Social justice and individual ethics in an open society : equality, responsibility, and incentives /

Can the need for incentives justify inequality? Starting from this question, Frank Vandenbroucke examines a conception of justice in which both equality and responsibility are involved. In the first part of the inquiry, which explores the implementation of that conception of justice, the justificati...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Vandenbroucke, Frank, 1955-
Corporate Author: SpringerLink (Online service)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Berlin ; New York : Springer, [2001]
Series:Studies in economic ethics and philosophy.
Subjects:
Online Access:Connect to the full text of this electronic book
Description
Summary:Can the need for incentives justify inequality? Starting from this question, Frank Vandenbroucke examines a conception of justice in which both equality and responsibility are involved. In the first part of the inquiry, which explores the implementation of that conception of justice, the justification of incentives assumes that agents make personal choices based only upon their own interests. The second part of the book challenges the idea that a normative conception of distributive justice can be based on that traditional assumption, i.e. that personal choices are not the subject matter of justice. Thus, Vandenbroucke questions the Rawlsian idea that the primary subject of a theory of justice is the basic structure of society, and not the individual conduct of its citizens. For a society to be really just, the ethos of individual conduct has to serve justice. Non-mathematical readers can skip the formal model proposed in Chapter 3 and understand the rest of the book.
Item Description:Electronic resource.
Physical Description:1 online resource (xiii, 305 pages) : illustrations.
Format:Master and use copy. Digital master created according to Benchmark for Faithful Digital Reproductions of Monographs and Serials, Version 1. Digital Library Federation, December 2002.
Bibliography:Includes bibliographical references (pages 295-301) and index.
ISBN:9783642594762 (electronic bk.)
364259476X (electronic bk.)
ISSN:1431-8822