A Humean Theory of Distributive Justice

This paper suggests a strategy for constructing a contemporary Humean theory of distributive justice which would serve to ground what I call an entrepreneurial welfare state. It is argued that blending David Hume's insights about the origins and purposes of justice with Ronald Dworkin's insurance-based reasoning supporting his equality of resources model of distributive justice will yield a state which, as a matter of justice, encourages its members to engage in entrepreneurial activities and which protects them from the worst extremes of market economies.

Introduction

I claim that an attractive theory of distributive justice can be constructed by blending David Hume's ideas about the origins and purposes of justice with Ronald Dworkin's insurance-based justification for his equality of resources model of distributive justice. The resulting theory—less egalitarian than Dworkin's and more liberal than Hume's—recommends adopting an entrepreneurial welfare state..

Hume on the Human Situation

Hume begins his account of the origins of justice by observing that animals tend to fit into two categories: either they are lion-like, having substantial needs and great resources with which to satisfy those needs, or they are sheep-like, having little in the way of abilities to satisfy their needs but also having correspondingly few needs. All animals have abilities and capacities sufficient to fulfill their needs. Both lions, with their prodigious appetites and means of satisfying those appetites, and sheep, with their modest appetites and modest means of satisfying those appetites, could survive on their own in the wild.

But humans, Hume claims, are quite different. Like lions, we have substantial needs. But like sheep, we hav...

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... and Practice of Equality, page 72, (italics added).

17. We can distinguish between two kinds of luck: option luck and brute luck." Option luck is a matter of how deliberate and calculated gambles turn out—whether someone gains or loses through accepting an isolated risk he or she should have anticipated and might have declined... Brute luck is a matter of how risks fall out that are not in that sense deliberate gambles." Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, page 73.

18. The ideas in this paper benefited from comments by audiences at the Atlantic Regional Philosophical Association meetings at Acadia University, the Canadian Philosophical Association meetings at Memorial University, and at the Philosophy Department at Dalhousie University. For extended discussion I thank Nathan Brett, Susan Dimock, Duncan MacIntosh, and Thea E. Smith.