Sufficientarianism

According to the sufficiency theory of justice in health, justice requires that people have equal access to adequate health. In this article, I lay out the structure of this view and I assess its distributive implications for setting priority (i) between health needs across persons and (ii) between health care spending and other societal goods. I argue, first, that according to the sufficiency theory, deficiency in health cannot be completely offset by providing other societal goods. And, second, that it can prevent the medicalization of societies by stressing that improvements beyond the level of adequate health have relatively little weight, if any, from the standpoint of justice.

Depuis que les modalités de ce geste médical, la transfusion sanguine, ont été découvertes il y a une centaine d'année, la nature du sang-ce qu'est le sang-a changé. Le sang était jusque-là un composant organique, une partie fluide de nous-même. Avec la possibilité de le transférer d'un corps à l'autre apparait celle de l'appréhender comme une ressource. Le sang devient un bien, quelque chose dont on reconnait les pouvoirs thérapeutiques, et, surtout, quelque chose que l'on peut redistribuer.

Almost everyone believes that freedom from deprivation should have significant weight in specifying what justice between generations requires. Some theorists hold that it should always trump other distributive concerns. Other theorists hold that it should have some but not lexical priority. I argue instead that freedom from deprivation should have lexical priority in some cases, yet weighted priority in others. More specifically, I defend semistrong sufficientarianism. This view posits a deprivation threshold at which people are free from deprivation, and an affluence threshold at which people can live an affluent life, even though their lives may be even further improved beyond that point. I argue that freedom from deprivation in one generation lexically outweighs providing affluence in another generation; in all other cases, freedom from deprivation does not have lexical priority.

The construction industry is prone to conflicts and disputes due to complexity, competitive environment, and complicated project documents. In this complex environment, members from various professions, each has their goals and desires to secure the most of his own benefits, work together to build a structure. The objectives of this study were to investigate the frequency, causes, and remedies of disputes in the Central Province of Saudi Arabia. The required data were collected, through a questionnaire survey, from 130 contractors and 54 owners located in the Central Province. This study reveals that disputes in the Saudi construction industry are inevitable with a frequency of occurrence exceeds two disputes per month. Project documents, owners, and contractors to some extent are the sources for such disputes. Project documents are poorly prepared with inaccurate specifications, ambiguity in contract wording, contradictions between project documents, unrealistic project duration, t...

Sufficiency principles require that each person has enough. This paper explores two such principles, located towards opposing ends of the political spectrum. Conservative Sufficiency affirms a permission to transform natural resources to benefit oneself or other people, provided that doing so is compatible with present and future people all having enough, but denies the relevance of additional distributive requirements, like Equality or Priority. By contrast, according to Conservationist Sufficiency, what everybody having enough undermines is not Equality and Priority, but our justification for further environmental damage, including damage harmful to future humans and nonhumans. Defending the Conservationist over the Conservative interpretation, this paper explains its appeal not only for those who care about animals and the environment but also for those who share other concerns present in the thought of J. S. Mill and John Rawls.

Limitarianism holds that there is an upper limit to how many resources, such as wealth and income, people can permissibly have. In this article, I examine the conceptual structure of limitarianism. I focus on the upper limit and the idea that resources above the limit are 'excess resources'. I distinguish two possible limitarian views about such resources: (i) that excess resources have zero moral value for the holder; and (ii) that excess resources do have moral value for the holder but that their claim to such resources is outweighed by other normative concerns. Moreover, I argue that, depending on the values limitarianism seeks to promote, limitarians should care about the number of people with excess resources or the total amount of excess resources (or both), that they can adopt redistributive measures and/or predistributive measures, and that some versions of limitarianism should take into account the distribution of risk among those above the riches line.

A double ambiguity has been charged against Rawls's difference principle (DP). Is it Maximin, Leximin, or something else? Usually, following A. Sen, scholars identify DP with the so-called Leximin. One argues here that one has to distinguish 1° the Leximin, 2° the Maximin (as rule of justice formally analogous to the maximin rule of decision), represented by the figure in L of the perfectly substitutable goods, and 3° the genuine DP. When the augmentation of inequality benefits the worse off, only Pareto-strong improvements are permitted. Leximin would also permit Pareto-weak improvements too (after the first maximum D), where only the richest improves: from (2, 3) to (2, 5), say. This is forbidden by DP. With two classes, unlike Maximin, DP has no curve of indifference and is always decisive, as Leximin is. For undecisive Rules of Justice, which admit indifferent curves, I propose to add a lexically secondary rule, to break ties. That move is able to clarify the links and the differences between on the one hand Maximin alone, with its typical indifference curves in L, and on the other hand, the DP properly understood and the Leximin, which both have no indifferent curves. With two classes of persons (best off/worse off), DP appears more egalitarian than Leximin, because it's secondary rule is MinIn (Minimization of Inequality). But the intuition behind the distinction is that it cannot possible "fair" that only the best off improves in a productive social cooperation.

Justice requires that people be treated fairly. What does that imply in a globalized world? The idea of a global justice emerges against a long tradition of defining justice as a property of the state. It is foreshadowed both by political cosmopolitanism beginning with Kant and by twentieth-century efforts to articulate universal human rights. Against this background, accounts of global justice show how injustice is both global and structural, reflecting subjections and disadvantages along the lines of race, class, and gender. It exposes the degree to which abstract concepts of equality and rights have been complicit in this injustice. Finally, instead of taking as paradigmatic conflicts over property, global justice refocuses political attention on health and housing, food and agriculture, the environment, labor and employment, sexuality and reproduction, and security.

Existe-t-il encore une justification de la propriété privée
susceptible d’emporter le jugement académique comme
celui du grand public ?
Concept peu problématique aux yeux de la majorité qui
s’en accommode fort bien, la propriété privée est sous
le feu de nombreuses critiques qui y voient la cause de
la crise écologique et des inégalités économiques et sociales.
Alors que les uns considèrent ce droit comme un
des axiomes essentiels du libéralisme moderne, les autres
soulignent la nécessité de réorganiser les rapports propriétaires.
Se pourrait-il que les arguments des premiers
rendent illégitimes les efforts des seconds ?
C’est à répondre à cette question que s’emploie cet ouvrage
en analysant les principaux arguments utilisés dans
le débat contemporain pour justifier l’existence de la
propriété privée. Trois arguments sont plus particulièrement
étudiés : la justification de la propriété privée par
le travail, par l’efficience économique dont elle serait la
cause, ainsi que par la liberté individuelle qu’elle rend
possible.
Cet ouvrage nécessaire expose les difficultés et les impasses
des arguments mobilisés dans le débat contemporain
pour justifier la propriété privée. Il pose les bases
d’une réflexion pour une nouvelle théorie démocratique
de la propriété débarrassée du spectre de l’absolutisme
propriétaire. Il s’adresse tant à la citoyenne ou au militant
qu’aux académiques qui y trouveront des discussions accessibles
mais pointues des principales justifications de la
propriété privée.
ISBN: 9782356879837

We examine the role of need satisfaction in non-comparative justice ratings about endowments with goods. As normative approaches, we discuss utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and sufficientarianism. Using a vignette experiment, we show that a need context increases the prevalence of prioritarianistic and sufficientarianistic justice ratings, which leads to an ethically problematic sigmoid shape of the justice evaluation function.

In this paper I present and analyze the classical libertarian thesis according to which there is an intimate connection between humans‟ right to self-ownership and their freedom, and I provide some reasons for preserving this traditional connection against its egalitarian contesters, represented by Gerald Allan Cohen. The principle states that humans have a right of property over their persons and powers, and any interference with this right is equivalent to a violation of their freedom. This is the reason why an egalitarian thinker like Cohen tries to reject the principle and its connection with freedom in order to legitimate redistribution of property in the benefit of the underprivileged: he argues that the principle itself (and particularly Robert Nozick‟s version of it) has no special relation with freedom and lacks any real significance for political philosophy. I will reject his argumentation and evidentiate that the traditional connection still stands and the principle is in...

El artículo indaga la legitimidad libertaria de las fronteras estatales para excluir inmigrantes. Se sostiene que en estas teorías la legitimidad de las fronteras se construye mediante la legitimidad de la propiedad. El artículo analiza las teorías libertarias de Nozick y Steiner y argumenta contra la idea de que el derecho de propiedad libertario permite excluir en las fronteras y sostiene que las condiciones de legitimidad de la propiedad implican una potestad estatal reducida para controlar fronteras. Si bien en un mundo ideal las comunidades dispondrían del poder total para controlarlas, en nuestro mundo imperfecto los estados carecen de esa potestad.

In his 2017 paper, "Prospect Utilitarianism: A Better Alternative to Sufficientarianism," Hun Chung proposed a theory of distributive justice called 'Prospect Utilitarianism (PU).' According to Chung, PU retains all the major attractions of sufficientarianism, while avoiding two major problems. The two problems are: (a) sufficientarianism fails to prescribe the right distribution under conditions of scarcity (i.e., 'lifeboat' situations), and (b) sufficientarianism fails to provide continuous ethical evaluations. Recently, Ben Davies (2022) and Lasse Nielsen (2019; 2023) have provided a defense of sufficientarianism from these two charges. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the shortcomings in Davies's and to a lesser degree Nielsen's defenses of sufficientarianism. Our paper will highlight that both Davies's and Nielsen's defenses of sufficientarianism stem from fundamental misunderstandings related to the concepts of continuity, welfarism, value satiability, and their interconnectedness with sufficientarianism. In the end, we will argue that Prospect Utilitarianism (PU) is a superior alternative to sufficientarianism.

In this article, I assess the prospects for the limitarian thesis that someone has too much wealth if they exceed a specific wealth threshold. Limitarianism claims that there are good political and/or ethical reasons to prevent people from having such ‘surplus wealth’, for example, because it has no moral value for the holder or because allowing people to have surplus wealth has less moral value than redistributing it. Drawing on recent literature on distributive justice, I defend two types of limitarian principles of justice. First, limitarian midlevel principles draw on the limitarian thesis to specify normative commitments for guiding institutional design and individual actions. Second, the limitarian presumption draws on that thesis to specify what a just allocation of wealth requires under epistemic constraints. Such a presumption says that without substantive reasons to the contrary, we should regard a distribution as unjust if some people’s wealth exceeds the limitarian threshold. Furthermore, I will argue that we must reject a possible but implausible interpretation of limitarianism as an ideal distributive pattern. Yet both as a midlevel principle and as a presumption, limitarianism can play an important role in theorizing about justice in the real world.

In earlier work on limitarianism, I argued that setting an upper limit to the amount of wealth that people can permissibly have is justified when decision-makers are unaware of or disagree about the appropriate distributive criterion or if they are unaware of people’s relevant features (or both). Robert Huseby has raised several powerful objections to this presumptive argument for limitarianism. Some of these objections call for a revision of my defence of presumptive limitarianism while others call for clarification, both of which I aim to do in this chapter. I will argue that unless decision-makers have substantive reasons to suggest otherwise, they must act as if there is an upper limit to the amount of wealth that people can permissibly have.

This paper examines the intergenerational justice theory of obligations to future generations. I refer to queer temporality theory and evaluate its radical questioning. However, I argue that its destructive conclusions need not be accepted. Proper division of the time span according to the nature of the problem is important for reaching a moderate conclusion.

This paper examines some key normative issues that arise from the commodifica - tion of the public supply of water. Since the end of World War Two, the provision of water for domestic consumption has, in most Western countries, been regarded as a fundamental public service and, as such, has typically been supplied by the State cheaply or free of charge to users. (Water for agricultural and industrial purposes has also often been so provided.) However, in recent times, in many parts of the world, water markets have been established. This clearly has distributive implications and, potentially, depending upon one's theoretical framework, raises problems of distributive justice. However, questions concerning the proper distribution of wa- ter have garnered little attention from political philosophers and applied ethicists, nor has there been much discussion of the moral permissibility of commodifying water. This is surprising given the centrality of water to human civilisation. In t...

The growing concentration of wealth has acquired a new urgency in recent years. One particular view in this context is developed by Ingrid Robeyns in her ground-breaking work on limitarianism. According to this view, no one should have more than a certain amount of valuable goods, such as income and wealth. The contributors to this symposium, Brian Berkey, David Axelsen and Lasse Nielsen, Jessica Flanigan and Christopher Freiman, and Lena Halldenius, critically examine various aspects of limitarianism. In particular, they examine how limitarianism should be interpreted and developed as a principle of justice, what reasons speak in favour and against limitarianism, and how limitarianism relates to other principles of distributive justice. Our hope is that this symposium will contribute to the ongoing debate in political philosophy about the concentration of wealth and economic justice.

This article examines the debate between equity theorists (Adam Swift and Harry Brighouse) and adequacy theorists (Elizabeth Anderson and Debra Satz) over elite private schooling and productivity. It challenges the view, presupposed but never defended by adequacy theorists, that private schools can be justified on social productivity grounds, that is, on account of their ability to increase social wealth and thus benefit the least well-off. The article also argues against what it calls the sufficientarian productivity advantage. Contrary to what adequacy theorists claim, the equity approach does not neglect productivity considerations and, conversely, the adequacy approach exaggerates the extent to which it successfully accommodates the interest in productivity within its account of educational justice.

In this introduction, the author briefly presents the way in which Clayton, Segall and Lippert-Rasmussen deal with what egalitarianism has to say about non-discrimination in hiring. Parallels and differences between their approaches are stressed.

Carl Knight argues that lexical sufficientarianism, which holds that sufficientarian concerns should have lexical priority over other distributive goals, is 'excessive' in many distinct ways and that sufficientarians should either defend weighted sufficientarianism or become prioritarians. In this article, I distinguish three types of weighted sufficientarianism and propose a weighted sufficientarian view that meets the excessiveness objection and is preferable to both Knight's proposal and prioritarianism. More specifically, I defend a multi-threshold view which gives weighted priority to benefits directly above and below its thresholds, but gives benefits below the lowest threshold lexical priority over benefits above the highest threshold.

A wide range of issues in moral, political, and legal philosophy fall under the heading of "intergenerational justice," such as questions of justice between the young and the old, obligations to more-or-less distant past and future generations, generational sovereignty, and the boundaries of democratic decision-making. These issues deserve our attention first because they are of great social importance. Solving the challenges raised by aging, stable pension funding, and increasing healthcare costs, for example, requires a view on what justice between age groups demands. Climate change, resource depletion, environmental degradation, population growth, and the like, raise serious concerns about the conditions under which future people will have to live. What kind of world should we bequest to future generations? Second, this debate has theoretical significance. Questions of intergenerational justice force reconsideration of the fundamental commitments (on scope, pattern, site, and currency) of existing moral and political theories. The age-group debate has led to fundamental questions about the pattern of distributive justice: Should we care about people's lives considered as whole being equally good? This has implausible implications. Can existing accounts be modified to avoid such problematic consequences?

Recent scholarship has sought to read Smith in TMS as an ethical critic of market inequality, one motivated by egalitarian commitments. This chapter pushes back against this reading, arguing that the position Smith adopts in TMS is most accurately labelled sufficientarian, not egalitarian. However, Smith’s sufficientarian considerations are deliberately focused on what is most apt for securing individual happiness. He says little of direct or decisive bearing on the plausibility of egalitarianism as a political commitment. Yet because ethical questions are not, in this area at least, isomorphic with political ones, we ought not to assume the latter can straightforwardly be read off the former. This ought to temper both our reading of Smith’s argument, and what we can appropriately extract from his text for present normative debate.

In this paper I propose a novel defence of political cosmopolitanism grounded in a familiar principle: universal moral equality. Critics of cosmopolitanism generally agree to universal moral equality, but disagree about what moral equality means politically. According to my argument, if we accept that all people are morally equal, then we ought to accept their equal moral standing. We should therefore prefer socio-political arrangements that reflect the equal moral standing of all people over those that reflect differentiated moral standing. A reasonable cosmopolitanism need not preclude partialist attachment to co-nationals, or undermine the significance of self-determination, so long as political arrangements do not produce differentiated moral standing. As the political application of an uncontroversial moral principle, I defend reasonable cosmopolitanism against nationalism and statism. Neither of these, I argue, are suitable foundations for global justice in migration because they each conceive of justice as a local concern for insiders.

Philip Pettit’s neo-Roman republican theory of non-domination is billed as a more egalitarian alternative to classical liberal theories of non-interference. As a theory of geopolitical affairs, however, his republicanism fails to fulfill this egalitarian promise in ways that closely echo John Rawls’s liberal law of peoples. Pettit’s republican law of peoples is ill equipped to address structural sources of transnational and global domination because it exaggerates the ontological separateness of peoples, it overvalues the self-sufficiency of states for purposes of achieving internal non-domination, and it conceives of domination too narrowly as an evil that must be intentionally or negligently imposed by identifiable agents.

Uniformity in human actions and attitudes incumbent with the ceteris paribus clause of folk psychology lucidly transits moral thoughts into the domain of subject versus object-centric explorations. In Zettel, Wittgenstein argues, “Concepts with fixed limits would demand uniformity of behaviour, but where I am certain, someone else is uncertain. And that is the fact of nature.” (Wittgenstein 2007, 68). Reflecting on the moral principle of “ethical giving” revives a novel stance in modern moral philosophy. An “ethical giving” is a moral position that looks at giving from the context of harmonizing the changing demands of situations with normative ethical principles. Despite giving more prominence to the query of intuition, the chapter brings up the justification of normative moral principles pertaining to their applications and purports. Human activities
aimed at decision-making goals conducted by the moral compass are nothing but the sanction of certain ethical norms and rules. In this context, two principles, the normative aspect and the perspective aspect, need to be expounded in parallel.

In his article, “Equality as a Moral Ideal”, Harry Frankfurt argues against economic egalitarianism and presents what he calls the “doctrine of sufficiency.” According to the doctrine of sufficiency, what is morally important is not relative economic equality, but rather, whether somebody has enough, where “having enough” is a non-comparative standard of reasonable contentment that may differ from person to person given his/her aims and circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to show that Frankfurt’s original arguments in support for his doctrine of sufficiency have critical problems that Frankfurt himself does not properly recognize. In the end, I will argue that in order to solve these problems the doctrine of sufficiency cannot help but to incorporate certain prioritarian commitments – commitments which many would view as implying economic egalitarianism. This is embarrassing for a doctrine whose raison d’être was mainly to defeat economic egalitarianism.