Distribution Is More Defensible: Egalitarian Or Prioritarian?

Which principle of distribution is more defensible: egalitarian or prioritarian? Explain your answer.

Distributive justice can be described as how goods are allocated in a socially just way in society. There are many different principles of distribution including egalitarian and prioritarian. In this essay I will explain in depth the views of the egalitarian and prioritarian whilst assessing their strengths and weaknesses. I will then go on to conclude that the egalitarian principle of distribution, specifically telic egalitarianism is a more effective theory than the prioritarian principle as although the levelling down objection poses a significant threat to the more extreme forms of egalitarianism, telic egalitarianism is able to overcome the claim that levelling down would not be beneficial in all cases. In extreme egalitarianism cases, it seems as though helping the people most in need would be preferable to levelling everyone down to a worse level, but it can be shown that in many examples this is not the case as levelling down would be better for everyone involved.

Egalitarianism can be defined as a doctrine that favours equality for everyone and rests on the assumption that all people are equal in status and worth. An egalitarian argues that people should be treated as equals as well as treating other people as equals. Many different positions have been described as being egalitarian and the one that I will focus on in this essay comes from Tempkin in his paper Equality, Priority or What?, where he puts forward his version of egalitarianism, equality as comparative fairness. Equality according to Tempkin is a subtopic of fairness, specifically focusing on how people fare in relation to others. Generally, it is true to sa...

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... a principle of distribution as it seems intuitive that we would want to help those in need before those who are not, yet this does not mean that the principle of egalitarianism cannot be preferable. Even though we want to help those who are most in need, surely if there is an option for complete equality this would be preferable. Telic egalitarianism not only brings a sense of justice and equality into situations but it values equality intrinsically which can surely only be regarded as a positive aspect of the principle. In extreme cases, levelling down in order to create equality may not be the best thing to do, but specifically in the case of telic egalitarianism, it has been shown that there are plenty of cases in which doing so would create the optimal circumstances for everyone involved therefore it is successfully able to overcome its weaknesses.