UC San Diego

This dissertation investigates the normative significance of asymmetrical power and its implications for equality, democracy, and responsibility. Across five body chapters, I argue that understanding what is objectionable about such hierarchies is essential to understanding what equality demands of our institutions. “Moral Equality, Relational Equality, and Democracy” defends the view that democracy is constitutive of a society of equals. Against recent critics who argue that unequal distributions of political power are compatible with moral equality, I show that their conception of moral equality is implausibly permissive, and that a more defensible conception entails that inequalities in political power damages our status as equals. “Relational Equality and the Parallel Case for Workplace Democracy” extends this line of reasoning into the economic sphere. I argue that if democracy is necessary to secure equality at the state level, then parallel reasoning grounds a strong case for democracy in the workplace. Against Niko Kolodny’s agnosticism on this issue, I develop a positive model of the relational equality-democracy connection that supports workplace democracy. “Responsibility for Work and Its Effects” turns to responsibility within the structure of modern work. With Dana Nelkin, I argue for an individualist framework that attributes responsibility in virtue of what agents do given their opportunities and the foreseeable contributions of others. Against dominant collectivist approaches, we argue that an adequate account of responsibility for collective labor need not involve collective agents. “Felt Subjection and Relational Equality” examines the lived experience of inequality. I argue that the subjective awareness of subordination undermines relational equality by eroding egalitarian regard. I survey empirical evidence showing that certain forms of power’s expression predictably weaken our disposition to conceived of ourselves as equals, revealing that relational equality depends, in part, on how power is experienced. “Against Domination’s Per Se Objectionability” challenges the influential view that domination is per se seriously objectionable. I argue, by way of moral tradeoffs, that if domination were objectionable in that way, it would be worth sacrificing something of significant value to avoid it. But once domination itself is isolated from familiar confounding factors, such sacrifices are unwarranted. The upshot is that domination is not per se seriously objectionable, even though much of what motivates concern about domination can be preserved without that thesis.