Reply to Ripstein: Notes on Welfarist versus Deontological Principles

Abstract

In Fairness versus Welfare (FVW), we advance the thesis that social policies should be assessed entirely with regard to their effects on individuals' well-being. That is, no independent weight should be accorded to notions of fairness such as corrective or retributive justice or other deontological principles. Our claim is based on the demonstration that pursuit of notions of fairness has perverse effects on welfare, on other problematic aspects of the notions, and on a reconciliation of our thesis with the evident appeal of moral intuitions. Here we summarize our three arguments and explain that Professor Ripstein's commentary largely fails to respond to them. (We will pass over some of what he says because it has little to do with our book, and we will not address his rather surprising attacks on our scholarship because the reader can readily verify their inaccuracy.)