Nov 30, 2021 — By Charles Camosy (Fordham University), with a response by Gerald McKenny (University of Notre Dame). From the 2021 Notre Dame Fall Conference, "I Have Called You By Name: Human Dignity in a Secular World". Session chair: William Mattison (University of Notre Dame). Full speaker lineup: https://ethicscenter.nd.edu/programs/fall-conference/2021-i-have-called-you-by-name/

Jan 1, 1997 — © Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Ratio (new series) X 3 December 1997 0034-0006 1 EQUALITY AND PRIORITY ¹ Derek Parfit In his article 'Equality', Nagel imagines that he has two children, one healthy and happy, the other suffering from some painful handicap. Nagel's family could either move to a city where the second child could receive special treatment, or move to a suburb where the first child would flourish. Nagel writes: This is a difficult choice on any view. To make it a test for the value of equality, I want to suppose that the case has the follow- ing feature: the gain to the first child of moving to the suburb is substantially greater than the gain to the second child of moving to the city. He then comments: If one chose to move to the city, it would be an egalitarian deci- sion. It is more urgent to benefit the second child, even though the benefit we can give him is less than the benefit we can give to the first child.² My aim, in this paper, is to discuss this kind of reasoning. 1 Nagel's decision turns on the relative importance of two facts: he could give one child a greater benefit, but the other child is worse off. There are countless cases of this kind. In these cases, when we are choosing between two acts or policies, one relevant fact is how great the resulting benefits would be. For Utilitarians, that is all that matters. On their view, we should always aim for the greatest ¹ This paper is a greatly shortened version of my Lindley Lecture 'Equality or Priority?' (42 pp.), published by the University of Kansas in 1995. That lecture owes much to the ideas of, or comments from, Brian Barry, David Brink, John Broome, Jerry Cohen, Robert Goodin, James Griffin, Shelly Kagan, Dennis McKerlie, David Miller, Thomas Nagel, Robert Nozick, Richard Norman, Ingmar Persson, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Joseph Raz, Thomas Scanlon, and Larry Temkin. ² Thomas Nagel, Mortal Question, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), pages 123–4. See also Nagel's Equality and Partiality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991). EQUALITY AND PRIORITY 203 sum of benefits. But, for egalitarians, it also matters how well off the beneficiaries would be. We should sometimes choose a smaller sum of benefits, for the sake of a better distribution. Should we aim for a better distribution? If so, when and how? These are difficult questions, but their subject matter is, in a way, simple. It is enough to consider different possible states of affairs, or outcomes, each involving the same set of people. We imagine knowing how well off, in these outcomes, these people would be. We then ask whether either outcome would be better, or would be the outcome that we ought to bring about. Some writers reject these questions. Nozick objects, for exam- ple, that these questions wrongly assume that there is something to be distributed. Most goods, he argues, are not up for distribu- tion, or redistribution.³ They are goods to which particular people already have entitlements, or special claims. Others make similar claims about desert. These objections we can set aside. We can assume that, in the cases we are considering, no one deserves to be better off than anyone else; nor does anyone have special claims to whatever we are distributing. Since there are some cases of this kind, we have a subject. If we can reach conclusions, we can then consider how widely these apply. Like Rawls and others, I believe that, at the fundamental level, most cases are of this kind. To ask my questions, we need only two assumptions. First, some people can be worse off than others, in ways that are morally relevant. Second, these differences can be matters of degree. To describe my imagined cases, I shall use figures. Nagel's choice, for example, can be shown as follows: Move to the city: Move to the suburb: The first child 20 25 The second child 10 O Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997 9 Such figures misleadingly suggest precision. Even in principle, I believe, there could not be precise differences between how well off different people are. I intend these figures to show only that the choice between these outcomes makes much more difference to Nagel's first child, but that, in both outcomes, the second child would be much worse off. ³ Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), pages 149-50. 204 DEREK PARFIT One point about my figures is important. Each unit is a roughly equal benefit, however well off the person is who receives it. If someone rises from 99 to 100, this person benefits as much as someone else who rises from 9 to 10. Without this assumption we cannot ask some of our questions. Thus we cannot ask whether some benefit would matter more if it came to someone who was worse off. Since each extra unit is an equal benefit, however well off the recipient is, these units should not be thought of as equal quan- tities of resources. The same increase in resources usually brings greater benefits to those who are worse off. But these benefits need not be thought of in Utilitarian terms, as involving greater happiness, or desire-fulfilment. They might be improvements in health, or length of life, or education, or range of opportunities, or involve any other goods that we take to be morally important." 2 Most of us believe in some kind of equality. We believe in politi- cal equality, or equality before the law, or we believe that every- one has equal rights, or that everyone's interests should be given equal weight. Though these kinds of equality are of great impor- tance, they are not my subject here. I am concerned with people's being equally well off. To be egalitarians, in my sense, this is the kind of equality in which we must believe. Some egalitarians believe that, if people were equally well off, that would be a better state of affairs. If we hold this view, we can be called Teleological- or, for short, Telic-Egalitarians. We accept The Principle of Equality: It is in itself bad if some people are worse off than others.5 Suppose that the people in some community could all be either equally well off, or equally badly off. The Principle of Equality 4 For two such broader accounts of well-being, see Amartya Sen, 'Capability and Well- Being', in The Quality of Life, edited by Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1993), Amartya Sen, Inequality Reexamined (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), Chapter 3; and Thomas Scanlon, 'Value, Desire, and the Quality of Life', in Nussbaum and Sen, op. cit. 5 We might add, ‘through no fault or choice of theirs'. In a fuller statement of this prin- ciple, we would need to assess the relative badness of different patterns of inequality. But we can here ignore these complications. They are well discussed in Larry Temkin's Inequality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993). O Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997 EQUALITY AND PRIORITY 205 does not tell us that the second would be worse. To explain that obvious truth, we might appeal to The Principle of Utility: It is in itself better if people are better off. When people would be on average better off, or would receive a greater sum of benefits, we can say, for brevity, that there would be more utility. If we cared only about equality, we would be Pure Egalitarians. If we cared only about utility, we would be Utilitarians. Most of us accept a pluralist view: one that appeals to more than one princi- ple or value. According to Pluralist Egalitarians, it would be better both if there was more equality, and if there was more utility. In deciding which of two outcomes would be better, we give weight to both these values. These values may conflict. One of two outcomes may be in one way worse, because there would be more inequality, but in another way better, because there would be more utility. We must then decide which of these two facts would be more important. Consider, for example, the following possibilities: (1) Everyone at 150 (2) Half at 199 (3) Half at 101 Half at 200 Half at 200 For Pure Egalitarians, (1) is the best outcome, since it contains the least inequality. For Utilitarians, (1) is the worst outcome, since it contains the least utility. For most Pluralist Egalitarians, (1) would be neither the best nor the worst of these outcomes. (1) would be, on balance, worse than (2), since it would be much worse in terms of utility, and only slightly better in terms of equality. Similarly, (1) would be better than (3), since it would be much better in terms of equality, and only slightly worse in terms of utility. In many cases the Pluralist View is harder to apply. Compare (1) Everyone at 150 with (4) Half at N Half at 200. If we are Pluralist Egalitarians, for which values of N would we believe (1) to be worse than (4)? For some range of values – such as 120 to 150 we may find this question hard to answer. And it may not have an answer. The relative importance of equality and utility may be, even in principle, imprecise. O Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997 206 DEREK PARFIT We should next distinguish two kinds of value. If we claim that equality is good, we may mean only that it has good effects. If people are unequal, for example, that can produce conflict, or damage the self-respect of those who are worst off, or put some people in the power of others. If we care about equality because we are concerned with such effects, we believe that equality has instrumental value, or is good as a means. But I am concerned with a different idea. For true Egalitarians, equality has intrinsic value, or is in itself good. This distinction is important. If we believe that, besides having bad effects, inequality is in itself bad, we shall think it to be worse. And we shall think it bad even when it has no bad effects. To illustrate this second point, consider what I shall call the Divided World. The two halves of the world's population are, we can suppose, unaware of each other's existence. Perhaps the Atlantic has not yet been crossed. Consider next two possible states of affairs: (1) Half at 100 Half at 200 (2) Everyone at 145 Of these two states, (1) is in one way better than (2), since people are on average better off. But we may believe that, all things considered, (1) is worse than (2). How could we explain this view? If we are Telic Egalitarians, our explanation would be this. While it is good that, in (1), people are on average better off, it is bad that some people are worse off than others. The badness of this inequality morally outweighs the extra benefits. In making such a claim, we could not appeal to inequality's bad effects. Since the two halves of the world's population are quite unconnected, this inequality has no effects. If we are to claim that (1) is worse because of its inequality, we must claim that this inequality is in itself bad.6 6 In his paper in this volume, which I cannot properly discuss here, Richard Norman writes: '[Parfit] asks us whether (1) is worse that (2). I have to confess that I do not know how to answer that question, and I do not think that this is simply a personal confession on my part. . . . I want to say of Parfit's Divided world example that when you abstract the question from the social context in which we make judgements about equality and inequality, it is no longer clear how to answer it' (pp. 240-1 below). It is, I agree, not obvious whether the inequality in (1) is bad. But that it is not because we cannot make value judgments about such examples. It is clear that (1) would be better than (3) Half at 100, Half at 50, but worse than (4) Everyone at 200. O Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1997

Jan 1, 1978 — 429 Too Many Requests You have sent too many requests in a given amount of time.

Feb 5, 2021 — John Haldane unpacks two key ideas at the core of secular liberalism.

Nov 11, 2020 — Part I (Pojman's critique of secular arguments for egalitarianism) starts at 07:05. Part II (Counter-evidence to secular egalitarianism) begins at 1:03:33. Conclusion - 1:15:07 Pojman, Louis. “On Equal Human Worth: A Critique of Contemporary Egalitarianism.” In Equality: Selected Readings, edited by Louis P. Pojman and Robert Westmoreland, 282-98. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Oct 3, 2020 — Encyclical Fratelli tutti (All Brothers) of the Holy Father Francis, 3 October 2020

Oct 30, 2019 — Yuval Levin's remarks during "The Nation & Conservative Tradition" panel at the 2019 National Conservatism Conference. Leading public intellectual Yuval Levin uses Edmund Burke to highlight four distinct understandings of nationalism.

Apr 10, 2018 — The age of human rights has been kindest to the rich. Even as state violations of political rights garnered unprecedented attention due to human rights campaigns, a commitment to material equality disappeared. In its place, market fundamentalism has emerged as the dominant force in national and global economies. In this provocative book, Samuel Moyn analyzes how and why we chose to make human rights our highest ideals while simultaneously neglecting the demands of a broader social and economic justice. In a pioneering history of rights stretching back to the Bible, Not Enough charts how twentieth-century welfare states, concerned about both abject poverty and soaring wealth, resolved to fulfill their citizens’ most basic needs without forgetting to contain how much the rich could tower over the rest. In the wake of two world wars and the collapse of empires, new states tried to take welfare beyond its original European and American homelands and went so far as to challenge inequality on a global scale. But their plans were foiled as a neoliberal faith in markets triumphed instead. Moyn places the career of the human rights movement in relation to this disturbing shift from the egalitarian politics of yesterday to the neoliberal globalization of today. Exploring why the rise of human rights has occurred alongside enduring and exploding inequality, and why activists came to seek remedies for indigence without challenging wealth, Not Enough calls for more ambitious ideals and movements to achieve a humane and equitable world.

Jun 19, 2017 — An enduring theme of Western philosophy is that we are all one another’s equals. Yet the principle of basic equality is woefully under-explored in modern moral and political philosophy. In a major new work, Jeremy Waldron attempts to remedy that shortfall with a subtle and multifaceted account of the basis for the West’s commitment to human equality.What does it mean to say we are all one another’s equals? Is this supposed to distinguish humans from other animals? What is human equality based on? Is it a religious idea, or a matter of human rights? Is there some essential feature that all human beings have in common? Waldron argues that there is no single characteristic that serves as the basis of equality. He says the case for moral equality rests on four capacities that all humans have the potential to possess in some degree: reason, autonomy, moral agency, and the ability to love. But how should we regard the differences that people display on these various dimensions? And what are we to say about those who suffer from profound disability—people whose claim to humanity seems to outstrip any particular capacities they have along these lines?Waldron, who has worked on the nature of equality for many years, confronts these questions and others fully and unflinchingly. Based on the Gifford Lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 2015, One Another’s Equals takes Waldron’s thinking further and deeper than ever before.

Jun 30, 2016 — Equality is a comparative notion: thus, for example, there is equality between two people in relation to a benefit or a burden when each receives the same benefit or shoulders the same burden. That i...