The justification of equality

Abstract

This article discusses the problem of grounding egalitarian principles in a justification capable of resisting objections founded on other values, such as utility and individual rights. It is argued that an individualistic egalitarianism can be grounded in a certain theory of the source of other-regarding moral reasons. This theory claims that, via a process of generalization, we derive impersonal concerns for ourselves and for others. The resulting concerns are fragmented and include separate concerns for each person, realized by looking at the world from each person’s point of view separately and individually, rather than by looking at the world from a single comprehensive point of view. It is suggested that this, in turn, makes pairwise comparison the natural way to deal with conflicting claims – AI-generated abstract.