Economic Inequalities and Choice

Ronald Dworkin’s controversial theory of distributive justice incorporates into liberal egalitarianism the previously exclusively conservative idea that one’s success is largely one’s own responsibility. In this book, Dr Neema Sofaer, a philosopher with broad experience in public and private sector projects, presents a reassessment of this key twentieth-century theory. Sofaer defends Dworkin’s central idea that whether it is just when one person ends up wealthier than another depends on the choices they made. She shows that classical objections to Dworkin’s theory are based on misinterpretations of this idea. However -- she argues -- the tax-and-redistribution scheme, which Dworkin proposes to provide a social safety net, commits him to an implausible view regarding which choices matter to distributive justice and why they matter.