Zofia Stemplowska

A crucial question for egalitarians, and theorists of distributive justice in general, is whether people can be held responsible for disadvantages they bring upon themselves. One response to this question states that it would be inegalitarian to hold people responsible on the basis of their actions if their actions are not ultimately under their control and reflect instead the good or bad luck the agent had in being the type of person who happens to act in a given way. I argue that even if we accept that there is something inegalitarian about holding people responsible on the basis of actions they did not ultimately control, the alternative (that is, not holding people responsible) is even more inegalitarian. Therefore, egalitarians, including so-called luck egalitarians, can and should hold people responsible on the basis of their actions, even if people lack free will and their actions are ultimately a matter of luck. Key Words: responsibility • egalitarianism • luck egalitarianism • fairness • distributive justice.

Political liberalism offers perhaps the most developed and dominant account of justice and legitimacy in the face of disagreement among citizens. A prominent objection states that the view arbitrarily treats differently disagreement about the good, such as on what makes for a good life, and disagreement about justice. In the presence of reasonable disagreement about the good, political liberals argue that the state must be neutral, but they do not suggest a similar response given reasonable disagreement about what justice requires. A leading political liberal, Jonathan Quong, has recently offered a rebuttal to this asymmetry objection. His reply rests on an innovative distinction between justificatory and foundational disagreement. Quong claims that disagreements about justice in a well ordered society are justificatory while disagreements about the good are foundational, and suggests that this fact blocks the asymmetry objection. We assess Quong's solution and argue that it fails to justify legitimate state action on matters of justice but not the good. We conclude that the asymmetry objection continues to undermine political liberalism