PERSIO TINCANI

Giustizia, ingiustizia, sfortuna

N. 199

Summary - In this paper the author deals with the problem of misfortune from the point of view of a normative theory of justice. In particular, it is claimed that an unlucky event engenders an entitlement to assistance for its victims. The author first takes into account the view that the demand for security addressed to institutions is linked to the idea of causality: this, in terms of political justice, entails the necessity of identifying a liability. On this view, a boundary should be traced between injustice and misfortune: while events caused by human behaviour can he judged as either just or unjust, merely fortuitous ones cannot. This implies that victims ate entitled to compensation for damages due to unjust events, not for damages due to unlucky events.

The author argues that, despite the distinction between unjust and unlucky events, the entitlement to compensation arises in both cases. In the case of merely unlucky events, rather than following the logic of liability, the administration of justice follows a different principle: the author proposes calling this the "principle of assistance". According to this principle, every unlucky event worsening the living conditions of someone must be followed by a redistributive reallocation of resources. Unlike solidarity, the principle of assistance is a (meta-)rule of justice, that can be outlined starting from a re-reading of Rawls' second principle.

The author argues, then, that the victims of misfortune are entitled to a "right to assistance" that has a normative grounding.