Equality, Priority and Social Justice

The moral principle of giving greater priority to benefiting people, the less well off they are, has been thought by some to share the plausibility of egalitarianism whilst avoiding the less plausible implications of the latter. This paper argues that the 'priority' principle does have an authentic place in our moral thinking, and that it is distinct from the idea of 'equality', but that the latter also has an indispensible role to play. The idea of 'priority'has its place as the expression of the moral standpoint of benevolent and sympathetic concern. 'Equality', in contrast, functions as a conception of social justice, from which it cannot be displaced by the idea of 'priority'.     

基于机会平等的分配正义

分配作为人类重要的社会活动,不仅关系到社会成员的经济状态,更对人们的社会权利和地位产生巨大的影响。在现代文明社会中,分配正义的伦理意义在于:如何在不侵犯社会成员自由的前提下,为人们带来应得的利益,保障、捍卫社会成员之间的平等地位和权利。在社会的层面上,平等是分配正义的首要伦理价值。福利、资源、权利(能力)都是分配的主要对象和领域。福利平等、资源平等、权利(能力)平等,似乎都可以在一定程度上作为正义分配的依据,但又都面临着各自平等理论的困境。文章从机会平等的角度,对分配正义进行了理解、研究和考察,并且构建了复合机会平等分配体系,力图实现作为机会平等的分配正义。     

Criteria of Justice: Desert,Needs and Equality

The conception of social justice as equality is defended in this paper by examining what may appear to be two inegalitarian conceptions of justice, as distribution according to desert and as distribution according to need. It is argued that claims of just entitlement arise within a context of reciprocal co-operation for mutual benefit. Within such a context there are special cases where it can be said that those who contribute more deserve more, and that those who need more should get more, but those claims themselves presuppose a norm of equal contribution and equal benefit. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Equality as Comparative Fairness

The goal of this article is modest. It is simply to help illuminate the nature of egalitarianism. More particularly, I aim to show what certain egalitarians are committed to, and to suggest that equality, as these egalitarians understand it, is an important normative ideal that cannot simply be ignored in moral deliberations. In doing this, I distinguish between equality as universality, equality as impartiality, and equality as comparability, and also between instrumental and non‐instrumental egalitarianism. I then characterise the version of egalitarianism with which I am concerned, which I call equality as comparative fairness. I discuss the relations between equality, fairness, luck, and responsibility, and defend egalitarianism against rival views that focus on subsistence, sufficiency, or compassion. I also defend egalitarianism against the Levelling Down and Raising Up Objections, and present several key examples to illustrate egalitarianism's distinct appeal, in contrast to prioritarianism's. I conclude by considering two common questions about my view: first, whether my ultimate concern is really with comparative fairness, rather than equality, so that my view is not, in fact, a substantive, non‐instrumental version of egalitarianism, and second, whether my view ultimately reduces to a theory about desert.     

从自由与平等的关系看获取正义

获取之正义乃是人类的千古困惑.获取正义之原则必须而且只能从社会主义社会理念中导出,该理念是:人人生而自由,人人生而平等,没有贵族,没有特权,没有压迫,没有剥削,公共职位向所有公民开放,人人有权选择并努力实现自己所向往的幸福生活.在此理念之下,自由与平等之关系是:公民之间的平等是基于自由权利的平等.社会主义社会理念下的获取正义包括:每个公民都有从自然资源中获取收益的社会权利;合法的市场交易所得;其他合法途径,如遗产继承、馈赠等.任何一个认同社会主义社会理念的人均不赞成公共财政充当劫富济贫的"佐罗"角色,但保障每个公民都能够从自然资源的收益中获得生存资料乃是政府之责任、公民之权利,税收资源的主要功能是创造和维护社会秩序、保障本民族的集体安全、满足公共事务的需要.     

Utopias and Comparative Assessments of Justice

When we make public policy choices, is it helpful to know how utopia (that is, the perfectly just institutional design) would look? Amartya Sen argues that it is neither necessary, nor sufficient, nor even contributory. He claims that before making a policy choice one should compare several feasible institutional designs to see which promotes justice most (a “comparative assessment” of justice), and that it is misleading to use the perfect design as a standard in those comparisons. Principles of justice are the proper standard. The present article contends that the perfect design has nevertheless an important role to play in the prior task of identifying and refining our principles of justice. It also shows that the perfect design—in at least one sense of this term—may be a legitimate long‐term goal for present policy choices.     

Equality, Justice, and Paternalism: Recentreing Debate about Physician-Assisted Suicide

abstract   Debate about physician-assisted suicide has typically focused on the values of autonomy and patient wellbeing. This is understandable, even reasonable, given the import-ance of these values in bioethics. However, these are not the only moral values there are. The purpose of this paper is to examine physician-assisted suicide on the basis of the values of equality and justice. In particular, I will evaluate two arguments that invoke equality, one in favour of physician-assisted suicide, one against it, and I will eventually argue that a convincing equality-based argument in support of physician-assisted suicide is available. I will conclude by showing how an equality-based perspective transforms some secondary features of debate about this issue.     

A Sense of Proportion: Some Thoughts on Equality,Security and Justice

Res Publica - This article develops an intuitive idea of proportionality as a placeholder for a substantive conception of equality, and contrasts it with Ripstein’s ideas, as presented in an...     

协调自由与平等的冲突——孙中山正义思想研究

自由与平等之间的冲突在我国20世纪上半叶已初露端倪。孙中山敏锐地意识到妥善处理两者关系的重要性,试图协调自由与平等的冲突,使自由、平等、博爱真正落到实处。正如美国学者史扶邻所说:“他为之奋斗的不仅是中国的现代化,而且是带有社会正义与公平的现代化。”[1]孙中山在处理自由与平等问题上的经验教训是当代中国社会的一笔宝贵精神财富。一自由与平等的冲突自由是智慧之源,自由释放出的智慧与力量,有善有恶,有利有弊,但我们并不能因为自由产生的恶、弊而藐视自由,剥夺人们最基本的自由权利。如果是这样,就会导致对人类生活的奴役,从而…     

柏拉图与亚里士多德正义观之辨析

正义之维在社会中的凸显,并非始于现代,古希腊著名的思想家柏拉图和亚里士多德都创立了各具特色的正义理论.他们的正义思想不仅迥异纷呈,而且也具共同性及内在关联性.     

Making Attentive Citizens: The Ethics of Democratic Engagement,Political Equality,and Social Justice

Much discussion of the ethics of participation focuses on electoral participation and whether citizens are obligated or can be coerced to vote. Yet these debates have ignored that citizens must first pay attention to politics and make up their minds about where they stand before they can engage in any form of participation. This article considers the importance for liberal democracy of citizens paying attention to politics, or attentive citizenship. It argues that the democratic state has an obligation to cultivate interest in politics and that this obligation authorizes means up to and including some forms of coercion. The argument is that when citizens are inattentive to politics, it undermines political equality and social justice because it undermines what John Rawls called the fair value of the political liberties. The importance of these ends for liberal democratic states requires them to take steps to promote attentive citizenship.     

Hikers in Flip‐Flops: Luck Egalitarianism,Democratic Equality and the Distribuenda of Justice

The article has two aims. First, to show that a version of luck egalitarianism that includes relational goods amongst its distribuenda can, as a matter of internal logic, account for one of the core beliefs of relational egalitarianism. Therefore, there will be important extensional overlap, at the level of domestic justice, between luck egalitarianism and relational egalitarianism. This is an important consideration in assessing the merits of and relationship between the two rival views. Second, to provide some support for including relational goods, including those advocated by relational egalitarianism, on the distribuenda of justice and therefore to put in a good word for the overall plausibility of this conception of justice. I show why relational egalitarians, too, have reason to sympathise with this proposal.     

Islamic Personal Religion and Moral Reasoning in Social Justice and Equality: The Evidence From Indonesian College Students

Researchers have long been concerned with the relationship between religion and social justice and equality. Hoping to understand this association at the individual level, researchers have taken on the psychological models of personal religion and Kohlberg's moral reasoning. This article extends this line of inquiry to Islam, using Muslim college and graduate students in Indonesia. Specifically, it explores the extent to which religious orientations and Islamic doctrinal orthodoxy relate to Kohlbergian principled reasoning in justice and equality. In view of the results, the Muslim respondents are skewed toward the nonprincipled mode of Kohlbergian moral reasoning. In addition, those with greater intrinsic religiosity are likely to respond in an increasingly principled manner to moral dilemmas, whereas personal extrinsic religiosity tends to increase conventional practice of moral reasoning. Quest religiosity and doctrinal orthodoxy have little to do with Kohlbergian principled reasoning. The implications of these findings are discussed by giving attention to the accent of personal mediation, Islam as a belief system, and congregational worship to principled reasoning in social justice.