There are various egalitarian moral doctrines. They differ in the requirements they impose on institutions and social practices and on individual conduct. This essay sketches two versions of egalitarian social justice and claims that the requirements they impose should strike us as reasonable, all things considered. One is welfarist egalitarianism, a cousin of classical utilitarianism. This version requires bringing about good quality lives for people and fair (equal) distribution of this good across persons. A notable feature of welfarist egalitarianism is that it accommodates the seemingly antiegalitarian claim that it does not matter in itself how one person’s condition compares to that of another, so a fortiori it does not matter in itself whether or not one person’s condition compares to that of others in the one particular way of being equal. The other version is relational or freedom-oriented egalitarianism, which holds that we should above all ensure that people are free to live as they choose and relate as equals, without social hierarchy. In the latter half of the twentieth century, John Rawls developed a powerful articulation of relational egalitarian justice. This essay sketches the two rival egalitarianisms with a view to showing their respective moral attractiveness and to suggesting that the welfarist version has greater moral attraction.

Muddles can be instructive. The clarifying confusion to be examined in this paper is Isaiah Berlin's intelligent vacillation on the issue of whether or not the extent of a person's freedom depends on his desires. Is the amount of freedom an agent possesses determined solely by his objective circumstances or is it also partly a function of his subjective tastes and preferences? In clarifying this question I shall suggest that Berlin has trouble answering it because he almost perceives that interpersonal cardinal measurement of freedom, if possible at all, is possible only on a subjective basis. Yet as Berlin eloquently reminds us measuring freedom according to a subjective metric generates paradox. Whether commonsense ideas of freedom are consistent and reasonable is not purely an academic issue, for we do often make political judgments to the effect that one or another policy, or a movement to one or another form of society, can be expected to reduce or enlarge human freedom. If freedom is not measurable these judgments are merely hortatory.

Some theories of justice hold that individuals placed in fortunate circumstances through no merit or choice of their own are morally obligated to aid individuals placed in unfortunate circumstances through no fault or choice of their own. In these theories what are usually regarded as obligations of benevolence are reinterpreted as strict obligations of justice. A closely related view is that the institutions of a society should be arranged in a way that gives priority to helping people placed in unfortunate circumstances through no fault or choice of their own. Any theory of this type needs a way of assessing individuals’ circumstances to determine who is fortunate and who is unfortunate.

I shall argue that the standard for assessing people's circumstances to determine what they owe and are owed according to distributive justice should be the welfare or well-being level that they can attain, given their circumstances. This claim, that the ‘currency of justice’ should be welfare, has attracted criticisms that some have thought decisive. My counterclaim is that if we adopt an objective account of welfare and properly accommodate concerns about individual responsibility, the criticisms can be drained of their force.

According to the ideal of tolerance, the state is supposed to be neutral or evenhanded in its dealings with religious sects and doctrines. The tolerant state does not pursue policies aimed at favoring one sect over another.

One way to think about capitalism-versus-socialism is to examine the extent to which capitalist economic institutions are compatible with the fulfillment of socialist ideals. The late G. A. Cohen has urged that the two are strongly incompatible. He imagines how it would make sense for friends to organize a camping trip, distills the socialist moral principles that he sees fulfilled in the camping trip model, and observes that these principles conflict with a capitalist organization of the economy. He adds that these principles are ethically attractive, so if it is feasible to organize the economy on the camping trip model, we ought to do so. This essay argues to the contrary that for all that has been said, capitalist economic arrangements might be in the set of institutional arrangements that overall would best fulfill the camping trip principles, and anyway, the principles themselves ought to be rejected, so the question whether or not a capitalist set-up might satisfy these principles should not interest us. The grounds for rejecting the camping trip principles support a form of welfarist consequentialism that denies that equality of distribution of any sort is per se ethically desirable and also denies that liberal freedoms to live as one chooses are per se morally desirable. Equality and freedom should rather be regarded as in the light of possible means (or hindrances) to advancing good for people, fairly distributed.

Imagine a democratic society in which all members are full citizens and citizens relate to each other as equals. Social arrangements bring it about, to the maximum possible extent, that all adults are full functioning members of society. The society is not marred by caste hierarchies, invidious status distinctions, or unequal power relations. No one is able to dominate others. Moreover, the urge to dominate over others does not loom large in social life. Each person's relations with others manifest the belief, shared by all, that each person is fundamentally the equal of all others and that this equality calls for treating others with civility and mutual respect and forbearance. Each is viewed as having the right to live as she chooses, within broad constraints of morality. This individual entitlement to freedom establishes a strong presumption against paternalism, restricting a person's liberty against her will for her own good. Regarding distributive justice, the norm is that each should be enabled to have enough by way of resources and opportunities to sustain herself as a full functioning member of democratic society.

Left-libertarianism is a version of Lockean libertarianism that combines the idea that each person is the full rightful owner of herself and the idea that each person should have the right to own a roughly equal amount of the world's resources. This essay argues against left-libertarianism. The specific target is an interesting form of left-libertarianism proposed by Michael Otsuka that is especially stringent in its equal world ownership claim. One criticism advanced is that there is more tension than Otsuka acknowledges between private ownership of self and equal ownership of the world. This emerges once one notices that self-ownership should not be conceived merely in a thin, formal way but also as a thicker substantive insistence on wide individual freedom. A second criticism is that in other respects the formal idea of self-ownership that Otsuka and other left-libertarians embrace is an extreme doctrine that merits rejection.