ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author begins by focusing upon John Rawls, because the author believes his work is the locus classicus of the ideas to be explored. The Formal Principle of Justice, taken in its bare abstractness, is unexceptionable. On one interpretation of his discussion of equal opportunity in A Theory of Justice, this is precisely what Rawls attempts to do. For convenient reference, let us call this the Expansive Instability Argument. The author begins where Rawls does, with a sketch of the development of the concept of equality of opportunity. He suggests that what bothers us about the situation of severely disabled persons, and what leads us toward a commitment to improving their opportunities through special allocations, is not the conviction that every lowering of life-prospects due to misfortune in the natural lottery requires social redress or compensation. Equal opportunity, under certain conditions, requires constraints on the uses of technologies for genetic enhancement.
