Three Kinds of Prioritarianism

Abstract

In the philosophical literature, prioritarianism is generally given either a teleological or contractualist rendering. Both forms of prioritarianism, I argue, are unsatisfactory, which creates a need for an alternative conception of prioritarianism. I develop a noncontractualist version of deontic prioritarianism that is superior to both teleological and contractualist prioritarianism with respect to grounding the normativity of absolute levels of well-being and explaining our moral thinking about priority to the worse off. Some objections to this view are addressed, and the possibility of a mixed or hybrid view is briefly considered. Noncontractualist deontic prioritarianism might apply to both whole lives and parts of lives, a position that is consistent with a person-centered approach to distributive ethics, I contend. Finally, noncontractualist deontic prioritarianism seems to apply to one-person cases in which there are not competing claims to our aid, but I argue that this result is not an embarrassment for the view.