The Unit and Currency of Egalitarian Concern

According to (welfarist) telic egalitarianism, it is, in one respect, noninstrumentally bad if some people are unfairly worse off than others. This paper is about two ambiguities in telic egalitarianism. The first ambiguity concerns the so-called temporal unit of egalitarian concern (; ). This is th...

Full description

Saved in:  
Bibliographic Details
Main Author: O’Brien, David (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
Check availability: HBZ Gateway
Journals Online & Print:
Drawer...
Fernleihe:Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste
Published: Brill 2019
In: Journal of moral philosophy
Year: 2019, Volume: 16, Issue: 5, Pages: 613-643
Further subjects:B whole-life egalitarianism
B McKerlie
B unfairness
B whole-good egalitarianism
B Temkin
B Egalitarianism
B Inequality
Online Access: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Description
Summary:According to (welfarist) telic egalitarianism, it is, in one respect, noninstrumentally bad if some people are unfairly worse off than others. This paper is about two ambiguities in telic egalitarianism. The first ambiguity concerns the so-called temporal unit of egalitarian concern (; ). This is the question of whether inequality during whole lives, inequality during certain segments of lives, or some combination of these, is what generates egalitarian concern. The second ambiguity concerns the so-called currency of welfarist egalitarian concern (; ). In the present context, this is the question of whether inequality in overall welfare, inequality in some of the constituents of welfare, or some combination of these, is what generates egalitarian concern. In this paper I argue that the debates about how these two ambiguities are to be resolved are not unrelated. The same reasons that, according to some telic egalitarians, support rejecting the whole-lives-only view about the temporal unit of egalitarian concern support rejecting the overall-welfare-only view about the currency of welfarist egalitarian concern.
ISSN:1745-5243
Contains:Enthalten in: Journal of moral philosophy
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1163/17455243-20182796