Rescuing luck egalitarianism about educational justice in non-ideal conditions

Abstract

Luck egalitarianism about educational justice requires, roughly, that educational policy be arranged so as to minimize unchosen inequality in how well lives go. Luck egalitarianism famously faces the objection that it is an implausibly overdemanding theory of educational justice—especially when it is applied to educators in non-ideal conditions like our own, who are tasked with educating in social circumstances that are marred by the effects of pervasive background and historical injustices. I show that luck egalitarianism can be rescued from that overdemandingness objection. I effect that rescue by showing, first, the importance of distinguishing between the ideal-theoretic and non-ideal-theoretic parts of a normative principle like luck egalitarianism and showing then that, having made that distinction, there is a version of luck egalitarianism whose non-ideal-theoretic part does not entail implausibly overdemanding requirements for educators in non-ideal conditions. I also show that my discussion suggests useful directions and resources for further work in non-ideal theorizing about luck egalitarianism and other theories of educational justice.