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Why Levelling Down could be Worse for Prioritarianism than for Egalitarianism

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Abstract

Derek Parfit has argued that, in contrast to prioritarianism, egalitarianism is exposed to the levelling down objection, i.e., the objection that it is absurd that a change which consists merely in the betteroff losing some of their well-being should be in one way for the better. In reply, this paper contends that (1) there is a plausible form of egalitarianism which is equivalent to another form of prioritarianism than the Parfitian one, a relational rather than an absolute form of prioritarianism, and that (2), although this relational or egalitarian form of prioritarianism is hit by the levelling down objection, the Parfitian form is also hit by it, or worse objections, if it is fully worked out.

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Notes

  1. Parfit (1995: 17) thinks that only teleological as opposed to deontological egalitarianism is exposed to LDO, so what I here mean by egalitarianism is teleological egalitarianism. Parfit’s (1995: 9) distinction is not wholly clear to me, but I shall take it that the main point of it is that, on the deontological view, injustice ‘necessarily involves wrong-doing,’ whereas, on the teleological view, there could be ‘natural injustice,’ i.e., unjust outcomes which are produced by natural forces.

  2. I have inserted the word ‘unjustly’ in Parfit’s (1995: 4) formulation. I assume that the inequality which is levelled down is unjust; otherwise, I do not think that egalitarians should concede that decreasing it need in any way be for the better.

  3. For further discussion of this issue, see Persson (2007).

  4. Of course, this weight needs to be determined more precisely, but this is a complicated matter that cannot be undertaken here. To fix this weight, we need to answer the question which is the main question of Temkin (1993) namely, when one outcome is worse than another in respect of inequality. It must be admitted that this weight is more complex than Parfit’s absolute weight, but we need not go into these complexities in order to determine how these views fare with respect to LDO.

  5. For a brief statement of my argument against transitivity, see Persson (2004: 191–4). For an argument to doubt, more specifically, the assignment of numerical values to the badness of unjust inequalities, see Temkin’s (1993: 218–27) ‘Repellant Conclusion.’

  6. This presupposes that non-existent, possible individuals do not enter into the egalitarian comparison. I think this is a natural assumption to make — for instance, because they are not a fixed class, but change as the existent individuals change — but it still needs a defence which I shall not here provide (however, see Persson, 2001: 32–6). For I am not attempting an overall assessment of the respective merits of egalitarian prioritarianism and Parfitian prioritarianism, but only of their merits with respect to matters relating to LDO.

  7. In terms of Parfit’s (1995: 20) distinction between ‘teleological’ views which are about the value of outcomes and ‘deontological’ views which are about ‘what we ought to do,’ I am here considering only the prospects of prioritarianism as teleological view, since I am here concerned with egalitarianism only as a teleological view (cf. footnote 1). So, I put aside views that would construe the greater moral weight of benefiting the worse-off as deriving from the act of benefiting. These are not committed to the existence of an impersonal outcome value and, hence, they escape my objection. So, another explanation of why prioritarians have overlooked my objection may be that their view is ambiguous between a teleological and deontological interpretation.

References

  • Parfit D (1984) Reasons and persons. Clarendon, Oxford

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  • Parfit D (1995) Equality or priority?, The Lindley lecture. The University of Kansas

  • Persson I (2001) Equality, priority and person-affecting value. Ethical Theory Moral Pract 4:23–39

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  • Persson I (2004) The root of the repugnant conclusion and its rebuttal. In: Ryberg J, Tännsjö T (eds) The repugnant conclusion. Academic, Dordrecht

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  • Persson I (2007) A defence of extreme egalitarianism. In: Holtug N, Lippert-Rasmussen K (eds) Egalitarianism: new essays on the nature and value of equality. Clarendon, Oxford

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  • Temkin L (1993) Inequality. Oxford U. P., New York

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Acknowledgment

I wish to thank participants at a workshop in St Anne’s College, Oxford, for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Special thanks to Jerry Cohen, Nils Holtug, Michael Otsuka and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen. Last, but not least, thanks to two anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Gothenburg University, Box 200, 405 30, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Ingmar Persson

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  1. Ingmar Persson
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Correspondence to Ingmar Persson.

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Persson, I. Why Levelling Down could be Worse for Prioritarianism than for Egalitarianism. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 11, 295–303 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-007-9102-6

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