Against Rawlsian Equality of Opportunity

• Published in: Philosophical studies 1999-01, Vol.93 (1), p.77-112
• Main Author: Arneson, Richard J.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Advantages; Ambition; Employment discrimination; Equality; Gender discrimination; Gifted persons; Human capital; Liberalism; Maximin; Opportunity equality; Philosophy; Philosophy of history. Social and political philosophy. Philosophy of law; Reasoning; Religion; Self esteem; Sexuality; Social and political philosophy; Social classes; Social discrimination; Socialization; Society; Sports; Statistical discrimination; Success
• ISSN: 0031-8116; 1573-0883
• DOI: 10.1023/A:1004270811433

Yet Rawlsian justice demands that if by huge expenditure of resources we can offer extra education to the upper middle class youths that marginally improves their prospects of competitive success as compared with their counterparts with equal talent born into even more privileged households, we must do so. [...]given that the Fair Equality of Opportunity Principle has strict lexical priority over the Difference Principle, it would be unjust to shift any resources that might be devoted to securing marginal improvements in the implementation of Fair Equality even in order to secure great gains in social justice as registered by the Difference Principle. According to the Difference Principle a marginal benefit for a single worst off person should be preferred to an enormous gain in well-being that wouldAGAINST RAWLSIAN EQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY 85be enjoyed by many better off persons.8 Judgments of this sort are unreasonable. but formulating an attractive version of Priority to the Worse Off is a task for another essay.In a nutshell, the objection against Rawlsian Fair Equality is that it incorporates a compromise with the norm of meritocracy, the principle that holds that other things being equal, those who are naturally more talented and develop their talents to higher excellence levels should enjoy greater prospects of good fortune in life. [...]maximin reasoning applied to all manner of social divisions in society will lead to the affirmation in the original position that no one should suffer any disadvantage merely because one is of one or another sex, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, or religious affiliation.The conclusion sounds nice, but the reasoning to it is faulty. If inequalities among groups exist, they are productive for the prospects of the worst off, or at least not counterproductive. [...]the parties in the original position would not be willing to accept lower prospects for the worst off (and the second-worst off, and so on, according to leximin) in order to rearrange society so that one can divide its population by a greater number of classifications of persons, with the result that the groups so defined have exactly equal prospects black and white, tall and short, members of religious groups, fans of different sports, and so on.