JOURNAL OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2012) 127–142 brill.nl/jmp Book Reviews Carl Knight, Luck Egalitarianism: Equality, Responsibility and Justice (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), 250 pages. ISBN 9780748638697 (hbk.). Hardback: £60.00. Carl Knight’s well-written and useful book, Luck Egalitarianism: Equality, Responsibility, and Justice, provides an interpretation and defense of luck egalitarianism, which he characterizes most generally as “the view that variations in the levels of advantage held by different persons are justified, if and only if, those persons are responsible for those levels” (p.1). Knight divides his book into three sections, the first seeking the best interpretation of luck egalitarianism, the second evaluating luck egalitarianism as an account of equality, and the third assessing luck egalitarianism as an account of justice. As the second and third sections of the book both largely deal with challenges to luck egalitarianism, we can think of the book as having two parts. In the first, Knight clarifies the relationship between different versions of luck egalitarianism and argues that a particular variety, “equal opportunity for present mood,” is the best interpretation, both on its own terms and in light of the inner logic of luck egalitarianism. In the second, he defends luck egalitarianism against many objections and shows where it has shortcomings as a complete theory of justice. Knight limits his discussion to questions of “domestic” distributive justice, almost completely leaving aside issues of global justice. This is motivated in part by the fact that much of the literature he engages focuses on domestic justice (p. 8). Two worries arise here. First, much of the global justice literature seems to depend on an, often implicit, commitment to some form of luck egalitarianism. It would have been interesting to see if Knight’s analysis applied to this literature as well. As the book is not long, this seems like a missed opportunity. Secondly, it is not clear, and not sufficiently discussed in the book, what could motivate a strictly domestic focus for luck egalitarianism, according to its own logic. “Democratic Equality,” arguably the main competitor to luck egalitarianism, has a story to tell about why different distributive principles apply at the domestic and global level. It is not obvious that such a story is available to luck egalitarians. So, if the logic of luck egalitarianism pushes us towards a global distributive principle, we might worry that Knight’s book is importantly incomplete. I shall, from now, however, largely leave this worry aside. In the first part of the book, Knight provides a clear and helpful discussion of several well-known versions of luck egalitarianism, including Ronald Dworkin’s equality of resources view and the different versions of equal opportunity for © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI 10.1163/174552412X619111 128 Book Reviews / Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2012) 127–142 welfare put forward by G.A. Cohen, Richard Arneson, and John Roemer, among others. (It is unfortunate that, probably due to publishing schedules, Knight does not cover the recent important statement of luck egalitarianism cast in institutional terms, by Kok-Chor Tan. See Kok-Chor Tan, “A Defense of Luck Egalitarianism,” The Journal of Philosophy, 11, 2008, 665–90.) Equality of resources, whether in the form presented by Dworkin or in a modified form, cannot deal with some important inequalities, Knight argues, and so must be rejected. In particular, when inequalities result from unchosen expensive tastes in the absence of envy, equality of resources will let them persist. Similarly, some inequalities cannot be dealt with via Dworkin’s hypothetical insurance market, as in such cases, insuring against unequal outcomes would be expensive enough to make it irrational. So, Knight claims, to the extent luck egalitarianism really cares about inequality, it should reject equality of resources. I must admit a temptation to say to these arguments, “all the worse, then, for luck egalitarianism, for it implies implausible obligations.” Knight, in this section, does little to comfort those who, like me, find the conclusions he draws deeply implausible. This is not, here, his project. Rather, he argues that certain assumptions about the importance of equality, common to luck egalitarians, push one away from equality of resources and towards equality of opportunity for welfare of some sort. Knight defends a version of equal opportunity for welfare, “equal opportunity for present mood.” On this account, whether a characteristic of a person is compensable or not turns only on the welfare expensiveness and the genuine chosenness of the characteristic. The particular position Knight defends is a controversial one. Most welfarist views focus on “life satisfaction,” or how one feels her life is “as a whole.” Knight argues, with some plausibility, that such accounts demand too much reflectiveness (p.70), and that they leave out important ways that things may go well or poorly for us. For example, if the only coffee shop near my office that I like closes for vacation for two weeks, and I have to drink coffee I like less during that time, it is unlikely to have a significant impact on how my life “as a whole” is going. But, it might, for a time, make me noticeably less happy. To overcome these difficulties, Knight claims that the proper measure for luck egalitarianism is not “life satisfaction” but rather present mood, and that the luck egalitarian ought to seek equal opportunity for present mood. What matters here is not how one feels, all things considered, Knight tells us, but rather, “how one feels, simpliciter” (p.72, emphasis in the original). (This is, of course, all modulated by responsibility sensitivity.) While I have a fair degree of sympathy with the arguments Knight raises against the “life satisfaction” account, especially from the perspective of the internal logic of luck egalitarianism, I have significant worries about the status of “equal opportunity for present mood” as an account of justice. These worries lead us into the second part of the book, Knight’s account and partial defense of luck egalitarianism as an account of justice. I have two concerns here. First, an account such as Knight’s would leave us with significant epistemic burdens. In order to do what justice requires, we will need to have quite specific information about each individual, information about what is likely to affect their specific moods, and whether Book Reviews / Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2012) 127–142 129 they are responsible for this or not. It is not clear that we can ever have reliable access to this information, and attempts to gather it would be expensive and potentially intrusive. Insofar as this only shows that we will always be imperfectly just, this is not a powerful objection to luck egalitarianism. But, if one is, like me, already skeptical of the idea that justice ought to have moods as its object, these facts make luck egalitarianism seem even less plausible as an account of justice. While Knight rightly points out that other theories of justice can also be difficult to implement, this reply does little to comfort those who think that the luck egalitarian approach is misguided at a deeper level. That attempting to be more just will likely make everyone worse off, not (just) because of leveling down, but because of the expense of gathering the needed information, ought, I think, lead us to think we have gone wrong at a very basic level. In the last section of his book, Knight gives a frank evaluation of a series of objections to luck egalitarianism – Bad Samaritanism, leveling down, diverging down, responsibility leveling, and the problem of expensive transfers. Each of these problems presents cases where luck egalitarian principles, taken on their own, lead to conclusions few would accept, such as that it’s better for everyone to be much worse off but equal, rather than unequal but with each person much better off. Knight is more sensitive to these difficulties than are most luck egalitarians, and accepts that they show the need for a plurality of principles, and that luck egalitarianism cannot be a complete theory of justice, or even a complete theory of distributive justice, on its own. My worry here is that many of the (otherwise sensible) adjustments Knight makes to his account seem, in the context of his theory, to be ad hoc fixes rather than principled adjustments. The resulting theory seems cobbled together, and lacks the sort of systematicisity we find in Rawls’ approach, for example, where the various elements are worked out via the contractualist argument. Maybe this sort of ad hoc intuitionism is the best we can do for a theory of justice, but again, if one is not already committed to luck egalitarianism, one might think that the ad hoc nature of Knight’s solutions give us some evidence that the project was mistaken from the start. Knight’s book is well done, careful, and systematic. It provides both a helpful overview of most of the luck egalitarian literature and an interesting original interpretation. He squarely faces the problems that stand before luck egalitarianism and provides answers that, while not always convincing to me, are at least plausible. It is likely to be useful to both graduate students and professors working in moral and political philosophy. I must note one major drawback of the book itself. The citation system used in the book involves endnotes placed at the end of each chapter that do not give full citations, but rather refer back to the bibliography. So, to know what note 95 of Chapter Two refers to, we must look several pages back to the end of the chapter, where we see it refers to “Arneson 2000c.” We then must turn to the bibliography to find out which specific work this refers to. This seems to me to be the worst of all systems for citations. Footnotes with full citations would be the best and today are not hard to use. The combination of chaptoral endnotes with only partial citations is extremely annoying. Knight surely had little, 130 Book Reviews / Journal of Moral Philosophy 9 (2012) 127–142 if anything, to do with this choice, but we should hope that the Edinburgh University Press will be kinder to its readers in the future. (Thanks to Greg Hall for helpful comments on this review.) Matthew Lister Villanova University School of Law lister@law.villanova.edu