GRIPH colloquium: The Self-Interest Bias in Theories of Justice 

Serena Olsaretti, ICREA-Universitat Pompeu Fabra 

Elizabeth Anderson has called luck egalitarianism “egalitarianism for egoists alone”, as it deems the choice to care for dependents to be an expensive taste and holds that “[p]eople who want to avoid the vulnerabilities that attend dependent caretaking must therefore decide to care only for themselves” (Anderson 1999: 300). In this paper I subject to close scrutiny the idea that theories of egalitarian justice display a bias in favour of those with (narrowly) self-interested preferences - that is, those who have preferences about themselves – to the detriment of those with (beneficial) other-regarding preferences – that is, preferences which have, as part of their non-instrumental goal, that of benefiting certain others. I argue, first, that many theories of egalitarian justice, as they are currently formulated or interpreted do display a bias in favour of narrowly self-interested ambitions and against other-regarding ones, and I identify the commitments in virtue of which they display this bias. Second, I argue that the bias is unmotivated, because the commitments that lead to it are not integral to the theories. 

For more information, contact Lisa Herzog l.m.herzog rug.nl