Justice and Egalitarian Relations
1.1. Introduction
Relations of unequal power and domination, and hierarchies of social status, characterize the societies we live in. Tey constitute the main obstacle to achieving a society of equals, and one that is diferent from economic inequality, even though the two ofen go hand in hand. Even if all had equal economic resources, this would not amount to a society of equals as long as some had arbitrary power over others and inegalitarian norms of social status deprived some of fair opportunities to acquire and enjoy social esteem for their traits, skills, pursuits, and projects.
Tis book provides a theory of how concern for egalitarian relations of non-domination and social status can be incorporated into a liberal conception of social justice, and lay a strong claim to constituting the most demandingly and stringently egalitarian components of such a conception. Its aim is to convince liberals that they should be relational egalitarians, and relational egalitarians that they should be liberals—and to convince those who remain unpersuaded by well-rehearsed philosophical arguments that justice requires people to get equal amounts of some good to be distributed, such as resources, or welfare, or equal opportunity to acquire these, that there is a better conception of egalitarian justice which they have strong reason to consider, and hopefully sign up to. Hardly anybody denies that people are fundamentally each other’s moral equals; and not many deny that this basic equality grounds a claim to stand, at the very least within the society of which one is a member, as a social and political equal. Taking these commitments seriously requires us to put stringent egalitarian constraints on the structure of important social and political relations of power and status, and thereby to make sure that the diferent social and economic outcomes these generate are signifcantly egalitarian, too—or so the argument will seek to show.
Te book argues that expressing respect for the freedom and equality of individuals in social cooperation requires stringent protections against domination. It develops a substantive, liberal conception of non-domination
Justice and Egalitarian Relations. Christian Schemmel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190084240.003.0001
tied to cooperation among free and equal persons, and argues that nondomination is a particularly urgent, but not the only, concern of social justice. Both its substantive nature and its account of the place of its demands within relational egalitarianism set it apart from, and render it superior to, neo-republican accounts of non-domination, which seek to reduce social justice to questions of non-domination. It also develops an account of the wrong of norms of status inequality, showing how status-induced foreclosure of important social opportunities is a social injustice in its own right, in addition to the role of status inequality in enabling domination, and the threats it poses to individuals’ self-respect. It applies these core requirements of liberal relational egalitarianism to political, economic, and health justice, and works out its implications for these domains: they amount to demands for far-reaching forms of equality in all three of them, which can rarely, if ever, be overridden by competing concerns.
Tis systematic account and defence of liberal relational egalitarianism builds on an in-depth engagement with several diferent literatures: literature on the kind of equality, if any, demanded by justice, which has mostly taken the form of a debate between relational and distributive egalitarians; literature about the nature of the value of social equality, which, in part, precedes the former, questions whether that value is best, or exclusively, accounted for by justice, and holds that reliance on diferent, fundamental values of equality and community is necessary; and neo-republican literature about the nature and demands of non-domination, and its connection to justice, which ofen proceeds by seeking to distance neo-republicanism from liberal egalitarian theories of justice, while nevertheless claiming broadly liberal credentials. Tese literatures have mostly developed in isolation from each other. Recent scholarship has started to bring them into contact, but as of yet no systematic attempt to integrate them has been made. Te book takes full account of the signifcant advances recently made in each of them, brings them together, and thereby seeks to advance all of them.
Tis completes the frst overview of the project. In order to give a fuller introduction to its key features, ambitions, and motivations, the remainder of this chapter proceeds as follows. Section 1.2 gives more depth to the theoretical challenges which justice-based relational equality faces, by showing how it seeks to weave together two concerns—social justice and social equality— which have, for the most part, been treated as separate matters in the history of modern political thought. Section 1.3 outlines how the book answers these challenges, by contrasting its ambitions to that of the three main families
of theoretical interlocutors just mentioned, and providing a more detailed outline of the arguments of each chapter and of how they contribute to the overall argument of the book. Section 1.4 concludes by delineating the scope of the theory to be developed, and the kind of social scenario it is intended to yield requirements of social justice for: in the frst instance, for a society characterized by a reasonably well-functioning institutional structure capable of organizing social cooperation by enabling and sustaining a complex division of labour. Tis does not rule out that it can be extended and applied to matters of international and global justice, too, but that extension is a task for another day.
1.2. L iberal Social Justice and Relational Egalitarianism: Te Project
Political thought about justice, and later social and distributive justice, and political thought about relations of social equality have traditionally, and in some respects up to the present, been separate, and have travelled on different roads. Briefy taking stock of these diferences puts some of the main challenges, as well as prospects of relational equality as a central requirement of social justice, into sharper focus. If successful, such a view would be able to account properly for the objectionable nature of key inegalitarian social relations—for their injustice and to explain, from this starting point also, when, and why, which kinds of unequal distributions of goods are unjust. However, unlike more traditional social egalitarian views, it would be able to do so while remaining a liberal theory which does not tell individuals how to lead their own lives, which does not put forward a vision of the good communal life directing and dictating the content of individual conceptions of the good, rather than merely constraining them in order to continuously safeguard everybody else’s freedom and equality.
Te philosophical project of this book is thus that of showing that liberal social justice can be home to a demanding conception of egalitarian relations, and that such a conception can be arrived at from premises thinner than those traditionally endorsed by many social egalitarians—whether or not such a conception also has good prospects of political success, in the sense of being capable of persuading as many people as possible, whatever their fundamental value outlooks, to sign up to it. A conception of egalitarian relations as a matter of social justice is not consonant with most of the history of
political thought, in which the latter has generally been restricted to the protection, and later also distribution, of property, and the former connected to encompassing visions of the good society as one where positive relationships of equality prevail. Yet a connection of both within a specifcally liberal conception of social justice is an attractive and worthwhile prospect. It is a novel road in political thought, worth trying out.
Te idea of social, or distributive, justice, according to which the primary task of justice for a state is to provide all individuals—at least within a given society—with both the liberty and the means needed to be a full participant in that society, is a relative latecomer in the history of Western political thought. Te demand that the state not only should ensure that people enjoy personal security and the protection of their property, but also should set up the societal order in such a way as to take appropriate care of everybody’s material situation frst rose to prominence in the socialist thinking of the nineteenth century which accompanied the acceleration of industrialization in key Western countries such as Britain, France, and, with some delay, Germany.1 Enlightenment thinking, the French Revolution of 1789, and the rapid displacement of traditional orders by industrialization made it possible to see the basic political and economic order of society as itself an appropriate object for deliberate political action and design, rather than simply having to be taken over by tradition. Tis is the birth of the contemporary concept of social justice, or at least of all its necessary presuppositions, as ranging comprehensively over the set-up of a given society, being primarily entrusted to the state, and demanding not only that everybody’s personal freedom and property be preserved, but also that everybody be enabled, by that order, to command an appropriate share of resources (understood in the widest sense of the term) so as to be an active and free participant in it.2
Tought about social equality as a value governing social and political relations predates these developments considerably—but without any clear
1 Te idea that the state may, and ought to, use coercive taxation to guarantee a basic minimum of material means for everybody appears somewhat earlier, in Kant’s work; Kant 1996 [1797], p. 101. However, Kant did not seem to regard this task as one of ‘distributive justice’; Kantian ‘distributive justice’ refers, somewhat idiosyncratically, to the determination and securing of rights (mainly to property) by enforceable and impartially administered public law, as opposed to a state of nature; ibid., pp. 86, 90. Most other thinkers understood distributive justice, in the Aristotelian tradition, to be about the distribution of ofces and privileges among those citizens of a polity, who, through personal excellence, merited them; Aristotle 2000, Book V.
2 See Fleischacker 2004, pp. 105, 125; Johnston 2011, pp. 3f and ch. 7; and Fleischacker 2004, chs. 1 and 2, on how, before, basic material provision was generally regarded as a matter for duties of charity, which did not translate into rights of recipients.
connection to justice. Renaissance writers such as Tomas More presented utopian societies characterized by simplicity of lifestyle and social equality as withering social criticism of what they saw as the decadence and corruption of the social and political life of their times.3 Tey did not argue for their ideals as conceptions of justice, as seeking to specify how social orders, or governments, ought to treat individuals by way of right. Later egalitarian movements, like the Levellers in seventeenth-century England, fused Christian belief in equality before God and specifc egalitarian visions of political life. Te Diggers (or True Levellers), led by Gerrard Winstanley, especially stressed the connection between calls for greater political equality and greater socio-economic equality as a necessary condition for it.4 Rousseau argued, on grounds of liberty, for a model of radical direct democracy, and for the claim that substantial social and material inequalities pervert societal relations5 and undermine the viability of democracy.6
In these movements in political thought, there was a development from utopian visions towards a conception of equality understood specifcally as a social and political value, tightly connected to republican and democratic forms of government, and viewed as both desirable, because libertypreserving and -enhancing, and, at least in principle, feasible. However, there was still little connection between such a value of equality and concern about socio-economic inequality as a matter of justice. Rousseau’s view does make a case for an intrinsic connection between law-making through egalitarian and direct democracy and the preservation of every citizen’s civil liberty, especially through the protection of property. But he regarded putting limits on socio-economic inequality as important mainly to ensure proper democratic governance—not because failing to do so also means negating individuals their fair share of the social product, in addition to political inequality.7
Later on, socialist thought transformed and widened such an ideal of equal political standing to a more encompassing and general ideal of living
3 More 2003 [1516]. Utopia also has some very inegalitarian features, such as a form of slavery for convicted criminals; ibid., p. 82.
4 Winstanley 1973; for discussion, see Fleischacker 2004, p. 43 n. 52. For recent discussions of Leveller thought about work relations and the proper place of markets, see Anderson 2017a, and the critical responses to her account included there.
5 Rousseau 1984 [1755].
6 Rousseau 1968 [1762]; see especially p. 96: ‘[N]o citizen shall be rich enough to buy another, and none so poor as to be forced to sell himself.’ How much material inequality exactly was meant to be ruled out by this is an open question.
7 Rousseau nowhere discusses distributive justice in any detail, and understands it, along Aristotelian lines (see fn. 1) as requiring distributions according to personal merit (as measured, according to him, by services rendered to the state); 1984 [1755], p. 171.
as social equals.8 It emphasized solidarity and communality, and refused to accept personal competition and confict as inevitable features of social life, against much of the liberal tradition, which saw the main task as that of managing, rather than eradicating, these features. Important parts of the socialist movement did regard the just distribution of the fruits of social labour as a primary socialist, or social democratic, concern. Marx subjected this focus on distribution to withering criticism for, in his view, failing to realize and stress how revolutionizing the modes of societal production would bring about a wholly diferent, much more desirable, set of social relations which would characterize the communist society to come.9 ‘Ofcial’ Marxist socialism eschewed framing this ideal in terms of an alternative conception of social justice, and generally privileged social scientifc analysis and theory of history over moral argument. However, ‘ethical’ (as opposed to ‘scientifc’) socialists did advocate a relationship ideal of social and political equality on moral grounds. Particularly notable is the work of the English socialist R. H. Tawney, who put forward an ideal of an egalitarian society, ultimately underwritten by Christian belief in the equal and infnite value of all individuals, as a society not characterized by hierarchical and divisive norms of social status, or dominatory power relations.10
Such a position is, in some respects, a forerunner of contemporary social egalitarian positions,11 and it could also be regarded as the basis for a distinct conception of social justice. However, that would be an ‘ethically socialist’ conception all the way down. It would rest on a perfectionist, comprehensive vision of solidarity among equals as the chief human good to be achieved in social life.12 Tat is not in line with a more liberal understanding of justice, which restricts itself to demanding that everybody’s rights be respected, and justifed claims honoured, because this is what individuals’ status as free and equal members of society demands, whatever more particular view of the human good, if any, we endorse.
Much of contemporary liberal egalitarian theorizing has, in the wake of Rawls’s work, sought to justify egalitarian concern without any appeal to such perfectionist, communitarian visions of the individual and social good. Its distinctive reinterpretation and development of liberal thought stresses
8 For a reasonably representative early socialist view, see Proudhon 2011 [1846].
9 Marx 2000 [1875]. See section 2.2.
10 Tawney 1931; for an overview of the main features of Tawney’s egalitarianism, see Wolf 2013.
11 See especially the ‘pluralist social egalitarian positions’ analysed in chapter 5.
12 See Wright 1987, p. 138.
the connection between an account of moral personhood which is intended to be more neutral, and broadly shareable, spelled out in terms of possession of the two fundamental moral powers of a capacity for a sense of justice, and the capacity to develop, pursue, and revise a conception of the good,13 and the task of social justice, which requires ensuring that each member of society is both free from obstruction by others and enjoys sufcient, and not too unequal, material means to live her life according to her own conception of the good.
Tis is the bridge between liberal insistence on respect for personal autonomy and egalitarian conceptions of social justice in much of contemporary liberal egalitarianism: it is the former that ultimately underpins the latter, not any particular perfectionist vision of the individual and social good of living together as social equals, beyond continuously ensuring (roughly) equal substantive liberty to live one’s life as one sees ft.14
Initially, in the Teory of Justice, Rawls sought to spell out this link on the basis of a less well-developed conception of the person, by drawing on a primarily distribution-centred perspective on social justice, and emphasizing the question of which goods individuals ought to be entitled to get in a suitably equal manner. Indeed, the connections Rawls established between the requirement of respecting personal autonomy and distribution-oriented welfare economics accounted for a signifcant part of the inaugural success of the theory.15 Other liberal egalitarians, most notably Dworkin in his
13 For a representative formulation of the second moral power and its implications, see Rawls 1996, p. 72: ‘Citizens think of themselves as free in three respects: frst, as having the moral power to form, to revise and rationally to pursue a conception of the good; second, as being self-authenticating sources of valid claims; and third, as capable of taking responsibility for their ends.’
14 A note on neutrality, non-perfectionism, and the shareability of political ideals: a neutral, nonperfectionist view insists that the use of political power in pursuit of justice must not be justifed on the basis of its furthering any particular conception of what constitutes a good (individual or communal) life; a political, non-comprehensive view further aims to deliver such requirements of justice on the basis of a set of moral ideas (about personhood, and society) which form, or are at least capable of forming, the basis of an overlapping consensus between diferent comprehensive philosophical doctrines about the good life, the nature of society, and the grounds of personhood; see Rawls 1996, and Quong 2010, pp. 15f, for a helpful taxonomy of diferent liberal views.
Te view developed in this book certainly aims to be non-perfectionist and compatible with a broad array of diferent, and potentially competing, conceptions of the good, and in this sense, to be broadly shareable. It also draws on ideas about personhood and the nature of society that have been developed, and refned, by Rawls in his search for a political conception of justice in the sense outlined earlier. However, it is not itself pitched, and developed, as a political ideal in this sense. It would certainly be nice if liberal relational egalitarianism could be the object of consensus among fundamentally diferent comprehensive philosophical doctrines, but no argument to this extent will be made, and its success does not crucially depend on it.
15 Rawls 1999a. In later works, Rawls’s focus shifs more clearly from the question of just distributions to the question of how free and equal members of a liberal democratic society should relate to each other; see Rawls 1996 (and 2001). It therefore ofers various points of departure for
contribution to the ‘equality of what’ debate, tied their ideal of justice even closer to the recipient-oriented focus characterizing modern welfare economics.16 Much of contemporary liberal egalitarianism thus interpreted the political value of egalitarian justice in almost exclusively distributive terms, and therefore largely eclipsed the question of appropriately egalitarian social and political relations.
It is this focus on distribution whose shortcomings will be analysed in the next chapter, and will be used as a starting point for the development of a liberal conception of egalitarian relations as matters of social justice. Yet, as seen, much of distributive egalitarianism is motivated by the aspiration to remain true to liberal conceptions of the person and of society, according to which it is up to individuals themselves to decide what is good for them, and up to them collectively to enable each other to do so (roughly) equally. Tis is an aspiration worth keeping.17
1.3. Plan of the Argument
Te aim of the book is constructive. It is to put forward a proposal for a liberal conception of social justice which accords centre stage to egalitarian relations, and to bring it into dialogue with rival theories of social justice and equality. Terefore, its aim is not to refute these theories, but to show what they are missing. As noted, three kinds of theories serve as primary interlocutors; it is worth introducing them in somewhat more detail to pin down the main contrasts with liberal relational egalitarianism, before outlining how the argument of the book will develop and defend this contrasting position.
Te frst are views which regard the main task of theories of social justice as that of specifying a just distribution of goods. Te most important members of this family are luck egalitarian theories, whose main demand is to shield individuals from the unequal impact of all factors which are beyond
relational egalitarian arguments. Some of these will be taken up, and discussed, in subsequent chapters. However, while the view to be developed in this book is certainly broadly Rawlsian (see fn. 14), Rawls scholarship is not its focus.
16 Dworkin 2000, chs. 1 and 2, which specify an auction of resources as the fairest initial situation for distributive justice, and draw on the works of Léon Walras.
17 Similar ambitions are shared by some contemporary neo-republicans—but not achieved, as chapters 3 and 4 will demonstrate.
their own control (‘brute luck’) on their lives, and to compensate them, up to equality, for the impact of those factors whose diferential impact cannot be fully neutralized.18 Luck egalitarianism is based on a specifc understanding of fairness: fairness requires equal distributive outcomes (unless individuals are themselves responsible for divergences from equality); luck egalitarians disagree among themselves about the proper currency for these outcomes (resources, opportunity for welfare, capabilities, or something else).
In recent debates, the idea of relational egalitarianism mainly gained traction as a source of objections to luck egalitarianism.19 However, while there has been some positive development of diferent versions of the relational egalitarian ideal,20 there is as of yet no worked-out proposal for a theory of social justice encompassing egalitarian relations. And there is no proposal at all as to how diferent kinds of them might ft within a specifcally liberal framework for social justice. For all the criticisms they received, distributive egalitarians, and luck egalitarians in particular, are right to want to know much more about that alternative; and especially about whether it really conficts and competes with their ideal as much as relational egalitarians tend to claim. Perhaps luck egalitarianism can itself sufciently account for relational egalitarian considerations.21
Piling up general objections to luck egalitarianism achieves little in answering these challenges; our focus will be on what exactly it is about relations of equality and the reasons for which they are demanded that distributive and luck egalitarian theories cannot capture. Te demands of liberal relational egalitarianism are themselves based on fairness, but on a diferent understanding of it. Ensuring fairness in the terms of social cooperation does not reduce to aiming at the right distributive outcomes, of whatever kind, but requires focusing on individuals’ position in relations of power and status, and putting stringent constraints on their structure, of the kind that will be outlined in a moment.
Te second set of interlocutors are, as noted, neo-republican theories of liberty, justice, and democracy, which have fourished over the last decades,
18 See Dworkin 2000, chs. 1 and 2; Cohen 1989; and Arneson 1989 for the probably best-known developments of the luck egalitarian ideal.
19 See especially Anderson 1999 and 2010b; and Schefer 2003a, 2003b, and 2005.
20 See, for example, Fourie et al. 2015; and Mason 2012.
21 For a recent exploration of diferent versions of the relational egalitarian ideal which largely afrms its compatibility with luck egalitarianism, and argues that at least some such versions can be understood as variants of distributive egalitarianism, see Lippert-Rasmussen 2018b (and further section 5.4).
and ofen present themselves as alternatives to liberal egalitarianism—in part because they draw on diferent sources of inspiration in the history of political thought. Te view developed in this book and neo-republicanism have some signifcant overlaps.22 However, they construe the concept of domination diferently, and one of the main contentions of this book is that suitably wide-ranging, equal, and deep protection against domination over central areas of individual lives can be better justifed on grounds of a liberal conception of society and the person; a conception which main proponents of neo-republicanism, such as Pettit,23 explicitly seek to eschew. Because of its broader focus on the fair structuring of social cooperation, it is also able to account for other social egalitarian demands which neo-republicans tend to ignore or neglect.
Te third are theories of social equality which regard equality in social relations as a positive ideal of social life, as something that contributes value to individual lives, or instantiates a good society, or community24 and not as requirements of social justice, or fairness. Tese views are the most clear-cut contemporary successors of the historical ideals of social and political equality as a value apart from justice which were briefy surveyed in the preceding section. Here, we will see that the implications of a liberal, justice-based, view of social equality focusing on the elimination of certain types of relational inequalities, rather than on celebrating the positive personal and impersonal value of social equality, are so far-reaching that there is good reason to think that reliance on such a positive ideal is dispensable— especially as it incurs its own problems.25 However, just as with distributive and luck egalitarianism, the aim is not a comprehensive refutation of neorepublicanism and free-standing social egalitarianism, but to use them as counterfoils for working out, and defending the credentials of, liberal relational egalitarianism.
Since the book aims not only to develop a reasonably complete such liberal ideal, but also to show that it has far-reaching and plausible implications for political and distributive justice, it is divided into two parts. Part I (chapters 1–6) works out core concepts and requirements: the expressive concept of
22 Recent scholarship has begun to examine similarities as well as diferences between neorepublicanism and social egalitarianism; see especially Schuppert 2015; Laborde and Garrau 2015; Anderson 2017a; and Kolodny 2019.
23 Pettit 1999a, 2012, and 2014.
24 See, for example, Miller 1998; Mason 2012 and 2015; and Cohen 2009.
25 A note on terminology: throughout this book, ‘relational equality’ and ‘social equality’ are used interchangeably.
justice that the ideal relies upon; its interplay with liberal conceptions of society and the person; the concept of domination and its rightful place within liberal social justice; the resulting array of requirements to equal protection against domination; and, fnally, the role of egalitarian norms of social status in warding of domination, securing self-respect, and keeping important social opportunities open to all.
Part II (chapters 7–9) develops the implications of these relational egalitarian requirements for three domains of social justice, broadly conceived. Te frst two are rights to participate as an equal in institutions of political decision-making, and requirements of distributive justice governing the distribution of income, wealth, and opportunities to attain generally favourable social positions in society. Tese domains merit a central place: any conception of justice that is to count as a serious contender has to have determinate and plausible implications for at least these two areas, so it has to be shown that this is the case for liberal relational egalitarianism. To these, the second part adds an investigation of its implications for health and healthcare. Tis is a particularly important topic, as one might worry that an ideal of relational equality is too narrowly concerned with the quality of social and political relations to be able to satisfactorily capture our concern with these goods, and with health inequalities, in particular. If it can, however, it has a strong claim to being able to serve as a reasonably complete conception of the dimensions in which social justice should be stringently and demandingly egalitarian.
Part I: Liberal Relational Egalitarianism
Chapter 2 develops the expressive perspective. It shows that the way social and political institutions treat individuals and groups is of irreducible importance to justice, and that this consideration cannot be satisfactorily accounted for by more traditional distributive theories of egalitarian justice, which focus on according individuals equal shares of justice-relevant goods; paradigmatically goods such as resources, opportunity for welfare, or basic capabilities. It makes a case for the special relevance for justice of the attitudes expressed by institutions in the treatment of those subject to their power, as that expression constitutes its meaning. Tat meaning is particularly salient where the treatment gives rise to, or shores up, power and status hierarchies between diferent individuals and groups.
While chapter 2 makes clear that power relations between individuals, and institutions and individuals, are a central subject of social justice, the expressive perspective does not, by itself, yield determinate answers to the question of which kind of power relations exactly are required by justice, and which are unjust. Chapters 3 and 4 tackle this question. Chapter 3 connects the expressive perspective to a liberal framework for social justice aiming at fair cooperation between individuals as free and equal, and derives a resulting liberal conception of non-domination from it, as demanded by respect for such freedom and equality. Domination consists of the asymmetrical capacity of one agent to arbitrarily interfere in the choices of another; interference is arbitrary when it is not forced to respect others’ prima facie relevant claims arising out of cooperation. Tis conception of domination is indebted to recent neo-republican scholarship, but it improves neo-republican frameworks for theorizing non-domination as a matter of social justice, in two important respects. First, it shows that non-domination is not the only concern of relevance to social justice, but only one among others—albeit one with a justifed claim to priority. Second, it yields a substantive conception of non-domination which gives a more determinate and plausible account of which choices and interests protection against domination has to range over, and shows how the liberal core ideas of personhood and society are essential for ensuring requirements of far-reaching, and intensive, protection. Chapter 4 develops these requirements of liberal non-domination. It shows how exactly they extend to protection against dominatory groups as well as against power relations which are not mediated by any kind of authority. It then demonstrates how diferent choices and interests, such as those falling under the basic liberties, connected to intimate personal relationships, or at stake in resource-intensive programs and policies to enhance life options, call for diferent kinds and thresholds of protection, and how the liberal conception is better placed to account for this than republican conceptions demanding the maximization of non-domination (independently of their disagreements about the construal of the concept of domination and its scope, tackled in the preceding chapter). It also requires that all protection be itself appropriately respectful of people’s moral agency. Te chapter concludes by demonstrating how these liberal requirements of non-domination give a wide policy mandate to combat domination not only by setting up the right kinds of formal institutions, but also by fostering a societal ethos, and social norms, of non-domination, and argues that liberals have no good reason to be worried by such a wide mandate.
Chapters 5 and 6 then take on the extension of liberal relational egalitarianism beyond non-domination. Chapter 5 compares the liberal approach to two important and powerful rival views which seek to argue, and account for, social and political relations of equality in a diferent way—and could, if successful, cover a wider array of such relations. Te frst is the pluralist, free-standing social egalitarian approach, which regards the value of social equality as going beyond, and sometimes perhaps even conficting with, social justice. Te second are relation-sensitive distributive egalitarian views, which enlarge the metrics of distributive justice beyond the traditional conceptions criticized in chapter 2, so as to incorporate fair shares of the various goods at stake in egalitarian relations, because of the distinctive contribution to the individual good, or to opportunities for it, that these are supposed to make. It shows that the best versions of pluralist social egalitarianism fail to give liberals a mandate to seek to shape society according to its demands, while relation-sensitive distributive conceptions either fail to capture what is distinctive about relational goods, or fail to yield demands which are recognizably egalitarian. Both results corroborate the case for the liberal approach to relational equality based on respect for freedom and equality in cooperation. However, the analysis also confrms that this conception must demand more than non-domination, and, in particular, be able to account for the wrong of inegalitarian norms of social status, as well as the connection between (in)egalitarian relations and the crucial psychological good of self-respect.
Chapter 6 undertakes the required extension. It develops an account of esteem-based norms of social status, and analyses the kinds of injustices that inegalitarian such norms may engender, or constitute. Tere are three of them. First, norms of social status can enable, or aggravate, domination, because there is ofen a tight link between perceived authority and social status. Second, they can harm self-respect. Where they do, this is a particularly stringent reason to combat them. However, closer analysis of selfrespect and its crucial role in underpinning individual autonomy reveals that not all inegalitarian norms of social status can be classifed as threats to self-respect without threatening precisely that role: self-respecting individuals are capable of resisting at least some threats to their self-worth, so requirements to protect self-respect have to aim at shoring up this capacity, not at shielding individuals from all possible threats. Self-respect thus yields particularly stringent requirements, but not all inegalitarian norms of social status violate them. Tird, such norms can be unjust, even when not
