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Philosophy & Public Affairs 31.2 (2003) 199-206



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Equality as the Virtue of Sovereigns:
A Reply to Ronald Dworkin

Samuel Scheffler


In "Equality, Luck, and Hierarchy," Ronald Dworkin raises a number of objections to my article "What is Egalitarianism?" 1 In this reply, I will respond briefly to his main objections.

I. Is Dworkin a Luck Egalitarian?

My article was not a review of Sovereign Virtue nor was it primarily a critique of Dworkin's theory. The article's primary topic was the position that Anderson has labeled "luck egalitarianism." I said at the outset of the article that there are many different versions of luck egalitarianism, but that they share a common core idea. The core idea is that inequalities deriving from people's voluntary choices are acceptable, whereas inequalities deriving from unchosen features of people's circumstances are unjust. Parts of my discussion were devoted to identifying what I take to be some general difficulties with this core idea, when it is taken at face value. In his reply, Dworkin responds to a number of these generic criticisms as if they had been aimed specifically at him, but I am well aware that his theory departs from the generic luck-egalitarian position in certain respects. Indeed, I emphasized that the reason I was devoting special attention to his theory was precisely because of the ways in which it departs from the generic luck-egalitarian position, and thus avoids some of the difficulties of that position. [End Page 199]

In his article, however, Dworkin says not only that his view differs from the generic luck-egalitarian position in various respects, but also that he does not accept the "core idea" and is not a luck egalitarian at all. This seems to me misleading. It is true that, through its reliance on devices like hypothetical insurance schemes, Dworkin's fully developed theory ends up qualifying the core idea in important ways. Nevertheless, Sovereign Virtue characterizes the general aims of that theory in terms that are quite similar to the ones I used in describing the "core idea." Dworkin writes, for example, that his theory "aims to make people's impersonal resources sensitive to their choices but insensitive to their circumstances" (SV, p. 323), and he then reiterates that "the general goal of equality of resources" is "that distribution should be sensitive to choice but not to circumstance" (SV, p. 334). In a typical passage, he elaborates on these ideas as follows: "In principle . . . individuals should be relieved of consequential responsibility for those unfortunate features of their situation that are brute bad luck, but not from those that should be seen as flowing from their own choices. If someone has been born blind or without talents others have, that is his bad luck, and, so far as this can be managed, a just society would compensate him for that bad luck. But if he has fewer resources than other people now because he spent more on luxuries earlier, or because he chose not to work, or to work at less remunerative jobs than others chose, then his situation is the result of choice not luck, and he is not entitled to any compensation" (SV, p. 287). These formulations are hardly so remote from the "core idea" that it is a mistake to count Dworkin as a luck egalitarian at all. It is more accurate to say that his developed theory represents an interpretation or a refinement of the core idea itself.

II. Choice and Circumstance

Anyone who says that "distribution should be sensitive to choice but not to circumstance" (SV, p. 334) must provide some explanation of what, for distributive purposes, is to count as choice and what is to count as circumstance. Dworkin has characterized the distinction between choice and circumstance in different ways over the years. Indeed, as I noted in my article (WE, p. 19 n. 35), he has not always used those precise terms to characterize the relevant distinction. Nevertheless, he says in Sovereign Virtue that the distinction between choices and circumstances "tracks [End Page...

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