The Metaphysical Case against Luck Egalitarianism

Luck egalitarianism is the name of a group of theories of justice that subscribe to the idea that a just society compensates for brute luck, but does not compensate for bad outcomes that fall under the responsibility of the agent himself. The theory has gained much popularity over the past decades. Notable defenders of versions of the theory are Dworkin (2000) and Cohen (1989). Centralizing luck in a theory of justice requires a substantial account of luck, and thereby makes the free will debate very important for distributive justice. Luck egalitarianism has been accused of relying heavily on a indeterminist view on free will. However, Richard Arneson (2004) and Carl Knight (2006) have argued that luck egalitarianism is also a plausible view under compatibilist accounts of free will. In this essay I argue that defenders of this view fail to properly distinguish between what T.M. Scanlon (1998) calls attributive and substantive responsibility. Compatibilist accounts of free will and responsibility provide an understanding of the former but not the latter concept, while the latter is the relevant one for justice. Knight and Arneson acknowledge difficulties, but do not deal with them in a satisfactory manner. A rigorous treatment of the argument in the free will debate, has detrimental consequences for the luck egalitarian position. If the libertarian position on free will is wrong, luck egalitarianism collapses into outcome egalitarianism. I argue that, in Dworkin’s terminology, the distinction between brute luck and option luck will turn out arbitrary, or irrelevant, for justice under Scanlon’s distinction. The only plausible version of luck egalitarianism that is different from outcome egalitarianism relies on indeterminism being true.