Introduction to Political Philosophy

Natural Endowments and Entitlement

As you read the material for the next class, keep the questions below in mind. To answer these questions you will have to reflect critically on what you have read and possibly re-read important passages. Keep in mind that there are two basic kinds of information that you need to look for in the readings.

  1. What are the main points or conclusions that an author accepts with respect to a particular issue?
  2. What are the reasons or important considerations that lead the author to accept that conclusion?

For our purposes, it is information of the latter sort (2) that will be our primary concern since our most basic task is to evaluate the reasons that are offered to support accepting one possible conclusion about an issue, rather than another. Although I strongly suggest that you write out brief answers to these questions, you do not have to turn in written responses. You do, however, need to be prepared to speak intelligently to these issues in the next class meeting.

Reading:

  • Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia, pp. 213-231 (handout).

Questions:

  1. What are the four positive arguments that are supposed to show that since natural endowments are morally arbitrary they should not be allowed to determine one’s distributive shares? Why are the first three unsatisfactory? What issue does the fourth raise that must be addressed?
  2. How does the requirement for a unified explanation of conjunction naturally lead to a patterned theory of distribution? Why is this not satisfactory according to Nozick?
  3. What are arguments E and G that attempt to show that people are entitled to holdings that result from their natural assets? Why is E easier to refute than G? What role does argument F play in this?
  4. Why is it problematic to try and exclude “morally arbitrary” features of individuals from the original position?
  5. Why is it morally troubling and perhaps inconsistent for Rawls to maintain that the totally of a community’s natural assets should be viewed as a collective asset for the ends of society?

 

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