Luck Egalitarianism

If people should be equally well off, in terms of what should they be equally well off? What justifies the presumption that equality is just? Would it be better in one respect to enforce a state of equality where everyone is much worse off but equally so? Is it unjust that we are better off than people living in Medieval times, or that we are better off than non-human animals? Is what matters not whether people can relate to one another as equals, but whether they have the same quantity of resources? Luck Egalitarianism addresses these and other important questions-all deriving from the intuition that differences in how well people are doing which do not reflect differential responsibility are unjust. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen tackles all the major questions concerning luck egalitarianism, providing deep, penetrating and original discussion of recent academic discourses on distributive justice as well as responses to some of the main objections in the literature. It offers a new answer to the "Why equality?" and "Equality of what?"-questions, and provides a robust luck egalitarian response to the recent criticisms of luck egalitarianism by social relations egalitarians. This systematic, theoretical introduction illustrates the broader picture of distributive justice and enables the reader to understand the core intuitions underlying (and sometimes conflicting with) luck egalitarianism. The book also interrogates applied distributive justice by addressing issues such as the levelling down objection, and explores how equality relates to other values such as freedom, community, stability, and publicity.