Levelling the Playing Field

What is equal opportunity? In an illuminating book, Andrew Mason brings to this contested concept an understanding of great breadth in the context of contemporary egalitarian thought. It is a timely book, because the discussion of equality in general, and in particular of equality of opportunity, has reached a point where it is crucial to rethink equal opportunity, and perhaps redefine it, given the many definitions, often conflicting, used by various ideologies and schools of thought. Mason's approach is both broad and profound in that he draws the demands of justice into the picture for equal opportunity. He suggests that any adequate account of equality of opportunity must have at least two elements: open competition for advantaged social positions leading to the appointment of the best qualified candidate, and fair access to the qualifications required for success in this competition. As for the first element, Mason rejects the idea that it is grounded in a pre‐justicial notion of desert, and offers instead to derive it from the requirement of respect for persons. The exploration of Rawls' account of fair equality of opportunity, as plausibly accommodating the second element, leads to Mason's conclusion that Rawls is unjustified in giving to the principle of fair equality of opportunity priority over counteracting the effects of natural endowments through the difference principle, in order to offset the effects of different social circumstances. Mason then argues that a mitigation approach, aimed at preventing differences in people's circumstances, both social and natural, from having an undue impact on their access to advantage, is better supported by moral intuitions than a luck‐egalitarian approach calling for a complete neutralization of the effects of these differences. His mitigation approach comprises a plurality of principles based on intuitive moral judgements. It is less elegant than the approach offered by luck egalitarians, but Mason claims this is also the source of its strength. The reason is that the mitigation approach allows differences in people's circumstances to influence their access to advantage, while not invariably requiring them to pay the full price for their choices. Mason argues that this accommodates most people's moral sensibilities

Competition (biology) · Context (archaeology) · Economic Justice · Economics · Element (criminal law) · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Equal opportunity · Field (mathematics) · Ideology · Law and economics · Levelling · Offset (computer science) · Order (exchange) · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociology · Computer Science · Law · Mathematics · Philosophy · Social Policy and Reform Studies

• If you’re a luck egalitarian, how come you read bedtime stories to your children

  Shlomi Segall•Critical Review of International…•2011

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