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Luck and Equality: A Reply to Hurley 1
Author(s) -
COHEN G. A.
Publication year - 2006
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2006.tb00571.x
Subject(s) - luck , egalitarianism , economic justice , positive economics , begging , sociology , law and economics , epistemology , philosophy , economics , law , political science , theology , politics
In Chapter 6 (“Why the Aim to Neutralize Luck Cannot Provide a Basis for Egalitarianism”) of her Justice, Luck, and Knowledge , Susan Hurley defends two claims: that “the aim to neutralize luck [does not] contribute to identifying and specifying what egalitarianism is”, and that it also provides no “independent non‐question‐begging reason or justification for egalitarianism” (p. 147). In the present response, I reject the first of Hurley's claims, and I show that the second, while true, lacks polemical force. I said, in “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice” ( Ethics , 1989), that