Responsibility and Distributive Justice

Abstract

Abstract Distributive justice principles specify what is a fair distribution of benefits and burdens across individual persons (and other beings as well, but this complication is set aside). Some distributive justice principles require provision of assistance to those who suffer misfortune and are worse off than others or badly off in absolute terms. Does one’s eligibility for receipt of such assistance vary, to some degree, independently of instrumental considerations, depending on the extent to which one is reasonably held responsible for coming to be in need of it? This chapter explores some answers to this question. One Yes answer holds that having had reasonable alternative courses of action that would have reduced the risk of suffering misfortune reduces the obligations of others to alleviate one’s plight. Another Yes answer holds that being morally deserving or undeserving affects the strength of one’s claim to assistance. These answers appear in luck egalitarian accounts of distributive justice. Two types of the No answer are distinguished. One type holds that distributive justice principles that call for aid to the unfortunate should be insensitive to the extent to which one is prudentially or morally responsible for becoming unfortunate and that it is bad moralism to think otherwise. Another type expresses free will skepticism, challenging the assumption that individuals are in fact variously responsible (or alternatively that we can ever know them to be variously responsible) for choosing and acting in ways that might land them in predicaments from which they need to be rescued.