Developing Relational Egalitarianism: Values and Domains

The main debate within contemporary egalitarians is between those who defend a distributive conception of equality and those who argue for a relational account of equality. While the former argue that equality is better understood as a pattern of distribution of certain goods that all should receive an equal amount of, for social, or relational, egalitarians what matters is the quality of social relationships (Anderson 1999; Scheffler 2003; Wolff 1998). Relational egalitarians argue that social hierarchies (or at least certain forms of them) should be eliminated, and relations of equality should be realised. Initially presented mainly as an alternative to distributive, and especially luck egalitarianism, in the last few years relational egalitarians have started to develop a more complete account of the relational egalitarian ideal (Fourie, Schuppert, and Wallimann-Helmer 2015; O’Neill 2008; Scheffler 2015; Schemmel 2021). Nonetheless, this project remains incomplete. In this panel we aim to contribute to that to the effort of developing a clearer picture of the relational egalitarian ideal including its characterization and implications for justice. In particular, we wish to do so by reflecting on the relationship between relational equality and other values, including freedom, care, democracy, as well as exploring the bearing of the relational egalitarian ideal in domains like global and intergenerational justice. By exploring how the idea of relational equality relates to other values and domains we can, first, gain a better understanding of what it means to relate as equals and, second, identify some of the ways in which the relational egalitarian perspective can enrich our understanding of other fundamental questions in political philosophy.

Specifically, we invite contributions that address, but are not limited to, the following issues and questions:

• The nature of relational equality, including the role of interpersonal relationships, social norms, and institutions.

• The relationship between relational and distributive egalitarianism

• The relationship between relational equality and freedom, including the relationship between relational egalitarianism and republicanism.

• The relationship between relational equality and democracy, including the question of the justification of democracy

• The relationship between relational equality and care and vulnerability, and the dilemmas that relationships of love and care pose to the ideal of relating as equals

• The connection between relational equality and global justice, including questions of migration

• The connection between relational equality and intergenerational justice, including questions of what is owed between age groups and non-overlapping generations.