Sources & Extracts

Review this excerpt and then go back to the main thread.

Philosopher Joel Feinberg make the following argument similar to Ayesha's.

Let us consider why we all agree (that is the author's assumption) in rejecting the view that differences in race, sex, IQ, or social "rank" are the grounds of just differences in wealth and income. Part of the answer seems obvious. People cannot by their own voluntary choices determine what skin color, sex, or IQ they shall have, or which hereditary caste they shall enter. To make such properties the basis of discrimination between individuals in the distribution of social benefits would be "to treat people differently in ways that profoundly affect their lives because of differences for which they have no responsibility." Differences in a given respect are relevant for the aims of distributive justice, then, only if they are differences for which their possessors can be held responsible; properties can be the grounds of just discrimination between persons only if those persons had a fair opportunity to acquire or avoid them. [Joel Feinberg, Social Philosophy, p. 108.]