LEISURE AS A SPECIFIC GOOD
2.1 THE NEGLECT OF TIME
On the basis of a survey of recent research—finding that many Americans report they have too little time for leisure activities and wish they spent less time working, that spending a greater amount of time in leisure pursuits and activities of one’s own choosing is associated with better, and long work hours with worse, health and subjective well-being, that there are significant inequalities in the distribution of free time, and that these inequalities are associated with inequalities in political participation—one might expect that leisure or free time would be a central concern in liberal theories of distributive justice.1 Such theories are typically concerned with things that citizens generally want or need, that are associated with gains to individual well-being, that are distributed unequally, and that are associated with political participation. To be clear, these empirical findings are not, in themselves, sufficient to conclude that leisure or free time ought to be an object of distributive concern. They nonetheless provide at least reason to assess whether and how the unequal distribution of leisure or free time ought be addressed. Yet liberal egalitarians have in fact given the subject little attention, and what little attention they have paid leisure or free time treats it as far from a central concern.
In this chapter, I contend that it is the way that leisure has standardly been conceptualized that has led to its neglect by theorists of distributive justice. That is, leisure has been regarded as a specific good. In particular, leisure has been understood as (1) time engaged in intrinsically valuable activities, namely philosophical contemplation, (2) time engaged in play or recreation, or (3) time not engaged in paid work. The standard liberal egalitarian approach to the distribution of such specific goods—liberal proceduralism—is to ensure that all citizens have fair access to such goods by ensuring a fair distribution of all-purpose resources.2 In possession of their share of such resources, individuals can choose which specific goods to select in accordance with their own preferences and understandings of the good life. For the liberal state to do otherwise and to ensure a given distribution of specific goods themselves, or even to promote access to one specific good over others, without some special intervening justification, is to overstep its bounds and to violate the rightful deference given to individual autonomy.
Thus, on the standard liberal proceduralist approach, as long as all citizens have access to the specific good of leisure time, understood according to one of the three standard conceptions, it would be prima facie wrong for the state to aim to ensure any particular distribution of leisure. Instead, the just distribution of leisure time is whatever emerges as a result of individuals’ choices made in accordance with their conceptions of the good, depending, that is, on the value they give to contemplation, or play, or paid work relative to other specific goods, assuming all have access to such goods. The appropriate focus of distributive concern is, accordingly, not on the distribution of the specific good of leisure, but on the distribution of the all-purpose resources that ensure that citizens have access to such goods, resources such as education, income and wealth, and occupational opportunities. So, assuming (1) the legitimacy of the liberal proceduralist approach, (2) the absence of an intervening justification for treating the specific good of leisure differently, and (3) the validity of the standard conception of leisure as a specific good, it is indeed appropriate for distributive theorists to disregard the types of findings presented at the outset and to continue to disregard leisure time.
I do not, however, believe that theorists of distributive justice have been right to dismiss all of the empirical findings above and, more important, to neglect the distribution of free time. In order to substantiate such a contention, one could reject (1), (2), or (3). I will not reject (1), as I instead endorse and assume the legitimacy of the liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice. I also will not reject (2), though some of the claims I advance in the course of the argument would provide effective grounds to take this approach as a supplementary path. Instead, I take route (3): I reject the standard conception of leisure time as a specific good. My argument is not that leisure cannot be appropriately understood as a specific good according to one of the standard conceptions; rather, I argue that the understandings of leisure as a specific good do not exhaust the possible conceptions of leisure. That is, I argue, leisure time should be understood not only as a specific good, but also as itself a resource—as the resource of free time. Accordingly, from this point on, I will distinguish between leisure and free time, referring to leisure for the concept as a specific good and to free time for the concept as a resource. I argue that free time, when understood as a resource, is central to liberal theories of justice.
That, ultimately, is the core of my argument. The aims of this chapter, however, are more preliminary. I begin with a discussion of how leisure has been neglected by liberal theories of justice, and then examine the liberal proceduralist approach and the distinction between specific goods and resources. I present the standard conceptions of leisure as a specific good, before suggesting how to conceptualize free time as a resource. The argument for understanding free time as a resource is the subject of Chapter 3.
In liberal theories of justice, free time or leisure—or even time generally—is rarely mentioned or given more than passing notice.3 There are, to my knowledge, only three places where one finds any sustained consideration of leisure as an object of distributive concern: Michael Walzer’s treatment of “free time” as a distinct “sphere of justice,” John Rawls’s consideration of including leisure in the index of “social primary goods,” and discussion of the “right to rest and leisure” in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.4 When the subject does receive such attention, the arguments are in fact about another subject (namely, the obligation to work) with leisure serving merely as a convenient proxy, are narrowly limited in the positions they advance, or are generally dismissive. The few existing treatments of the distribution of leisure may give one little reason to think it is a subject that merits much further consideration.
Free Time as a Sphere of Justice
Walzer’s theory of distributive justice is one of “complex equality,” according to which all distinct social goods—such as money, office, recognition, and political office—ought to be distributed based on principles specific to each good within separate “spheres of justice.” Walzer recognizes free time as one of the distinct social goods that merits its own sphere of justice, and indeed Walzer contends that the “distribution of free time” is a “central issue of distributive justice.”
The particular principles that Walzer advances to govern the distribution of free time do not, however, substantiate this claim. Walzer makes two arguments in particular that moderate the claim’s impact. First, though he contends that individuals do need a “cessation from work,” he argues that the particular way that free time is distributed in a society is not a matter of justice. Instead, it is a matter of societal discretion: one society could grant individuals the leave to take personal vacations while another society could coercively impose public holidays. The choice between these two types of distribution is not governed by principles of justice. Though the provision of free time in some form remains a matter of concern, setting aside the question of what form that provision takes effectively reduces the reach of justice over free time.
Second, and more important, Walzer suggests that if complex equality obtained, to the effect that money, offices, education, and political power were more equally distributed than they are at present, significant inequalities in free time would not arise. The rich would not be able to amass enough wealth to enjoy their familiar “upper-class idleness” and the powerful would not hold enough sway to command others to work while they rest. Instead, Walzer assumes that realizing complex equality in the other spheres of justice would automatically go a long way toward achieving a more equal distribution of free time. By virtue of this assumption, Walzer again blunts the impact of recognizing the distribution of free time as a central concern of justice.
Having tempered his position in these ways, Walzer ultimately contends that justice requires only that one not “be excluded from the forms of rest central to one’s own time and place.” Given that this principle must be flexible enough to apply to diverse societies’ different ways of organizing free time, it is unclear what this principle demands in practice. Moreover, given that justice—on either Walzer’s view or any liberal egalitarian view—would already require some form of equal social status, and that, as Walzer contends, the greater equality required in money and political power would mitigate existing inequalities in free time, it is unclear what, if anything, this principle demands beyond the other requirements of justice. Free time, on this account, might be an important domain of human life, but it is likely not one that a theory of justice must treat as a “central issue.”5
Leisure as a Primary Good
The only other notable treatment of leisure within theories of distributive justice—Rawls’s consideration of leisure as a primary good—is not in fact directly about leisure. That is, Rawls suggests that leisure could be added to the index of social primary goods (the metric used to compare individuals’ social and economic advantages) neither because leisure is an important good nor because the distribution of leisure is a relevant component of the distribution of social advantage. Instead, Rawls proposes recognizing leisure as a primary good only as one possible way of remedying a flaw he perceived in his original theory, that is, that the theory did not sufficiently incorporate the expectation that all citizens should work.
In the first statement of his theory of justice, “justice as fairness,” Rawls addresses neither leisure nor a work expectation.6 He proposes that inequalities in social and economic advantages ought to be distributed so that they are to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged (the difference principle), and that the relevant metric for determining advantages is an index of primary goods. The index consists in a subset of all social primary goods, and includes income and wealth and the powers and prerogatives of office. When the difference principle and the index are so formulated, absent some further clarification, an implication is that those who do not work and do not earn an income, even if they willingly do not do so, qualify as among the least advantaged and thus require public support. This implication was first pressed on Rawls by the economist R. A. Musgrave, who argued that the theory as formulated “favors those with a high preference for leisure,” including “recluses, saints, and (nonconsulting) scholars.” Rawls accepted the force of Musgrave’s critique and in his initial reply and subsequent elaborations considered how to ensure that those who elected not to work did not qualify as among the least advantaged.7
It is in this context that Rawls considered adding leisure to the index of primary goods. Specifically, he proposed that “twenty-four hours less a standard working day might be included in the index as leisure,” so that “those who are unwilling to work would have a standard working day of extra leisure, and this extra leisure itself would be stipulated as equivalent to the index of primary goods of the least advantaged,” to the effect that those who choose not to work do not count as the least advantaged. Rawls consistently maintained that those “who surf all day off Malibu” must somehow support themselves and cannot live off public funds, and that adding leisure to the index is one way of ensuring this result.8
It is worth stressing that Rawls never contended that leisure ought to be included in the index, only that doing so was one possible strategy among others to ensure that all “do their part in sharing the burdens of social life.” Rawls did not discuss leisure’s importance or its distribution, and indeed his willingness to include leisure in the index was apparently not prompted by a concern for either (aside from his opposition to supporting the leisure of surfers with welfare). Instead, Rawls argued that leisure ought to be added to the index of primary goods only if it would be “the best way to express the idea that all citizens are to do their part in society’s cooperative work.” By implication, if including leisure in the index would not be the best way to incorporate a work expectation, then leisure ought not be given that status and another strategy ought to be pursued. (One such alternative strategy that Rawls suggests is simply “to assume that everyone works a standard working day.”) Far from constituting an endorsement of Walzer’s claim that the distribution of free time is a central concern of distributive justice, Rawls’s willingness to recognize leisure as a primary good is in fact only instrumental to grounding a work expectation.9
A Human Right to Leisure
Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights holds that “everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.” On its face, this recognition of a human right to leisure seems to undermine the contention that leisure has been neglected by contemporary theories of justice, for if anything does, the canonization of a fundamental interest as a human right seems to indicate the widespread acceptance of that right as a fundamental principle of justice. In fact, however, Article 24 is widely criticized and even mocked; it is, indeed, “mirth-producing.” One recent commentator summarizes the usual treatment of the human right to leisure by noting that though “it is an official affirmation by a highly respected international organization, almost everyone has regarded it as suspect.”10
Some who reject the human right to leisure also reject all of the “second generational” human rights to economic and social conditions that are recognized by the declaration. Maurice Cranston, for instance, argues that only fundamental political and civil rights ought to be recognized as human rights because going further and recognizing economic and social rights effectively devalues the currency of human rights, and in pressing this critique Cranston singles out the right to holidays with pay as particularly objectionable. Even those who accept economic and social rights as justifiable human rights, however, and who endorse many of the other second generational rights in the declaration, often find Article 24 a stroke too far. Allen Buchanan, for instance, advocates a human right to “resources for subsistence” but rejects the right to leisure as one of the “more dubious putative economic rights.” Buchanan captures the widespread dismissal of Article 24 when he refers to the right to holidays with pay as “notorious” and “pretty obvious[ly] … not necessary for a decent human life.”11
Though the right to leisure is widely rejected as a proper or genuine human right, it must be noted that Article 24 is not without its defenders. Jeremy Waldron, for one, criticizes those who dismiss the right to leisure, arguing that “in the history of labor’s struggle with capital,” the attempt to secure limitations on working hours “has been a constant and desperate theme, and anyone who denigrates its urgency simply doesn’t know what he is talking about.” Although Waldron offers a forceful argument against any dismissal of the right to leisure out of hand as unjustified, his remarks are limited to that aim and he does not provide a further positive account of why leisure ought to be recognized as a human right or what the recognition of such a right would entail. Despite the modesty of Waldron’s position, his defense is perhaps the right’s strongest expression of support.12
2.2. LIBERAL PROCEDURALISM AND SPECIFIC GOODS
Apart from these three treatments, liberal egalitarians have almost entirely ignored the distribution of leisure, their engagement with the subject limited to only passing references. Though ultimately mistaken, the cursory attention the subject has received is not entirely unwarranted given how leisure has been standardly conceptualized. That is, leisure has been understood as a specific good, and on the liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice, the distribution of such specific goods is presumptively not a proper object of concern. Thus, when leisure is understood in this way, theorists of distributive justice are prima facie not wrong to disregard leisure.
The liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice derives from liberal egalitarianism’s two central commitments: to both individual freedom of choice and some degree of equality in the distribution of society’s benefits. If a society subscribed only to a liberal principle of justice, without any concern for realizing some degree of equality in the distribution of advantages either as individuals begin life or throughout their lives, given the inequalities in individual’s talents, characters, and backgrounds, the distribution of benefits in the society predictably would be highly unequal. Conversely, if a society held only an egalitarian principle of justice, with no concern for respecting individual freedom, the most efficient and effective way to realize an equal distribution of benefits among the society’s members likely would be to centrally distribute shares irrespective of individuals’ choices. The basic solution to resolving this central tension is liberal proceduralism.
Liberal proceduralism is best understood in contrast to its alternative, which, following the economist James Tobin, can be labeled “specific egalitarianism.”13 Say a society has a highly unequal distribution of food, with some people having an abundance and others having little. The specific egalitarian response to this inequality in food among the society’s members is to redistribute food so that all have the same amount or, more plausibly, that all have enough. The specific egalitarian would achieve this result by directly altering the distribution of food, either by distributing food through public kitchens or pantries or by distributing food stamps. The liberal proceduralist, by contrast, would respond to the inequality in the distribution of food by examining the underlying distribution of income and wealth in the society. If the unequal distribution of food results from an inequality in the distribution of income and wealth, the liberal proceduralist response is to remedy that objectionable inequality in income and wealth through general taxation and transfer measures rather than to directly address the inequality in the distribution of food. If instead the unequal distribution of food does not result from any objectionable inequality in the distribution of income and wealth (but rather, say, from differences in individuals’ preferences), the liberal proceduralist will be untroubled by that inequality. Thus, whereas the specific egalitarian is primarily concerned with inequalities in specific goods and aims to redress those inequalities directly, the general egalitarian is primarily concerned with inequalities in resources (like income and wealth) and seeks to remedy those inequalities in resources rather than in specific goods.
The liberal proceduralist approach is illustrated by an example drawn from Ronald Dworkin’s theory of “equality of resources.” Imagine that a number of shipwreck survivors wash ashore on a deserted island rich in natural resources.14 The castaways are all equally talented and endowed—equal in strength, intelligence, skills, perseverance, attentiveness, and so on. Faced with the prospect of how to divide up the natural resources of the island among themselves, the new immigrants (for rescue is unlikely) decide to divide the resources equally since none has any prior claim. To divide the island’s resources equally, the immigrants distribute among themselves an equal number of clamshells to each and then hold an auction for different plots of land. Though the immigrants are equally talented, they nonetheless have different preferences, and they use their clamshells to select different plots of land in accordance with their preferences: some select smaller, beachfront plots and others larger, inland plots; some select remote, fertile plots and others central, rocky plots; and so on. With the different plots thusly distributed, the immigrants then decide to use them differently: some choose to work long hours fishing or gardening while others choose to spend most of their hours swimming or sunbathing; one with a flat plot erects a tennis court, another with a central plot makes a kitchen, and a third with a wooded plot builds furniture; and so forth. The immigrants, retaining their clamshell currency, then trade with each other for the various products and services they each can provide. After the initial auction and their different choices and trades, the immigrants’ lives all look rather different: some have few possessions but a great deal of rest and relaxation, while others have abundant possessions but a great deal of long and hard work. Though the castaways began with equal shares of “resources” (both talents and clamshells), after a period of time they end up with different bundles of “specific goods” (both possessions and lifestyles). According to Dworkin’s theory of equality of resources, given these facts alone, the resulting distribution of specific goods on the island is just.
Different theories might instead find the distribution on the island unjust, on the basis of these or additional facts, and especially once one adds the inevitabilities of illness, children, natural disasters, and so forth, and accordingly prescribe some later redistribution of clamshells. Nonetheless, Dworkin’s island story provides a clear example of the liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice: rather than focus on and directly intervene in the distribution of specific goods, the liberal proceduralist targets the distribution of resources and leaves the distribution of specific goods to individual choices mediated through market mechanisms.
Dworkin’s island example also provides a basis for drawing a more careful distinction between the categories of “resources” and “specific goods”.15 Resources are the “inputs” that are generally necessary to pursue one’s conception of the good, whatever it may be. (I use conception of the good in the broad sense of a plan of life, idea of the good life, or even preferred lifestyle.16) Resources may be divided into various subcategories, including material resources (e.g., money or property), personal resources (e.g., intelligence, strength, or a work ethic), and “opportunity” resources (that is, the legal rights and protections or social conditions that allow one to pursue one’s conception of the good, e.g., freedom of movement or a functioning labor market).
Specific goods are the particular components that are part of one’s particular conception of the good. Specific goods too can be divided into subcategories, including material goods (e.g., food, a plot of land, a tennis racket), “experiential” goods (e.g., tennis playing, friendship), and “social” goods (e.g., public parks, a community of tennis players). The use of “goods” does not, accordingly, refer strictly to goods as material commodities, as things of value, or as privately held entities, but more broadly to any particular object or experience that contributes to or constitutes one’s particular conception of the good. To take an example, if one’s conception of the good involves bicycling, then time spent bicycling, access to a bicycle, and bicycle lanes might be the specific goods that are part of one’s conception of the good, whereas money to buy a bicycle, freedom of movement, and functioning commodity markets might be the resources that are necessary to pursue one’s conception of the good.
Note that the distinction between specific goods and resources is not that the latter are instrumental to pursuing one’s conception of the good, whereas the former are intrinsic to one’s conception of the good. Resources are instrumental to the pursuit of one’s conception of the good, but so too may specific goods be: as in the example, both freedom of movement and bicycle lanes are instrumental to the pursuit of one’s conception of the good, though the former is a resource and the latter a specific good. Instead, the relevant distinction is that specific goods are the particular goods that one requires to pursue one’s particular conception of the good, whereas resources are the all-purpose means that one generally requires to pursue one’s conception of the good, whatever it may be. Unless one’s particular plan of life involves bicycling, bicycle lanes are generally not instrumental to the pursuit of one’s conception of the good, whereas freedom of movement is generally instrumental to the pursuit of one’s conception of the good, whatever it may be. It must also be noted that the boundaries between resources and specific goods are not always sharply defined. If, for instance, bicycling were the predominant mode of transport in a given society, bicycle lanes might be more properly regarded as resources.
The liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice is, then, to redress inequalities by focusing on the background distribution of resources rather than the resulting distribution of specific goods. Liberal proceduralism is justified broadly on the values of individual freedom of choice and personal autonomy. By providing individuals with the resources they require to pursue their conceptions of the good, whatever they are, rather than with the specific goods that are necessary to pursue only some conceptions of the good, the state gives individuals wider latitude to direct and lead their own lives as they see fit. More specifically, the liberal values of individual freedom and personal autonomy ground three distinct principles—the principle of anti-paternalism, the principle of non-perfectionism, and the principle of neutrality—each of which provides reason to favor liberal proceduralism over specific egalitarianism. Though the values of individual freedom and personal autonomy do not necessarily justify these three principles, and though these three principles do not necessarily dictate liberal proceduralism, nonetheless these liberal values and the three principles do standardly support general over specific egalitarianism.17
The liberal commitment to individual freedom, specifically to respect an individual’s judgment over how to conduct her own life and affairs, grounds a principle of anti-paternalism. Following judgment-based definitions of paternalism, a state action is paternalistic when it is justified by the view that the state’s judgment about how one should run one’s life is superior to one’s own judgment.18 According to the principle of anti-paternalism, a state action with a paternalist motive or justification is presumptively impermissible. The justification of particular instances of specific egalitarianism need not be paternalist: for instance, if the only way for the state to solve a collective action problem is to provide a specific good (e.g., open green space) directly, rather than by providing all citizens with the all-purpose resources to procure that specific good, the justification for the state’s action is not paternalist. Nonetheless, the justification of specific egalitarianism does often depend on paternalistic motives, as, for instance, when the state provides the hungry with food stamps rather than with money to purchase food because it believes its judgment is (or is likely to be) better than the recipient’s judgment about how best to spend the money. More important, liberal proceduralism necessarily involves the state not substituting its superior judgment for an individual’s own judgment about how to conduct her own affairs. Thus, the principle of anti-paternalism provides a presumptive reason to favor the liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice.
The same commitment to respecting an individual’s own judgment about how best to live his life also grounds a principle of non-perfectionism. Perfectionist state actions encourage citizens to pursue ways of life that the state holds to be valuable or good, or, alternately, discourage citizens from pursuing ways of life that are held to be worthless or bad.19 The principle of non-perfectionism holds that state actions that are justified on the basis of perfectionist considerations (that is, judgments about better or worse ways of life) are impermissible. Again, often instances of specific egalitarianism are justified on perfectionist grounds, as, for instance, when the state provides individuals with access to the fine arts because it holds that a life that includes the fine arts is better than one that does not. (Though, again too, instances of specific egalitarianism that could be justified on perfectionist grounds need not in fact be perfectionist if they are justified on other grounds, as, for example, if the fine arts are subsidized as part of a broad public works program to counter unemployment.) Though some instances of specific egalitarianism may be proscribed by the principle of non-perfectionism, more significantly, the liberal proceduralist approach is necessarily not perfectionist. If the state provides one with all-purpose resources that one can use to pursue any conception of the good, without any concern for the value of the conception of the good that one might hold, the state is not acting on the basis of perfectionist considerations.20 Again then, the principle of non-perfectionism provides a presumptive reason in favor of liberal proceduralism.
Third, and finally, the liberal value of personal autonomy grounds a principle of neutrality. The state acts non-neutrally, following the conception of neutrality of treatment, when it acts in a way that is more accommodating to some conceptions of the good than others, to the effect that individuals with the disadvantaged conceptions of the good are denied the same opportunities that individuals with the advantaged conceptions of the good enjoy, all else equal, to pursue their values and commitments. The principle of neutrality requires that the state not act in such a way that is more or less accommodating of some conceptions of the good than others. The state, on this view, does not violate the principle of neutrality when it provides equal “inputs” (rules, mechanisms, resources, or goods) for all conceptions of the good, by enforcing a set of general rules, by providing resources that contribute to all or almost all conceptions of the good, or by providing different specific goods for different conceptions of the good in an evenhanded way.21
Though it is in principle possible to achieve neutrality of treatment by providing different specific goods for different conceptions of the good in equal measure (and though it may be necessary to achieve neutrality in this way in some instances), specific egalitarianism is, in practice and in general, the most difficult way to satisfy neutrality of treatment. It requires the state to assess the range of contending conceptions of the good, to then determine which goods to provide, and finally to assess how to provide those goods in an evenhanded way, a task that may in some cases be practically impossible. Instead, the other two ways of achieving neutrality of treatment—enforcing a set of general rules or providing resources that are valuable to all or nearly all conceptions of the good—are both, when available, more straightforward ways to satisfy neutrality and both are forms of liberal proceduralism. Thus, the principle of neutrality, too, provides a presumptive reason to favor the liberal proceduralist approach to distributive justice.
Though it is possible to override the presumptive case in favor of liberal proceduralism, grounded in the principles of anti-paternalism, non-perfectionism, and neutrality, by providing a special justification for a given specific good, the default approach is to address the distribution of all-purpose resources rather than the distribution of specific goods. Because, as I will now show, leisure has been standardly understood as a specific good rather than as a resource, it is therefore not surprising that leisure has generally been neglected by liberal theories of justice.
2.3 LEISURE AS A SPECIFIC GOOD
There are, broadly stated, three ways that leisure has standardly been conceptualized by political philosophers, and on each conception leisure is a specific good: leisure as time engaged in contemplation, leisure as time engaged in recreational activities, and leisure as time not engaged in paid work.
Leisure as Time Engaged in Contemplation
Though the latter two conceptions are the more common understandings today, the first—Aristotle’s classical conception of leisure as contemplation—is the most philosophically sophisticated.22 Aristotle conceives of leisure (schole) as activities that are done “for their own sake”—the intrinsically valuable pursuits in which one finds human excellence and happiness.23 He identifies as not leisure (ascholia) all those things that are done “for the sake of other things,” because they are “deemed necessary” for instrumental reasons. The activities Aristotle describes as not leisure, as they are done for the sake of instrumental reasons, can be put into three categories. First, those activities that are done for man’s material sustenance and comfort, to satisfy the “necessaries of life,” like work and business, are not leisure. In a phrase Aristotle repeats, just as war must be “for the sake of peace,” so “business [must be] for the sake of leisure.”24 Second, play, recreation, and other amusements are not leisure, for if play were leisure, “then play would be the end of life.” Instead, play is done to relieve the toil of work: “he who is hard at work has need of relaxation, and play gives relaxation.” Play and other “amusements” are, in this way, like “medicines” to obtain “rest” and “relaxation.”25 Third, the activities of politics and ruling are not strictly leisure because they are necessary as a means to attain happiness for one’s city, and not an end in themselves.26 Though citizens require leisure, politics itself is not properly a leisure activity.27
The activities associated with leisure include, in the strictest sense, only philosophical contemplation—the “activity of study” which “aims at no end apart from itself.” Aristotle does, however, also permit that music, properly undertaken, can be leisurely, so long as it is not done primarily “for the sake of pleasure” but instead for “intellectual enjoyment.” Broadening the range of leisure activities from only philosophy to also include music allows for leisure to be something that all citizens could enjoy.28
Aristotle’s conception of leisure (and its neo-Aristotelian interpretations) must be categorized as a specific good. Because Aristotle’s conception associates leisure with particular activities, like philosophical contemplation or music, that are identified as intrinsically valuable by a perfectionist theory of human excellence, it describes leisure in such a way that it is properly regarded as a particular component of a particular conception of the good.
Leisure as Time Engaged in Recreational Activities
The second standard conception of leisure—leisure as time engaged in recreational activities—accords much more closely with contemporary usage, but has also received much less sustained development by political philosophers. On this view, leisure is the time when one is engaged in “recreational” activities, defined broadly as activities that are typically pursued in one’s society for the sake of entertainment, enjoyment, or relaxation, often denoted by the appendage of “for pleasure,” as in “reading for pleasure.” This conception of leisure—more often employed by sociologists and historians—is occasionally suggested by theorists of distributive justice with references to “leisure activities” and “leisure pursuits.”29 Its most notable articulation is in Martha Nussbaum’s list of central human capabilities as the capability of “play,” defined as “being able to laugh, to play, to enjoy recreational activities.”30
Though not necessarily wedded to a particular theory of human excellence like Aristotle’s conception of leisure, leisure as time engaged in recreational activities is, on the liberal proceduralist approach, still appropriately identified as a specific good. Time engaged in recreational activities is a particular component of some people’s particular conceptions of the good but not others’, and people prefer to spend more or less time engaged in such activities. On Nussbaum’s capabilities theory, the state ought to provide only the capability (that is, the opportunity) to engage in recreational activities, and not directly provide or promote time engaged in recreational activities. Accordingly, Nussbaum clarifies that “a person who has opportunities for play can always choose a workaholic life.”31 Yet, on the liberal proceduralist approach, it is unwarranted for the state to promote the capability to engage in this particular functioning, rather than the capability, more generally, to pursue one’s conception of the good, whatever it is.32
For the state to provide or otherwise promote time engaged in recreational activities is, absent an intervening justification, to violate the non-perfectionist, anti-paternalist, and neutrality principles. While it may be easier to provide an overriding justification for this conception of leisure than for Aristotle’s (on, for instance, the grounds of providing public goods), leisure understood as time engaged in recreational activities is nonetheless a specific good that, on the liberal proceduralist approach, presumptively ought to be distributed in accordance with the individual choices of citizens equipped with the necessary all-purpose resources to pursue such activities.33
Leisure as Time Not Engaged in Paid Work
Of the three standard conceptions of leisure, by far the most common within liberal theories of justice is time not engaged in paid work. This is the conception employed both by Dworkin and Rawls, and other theorists, following in their steps, have almost universally adopted their conception of leisure as time not engaged in paid work. Given that Dworkin’s theory of distributive justice takes a stylized market as its foundation and that it was an economist who first pressed Rawls to address leisure, it is perhaps not surprising that their conception of leisure—and thereby that of liberal theorists of justice generally—follows the textbook economic definition and model of leisure.
On the simple neoclassical model of the labor market, leisure is defined as all time when one is not engaged in income-earning market work.34 Leisure, on this view, is defined strictly in opposition to paid work: whereas market work is income-earning, leisure is income-consuming, either directly (through income expenditure) or indirectly (through the opportunity cost of forgone income). According to the textbook model of “labor-leisure choice,” individual workers choose to allot their time to either paid work or to leisure in accordance with their preferences, specifically in accordance with their preferences for the intrinsic and extrinsic benefits of work relative to those of leisure. As individuals with diverse tastes and circumstances, individual workers (or potential workers) have different preferences for how much time they wish to spend engaged in paid work relative to leisure, and they select their hours of paid work in accordance with their diverse income-leisure preferences. In short, individual workers face a “trade-off between work and leisure,” and can, in accordance with their preferences, choose to spend a given period of time to earn income through paid work or to forgo additional income and “purchase” or “consume” leisure.35
Most liberal theorists adopt this standard economic model of leisure in two important respects. First, most basically, they conceive of leisure on the economic terms as time not engaged in paid work.36 Second, and just as significantly, they follow the textbook model’s treatment of leisure as a good that individuals can “purchase” or not, and in varying quantities, in accordance with their preferences. Nearly every reference to leisure in liberal theories of justice is in the context of discussions of citizens’ “income/leisure preferences” or their preferences with respect to “income-leisure trade-offs.” Dworkin refers to citizens’ decisions to “consume leisure” or to “purchase leisure,” and G. A. Cohen suggests that “we could think of income and leisure on the model of apples and oranges.”37
This second point of congruence between the textbook economic model and the usual liberal conception of leisure is particularly noteworthy because it explicitly highlights how leisure is regarded on this view as a specific good. How much leisure one enjoys is a particular component of one’s particular conception of the good, and leisure is, as such, a specific good that one can choose in accordance with one’s preferences. Different conceptions of the good include different amounts of leisure: one might be a leisure lover or a work lover, or, as Dworkin more pointedly expresses it, an “ant” or a “grasshopper.” Though it may be relevant whether one chooses leisure over paid work in determining what one’s fair claim to resources is (as in Rawls’s discussion of leisure), for the state to be concerned with providing or promoting leisure, in itself, is contrary to the non-perfectionist, anti-paternalist, and neutrality principles, for leisure is a specific good that is of varying importance to different conceptions of the good. Indeed, the argument that would, in practice, most readily provide citizens with opportunities for leisure—Philippe Van Parijs’s argument for an unconditional basic income—in fact relies on the premise that the state ought to be neutral between leisure-loving and work-loving conceptions of the good.38
2.4 FROM LEISURE TO FREE TIME
As these various conceptions show, leisure has been defined both negatively, as the time when one is not engaged in particular activities, and positively, as the time when one is engaged in other activities. Moreover, the particular activities that leisure has been associated with, either as the synonym or the antonym—paid work, play, and philosophical contemplation—seem to exist on entirely different registers. Yet, despite the diversity of the existing conceptions and their apparent dissimilarities, a feature that unites them all is the opposition to some idea of necessity. On each of these conceptions, leisure is the time when one is not engaged in activities because one must or has to, but instead because one can or wants to.
Part of what distinguishes paid work, for instance, from leisure is that paid work is an activity that one must do in order to earn a living, whereas leisure is the time when one can engage in other pursuits. Similarly, part of what associates leisure with recreation is that recreational activities are those one chooses to do because one wants to do them, not because one has to. When we think of the professional movie critic at the cinema on assignment, this otherwise paradigmatic recreational activity—going to the movies—does not seem so leisurely. Even the Aristotelian conception of leisure as philosophical contemplation depends on this dichotomy: leisure is associated with contemplation because it is done for its own sake, unlike those activities that are done because they are instrumentally necessary to one’s ends.
To be sure, on almost all conceptions, leisure may be distinguished from its opposite by additional features as well. Paid work, for instance, might be further distinguished from leisure because paid work, unlike leisure, is performed under the thumb of another. Or, in the same way, perhaps recreational activities qualify as leisure not only because one wants to do them, but also because one does them with pleasure. Still, across all existing conceptions, leisure is in some way defined in opposition to necessity. Certainly, too, the operational idea of necessity varies across conceptions: the reason paid work is necessary is not the same as the reasons why play or contemplation are not. Nonetheless, the common core of the concept is its opposition to necessity.
In Chapter 3, I show that, apart from the various ways that leisure has been understood as a specific good, it is also possible to reconceptualize leisure as a resource—as the resource of free time. Putting the antithesis to necessity at the core, I argue on behalf of recognizing free time, defined as time that is not committed to meeting one’s own or one’s dependents’ basic needs, as a resource, for citizens require such time to pursue their conceptions of the good, whatever they may be.
Before turning to the task of reconceptualizing leisure as a resource in Chapter 3, it is worth emphasizing that the standard liberal egalitarian approach holds only that, absent some special intervening justification, the state ought to address the distribution of resources rather than specific goods. That is, the standard liberal egalitarian approach provides only a presumptive position in favor of general over specific egalitarianism. This presumptive case could be defeated for a given specific good by providing an argument about why the distribution of that particular specific good ought to be addressed directly. The types of special justifications that could be offered are myriad: there are possible arguments from, at least, collective action, efficiency, social equality, vulnerability, and exploitation.
It is not my aim to reject the possibility of providing special justifications of this type to establish that theories of distributive justice ought to address the distribution of leisure as a specific good. There are many legitimate reasons why theories of distributive justice may be concerned with the distribution of leisure, even as a specific good. Arguments for maximum hours laws, for instance—one of the most powerful ways to affect the distribution of leisure—can and have been defended on the grounds that they reduce unemployment, protect workers from coercion, preserve family life, and are a warranted case of paternalism to preserve the health of workers. While I do not necessarily endorse such arguments, I also do not reject them: they are simply alternative strategies not pursued here.
Instead, my aim is to provide a more fundamental argument for why free time must be incorporated into a theory of distributive justice. If free time is reconceptualized as a resource, not only can one argue, if some special justification applies, that theories of justice ought to address free time, but instead one must accept, unless there is some argument to the contrary, that our theories of justice must address free time. By demonstrating how leisure can be reconceptualized from a specific good to the resource of free time, my approach provides a more comprehensive and fundamental case for recognizing free time as a distinct object of distributive justice.
1 See 1.4 for a survey of this research. I refer to liberal theories of distributive justice and liberal egalitarianism interchangeably. I use “liberal” and “egalitarian” broadly: “liberals” need only give special priority to a set of individual freedoms and “egalitarians” need only value some type of social or distributive equality.
2 This statement of liberal proceduralism does privilege a “resourcist” theory of distributive justice, but it is, as I discuss below, not inconsistent with theories that use other distributive metrics.
3 How justice applies to work is also relatively neglected, though work has received more attention than leisure or free time. In treatments of just work, leisure is sometimes suggested as possible compensation for a lack of meaningful work, e.g., Russell Muirhead, Just Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 174. See also Richard J. Arneson, “Meaningful Work and Market Socialism,” Ethics 97 (1987): 517–45; Samuel Arnold, “The Difference Principle at Work,” Journal of Political Philosophy 20 (2012): 94–118; Nien-Hê Hsieh, “Justice in Production,” Journal of Political Philosophy 16 (2008): 72–100; James Bernard Murphy, The Moral Economy of Labor: Aristotelian Themes in Economic Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993); Adina Schwartz, “Meaningful Work,” Ethics 92 (1982): 634–46; Lucas Stanczyk, “Productive Justice,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 40 (2012): 144–64.
4 Philippe Van Parijs’s argument for a universal basic income—with the implication that one could spend all of one’s days in idleness, surfing and the like—may seem like a relevant consideration of leisure and it is indeed indirectly related to leisure, but it is not, as I discuss below, actually concerned with the distribution of leisure itself.
5 Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice: A Defense of Pluralism and Equality (New York: Basic Books, 1983), 187, 185, 196. Perhaps for these reasons, Walzer’s claim that the distribution of free time is a central issue of distributive justice has not been endorsed or developed. As one indication of the silence that has met Walzer’s treatment of free time, a prominent edited volume dedicated to Spheres of Justice, with essays by many of the central figures in the distributive justice literature, contains only two references to free time, even though one of those references describes Walzer’s discussion of free time as “one of the best chapters in the book.” Brian Barry, “Spherical Justice and Global Injustice,” in Pluralism, Justice, and Equality, ed. David Miller and Michael Walzer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 73. The other reference is in Amy Gutmann’s essay “Justice Across the Spheres,” 112. Both Barry and Gutmann discuss free time to make more general points; neither endorses Walzer’s contention that free time is a central issue of distributive justice.
6 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, original ed. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 1971).
7 R. A. Musgrave, “Maximin, Uncertainty, and the Leisure Trade-Off,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 88 (1974): 632; John Rawls, “Reply to Alexander and Musgrave,” Quarterly Journal of Economics 88 (1974): 654. Rawls returned to the question in “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 17 (1988): 257 and in Justice as Fairness: A Restatement, ed. Erin Kelly (Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2001), 179. The revised version of “The Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good” in Political Liberalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 173–211 includes modest revisions of the discussion of leisure from the earlier version of the article (at 181–82).
8 Rawls, “Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good” (1988), 257n7. Rawls consistently uses the example of the Malibu surfer in his discussions of leisure (see also Justice as Fairness, 179, and “Priority of Right and Ideas of the Good” [1993], 181–82). Philippe Van Parijs recounts that when he and Rawls had a conversation about the issue in 1987, the Malibu surfer was the example to which they referred (Van Parijs, “Why Surfers Should Be Fed: The Liberal Case for an Unconditional Basic Income,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 20 [1991]: 101).
9 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 179. For helpful discussions of Rawls’s treatment of leisure, see Philippe Van Parijs, “Difference Principles,” in The Cambridge Companion to Rawls, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) and Real Freedom for All: What (if Anything) Can Justify Capitalism? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 92–102; Thomas W. Pogge, Realizing Rawls (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), 198–200; Samuel Freeman, Rawls (London: Routledge, 2007), 229–30; and Kristi A. Olson, “Leisure,” in The Cambridge Rawls Lexicon, ed. Jon Mandle and David A. Reidy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 433–34.
10 Sidney Hook, “Reflections on Human Rights,” in Philosophy and Public Policy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1980), 92, cited in Mathias Risse, “A Right to Work? A Right to Leisure? Labor Rights as Human Rights,” Law & Ethics of Human Rights 3 (2009): 1n4; Carl Wellman, The Proliferation of Rights: Moral Progress or Empty Rhetoric (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1999), 2.
11 Maurice Cranston imagines that recognizing a right to leisure might lead people to say, for instance, “It would be a splendid thing … for everyone to have holidays with pay, a splendid thing for everyone to have social security, a splendid thing to have fair trials, free speech, and the right to life—and one day, perhaps, all these beautiful ideals will be realized.” Cranston, “Are There Any Human Rights?,” Daedalus 112 (1983): 12. See also Cranston, “Human Rights, Real and Supposed,” in Political Theory and the Rights of Man, ed. D. D. Raphael (London: Macmillan, 1967), 43–53 and What Are Human Rights? (London: Bodley Head, 1973). Allen Buchanan, Justice, Legitimacy, and Self-Determination: Moral Foundations for International Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 160, 129.
12 Jeremy Waldron, Liberal Rights: Collected Papers, 1981–1991 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 13. See also Charles R. Beitz, The Idea of Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 61; James Griffin, On Human Rights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 16, 180; David L. Richards and Benjamin C. Carbonetti, “Worth What We Decide: A Defense of the Right to Leisure,” International Journal of Human Rights 17 (2013): 329–49; Risse, “A Right to Work?,” 34; Mathias Risse, On Global Justice (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 245–60.
13 Tobin labels liberal proceduralism “general egalitarianism.” Tobin, “On Limiting the Domain of Inequality,” Journal of Law and Economics 13 (1970): 263–77. For a discussion of general and specific egalitarianism, see Debra Satz, Why Some Things Should Not Be For Sale: The Moral Limits of Markets (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 76–84.
14 The island example is a simplified version of the one Dworkin employs in “Equality of Resources” (1981) in Sovereign Virtue: The Theory and Practice of Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000).
15 The distinction between resources and specific goods fits most readily with a “resourcist” theory of distributive justice—that is, one that uses resources themselves as the metric for assessing individuals’ distributive shares. Other theories use different metrics, but nonetheless still rely on the distinction between resources and specific goods; they simply use different metrics to assess individuals’ distributive shares. A theory that, for instance, uses capabilities as the relevant metric focuses on individuals’ capabilities to function as democratic citizens as the relevant point of distributive concern, but these capabilities are themselves determined by the resources individuals possess or can access, and unjust distributions of capabilities are addressed by distributing or otherwise providing individuals with the required resources. The same pattern holds for Richard Arneson’s metric of opportunity for welfare and G. A. Cohen’s metric of access to advantage. See Elizabeth Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999): 287–337 and “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice,” in Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities, ed. Harry Brighouse and Ingrid Robeyns (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 81–101; Arneson, “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare,” Philosophical Studies 56 (1989): 77–93 and “Equality of Opportunity for Welfare Defended and Recanted,” Journal of Political Philosophy 7 (1999): 488–97; and Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” in G.A. Cohen, On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, and Other Essays in Political Philosophy, ed. Michael Otsuka. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 3–43. The theories of distributive justice to which this distinction does not readily apply are those that do not follow the standard liberal proceduralist approach.
16 Though some of these terms suggest that one’s conception of the good must depend on a rational or coherent plan, or a “unified conception of one’s overall purposes,” my use of the term does not depend on it having this strong meaning. For a discussion of this point, see Charles Larmore, “The Idea of a Life Plan,” Social Philosophy and Policy 16 (1999): 96–112.
17 An additional reason to favor liberal proceduralism is that it is often more efficient than specific egalitarianism. If efficiency is defined in terms of Pareto improvements, so that one state of affairs is more efficient than another if it improves the positions of some without making anyone else worse off, general egalitarianism often will be more efficient than specific egalitarianism in two ways. First, say someone who has little food is granted a food stamp, but that she would prefer to use the equivalent value of the food stamp on building a monument to her god (as in T. M. Scanlon’s classic example): giving her the equivalent value rather than the food stamp is more efficient in that it makes her better off without making anyone else worse off. Second, say she decides to trade her food stamp with someone else for its market value in money, thereby adding unnecessary transactions and their attendant costs to the market: again, giving her the equivalent value rather than the food stamp is more efficient in that it makes her and everyone else better off without making anyone worse off (assuming in both cases that no one is made worse off by having their preference to give food stamps rather than money unmet). Though the argument for liberal proceduralism from efficiency may carry some weight in a liberal theory of justice, it is the anti-paternalist, non-perfectionist, and neutrality principles that provide first-order reasons in favor of general egalitarianism. Scanlon, “Preferences and Urgency,” in The Difficulty of Tolerance: Essays in Political Philosophy, 70–83. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
18 Seana Valentine Shiffrin, “Paternalism, Unconscionability Doctrine, and Accommodation,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (2000): 218; Jonathan Quong, Liberalism without Perfection (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 80.
19 Joseph Raz, The Morality of Freedom (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 133.
20 Indeed, a test of whether something is a resource or a specific good is whether providing the thing in question favors a particular view of the good life or a particular way of living. Thus, when one criticizes Rawls’s primary good of income and wealth as favoring materialistic ways of life, the appropriate liberal proceduralist defense is to show that income and wealth are valuable whatever one’s conception of the good (and thereby a resource and not a specific good). For such critiques, see Adina Schwartz, “Moral Neutrality and Primary Goods,” Ethics 83 (1973): 294–307 and Michael Teitelman, “The Limits of Individualism,” Journal of Philosophy 69 (1972): 545–56. For such a defense, see Freeman, Rawls, 152–54.
21 Alan Patten, “Liberal Neutrality: A Reinterpretation and Defense,” Journal of Political Philosophy 20 (2011): 249–72. Neutrality of treatment is to be distinguished from its primary rivals, neutrality of intentions (or aims or justifications) and neutrality of effects (or outcomes). Neutrality of intentions is violated if the state adopts a policy with the aim of favoring a particular conception of the good or with a justification that involves valuing a particular conception of the good over others. Neutrality of effects is violated if the state adopts a policy that has the effect of making a particular conception of the good more successful than others. Because neutrality of intentions is, in the relevant respects, indistinguishable from the principle of non-perfectionism, and because neutrality of effects has similar implications but is widely rejected as too strong a requirement, I focus instead on neutrality of treatment.
22 For contemporary accounts informed by Aristotle’s account of leisure, see Josef Pieper, Leisure, the Basis of Culture, trans. Alexander Dru (New York: Pantheon Books, 1952); Sebastian De Grazia, Of Time, Work, and Leisure (1962; repr., New York: Vintage, 1994); and, more recently, Robert Skidelsky and Edward Skidelsky, How Much Is Enough? Money and the Good Life (New York: Other Press, 2012), 165–67.
23 Strictly speaking, Aristotle defines leisure as intrinsically valuable activities themselves, not the time in which one does such activities. This distinction is not significant for the present treatment, so, for the sake of consistency, I refer to the Aristotelian conception as the time when one is engaged in intrinsically valuable activities.
24 Aristotle, The Politics, in The Politics and Constitution of Athens, ed. Stephen Everson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 1333a29–1333b1, 1334a12–39, 1337b27–1338a14.
25 Politics, 1337b34–42; Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1999), 1176b7–1177a1. See Joseph Owens, “Aristotle on Leisure,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 11 (1981): 717.
26 “The actions of the politician … deny us leisure.” Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b13. For this position, see Carnes Lord, Education and Culture in the Political Thought of Aristotle (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982). Whether or not politics qualifies as intrinsically good and so as a leisure activity is disputed, as this question is part of a broader unresolved dispute about whether the life of the statesman is a good life or whether it is in conflict with the contemplative life. For the contrary position on politics as leisure, see, for instance, David J. Depew, “Politics, Music, and Contemplation in Aristotle’s Ideal State,” in A Companion to Aristotle’s Politics, ed. David Keyt and Fred D. Miller, Jr. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 346–80.
27 Politics, 1277b34–1278a23, 1328b40–1329a2.
28 Nicomachean Ethics, 1177b21; Politics, 1337b27–1338a23. See also Friedrich Solmsen, “Leisure and Play in Aristotle’s Ideal State,” Rheinisches Museum für Philologie 107 (1964): 217–18 and Richard Kraut, Aristotle: Political Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 197–201.
29 Anderson, “What Is the Point of Equality?,” 322; G. A. Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 212.
30 Martha C. Nussbaum, Women and Human Development: The Capabilities Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 78–80.
31 Ibid., 87.
32 For this reason, Nussbaum’s version of a capabilities theory does not fit squarely within the standard liberal proceduralist approach. Nussbaum argues that her approach is “very close” to Rawls’s use of primary goods, with the main difference being that her list of capabilities is longer and more definite than Rawls’s list of primary goods. Yet, Rawls’s list of primary goods is a set of all-purpose resources generally required for the functioning of citizens, whereas Nussbaum’s list of capabilities instead specifies a list of particular functionings. See Nussbaum, Women and Human Development, 88–89 for the argument about the similarity between her and Rawls’s approaches, and Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 168–73 for his treatment of capabilities, and Rawls, “Social Unity and Primary Goods,” in John Rawls: Collected Papers, ed. Samuel Freeman (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 359–87 for a discussion of how primary goods are the “necessary conditions for realizing the powers of moral personality and are all-purpose means for a sufficiently wide range of final ends” (367).
33 For a discussion of the public goods argument, see, for instance, Harry Brighouse, “Neutrality, Publicity, and State Funding of the Arts,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 24 (1995): 35–63, and Ronald Dworkin, “Can a Liberal State Support Art?,” in A Matter of Principle (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 221–33.
34 It is important to note that this model of the labor market is indeed the simple textbook model and that, as such, it lacks the complexity and qualifications of more sophisticated models of work hours employed by labor economists. Because some of the theoretical and empirical deviations from the simple neoclassical textbook model are significant to my argument, I discuss some of the features of the more sophisticated labor market models in Chapter 4. Here, however, the simple model is sufficient, for it is this textbook model that liberal theorists have employed in their treatments of leisure. For an illuminating (and, to the best of my knowledge, the only comprehensive) history of economic models of leisure, see John Alsworth Menefee, “The Economics of Leisure: The Evolution of the Labor-Leisure Tradeoff in Economic Doctrines” (PhD diss., Duke University, 1974).
35 George Borjas, Labor Economics, 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2016), 21–49; N. Gregory Mankiw, Principles of Economics, 7th ed. (Stamford, CT: Cengage Learning, 2015), 380.
36 See, for example, Joseph H. Carens, Equality, Moral Incentives, and the Market: An Essay in Utopian Politico-Economic Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 50, 147; Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 105, 211; Miriam Cohen Christofidis, “Talent, Slavery, and Envy,” in Dworkin and His Critics: with Replies by Dworkin, ed. Justine Burley (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004), 34; Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 329; Marc Fleurbaey, Fairness, Responsibility, and Welfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 101; Michael Otsuka, “Liberty, Equality, Envy, and Abstraction,” in Burley, Dworkin and His Critics, 71; Eric Rakowski, Equal Justice (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 107–19; Stuart White, “The Egalitarian Earnings Subsidy Scheme,” British Journal of Political Science 29 (1999): 604ff.; Philippe Van Parijs, “Equality of Resources versus Undominated Diversity,” in Burley, Dworkin and His Critics, 45; and Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, 196.
37 Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, 61; Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 89, 90; Cohen, Rescuing Justice and Equality, 110n53.
38 Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, 89; Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue, 329; Van Parijs, “Why Surfers Should Be Fed,” 102, 111–12. For a discussion of the Van Parijs neutrality argument for the basic income, see Simon Birnbaum, “Should Surfers Be Ostracized? Basic Income, Liberal Neutrality, and the Work Ethos,” Philosophy, Politics & Economics 10 (2011): 396–419.