Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality

Overview

Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality, published in 2000, is Ronald Dworkin's most comprehensive statement of his theory of equality. The book collects and revises essays written over two decades to present a unified argument that equality is the sovereign virtue of political community, and that the proper interpretation of equality is not equality of welfare or equality of opportunity but equality of resources. Dworkin's theory is one of the most influential contributions to Anglophone political philosophy since Rawls's A Theory of Justice.

The book's central claim is that a just society must treat all its members with equal concern and respect. This principle, which Dworkin argues is the fundamental commitment of liberal political morality, requires a distribution of resources that is ambition-sensitive but endowment-insensitive: people's shares should reflect their choices and ambitions, but not their natural talents or social circumstances. The result is a theory of distributive justice that combines a robust egalitarianism with a deep respect for individual responsibility and choice.

Key Ideas

Equality of Resources

Dworkin's theory of equality of resources is the core of the book. He argues that the proper measure of equality is not equality of welfare (the same level of satisfaction) but equality of the resources available to each person. Resources include both impersonal resources (wealth, property, and other transferable goods) and personal resources (physical and mental capacities, health, and talents). The goal of equality of resources is to achieve a distribution in which no one envies the bundle of resources held by anyone else, after adjustments for differences in choice and ambition.

The Hypothetical Insurance Market

To determine what justice requires in the face of natural inequalities, Dworkin introduces the device of a hypothetical insurance market. Imagine that people do not know what their natural talents or disabilities will be, and they have the opportunity to purchase insurance against the risk of having fewer talents or greater needs. The premiums they would pay, and the coverage they would choose, under these conditions provide a benchmark for what justice requires in the real world. The idea is to use the choices that rational people would make under conditions of uncertainty to determine the level of redistribution that is required by equality.

Option Luck and Brute Luck

Dworkin draws a crucial distinction between option luck and brute luck. Option luck is the outcome of deliberate choices and gambles: a person who chooses to invest in a risky stock and loses money has suffered the consequences of her own choice. Brute luck is the outcome of events that are not chosen: a person who is born with a disability or who is struck by lightning has suffered a misfortune that is not a matter of choice. Dworkin argues that equality of resources should compensate for differences in brute luck but not for differences in option luck, since the latter reflect the choices for which individuals are responsible.

The Priority of Equality

Dworkin argues that equality is not merely one value among others but the sovereign virtue of political community. A government that does not treat its citizens with equal concern and respect lacks legitimacy. This does not mean that equality always trumps other values, but it does mean that inequalities must be justified, and that the burden of proof falls on those who defend unequal treatment. Dworkin's egalitarianism is therefore a demanding standard: it requires not merely that everyone have a minimum level of resources, but that the distribution of resources be continuously sensitive to the requirements of equal concern.

Legacy

Sovereign Virtue has been enormously influential in political philosophy and legal theory. Dworkin's equality of resources has been taken up by philosophers working on distributive justice, and his distinction between option luck and brute luck has shaped debates about the proper scope of the welfare state. The hypothetical insurance market has been used to justify a wide range of redistributive policies, from progressive taxation to universal healthcare.

The book has also generated extensive criticism. Some have argued that the distinction between option luck and brute luck is difficult to sustain in practice, since many outcomes are the product of a complex mixture of choice and circumstance. Others have questioned whether the hypothetical insurance market can do the work Dworkin assigns to it, and whether the method of hypothetical choice can generate determinate answers to questions of distributive justice. Despite these criticisms, the book remains one of the most sophisticated and ambitious defenses of egalitarian liberalism. The questions Dworkin raised, about what justice requires and what equality means, continue to define the terms of debate in contemporary political philosophy.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Ronald Dworkin." Comprehensive survey of Dworkin's legal and political philosophy.
2. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Equality." Analysis of the concept of equality in political philosophy, including the equality of resources approach.