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Note that many examples of benefiting from injustice are intergenerational in the sense that (some of) the beneficiaries are born after the injustice has taken place. Such examples include colonization and climate change. Intergenerational cases might give rise to the non-identity-problem, according to which (on one interpretation) one cannot benefit from an act that belongs to the set of necessary conditions for one’s existence (See Simon Caney, “Cosmopolitan Justice, Responsibility and Global Climate Change,” Leiden Journal of International Law 18 (2005): 747–775; Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984). In this paper, I do not take into account the non-identity problem, and will mostly use intragenerational cases. Note also that the question of whether injustice has contributed to the allocation of current holdings raises massive practical and epistemic challenges. I disregard these here in order to focus on some principled points. The reason is that BP will also be applicable in contexts in which it will be practically and epistemically manageable.
Or simply the beneficiary principle. See Daniel Butt, “On Benefiting from Injustice,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 37 (2007): 129–152; Daniel Butt, Rectifying International Injustice – Principles of Compensation and Restitution Between Nations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Daniel Butt, “‘A Doctrine Quite New and Altogether Untenable’: Defending the Beneficiary Pays Principle,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2014): 336–348; Alexandra Couto, “The Beneficiary Principle and Strict Liability: exploring the normative significance of causal relations,” Philosophical Studies (forthcoming); Robert E. Goodin, “Disgorging the Fruits of Historical Wrongdoing,” American Political Science Review 107 (2013): 478–491; Robert Goodin and Christian Barry, “Benefiting from the Wrongdoing of Others,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2014): 363–376; Axel Gosseries, “Historical Emissions and Free-riding,” Ethical Perspectives 11 (2004): 30–60; Bashshar Haydar and Gerhard Øverland, “The Normative Implications of Benefiting from Injustice,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2014): 349–362; Robert Huseby, “Should the Beneficiaries Pay?” Politics, Philosophy & Economics 14 (2015): 209–225; Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, “Affirmative Action, Historical Injustice, and the Concept of Beneficiaries,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 25 (2017): 72–90; Carl Knight, “Benefiting from Injustice and Brute Luck,” Social Theory and Practice 39 (2013): 581–598; Edward Page, “Give it Up for Climate Change: A Defense of the Beneficiary Pays Principle,” International Theory 4 (2012): 300–330; Tom Parr, “The Moral Taintedness of Benefitting from Injustice,” Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (2016): 985–997; Avia Pasternak, “Voluntary Benefits from Wrongdoing,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2014): 377–391.
See Holly Lawford-Smith, “Benefiting from Failures to Address Climate Change,” Journal of Applied Philosophy 31 (2014): 392–404; Parr, op. cit., p. 987.
Note that most theorists, reasonably, agree that if the perpetrator of injustice is still around, she has even stronger duties to compensate.
I suppose throughout that the beneficiary-oriented BP imples that to the extent that the beneficiary is required to give up goods, she should do so equivalent to the value of the benefit, whether or not this corresponds to the (originally) wrongfully held objects (or its derivatives).
See Simon Caney, “Climate Change and the Duties of the Advantaged” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 13 (2010): 203–228, p. 216.
Butt, 2009, op. cit., pp. 127–128.
See Goodin, op. cit., p. 478.
A similar view is found in Goodin and Barry, op. cit., pp. 366–368. See also Parr, op. cit., p. 994. Holly Lawford-Smith also hints at a beneficiary-oriented view, but settles eventually for an explicitly victim-oriented version of the BP (See Lawford-Smith, op. cit., p. 399).
As will become clear below, this view is arguably only relevant to the extent that some other agents (apart from the victim of the injustice) sometimes have greater claims to the fruits of injustice than the beneficiary has.
There might of course also be other such modes.
Note that justifications for 2 will most often also incidentally be justifications for 1. If I have moral reason to relinquish a holding, it seems reasonable to assume that I have a lesser claim to this holding than to those of my holdings that I have no moral reason to relinquish.
See Caney, 2010, op. cit., p. 216; Goodin, op. cit., p. 482–484; Goodin and Barry, op. cit., pp. 363–364. Notice, however, that Goodin and Barry are more concerned with the implications of this view than with its justification.
To be sure, the absence or presence of the victim may make some difference, even on the beneficiary oriented view. All else equal, it would seem that the innocent beneficiary’s duty to relinquish is stricter if the victim is present, than if the victim is absent.
I accept, as noted, that (non-innocent) perpetrators have special duties to compensate the victim.
See Goodin and Barry, op. cit., p. 367.
See Butt, 2009, op. cit., pp. 127–128.
It is worth noting, however, that some defenses of the BP are conditional. Haydar and Øverland, op. cit., argue that the principle is mainly relevant in the presence of further so called boosting conditions. Barry and Wiens hold that beneficiaries gain duties to compensate only when ‘…receiving and retaining the benefits sustains wrongful harm’ (Christian Barry and David Wiens, “Benefiting from Wrongdoing and Sustaining Wrongful Harm,” Journal of Moral Philosophy 13 (2016): 530–552, p. 533). I focus on more general views in this paper.
See Goodin and Barry, op. cit., p. 364.
See Knight, op. cit.
Haydar and Øverland, op. cit., 352. I take it that many defenders of BP would hold that the principle applies to this case. As noted above, however, Haydar and Øverland’s view is special in the sense that they think that additional factors are necessary for the beneficiary to gain compensatory duties. In this case, it is the fact that a structured competitive setting (applying for a job) is upset, which boosts the beneficiary’s duty.
See Goodin and Barry, op. cit., p. 364.
See Goodin, op. cit., p. 478. Note that Goodin primarily is concerned with disgorgement, which in his terminology is an object-oriented view (as opposed to person-oriented). My use of the term ‘relinquish’ rather than ‘disgorge’ is intended to signal that the distinction between object- and person-oriented is not vital to the current paper.
See Ibid., p. 487; Goodin and Barry, op. cit., p. 367.
This is not to deny that possibility, however. Some might think that taint, with time, will eventually wash off.
See Goodin, op. cit., p. 487.
See Ibid., pp. 478–491.
Something similar can be said about theories of absolute desert. A person might be better off than she morally ought to be, and it could be the case that it would be better (whether in one respect or all things considered) if she were worse off.
Ibid., p. 484.
Parr states explicitly that his account is subject to a non-waste restriction (See Parr, op. cit., p. 993, footnote 15). As indicated in the main text, I am not convinced that such a restriction is plausible. To be sure, it is intuitively plausible to avoid waste, but it is not clear how this should measure up against the wrongness of benefiting from injustice. According to Parr, a “… good is morally tainted when the recipient’s possession of it is the intended result of injustice (Ibid., p. 994, emphasis in original).” Further, he holds that “[w]e can explain the normative significance of the moral taintedness by reference to the idea that, in refusing to relinquish the good or the benefit it yields, the recipient allows the wrongdoer to complete her immoral plans (Ibid., p. 994).” One reason for this, Parr submits, is that it is impersonally bad for immoral plans to be realized (See Ibid., p. 994). In light of this explication of the badness of receiving and keeping tainted goods, the waste-restriction, at least in a general form, starts to appear implausible. It might be plausible not to relinquish a huge benefit from a modest wrongdoing, if relinquishing necessitates waste, but very implausible not to relinquish a moderate benefit from a massive and grave injustice, even if the benefit thereby goes to waste. Otherwise, the importance of keeping immoral plans from being realized starts to look negligible.
To repeat, this is to grant the lesser claims thesis as such, but not necessarily in an interesting version.
See Huseby 2015 op. cit.; Knight, op. cit.; Lippert-Rasmussen, op. cit.; [DELETED].
See Robert Huseby, “The Beneficiary Pays Principle and Luck Egalitarianism,” Journal of Social Philosophy 47 (2016): 332–349; Knight, op. cit.
Acknowledgements
This paper was presented at the Center for the Study of Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo in 2016. I am very grateful to Daniel Butt, Alexandra Couto, Bob Goodin, Bashshar Haydar, Ole Koksvik, Sigurd Lindstad, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Ed Page, Ana Tanasoca, and an anonymous reviewer for helpful comments. Work on this article has been supported by the Norwegian Research Council (Grant number: 222541).
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Huseby, R. Should We Relinquish or Distribute the Benefits of Injustice?. J Value Inquiry 52, 213–225 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-017-9610-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10790-017-9610-0