Abstract

While humans have developed universal capacities for detecting unfair behaviours, the nature of equity and how to achieve it remain debated. This paper examines equity from a less common perspective, that of Marxist Buddhism, a philosophy first developed in Asia in the 1920s that incorporates socialist ideas into the Mahayana tradition. It therefore (i) demonstrates that Marxist Buddhism’s emphasis on the altruism of equity reflects a virtue ethics approach that contrasts with deontology and anti-deontological traditions, adding novelty to the field and (ii) shows that unlike the Western theorists who assume the state is a guarantor of fair distribution, Marxist Buddhists distribute the responsibility of achieving equity to each society member. This decentralized approach is thus more feasible for most developing countries that lack stable governments. Moreover, Marxist Buddhism (iii) facilitates analysis by and for powerless individuals, which better prevents hermeneutical lacunae, such as linguistic injustice, than other theories of equity. Finally, this discussion of Marxist Buddhism (iv) sheds new light on the debate over intervention types in the current literature on implicit bias.