Philosophy

Events

“Biting the Bullet: Levelling-Down and Radical Egalitarianism” by Alexander Sager (Portland State University)

Date: December 3 2010, 3:30pm Location: John R. Howard Hall 202

Radical egalitarians advocate a moral standard under which people should not only enjoy equal rights, liberties, and opportunities, but also share approximately equal goods. Most philosophers who defend distributive justice reject radical egalitarianism in favour of a version of the difference principle or the doctrine of sufficiency. One reason for this rejection is the levelling-down objection. Radical egalitarianism is a comparative view: the goodness of a distribution depends partly on how much other people have. This has a counterintuitive implication. It is possible to achieve equality by levelling down – instead of improving the lot of the worst off, levelling down would involve taking goods away from people with more until everyone has an equal share. In this case equality is achieved in a way that harms the better-off people while appearing to benefit no one.

I argue that radical egalitarians should not be daunted by the levelling-down objection. Drawing on an analysis of the moral emotions of sympathy and envy, I provide a number of examples in which levelling-down appears morally permissible and is perhaps even required. This provides grounds for a version of radical telic egalitarianism in which levelling-down sometimes results in outcomes that are better all-things considered.