Why Inequality Matters
Luck Egalitarianism, its Meaning and Value

This book explores and defends the view that inequality is intrinsically bad when and because it leads to arbitrary disadvantage.

Shlomi Segall (Author)

9781107129818, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 21 July 2016

268 pages, 14 tables
23.7 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.54 kg

'… this book is a tour de force through the important but dense literature on telic egalitarianism, which makes it required reading for anyone interested in this area.' Adina Preda, Ethics

Equality is a key concept in our moral and political vocabulary. There is wide agreement on its instrumental value and its favourable impact on many aspects of society, but less certainty over whether it has a non-instrumental or intrinsic value that can be demonstrated. In this project, Shlomi Segall explores and defends the view that it does. He argues that the value of equality is not reducible to a concern we might have for the worse off, or to ensuring that individuals do not fall into poverty and destitution; instead he claims that undeserved inequalities, wherever and whenever we might find them, are bad in themselves. Assessing the strength of competing accounts, such as sufficientarianism and prioritarianism, he brings together for the first time discussions of the moral value of equality with luck- or responsibility-sensitive accounts of distributive justice. His book will interest readers in political and moral philosophy.

Part I. Egalitarianism: 1. The variety of objections to equality
2. Why inequality matters
3. When does inequality matter?
4. Who is inequality bad for?
Part II. Alternatives to Egalitarianism: 5. What is the point of sufficiency?
6. Prioritarianism and the person-affecting view
7. Prioritarianism and time
Part III. Chances and Choices: 8. Should egalitarians care about chances?
9. The badness of voluntary inequalities.

Subject Areas: Law [L], Economic theory & philosophy [KCA], Economics [KC], Political science & theory [JPA], Politics & government [JP], Social & political philosophy [HPS], Ethics & moral philosophy [HPQ], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy [HP]