Original scientific paper

Maximization, Slotean Satisficing, and Theories of Sufficientarian Justice

Alexandru Volacu ; National University of Political Science and Public Administration (SNSPA Bucharest), Romania

Abstract

In this paper I seek to assess the responses provided by several theories of sufficientarian justice in cases where individuals hold different conceptions of rationality. Towards this purpose, I build two test cases and study the normative prescriptions which various sufficiency views offer in each of them. I maintain that resource sufficientarianism does not provide a normatively plausible response to the fi rst case, since its distributive prescriptions would violate the principle of personal good and that subjective-threshold welfare suffi cientarianism as well as objectivethreshold welfare sufficientarianism committed to the headcount claim do not provide normatively plausible responses to the second case, since their distributive prescriptions would violate the principle of equal importance. I then claim that an objective-threshold welfare sufficientarian view committed to prioritarianism under the threshold offers the normatively plausible response to both cases and therefore resists the challenge raised by scenarios that involve differential conceptions of rationality.

Keywords

Maximization; resources; satisficing; sufficientarianism; welfare

Hrčak ID:

195004

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/195004

Publication date:

11.4.2017.

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