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Reconsidering the Levelling-down Objection against Egalitarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 January 2009

Brett Doran
Brett Doran
Affiliation:
Rice University, bdoran@ruf.rice.edu
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Abstract

The levelling-down objection rejects the egalitarian view that it is intrinsically good to eliminate the inequality of an outcome by lowering the relevant good of those better off to the level of those worse off. Larry Temkin suggests that the position underlying this objection is an exclusionary version of the person-affecting view, in which an outcome can be better or worse only if persons are affected for better or worse. Temkin then defends egalitarianism by rejecting this position. In this essay, I avoid Temkin's conclusion by arguing that the levelling-down objection is best understood as resting on an alternative position, which involves a distinction between those non-person-affecting ideals that posit value as tied to individuals in a particular manner and those that do not. Taken as the basis of the levelling-down objection, this position allows us consistently to reject egalitarianism while accepting many plausible non-person-affecting ideals.

Type
Articles
Information
Utilitas , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 2001 , pp. 65 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2001

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References

1 Temkin, Larry, Inequality, Oxford, 1993Google Scholar, ch. 9; and his ‘Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection’, The Ideal of Equality, ed. Clayton, M. and Williams, A., LondonGoogle Scholar, forthcoming.

2 The focus of this essay is strictly on teleological or substantive egalitarianism, which is concerned with the equality of outcomes assessed in terms of goods persons have.

3 Frankfurt, Harry, ‘Equality as a Moral Ideal’, Ethics, xcviii (1987), 32Google Scholar.

4 See Temkin's discussion of these issues, and the distinction between ‘prioritarianism’ and non-instrumental egalitarianism, in Inequality, pp. 245–8 and ‘Levelling Down Objection’, sect. II. Also, see McKerlie's, Dennis discussion in his ‘Equality and Priority’, Utilitas, vi (1994)Google Scholar and ‘Equality’, Ethics, cvi (1996), 285–8Google Scholar.

5 Temkin, , Inequality, p. 256Google Scholar.

6 See Parfit's, discussion of this view in part four of his Reasons and Persons, Oxford, 1984Google Scholar.

7 Temkin, , Inequality, pp. 260 f.Google Scholar; and Temkin, ‘Levelling Down Objection’, sect. VII.

8 Temkin, , Inequality, p. 260Google Scholar.

9 Temkin, ‘Levelling Down Objection’, sect. XIII.

10 Ibid.

11 Granted, some may not be persuaded by Temkin's arguments against the Slogan, and endorse the result that no non-person-affecting ideal is acceptable. Those who do would probably continue to posit the Slogan as the basis of the levelling-down objection. Nonetheless, I believe that on reflection the Slogan, despite its initial appeal, ought to be rejected. For the remainder of this essay, then, I assume the falsity of the Slogan and attempt to find an alternative position on which to base the levelling-down objection. This attempt, therefore, is not a clarification of the thinking behind those who accept the Slogan; rather, it is intended as a clarification of the thought some have that despite rejecting the Slogan, the levelling-down objection still seems crushing against egalitarianism.

12 What counts as better or worse is not important here; I am only concerned with the structure of how proportional justice links value to persons within situations, not our particular normative judgements stemming from this structure.

13 Of course, we are not committed to including all sorts of intentional behaviours — one could, for instance, claim that merely one's actions count toward desert, thereby excluding one's thoughts, attitudes, etc. But the point is that desert is generated and determined by at least some feature of persons' wilful behaviour.

14 Temkin, , Inequality, p. 12Google Scholar.

15 The claim being appealed to here is that it is only by wilfully behaving in some manner that a person can be said to deserve some particular outcome. A consequence, then, of this distinction is that the natural and social contingencies of the positions and circumstances into which we are born are to be understood as merely undeserved. Therefore, the inequalities that exist by birth are not deemed objectionable by this conception of proportional justice. This seems to be a key divergence from Rawls's position that because these natural and social inequalities are arbitrary and undeserved, they are objectionable and ought to be corrected; see Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Mass., 1971, esp. sect. 12Google Scholar.

Of course, some might object to this view of desert and posit a theory in which what persons deserve is based on something other than wilful behaviour. Such an account might then claim that undeserved outcomes are objectionable because they are not in line with what is deserved. But even if we grant an account of this sort we should note that the conception of person-relevance rejects not only claims regarding merely undeserved outcomes, but any view that proffers desert-claims not generated and determined by persons' wilful behaviour.

16 The egalitarian certainly might also care about the wilful behaviour of persons to the extent that such behaviour can render an equal situation unfair. It is perfectly consistent, for instance, for the egalitarian to agree that the unequal distribution in situation C is fair because of the respective wilful behaviour of the saints and sinners. But, of course, this is just the position held by the ideal of proportional justice – and on the same grounds. The point here, however, concerns the essential egalitarian claim (i.e., that claim which differentiates it from the ideal of proportional justice) that an unequal outcome is unfair even considered entirely without regard to the persons' wilful behaviour, how they are affected or anything else regarding these persons except the comparative distribution of the relevant good. And it is only against the backdrop of this fundamental concern that the egalitarian is concerned with whether persons' wilful behaviour supports the positive value of equality or justifies a particular inequality. At the end of sect. IV, we will consider this issue further, as well as the egalitarian's claim that inequalities among equally deserving persons are objectionable.

17 That is, this view of egalitarianism holds (similarly to Rawls's view on natural and social inequalities) that it is cosmically unfair to be worse off than others due solely to bad luck that is independent of anyone's wilful behaviour. This prompts Anderson, Elizabeth S. to call (roughly) this view ‘luck egalitarianism’ in her recent essay, ‘What is the Point of Equality?’, Ethics, cix (1999)Google Scholar.

18 In other words, we can maintain a person-affecting view in so far as it is a claim about what does matter morally, and not also as a claim about what does not matter morally. A non-exclusionary restatement of the person-affecting view can be something like this: ‘An outcome is better or worse if persons are affected for better or worse’. This is most similar to Parfit's initial statement of the person-affecting view: ‘It will be worse if people are affected for the worse’ (Parfit, p. 370). (Parfit discusses exclusionary variants of this view most explicitly in his consideration of the Absurd Conclusion, ch. 18.) Stated as such, the person-affecting view can be just one among possible moral claims, including the Principle of Person-Relevance.

19 Of course, one may not consider all wilful behaviour, in our broad understanding, to count as autonomous action; for instance, one may not consider it autonomous to hold certain ideas or thoughts wilfully. But, in any event, that which one does count as autonomous ought to be some subset of persons' wilful behaviour.

20 Although we may also believe that virtuous persons deserve to fare better than those lacking virtue, the value associated with virtue is not one of desert. In so far as virtuous persons fare worse than non-virtuous persons, this may be a bad outcome vis-à-vis proportional justice. But the value generated by persons' virtue is not affected by varying degrees of well-being.

21 This distinction also reflects the difference in how wilful behaviour determines value for each ideal. In the case of virtue, certain types of wilful behaviour (namely, virtuous behaviour) produce positive value while other types (e.g., vicious behaviour) produce negative value. The type of wilful behaviour thus determines whether the value is positive or negative (and, we can presume, to what degree this value is positive or negative). For the ideal of autonomy, it is simply the occasioning of wilful behaviour that determines that the value produced is positive (rather than negative).

22 Other examples of plausible ideals that would be supported by the Principle of Person-Relevance might include promise-keeping (since a moral claim to fulfil a promise is created in the wilful act of promising), self-perfection (in so far as we might consider it good that persons wilfully strive toward bettering or perfecting themselves in certain ways), merit-based theories (in which desert-claims are generated by meritorious, and presumably wilful, behaviour), and so forth. Note that a merit-based theory of desert differs from proportional justice in that the former can talk in terms of absolute deserved outcomes, rather than merely proportionately deserved outcomes. A simple example: the winner of an Olympic marathon deserves the gold medal, and not just something comparatively better than the runner who finishes second.

23 This involves a somewhat broad understanding of affecting the world: a person wilfully affects the world either in the obvious way as manifest in the external world or by affecting one's ‘inner world’, so to speak, through intentionally held thoughts, preferences, and so forth.

24 George Sher has suggested that this might be the case.

25 McKerlie, , ‘Equality’, 293Google Scholar (my emphasis).

26 I am aware that Temkin speaks in terms of individuals having complaints with respect to inequalities (see esp. Inequality, pp. 19–27 and 44 f). It appears, however, that Temkin holds worse-off individuals to have complaints against inequality because undeserved inequalities, in which some have less than others, are objectionable. In such terms, the individual complaint is conditional on the disvalue of inequality, rather than a reason for the disvalue. McKerlie's account, at least ostensibly, importantly goes in the other direction: ‘inequality is objectionable because it violates a claim of the worse-off person. … Equality is a value concerned with the human good, and it is a response to the moral claims of individuals’ (McKerlie, , ‘Equality’, 294 f.Google Scholar).

27 More generally, note that this problem with the abstract position seems to lead to its inability to resist even arbitrary and highly implausible postulations of value in a fashion similar to McKerlie's defence of egalitarianism, in which one needs merely to assert that persons have individual moral claims to such values.

28 In particular, I have suggested three general features of the Principle of Person-Relevance that I believe support its intuitive plausibility. First, this principle is presented as a partial articulation of the belief that value is importantly connected to persons as individual agents — specifically, to our intentional and wilful behaviour. This was shown to be structurally similar to the (quite plausible) person-affecting view by means of a direct-affecting link to persons. Secondly, this principle provides a substantive grounding for many credible and normatively diverse non-person-affecting ideals in which value is generated and determined by persons behaving wilfully. And thirdly, it offers a reasoned explanation for the common belief that the levelling-down objection still seems powerful even if the Slogan is rejected.

Now some might believe that this principle does not have quite the initial appeal of the Slogan. Perhaps this is simply because the Slogan treads on more sceptical ground, with less burden of proof. But, again, this essay's presentation of the Principle of Person-Relevance is not intended as an argument against the Slogan. And for those who find the Slogan appealing, any theory in defence of (some) non-person-affecting ideals will appear erroneous. I believe, though, that those who are sympathetic to or supporters of the possibility of non-person-affecting ideals would find the Principle of Person-Relevance, in light of these three features, to be (at the least) more appealing than the Slogan.

29 Interestingly, McKerlie attempts to bolster the appeal of defending the value of equality in terms of moral claims by comparison to the moral claims involved in keeping a promise (McKerlie, , ‘Equality’, 293f, n. 38Google Scholar). But, as we noted above (n. 22), the moral claims of a promise can be understood as created in the wilful act of making a promise, and therefore can be endorsed by the Principle of Person-Relevance. Indeed, just as with other person-relevant values, this wilful creation of a moral claim seems right as the explanation of why keeping a promise has positive value. Alternatively, a moral claim to have an equal share of goods has no such grounding; in fact, McKerlie merely attributes these claims to persons with no further justification.

30 I would like to thank Larry Temkin and George Sher for their invaluable comments and criticisms on earlier drafts of this essay.