Abstract

A recent movement within political philosophy called luck egalitarianism has attempted to synthesize the right’s regard for responsibility with the left’s concern for equality. The original motivation for subscribing to luck egalitarianism stems from the belief that one’s success in life ought to reflect one’s own choices and not brute luck. Luck egalitarian theorists differ in the decision procedures that they propose, but they share in common the general approach that we ought to equalize individuals with respect to brute luck so that differences in distribution are only a consequence of the responsible choices that individuals make. I intend to show that through the application of its own distributive procedures, the interpersonal luck egalitarian approach actually undermines its original motivation by making the lives of individuals subject to brute luck. I propose two alternative methods that the luck egalitarian could use to prevent the problems suffered by the interpersonal luck egalitarian standard.

摘要

政治哲学内部最近发生的一种运气平等主义运动试图将右派对责任的关注与左派对平等的关注综合起来。订阅运气平均主义的最初动机是基于这样的信念，即一个人的生活成功应该反映出自己的选择，而不是蛮横的运气。运气平均主义理论家提出的决策程序有所不同，但他们共有一个普遍的方法，即我们应该在残暴运气方面使个人平等，以使分配差异仅是个人做出负责任选择的结果。我打算表明，通过应用自己的分配程序，人际运气平均主义方法实际上使个人生活遭受残酷运气，从而破坏了其最初的动机。我提出了两种可选方法，运气均等主义者可以使用它们来防止人际运气均等主义标准所遭受的问题。