On the Possibility of Nonaggregative Priority for the Worst Off

We shall focus on moral theories that are solely concerned with promoting the benefits (e.g., well-being) of individuals and shall explore the possibility of such theories’ ascribing some priority to benefits to those who are worse off —without this priority being absolute. Utilitarianism (which evaluates alternatives on the basis of total or average benefits) ascribes no priority to the worse off, and leximin (which evaluates alternatives by giving lexical priority to the worst off, and then the second worst off, and so on) ascribes absolute priority to the worse off (i.e., favors even a very small benefit to a worse-off person over very large benefits to large numbers of better-off people). Neither extreme view, we assume, is plausible. One intermediate view is finitely weighted total prioritarianism. It is like utilitarianism except that it is concerned with total weighted benefits. It differs, however, in that there is a prioritarian weighting for benefits: benefits to individuals have finitely decreasing marginal weights (i.e., the moral importance of a one-unit increase in benefits is smaller the more units the individual already has). Thus, like leximin, it gives priority to the worse off. Unlike leximin, however, this priority is not absolute or infinite. Large enough benefits to the better off can take priority over the benefits to a worse-off individual. Finitely weighted total prioritarianism is commonly considered an attractive compromise between utilitarianism and leximin. It shares with utilitarianism, however, a questionable property: namely, that it justifies that a significant benefit to the worst-off person can be outweighed by trivial benefits to enough best-off people. In this sense, it can be argued that it does not give enough priority to the worse off. Is it possible to avoid the problem of finitely weighted total prioritarianism without assigning absolute priority to the worse off? We show that it is not easy to do so. We do this by considering the possibility of combining nonaggregative priority for the worst off over the best off while also allowing some aggregation (e.g., when the worst off are not affected).