Equality or Compassion1
Introduction
In Equality, Priority and Compassion,2 Roger Crisp rejects both egalitarianism and
prioritarianism. Crisp acknowledges that most people feel a special concern for those who
are badly off, but he contends that this concern is best accounted for not by appeal to the
tenets of egalitarianism or prioritarianism, but by appeal to “a sufficiency principle based—
indirectly, via the notion of an impartial spectator—on compassion for those who are badly
off (p. 1).”3 A key example in Crisp’s article is the Beverly Hills case (discussed below).
This example is directed against prioritarianism, but it might be thought equally powerful
against egalitarianism. In this paper, I shall offer several egalitarian responses to the Beverly
Hills case. I shall also challenge the wide person-affecting principle and Crisp’s Welfarist
Restriction, which some believe underlie the Levelling Down and Raising Up Objections
against egalitarianism. Together, this paper’s considerations illuminate both the nature and
appeal of egalitarianism.
The paper is divided into five main sections, a conclusion, and an appendix. In
section one, I summarize Crisp’s positive account of when we should give priority to a
worse-off person over a better-off person, and present the Beverly Hills case that he offers in
support of his view. In section two, I characterize the version of egalitarianism with which
this paper is concerned. In section three, I show how egalitarians might accommodate
Crisp’s intuitions about the Beverly Hills case. In section four, I suggest there are good
reasons to reject Crisp’s intuitions about the Beverly Hills case. In section five, I question
the wide person-affecting principle, Crisp’s Welfarist Restriction, and the Levelling Down
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and Raising Up Objections. Finally, in the appendix, I comment on an influential forerunner
of Crisp’s paper, Harry Frankfurt’s “Equality as a Moral Ideal.”4
Crisp’s paper has considerable merits. Besides being wonderfully clear, it shows the
importance and role of compassion, and offers a worthy challenge to prioritarianism.
However, this paper raises significant doubts about Crisp’s rejection of egalitarianism.
I. The Virtue of Compassion and the Beverly Hills Case
Crisp believes that in some cases we should give priority to a worse-off person over a
better-off person. But he denies that the best account of why we should do this is provided
by egalitarianism or prioritarianism. Rather, he claims, we should appeal to what an
impartial spectator would say about the situation; where, he assumes, the impartial spectator
will be a virtuous spectator, and in particular will be motivated by the virtue of compassion.
Thus, Crisp contends that “The notion of compassion … used in conjunction with the notion
of an impartial spectator, may provide us with the materials for an account of distribution
which allows us to give priority to those who are worse off when, and only when, these
worse off are themselves badly off (p. 15).” Specifically, Crisp proposes “The Compassion
Principle: Absolute priority is to be given to benefits to those below the threshold at which
compassion enters. Below the threshold, benefiting people matters more the worse off those
people are, the more of those people there are, and the greater the size of the benefit in
question. Above the threshold, or in cases concerning only trivial benefits below the
threshold, no priority is to be given (p. 16).” As for the tricky question of where the
threshold for compassion lies, Crisp explicitly echoes Harry Frankfurt5 in endorsing “The
Sufficiency Principle: Compassion for any being B is appropriate up to the point at which B
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has a level of welfare such that B can live a life which is sufficiently good (p. 20).”
Although Crisp has theoretical reasons for couching his discussion in terms of what a
virtuous impartial spectator would judge, we can ignore those for our purposes. It is enough
to recognize that Crisp believes there are certain circumstances that warrant our compassion,
and that it is when, and only when, compassion is warranted that we ought to give priority to
someone who is worse off than another.
I once referred to prioritarianism as “extended humanitarianism,” because I saw it as
extending the humanitarian’s “principle concern … to relieve suffering.”6 If one accepts a
dictionary definition of compassion, as “a deep feeling for and understanding of misery or
suffering and the concomitant desire to promote its alleviation,”7 Crisp seems to be endorsing
the notion that we should extend the giving of priority beyond those who are literally in
misery or suffering, to include any whose lives are not “sufficiently” good. So, Crisp goes
part way with the prioritarian, or extended humanitarian. But he insists that at some point—
once a being’s life is “sufficiently” good—even “extended” compassion gives out. (Having
noted that Crisp seems to be employing an “extended” notion of compassion, I’ll often
follow Crisp’s usage and drop the qualifier “extended.”) At that point, there may still be
general reasons of beneficence to improve a being’s life, but there will no longer be any
reason to give that being priority over any other being, including beings even better off than
she.
Crisp’s analysis has a simple form. He is offering an explanation of why, and when,
we should give priority to a worse off person over a better off person. Roughly, he is
claiming that it is only appropriate to give priority to one person over another when the one
person’s situation warrants greater compassion. But, he suggests, compassion only stretches
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so far; above a certain level—specifically, when a person’s life is “sufficiently” good—it is
no longer warranted. Thus, among people whose lives are “sufficiently” good, there is no
reason to give any of them priority, even if some of them are worse off than others. Clearly,
if Crisp is right we should reject both egalitarianism and prioritarianism, since both views
would give priority to a worse-off person over a better-off person, even when the worse-off
person was sufficiently well off that her situation didn’t warrant our compassion.
In support of his claims, Crisp asks us to consider what he calls the Beverly Hills
case. In the Beverly Hills case, we have to choose between offering “fine wine to different
groups of well-off individuals (p. 12).” We can give bottles of Lafite 1982 to 10 Rich, and
raise them from level 80 to level 82, or we can give bottles of Latour 1982 to 10,000 Superrich, and raise them from level 90 to 92. Crisp claims that we should improve the lot of
10,000 Super-rich by two, rather than the lot of 10 Rich by two. He writes, “It seems
somewhat absurd to think that the Rich should be given priority over the Super-rich to the
extent that aggregation is entirely forbidden in the case of the latter (pp. 13).” But he then
proceeds to a much stronger claim, adding the following: “Indeed, what the Beverly Hills
case brings out is that, once recipients are at a certain level, any prioritarian concern for them
disappears entirely. This implies that any version of the priority view must fail: when
people reach a certain level, even if they are worse off than others, benefiting them does not,
in itself, matter more (p. 13).” Crisp’s contention, of course, is that we feel no compassion,
or even “extended” compassion, for the Rich or the Super-rich, nor, more importantly, should
we. Hence, contrary to the claims of prioritarianism, there is no reason to give the Rich
priority over the Super-rich.
4
Problems of aggregation are amongst the most difficult in all of moral philosophy,8
and it wouldn’t be surprising if prioritarians, like everyone else, lack an adequate response to
them. But prioritarians needn’t be saddled with the view that the Rich should be given
absolute priority over the Super-rich. The question is whether the Rich should be given any
priority over the Super-rich, strictly in virtue of the fact that their absolute level is lower.
Prioritarians who think the answer to this question is “yes,” must contend that if compassion
can be appropriately “extended” beyond a concern for misery and suffering to include the
plight of people whose lives are not “sufficiently” good, it can also be appropriately extended
to include the plight of people whose lives are “sufficiently” good but are still not as good as
possible. Alternatively, prioritarians must offer another explanation for the appropriateness
of giving priority to one person rather than another, that does not depend on the
appropriateness of even “extended” compassion regarding the worse-off person’s situation.
I leave to committed prioritarians the task of taking up Crisp’s challenge on behalf of
prioritarianism. However, since the Beverly Hills case also threatens egalitarianism, I would
like to consider some egalitarian responses to Crisp’s example. I shall do that in sections
three and four, but first it will be useful to characterize my version of egalitarianism.
II. Egalitarianism9
Egalitarians come in many stripes. Too many, I'm afraid. Numerous, quite distinct,
positions have been described as egalitarian. Correspondingly, in discussing equality it is
important that one clarify the sense one is using the term.
In this paper, I shall be concerned with a version of egalitarianism that might be
called equality as comparative fairness. On this view, equality is a subtopic of the more
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general—and even more complex—topic of fairness. Specifically, concern about equality is
a portion of our concern about fairness that focuses on how people fare relative to others. So,
our concern for equality is not separable from our concern for a certain aspect of fairness;
they are part and parcel of a single concern.
Egalitarians in my sense generally believe that it is bad for some to be worse off than
others through no fault or choice of their own. The connection between equality and
comparative fairness explains both the importance, and limits, of the “no fault or choice”
clause. Typically, if one person is worse off than another through no fault or choice of her
own the situation seems unfair, and hence the inequality between the two will be
objectionable. But the applicability of the “no fault or choice” clause is neither necessary nor
sufficient for comparative unfairness,10 and it is the latter that ultimately matters on my
version of egalitarianism.
On my view, egalitarians are not committed to thinking deserved inequalities are as
bad as undeserved ones. In fact, I think deserved inequalities, if there are any, are not bad at
all. The reason for this is simple. Undeserved inequality is unfair, but deserved inequality is
not. Thus, the egalitarian is not committed to the view that it is bad with respect to equality
for parents or citizens to freely and rationally sacrifice for their descendants so that their
descendants will be better off than they. Nor is the egalitarian committed to the view that it
is bad with respect to equality for imprisoned criminals to be worse off than regular citizens,
if the egalitarian believes that the criminal could have been as well off as others, but freely
chose a life of crime. In such cases, the worse-off are so by their own free choice, and the
way in which this is so makes it seem that the unequal outcomes are not unfair, and hence not
objectionable. These cases differ from those where the worse-off are so because they were
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unlucky enough to be born into poverty, or with severe handicaps, or with the "wrong" color
skin in a racist society.
Opponents sometimes try to saddle egalitarians with the view that all inequalities are
bad. This is a ludicrous position no egalitarian accepts. Egalitarians needn’t object to the
fact that there are more electrons than protons, or more roaches than whales. Nor need
egalitarians object to inequalities of height or hair color, considered just by themselves. This
may seem obvious, but it is connected to a significant point. Egalitarians aren’t simply
concerned with how much inequality obtains in a situation; they are concerned with how bad
a situation’s inequality is. While there may be more inequality in one situation than another,
that needn't be worse if the greater inequality is morally irrelevant, deserved, or of less
normative significance than the lesser inequality.11
My version of egalitarianism is an example of what Derek Parfit has called telic
egalitarianism.12 Telic egalitarians are concerned with inequality’s impact on the
goodness, or desirability, of outcomes. They believe that inequality amongst equally
deserving people makes an outcome bad in one respect. In contrast, deontic egalitarians
believe that there is a duty to promote equality, independent of the extent to which this
produces a better outcome, though other duties may conflict with this duty.
My version of egalitarianism is also an example of non-instrumental egalitarianism.
On this view, equality, understood as comparative fairness, is intrinsically valuable, in the
sense that it is sometimes valuable in itself, over and above the extent to which it promotes
other ideals. On instrumental egalitarianism, by contrast, the value of equality is wholly
derivative from the value of other ideals whose non-egalitarian goods it promotes. On
instrumental egalitarianism the ideal of equality does not play a fundamental role in one’s
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account of the moral realm. On non-instrumental egalitarianism equality is a distinct moral
ideal with independent normative significance. Thus, a complete account of the moral realm
must allow for equality’s value.
It is, of course, extremely difficult to determine when inequalities are comparatively
unfair, and a complete resolution of this question might require a solution to the problem of
free will. In addition, even if we could determine which inequalities involve comparative
unfairness, it is extremely difficult to determine how bad a situation’s inequality is. Even so,
I think significant progress can be made in our understanding of egalitarianism and its
implications once we recognize the intimate connection between equality and comparative
fairness.13
Egalitarians are often accused of engaging in “the politics of envy.” But surely
not all egalitarians are "maliciously covetous or resentful of the possessions or good
fortune of another" (as Webster's Third New International Dictionary defines the term
"envious")? For example, egalitarians who feel guilty about their own good fortune
needn’t be envious of their own good fortune. Likewise, egalitarians who condemn past
inequalities between clan leaders and their followers, or servants, needn’t be "maliciously
covetous" or "resentful" of the clan leader's possessions or good fortune. Indeed, they
may well believe, rightly, that they are much better off than the clan leader ever was, and
that, for a multitude of reasons, the clan leader is more to be pitied than envied (though
perhaps his followers or servants should be pitied even more!). Rather, egalitarians
believe that these are cases where it is bad—because unfair—for some to be worse off
than others through no fault or choice of their own. Thus, the egalitarian's judgment is
not motivated by envy, but by a sense of fairness. At least, I believe that is what an
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egalitarian's judgment should be motivated by, whether considering other societies or
one's own.14
Finally, let me add that any reasonable egalitarian will be a pluralist. Equality is
not the only thing that matters to the egalitarian. It may not even be the ideal that matters
most. But it is one ideal, among others, that has independent normative significance.
Bearing the preceding in mind, let us now consider how an egalitarian might
respond to Crisp’s Beverly Hills case on the view of equality as comparative fairness.
III. Maintaining Egalitarianism while Accommodating Crisp’s Intuitions
I believe that one could accept Crisp’s intuitions about the Beverly Hills case, and
still be an egalitarian. Let me suggest three ways of reconciling these positions.
First, Crisp’s description of the case is a bit unfortunate. Although Crisp is careful to
tell us early on that the numbers in his diagrams “represent the welfare of each individual in
each group (p. 1),” and reminds us in a later note about another example that he is “assuming
my ‘Rich’ to be welfare-rich (p. 26),” I fear, based on my own misinterpretation of his
example, that we may intuitively fail to heed these remarks when we think about the case.
Specifically, his titling of the case as the Beverly Hills case, and his labeling of the two
groups as “Rich” and “Super-Rich” invites us to consider whether we should provide bottles
of fine wine to the Super-rich actress making $20,000,000 per picture, or to the “merely”
Rich actor making $1,000,000 per picture. In such cases, we may reasonably assume that
both have far more money than they need, neither wants for anything, and hence that each is
equally well off. That is, we may think that after a point merely having more money, or a
fungible good like wine that money can buy, doesn’t make one better off. Correspondingly,
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even if we share Crisp’s intuitive response, that we have no more reason to give bottles of
wine to the Rich than the Super-rich, this may just show that we have lost sight of the fact
that the Rich are actually supposed to be worse off than the Super-rich, as their initial levels
of 80 and 90, respectively, are intended to reflect. After all, insofar as one implicitly assumes
that the Rich and Super-rich are equally well off, the egalitarian would agree that there was
no reason to favor the Rich over the Super-rich, and this might account for any intuitive
agreement people share with Crisp about the case.
Second, Jim Griffin has argued against what he calls the simple “totting up” model
for assessing the quality of people’s lives.15 Griffin distinguishes between local preferences
and global preferences. Roughly, local preferences are our particular short-term preferences,
like our preferences for seeing a particular movie, or eating Chinese food some night. Global
preferences are long-term preferences for how our lives should go over significant periods,
like our preferences for being a good parent, having a successful career, or living a long,
healthy, life. Griffin suggests that when we compare the quality of people’s lives for moral
purposes, what matters is the nature and degree of satisfaction of their global preferences, not
the sum of their satisfied local preferences. Indeed, while Griffin readily admits that a person
will be temporarily happier or more satisfied if he sees a movie, or eats a meal, of his choice,
he denies that such pleasures or desire-satisfactions make a difference to the overall goodness
of the person’s life.
Griffin’s view is controversial, but even those—like me—who ultimately reject it,
may agree that it has some intuitive force. To the extent that it does, such a view might
account for the intuition that it doesn’t matter whether we provide wine to the Rich or Superrich. Even supposing that the Rich are genuinely worse-off than the Super-rich in terms of
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the quality and satisfaction of their global preferences, we may assume that giving them wine
only affects their local preferences, and hence does not affect the overall quality of their lives
as a whole. But, on the view in question, what matters from an egalitarian standpoint would
be how people compare in terms of the overall quality of their lives as a whole. Hence, it
won’t matter who gets the wine, because the fundamental gap in the quality of lives between
the Rich and the Super-rich, won’t be affected by our choice.
Third, in my book, Inequality, I argued that there were many different aspects of
inequality. I argued that each of these aspects represented a plausible position that might
underlie and influence our egalitarian judgments. I cannot repeat my arguments for these
aspects here,16 but let me note that on several aspects it wouldn’t matter whether we gave the
wine to the Rich or Super-rich. For example, on one aspect we would measure a situation’s
inequality as a function of the total deviation from the “closest” situation in which everyone
was equal, where the “closest” situation turns out to be the situation’s median level. Since, in
the real world, both the Rich and the Super-rich are well above the median level, it won’t
matter whether we raise the Rich or the Super Rich n units, as both would increase the total
deviation from the median by the same amount. Similarly, there are other plausible aspects
that would measure inequality as a function of the size of the gap between either the worstoff people, or all those worse off than the average, and the situation’s average level. On
either of these views, the egalitarian could admit that in a society like ours it wouldn’t matter
whether wine was given to the Rich or the Super-rich, if they would benefit equally from it.
Either way, the situation’s inequality would worsen to the same extent, as the society’s
average level would be increased by the same amount, and hence, so would the gaps between
the worst-off group, or all those worse off than the average, and the average level.
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I submit, then, that Crisp’s Beverly Hills case is hardly a knockdown against
egalitarianism. Even if one shares Crisp’s intuition that it doesn’t matter whether one
provides the Rich or the Super-rich with wine, there are a multitude of explanations of that
intuition compatible with egalitarianism. 17
IV. Defending Egalitarianism and Rejecting Crisp’s Intuitions
Although I think an egalitarian could accept Crisp’s intuitions about the Beverly
Hills case, I don’t think she has to. Indeed, I think there are powerful egalitarian reasons to
reject Crisp’s intuitions about the case. Let me illuminate these reasons by considering the
case more closely, and exploring our reactions to other related examples.
Crisp takes it for granted that we regard it as desirable for the Rich or Super-rich to
receive fine wine, and that we should regard it as “somewhat absurd” to think that it might be
better for 10 Rich to receive bottles of wine than 10,000 Super-rich. But while I readily grant
that there are certain respects, say regarding beneficence, in which I share his intuitions, in
others my intuitions differ markedly from his. In a world where each year “well over 10
million children die… from readily preventable causes,”18 I rail at the prospect of the Rich or
the Super-rich getting yet another bottle of fine wine. My thought is: “a pox on both
alternatives!” I’d rather see neither group get the bottles of wine than one group get them,
one group get them rather than both, and if one group must get wine, I’d rather see 10 Rich
get bottles than 10,000 Super-rich. Moreover, I’d look at the latter case not as a particularly
desirable outcome, but as the best of two bad outcomes.
Of course, Crisp will share my intuitions to an extent, insofar as he feels compassion
for the world’s needy and assumes the resources spent on the fine wine could be better spent
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keeping people alive. But I am making a further—much more controversial—claim. I
believe that even if the resources spent on the Rich and Super-rich couldn’t be diverted to aid
the needy, there would be something bad about using those resources to further indulge the
Rich or Super-rich. What could that “bad” be? For me, it is a matter of comparative
unfairness. To me, it is terribly unfair that, through no fault or choice of their own, some
must struggle to survive, and ultimately lose that struggle, while others indulge in
extraordinary extravagance. That unfairness is only exacerbated, making an already bad
situation even worse, when I imagine even more frivolous luxuries laid in the laps of the
Rich or Super-rich.
Note, as a pluralist, the egalitarian need not claim that it would be better all things
considered for nobody to get the wine than for it to go to the Rich or Super-rich. Though I
incline towards that position myself in such cases, it is enough to defend non-instrumental
egalitarianism that there be one important respect in which it would be better for nobody to
get the wine. I believe there is such a respect. It would be better, to some extent, because
fairer.
Crisp has claimed that our propensity to give priority to a less fortunate person over a
more fortunate person is best explained by appeal to the virtue of compassion, and that once
people are “sufficiently” well off, compassion gives out. I believe that the appropriateness 19
of compassion may be an important part of the explanation of our giving priority to some less
fortunate people over some more fortunate people, but that considerations of fairness also
play a role in such matters. Moreover, I believe that considerations of fairness are distinct
from considerations of compassion, and do not give out once people are “sufficiently” well
off. In support of these claims, let me offer the following.
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First, I can feel compassion for the misery or suffering of others, even when it is
deserved. But fairness is another matter. Consider two cases. In case one, John is much
worse off than Judy, as a result of a free fully informed choice that he made. More
specifically, assume that John knew better than to do what he did, ignored his better
judgment, and deserved the bad consequences of his choice. However, having fully “learned
his lesson,” John now deeply regrets his decision, and would never make such a choice again.
In case two, John is much worse off than Judy as a result of terrible bad luck. He was out for
a stroll in the park on a beautiful day, when a tree suddenly shed a limb that fell on him.
Imagine that in both cases John’s condition would be exactly the same, and involve a great
deal of misery and suffering. As a compassionate human being, I feel a strong pull to aid
John in both cases. If I could relieve John of some of his intense misery and suffering at little
cost to myself, I think I should do so. (Here, I am supposing that helping John in the case
where he is deserving of his plight won’t encourage him or others to act similarly in the
future.20) Still, as much as compassion may lead me to help John in both cases, overall I feel
a much stronger pull to help John in the second case.
If I imagine that helping John would require me to use resources that I would
otherwise contribute to a worthy charity, I might well do so in the second case but not in the
first. Why? Because in the second case John’s situation strikes me as unfair. He has been
the victim of terrible, cosmic, bad luck. After all, millions of people go for walks, without
being struck down by falling limbs! In the first case, on the other hand, there is nothing
unfair about John’s situation. He is in a bad way, but he is fully responsible for being in that
bad way. I suspect that most people will share my view, and feel very differently about the
priority that John should be given in the two cases. This suggests that fairness and
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compassion are distinct concerns, and that each may play a role in our giving priority to some
who are worse off than others.
Note, Crisp may try to account for our different reactions to the two cases, in terms of
compassion itself. He might acknowledge that we can feel compassion for misery and
suffering even when it is deserved, but suggest that we should feel even greater compassion
for misery and suffering in cases where it is undeserved. There is much to be said about such
a move, but for now let me simply record my conviction that ultimately it fails to replace
considerations of equality with those of compassion, rather it brings considerations of
equality, or comparative fairness, into our understanding of the virtue of compassion. Of
course, to defend this conviction an argument has to be offered moving from the
considerations of desert noted above to the considerations of equality, or comparative
fairness. Unfortunately, while I think such an argument can be given, I cannot pursue it here.
Crisp’s Beverly Hills case is unfortunate for many reasons. To really test whether
Crisp’s view is correct, we should imagine a case where the people involved clearly have
lives that are “sufficiently” good, but where they are the only ones in the situation, or even
better, where all the other beings in their situation are even better off. We should also be sure
that we aren’t inadvertently focusing on mere economic inequality—as we might in thinking
about the Rich and Super-rich—but are thinking about an inequality of what really matters
most; say, inequality of welfare, or opportunity for welfare, or capabilities and functionings,
or access to advantages.21
Consider the following case. I have two daughters. My daughters aren’t superrich, or
even rich by Beverly Hills’ standards. But they are incredibly well off. Indeed, by the
criteria that truly matter most, they are amongst a tiny fraction of the most fortunate people
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who have ever lived. Suppose the following is true. Both are extremely intelligent and
attractive, have deep friendships, a stable home, excellent schools, high self-esteem,
rewarding projects and commitments, fantastic careers and a long healthy life ahead of them.
In short, imagine that my two daughters are destined to flourish in all the ways that matter
most. By any reasonable criteria, we must assume that my daughters will have “sufficiently”
good lives.
Next, suppose that Andrea is a little better off than Becky in all of the relevant
categories. So, Andrea is a little smarter and more attractive, has slightly more rewarding
friendships, will live longer, and so on. Moreover, suppose that neither Andrea nor Becky
has done anything to deserve their different fortunes.
Now imagine that Andrea’s incredibly good fortune even extends to the most trivial
of matters. So, she is just plain lucky in everything she does. Here is one way in which she
is lucky. Every time she takes her weekly walk, she finds a twenty-dollar bill. She doesn’t
look for money as she walks, or take particular routes where she thinks rich people with
holes in their pockets tread, she just always comes across money when out walking. Blind
luck. Of course, for someone as well off as she is in terms of what truly matters, finding $20
once a week doesn’t make much of a real difference to her life, but she never loses the thrill
of finding money, and it invariably brightens her day, bringing a warm smile to her face and
a glow to her heart.
Becky, on the other hand, doesn’t share her sister’s incredible luck. She walks even
more regularly than Andrea, and takes similar paths at similar times. Moreover, she scans
the path as she walks far more vigilantly than Andrea. But for some reason she never finds
any money. Of course, in a life as fulfilling as hers, this hardly matters, it simply means that
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she misses the excitement Andrea feels when she comes across money, together with its
attendant outward smile and inward glow.
Finally, let us suppose that Becky isn’t the least bit envious of her sister’s good
fortune. Perhaps she is innocently unaware of it, or perhaps she is such a precious child that
she wouldn’t be envious of Andrea’s good fortune even if she knew about it—she would just
be happy for her.
Now suppose I knew all of this and was out walking with my daughters. If I saw
twenty dollars floating in the air (yes, like manna from heaven!) heading towards Andrea, I
have no doubt that if I could redirect it towards Becky with a quick, strong, blow, I would do
so. Or, alternatively, if I came across a twenty dollar bill on the path, I would, if I could,
cover it with my foot until Andrea passed, and then uncover it in time for Becky to discover
that wonderful pleasure of “finding” money on a walk. More generally, I would want Becky
benefit from a “windfall” rather than Andrea, to make up for the fact that Andrea was already
destined to be better off than Becky over the course of her life.
On Crisp’s view, since Andrea and Becky both clearly lead “sufficiently” good lives,
compassion won’t enter into the situation, and hence there would be no reason for me to give
Becky priority over Andrea in this way. I think Crisp is half right. I agree that in this case I
wouldn’t feel compassion for Becky. Hers is not a life of misery, nor is it lacking in any of
the ways that matter most. Still, I would give Becky priority in the manner suggested.
Prioritarians would also give Becky priority over Andrea. And they might appeal to this
example to support the view that giving priority to the worse off doesn’t depend on
compassion, and doesn’t lose all its force once people are sufficiently well off. However,
prioritarians still have to meet Crisp’s challenge. They must explain why we feel Becky
17
should get priority over Andrea in such a case—unless, they just stick with the simplest
answer that it is because she is worse off! This, of course, would be to simply assert what
Crisp challenges them to defend, namely that prioritarianism is a legitimate moral principle.
Egalitarians, on the other hand, have an answer to Crisp’s challenge. It is pure luck
that Andrea continually finds money and Becky doesn’t. Pure luck that Andrea is better off
in a multitude of other ways that matter. Hence, Becky is not merely worse off than Andrea,
she is worse off through no fault, or choice, of her own. Egalitarians believe this crucial fact
about the relation between Becky and Andrea provides them with reason to give Becky
priority over Andrea. Not the reason provided by compassion, but the reason of equality, or
comparative fairness.
Note, if someone were to claim, on Becky’s behalf, that it wasn’t fair that she never
found money, while her sister always did, it would be no answer to that charge for someone
to retort that “life isn’t fair.” To the contrary, such a cynical retort vindicates the
egalitarian’s view of the situation, even when it is offered in support of the view that we
needn’t do anything about Becky’s situation. The egalitarian is acutely aware that “life isn’t
fair.” That is the starting point of her view. What separates the egalitarian from the antiegalitarian is the way she reacts to life’s unfairness. The essence of the egalitarian’s view is
that comparative unfairness is bad, and that if we could do something about life’s unfairness,
we have some reason to. Such reasons may be outweighed by other reasons, but they are not,
as anti-egalitarians suppose, entirely without force.
Finally, consider the difference between three scenarios involving Andrea and Becky.
In each, Andrea and Becky are as described above, but the situations of the other members of
their world vary. In the first, Andrea and Becky are the very best-off people, and everyone
18
else is much worse off. In the second, as well off as they are, Andrea and Becky are actually
the two worst-off people, and everyone else is much better off. In the third, Andrea is the
best-off person, Becky the worst-off, and everyone else is in between. Now assuming that
everyone was equally deserving, how would we respond in the different scenarios to the
prospect of Andrea always finding $20 bills, versus Becky doing so? On Crisp’s view, since
Andrea and Becky are both “sufficiently” well off, we would give no priority to Becky
finding the money rather than Andrea in any of the scenarios, and no priority to Andrea and
Becky finding the money in the second scenario, rather than any of their contemporaries. On
prioritarianism, we would give Becky greater priority than Andrea in each of the scenarios,
but the extent to which we would regard it as desirable for them to find the money would be
exactly the same in each of the scenarios. On egalitarianism, we would regard it as more
desirable for Becky to find the money in the second and third scenarios than in the first, more
desirable for Andrea to find the money in the second scenario than in the first and third, more
desirable for Andrea and Becky to find the money in the second scenario than for their
contemporaries to do so, and more desirable for Becky to find the money than Andrea in
each of the scenarios, but particularly in the third. Suffice it to say, I find the egalitarian
judgment of these scenarios compelling. To my mind, there is at least one important respect
in which it makes a difference to the desirability of Becky or Andrea finding the money
which of the scenarios obtain. Of course, not everyone shares my intuitions. Those that
don’t may rest content with the claims of Crisp or the prioritarians. But for the rest, and there
are many such people, I believe the best account of such cases appeals to the value of
equality as comparative fairness.
19
V. The Wide Person-Affecting Principle, the Welfarist Restriction, and the Levelling Down
and Raising Up Objections
Many who reject egalitarianism are led to do so by the Levelling Down and
Raising Up Objections. Roughly, the Levelling Down Objection claims that there is no
respect in which a situation is normatively improved merely by levelling down a betteroff person to the level of someone worse-off, and likewise the Raising Up Objection
claims that there is no respect in which a situation is normatively worsened by improving
some people’s lives, even if those people are already better off than everyone else. But, it
is claimed, since levelling down may undeniably decrease inequality, and raising up may
undeniably increase inequality, this shows there is nothing valuable about equality itself,
and hence that substantive non-instrumental egalitarianism must be rejected.
Elsewhere,22 I have argued that the Levelling Down and Raising Up Objections
have great intuitive appeal, but that they derive much of their force from a position I call
the Slogan, according to which one situation cannot be worse than another in any respect,
if there is no one for whom it is worse in any respect. I have shown that the Slogan must
be rejected, and contended that this deprives the Levelling Down and Raising Up
Objections of much of their rhetorical force.
Some people accept my claims about the Slogan, but still find the Raising Up and
Levelling Down Objections crushing against non-instrumental egalitarianism. Most such
responses turn on rejecting the Slogan, as a narrow person-affecting principle, in favor of
a wide person-affecting principle23 that assesses the goodness of alternative outcomes not
in terms of how the particular people who would be in each outcome would be affected
for better or worse, but rather in terms of how people are affected, for better or worse, in
20
each outcome. 24 Tim Scanlon once wrote “rights … need to be justified somehow, and
how other than by appeal to the human interests their recognition promotes and protects?
This seems to be the uncontrovertible insight of the classical utilitarians.”25 Followers of
the view in question extend the “uncontrovertible insight” beyond rights to the entire
moral domain. As Crisp puts the point, “the worry arises from the idea that what matters
morally could be something that was independent of the well-being of individuals (p.3).”
I accept the claim of my critics who have contended that one could reject the
Slogan and still endorse the Levelling Down and Raising Up Objections, by moving to a
wide person-affecting principle. And I readily grant that like the narrow person-affecting
principle, the wide person-affecting principle has great initial appeal. But while a wide
person-affecting principle can handle one of the problems I levelled at the Slogan,
namely the Non-Identity Problem,26 it can’t handle any of the other problems I raised for
the Slogan. For example, I noted that most people firmly judge that there is at least one
respect in which an outcome where the most vicious sinners fare better than the most
benign saints, is worse than an outcome where the sinners and saints both get what they
deserve, even if the saints are just as well off in the first alternative as the second. But
neither the Slogan nor the wide person-affecting principle can capture this judgment.
Thus, like the Slogan, the wide person-affecting principle is unable to capture the noninstrumental value of proportional justice, a value to which many are committed. More
generally, the wide person-affecting principle has the same fundamental shortcoming as
the narrow principle; namely, that it allows no scope for any impersonal non-instrumental
ideals.
21
To clarify my worry, let me explain the distinction I have in mind between
personal and impersonal non-instrumental ideals. Recall that earlier I introduced a notion
of a non-instrumental ideal, as an ideal that was intrinsically valuable, in the sense that
the realization of such an ideal was sometimes valuable in itself, over and above the
extent to which it promoted other ideals. I implied that non-instrumental ideals were
distinct moral ideals with independent normative significance, and that a complete
account of the moral realm must allow for their value. Let us define personal noninstrumental ideals as ideals whose non-instrumental value lies in the contribution they
make, when realized, to individual well-being. We might say that such ideals are noninstrumentally valuable because of the extent to which their realization is good for
people. In contrast, let us define impersonal non-instrumental ideals as ideals whose noninstrumental value lies partly or wholly beyond any contributions they make, when
realized, to individual well-being. We might say that, qua being impersonal, such ideals
are non-instrumentally valuable because of the extent to which their realization makes an
outcome good, independently of, or beyond, the extent to which they are good for people.
Utility might be an example of a personal non-instrumental ideal. (Henceforth, I
omit the qualifier “non-instrumental.” Our discussion is only concerned with noninstrumental ideals, since the value of any instrumental ideal is always derivative from
the value of the non-instrumental ideal(s) it promotes.) Freedom might also be an
example of a personal ideal, if one thought the value of freedom lay solely in the extent to
which freedom was good for people (that is, promoted individual well-being). On the
other hand, freedom might be an example of an impersonal ideal if one thought freedom
contributed to the goodness of outcomes beyond the extent to which was good for people.
22
As presented in section II, equality exemplifies an impersonal ideal, as equality is
supposed to make an outcome better independently of, or beyond the extent to which it
promotes individual well-being.
My worry about wide-person affecting principles should now be clearer. I
believe there are impersonal ideals. Indeed, I believe many of the most important ideals
are impersonal (or at least have an impersonal element), including justice and equality.
Like narrow person-affecting principles, wide person-affecting principles rule out all
such ideals. I find this deeply implausible.
Let me expand on my worry. Although a definitive characterization of wide
person-affecting views is elusive, in essence, advocates of such views endorse
(something like) the following two claims: claim 1, only sentient individuals are the
proper objects of moral concern; and claim 2, for purposes of evaluating outcomes,
individual well-being is all that matters. Although both claims can be questioned, for the
sake of argument I am willing to accept claim 1. But claim 1 must be carefully
interpreted if it is not to be deeply misleading. For example, claim 1 is most plausible—
though still questionable—insofar as it asserts the moral primacy of sentient individuals,
as opposed to groups or societies. But, importantly, sentient individuals are not merely
the objects of moral concern, they are also the source of moral concerns, and of both
moral and non-moral values. Thus, for example, rational agents can give rise to moral
concerns and values that non-rational sentient beings cannot.
Once one recognizes that sentient individuals are not merely the objects of moral
concern, but also the source of moral concerns and values, claim 2 loses its appeal. For
purposes of evaluating outcomes, why should we only care about the well-being of
23
individuals? Why shouldn’t we also care about whether moral agents get what they
deserve (justice), or how individuals fare relative to others (equality), or whether rational
agents have acted freely, autonomously, or morally? Most humans have extraordinary
capacities beyond their capacity for well-being. These capacities serve as a source of
impersonal value in the world; for example, the impersonal value that can be found in
friendship, love, altruism, knowledge, perfection, beauty, rights, duty, virtue and truth.27
None of these values arise in a world devoid of sentient beings, and that truth may
underlie claim 1’s appeal. But, importantly, such values do arise when rational or moral
agents stand in certain relations to each other or the world. Moreover, I submit that the
value of such relations cannot be best understood instrumentally; nor does it lie solely in
the extent to which such relations promote individual well-being. Individual well-being
is valuable; but in my judgment it is a grotesque distortion of the conception of value to
think that it is the only thing that matters for the goodness of outcomes.28
Interestingly, Crisp sees the force of proportional justice, and so incorporates it
into the position he calls The Welfarist Restriction, according to which “In choices
affecting neither the number nor the identities of future people, any feature of an outcome
O that results in any individual in that outcome being (undeservedly) worse off than in
some alternative outcome P cannot count in favour of O, except to the extent that another
in O might be made (not undeservedly) better off (p. 3).”29 But most advocates of a
“pure” wide person-affecting view will ask why the parenthetical qualifications of
“deservedly” and “not undeservedly” appear in the articulation of a welfarist restriction.
Desert is one thing, welfare another, and it is hard to see how Crisp can reconcile
allowing desert to have weight with his earlier expressed doubt “that what matters
24
morally could be something that was independent of the well-being of individuals (p. 3).”
Unfortunately, Crisp’s qualifying remarks about desert seem ad hoc, inserted to respond
to the intuitive force of proportional justice.
I can see why someone might believe there were no impersonal ideals. Or
alternatively why someone might think there were many. But in the absence of an
argument I don’t see forthcoming, it strains credulity to believe there must be exactly one
impersonal ideal, proportional justice. If Crisp allows the Welfarist Restriction to be
qualified to allow for the impersonal value of desert, I don’t see why it shouldn’t also be
qualified to allow for the impersonal value of comparative fairness. It might then hold
the following: “In choices affecting neither the number nor the identities of future
people, any feature of an outcome O that results in any individual in that outcome being
(undeservedly or comparatively unfairly) worse off than in some alternative outcome P
cannot count in favour of O, except to the extent that another in O might be made (not
undeservedly or comparatively unfairly) better off.” But of course, one might then want
to further qualify the “Welfarist” Restriction to allow for any other genuine impersonal
values. Unsurprisingly, this would abandon the spirit of the wide person-affecting
principle that Crisp appeals to, in favor of the view that what is relevant to the assessment
of outcomes is welfare, together with any and all genuinely impersonal ideals. Naturally,
Crisp wouldn’t want to do this. But in the absence of an argument to the effect that there
are no genuine impersonal ideals other than desert, it isn’t clear why we should accept his
version of the Welfarist Restriction.
In light of the foregoing, let us return to the Levelling Down and Raising Up
Objections. Isn't it unfair for some to be worse off than others through no fault of their
25
own? Isn't it unfair for some to be born blind, while others are not? And isn't unfairness
bad? These questions, posed rhetorically, express the fundamental claims of the noninstrumental egalitarian. Once one rejects the person-affecting principles as capturing the
whole of morality relevant to assessing outcomes, as I believe one should, there is little
reason to forsake such claims in the face of the Raising Up and Levelling Down
Objections.
But, the anti-egalitarian will incredulously ask, do I really think there is some
respect in which a world where only some are blind is worse than one where all are?
Yes. Does this mean I think it would be better if we blinded everyone? No. As noted
previously, equality is not all that matters. But it matters some.
Consider the following example. Many children are afraid of death. Parents who
don't believe in an afterlife are often at a loss as to what they can honestly say to assuage
their concerns. And in truth, there is not much one can say that will genuinely answer
their children's worries. So, instead, grasping, parents often make a lot of orthogonal
points—about how the old must make way for the young, about how much of what we
appreciate about life—what makes life so valuable—is related to death, and so on. And
one point parents often emphasize is how death is a part of life, that in fact everyone dies,
and indeed, that all living things die.
It is striking that one should hope or expect the universality of death to provide
comfort to one worried about his or her own death. After all, the fact that everyone else
will also die, doesn't lessen the terror of one's own death—a death that each of us must
ultimately face alone. Yet somehow, it seems worth noting the obvious fact that we are
all in the same predicament. Each of us who lives, inevitably dies.
26
But suppose it weren't that way. Suppose some percentage of humans had
accidentally stumbled across, and eaten, a small number of berries that miraculously
made them immortal. So that in fact, while some people died, others lived forever. What
should one then say if one's child lamented that she didn't want to die, and then added the
plaintive complaint that it wasn't fair! Why, as one's child might put it, should she have
to die, when Katie doesn't! It seems to me that in such a situation the charge of
unfairness strikes deep and true. The situation would be unfair, terribly unfair, and this
would be so even if, contrary to fact, the immortality berries weren't actually worse for
those who remained mortal, but merely better for those on whom they bestowed eternal
life.
Does this mean I think it would actually be worse, all things considered, if there
were a limited supply of such berries? Not necessarily. But on the other hand, I'm glad I
don't actually have to make such a decision. For as great as the gains of immortality
might be for the fortunate ones, the resulting unfairness would be of cosmic proportions.
It would be, to my mind, terribly unfair, and to that extent bad. So I contend that here, as
before, something can be bad in a very important respect even if there is no one for whom
it is bad.30
Advocates of the Raising Up and Levelling Down Objections are among the many
anti-egalitarians mesmerized by "pure" equality's terrible implications. But, of course,
equality is not the only ideal that would, if exclusively pursued, have implausible or even
terrible implications. As I have noted elsewhere,31 the same is true justice, utility,
freedom, and probably every other substantive ideal. This doesn’t show that we should
reject each of these ideals, only that morality is complex.
27
The main lesson of the Raising Up and Levelling Down Objections is that we
should be pluralists about morality. Egalitarians have long recognized, and accepted, this
lesson. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for their opponents.
Conclusion
Crisp believes that often when we give priority to one person over another, this is
because the one person’s plight warrants our compassion more than the other person’s.
He is surely right about this. Unfortunately, he also believes that such considerations are
the only non-instrumental reasons for giving one person priority over another. I believe
he fails to make his case for this stronger claim. However successful Crisp may be in
challenging prioritarianism, he has not undermined egalitarianism. To the contrary,
thinking about the Beverly Hills case and related examples only strengthens my
conviction that equality, understood as comparative fairness, matters.
Larry S. Temkin
Rutgers University
Appendix
In “Equality as a Moral Ideal,” Harry Frankfurt presents an important forerunner of
Crisp’s paper. Calling his view “the doctrine of sufficiency,” Frankfurt accuses economic
egalitarians of conflating a concern for helping the needy or badly off, with a concern for
helping people because they are worse off than others. Frankfurt argues that economic
equality itself doesn’t matter, what matters is for everyone to have “enough.” Although
Frankfurt’s specific target is economic egalitarianism, his remarks attack economic
prioritarianism as well. Thus, while Frankfurt readily grants that “It is indeed reasonable to
assign a higher priority to improving the condition of those who are in need than to
28
improving the condition of those who are not in need (p. 267),” he asserts that this is only
because we have reason to give priority to the needy, not because there is any general
obligation to give priority to those who are worse off. Thus, he contends that “We tend to be
quite unmoved, after all, by inequalities between the well-to-do and the rich; our awareness
that the former are substantially worse off [economically] than the latter does not disturb us
morally at all…. The fact that some people have much less than others is morally
undisturbing when it is clear that they have plenty (p. 268).”
Frankfurt offers numerous arguments in support of his position. Unfortunately, his
strongest arguments hit a weak target, and most thoughtful egalitarians could readily accept
his claims without altering their views. For example, Frankfurt claims that “A concern for
economic equality, construed as desirable in itself, tends to divert a person’s attention away
from endeavoring to discover … what he himself really cares about and what will actually
satisfy him, although this is the most basic and the most decisive task upon which an
intelligent selection of economic goals depends. Exaggerating the moral importance of
economic inequality is harmful, in other words, because it is alienating (p. 23).” Suppose
Frankfurt is right about this. What does it show? It shows that we shouldn’t “exaggerate the
moral importance of economic inequality.” It shows that we should try not to let our concern
about economic inequality divert our attention from other factors that are central to our
economic well-being, to our self-understanding, and to our flourishing. What egalitarian,
pluralist that she is, would dispute such innocuous claims? Egalitarians can readily admit
that a preoccupation with inequality can have bad effects on both oneself and society. But
surely these truths, if they are truths, do not show that inequality does not matter.
Undeserved inequality may be bad, because unfair, and hence there may be powerful reasons
29
to remedy it if one can, even if, as Frankfurt claims, there are significant psychological or
social reasons to not unduly dwell on it.
To see this, consider the case of death. Most people claim death is bad, and amongst
the most significant misfortunes humans face. Yet, one might claim that focusing on the
overwhelming badness of death can have paralyzing and debilitating consequences. In
particular, it might divert one’s attention from developing a life plan and finding out what
projects and commitments might matter to you. Thus, focusing on death might prevent one
from fully engaging in life, and deprive one of the chance to make one’s limited life as
worthwhile as possible. Indeed, I could well imagine an argument almost exactly like
Frankfurt’s condemning the preoccupation with death and concluding, a la Frankfurt, that
“exaggerating the moral importance of death is harmful, in other words, because it is
alienating.” I think such an argument would be even stronger, and more plausible, than
Frankfurt’s argument about equality. But surely it wouldn’t show that death doesn’t matter.
Or that death isn’t bad. Or that we shouldn’t try to delay death if we can. All it shows is that
we should try not to let ourselves be preoccupied with death to the point where it unduly
interferes with the realization of important human ends. As indicated above, the analogous
conclusion holds for the case of inequality.
As for Frankfurt’s other arguments, they are all explicitly directed at his narrow target
of economic inequality. For example, at one point he notes that “giving additional resources
to people … in need may not actually improve the condition of these people at all. Those
below a utility threshold are not necessarily benefited by additional resources that move them
closer to the threshold. What is crucial for them is to attain the threshold. Merely moving
closer to it may either fail to help them or be disadvantageous (p. 32).” Elsewhere, Frankfurt
30
observes that “if we believe of some person that his life is richly fulfilling, that he himself is
genuinely content with his economic situation, and that he suffers no resentments or sorrows
which more money could assuage, we are not ordinarily much interested—from a moral
point of view—in the question of how the amount of money he has compares with the
amounts possessed by others (p. 33).”
I believe Frankfurt’s arguments succeed in undermining the view that economic
inequality as such is valuable. But the view in question is a straw man. Notwithstanding the
fact that economists have developed and discussed numerous measures of inequality, and that
in political discourse people often concentrate on economic inequalities, nobody believes that
economic inequality, as such, is objectionable. Rather, for a variety of social, political, and
practical reasons, people focus on economic inequalities as useful proxies for more
fundamental inequalities that matter. Thus, in the extended, and now famous, “equality of
what” debate, nobody defends the view that economic inequality as such matters. Rather,
people have defended various versions of equality of opportunity, welfare, opportunity for
welfare, access to advantages, capabilities and functionings, primary goods, and resources.
To be sure, economic equality is a component of equality of primary goods, or equality of
resources, but it is only one component among others, which, in the case of primary goods
includes rights, liberties, opportunities, and powers, and in the case of resources includes
natural talents or gifts that would make one bundle of resources more valuable than another.
I submit, then, that egalitarians could readily accept Frankfurt’s conclusion regarding
economic inequality. Economic inequality, itself, is not what matters.
31
1
Over the years many have influenced my thinking on topics related to this paper. While my poor
memory prevents me from properly acknowledging them all, I’d like to thank G.A. Cohen, Tyler Cowen,
James Griffin, Dan Hausman, Nils Holtug, Shelly Kagan, F.M. Kamm, Thomas Nagel, Ingmar Persson,
John Roemer, Amartya Sen, Seana Shiffrin, and Andrew Williams. Special thanks for comments on earlier
drafts of this paper are owed to John Broome, Roger Crisp, Jeff McMahan, and Derek Parfit.
2
Insert appropriate reference. All page references to Crisp’s article are to the final manuscript version
submitted to Ethics, and will need to be revised when page proofs of his article are available.
3
P. 1.
4
Ethics, 98, 1987, pp. 21-43.
5
In “Equality as a Moral Ideal,” Frankfurt argues that economic equality itself doesn’t matter, what
matters is for everyone to have “enough.” Frankfurt calls his view “the doctrine of sufficiency.”
6
Inequality, Oxford University Press, 1993, pp. 245-46.
7
This is the main definition offered in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, unabridged, G. & C.
Merriam Co., 1981, p. 462).
8
I have discussed some of these problems in a number of articles, including “Worries about Continuity,
Transitivity, Expected Utility Theory, and Practical Reasoning" in Exploring Practical Philosophy, edited
by Dan Egonsson, Jonas Josefsson, Björn Petersson, and Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen, pp. 95-108, Ashgate
Publishing Limited, 2001, "An Abortion Argument and the Threat of Intransitivity," in Well-being and
Morality: Essays in Honour of James Griffin, edited by Roger Crisp and Brad Hooker, pp. 336-356,
Oxford University Press, 2000, "Intransitivity and the Person-Affecting Principle: A Response,"
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LIX, no. 3, September, 1999, pp. 777-784, "Rethinking the
Good, Moral Ideals and the Nature of Practical Reasoning," in Reading Parfit, edited by Jonathan Dancy,
pp. 290-344, Basil Blackwell, 1997, and "A Continuum Argument for Intransitivity," Philosophy and
Public Affairs 25, no. 3, Summer, 1996, pp. 175-210. I hope to bring these results together in a book
dealing with problems of aggregation and related issues tentatively titled Rethinking the Good, Moral
Ideals, and the Nature of Practical Reasoning.
32
9
This section largely repeats the characterization of egalitarianism that I offer in section A of “Equality,
Priority, or What?” (forthcoming, Economics and Philosophy). For further explication of some of the
notions presented here, as well as more distinctions between different kinds of egalitarian positions, see
chapter one of Inequality, “Egalitarianism: An Overworked, Ambiguous, Notion” (in Philosophical Issues,
volume 11, edited by Ernie Sosa and Enriquea Villanueva, pp. 327-352, Blackwell Publishers, 2001),
“Equality” (in The Blackwell Encyclopedic Dictionary of Business Ethics, edited by Edward Freeman and
Patricia Werhane, pp. 216-219, Blackwell Publishers, 1997), and section B of “Equality, Priority, or
What?”
10
Discussions with Ingmar Persson led me to recognize that the “no fault or choice” clause is not central to
the egalitarian’s fundamental concern for comparative fairness, but rather serves as a typically useful proxy
for that concern. To see why the applicability of the clause is neither necessary nor sufficient for
comparative fairness, see my response to Persson’s “The Badness of Unjust Inequality” in part four of “A
Reply to My Critics” (forthcoming, Theoria).
11
See, for example, pp. 17-8 and 35 of my Inequality (Oxford University Press, 1993), and section G of
this paper.
12
Derek Parfit introduces the terminology of telic and deontic egalitarianism in “Equality or Priority?”
(The Lindley Lecture, University of Kansas, 1991, copyright 1995 by Department of Philosophy,
University of Kansas; reprinted in The Ideal of Equality, edited by Matthew Clayton and Andrew Williams,
MacMillan Press Ltd and St. Martin’s Press, Inc., 2000.) Corresponding notions are also introduced in
chapter one of Inequality, p. 11.
13
Inequality is an attempt at making such progress. It reveals significant complexities in the notion of
equality as comparative fairness. There is not a simple, single, easily articulated concern shared by those
believe that inequality is bad when, and because, it involves comparative unfairness.
14
Crisp tentatively speculates that concerns for comparative fairness “have their ultimate source in envy,
generalized through sympathy (p. 5).” I find this deeply implausible. My sympathy for you may lead me
to adopt your views as my own where I think your views are reasonable or justifiable, but not otherwise. If
you unreasonably hate your neighbor, I won’t have sympathy for your position, and hence won’t be led to
hate or harm your neighbor on your behalf. On the other hand, if you have been wronged by your
33
neighbor, I would have sympathy for you, and this might lead me to seek rectification from your neighbor
on your behalf. Similarly, only if I think you have a legitimate complaint of unfairness regarding how you
fare relative to another, might I be led to sympathize with your position and regard it as unfair. If I merely
think you are being envious, I won’t have sympathy for your situation and hence won’t be moved by
sympathy to regard your situation as unfair or unfortunate. Nor, in such a situation, would I be moved to
act on your behalf to remove the source of your envy. Of course, Crisp may have in mind here an
unconscious mechanism that defies my view of the matter. Such claims are notoriously difficult to defeat,
but also notoriously problematic.
15
See Griffin’s Well-Being: Its Meaning, Measurement, and Moral Importance, Clarendon Press, 1986.
16
The interested reader might look at chapters two through five of Inequality, especially chapter two.
17
The reader will note that this section’s first two responses might also be invoked by a prioritarian to
explain our intuitive reactions to the Beverly Hills case. But the deeper challenge Crisp is posing for
prioritarianism remains: to show that compassion is appropriate even for people whose lives are
“sufficiently” good, or that factors other than compassion underlie prioritarianism’s appeal.
18
See Peter Unger’s Living High & Letting Die, Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 4-5. Unger claimed
that at the time he wrote the book, in 1995, this statistic had been true for each of the preceding 30 years.
19
Crisp doesn’t believe that the feeling of compassion is what is relevant here, but rather its
appropriateness. The virtue of compassion comes into play when the circumstances warrant compassion,
and it is the presence of such circumstances that is carrying the moral weight here, and not our particular
psychological reaction that we identify as compassion. I am grateful to Jeff McMahan for pointing out the
need to clarify this point to prevent misunderstandings.
20
I am also assuming that the first case is one where we would feel compassion should temper justice, just
as we sometimes believe that mercy should temper justice.
21
Classic contributions to the so-called “equality of what” debate include Richard Arneson’s “Equality and
Equality of Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophical Studies, 1989, pp. 77-93, G. A. Cohen’s “On the
Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics, 99, 1989, pp. 906-44, Ronald Dworkin’s “What is Equality?”
“Part 1, Equality of Welfare,” and “Part 2, Equality of Resources,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10: 3, 4,
34
1981, pp. 185-246, 283-345, and Amartya Sen’s “Equality of What?” The Tanner Lectures on Human
Values, vol. 1, The University of Utah, 1980, and Sen’s Inequality Reexamined, Clarendon Press, 1992.
22
See chapter nine of Inequality, "Harmful Goods, Harmless Bads" (in Value, Welfare and Morality,
edited by R.G. Frey and Christopher Morris, Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp. 290-324), and
"Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection" (in The Ideal of Equality, edited by Matthew
Clayton and Andrew Williams, Macmillan and St. Martin's Press, 2000, pp. 126-161). My first discussion
of this topic appeared in early drafts of my 1983 Princeton PhD dissertation, Inequality. This discussion
helped define and motivate prioritarianism—which I then called “extended humanitarianism”—as an
alternative to “genuine” egalitarianism—which I now call non-instrumental egalitarianism. I noted that
prioritarianism was often conflated with egalitarianism, could avoid the levelling down objection, and
might appear to many as the most plausible alternative to egalitarianism.
23
Derek Parfit introduces the distinction between narrow and wide person-affecting principles in part four
of Reasons and Persons (Clarendon Press, 1984) see especially sections 134-136.
24
Advocates of this kind of view include Nils Holtug, in “Good for whom?” (forthcoming, Theoria), Brett
Doran in “Reconsidering the Levelling-down Objection against Egalitarianism,” (Utilitas 13, No. 1, March
2001, p. 65-85), and Campbell Brown in his unpublished manuscript “How to Have the Levelling Down
Intuition and Reject the Slogan Too” (Australian National University).
25
“Rights, Goals, and Fairness,” Erkenntnis 11 (1977), pp. 81-95, reprinted in Public and Private Morality,
edited by Stuart Hampshire, Cambridge University Press, 1978, p. 93.
26
Here I followed Derek Parfit, who identifies the Non-Identity Problem and demonstrates its devastating
implications for narrow person-affecting principles in part four of Reasons and Persons.
27
I here offer a representative, but by no means exhaustive, list of factors that some people have thought
correspond to impersonal moral ideals. The list is certainly subject to revision, but it is enough to give
some sense for what is at stake if we accept the person-affecting principles’ implication that all impersonal
ideals must be rejected. Presumably, the philosopher’s mantra of “knowledge for knowledge’s sake”
would need to be rejected or revised as misleading rhetoric. So, too, I think, would the insight underlying
Keat’s famous contention in Ode on a Grecian Urn that “’Beauty is truth, truth beauty’—that is all Ye
know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
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28
If one has a wide enough conception of individual well-being, one can make room for all the ideals one
wants as personal rather than impersonal, and then accept the wide person-affecting principle, or Crisp’s
welfarist restriction. John Broome advocates this kind of position in his excellent book, Weighing Goods
(Basil Blackwell, 1991). Hence, Broome is able to advocate a version of the wide-person affecting
principle, which he calls the Principle of Personal Good. I don’t, myself, believe it is plausible to construe
individual well-being as widely as Broome, but of course, if one construes it widely enough, then as
Broome argues ideals like equality and justice will count as good for people, and the levelling down
objection will fail. The difference between Broome and me on this point is discussed further in “Equality,
Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection.”
29
Strikingly, I think Crisp’s Welfarist Restriction is equivalent to the Slogan, or narrow person-affecting
principle, except that he has (conveniently!) tailored the principle to avoid the two main objections I raised
to the Slogan. By restricting the principle to same people cases Crisp avoids the non-identity problem, and
by incorporating considerations of desert he avoids worries about desert. Or tries to anyway, as we shall
discuss next.
30
Note, I am assuming that the fundamental unfairness of the situation doesn’t depend on whether my
child knows that Katie will live forever. Her feelings about the unfairness are not what matters to me; but
the fact that her feelings are justified. The situation is unfair, whether or not she knows it or it affects her
adversely.
31
See, for example, chapter nine of Inequality, "Equality, Priority, and the Levelling Down Objection,"
and “Egalitarianism: An Overworked, Ambiguous, Notion.”
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