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Can There be Relational Equality Across Generations? Or at All?

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Abstract

Relational egalitarianism, the view that social equality is fundamentally about equal relationships, has a problem addressing intergenerational justice. Specifically, how can we have any relationship, egalitarian or otherwise, with people that we do not overlap with temporally? I argue that the problem is even greater than that since we do not overlap in many other relevant ways, and are not in relationships with most of our temporal peers either. If relational equality relies on actual relationships, it cannot succeed as an account of justice. However, we stand in certain social relations to one another, less direct than relationships, that might connect us, in an egalitarian fashion, to many more people than the ones with whom we have relationships. If this account, or one like it, cannot succeed, however, we may have to give up on relational egalitarianism altogether.

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Notes

  1. Dworkin (1983), p. 24, but Will Kymlicka popularized it in Contemporary Political Philosophy, Oxford, 1990. For recent work defending the ‘presumption of equality', see, for example, Gosepath (2015), pp. 167–185.

  2. Cohen (2011), pp. 3–43. For an overview of recent work on the topic see Olsaretti (2018), pp. 1–12; as well as the volume as a whole.

  3. Anderson (1999).

  4. Anderson (1999), p. 314.

  5. See, for example, Anderson (2010); ‘Equality', The Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, edited by David Estlund, 2012, pp. 40–57; Scheffler (2003), pp. 5–39 and ‘The Practice of Equality', Social Equality: On What It Means to be Equals, edited by Carina Fourie, Fabian Schuppert, and Ivo Wallimann-Helmer, Oxford University Press, 2015, pp. 21–44; Scanlon 2018; Schemmel, Christian, ‘Distributive and Relational Equality', Politics, Philosophy & Economics, 11 (2), 2011, pp. 123–148; Pettit 2012; Pettit is not always labeled a relational egalitarian, but I agree with Garrau and Laborde that his views are ‘a paradigmatic relational theory of equality', Garru and Laborde (2015), p. 45.

  6. Lippert-Rasmussen (2015), pp. 220–241 and Lippert-Rasmussen (2018), pp. 81–109.

  7. Anderson (1999), p. 320. One reviewer pointed out that certain distributions might be seen as ‘translating' certain relational demands. As is widely recognized, so too certain (or even all) relational inequalities might be reducible to inequalities in the distribution of something(s). The possibility of such a distributive reading of all relational views, Samuel Scheffler calls the ‘distributivist objection'. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen calls it the ‘reductionist challenge' Scheffler (2015), pp. 21–44; Lippert-Rasmussen (2018), pp. 81–109. If relational egalitarianism, while required, cannot also avoid requiring certain particular distributions, or if distributive justice, while required, does not amount to social equality all on its own (i.e., without certain relational equalities as well), you have a pluralist, rather than a purely relational or distributive sort of egalitarianism. Justice demands, on such a view, that we be in socially related in an egalitarian fashion and that we have appropriate distributive shares.

  8. Anderson (1999), p. 313.

  9. Sheffler (2015), p. 21.

  10. Quong (2018).

  11. Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Relational Egalitarianism: Living as Equals, Cambridge University Press, 2018, pp. 123–124.

  12. Rawls (1999) p. 251.

  13. As to the need for independent arguments, compare the content of Rawls’s intergenerational view to his overall theory. His two well-known principles of justice are, actually, a ‘special’ case of his ‘general conception' which says, ‘All social values…are to be distributed equally unless an unequal distribution of any, or all, of these values is to everyone’s advantage'—which is just the difference principle writ large Rawls (1999), p. 54. On the other hand, the just-savings principle is a kind of sufficientarianism. It obliges each generation to save enough to ‘make possible the conditions needed to establish and to preserve a just basic structure over time’ Rawls (2001), p. 159. The arguments for the one principle cannot be the arguments for the other—except in the generic sense that they are both what parties would agree to in the original position. As to Rawls’s changing account of the motives of parties to the original position, see note 21 below. On the other hand, an anonymous reviewer directed me to Gaspart and Gosseries’ argument that ‘just savings can be derived from…the existing three principles, without…independent justification', as evidence that Rawls could have derived the just-savings principle more directly. However, even if they succeed, the way they derive the principle is not Rawls’s way, and the principle that they derive is not Rawls’s principle (for example, it makes saving unjust in some circumstances). See Gaspart and Gosseries (2007), p. 97.

  14. Beard (2019).

  15. Asheim (2003).

  16. Adler (2009).

  17. Parfit (1987), p. 378.

  18. Presumably, this is one reason the just-savings principle replaces it in the intergenerational case.

  19. See, for examples, Asheim (2003) and Chichilnisky et al. (2020).

  20. If nothing else, it seems clearer what it would mean to maintain a certain (non-comparative) level of something (or some things) intergenerationally, than how we would maximize, or maximize the minimum share of, something across generations.

  21. Initially, Rawls characterized parties to the original position as mutually indifferent, then suggested, as one of ‘several courses open to us' for dealing with intergenerational justice, treating parties as the ‘heads of families' or, at least, motivated by a concern for the future (rather than indifferent) Rawls (1999), p. 111. Finally, Rawls rejected that view in favor of arguing that from the original position each generation would want past and future generations to have followed, or to follow, the ‘just savings principle'—and that the non-compliance of previous generations should be treated as a matter of nonideal theory that he need not further address in his ideal theory Rawls (2005), pp. 273–274, footnote 304.

  22. Page (2007), pp. 3–20.

  23. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for encouraging me to distinguish (a) and (c).

  24. https://www.census.gov/topics/population.html.

  25. The first number is called ‘the Dunbar number', or more accurately, ‘the Dunbar hypothesis', because the exact number is not well confirmed empirically. But I think it is safe to assume that it is within Fermi distance (an order of magnitude) to the truth—close enough for our purposes. For the original paper, see Dunbar (1992), pp. 469–493.

  26. ‘More or less', since, as Rawls puts it, ‘egalitarianism admits of degrees, there are conceptions of justice that are recognizably egalitarian, even though certain significant disparities are permitted' Rawls (1999), p. 471. See footnote #10.

  27. Anderson (1999), pp. 312–314; Scheffler (2003), p. 33.

  28. Anderson (2012), p. 42f.; Scheffler (2015), p. 36, ‘I take it, that [relational equality] is a familiar ideal. And one has only to consider its application to cases of racial or ethnic or gender hierarchy to see that it has considerable critical force'.

  29. On the ‘communism of the rich', for example, see Graeber (2011). On how the neglect of the universal need for dependency care makes patriarchal ‘equality' possible, see for example, Bhandary (2020). On the role that white supremacy plays in liberal ‘equality', see for example, Mills (2017).

  30. Though I focus on hierarchy here, and Anderson does sometimes seem to argue that all relational injustices are a matter of pernicious hierarchies (Anderson 2012), relational egalitarians need not be committed to the view that the only problematic social relations are hierarchical ones. See Hartley and Watson (2021), Bhandary 2019), and Iris Marion Young, arguably, the progenitor of contemporary relational egalitarianism. She focused on what she called the ‘five faces of oppression (exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence)' Young (1990).

  31. Petitt (2010), pp. 31–35.

  32. Some, including Rawls, claim we have a ‘natural duty' to support just institutions, for example, see Rawls (1999), pp. 93–101.

  33. Niko Kolodny’s relational egalitarian justification for democracy, for example, argues that democracy is justified by the way participation in it situates us socially in relations of equality to one another Kolodny (2014a), pp. 195–229, and Kolodny (2014b), pp. 287–336.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Asha Bhandary for shepherding the larger project of which this is a piece, to David Estlund for crucial, and generous, input on revisions, to Ali Hasan for discussions of an ancient draft of this essay, and to two anonymous reviewers who offered incisive feedback.

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    Timothy Sommers

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Sommers, T. Can There be Relational Equality Across Generations? Or at All?. Res Publica 29, 469–481 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-023-09583-6

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