UC San Diego

For many egalitarians, social justice requires equality in the distribution of goods or opportunities. By contrast, relational egalitarians take social relationships among members of society, not distribution, to be the proper object of egalitarian concern. This dissertation provides a conceptual framework for theorizing about relational equality. I demonstrate its appeal by using it to develop an account that attends to neglected aspects of relational equality, grounds its core commitments, and provides resources for addressing some of the most pressing objections raised against it. I conceptualize ‘relating’ in terms of three components: status/standing, regard, and treatment. All three components can be worked out in negative and/or positive terms: persons can lack or possess statuses; regard can require lacking or possessing beliefs and attitudes; treatment can require negative or positive behavioral norms. I characterize egalitarian relationships in terms of both negative and positive norms that are responsive to the equal value of persons and their nature as reasons-responsive agents. I identify some egalitarian norms that apply to various relationships among responsible agents living interdependently, including norms of mutual accountability, fairness, and answerability. Relational equality, as I describe it, is an attractive social ideal. I ground it as a political value that generates demands of justice by connecting it to the fair value of the basic liberties, the social bases of self-respect, and fair equality of opportunity. Although this strategy fits with a broader range of liberal commitments, I propose an alternative that appeals to a minimal perfectionist liberalism inspired by J.S. Mill. I argue that relational equality provides necessary social conditions for persons to realize their nature as deliberative agents within society.