RT Article
T1 The Unit and Currency of Egalitarian Concern
JF Journal of moral philosophy
VO 16
IS 5
SP 613
OP 643
A1 O’Brien, David
LA English
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1817474014
AB 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.
K1 whole-good egalitarianism
K1 whole-life egalitarianism
K1 unfairness
K1 Temkin
K1 McKerlie
K1 Inequality
K1 Egalitarianism
DO 10.1163/17455243-20182796