Date of Award
8-8-2017
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Department
Philosophy
First Advisor
Peter Lindsay
Second Advisor
Andrew J. Cohen
Third Advisor
Andrew Altman
Abstract
A recent movement within political philosophy called luck egalitarianism has attempted to synthesize the right’s regard for responsibility with the left’s concern for equality. The original motivation for subscribing to luck egalitarianism stems from the belief that one’s success in life ought to reflect one’s own choices and not brute luck. Luck egalitarian theorists differ in the decision procedures that they propose, but they share in common the general approach that we ought to equalize individuals with respect to brute luck so that differences in distribution are only a consequence of the responsible choices that individuals make. I intend to show that through the application of its own distributive procedures, the luck egalitarian approach actually undermines its original motivation by making the lives of individuals subject to brute luck.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.57709/10159036
Recommended Citation
Jeffers, Matthew, "Luck and the Limits of Equality." Thesis, Georgia State University, 2017.
doi: https://doi.org/10.57709/10159036