Prioritarismus und Egalitarismus

English abstract: Prioritarianism and utilitarian egalitarianism are two approaches to welfare ethics which, as an improvement on utilitarianism, incorporate elements of distributive justice into the moral evaluation function: Prioritarianism values improvements for the disadvantaged more highly than improvements for those who are already well-off; and utilitarian egalitarianism rewards distributional equality by deducting from the total utility when evaluating unequal utility distributions. This chapter explains how these two forms of evaluation work and specifies their exact evaluation functions; it defines prioritarianism and egalitarianism, sets out justifications for them, compares the two systems and highlights their differences.