Ageing without Ageism?

Conceptual
Puzzles and Policy Proposals Greg
Bognar (Editor)
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Ageing without Ageism?
Ageing without Ageism?
Conceptual Puzzles and Policy Proposals

Edited by
Greg Bognar
&
Axel Gosseries
 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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Acknowledgements

We are extremely grateful to colleagues who accepted to serve as referees for

the chapters of this volume, including Paula Gobbi, Soren Flinch Mitgaard, Holly
Lawford-Smith, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Jeffrey Moriarty, Pedro Pita Barros,
Daniel Sabbagh, Nenad Stojanovic, James Taylor, Pierre-Etienne Vandamme, and
Fabio Waltenberg. Many thanks also go to Dominic Byatt at Oxford University Press
for his support throughout the preparation of this book and to the OUP referees for
their very useful insights on our initial proposal.
The editors would like to acknowledge the financial support of the Grant Agency
of the Czech Academy of Sciences through a project on ‘Taking Age Discrimination
Seriously’ (grant ID: 17-26629S, PI: Axel Gosseries) awarded to the Institute of State
and Law of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Centre for Law and Public
Affairs (CeLAPA), created under subsidies for a long-term conceptual development
(RVO: 68378122).
Contents

List of Figures viii

List of Tables ix
List of Contributors x

Introduction 1
Greg Bognar and Axel Gosseries

PART I. CONCEPTUAL PUZZLES

1. Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong? 13

Katharina Berndt Rasmussen
2. Does the Badness of Disability Differ from that of Old Age? 28
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen
3. In Defence of Age-Differentiated Paternalism 41
Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen
4. Age and the Social Value of Risk Reduction: Three Perspectives 53
Matthew D. Adler
5. Can Egalitarians Justify Spending More on the Elderly? 71
Paul Bou-Habib
6. Age Limits and the Significance of Entire Lives Egalitarianism 82
Axel Gosseries
7. Age Universalism Will Benefit All (Ages) 94
Simon Birnbaum and Kenneth Nelson

PART II. POLICY PROPOSALS

8. ‘Let Them Be Children?’: Age Limits in Voting and
Conceptions of Childhood 115
Anca Gheaus
9. Age and the Voting–Driving Analogy 128
Alexandru Volacu
10. Empowering Future People by Empowering the Young? 143
Tyler M. John
 Contents vii

11. COVID-19, Age, and Rationing 159

Greg Bognar
12. Ageism in Assisted Reproduction 172
Francesca Minerva
13. An Education Resource Account for Early School Leavers 184
Andrée-Anne Cormier and Harry Brighouse
14. Differentiating Retirement Age to Compensate for
Health and Longevity Inequality? 199
Vincent Vandenberghe
15. Ageing in Place and Autonomy: Is the ‘Age-Friendly’ City
Initiative Too Elderly-Friendly? 214
Kim Angell
16. An Age-Based Delayed Housing Wealth Tax 229
Daniel Halliday
17. Two Types of Age-Sensitive Taxation 242
Manuel Sá Valente
18. An Age-Differentiated Tax on Bequests 254
Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere

Index 267
List of Figures

4.1 A prioritarian transformation function 57

7.1 Age-related profiles of social insurance income replacement (country group
averages 1990–2015) 101
7.2 Age-balance of income replacement in social insurance by type of generational
welfare contract in 18 OECD countries, 1990–2015 102
7.3 Income replacement in social insurance for three age-related social risks in
Japan, Norway, and Sweden, 1960–2015 103
14.1 Differentiated retirement ages equalizing (expected) ill health across and
within countries 206
14.2 Difficulty of differentiating ex post (importance of type-E and type-F errors).
The case of low-educated versus highly educated females aged 55–65 in
Germany (DEU), France (FRA), Belgium (BEL), and Poland (POL) 209
17.1 Standard and proposed distribution of income (full line) and tax rates (dotted
line) 247
List of Tables

1.1 Four forms of discrimination with age-related examples 20

4.1 Current-year incomes of the 35 groups 59
4.2 Utilitarian value of increase ∆p in current-year survival probability (relative to
utilitarian value of that increase for 80-year-old, low-income group) 61
4.3 CBA value of increase ∆p in current-year survival probability (relative to CBA
value of that increase for 80-year-old, low-income group) 63
4.4 Prioritarian value of increase ∆p in current-year survival probability (relative
to prioritarian value of that increase for 80-year-old, low-income group) 65
4.5 COVID-19 infection fatality risk (IFR) 66
4.6 Utilitarian social value of vaccination 67
4.7 CBA social value of vaccination 67
4.8 Prioritarian social value of vaccination 68
7.1 Type of generational profile in age-related social insurance and selected
outcomes in 18 OECD countries 104
7.A1 Variables included in the empirical analyses: Childhood risk category by
country, averages for the period 1990–2015 107
7.A2 Variables included in the empirical analyses: Working age risk category by
country, averages for the period 1990–2015 108
7.A3 Variables included in the empirical analyses: Old age risk category by country,
averages for the period 1990–2015 109
11.1 Four patients 162
14.1 Health items: Subjective health 203
14.2 Health items: Objective conditions 204
14.3 Differentiated retirement ages equalizing ill health (international reference =
67): Between- and within-country differentiation 207
List of Contributors
Matthew D. Adler, Richard A. Horvitz
Professor of Law and Professor of
Economics, Philosophy, and Public Policy,
Duke University
Kim Angell, Department of Philosophy,
UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Katharina Berndt Rasmussen, Department
of Philosophy, Stockholm University, and
Institute for Futures Studies
Simon Birnbaum, Department of Political
Science, Södertörn University
Greg Bognar, Department of Philosophy,
Stockholm University
Paul Bou-Habib, Department of
Government, University of Essex
Harry Brighouse, Department of
Philosophy, University of Wisconsin,
Madison
Andrée-Anne Cormier, Department of
Philosophy, York University, Glendon
College
Anca Gheaus, Department of Political
Science, Central European University
Axel Gosseries, Fonds de la Recherche
Scientifique (FNRS) and Hoover Chair in
Economic and Social Ethics, University of
Louvain (UCLouvain)
Daniel Halliday, School of Historical and
Philosophical Studies, University of
Melbourne
Tyler M. John, Department of Philosophy,
Rutgers University, New Brunswick
Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Centre for the
Experimental-Philosophical Study of
Discrimination (CEPDISC), Aarhus
University, and Department of Philosophy,
UiT The Arctic University of Norway
Francesca Minerva, Department of
Philosophy, University of Milan
Viki Møller Lyngby Pedersen, Centre for
the Experimental-Philosophical Study of
Discrimination (CEPDISC), Department of
Political Science, Aarhus University
Kenneth Nelson, Swedish Institute for
Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm
University
Pierre Pestieau, Université de Liège; Center
for Operational Research and Econometrics
(CORE, UCLouvain); Paris School of
Economics
Gregory Ponthiere, Hoover Chair in
Economic and Social Ethics, University of
Louvain (UCLouvain)
Manuel Sá Valente, Hoover Chair in
Economic and Social Ethics and Superior
Institute of Philosophy, University of
Louvain (UCLouvain)
Vincent Vandenberghe, Institute of
Economic and Social Research (IRES),
Louvain Institute of Data Analysis and
Modeling in Economics and Statistics
(LIDAM), University of Louvain
(UCLouvain)
Alexandru Volacu, Faculty of Business and
Administration, University of Bucharest
Introduction
Greg Bognar and Axel Gosseries

This book aims to contribute to the essential and timely discussion on age, ageism,
population ageing, and public policy. It attempts to demonstrate the breadth of the
challenges by covering a wide range of policy areas from health care to old-age
support, from democratic participation to education, from family to fiscal policy.
It bridges the distance between academia and public life by putting into dialogue
fresh philosophical analyses and new specific policy proposals. It approaches famil-
iar issues such as age discrimination, justice between age groups, and democratic
participation across the ages from novel perspectives.
Our societies continue to rely extensively on age criteria, despite the fact that con-
cern for age discrimination is not new. The US Age Discrimination in Employment
Act was adopted as far back as 1967. In Europe, age has been increasingly included in
anti-discrimination legislation over the past several decades. Legal scholars, sociolo-
gists, anthropologists, and other social scientists have long studied how age structures
our lives. Children studies and gerontology are vast and well-established fields of
scholarship. Yet, with few exceptions, practical philosophers have been less active
than researchers from other disciplines on the age front.1 This book aims especially
to contribute to filling this gap, in dialogue with other disciplines.
Two trends in particular render this a timely exercise. One is the ongoing process
of critically scrutinizing our societies through the prism of race, gender, disability,
and other categories. This calls for looking at whether age is different—whether it
is unique or, as it is sometimes put, ‘special’ from a normative perspective. Can this
explain that it tends to get less attention than other social categories? Should we worry
less about differential treatment on grounds of age than about differential treatment
based on race or gender? And if so, what are the difference-makers that render age
special from a normative perspective?
The other trend that warrants a closer look at age is the ageing of our societies.
Fifteen years ago, fewer than 500 million people were 65 or older. In 2030, there will
be more than one billion people over 65, and by 2050, there will be around 1.5 billion.2
During the past decade, the number of older people surpassed the number of children
under five for the first time in human history.3 In 2015, Japan was the only country
that had more than 30 per cent of its population made up by those over 60; by 2050,
this will become the case in all developed countries, including China.⁴

1 See, e.g. Daniels (1998), McKerlie (2013) or Bidadanure (2021).

2 See National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) (2007).
3 See National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) and the WHO (2011).
⁴ See WHO (2015).

Greg Bognar and Axel Gosseries, Introduction. In: Ageing without Ageism?. Edited by Greg Bognar & Axel Gosseries, Oxford
University Press. © Greg Bognar and Axel Gosseries (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894090.003.0001
2 Introduction

Population ageing presents enormous challenges. Ageing societies will have to

make massive adjustments to their old-age support and healthcare systems, their
labour markets, and their social and political institutions. Population ageing will have
profound effects on family life, the nature of work, politics, and people’s life plans.
With no historical experience to rely on, societies will have to try untested, novel,
and creative ways for coping with the challenges of ageing. And they must be able to
provide ethical justifications for their choices.
Our aim is to provide a multidisciplinary discussion, with contributions especially
from philosophy but also inputs from political science, economics, sociology, and
other areas. In order to impose some order on a wide-ranging collection of topics, we
divided the book into two parts. The chapters in Part I present in-depth discussions
of conceptual and normative issues. The chapters in Part II defend specific policy
proposals, grounded in explicit normative arguments. Readers interested in concep-
tual issues can begin at the beginning; readers more interested in policy alternatives
can pick one of the chapters from Part II as their entry point. To help orientation, we
provide separate overviews of the two parts below.

1. Overview of Part I

Part I departs from the fundamental normative question about age. Is unequal treat-
ment on the basis of age permissible? How does it differ, from an ethical point of view,
from other forms of differential treatment? Age discrimination has been a neglected
area in the literature on wrongful discrimination in philosophy and legal theory. The
first three chapters aim to fill some of the gaps by approaching the fundamental nor-
mative question from different directions. What do different theories of wrongful
discrimination have to say about the wrongness of age discrimination specifically?
How is age discrimination connected to disability discrimination? How should we
think about the link between paternalism and age?
In the opening chapter of Part I (‘Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong?’),
Katharina Berndt Rasmussen examines the morality of age discrimination by bring-
ing together philosophical theories of wrongful discrimination and accounts of the
‘specialness’ of age—that is, defences of the claim that there is a moral difference
between discrimination on the basis of age and discrimination on other grounds such
as gender or race. After providing an overview of considerations that might make
age special, Berndt Rasmussen offers a taxonomy of different forms of age discrimi-
nation and relates them to three theories of wrongful discrimination. She finds that
these three theories differ with respect to their moral assessment of various forms
of age discrimination due to the different roles that ‘specialness’ considerations play
in each. Rather than arguing for any particular theory, however, Berndt Rasmussen
concludes by offering a template for identifying, analysing, and morally evaluating
different forms of age discrimination.
 Ageing without Ageism? 3

In the second chapter, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen compares age discrimination

and disability discrimination (‘Does the Badness of Disability Differ from that of Old
Age?’). He begins with a familiar question from the philosophy of disability: to the
extent that being disabled is worse than being non-disabled, is this largely because of
factors that are independent of the social environment (the ‘disability as bad differ-
ence’ view) or largely because of the (ableist) nature of the social environment (the
‘disability as mere difference’ view)? Correspondingly, we might ask, to the extent
that being old is worse than being young, is this largely because of factors that are
independent of the social environment or largely because of the (ageist) nature of the
social environment? Are the answers to these questions related? If they are, how?
Lippert-Rasmussen considers whether, if we are inclined to accept the view that
the disadvantages of disability are largely caused by an ableist social environment,
we should also accept the view that the disadvantages of old age are largely caused by
an ageist social environment. He thinks we should. But Lippert-Rasmussen argues
that the view that ageist social environments are primarily responsible for the dis-
advantages of old age should be rejected. Therefore, we should also reject the view
that ableist social environments are primarily responsible for the disadvantages of
disability. Yet, while insisting that our views on disability constrain those we adopt
on age, Lippert-Rasmussen also stresses that we should not overstate the impor-
tance of taking a stance on the mere-difference and bad-difference divide. Rather,
we should pay more attention to the specific ways old age and disability cause disad-
vantage instead of trying to defend broad generalizations about what family of causes
predominates.
The third chapter examines age discrimination from the perspective of age-
differentiated paternalism. Many of us share the intuition that paternalism is less
problematic when applied to children rather than to the elderly. One interest of Viki
Møller Lyngby Pedersen’s chapter, ‘In Defence of Age-Differentiated Paternalism’, is
that she stresses that we need to consider not only the dimensions of competence and
voluntariness but also the magnitude of the good promoted by paternalistic interven-
tions. While this dual account does not generally challenge common-sense intuitions
about paternalism, it introduces additional complexity when evaluating paternalistic
interventions in a wide range of cases. The chapter considers many examples, from
age-differentiated rules for access to sterilization, through age-differentiated fines for
not using a helmet, to age-differentiated prices for cigarettes. Readers especially inter-
ested in these issues may also want to take a look at Chapter 8 (on paternalism and
conceptions of childhood), Chapter 12 (on paternalism in assisted reproduction and
social freezing), or Chapter 13 (on anti-paternalism in compulsory education).
The remaining chapters in Part I take up issues of distributive justice. They con-
sider the connection between age and different methods of policy evaluation. They
examine the role of age in egalitarian theories of distributive justice. They ask whether
it is justified that modern welfare states spend more on the elderly than on other age
groups, explore the implications of the idea that principles of distributive equality
4 Introduction

should apply to whole lives rather than particular segments (or stages) in life, and
defend the view that social insurance systems should be age-balanced, offering
similar levels of income replacement across age-related social risks.
In ‘Age and the Social Value of Risk Reduction: Three Perspectives’, Matthew D.
Adler compares three frameworks of policy analysis from the perspective of fatality
risk reduction for different age groups. Do they imply that the value of risk reduction
depends on age—and how do they relate age to other factors? The three frameworks
are utilitarianism, prioritarianism, and cost–benefit analysis.
Adler finds that the value of risk reduction decreases with age but increases with
income according to utilitarianism. It decreases even more sharply with age accord-
ing to prioritarianism, but prioritarianism can also neutralize the effect of income.
And for cost–benefit analysis, the value of risk reduction increases with income even
more sharply than for utilitarianism, while it first increases and than decreases with
increasing age. None of the frameworks, therefore, is neutral with respect to age. They
value fatality risk reduction differently depending on a person’s age (and income).
Prioritarianism is the only approach that can neutralize the effect of income and put
higher value of reducing risks to the young. That may be an attractive feature.
Paul Bou-Habib, in his chapter ‘Can Egalitarians Justify Spending More on the
Elderly?’, takes an egalitarian approach to age and fair distribution. He argues that
the fact that modern welfare states devote a disproportionate amount of their budget
to the needs of the elderly raises a puzzle. People who reach old age are often, on the
whole, more fortunate than those who don’t because they have enjoyed a longer life.
In devoting disproportionate expenditure towards their needs, the welfare state thus
appears to be privileging the needs of those who are more fortunate than others.
Bou-Habib examines the response to this puzzle provided by relational egalitari-
ans (who hold that we should care not only about how the welfare state distributes
resources between persons but also about whether it protects people from mistreat-
ment by others). Relational egalitarians justify disproportionate expenditure on the
elderly on the grounds that it is necessary to protect them against domination and
marginalization, among other forms of mistreatment. But Bou-Habib finds that the
relational egalitarian response does not solve the puzzle. He proposes a different solu-
tion, based on two claims. First, suffering is intrinsically bad and should be prevented,
even when it is experienced by persons who are more fortunate than others. Second,
disproportionate expenditure on the needs of the elderly is a form of insurance that
all persons would have purchased in fair circumstances.
In his chapter, ‘Age Limits and the Significance of Entire-Lives Egalitarianism’,
Axel Gosseries focuses on the claim that principles of distributive justice should be
applied to whole lives—that is, to determine what we owe to people as a matter of fair
distribution, we need to consider how they fare during their entire lives. Gosseries
provides an overview of the entire life view and explores its possible underlying intu-
itions. He separates a defensive version of the view (which argues that some age limits
are not objectionable) from an affirmative one (which argues that some age limits are
actually desirable). He concludes that while age limits tend to provide one of the best
illustrations of the practical relevance of the ‘entire life’ debate, the latter does not
 Ageing without Ageism? 5

necessarily offer us insights that are as significant as expected to defend age limits
over their whole range.
Part I closes with a more empirically orientated chapter. It starts with the obser-
vation that welfare states differ greatly in the extent to which they provide social
protection for various age-related social risks. They set different priorities between
needs associated with childhood, maturity, and old age. In ‘Age Universalism will
Benefit All (Ages)’, Simon Birnbaum and Kenneth Nelson explore and defend the
ideal of age universalism in social insurance, according to which the degree of income
replacement should be similar across age-related social risks. The argument suggests
pragmatic advantages of age-balanced social insurance, showing that it tends to pro-
vide higher levels of income replacement for age-related risks throughout the life
cycle and achieve more favourable social outcomes in all age groups with respect to
poverty rates, trust, and subjective well-being.

2. Overview of Part II

The chapters in Part II have a more policy-oriented focus. They cover a range of top-
ics from different perspectives. The topics include political participation, education,
health care, retirement, and old-age social services as well as taxation and inheritance.
The first cluster of chapters is on political participation and voting rights. The
chapters address whether and how disenfranchising the young can be justified on
the basis of different conceptions of childhood, whether the voting–driving analogy
can justify disenfranchising the old, and whether giving extra weight to the young
in political decision-making can be a plausible avenue to addressing concerns about
political short-termism.
In the first chapter, ‘“Let Them Be Children”? Age Limits in Voting and Concep-
tions of Childhood’, Anca Gheaus explores alternative views about the nature and
value of childhood and their relevance to the issue of children’s voting rights. In par-
ticular, she contrasts one view that regards childhood as a mere deficiency and as
preparation time for adulthood with a family of views that emphasizes the value of
goods unique to childhood, such as playfulness and carefreeness. Defenders of defi-
ciency views tend to assume that the lack of agency is an unqualified bad for children
and neglect ways in which childhood allows access to other sources of value.
Gheaus maps out how the different accounts bear on arguments for and against
enfranchising children. She also explains why children who live in a society in
which many adults fail to comply with their duties of intergenerational justice have
a weightier interest in voting and hence why the case for children’s enfranchisement
is stronger in such circumstances.
The next chapter continues to explore political participation by looking at the
other end of life. Should there be an age limit such that people over it lose their eli-
gibility to vote? After all, loss of ability is often used to justify restricting people’s
freedom. For instance, age-related loss of ability is used to justify the requirement
of periodic renewal of driving licences and could result in the loss of driving permit
6 Introduction

for the elderly, limiting their freedom of movement. Can there be an analogous case
for voting? In ‘Age and the Voting–Driving Analogy’, Alexandru Volacu asks this
question. He examines arguments by analogy in general and formulates such an argu-
ment linking driving and voting. He considers different ways the argument could be
applied to age-adjusted voting rights. However, in the end, he finds that there are sig-
nificant dissimilarities between driving and voting. Thus, Volacu concludes that the
argument is unsuccessful.
In ‘Empowering Future People by Empowering the Young?’, Tyler M. John argues
that the state is plagued with problems of political short-termism: excessive priority
given to near-term benefits at the expense of benefits further in the future. Political
scientists and economists reckon that political leaders rarely look beyond the next
2–5 years, exacerbating problems such as climate change and pandemics. What can
be done to counter this? One possible mechanism involves apportioning greater rel-
ative political influence to the young. The idea is that younger citizens generally have
greater additional life expectancy than older citizens, and thus it looks reasonable to
expect that they have preferences that are extended further into the future. If we give
greater relative political influence to the young, our political system might exhibit
greater concern for the future.
But John shows that giving greater political power to the young is unlikely in
itself to make states significantly less short-termist: no empirical relationship has
been found between age and willingness to support long-termist policies. Instead, he
proposes a more promising age-based mechanism. States should develop youth citi-
zens’ assemblies that ensure accountability to future generations through a scheme of
retrospective accountability. Policymakers would be rewarded in the future in pro-
portion to the effects of their policies on the long run. This would incentivize them
now to choose policies that have the best long-term consequences.
The second couple of chapters in Part II are on health care. The first is Greg Bog-
nar’s chapter on ‘COVID-19, Age, and Rationing’. During the COVID-19 pandemic,
some hospitals found themselves short of ventilators, intensive care unit (ICU) beds,
and qualified medical personnel to take care of patients. Physicians had to make
difficult, life-and-death choices. They were aided by various guidelines and recom-
mendations issued by governments and medical associations. Bognar reviews some
of these guidelines, looking in particular at the role of age and life expectancy as cri-
teria for the rationing of healthcare resources. He defends the view that the ethical
aim of triage should be to maximize benefits and concludes that while neither age
nor life expectancy should be used to categorically exclude patients, both may have
a role in triage by virtue of their connection to capacity to benefit.
Francesca Minerva’s chapter, ‘Ageism in Assisted Reproduction’, begins from the
fact that female fertility declines at a much faster rate than male fertility. While, in the
past decades, assisted reproduction treatments (ARTs) have dramatically increased
women’s chances of getting pregnant over the age of 35, it remains very difficult for
women above their mid-40s to get pregnant, given that ART success rates decrease
with increasing age. Moreover, many European countries legally prevent women over
the age of 45 from accessing ARTs.
 Ageing without Ageism? 7

Minerva opposes upper age limits on ARTs for women, rejecting three arguments
that are based, respectively, on paternalism (to protect the mother’s health), the link
between age and increased risk of abnormalities for the child, and the diminished
ability of older parents to take care of children. She also calls for a more pro-active
policy, including free access to social freezing and investment in research into ways
of delaying menopause.
In the following chapter, Andrée-Anne Cormier and Harry Brighouse propose ‘An
Education Resource Account for Early School Leavers’. They argue that school should
cease to be compulsory at age 16 and that an education resource account (ERA)
should be established for students who leave school at that age. The ERA would be
sufficient to cover three years of full-time education. It could be linked to inflation
and early school leavers could use it in accredited non-profit educational institutions
at any later point in their lives.
Two sets of arguments support their proposal. The first, building on the empir-
ical literature, focuses on efficiency and highlights the advantages of an ERA with
respect to the ‘disruptive’ students issue in particular. The second set of arguments is
anti-paternalistic. Cormier and Brighouse distinguish three anti-paternalistic argu-
ments: the view that individuals are the best judges of their own welfare (also
discussed in Chapter 3), the idea that autonomous decision-making is a com-
ponent of well-being, and a respect-based view of what renders anti-paternalism
wrong. While they endorse the latter two arguments, their ERA proposal still has
a mildly paternalistic dimension since its funds can only be used for education
purposes.
Vincent Vandenberghe takes up the issue of retirement in ‘Differentiating Retire-
ment Age to Compensate for Health and Longevity Inequality’. As he points out,
usually a uniform age is used to proxy work capacity loss and trigger the payment
of pensions. Recently, however, some have argued that we need several retirement
ages to better match the distribution of work (in)capacity across socio-demographic
groups. At first sight, this proposal makes perfect sense. Work capacity declines
faster among low-income and low-educated individuals. But there is also a lot of
unaccounted heterogeneity even inside narrowly defined socio-economic groups.
And this compromises the feasibility and desirability of retirement-age differenti-
ation. Under a regime of systematic retirement-age differentiation, there would be
many situations with no retirement for people with serious work restrictions and,
simultaneously, numerous cases where entirely healthy people enjoy retirement. An
alternative approach would be to stick to a uniform retirement age, backed up by a
reinforced disability scheme.
Old age also takes centre stage in Kim Angell’s ‘Ageing in Place and Autonomy: Is
the “Age-Friendly” City Initiative Too Elderly-Friendly?’ Angell is concerned with the
‘age-friendly cities’ initiative aimed at enhancing people’s opportunity to age in place.
He presents an autonomy-based defence of the idea and examines the moral claim
that the elderly can make in support of their ability to age in place. He emphasizes,
among other considerations, that ageing in place can have cognitive benefits through
the routines and habits made possible by familiar environments.
8 Introduction

He argues, however, that the claims of the elderly can come into conflict with the
claims of the young. We should not only look at today’s elderly but also anticipate how
today’s young will fare when they get old. Angell appeals to the cohort-specific predic-
tions by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)—
such that, for example, today’s young are expected to be worse off when old than the
currently old—to make the case for an ‘all-age-friendly’ (or even ‘young-friendly’)
interpretation of the age-friendly cities initiative, while also insisting on the impor-
tance of policies benefiting low-income families (regardless of age) and promoting
intergenerational housing initiatives.
The last cluster of chapters in the book focuses on age and taxation, looking
respectively at housing, income, and bequests.
In his chapter, ‘An Age-Based Delayed Housing Wealth Tax’, Daniel Halliday
considers taxation and housing wealth. Popular narratives around ageing and inter-
generational inequality suggest that young people increasingly tend to subsidize older
people in spite of enjoying poorer economic prospects. One specific concern is that
older and younger birth cohorts are unequally situated with respect to the distribu-
tion of housing wealth as well as the distribution of the tax burden. Halliday addresses
this concern by proposing an age-based delayed housing wealth tax. The idea is that
once homeowners reach a certain age, they are charged some portion of their home’s
value on an annual basis, which would eventually be paid to the tax office upon the
death of the surviving spouse. This tax can be avoided by downsizing to a home
of lesser value and thereby freeing up housing to be purchased by younger people.
Retaining a valuable home means, instead, incurring a tax liability that can be used to
fund the benefits consumed by retirees. A delayed housing wealth tax can be designed
to accommodate variables such as couples who differ in age or single retired home-
owners. Halliday argues that his proposal compares favourably with alternatives, such
as inheritance taxation, for getting older people to absorb the costs of their care. Just
as in the previous chapter, access to housing for the young is a central concern.
In his chapter, Manuel Sá Valente distinguishes between ‘Two Types of Age-
Sensitive Taxation’. One is a form of cumulative income taxation which taxes annual
income, taking into account all earlier income years instead of just the last one. The
other is an explicitly age-differentiated scheme that taxes annual income adjusted
by a rate that depends on the taxpayer’s age. The chapter first presents reasons
to support cumulative income taxation and examines how it would affect fiscal
obligations across life. Then, it argues that maximin egalitarians—that is, egalitarians
who give absolute priority to improving the situation of the least well off—should
aim at a hump-shaped tax rate across people’s lives. Such a rate reflects a concern
about both early death and poverty in old age, hence focusing on the young and
the elderly, not the middle-aged. The chapter questions whether cumulative income
taxes can deliver this result without resorting to explicitly age-differentiated taxes. It
reaches the conclusion that while cumulative income taxation can benefit the young
(including the short-lived among them), age-differentiated taxes are necessary to
protect the elderly poor.
In the final chapter, Pierre Pestieau and Gregory Ponthiere present four argu-
ments supporting ‘An Age-Differentiated Tax on Bequests’—that is, a tax rate on
 Ageing without Ageism? 9

inheritance that varies with the age of the deceased. The arguments are based on
different ethical foundations and lead to an inheritance tax that can either increase
or decrease with the age of the deceased. Pestieau and Ponthiere make the case for an
age-differentiated tax based on the idea of compensating unlucky prematurely dead
persons. Their view supports a bequest tax that increases with the age of the deceased.
Along with Chapters 5 and 17, their chapter illustrates the many normative problems
that differential longevity raises.
∗∗∗
Together, these chapters provide us with a sense of the complexity of the issues at
stake. The account we accept about the wrongness of discrimination makes a differ-
ence to which age-based policies can be defended. So does the view of paternalism
we take and, more generally, the background theory of justice we endorse. It mat-
ters whether we consider differential longevity unfair, whether we are concerned
with equality between entire lives or parts of lives, whether we hold that differen-
tial treatment by age is relevantly similar to unequal treatment by race, gender, or
disability. The justification of age-based policies can be affected by a multitude of
seemingly remote normative commitments and ideas. In addition, it is influenced by
empirical assumptions about age and ageing. Several chapters in this book have criti-
cally discussed such assumptions, including the connection of age to specific abilities
(for instance, working capacity or political competence), characteristics (for instance,
fertility) or dispositions (for instance, long-termist preferences).
All this suggests that it is probably wise to renounce the quest for a unified view
of the normative relevance of age. The role of age is likely to remain different in dif-
ferent policy areas and in different policies within those areas. This means that we
are left with several tasks. We should keep critically investigating the degree to which
specific age-based policies can be justified. When we develop and debate new poli-
cies, we should continuously keep in mind how they are affected by age and how they
would affect different age groups. We should keep unveiling common patterns of jus-
tification that operate across several domains and that oppose or support age-based
practices. Behind all that, there is the question whether there should be a society
on the horizon in which age loses its structuring function: where people can work
before studying, retire before starting to work, or have children well after having
started their professional career. We hope that this book will contribute to helping
the reader decide whether such a society would not only be feasible but also, and
more importantly, desirable.

References

Bidadanure, Juliana Uhuru. 2021. Justice Across Ages: Treating Young and Old as Equals.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Daniels, Norman. 1998. Am I My Parents’ Keeper? An Essay on Justice between the Young
and the Old. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
10 Introduction

McKerlie, Dennis. 2013. Justice between the Young and the Old. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US). 2007. Why Popula-
tion Aging Matters: A Global Perspective. Baltimore, MA: National Institute on Aging,
National Institutes of Health (US).
National Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) and the WHO (World
Health Organization). 2011. Global Health and Ageing. Baltimore, MA: National
Institute on Aging, National Institutes of Health (US) and WHO.
World Health Organization (WHO). 2015. World Report on Ageing and Health. Geneva:
World Health Organization.
 PART I
CONCEPTUAL PUZZLES
1
Age Discrimination
Is It Special? Is It Wrong?
Katharina Berndt Rasmussen

1. Introduction

Imagine Dana and Eli, two applicants for a vacant position. While both are qualified
in all relevant respects, neither is called to be interviewed for the job simply because
of their gender (Dana is female) and race (Eli is black), respectively. These cases are
intuitively clear instances of discrimination and intuitively morally wrong.
They are classified as group discrimination also by the following definition:1

An agent (say, an employer) group discriminates against someone (say, an appli-

cant) on grounds of property P, by doing something (e.g., disregarding their
application) if and only if:

(i) in disregarding the application, the employer treats the applicant worse than
she would have treated him, had he not had P, or had she not believed him to
have P,
(ii) it is because the applicant has P or because the employer believes that he has P,
that she treats him worse, and
(iii) P is the property of being a member of a socially salient group, i.e., a group per-
ceived membership of which is important to the structure of social interactions
across a wide range of social contexts.

Being female and being black, respectively, are socially salient properties in many
societies. Clearly, not being called to be interviewed for a job that one applied for
just because of such a property—when one is qualified and would have been called
had one lacked the property—amounts to being treated worse in at least one of the
following senses:

(a) being made worse off (e.g. deprived of an opportunity), or

1 Cf. Lippert-Rasmussen (2014); Berndt Rasmussen (2019); and many of the entries in Lippert-
Rasmussen (2017). In legal terms, this definition captures (possibly legally acceptable) differential
treatment as well as (unlawful) discrimination. On the moral status of these phenomena, see section 4.

Katharina Berndt Rasmussen, Age Discrimination. In: Ageing without Ageism?. Edited by Greg Bognar & Axel Gosseries,
Oxford University Press. © Katharina Berndt Rasmussen (2023). DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894090.003.0002
14 Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong?

(b) being treated as inferior (e.g. considered not worthy of equal consideration with
other—male or white—applicants).2

And arguably, treating someone worse in at least one of these senses just because of
their socially salient property is prima facie morally wrong.3 Hence, ceteris paribus,
Dana and Eli are wrongfully discriminated against.
Now, imagine Alex, Billie, and Charlie, three equally qualified applicants for a
vacant position. They belong to three different birth cohorts (say, three consecutive
generations) and thus to different age groups: Alex is 60+, Billie is 40, and Charlie is
under 18. While Billie is called back to be interviewed, the other two are not—simply
because of their old and young age, respectively.
Clearly, being old (60+) and being young (under 18) are socially salient properties
in many societies and, in this sense, comparable to being female and being black.
Moreover, in not being called back, Alex and Charlie suffer the same form of worse
treatment as Dana and Eli. Hence, even their cases should be classified as discrimi-
nation by the above definition and count as morally wrong for the same reasons.
Writers on age discrimination, however, suggest that age is ‘special’, that is, rele-
vantly different from other grounds of discrimination such as gender or race. Such
specialness, in turn, might have moral ramifications, possibly making age discrimi-
nation less severe, or more justifiable, than these other forms. The specialness of age
may thus translate into lesser moral seriousness of age discrimination. Our practices
and intuitions seem to support this idea: in many societies, it is common and com-
monly accepted that, for example, the right to vote and to run for office is not granted
to minors, that car or life insurance premiums are age-adjusted, or that retirement at
a certain age becomes mandatory. On the other hand, there might be good reasons
to change these practices and discount these intuitions.
This chapter examines the moral status of age discrimination by bringing together
accounts of the wrongness of discrimination with accounts of the specialness of age.
Section 2 summarizes the special features of age and their role in different proposals
to justify the use of age criteria and suggests a template within which these specialness
considerations become relevant: the argument from specialness. Section 3 explores
different forms of age discrimination. Section 4 presents three influential accounts of
the wrongness of discrimination and shows that different forms of age discrimina-
tion are covered by different wrongness accounts. Moreover, I return to the proposals
justifying the use of age criteria, based on the specialness of age, and explore the roles
they can play under these different accounts. Section 5 concludes.

2. Specialness of age and age-based treatment

The debate on age discrimination largely focuses on chronological age, defined as

the number of years from a person’s birth to the given date. Chronological age

2 See Berndt Rasmussen (2019).

3 For ease of exposition, I switch between talking about an action’s being prima facie (morally) wrong
and there being a prima facie (moral) reason against the action.
 Ageing without Ageism? 15

(henceforth without the qualifier) has three special features, as compared to, for
example, gender or race:

(a) perfect passage-of-time correlation (by definition);

(b) high divisibility: a normal life span can be partitioned into many alternative age
segments of different sizes; and
(c) multiple belonging: a person with a normal life span will belong to a number of
such age segments as time passes.⁴

A key idea is that, because of these special features, relying on age criteria (e.g. age
limits) may sometimes be justified in two different ways. First, means–end efficiency:
age is a good proxy (statistical indicator) for certain given target variables and, as
such, a tool for more efficient decision-making. Second, overall betterness: using age
criteria leads to better overall outcomes, in some sense. I will discuss these two pro-
posals in sections 2.1 and 2.2, indicating which specialness features (a–c) become
relevant at different points in the arguments.

2.1 Means–end efficiency: Age as reliable and precise proxy

In typical employment cases, applicant age is ‘significantly correlated’ (Gosseries

2014: 63f.) to, for example, job qualifications and expected productivity. This is
mainly due to specialness feature (a), passage-of-time correlation.
To illustrate: Charlie, who is under 18, most likely does not have a college or uni-
versity degree. This has to do with the way our societies organize their education
systems: age of entry, sequence of educational levels, number of years required for
a degree, etc. Also, under-18-year-olds are likely not to have the cognitive capacities
required for jobs where risk management is central. This has to do with typical neu-
rological/brain development. Alex, who is 60+, is likely to lack some of the physical
and cognitive abilities of an applicant in their forties, like Billie, but also likely to have
more experience-based competences. This has to do with processes of physical and
mental decline and with the time dimension of learning curves, respectively.
In a medical context, given statistical facts about life expectancy, age can work as
a proxy for remaining life years (Cupit 2013; Bognar 2015). Thus, age can be one
relevant factor for allocating scarce health resources, as exemplified by the concepts
of quality-adjusted life year (QALY), and disability-adjusted life year (DALY).⁵
Thus, for a variety of reasons, age can be a reliable proxy for relevant individual tar-
get variables. Of course, for any given applicant or patient, an employer or medical
provider might make a more accurate assessment of such target variables by conduct-
ing an individual assessment. Yet, since the latter tend to be more time-consuming,

⁴ For discussions of these features, see Macnicol (2006); Cupit (2013); Gosseries (2014); Bidadanure
(2016).
⁵ See Bickenbach (2016).
16 Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong?

complicated, or morally problematic, relying on age criteria can facilitate decision-

making. Thus, to promote means–end efficiency, there may be reasons to use age
criteria.
Justifying age criteria by reference to means–end efficiency also relies on special-
ness feature (b), high divisibility. Since a normal lifespan is divisible into any set of
age segments that are relevant in a given context, using age criteria potentially allows
for higher levels of ‘precision’ (Gosseries 2014: 63f.; cf. Bidadanure 2016) in approx-
imating the relevant target variables, compared to, for example, gender and race.
Using more precise age criteria allows for increased means–end efficiency (at least,
if information is not too costly).
However, there is a general objection against this efficiency justification of age cri-
teria. In openly sexist or racist societies, where women or people of colour are denied
higher education, gender and race can also be reliable—and sufficiently precise—
proxies. Still, we would not consider the resulting discriminatory hiring decisions
as morally less severe or more justifiable than their counterparts in our (less openly
sexist or racist) societies due to these different social facts.
Whether something is a good proxy is contingent on, for example, physical, bio-
logical, and psychological facts but also social facts that depend on (the aggregate
of) our choices, such as how we choose to set up our education system. When social
facts are invoked to justify the use of a proxy, the justificatory burden shifts to these
social facts and underlying choices. This means that if we seek to justify the use of
age criteria by appealing to the fact that age is a good proxy, yet this latter fact is
explained by the fact that our society is organized around age criteria, our argument
becomes circular unless we can independently justify society’s organization around
age criteria (Gosseries 2014: 65f.; Lippert-Rasmussen 2014: 283–299). The analogy
with gender and race thus serves to illuminate the point that establishing age as a
reliable and precise proxy for certain target variables is not sufficient for an overall
justification of age criteria.
Moreover, we should pause to note that this, indeed, is not necessary either. One
could reject the idea that age is a reliable, sufficiently precise proxy for specific indi-
vidual target variables and still concede that relying on age criteria allows for better
overall outcomes on a collective level. For example, if the justification of certain age
limits on alcohol consumption appeals to epidemiological evidence of their correla-
tion to reduced youth criminality or disease rates, such criteria may be used primarily
as a means for achieving a better collective outcome, even though correlation with
specific individual target properties may be weak. The concern for better overall
outcomes is thus distinct from the concern for means–end efficiency. And overall
outcomes need to be considered even in the final analysis of the justificatory force of
means–end efficiency considerations.

2.2 Better overall outcomes: Utility or fairness/equality

Attempts to justify age criteria from better overall outcomes are mainly concerned
either with utility or with fairness/equality. One key consideration under the headline
 Ageing without Ageism? 17

of utility is collective ‘sequence efficiency’ (Gosseries 2014: 70f.): organizing certain

aspects of society around age criteria promotes total utility as it makes society overall
more functional. The education system is an obvious example. There are efficiency
reasons for making people go through stages of education, starting at a young,
learning-conducive age and consecutively taking higher levels, prior to entering the
labour market.
Again, however, one could object that there might be overall efficiency gains from
race or gender discrimination—say, in a caste-like hierarchy—which we would not
grant any justificatory force. With age, though, there is a crucial difference. In the
education system example, collective sequence efficiency originates from individual
sequence efficiency.⁶ In certain contexts, ordering someone’s activities in chronolog-
ical sequences promotes their achievement of the context-given objectives due to the
specialness feature (a), perfect correlation with the passage of time, which, in turn,
correlates with other factors. For example, learning how to spell prior to signing up
for creative writing classes yields a better outcome for the individual than the reverse.
Individual sequence efficiency is thus a further specialness consideration—and one
which can appeal even to non-utilitarians. The trade-offs it is based on are not inter-
personal, as in the sexist or racist caste system, where some people’s extra burdens
generate benefits for others. Rather, the trade-offs are intrapersonal: collective gains
result from a more efficient distribution of burdens and benefits over individuals’
lifetimes, as allowed by the specialness feature (c), multiple belonging. Moreover,
specialness feature (b), high divisibility, facilitates the tailoring of age segments to
improve intrapersonal distributions—to the overall benefit of both the individuals
and the collective whole.
From a perspective of fairness or equality, age criteria seem problematic as
they imply worse treatment (in at least one of the above senses) of some—and,
hence, inequality. Old Alex and young Charlie are denied an employment oppor-
tunity, which is granted to middle-aged Billie. The key idea with justifying such
treatment, nevertheless, from a fairness or equality perspective is that, in the case
of age, the inequality is mitigated once we consider whole lives.
According to ‘complete life neutrality’ considerations (Gosseries 2014: 66ff), for
a fixed set of age criteria, ceteris paribus, there will be no inequality in treatment
over complete lives. The ceteris paribus clause ensures that—due to specialness fea-
ture (c) (i.e. multiple belonging)—each age criterion for resource allocation impacts
equally on everyone, if only at different points in time, thus treating each equally over
their lifetime.⁷
However, this idea presupposes a very demanding ceteris paribus condition, where
everyone has the same life length as well as the same lifetime profile of needs, goals,
and desires. Yet, realistically, a medical treatment offered to all those under 70 affects
those who happen to need it at 65 or 75, respectively, very differently; a pensions

⁶ Bidadanure (2016: 247) calls this ‘lifespan efficiency’. Alternatively, one could ask which resource allo-
cation pattern over their lifetime a rational chooser would prefer from behind a Rawlsian veil of ignorance
(Cupit 2013; cf. Daniels 1988; Bognar 2008, 2015).
⁷ Some egalitarians may object that relational inequalities at any specific time matter and do not
disappear because of reversed inequalities at some other time (Bidadanure 2016).
18 Age Discrimination: Is It Special? Is It Wrong?

plan for all and only those above 65 benefits only whoever lives that long (Cupit
2013). Moreover, changes in these age criteria—or in the environment in which these
criteria receive significance—may lead to complete life inequalities between birth
cohorts. For example, if the required age for a benefit is raised at some point in time,
all birth cohorts reaching the threshold age after that point will be worse off, over
their lifetime, than previous ones.⁸
According to ‘affirmative egalitarian’ considerations (Gosseries 2014: 70ff), age
criteria may effectively reduce existing social inequalities over complete lives. Con-
sider, for example, mandatory retirement at age 67. Assume that there is a number
of consecutive birth cohorts, each of which has a certain proportion of unemployed
individuals. As one cohort reaches the threshold, their jobs are made vacant and filled
with members of the subsequent cohorts, shifting employment benefits to some pre-
viously unemployed. Later on, these cohorts, of course, have to do the same for their
successors. Then, people’s life trajectories are equalized in the sense that fewer will
go through stretches of unemployment prior to, while all are retired after, this age
threshold.⁹
Another example is the allocation of life-saving treatment: fairness may require
that we give it to a young person, who has not yet reached the ‘fair innings’ thresh-
old of a ‘complete or full life’, rather than to someone beyond this threshold (Bognar
2008). Similarly, McKerlie (1992) suggests that, due to differences in life span, we
should discriminate in favour of the young to concentrate resources to life stages
through which more will live.
Acknowledging inequalities over whole lives (e.g. in employment opportunities or
life years) combined with special feature (c), multiple belonging, may thus provide
affirmative egalitarian support for age-based treatment.

2.3 Argument from specialness

To pinpoint the role of specialness considerations for the overall moral assessment of
age discrimination, I propose the following argument from specialness:

(1) There is a prima facie reason against group discrimination.

(2) Age-based treatment is a form of group discrimination (like gender- or race-
based treatment).
(3) In some contexts, specialness considerations concerning means–end efficiency
or overall better outcomes provide reasons for age-based treatment that outweigh
the prima facie reason against it.
(4) Hence, in such contexts, we have overall reason for age-based treatment.

⁸ The ‘diversification’ approach (Gosseries 2014: 63) highlights that complete life inequalities, resulting
from age criteria, are moderated due to age’s specialness: criteria tend to vary across contexts (due to (b)),
and resulting disadvantages tend to spread out over an individual’s lifetime (due to (c)).
⁹ See Wedeking (1990); Arneson (2006: 797f.). For dissenting views, see Overall (2006); Nussbaum and
Levmore (2017).
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Essay on art and
photography
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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Title: Essay on art and photography

Author: A. V. Sutton

Release date: August 29, 2023 [eBook #71518]

Language: English

Original publication: Liverpool: Michael James Witty, 1866

Credits: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading

Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ESSAY ON

ART AND PHOTOGRAPHY ***
 E S S AY
ON

A R T A N D P H O T O G R A P H Y.

1866.
PRINTED BY
M. J. WHITTY
18 CABLE ST.
LIVERPOOL
 E S S AY

ON

Art and Photography.

BY

A. V. SUTTON.

LIVERPOOL:

MICHAEL JAMES WHITTY.

MDCCCLXVI.
 D e d i c at e d

TO MY

Friends and Patrons.

 INTRODUCTION
The idea that occurred to me in drawing in epitome a history of
the amalgamation of Art and Science, and ultimately induced me to
attempt so hazardous a task, was to enable the public to learn the
true course to be pursued in order to give fresh vigour and impulse
for the revival of Fine Arts, and I have endeavoured to exemplify in a
striking manner, as far as my poor abilities admit, the inestimable
advantage the one confers upon the other, which renders the
combination so essential in advancing and developing a better, truer,
and nobler style of art—a style that I feel assured will distinguish for
ever the present generation. With this view, I have gathered
materials from every common report or otherwise, from personal
acquaintance with some of the most distinguished artists of the day,
and it is with regret that I find how immeasurably incompetent I am to
do justice to a subject so worthy of being treated by greater talents
and accomplishments than are granted to me. In sketching the
various changes Photography has undergone ere it reached the
supremacy it now enjoys, owing—principally to the natural instability
of events—and in the rapid survey to which the limits of the Essay
constrain me, I have been compelled to point out defects “both in the
Art and the Science,” without reserve, but with all due respect to the
opinion of others; but while doing so, I trust that I have rendered
justice also.
As a professional artist, the reader may be led to suppose I write
with bias—not so. I have most cautiously avoided any sentiment that
might be so construed, and beg that judgment may be suspended
until these pages have been perused, the perusal of which, I
sincerely trust, may have the desired effect—not actually resulting in
the revival of Fine Arts—but as an auxiliary for paving the way for
others commanding a greater range of knowledge, who may thereby
be induced to embark in the cause I am humbly seeking to advocate.
Liverpool,
Jany., 1866.
ESSAY.
 ESSAY.
When Photography was first introduced, it met with a severe
struggle ere gaining the esteem it now happily enjoys. Artists of all
grades unanimously condemned it, looking upon it only in the light of
a vehicle that would carry destruction to their own especial pursuits,
while on those who attempted to practice and advance it fell
anathemas and ridicule. So great was professional prejudice, and so
blind in its apprehension, that it dexterously and successfully biased
and enlisted the opinion of the Press in its favour, which echoed the
assertions that, under the most favourable circumstances,
“Photography could only be a caricature of the subject it portrayed.”
Thus was the combination of Art and Science for a time checked in
its progress, and the artists, now exulting in having temporarily
attained their purpose, watched jealously the science of chemistry,
and depreciated as useless any further inquiry that seemed to
encourage or aid Photography.
The great body of the public, as usual in all such cases,
remained neutral, but fortunately, for the advancement of the new
art, there remained a few who were more sanguine than their
cotemporaries, and generously bestowed their sympathy on the
“oppressed.” They saw in Photography, a great science, then but in
its infancy, but which must ultimately compete with the finer arts; its
peculiar adaptation in copying rendering it still more valuable, not
only to artists, in furthering their own success, by securing
truthfulness and accuracy, but likewise in all the various usages to
which it has since been so successfully applied. Too numerous to
attempt to specify here.
At the period we speak of, Photography was entirely confined to
that class of illiterate men who only pursued it to benefit by its
novelty, and like everything new, particularly when added to
cheapness, produced a great amount of bad taste and unpardonable
vulgarity. It is, no doubt, an art which is peculiarly liable to be
perverted to base and immoral uses, but now that better taste
prevails, no such fears need be entertained. All classes of society
have been benefited by Photography; it has been a generous friend
to the poor as well as to the rich, and all must acknowledge its
superior advantages and merits. Not only has it been fostered and
liberally supported by the munificence of kings, but also in the more
humble walks of life has it been welcomed as a benefactor. Its
patrons of all grades have not only derived pleasure from the novelty
of its fascinations, but inexpressible consolation from the souvenirs it
affords of cherished places, and the memory of those loved ones
who may be far away, or sleeping the “sleep of death.”
It would indeed be deplorable if an art so consecrated to all that
is noble, pure, generous and holy, were again to be jeopardised by
the association of bad taste and worse usages. In England we are
fortunately protected from such an evil; but in other countries,
particularly in France, it still exists to an alarming extent, and until the
authorities there adopt the same measure of punishment as with us,
no one can walk the streets without being subjected to some gross
outrage against propriety and moral feeling. Photography, therefore,
has a double claim upon our affections—to preserve it unscathed
and unsullied, when we find it diverted into new channels that may
endanger its purity and legitimate usefulness. An art which assists
the memory and educates the taste is entitled to encouragement, the
more particularly, when by its aid we can recall in privacy the happy
hours suggested by the contemplation of the sure-reflected
lineaments of a doating mother, an affectionate sister, a tender loving
wife, or a fond and innocent child.
One great reason why Photography is so frequently applied to
unworthy purposes is, owing to its cheapness, for, where there is a
supply of anything novel, combined with cheapness, patrons will
present themselves. This is a public weakness which is to be
regretted, for although competition may be consistent with the “spirit
of the age,” it is an unpardonable error when cheapness is resorted
to as a means to success, in place of trying to excel by artistic or
superior merits alone.
In no stage of Photography have we been further advanced and
initiated into the grand applications of its science than by the
introduction of the “paper process;” it presented to the mind of the
photographer a channel for experimentalising and uniting art proper
with his own, for previously the word Art was foreign to the ear of the
professional photographer; all that was deemed essential in the
pursuit was that you should acquire a knowledge how to produce a
photograph free from all the optical and chemical defects. Light was
only studied to secure the image with brilliancy on the plate, of the
subject or object about to be copied. If it came out clear, clean, and
sharp, the operator was delighted with his success—its artistic merits
were never consulted; no question asked whether the face came out
with the rich, soft, rotundity of nature; whether the light and shade
had given tone and gradation, to add harmony to the picture;
whether the line of the head had been carried to prevent
awkwardness to the figure; whether the eyes did not look askance to
the pose of the head; its artistic superiorities, in fact, were never
looked for, which explains why, at that period, photographs were
taken, as a general rule, simply head-bust, most commonly called
vignettes, or as the Americans would term it, ambrotype. Such were
the productions of the “Glass Age.” But from the time the “paper
process” established itself, Photography at once took its place
among the finer arts, and having gained the victory, the artists that
had disdainfully resented its popularity, ventured to advance into the
new field of enterprise, and not only were they delighted in procuring
such an auxiliary, but they laboured in trying to improve the
application of its science to Portraiture. Though painting renders the
chemical result subordinate, and likewise subservient to the skill of
the artist, when removed from the pressure frame to the easel, yet in
no way does it depreciate Photography as an art which is necessary
to assist in securing with unerring accuracy of outline momentary
indications of character, expression of face, and costume, consisting
of numberless and minute details; all of which are at once portrayed
on a tablet of glass reflected through the Camera; and which, if not
satisfactory to the mind of the operator, he may arrange according to
his own artistic taste, judgment and skill, with a view of securing
pictorial effect and individual character.
It would be utterly impossible to estimate the advantages
Photography has conferred upon all mankind, or to anticipate the still
greater wonders it is yet destined to achieve.
Having sketched the early struggles which Photography had to
surmount to claim a high place for its followers, we now proceed to
examine its distinguishing features. In scrutinizing the works of even
the greatest artists of our day, we are sure to find some fault—some
error. Why is it that imperfection should exist even in works of the
highest rank, grand in conception, beautiful in execution, rich in
modulation, truthfulness of outline and form, and harmonious in
colouring? For the simple reason, that true excellence can only be
found in composition pictures where the creative mind of the artist
has been free to labour in accordance with its own poetic fancy, and
when such perfection exists in portraiture without the aid of
Photography, it will indeed be an exception!
When the practical eye of an artist takes up a Work of Art, he at
once recognizes the forte of the genius in some one particularity.
Say for instance one artist may excel in the master-stroke of
execution, and by a few strokes of the brush give much more artistic
and life-like effect than another would by hours of close application
and the minutest finish—the difference between these two artists
being that the one was a true born artist, and the other a lover of the
art—simply one who had acquired its mechanism from untiring study
and practice. We will again find others who excel in the
amalgamation of colours, others for composition, others for
costumes and drapery—others for the delicacy and transparency of
the flesh tones; and we might still further attempt to specify their
various fortes of particular excellence, by dissecting the human
forms and classify them by their technical terms in anatomy. For
instance, I have known artists who have excelled in the execution of
a face, and yet fail in the representation of the hair—all their heads
conveying to the observer an idea that they were wigged! In other
productions we are at once made sensible that the artist has one
ideal for a nose, and if the picture represents innumerable figures,
they are all possessed of the same type of nasal organ! In others
again, we find the artist manifest in some peculiarity in the eye or in
the mouth; but it is not any of these artistic individualities we ask for
when we are desirous of possessing a faithful likeness of some
loved one, nor do we care to find as we scan their well-remembered
features, the artist’s ideal of a nose, an eye, a mouth, a chin, or
some other member, in place of its, perhaps, more homely
characteristic. In nature we are daily witnessing how the various
types of features, at once the most classic and homely—highest and
lowest, come to mingle so congruously in one face, but such as
nature has thought fit to endow us, such do we want to be faithfully
and accurately delineated, and if such combination of distinctive
specialities of art are required for portraiture, which is rarely, if ever,
found individually, then how inestimable is the aid of Photography!
Many are under the impression that its process exaggerates to such
an extent that the object or subject reproduced is figuratively
distorted, which constituted the opprobium attached to its
productions. This is a mistake. If the operator uses a first-class
instrument, and sufficiently large to secure the same perfect
definition at the extreme margin of the plates as in the centre, and
regulated by the diaphragm with space sufficient for the required
length of focus, no aberation or distortion will be visible. But if a
questionable lens is used, and the aperture too small for the flatness
of “field” required, then the whole model will be more or less
distorted; its receding lines obtruding as to become perfectly blurred
and indistinct; the shadows black, without detail, and the lights hard
and flat. But let it be remembered that this Essay is entirely confined
to the aspirants to Art in its higher branches. Photography in the
hands of a lover of its art, initiated in the theory and practical
knowledge of its science, would not waste valuable time in the
production of such enormities. We have, therefore, only to deal with
its advantages in its higher order of execution; or if we deviate a
while from our theory, it is but to confirm our arguments, and give the
reader an opportunity to discriminate for himself between the two.
But to return to the fallacy of portraiture being confined to the
erroneous pencil of the deceitful imagination of an artist possessing
one or more only of those capabilities essential to the production of