|
Larry Temkin is an American philosopher specializing in normative ethics and political philosophy. His research into equality, practical reason, and the nature of the good has been very influential. His work on the intransitivity of the all things considered better than relation is groundbreaking and challenges deeply held assumptions about value, practical reasoning, and the goodness of outcomes. His 1993 book Inequality〔''Inequality'', Oxford University Press, 1993.〕 was described by the Times Literary Supplement as “brilliant and fascinating,” and as offering the reader more than any other book on the same subject. Temkin graduated number one with a BA-Honors Degree from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1975, and received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University in 1983 under the supervision of Derek Parfit. He also studied at Oxford University in 1978-79. He began his professional career at Rice University, moving to (Rutgers University ) in 2000. He has held Visiting Fellowships at the Australian National University, the National Institutes of Health, All Souls College (Oxford University), Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, and the National Humanities Center. Temkin is a (committed teacher ) who has won eight major teaching awards. In 2011-2012, he will be the Laurance S. Rockefeller Professor of Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University in the University Center for Human Values. This article describes Temkin’s work on equality and on intransitivity and the nature of the good. == The nature of equality == Most work on equality asks whether equality is desirable, and, if so, what kind of equality we should seek. In Inequality, Temkin asks a more basic question: when is one situation worse than another with respect to inequality? Sometimes the answer is obvious, but sometimes it is not. Consider, for instance, three situations: one in which many are well off and just a few are badly off, one in which many are badly off and just a few are well off, and one in which there is an equal number of well off and badly off people. The first situation may be one in which a minority has been singled out for mistreatment, making the inequality seem especially gratuitous or cruel. The second situation may be one in which a dominant elite oppresses and exploits the masses. And the third situation seems to feature the greatest deviations from pure equality. Other things being equal, it is hard to say which situation is worst with respect to equality. A case, it seems, can be made for any of the three. Temkin uses such thought experiments to show that equality is not the simple notion it is often taken to be. Judgments of inequality’s badness, he shows, turn on a host of considerations, such as how much deviation there is from pure equality, how gratuitous the inequality seems, and the extent to which individuals have an equality-based complaint. An individual’s equality-based complaint, moreover, can depend on how she compares with the average person, the best off person, or all those better off than she; and, in addition, one might arrive at a judgment concerning the badness of an outcome’s inequality by adding individual complaints, focusing on the worst-off’s complaints, or adding everyone’s complaints, but giving special weight to larger complaints. In all, Temkin argues that at least eleven distinct aspects underlie egalitarian judgments. Temkin also challenges the conventional view that equality is holistic (that it is concerned mainly with groups) and that it is essentially distributive. While inequalities between groups can be important, Temkin argues that, often, the proper object of moral concern is inequalities between individuals. And while equality is indeed a distributive principle, Temkin argues that what makes it distinctive is that it is essentially comparative – it expresses a fundamental concern for how individuals fare relative to each other. No other distributive principle, he argues, has that feature. In all, Temkin mounts a case against the conventional view that equality is simple, holistic, and essentially distributive, and a powerful case for the view that it is complex, individualistic, and essentially comparative. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Larry Temkin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|