Do all persons have equal moral worth? : on "basic equality" and equal respect and concern

239 Pages·2015·1.49 MB·English

by  Steinhoff, Uwe

Do All Persons Have Equal Moral Worth?
Do All Persons Have Equal
Moral Worth?
On “Basic Equality” and Equal Respect
and Concern
Edited by Uwe Steinhoff
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© Oxford University Press 2015
Chapter 2 is a slightly revised version of a chapter originally published in
George Sher, Equality for Inegalitarians, 2014, © George Sher, published by
Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission.
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First Edition published in 2015
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Acknowledgments
Chapter 2 is a slightly revised version of a chapter originally published in
George Sher, Equality for Inegalitarians, 2014, © George Sher, published by
Cambridge University Press, reproduced with permission. Some paragraphs
of chapter 8 draw on material originally published as “Against Pogge’s ‘Cos-
mopolitanism,’” Ratio 26 (2013), pp. 329–341.
This volume is the outcome of a workshop that was held from November
22 to 24, 2012 at the Department of Politics and Public Administration of the
University of Hong Kong. I thank all participants for their contributions and
for the lively discussions. I also thank the administrative staff of the Depart-
ment of Politics for their help in organizing it, in particular Peran Chan,
Victoria Kwok, Jacqueline Mui, Sharon To, Daniel Tsang, and Nicole Yung.
I owe special thanks to May Yim, whose organizational skills were indispen-
sable and who went far beyond the call of duty to ensure that the workshop
ran smoothly and was a pleasant experience for all participants.
Finally, I would like to thank OUP’s Dominic Byatt, who was supportive of
this project right from its inception.
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Contents
Notes on Contributors viii
Introduction xi
1 What is Basic Equality? 1
Christopher Nathan
2 Why We Are Moral Equals 17
George Sher
3 Basic Equality: Neither Acceptable nor Rejectable 30
Richard Arneson
4 Rationality, Equal Status, and Egalitarianism 53
Thomas Christiano
5 The Irrelevance of the Concept of Worth to the Debate between
Egalitarianism and Non-Egalitarianism 76
Héctor Wittwer
6 Equality, Universality, and Impartiality—How They Work
and Why They Matter 96
Jan Narveson
7 On the (Re)Construction and Basic Concepts of the Morality
of Equal Respect 124
Stefan Gosepath
8 Against Equal Respect and Concern, Equal Rights,
and Egalitarian Impartiality 142
Uwe Steinhoff
9 Do Liberal Egalitarians Really Believe in Equality Given Their
Commitment to Equality of Opportunity? 173
Jiwei Ci
Notes 189
References 208
Index 217
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Notes on Contributors
Richard Arneson is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of
California, San Diego, where he has taught since 1973. His current rank is Professor
Above Scale (Distinguished Professor). He holds the Valtz Family Chair in Philosophy
at UCSD. He has an unpaid affliation at the Freedom Center at the University of
Arizona, and also holds the unpaid post of Co-Director of the Institute for Law and
Philosophy at the School of Law of the University of San Diego. He has held visiting
appointments at the University of California at Davis, Yale University, and the
Australian National University. He works in moral and political philosophy,
especially on topics concerning egalitarian theories of social justice and the prospects
for act consequentialist moral theory in the light of the objections this doctrine has
attracted. He has published more than 100 essays to date.
Thomas Christiano teaches at the University of Arizona. He has published
numerous articles in the most prestigious journals and is the author of Democratic
Authority and Its Limits (Oxford University Press, 2008) and The Rule of the Many:
Fundamental Issues in Democratic Theory (Westview Press, 1996).
Jiwei Ci was born in Beijing and studied in Beijing and Edinburgh. Before coming to
Hong Kong, he had taught in Beijing and had been an Andrew Mellon Fellow at the
Stanford Humanities Center, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center in North
Carolina, and a Member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced
Study in Princeton. He teaches various subjects in moral and political philosophy,
from time to time also offering courses on continental philosophy and on
Confucianism. His research interests include theories of justice, the philosophical
and cultural dimensions of capitalism, and the ethics and politics of communist and
post-communist China. His articles appeared, for instance, in the Journal of Political
Philosophy and in Political Theory. He is also the author of Dialectic of the Chinese
Revolution: From Utopianism to Hedonism (Stanford University Press, 1994) and The
Two Faces of Justice (Harvard University Press, 2006).
Stefan Gosepath is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the Free University Berlin,
Germany, and director of the Centre for Advanced Studies “Justitia Amplifcata—
Rethinking Justice: Applied and Global.” Until recently he was Professor of
International Political Theory and Philosophy at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe
University, Frankfurt am Main, in the Cluster of Excellence, “The Formation of
Normative Orders.” Previously he has been a professor at the universities of Bremen,
Giessen, Potsdam, Vienna, and Visiting Fellow at Harvard University and Columbia
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Notes on Contributors
University. He has published numerous articles on practical reason and normativity,
justice and equality, human rights and global justice, and on morality. He is also
author of the books Aufgeklärtes Eigeninteresse: Eine Theorie theoretischer und
praktischer Rationalität (“Enlightened Self-Interest: A Theory of Theoretical and
Practical Rationality,” Suhrkamp, 1992) and Gleiche Gerechtigkeit: Grundlagen eines
liberalen Egalitarismus (“Equal Justice: Foundations of a Liberal Egalitarianism,”
Suhrkamp, 2004).
Jan Narveson, B.A. (Chicago), Ph.D. (Harvard) (and F.R.S.C., and O.C.) is
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo in
Ontario, Canada (after 41 years as professor.) He is the author of over two hundred
papers in philosophical periodicals and anthologies, mainly on moral and political
theory and practice, and of several books: Morality and Utility (1967); The Libertarian
Idea (1989; republished by Broadview Press, 2002); Moral Matters (1993; 2nd ed.
1999); Respecting Persons in Theory and Practice (2002); You and The State (2008); This is
Ethical Theory (2010); and co-author of: with Marilyn Friedman, Political Correctness
(1995); and, with James P. Sterba, Are Liberty and Equality Compatible? (2010). He is
editor of Moral Issues (1983); with John T. Sanders, For and Against the State (1996);
and, with Susan Dimock, Liberalism: New Essays on Liberal Themes (2000). In 2007, a
Festschrift of essays about his work was published: Liberty, Games, and Contracts, ed. by
Malcolm Murray (Ashgate). He was made a member of the Royal Society of Canada in
1989, and made an Offcer of the Order of Canada in 2003.
Christopher Nathan is a Lecturer in Political Philosophy at the University of Exeter.
His publications include “Need there be a defence of equality?”, for which he
received the Postgraduate Essay Prize of the journal Res Publica.
George Sher is Herbert S. Autrey Professor of Philosophy at Rice University. His areas
of interest include social and political philosophy, ethics, and moral psychology. His
essays have appeared in Ethics; Philosophy and Public Affairs; The Journal of Philosophy;
Nous, and many other journals. His books include Desert (Princeton, 1987); Beyond
Neutrality: Perfectionism and Politics (Cambridge, 1997); Approximate Justice: Studies in
Non-Ideal Theory (Rowman and Littlefeld, 1997); In Praise of Blame (Oxford, 2006);
and Who Knew? Responsibility without Awareness (Oxford, 2009). He is currently
working on a book entitled Equality for Inegalitarians, which will be published by
Cambridge University Press.
Uwe Steinhoff is Associate Professor at the Department of Politics and Public
Administration of the University of Hong Kong and Senior Research Associate in the
University of Oxford Changing Character of War Programme. He has published
numerous articles in such journals as Journal of Ethics, Philosophical Quarterly,
Philosophical Forum, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Journal of Military Ethics,
and the Journal of Political Philosophy. He is also the author of On the Ethics of War
and Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2007); The Philosophy of Jürgen Habermas
(Oxford University Press, 2009); and On the Ethics of Torture (State University
of New York Press, 2013).
Héctor Wittwer got his Ph.D. (2001) and his Habilitation (2007) from Humboldt
University, Berlin. He taught philosophy as substitute professor at the universities of
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