Prioritarianism

Abstract

Abstract Prioritarianism, or the priority view, is the view that benefits to those who are worse off, absolutely speaking, have a greater moral weight or value than benefits to those who are better off. It could be seen as a view that aims to rectify the distributive insensitivity of utilitarianism ( see Utilitarianism). Many find it implausible that utilitarianism implies that a benefit, or a unit of welfare or well‐being ( see Well‐being), has the same moral value, or makes the outcome as much morally better, if it is received by somebody who is better off as by somebody who is worse off. To be sure, utilitarians could mitigate the counterintuitiveness of this implication by maintaining that what we usually are in a position to distribute directly are resources which produce benefits (understood in terms of pleasure, happiness, desire‐fulfillment, etc. [ see Pleasure; Happiness]) rather than benefits and that, according to diminishing marginal utility, resources as a rule produce fewer benefits in the hands of the better off than the worse off. So, in practice, utilitarianism generally implies that resources should go to the worse off. But this clarification is not enough to appease many critics of the distributive shortcomings of utilitarianism: they will insist that it is morally better if a resource goes to someone worse off even if it does not then generate a greater benefit than it would were it to go to someone better off. Such critics might turn to prioritarianism.