Entropic Justice: Redistributing Unchosen Suffering in Ideal Theory

This paper develops a novel principle of distributive justice oriented toward suffering rather than resources: the Entropic De-concentration Principle (EDP). The core argument proceeds from a widely shared intuition—that unchosen, destructive burdens should be shared when doing so prevents one person's collapse without imposing comparable collapse on others—and extends it from material effort to agency-destroying suffering. The paper introduces a counterfactual thought experiment: a technology capable of redistributing severe suffering into mild, sub-threshold costs distributed symmetrically across many persons. This heuristic device, situated within the tradition of ideal theory (Rawls, Parfit, Thomson), isolates the normative structure of our resistance to suffering-redistribution and tests whether that resistance can be principled or merely reflects conceptual inertia. The operative concept of suffering is functional-agential: not phenomenal qualia nor objective deprivation, but the systematic undermining of a subject's capacity for reflective endorsement, planning, and pursuit of self-authored goals. The threshold of moral concern is articulated through Nussbaum's capabilities framework: suffering crosses the decisive threshold when it renders central capabilities non-exercisable. The paper engages directly with deontological objections. Drawing on Nozick's side-constraints, Kamm's analysis of permissible harm, and Thomson's work on the stringency of rights, it argues that a categorical prohibition on symmetric, non-catastrophic redistribution cannot be derived from standard deontological premises. The right not to experience mild discomfort is less stringent than the right to maintain basic agential functioning. The resulting view—entropic justice—is explicitly anti-aggregative: it does not permit sacrificing one person's agency for aggregate welfare gains, but rather forbids allowing agency-destroying suffering to concentrate when de-concentration is available without sacrifice. The principle complements luck egalitarianism (Cohen, Dworkin, Arneson) by extending its logic from resources to suffering, while responding to Anderson's critique by restricting scope to brute-luck harms. Entropic justice reframes distributive theory: justice concerns not only who gets what, but also where suffering falls and whether its concentration is morally arbitrary.