IS HARRY FRANKFURT’S “DOCTRINE OF SUFFICIENCY” SUFFICIENT?

• Authors: Hun Chung
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

In his article, “Equality as a Moral Ideal”, Harry Frankfurt argues against economic egalitarianism and presents what he calls the “doctrine of sufficiency.” According to the doctrine of sufficiency, what is morally important is not relative economic equality, but rather, whether somebody has enough, where “having enough” is a non-comparative standard of reasonable contentment that may differ from person to person given his/her aims and circumstances. The purpose of this paper is to show that Frankfurt’s original arguments in support for his doctrine of sufficiency have critical problems that Frankfurt himself does not properly recognize. In the end, the author will argue that in order to solve these problems the doctrine of sufficiency cannot help but to incorporate certain prioritarian commitments – commitments which many would view as implying economic egalitarianism. This is embarrassing for a doctrine whose raison d’être was mainly to defeat economic egalitarianism.

Keywords

EN

EGALITARIANISM; HARRY FRANKFURT; PRIORITARIAN; SUFFICIENCY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences and Institute of Philosophy of Academy of Sciences of Czech Republic
• Journal: Organon F. medzinárodný časopis pre analytickú filozofiu
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 23
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 50 -71

Contributors

author

Hun Chung

• Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, 213 Social Sciences Building, 1145 E. South Campus Drive, Tuscon, AZ 85721-0027, USA