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Enough is too much: the excessiveness objection to sufficientarianism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2021

Carl Knight Open the ORCID record for Carl Knight [Opens in a new window]
Carl Knight*
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK
*
Email: carl.knight@glasgow.ac.uk
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Abstract

The standard version of sufficientarianism maintains that providing people with enough, or as close to enough as is possible, is lexically prior to other distributive goals. This article argues that this is excessive – more than distributive justice allows – in four distinct ways. These concern the magnitude of advantage, the number of beneficiaries, responsibility and desert, and above-threshold distribution. Sufficientarians can respond by accepting that providing enough unconditionally is more than distributive justice allows, instead balancing sufficiency against other considerations.

Keywords

Distributive justicelexical priorityprioritarianismsufficiencysufficientarianism

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Article
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Economics & Philosophy , Volume 38 , Issue 2 , July 2022 , pp. 275 - 299
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© The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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