Just Enough: Sufficiency As a Demand of Justice
Liam Shields
Abstract
Whether people in some society are able to secure enough food, healthcare or education seems to be an important way of assessing that society. However, as a philosophical ideal sufficiency faces many problems. Chief among these is that the ideal has been understood in ways that give rise to powerful objections that make it seem less attractive than ideals of equality. This book offers a new characterization of sufficiency as a demand of justice called shift-sufficientarianism. The book argues that shift-sufficientarianism is an attractive ideal that is indispensable to sound assessments of soc ... More
Whether people in some society are able to secure enough food, healthcare or education seems to be an important way of assessing that society. However, as a philosophical ideal sufficiency faces many problems. Chief among these is that the ideal has been understood in ways that give rise to powerful objections that make it seem less attractive than ideals of equality. This book offers a new characterization of sufficiency as a demand of justice called shift-sufficientarianism. The book argues that shift-sufficientarianism is an attractive ideal that is indispensable to sound assessments of societies. In particular, the author argues that securing enough education, enough autonomy and a good enough upbringing are important requirements of any just society. This author also goes on to argue that this understanding of sufficiency sheds important light on what we may owe to non-compatriots as a matter of global justice.
Keywords:
Sufficientarianism,
Distributive Justice,
Political Philosophy,
Equality,
Education
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2016 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780748691869 |
Published to Edinburgh Scholarship Online: January 2018 |
DOI:10.3366/edinburgh/9780748691869.001.0001 |