Year: 2019
Type: book
Abstract: I identify and respond to a problem for liberal relational egalitarians.There is a prima facie worry about the compatibility of liberalism and relational egalitarianism, concerning the requirements of equality in informal social life.Liberalism at least involves a commitment to leaving individuals substantial discretion to pursue their own conceptions of the good.Relational equality is best understood as a kind of deliberative practice about social institutions and practices.Patterns of otherwise innocuous social choices (e.g., where to live, whom to befriend or marry) can create emergent, severe differentials in power, status, and influence, and when they do they can threaten relational equality.If relational equality required individuals to subordinate personal choices to egalitarian considerations, it would run into conflict with liberal commitments.In response, I defend the value of accepting an imperfect realization of relational equality.What I call fair relational equality demands that members of society treat some informal social norms and practices as part of the basic structure of society, in need of justification.Three practices are required to meet that demand.First, the relational-egalitarian society must develop institutional strategies to preempt or mitigate tendencies toward emergent inequality as they are identified.Second, members of society must engage in broad social deliberation about the norms and expectations of informal social interaction.Third, they must be willing to reform social practices where doing so does not impinge on important personal projects and values.Having had an itinerant academic path, I am fortunate to have many to thank.First and foremost, I am grateful for the attention, energy, and support of my committee.My advisor, Henry Richardson, has been enormously generous with his time, and his acute but charitable feedback has made the project much better than it otherwise would have been.Chapter 6 of his Democratic Autonomy inspired my interest in egalitarian deliberation, and my discussion of societal deliberation of informal norms is doubtless influenced by early drafts of Articulating the Moral Community, but I never felt constrained to model my agenda after his.He helped me find my own view and pointed me toward the hardest and most interesting questions I had yet to see.Judith Lichtenberg provided invaluable insight into problems of demandingness and steered me back to practical implications when my work was hazy.Madison Powers introduced me to the literature on relational egalitarianism, and I am grateful for his inexhaustible erudition and recommendations.Both Judy and Madison both gave extraordinarily helpful feedback throughout.
Author: Daniel Keith Threet
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W3026641455