Other-Sacrificing Options: Reply to Lange

Romy Eskens

doi:https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v21i2.1727

Volume 21, Number 2
February 2022

DISCUSSION

Other-Sacrificing Options: Reply to Lange

Volume 21, Number 2, February 2022, Pages 290–297

https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v21i2.1727

PDF

Abstract

In “Other-Sacrificing Options,” Benjamin Lange argues that, when distributing benefits and burdens, we may discount the interests of the people to whom we stand in morally negative relationships relative to the interests of other people. Lange’s case for negative partiality proceeds in two steps. First, he presents a hypothetical example that commonly elicits intuitions favourable to negative partiality. Second, he invokes symmetry considerations to reason from permissible positive partiality towards intimates to permissible negative partiality towards adversaries. In this paper, I argue that neither the intuition elicited by Lange’s example nor the invoked symmetry considerations support a permission for negative partiality. This does not mean that negative partiality is unjustified. It means only that the justification, if there is one, must take a different form. I end by suggesting an alternative justification of negative partiality, one that mirrors gratitude-based justifications of positive partiality rather than justifications based on intimacy.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.

|

Gratitude’s Fitting Growth

Daniel Telech

Touching the Good: Special Relationships as Contact with Value

Adam Lovett and Stefan Riedener

Gratitude for What We Are Owed

Aaron Eli Segal

Rights, Roles, and Interests

Robert Mullins

What Is (Fundamentally or Per Se) Wrong with Colonialism: A Reply to Agrawal and Buchanan

Daniel Weltman

Not Living My Best Life: A Reply to Masny

Guy Fletcher

Privileged Citizens and the Right to Riot: A Reply to Pasternak

Thomas Carnes

The Case for Voting to Change the Outcomes Is Weaker Than It May Seem: A Reply to Zach Barnett