Justice, Luck, and Knowledge

by S. L. Hurley

Overview

The recent past has seen striking advances in our understanding of both moral responsibility and distributive justice. S. L. Hurley's ambitious work brings these two areas of lively debate into overdue contact with each other.

Key contemporary discussions of distributive justice have formulated egalitarian approaches in terms of responsibility; in this view, the aim of egalitarianism is to respect differences between positions for which people are responsible while neutralizing differences that are a matter of luck. But this approach, Hurley contends, has ignored the way our understanding of responsibility constrains the roles it can actually play within distributive justice. Her book brings the new articulation of responsibility to bear in explaining these constraints. While responsibility might help specify what to distribute, it cannot tell us how to distribute; thus, Hurley argues, responsibility cannot tell us to distribute in an egalitarian pattern in particular. It can, however, play other important roles in a theory of justice, in relation to incentive-seeking behavior and well-being. Hurley's book proposes a new, bias-neutralizing approach to distributive justice that places responsibility in these less problematic roles.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674017702
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	03/31/2005
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	524
Product dimensions:	5.75(w) x 8.94(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Susan L. Hurley (1954–2007) was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bristol.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Responsibility and Justice

I. RESPONSIBILITY

1. Philosophical Landscape: The New Articulation of Responsibility

2. Why Alternate Sequences Are Irrelevant to Responsibility

3. Why Responsibility Is Not Essentially Impossible

4. Responsibility, Luck, and the "Natural Lottery"

II. JUSTICE

5. Philosophical Landscape: The Luck-Neutralizing Approach to Distributive Justice

6. Why the Aim to Neutralize Luck Cannot Provide a Basis for Egalitarianism

7. Roemer on Responsibility and Equality

8. The Currency of Distributive Justice and Incentive Inequality

9. The Real Roles of Responsibility in Justice

10 From Ignorance to Maximin: A Bias-Neutralizing Alternative

Appendix: Outline of the Arguments

Bibliography

Index

What People are Saying About This

Peter Vallentyne

Hurley's arguments are highly original. This is an impressive and insightful book.
— Peter Vallentyne, Professor of Philosophy, Virginia Commonwealth University

John Martin Fischer

Luck-neutralization is a central concept in contemporary work on distributive justice, and thus moral responsibility is also a central concept (insofar as luck is what one is not morally responsible for). It is therefore fruitful and illuminating to apply important insights from responsibility theory to various theories of distributive justice. The book is written in a lively style, Susan Hurley is remarkably well-versed in the literature on free will and moral responsibility as well as distributive justice, and the ideas are vibrant and provocative...a path-breaking book.
— John Martin Fischer, Professor of Philosophy, University of California Riverside

Editorial Reviews

Exceedingly rigorous...at the same time, exceptionally reader-friendly...One of the best critical introductions to the...problem of determinism and moral responsibility on the market...[this book] deserve[s] to be read by all responsibility enthusiasts...Eye-opening and exciting...incisive...carefully crafted...ground-clearing as well as path-breaking, [it is]...from start to finish, a true masterpiece of conceptual clarity and tidiness...Shrewdly analyses the relevant concepts...defuses bothersome misapprehensions and misapplications...[and] deftly pulls together the remaining strands...Deeply thought-provoking...[Both egalitarians and inegalitarians] need to rethink their positions.

Mind - Kristjan Kristjansson

Hurley does a great service to the theory of egalitarianism by doing what most authors have shied away from doing so far, namely, opening the black box of 'responsibility' in order to examine how the various conceptions of responsibility can inform the debate about the just allocation of resources in an egalitarian society.

Philosophical Books - Marc Fleurbaey

Hurley's central thesis, that responsibility and luck-neutralization are not the basis of egalitarianism, is original and correct...To my mind, Hurley's thesis engages with many statements that leading egalitarians have put in writing. That thesis, we should recall, is obvious only once Hurley makes her compelling argument for that thesis...The book is dense with thought-provoking ideas.

Economics and Philosophy - Nir Eyal

Luck-neutralization is a central concept in contemporary work on distributive justice, and thus moral responsibility is also a central concept (insofar as luck is what one is not morally responsible for). It is therefore fruitful and illuminating to apply important insights from responsibility theory to various theories of distributive justice. The book is written in a lively style, Susan Hurley is remarkably well-versed in the literature on free will and moral responsibility as well as distributive justice, and the ideas are vibrant and provocative...a path-breaking book.

John Martin Fischer

Hurley's arguments are highly original. This is an impressive and insightful book.

Peter Vallentyne

An admirable piece of work...Hurley's book provides a very insightful discussion of the relationship between luck and justice (among several other issues). She has done egalitarians a great service in clarifying the relation between egalitarianism and luck-neutralization.

Philosophy, Politics, and Economics - Kaspar Lippert-Rasmussen

Hurley's penetrating treatment of [responsibility and justice] is bound to have a considerable influence on these fields. I found her subtle taxonomy of reason-responsiveness views especially instructive, and her critique of the idea that responsibility is 'essentially impossible' seems to me a tour de force. Further, the defense of a 'bias-neutralizing' conception of justice in favor of 'luck neutralizing' conceptions will surely have to be reckoned with by anyone who works in these fields.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research - Gary Watson

Hurley's book is a first-rate achievement. It is uniformly informative and clarifying.
— Kaspar Lippert-Rasmussen

Philosophical Books

Hurley's penetrating treatment of [responsibility and justice] is bound to have a considerable influence on these fields. I found her subtle taxonomy of reason-responsiveness views especially instructive, and her critique of the idea that responsibility is 'essentially impossible' seems to me a tour de force. Further, the defense of a 'bias-neutralizing' conception of justice in favor of 'luck neutralizing' conceptions will surely have to be reckoned with by anyone who works in these fields.
— Gary Watson

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Exceedingly rigorous...at the same time, exceptionally reader-friendly...One of the best critical introductions to the...problem of determinism and moral responsibility on the market...[this book] deserve[s] to be read by all responsibility enthusiasts...Eye-opening and exciting...incisive...carefully crafted...ground-clearing as well as path-breaking, [it is]...from start to finish, a true masterpiece of conceptual clarity and tidiness...Shrewdly analyses the relevant concepts...defuses bothersome misapprehensions and misapplications...[and] deftly pulls together the remaining strands...Deeply thought-provoking...[Both egalitarians and inegalitarians] need to rethink their positions.
— Kristjan Kristjansson

Mind

An admirable piece of work...Hurley's book provides a very insightful discussion of the relationship between luck and justice (among several other issues). She has done egalitarians a great service in clarifying the relation between egalitarianism and luck-neutralization.
— Kaspar Lippert-Rasmussen

Philosophy