On giving priority to the worse off

Abstract

An unpublished manuscript in which Parfit develops the Priority View, the position that benefiting people matters more the worse off they are. Parfit argues that the basic idea underlying the Priority View is not the diminishing marginal utility of resources but the diminishing moral importance of utility itself. The manuscript articulates the distinction between the Priority View and egalitarianism, and provides an early formulation of ideas Parfit later presented in his 1991 Lindley Lecture ``Equality or Priority?''