On Egalitarianism In Contemporary Political Philosophy

Egalitarianism which includes two topics beomes an important issue in contemporary political philosophy in 1970s,These two topics are why equality is important and which kind of egalitarianism is desirable.According to Robert Nozick,who is anti-egalitarianism in my view,the holding is just if it is from state of justice and through procedure of justice.I do not agree with Nozick's view after inspecting so-called"The Nozick's Proviso" and "The Chamberlain Argument",which could lead his argument to lose effctiveness.Worsely,the concept of self-ownership which is the basis of holding justice is problematic.Actually,I will accept a kind of fact-sensitive self-ownership than a kind of fact-insensitive self-ownership,to share the profits and burdens in social cooperation.After all,it's necessary to bring about the egalitarian ideal.John Ralws first tried to justify one kind of egaliatarianism theory which he called justice as fairness.Rawls believed that no one can claim he or she could benefit from natural talents and social environment,as all of these is arbitrary and occasional in moral view.His aim is to realize the "endowment-insensitive"by differentiating the preinstitutional and institutioanal desert.But what he failed to do is that he misunderstood the role desert plays in distributive justice,ignored the role of individual choice and responsibility,and mixed the relationships of three concepts who are desert,entatilement and legitimate expectation.Luck egalitarianism,which inherits Rawls' property,becomes one of the most attracting theories.Beside the aim of "endowment-insensitive",another goal of luck egalitarianism is to realize "ambition-insensitive".In short,the aim of luck egalitarianism is to neutralize the effects of brute luck.As for option luck,it is different.If someone choose some acts or behaviors voluntarily,he or she must bear the result.As we saw,luck egalitarianists have been criticized by many other scholars,especially from "The Levelling Down Objection" which says that egalitarianism will level down the better-off without anyone benefit.I think all of supporter of luck egalitarianism should take this objection seriously.Derek Parfit,who is a representative holding prioritarianism,pointed out that prioritarianism could dispalce egaliatarianism because of the latter's defects.He thought a kind of non-comparative theories in distributive justice is better than comparative theory,and prioritarianism is just a theory that is non-comparative.This theory requires us to give priority to worse-off as well-being of these people outweighs others such as the better-off.But this theory will be challenged by levelling down objection as what egalitarianism did.Another problem is that this theory will ignore individual choice and responsibility.Sufficientarianism,contrary to egalitarianism and prioritarianism,believes that what the most important is to make all of people to live above the sufficient line,so as to making people decent human being.Similarly,sufficientarianism is problematic,because how to identify the sufficient line accurately is difficult,and it does not cencern well-being of people who are above the sufficient line.At last,if it pursue multi-thresholds and more complicated sufficient line,the advantages of this theory would disappear.We could make a conclusion that all of these theories,such as Justice as Fairness,Luck Egalitarianism,Prioritarianism,and Sufficientarianism,are members of egalitarianism.The family resemblance of these theories is to improve the well-being of worse-off.As this dissertation notes,there are no perfect and ideal egalitarianism which could be applied to social facts without any critics.Any equality or unequality should be justified in public.