What should egalitarians believe if they really are egalitarian? A reply to Martin O’Neill

Bibliographic Data

ID12717543
AuthorsAlexander Brown (0000-0002-3945-7337, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK)
Year2013
Volume13
Issue4
Pages453-469
Publication date2013-10-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEuropean Journal of Political Theory (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1474-8851 • E-ISSN: 1741-2730
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1474885113506710
OpenAlexW2058132818
LanguageEN
Citations received2

In his article, ‘What Should Egalitarians Believe?’, Martin O’Neill argues, amongst other things, that egalitarians should reject both Telic and Deontic Egalitarianism and that they should adopt in their place a version of Non-Intrinsic Egalitarianism, specifically, the Pluralist Non-Intrinsic Egalitarian View. The central purpose of my article is to challenge O’Neill’s assumption that he can defend each of the various propositions that make up his position simultaneously. I do this with two arguments. First, I argue that in order to justify why egalitarians should adopt a version of Non-Intrinsic Egalitarianism, O’Neill is bound to rely on forms of egalitarianism that are either Telic or Deontic, and so he is no longer able to affirm that egalitarians should reject both Telic and Deontic Egalitarianism. Second, I argue that by allowing the inclusion of non-egalitarian reasons into the Pluralist Non-Intrinsic Egalitarian View, O’Neill opens the floodgates to an indefinite number of other non-egalitarian reasons, such that it is scarcely credible that the Pluralist Non-Intrinsic Egalitarian View really is an egalitarian view after all

Deontic logic · Economics · Egalitarianism · Epistemology · Law and economics · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociology · Law · Philosophy · Political Philosophy and Ethics

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