Social Equality On What It Means to be Equals

Is equality valuable? This question dominates many discussions of social justice, which tend to center on whether certain forms of distributive equality are valuable, such as the equal distribution of primary social goods. But these discussions often neglect what is known as social or relational equality. Social equality suggests that equality is foremost about relationships and interactions between people, rather than being primarily about distribution.

A number of philosophers have written about the significance of social equality, and it has also played an important role in real-life egalitarian movements, such as feminism and civil rights movements. However, as it has been relatively neglected in comparison to the debates about distributive equality, it requires much more theoretical attention. This volume brings together a collection of ten original essays which present new analyses of social and relational equality in philosophy and political theory. The essays analyze the nature of social equality, as well as its relationship to justice and politics.

Carina Fourie is Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Ethics Research Institute, Philosophy Department, University of Zurich.

Fabian Schuppert is Research Fellow at the Institute for Collaborative Research in the Humanities, Queen's University Belfast.

Ivo Wallimann-Helmer is Director of the program for Advanced Studies in Applied Ethics and Post-Doctoral Researcher in the University Research Priority Program for Ethics at the Centre for Ethics, University of Zurich.