Envy, self-esteem, and distributive justice

Abstract

Most agree that envy, or at least the malicious kind(s), should not have any role in the moral justification of distributive arrangements. This paper defends a contrary position. It argues that at the very least John Rawls, Axel Honneth and others that care about the social bases of self-esteem have good reasons to care about the levels of envy that different distributive principles reliably generate. The basic argument is that (1) envy involves a particular kind of harm to self-esteem such that excluding envy-avoidance from the more general commitment to protect self-esteem requires a justification. (2) There are no strong reasons for this exclusion. I discuss three objections to the second premise: that envy is irrational, that it is unfair to prevent and compensate for it, and that envy-avoidance is unreasonable due to the vicious or antisocial nature of envy. The response is that envy can be rational with respect to opportunities for attaining social esteem; that it is not unfair to prevent or compensate for envy that is reasonably unavoidable and relatively burdensome; and the kind of envy-avoidance I defend does not appear unreasonable if distinguished from a form of preference-satisfaction.