Leveling Down Objection

Overview and Intuitive Example

The leveling down objection is a widely discussed challenge to egalitarian moral and political theories. It questions the idea that equality itself—for example, equality of welfare, resources, or opportunity—has intrinsic value independently of its effects on people’s lives.

The objection is often illustrated by a simple case. Suppose:

• Group A: Everyone can see perfectly.
• Group B: Half the population is blind, half can see.

If there were a button that, when pressed, made the sighted people in Group B blind as well—thus making everyone equally blind—would this be in any way an improvement? No one is better off; some are clearly worse off. Yet if equality is regarded as an intrinsic good of the kind strict egalitarianism posits, then the resulting perfect equality should count as better in at least one respect. The leveling down objection highlights the apparent moral absurdity of this implication.

Target and Structure of the Objection

The leveling down objection is primarily aimed at strict or telic egalitarianism—views that hold that:

• Inequality in itself is a moral bad, and
• A more equal distribution is, in at least one important moral respect, better simply because it is more equal, holding everything else fixed.

The objection proceeds by considering pure leveling down: situations where inequality is reduced only by making better-off individuals worse off, without any compensating gain to the worse off or to anyone else.

The core claim is that strict egalitarianism seems committed to saying:

• The world with everyone equally blind is, in one respect, better than the world with some people sighted and others blind,
• Even though no one gains and some lose.

Critics argue that this clashes with a powerful benefit-based intuition in ethics: a change cannot make things better in any respect if it benefits no one and harms some.

Thus, the leveling down objection is often formulated as a reductio ad absurdum: if egalitarianism implies that pure leveling down is better in some way, then that version of egalitarianism is implausible and should be revised or rejected.

Responses and Modifications of Egalitarianism

Egalitarian theorists have developed several responses to the leveling down objection. These fall into broad strategies:

1. Accepting a Limited Sense of “Better in One Respect”

Some philosophers, including Derek Parfit, suggest that we can say:

• The leveled-down situation is better in one respect (equality),
• While being worse all things considered, because it involves a loss of well-being.

On this view, the judgment that equality has some intrinsic value is preserved, but it is systematically outweighed by other moral considerations, such as total or average welfare. The world of universal blindness is not better overall, even if it has one relational improvement.

Critics argue that this “better in one respect” talk is still counterintuitive, and risks reintroducing the very problem the objection highlights: it appears to attribute positive value to a change that benefits no one.

2. Prioritarianism: Replacing Equality with Priority to the Worse Off

Prioritarianism rejects the idea that equality as such has intrinsic moral value. Instead, it claims that:

• Benefits to people matter more, morally, the worse off those people are.

On this account, we should often help the worse off first, not because this reduces inequality, but because improving the condition of the worse off has extra moral weight. Importantly, pure leveling down—harming the better off without helping anyone—has no value for prioritarians, since no one’s condition improves and priorities apply only to benefits, not to harms.

Prioritarianism thus avoids the leveling down objection by denying its crucial assumption: that equality is itself a value to be promoted.

3. Relational or Deontic Egalitarianism

Another major response is relational egalitarianism, which shifts focus from distributions of goods to social and political relations. On this view, what matters is not equal welfare as such, but equality of status, the absence of domination, and relations of mutual respect among citizens.

Relational egalitarians argue that:

• The value of equality lies in non-hierarchical social relations,
• Pure leveling down in welfare or resources does not necessarily improve those relations, and may even damage them.

They often reject the idea that we should maximize a scalar “amount of equality” in the abstract. Consequently, the leveling down objection is seen as misdirected: it targets a telic, distributive picture that relational egalitarians do not accept.

4. Restricting the Domain of Equality

Some egalitarians respond by restricting the domain over which equality is assessed. For example, they may argue that:

• Only claims to certain basic goods (such as rights, liberties, or opportunities) are subject to egalitarian demands,
• Or that equality is relevant only under certain feasible or non-harmful conditions.

On these views, a policy that deliberately makes some worse off solely to achieve equality is ruled out on independent moral grounds, such as respect for persons, rights, or non-maleficence. Equality remains important, but it is constrained so that leveling down is never morally required, even in one respect.

Philosophical Significance

The leveling down objection is significant in several ways:

1. Clarifying the Value of Equality
   It forces egalitarian theories to explain whether and how equality has intrinsic value, as opposed to instrumental value (e.g., preventing envy, domination, or social conflict). The objection has pushed many theorists toward more nuanced or relational understandings of equality.

2. Shaping Non-Egalitarian Alternatives
   The prominence of the objection has contributed to the rise of prioritarianism and other views that preserve concern for the worse off while denying that equality, by itself, is a moral ideal.

3. Distinguishing “Better in One Respect” from “Better Overall”
   The argument has encouraged more fine-grained distinctions between different kinds of moral assessment—e.g., being better along one dimension versus better all things considered, and between comparative (relational) and non-comparative (absolute) values.

4. Policy and Institutional Implications
   In practical debates—over taxation, healthcare distribution, or education—the leveling down objection is often invoked to argue that reducing inequality by lowering the position of the better off (without raising the worse off) is morally suspect. It thus shapes how egalitarian ideals are interpreted in public policy.

Because many philosophers accept at least some egalitarian intuitions while also finding the objection powerful, the leveling down objection remains a central point of reference in contemporary discussions of distributive justice, moral value, and the ethics of social and economic inequality.