Inequality is widely regarded as morally objectionable: T. M. Scanlon
investigates why it matters to us. Demands for greater equality can
seem puzzling, because it can be unclear what reason people have for
objecting to the difference between what they have and what others
have, as opposed simply to wanting to be better off. This book
examines six such reasons. Inequality can be objectionable because it
arises from a failure of some agent to give equal concern to the
interests of different parties to whom it is obligated to provide some
good. It can be objectionable because it involves or gives rise to
objectionable inequalities in status. It can be objectionable because
it gives the rich unacceptable forms of control over the lives of
those who have less. It can be objectionable because it interferes
with the procedural fairness of economic institutions, or because it
deprives some people of substantive opportunity to take part in those
institutions. Inequality can be objectionable because it interferes
with the fairness of political institutions. Finally, inequality in
wealth and income can be objectionable because it is unfair: the
institutional mechanisms that produce it cannot be justified in the
relevant way. Scanlon's aims is to provide a moral anatomy of these
six reasons, and the ideas of equality that they involve. He also
examines objections to the pursuit of equality on the ground that it
involves objectionable interference with individual liberty, and
argues that ideas of desert do not provide a basis either for
justifying significant economic inequality or for objecting to it.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9780192540881
Publisert
2020
Utgiver
Vendor
OUP Oxford
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter