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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
We can enjoy and suffer many kinds of human goods and evils. The goods (or benefits) include not only experiences and enjoyments but also the having and exercise of various talents and abilities, the receipt of recognitions and rewards, successes, employments, opportunities. The evils (or harms) include not only pains and frustrations but also defects such as ugliness, disabilities such as paralysis or retardation, lack of standard opportunities such as unemployment, financial loss, failure, disgrace. It is tempting to say that wherever a person has a good he has an advantage and when he suffers an evil he is, in that respect, disadvantaged. However this usage can make it look as if all human goods and evils are subject matter for distributive justice. In fact that is not the conventional view.
1 Cf. Campbell, T.D. ‘Equality of Opportunity,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 75 (1974-5) 51–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Campbell rejects the ‘handicap’ view in favour of what appears to be a ‘moral grit’ view. (The invidious terms are mine, however.)
2 Cf. Hayek, F.A. The Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1960), 166Google Scholar; also cf.70.
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5 Rawls, 104
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