Cynthia Stark Associate Professor of Philosophy in Salt Lake City (USA) Resident at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: June/July 2014 Research topic at the Forschungskolleg Humanwissenschaften: »Dworkin and Rawls on the Benchmark of Equality« Project outline: Egalitarians typically do not endorse strict distributive equality. Rather they invoke a benchmark of equality; departures from equality, they think, face a case to answer. Rawls, for instance, argues that inequalities are just if and only if they conform to the difference principle, which requires that inequalities maximally benefit the worst-off. Luck egalitarians argue that inequalities are just if and only if they conform to the luck/choice principle, which condemns inequalities caused by brute luck and permits those produced by choice. My paper argues, first, that only Dworkin, among luck egalitarians, can legitimately lay claim to a benchmark of equality. It argues, second, that Rawls’s approach is preferable to Dworkin’s if one takes seriously the idea, stressed by both theorists, that a scheme of social cooperation should treat citizens as equal moral persons. (Cynthia Stark) Funding of the stay: »Justitia Amplificata. Rethinking Justice − Applied and Global«Scholarly profile of Cynthia StarkMain areas of research: Political Philosophy, Theories of Justice, Philosophy of John RawlsSelected publications:
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