Abstracts
Abstract
In recent years, a number of philosophers have argued that much theorizing about the value of equality, and about justice more generally, has focused unduly on distributive issues and neglected the importance of egalitarian social relationships. As a result, relational egalitarian views, according to which the value of egalitarian social relations provides the grounds of the commitment that we ought to have to equality, have gained prominence as alternatives to more fundamentally distributive accounts of the basis of egalitarianism, and of justice-based entitlements. In this paper, I will suggest that reflecting on the kind of explanation of a certain class of our justice-based entitlements that relational egalitarian considerations can offer raises doubts about the project, endorsed by at least some relational egalitarians, of attempting to ground all entitlements of justice in the value of egalitarian social relationships. I will use the entitlement to healthcare provision as my central example. The central claim that I will defend is that even if relational egalitarian accounts can avoid implausible implications regarding the extension of justice-based entitlements to health care, it is more difficult to see how they can avoid what seem to me to be implausible explanations of why individuals have the justice-based entitlements that they do. To the extent that I am correct that relational egalitarian views are committed to offering implausible explanations of the grounds of justice-based entitlements to healthcare, this seems to me to provide at least some support for a more fundamentally distributive approach to thinking about justice in healthcare provision.
Résumé
Au cours des dernières années, certains philosophes ont avancé qu’une grande part de la théorisation sur la valeur de l’égalité, et la justice de façon plus générale, s’est concentrée de manière excessive sur des enjeux distributifs et a, par là même, négligé l’importance des relations sociales égalitaires. Par conséquent, les approches relationnelles de l’égalité, selon lesquelles la valeur des relations sociales égalitaires constitue le socle de l’engagement qui doit être pris envers l’égalité, ont pris du terrain en tant qu’alternatives à des explications plus fondamentalement distributives de la base de l’égalitarisme et de l’admissibilité fondée sur la justice. Dans cet article, je propose qu’en réfléchissant au type d’explication d’une certaine catégorie de droits fondés sur la justice que peuvent offrir des considérations liées à l’égalitarisme relationnel, on peut remettre en doute le projet, auquel souscrivent certains partisans de l’égalitarisme relationnel, de baser tous les droits fondés en justice sur la valeur des relations sociales égalitaires. Comme exemple principal, je prendrai le droit à l’accès aux soins de santé. Je défendrai l’argument central suivant : même si les explications relationnelles de l’égalitarisme peuvent éviter des implications peu plausibles quant à l’extension de droits fondés sur la justice aux soins de santé, elles peuvent toutefois plus difficilement éviter ce qui me semble être des explications invraisemblables des raisons pour lesquelles les individus possèderaient de tels droits. S’il est bien vrai que les conceptions de l’égalitarisme relationnel sont contraintes à offrir des explications invraisemblables du fondement en justice des droits aux soins de santé, il me semble que cela offre au moins un certain soutien à une approche plus fondamentalement distributive pour penser les enjeux de justice dans l’accès aux soins de santé.
Appendices
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