Volume 28, Number 1
July 2024
ARTICLE

Three Kinds of Prioritarianism

Volume 28, Number 1, July 2024, Pages 110–140
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v28i1.2991
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Abstract

In the philosophical literature, prioritarianism is generally given either a teleological or contractualist rendering. Both forms of prioritarianism, I argue, are unsatisfactory, which creates a need for an alternative conception of prioritarianism. I develop a noncontractualist version of deontic prioritarianism that is superior to both teleological and contractualist prioritarianism with respect to grounding the normativity of absolute levels of well-being and explaining our moral thinking about priority to the worse off. Some objections to this view are addressed, and the possibility of a mixed or hybrid view is briefly considered. Noncontractualist deontic prioritarianism might apply to both whole lives and parts of lives, a position that is consistent with a person-centered approach to distributive ethics, I contend. Finally, noncontractualist deontic prioritarianism seems to apply to one-person cases in which there are not competing claims to our aid, but I argue that this result is not an embarrassment for the view.
Copyright © 2024 Carlos Soto
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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