Practicing Fairness and Equality Philosophy Reading Discussion

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Prioritizing Evils over
Unjust Inequalities
Decency versus Relative Well-Being
Feminists and other political activists working for social justice or liberation
should give priority to addressing evils over the goal of eliminating unjust inequalities. The value priorities in this judgment?decency over relative wellbeing?underlie many politically separatist movements, whose adherents
have elected not to push for assimilation into mainstream American culture.
One need not be a separatist, however, to share this basic belief about priorities and to be impatient with the emphasis often given to concepts of social
equality by political activists, the media, law, and government. Equality as an
ethical and political value abstracts from particular levels of welfare. Its concern is the distribution of bene?ts and burdens among persons or groups, not
with the quality or even quantity of what is distributed. For that reason, implementing equality is not directly about eliminating evils. Unjust inequalities
are defects in a practice and grounds for complaint. They can cause needless
envy and resentment and should often be removed. But inequality, even when
unjust, is not itself an intolerable harm. It is not an evil.
Moral concerns for equality are basically concerns to be fair in dealings
with others or in the way a practice treats its participants. To be fair is to avoid
arbitrariness, be consistent in administering policies, make sure the rules of a
practice give each participant a fair share of its bene?ts and no more than a fair
share of its burdens, and respect everyone as an equal, that is, not presume
anyone generally more or less important as a human being than anyone else.
Whether inconsistency or arbitrariness in policy administration results in
evils depends on circumstances and the policies? content. In extreme scarcity,
shorting someone on food rations in violation of the rules can hasten death, al-
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Prioritizing Evils over Unjust Inequalities
97
though in less harsh times, it might produce only resentment. Evenhandedness in administration does not, of course, address evils embedded within the
policies administered. The rule that children born to slaves are also slaves perpetuates an evil, regardless of how evenly the rule is enforced. Yet rules that
treat everyone as equals can still be inhumane, as in the village lottery of
Shirley Jackson?s famous short story.1 Philip Hallie, who has written on both
cruelty and rescue and whose views on evil appear to be in agreement with the
atrocity theory of evil, argues in his posthumously published Tales of Good
and Evil, Help and Harm that ?evil does not happen only inside moral agents?
but involves an ?intimate linkage between the moral agents of evil and the sufferings and deaths those moral agents willingly perpetrate.?2 Citing Lewis Carroll?s parable of the walrus and the carpenter, Hallie argues that Carroll was
right to teach the importance of attending more to the harm done than to the
feelings of its perpetrators.3 He might have added ?or the relationships between what some suffer and what others suffer.?
More than a decade ago Harry Frankfurt wrote that ?with respect to the
distribution of economic assets, what is important from the point of view of
morality is not that everyone should have the same but that each should have
enough,? a position he refers to as ?the doctrine of suf?ciency.?4 Whether or
not he is right about morality, his observation seems just right from the point
of view of evil. Even if equality does have moral value, inequalities are not
evils. It is far more important that people have enough, when that is a feasible
goal, than that they have the same. What is important from the standpoint of
evil is that no one be wrongfully deprived of the basics that make life tolerable
and decent. Joseph Raz, arguing against strict egalitarianism, distinguishes
helpfully between equality as a social ideal and equality as merely a by-product of the generality of rules.5 He notes that from the point of view of genuine
principles of equality, the only intrinsic goods are relational ones.6 The only
reason they offer to avoid harming or hurting anyone is that others are unharmed or unhurt, which is absurd. Although neither Frankfurt nor Raz uses
the language of evil, their worries about egalitarian ideals are important to the
more speci?c idea that evils are of greater importance than mere inequalities
and should receive priority of attention. That, at any rate, is the idea that this
chapter develops.
Further, there are some things that no one should have a ?share? of, such
as torture and rape, or toxic air, water, and soil. Social justice requires not only
fairness in distributing bene?ts of social cooperation and burdens necessary to
produce or maintain them but also prevention of gratuitous, cruel, and inhumane burdens. Examples are the burdens of disrespect and humiliation that
Avishai Margalit ?nds distinctive of societies that are less than decent.7 Struggles for social justice should work to eliminate and redress the evils of such
burdens.
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The Atrocity Paradigm
One social justice movement that presents an instructive case is mainstream American feminism of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the
end, mainstream American feminism prioritized equal political and economic
rights for women over ending such atrocities as domestic violence and the traf?c in women and girls. Thanks to the efforts of Susan B. Anthony (1820?1906),
Elizabeth Cady Stanton (1815?1902), and many others revered by mainstream
feminists today, American women succeeded in securing the franchise, the
right to own property while married, and access to higher education. Many
entered the professions, the business world, and eventually government at
many levels. But other feminists, such as anarchist socialist philosopher Emma
Goldman (1869?1940), worked to expose the fundamental evils of intolerable,
unsafe working conditions for paid laborers of both genders (often immigrants, like herself) and the international traf?c in female ?esh.8 After distributing birth control literature and protesting the military draft, she was rewarded for her labors by being forcibly deported to Russia in 1919. Sexual
harassment, sexual slavery, rape, battery, and intolerable working conditions
for relatively unskilled laborers (many of them women, often immigrants) remain, despite the franchise, married women?s property rights, and the access
of those who can afford it to the professions, corporate business, and government of?ce.9 When feminism is dominated by the rhetoric of equality, it tends
not even to discuss the worst evils.
Equality Feminism versus Feminist Opposition
to Oppression
American feminism is commonly identi?ed with the pursuit of women?s equality, meaning rights for women equal to those of men. Not all men, however,
have equal rights. In practice, equality feminism has meant rights for white
middle-class women equal to those of white middle-class men, the generally
unstated but implied comparison classes. The comparisons have not been
women and men globally, white women and men of color, or middle class
women and working class, jobless, or homeless men. Women who are not
white or not middle class are often engaged less in the pursuit of gender equality than in struggles against other injustices.
Yet there is also a long, nonmainstream, less well-known history of feminist activism, including the efforts of Matilda Joselyn Gage (1826?1898) and
Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860?1935) as well as Goldman, that did not prioritize equality but sought to expose and end oppression. Media publicity of
equality for women or gender equality (often focused on men rather than
women) tends to draw attention away from the real evils of oppression. It risks
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99
trivializing feminism with its protracted protests of inequalities that, although
unjust, are not oppressive (?glass ceilings? in corporate management) and convoluted defenses of inequalities arguably needed to redress or correct other injustices to women (preferential treatment in hiring or admissions). Legal scholars Catharine MacKinnon and Martha Minow, moving more in the direction of
Goldman, have tried to put the pursuit of women?s equality into perspective.
MacKinnon contrasts inequality as difference with inequality as dominance,
pointing out rightly that of these, domination (and the peculiar ?differences?
that it produces) has been feminism?s appropriate target of criticism.10 Minow
points to ?the dilemma of difference,? noting that both treating women the
same as men and offering special treatment on account of women?s special
needs can re-entrench ?differences? oppressive to women.11
The concept of dominance, which MacKinnon highlights, does not make
the ethically critical point as well as the concept of oppression. The reason is
simply that unlike dominance, oppression, by de?nition, does harm. In the
language of Marilyn Frye, it reduces, molds, and immobilizes the oppressed.12
In contrast, dominance?a superior power position?may not actually do
harm even when it is unjusti?ed. Dominance can be benevolent and should be
when parents are dominant over children. Dominance implies power inequality, however, which gives it a potential for oppression. When dominance becomes systematically harmful, we can subsume it under oppression as oppressive dominance. The point is that the practices most important to resist are
those that do intolerable harm. Neither inequality nor dominance clearly identi?es them.
The atrocity theory of evil lends support to the kinds of feminism and
other social justice or liberation movements that target severe oppression.
Severe oppression is a paradigm evil, although not all evils result from oppression. The oppressed?a people, a group, individuals?survive, but with
seriously diminished potentialities. As Frye notes, they are caught between
opposing social forces in such a way that they are in the wrong, and they lose,
no matter what they do.13 Iris Marion Young articulates the analysis of oppression further as a complex phenomenon manifested in the ?ve characteristic ?faces? of marginalization, powerlessness, violence, cultural imperialism,
and exploitation.14 Some faces are more salient in certain forms of oppression
than in others.
Exploitation, for example, has been a historically salient face of slavery
and of the abuse of women as wives. Despite differences in kinds and degrees
of exploitation to which slaves and wives have been vulnerable, both have
been stereotyped as simple-minded, even childlike, and have nonetheless been
entrusted with such essential social tasks as cooking and childcare.15 Oppressors count heavily on the loyalties of slaves and wives. Marginalization (with
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exclusion as its extreme), in contrast, is the face of oppression salient in antiSemitism, in the abuse of women as prostitutes, and in ?homophobia.?16 The
oppressed here are regarded by oppressors (who do not count on their loyalties) as cunning, manipulative, untrustworthy, corrupt.
Slaves and to a lesser extent wives have been socially diminished, if not
entirely ?socially dead,? in being cut off from kin, in both directions for slaves
and in terms of identities of origin for wives. Both have been of?cially under
their oppressors? ?protection.?17 But lesbians, gay men, transgender people,
and prostitutes tend to have outlaw status. ?Passing? becomes an issue more
frequently here. Jews, when not outlaws, have often been pariahs. These oppressed are neither of?cially nor unof?cially under their oppressors? protection. All are common targets of hate crimes, and many have formed their own
organizations for self-protection.
Both marginalization and exploitation exist to some degree in each pattern
of oppression. But they play different roles, have different degrees of prominence, and to some extent exist in tension with each other. To exploit women
as wives and mothers, patriarchal institutions long excluded them from careers and promotions that would compete for their time and energy with home
management and childcare. Here, exclusion facilitated exploitation. Jewish
men, excluded from the European mainstream, were exploited to perform social functions (moneylending) forbidden to Christians, which was then also
held against them, morally, reinforcing their pariah status. Here, exploitation
served exclusion. But when exploitation clashed strongly with exclusion in
the racist anti-Semitism of the Third Reich, exclusion got priority. The Reich
poured resources into killing Jews even while it needed workers and other resources for the war effort. In contrast, exploitation has been the more basic oppression of wives, who have been granted rights and limited forms of assimilation, reluctantly, by the argument that doing so would enable them to perform
still better as mothers and homemakers. Arguably prostitutes get the worst of
both forms of oppression: brutal exploitation and simultaneous outlaw status,
many treated as ?throwaway women? with no protection whatever.18
The ethically critical point that critics who target severe oppression can
make with regard to the relative importance of equality can be articulated
straightforwardly in the language of evil. Inequalities are not themselves evils,
although they tend to accompany the evils of exploitation and oppression. For
this reason it is a mistake to focus on inequality as the basic wrong to be addressed by feminism and other struggles against oppression. That inequalities
should not be feminism?s paramount concern is actually a modest claim, however startling it may sound in the context of American feminism. To clarify
that, I turn to distinguishing within morality between evils and what is
morally bad or wrong, undesirable, even unjust, but not evil.
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Morally Bad versus Evil
Earlier chapters have asserted that not everything bad or wrong is an evil and
that what distinguishes evils from ordinary wrongs is the element of intolerable harm. Many bad experiences are unpleasant but not really harmful, for example. But one may wonder whether a meaningful distinction can be drawn,
from a moral point of view, between evil and bad or wrong. Many moral
philosophers, including Kant, have treated evil as comprehending all forms of
immorality. Nietzsche did not distinguish between evil and bad within morality. In his contrast of schlecht (bad) with b?se (evil), schlecht appears not to be a
moral judgment. It connotes inferiority in status, power, strength, vitality, and
the like, but not moral inferiority. The implication seems to be that evil comprehends all forms of moral inferiority.
Yet common sense ?nds many motives and deeds morally de?cient, bad,
problematic, or wrong without ?nding them positively evil. Shoplifting, riding the subway without paying, and cheating on income tax are dishonest and
in that respect morally bad, wrong. Anyone who makes a habit of such conduct has a morally bad habit. Calling it evil, however, is overkill; shoplifting is
not evil. Saving someone?s life solely in order to collect a debt is morally very
bad (because of its motive, even though the act, abstracted from the motive, is
actually right). Extorting money from the rich by threatening to ?out? them
as homosexuals is also very bad, but not necessarily evil?depending on
whether outing makes the victim seriously vulnerable to major hate crimes.
Accepting employment as a hired killer or torturer is evil. In Edith Wharton?s
novel The House of Mirth, Bertha Dorset?s mendacious and exploitative public
expulsion of Lily Bart, which foreseeably precipitated Lily?s ultimately fatal
downfall, was evil.19
Within morality, both from a common sense point of view and in the
atrocity theory, bad is the more comprehensive concept. It applies to wrong
acts, immoral motives, or both. Calling what is evil merely bad understates the
case. It has been observed that ?good? is a relatively tame term of commendation.20 Within morality, ?bad? is a relatively tame term of derogation. The
child in William March?s novel The Bad Seed is portrayed as evil, not merely
bad.21 Bad girls are naughty but not likely to be serial murderers. Mass rape in
war is not just bad. It is also (that is, more speci?cally) evil. Because he distinguishes between two modes of valuation, Nietzsche ?nds it an open question
whether those who are evil are also bad (in a nonmoral sense). He entertains seriously the proposition that many evil people were not bad but were actually
superior. As examples he mentions Napoleon and the ancient Romans, both responsible for wanton destruction of human life and incalculable suffering. On
the atrocity paradigm, it is not an open question whether evils are morally
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bad. Conduct is morally bad when it is culpable and wrong. It becomes evil
when it also foreseeably deprives others of basics needed for their lives or
deaths to be tolerable or decent. Inequalities can be bad (culpable and wrong,
unjust), even though they are not evil (do not produce intolerable harm).
?Morally bad? does share in common with Nietzsche?s schlecht that it is a
less hostile judgment than evil. For that reason it is ordinarily easier to accuse
oppressors of the unfairness of unequal treatment than to accuse them of
downright evil. At times, Nietzsche seems not to consider schlecht a hostile
judgment at all and even to suggest that it is relatively friendly, because it can
be combined with a certain condescending benevolence. Still, even though it
does not carry the hostility of judgments of evil, Nietzsche?s schlecht is unfriendly in its distancing and in its implications that those so characterized are
unworthy of admiration, esteem, or respect.
Unlike Nietzsche?s schlecht, however, bad in the moral sense is more apt to
express blame and disappointment than pity, although like schlecht it is often
compatible with benevolent responses. Parents blame a misbehaving child for
being bad (not evil), but also aim to correct, not reject, the child. ?Bad girls?
are not inferior children; they are bad in something closer to a moral sense.
Still, morally bad is a less hostile, less aggressive, and less blaming judgment
than evil. The atrocity paradigm suggests that the energy fueling the hostility
in judgments of evil is better channeled into eliminating harms and abolishing
evil institutions than into punishing evildoers. For it is the harm, rather than
the culpable wrongdoing, that distinguishes evils from other wrongs.
On the atrocity paradigm, hostility against evildoers need not be total, allout, or unforgiving. Because of the many forms that culpable wrongdoing
takes, evildoers need not be perceived as sadistic monsters or as necessarily
evil people. Nietzsche treats both bad and evil as applying basically to people
who were perceived as either inferior (bad) or monstrous (evil). The judgment
in both cases was totalizing; the whole person was judged, stereotyped, not
just something the person did. This is far less true of judgments of moral badness, and also less true of judgments of evil on the atrocity paradigm.
Applied to social practices or institutions, however, it is fair to say that
?evil? really is a totalizing judgment, in the following sense. Even if not absolutely everything about an evil institution is unacceptable, evil institutions
are rotten at the core. Practices that are bad but not evil tend to be unjust in
limited, ?xable, respects. Evil practices need to be abolished. Bad ones need
repair. Genocide, slavery, torture, and rape are evil practices. ?Glass ceilings?and arbitrary quotas are bad but often embedded within otherwise tolerable institutions, to which they are inessential. Hence, those opposing oppression tend to be revolutionaries and those opposing inequalities,
reformists. It is, of course, possible to revolt against some practices while
working to reform others.
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Are Some Inequalities Evils?
It may be argued that some unjust inequalities, which would not be evils if
they were merely sporadic or isolated incidents in a life otherwise ?ourishing,
become evils when they are systematic and come to pervade one?s life. Being
excluded on the basis of one?s race or gender from admission to any high
school whatever, as was true of African Americans in Alabama in the 1930s, is
an example, in contrast with being excluded from a particular high school.
The systematic exclusions symbolize a social judgment of inferiority regarding
one?s humanity. If social con?rmation is essential to maintaining one?s sense of
worth, that judgment assaults the human dignity of those suffering the injustice. Because one?s social identity is partly constructed by social norms governing social interactions, such exclusions actually dis?gure those who are excluded.22 That dis?gurement is at least an evil, whether or not it is an atrocity.
It is indecent. Major historical examples come readily to mind: ghettos and expulsions of the Jews in late medieval Western Europe, South African apartheid, racial segregation in the United States.
Two factors can intensify the harm suffered when exclusions become systematic. One is the narrowing of opportunities. As opportunities narrow it becomes eventually impossible to acquire certain basics at all, an adequate education, for example. The other is negative symbolic meaning. Exclusions can
take on a negative symbolic meaning, becoming an assault on the humanity of
those excluded. Regarding the ?rst factor, it is the increasing lack of opportunity, not inequality in opportunity, that turns rejections into evils. With regard to the second factor, it may be less clear. How do inequalities come to be
an assault on human dignity? Can just any sort of unequal treatment do that, if
it is systematic?
To what extent is it the unjust discrimination and to what extent the quality?that is, the nature?of the treatment, as distinct from the inequality of its
distribution, that is responsible for the assault on dignity? ?Unequal? grossly
underdescribes the treatment of Blacks under South African apartheid and racial
segregation in the United States. They were subject to unspeakable violence, terror, poverty, and degradation. What made their treatment indecent was not that
Blacks were singled out for it. No one should have to endure that fate.
It may be that part of what is traumatic in some assaults, such as the sexual assault (?incest?) of a child by a guardian, is that the victim is singled out
to bear a special burden alone, or at least thinks so. It is true that no one should
have to endure what the victim endures. But being singled out appears in some
cases to aggravate the harm. Perhaps the same is true of apartheid and segregation, where whole groups are singled out.
In some cases, it is not obvious that the ?rst factor, the harm created by
such things as a lack of opportunity, is present as something distinct from the
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symbolic meaning of the maltreatment. Some forms of maltreatment humiliate
by the very triviality or useless absurdity of what one is forced to do. A domestic abuser may insist that the towels in the bathroom be aligned just so and
deliver severe punishment for violation of this and other similarly trivial requirements. Suppose punishment (admittedly harmful) is at least sometimes
avoidable by compliance. It is not that aligning the towels is a harm. Rather, its
imposition as a major requirement, violation of which is treated as a capital offense, is indecent. Still more extreme, Jews in Hitler?s Vienna were made to
scrub the pavement with toothbrushes, sometimes with their underwear.
Here, disrespect, the absurdity of the task, the assault on privacy, and discrimination combine to humiliate. Yet it would be humiliating if people were
randomly assigned such tasks and were ridiculed and maltreated while they
performed them. The symbolic meaning of being made to perform such a task
looms larger in such cases than the harmfulness of the task itself.
The basic point is that the symbolic meaning of a form of treatment can
turn it into an assault on dignity that makes it an evil, somewhat independently of the nature of the treatment. That point holds regardless of whether
the treatment is systematic or an isolated instance, and also regardless of
whether those so treated are chosen randomly or not. Deprivations in?icted by
Jim Crow laws (being denied access to a restroom or drinking fountain, being
made to sit in the back of the bus), which might in other contexts have been
annoying or inconvenient, became evils because they acquired the power to
symbolize a social judgment of inferior humanity in those so restricted. They
are most likely to have that power when the restriction is institutionalized,
supported by the sanctions of law, and associated with a natural feature (such
as skin color) or an imposed feature (such as badges or readily identi?able
clothing). When one?s life becomes permeated by such exclusions, they take
on importance they would not otherwise have had. Thus, exclusions that look
super?cially like inconveniences may in fact contribute signi?cantly to indignity in those who suffer them.
Still, there are distinctions to be made, even when an injury is to dignity
rather than simply to the pursuit of one?s interests. Not all indignities are
equal; not all are evils. The above examples illustrate treating people as inferior with respect to their very humanity. Institutional support for such judgments is socially dis?guring to those so treated. Not every indignity communicates that harsh a judgment, however. The following case illustrates a certain
indignity. Yet I would not go so far as to consider it an evil.
When I applied to Princeton to graduate school in 1961, I was rejected on
the basis of my sex. But Harvard accepted me. In Harvard Yard, however, I was
routinely denied access to the Lamont Library, the undergraduate men?s library, on grounds of my sex. I tested the policy that excluded women by attempting more than once to enter that library. At the same time, male students
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105
were welcomed onto the ?rst ?oor of the Radcliffe Library for undergraduate
women, which enabled them to check out any books they wished. Women
were not allowed even through the front door to Lamont. I was at ?rst amazed
and amused but eventually resented it. Some of my course assignments were in
books obtainable only in Lamont. I could have asked a male friend to check
them out for me. (The library did not provide men to offer this service to
women.) But I generally did not, because it was embarrassing to have to make
the request. This affront to my dignity, however, was compensated to no small
extent by the privilege of being able to study at Harvard in the ?rst place, in
the same classrooms (not true for Radcliffe students of Helen Keller?s era) and
from the same teachers as male students. Being excluded from Lamont Library
was not something that agitated me or even occupied my thoughts much, although the difference between the Lamont and Radcliffe Library policies did
symbolize the judgment that female students were less important members of
the university community than male students. Nor was this an isolated instance of discrimination against females on that campus, although it was remarkable for being so overt. Women received markedly less encouragement to
participate in class discussions, although that was not (to my knowledge) an
of?cial policy. And undergraduate women were not supposed to appear on the
streets in pants unless they also wore a long coat. Still, none of these discriminations was an evil, nor did they add up to an evil. They symbolized judgments that female students were less important to Harvard and were not to be
confused with males (but were to be readily identi?able as female), but not
that women were subhuman.
Not every affront to dignity is an evil, however wrong. There are degrees
of seriousness even here, marked, for example, by the difference between an
affront (or slight) and an assault (or attack). Not all injuries to dignity leave
permanent or deeply dis?guring scars, even if they leave permanent memories
and are just cause for resentment.
What Does It Mean to Prioritize?
I have said that evils deserve to be prioritized by social justice movements over
unjust inequalities and that they deserve the ?rst attention of those in a position to prevent or alleviate them. Feminism, for example, should in general
prioritize ending domestic violence, rape (especially forcible ?incest? perpetrated on children), severely hazardous working conditions, and involuntary
homelessness over many, perhaps most, inequalities in wages, hiring, promotion, and admissions. Yet we hear relatively little about domestic violence,
rape, hazardous working conditions, and homelessness, compared to debates
regarding inequalities in wages, hiring, promotions, and admissions. College
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textbooks on contemporary moral issues seldom include selections on rape (almost never on homelessness or domestic violence) but almost always have
something on af?rmative action in hiring or admissions. But what does it mean
to ?prioritize? or give ??rst attention??23 Some interpretations of that idea
make it sound absurd.
A natural objection, for example, is that since it appears unlikely that
there will ever be a time when there are no more evils, prioritizing them threatens to absorb all of our attention, leaving no energy, time, or other resources
for anything else. Maybe we should prioritize what is more manageable? Does
prioritizing evils mean that we forgo everything less important, even addressing lesser injustices, some far more readily correctable than real evils? Should
women who have jobs that pay a living wage ignore salary and promotion inequities as long as there are women who are sold, raped, and battered?
The answer to the general question is, I think, mostly no, but sometimes
yes. Prioritizing evils does not have to mean not caring at all about lesser injustices, or not doing anything toward preventing or mitigating them. Giving
?rst attention to evils is ordinarily compatible with also giving second attention to lesser injustices, about which we can frequently do more. Some people
are better positioned to do something signi?cant about inequality in hiring
than to do anything signi?cant about domestic violence. And yet the positions
we occupy often result from prior choices and re?ect our value priorities. We
may have to get into position to do something signi?cant about evils, by becoming informed, for example, in a society that does not disseminate the relevant information or permit it to be readily accessible. But even when we are in
a good position to do something signi?cant about evils, it is not necessary in
order to prioritize them that we do nothing else. I have not suggested that addressing evils be prioritized over everything, but more speci?cally that social
justice movements prioritize evils over unjust inequalities. Even that more
limited idea does not imply that such movements should ignore unjust inequalities as long as there are evils to be addressed.
Where a political movement?s ?rst attention lies is revealed not only by
how great a portion of its resources are devoted to it but also by its paradigms,
to what examples it calls attention in exposing social injustice, what causes it
publicizes ?rst or most. The atrocity paradigm of evil prioritizes atrocities
among evils. ?Prioritizing? here does not imply a lexical ordering, like John
Rawls?s lexical ordering of principles of justice, according to which the ?rst
principle must be satis?ed before the second one even comes into play.24 We
need not be satis?ed that evils have been addressed as fully as possible before
giving any attention to other matters. Prioritizing evils does mean, at least,
making sure that signi?cant attention is devoted to them, whatever else we do.
It may be helpful to consider some analogies. Giving priority to family, for
example, is commonly done by making ourselves and our resources available
Prioritizing Evils over Unj