Book Review

One Another’s Equals, by Jeremy Waldron. Cambridge, Mass., and London:

Harvard University Press, 2017. Pp. x + 264.
It is a firmly entrenched though comparatively little examined slogan of moral
common sense that humans are morally equal. But what is that slogan based
on, and what exactly is its cash value? These are the themes explored in
Jeremy Waldron’s new book, based on his 2015 Gifford Lectures. Waldron’s
book suavely reworks and expands a number of important and intriguing
papers of his that have been floating around for several years. Waldron is as
readable and as companionable as ever, and the arrival of this book is a sig-
nificant moment for moral and political philosophy. Where exactly Waldron’s
contribution is to be located in that broad landscape—whether in applied
ethics, or normative ethics, or in political philosophy, or perhaps in all three
areas—is just one of the many questions raised by the book. More on this in
due course.

1. Making sense of basic equality

Taking a hint from Ronald Dworkin’s writings on liberal justice, Waldron’s
avowed subject is ‘basic’ or ‘deep’ or ‘abstract’ equality (pp. 2, 13-15), a form
of equality which Dworkin affirmed but never really explored in depth. Basic
equality is a type of moral equality lying beneath the entitlements awarded to us
by theories of distributive justice. The distributions mandated by these latter
theories are ‘surface-level’, compared to the basic equality among us which
somehow qualifies us all to be included within the scope of surface-level the-
ories. But basic equality has other tasks to accomplish as well. Its presence is
supposed to have a more broadly moral and not just political significance.
In particular, Waldron wants basic equality to accomplish two jobs: a
‘vertical’ job and a ‘horizontal’ job. Basic equality ’s vertical job is to identify
‘a particular value or set of requirements that attend our dealings with each
human person’, whereas basic equality ’s horizontal job is to assert ‘an equal-
ity of that value or a sameness of those requirements across all human per-
sons’ (p. 3). These requirements have both a moral and a political
application. As Waldron warms to his theme, the dual job specification be-
comes even more exacting, or at least more flamboyantly described:
The property we are looking for must house the distinctiveness of each person,
even while it draws attention to facts about us whose similarity is the basis of our

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 2 Book Review

equality. So the property we are looking for not only has to equalize its bearers; it
has to sparkle so much with their individuality that it is capable of sustaining not
just equality but equal respect for the actual persons… whom we are calling one
another’s equals. (p. 156)
Another term for basic equality is human worth. Worth differs from merit: to
put it simply, worth ‘is what is left over when you take merit away ’ (p. 2).
Waldron spends many pages here reviewing properties that can satisfy the
worth-realizing role. He also describes, relatively early on, what consequences
might ensue if we abandon the search for such properties. In this connection,
he invokes the monstrous views of Hastings Rashdall, who blithely asserted as
recently as 1907 in his The Theory of Good and Evil that ‘sooner or later, the
lower Well-being—it may be the very existence—of countless Chinamen or
negroes must be sacrificed that a higher life may be possible for a much
smaller number of white men’ (p. 22). Any commitment to basic equality
will involve, at the very least, the denial of these ‘Rashdall-discontinuities’
among human beings (p. 31); friends of basic equality will thus affirm that
there is no ‘major difference of kind’ among humans (p. 29). In tandem with
this commitment to ‘continuous equality ’ (p. 34), Waldron pursues the
search for properties that can explain our dignity, or ‘a high and distinctive
status’ (p. 3, emphasis in original) which distinguishes us from non-human
animals.
Is basic equality descriptive or prescriptive? The answer, it seems, is both.
Basic equality is meant to have prescriptive force, but it applies in virtue of
the descriptive properties possessed by everyone who falls under its scope.
Both dimensions will receive attention in this discussion.
Now, we are all human, and that is itself a descriptive property, but
Waldron thinks that any appeal solely to human DNA, or to the mere fact
that we are members of the species Homo sapiens, would expose us to the
accusation of being ‘blatant speciesists or pure human chauvinists’ (p. 87; cf.
pp. 229-230). We must somehow earn our right to be considered one an-
other’s moral equals by pointing to thicker, more specific descriptive proper-
ties shared by all of us. Nor are we entitled simply to decide that we are going
to treat each other as basic equals, disregarding or overlooking our various
descriptive differences, even if that decision fell short of proclaiming a special
objective status for human beings as such. That conventionalist or ‘decisio-
nist’ route, embraced by writers such as Margaret McDonald and (in some
moods) Hannah Arendt, is unsatisfying, Waldron tells us, because it is un-
grounded—‘as though we could just decide to treat trees, tigers, teapots and
teenagers as one another’s equals for political purposes’ (p. 59, emphasis in
original).
Waldron thinks that the connections from the descriptive realm to the
prescriptive realm will fall short of necessary connection, or entailment.
Similarly, the doctrine of supervenience which is often invoked to explain
the connection between descriptive properties and normative properties does

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 Book Review 3

not compel any commitment to a single shared property possessed by every

individual who falls under the scope of basic equality (pp. 61-63). What
Waldron eventually settles for is a rather looser set of connections between
the descriptive and the prescriptive, which allows us, as he puts it, to make
sense of our status as moral equals:
We are not looking for a descriptive property to drive us towards equality or to
prove that equality is valid. Rather, we are looking for a descriptive property whose
conjunction with our prescriptive position will help make sense of the whole
egalitarian package. (p. 66, emphasis in original)

2. Two problems for basic equality

How are we going to do that? Humans come in all sorts of shapes and sizes,
after all; they vary in every conceivable way ‘from weight lifting to the cal-
culus’, in Bernard Williams’s memorable phrase (Williams 2005, p. 101). This
variation clearly affects degrees of merit, but it also infects the obvious can-
didates for moral worth, for example, our capacity for moral agency, or our
capacity to realize well-being, or aspects of our moral performance. These
properties all come in degrees; they are scalar. Waldron thus faces what we
can call the scalar problem.
There are also ‘marginal’ persons, as the literature sometimes designates
them, who have either succumbed to severe illness or injury, or who are
either too old or too young to qualify for full-blown status as persons. Do
these marginal persons qualify for basic equality, or not? The possibility of
their exclusion will strike many of us as an unappetising form of double
jeopardy: having fallen short of personhood, these individuals are then more-
over judged to be unqualified for the status of basic equality. Waldron wishes
to keep every human within the scope of basic equality, but how is he going
to do that without relying on chauvinism? We can call this the marginal
problem.
Both the scalar problem and the marginal problem tax our egalitarian
intuitions. We may wish to resist the assignment of a higher moral standing
to a human individual who has already achieved a higher score among the
relevant indices of well-being, capacity, or performance, and we may recoil at
the assignment of a lower standing to a human individual who performs
poorly on these indices. But it is not easy to avoid a sliding scale of moral
standing if we are determined to avoid awarding special perks to human
beings, regardless of the condition they are in, merely because they are
human.

3. A Rawlsian lesson
To defeat the scalar problem, Waldron follows the broad example of John
Rawls in A Theory of Justice and invests in range properties (Rawls 1971,
pp. 501-508). Range properties eliminate scalar variation among properties
by describing them in a certain way. Take a property, N, which strikes us as a

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compelling candidate for the conferral of moral worth, but which can be
realized to different degrees. Assume also that Daisy realizes N to a higher
degree than Jay. By assumption, the possession of N by Daisy and Jay confers
moral worth on both of them. But since Daisy instantiates N-ness to a higher
degree than Jay, we must now confront the question of whether Daisy enjoys
a higher moral worth than Jay.
Here is a way round the problem. Both Daisy and Jay satisfy the second-
order range property of having N to some or other degree; both of them have
the property of instantiating N somewhere within the possible range of N-
values. Range properties are therefore second-order, all-or-nothing properties
which testify to the positive presence of first-order, scalar properties, and
which are insensitive to differences among those first-order properties.
Both Daisy and Jay have the range property of instantiating N to some
degree, and they have this property equally. Rawls takes the various proper-
ties constituting the elements of moral personality—the capacity to form a
comprehensive conception of the good, and a sense of justice—as cases in
point. So, although Daisy and Jay may instantiate to different degrees these
elements of moral personality, the very fact that they instantiate them to any
degree counts as equal satisfaction of the range property.
Though Waldron’s commitment to range properties is shared with Rawls,
he adopts a broader view of the relevant first-order properties. He casts a wide
net here, drawing on figures as various as Kant, Aristotle, Locke, Mill, and
Williams, and also on certain styles of thinking in religious writings (Lectures
3, 5). What his account eventually settles for is a sensibly broad, open-ended
collection of capabilities and narrative possibilities, focusing on the conditions
required for living a successful human life over a whole lifetime (p. 234).
To activate this broad collection of capabilities and properties in the ser-
vice of basic equality, however, Waldron needs to have confidence in the
resilience of range properties. Now in some contexts, there is nothing fishy
about range properties. Waldron’s own example concerns jurisdictional au-
thority: though Stirling is nearer to the centre of Scotland than Gretna Green,
both towns are equally in Scotland for jurisdictional purposes (p. 119). For
these purposes, to be in Scotland at all means to be equally in Scotland. A
town is either in Scotland or it is not in Scotland; this is an all-or-nothing
property. This is perfectly convincing, but no one really thought that juris-
dictional authority was exposed to the scalar problem in the first place. The
issue is whether range properties can solve the scalar problem for morality.
It is easy to suspect that in the moral domain there is something gimmicky
about focusing on the second-order range property, rather than on the instan-
tiation of the first-order scalar property which also constitutes satisfaction of the
range property. An individual satisfies the second-order range property because
she satisfies the first-order scalar property. So won’t it be more honest to focus
on her first-order properties than on the fact that she also instantiates that
second-order property? If it is the realization of a certain first-order property

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 Book Review 5

which qualifies an individual for moral standing in the first place—if it is my

instantiation of agency which makes me a morally significant entity, unlike a
rock—and if realization of that property varies by degree, then why isn’t it
basically cheating to level the playing field by pretending that each individual
who instantiates the first-order property to any degree has instantiated it to a
relevantly equal degree? If we want to argue honestly for the egalitarian intu-
ition, we need a more principled reason for not deferring to the lower-order
scalar property, rather than settling for appeal to the higher-order range prop-
erty which conveniently flattens the differences. Or so it may seem (cf. Carter
2009, pp. 549-550, Arneson 1999, pp. 108-109).
Waldron has his own way of dealing with the scalar problem: the theory of
‘scintillation’, outlined in Lecture 4, which provides room for the operation
of both scalar and range properties. This theory will be explored in Section 4
below, because it plays a key role in Waldron’s account of how basic equality
can do prescriptive work. Waldron does not have much to say about Rawls’s
own extended defence of the range property solution against the scalar prob-
lem. Rawls’s answer strikes me as instructive, however, because it allows us to
draw a deeper lesson about the basic equality project, though not one which
will be welcome to its proponents.
As Rawls sees things, he does not need to worry about scalar variation in
the properties realizing moral personality, because variations in those proper-
ties can be immediately handed over to the theory of justice as fairness itself:
‘[T]he principles of justice assure us that any variations in ability within the
range [property] are to be regarded as any other natural asset’ (Rawls 1971,
p. 508). One of the aims of Rawls’s justice as fairness, to put it roughly, is to
neutralize the distributive effects of morally arbitrary differences in talent or
endowment. For Rawls, these differences among endowments do not chal-
lenge the very possibility of his theory of justice, but simply constitute the raw
descriptive data to which his theory is to be applied. (Waldron’s phrase for
these descriptive facts is ‘description as target’ (p. 46).) The mere fact that
these individuals are unequal in the first place, prior to the application of the
theory of justice as fairness, does not invalidate the very possibility of that
theory. How could it? If everyone was already equal with everyone else, there
would be nothing for an egalitarian theory of justice to do. And if the mere
existence of inequalities among talents or endowments was supposed to en-
danger these individuals’ qualification as subjects of egalitarian justice, we
would be making demands on the scope question for justice which were at
odds with what happens in the retail operation of justice. This is why Rawls
does not have to worry about differences in degrees of moral personality
among human beings. He can rely on the unremarkable claim that justice
applies to anyone who falls within the conceptual range of its operation.
(There are still serious charges of exclusion for him to face, however: see
Nussbaum 2007. But Rawls is not exposed to the scalar problem in particular,
which is what concerns us here.)

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There is a deeper lesson to be recovered from Rawls’s relative insouciance

on this score. What his argument suggests is that it is wrong-headed to apply
egalitarian justice to subjects only if these subjects are already equals in some
descriptive aspect. The point of egalitarian theories of justice is to arrive at
egalitarian distributions. They do not have to proceed from an egalitarian
distribution of something or other which qualifies the individuals in question
as subjects of justice. The same lesson can be extended from the political
domain to the broader moral domain. If an egalitarian pattern of concern
or respect is what we are aiming at, it does not follow that we have to embark
from some form of descriptive equality, involving equal degrees of instanti-
ation of the same descriptive properties. Though Waldron shares the Rawlsian
commitment to range properties, it is fairly clear that Rawls does not invest
the basic equality project with anything like the same urgency as Waldron.
Rawls’s implicit reservations are instructive, and they should be noted.

4. Is basic equality prescriptive?

Waldron wishes basic equality to enjoy prescriptive significance. He tells us
that the fact of basic equality ‘provides a platform’ (p. 5) for the scrutiny of
surface-level inequalities, and more generally that surface-level justice is ‘pre-
dicated upon and answerable to’ basic equality (p. 36). But what does the
answerability amount to, exactly? When the issues are looked at in more
detail, basic equality is considerably less interventionist.
In some of Waldron’s passages, basic equality seems to apply only in a
highly mediated way, as a second-order way of supervising content which is
otherwise executed squarely at the first-order level. We are told that, if we are
utilitarians, then everyone counts equally (p. 47). And that is enough to
confirm the contribution of basic equality. Similarly, if we are Kantians,
then no one’s rational agency is overlooked, or discounted at the outset.
Thus every rational agent’s rational agency is equally significant. But these
roles actually do little to generate gainful employment for basic equality. The
truth here is that utilitarians are debarred from turning up their noses
at sources of utility, wherever they come from: everyone’s utility counts
equally, and no one’s utility is refused. Similarly, Kantians are committed
to respecting rational agency wherever it is to be found. The invocation of
basic equality adds little to these theoretical pictures of the moral life. It just
rubber-stamps whatever commitments they already contain. The underlying
danger is that the work allegedly done by basic equality is little more than a
shadow cast by these theories’ generality.
In connection to theories of distributive justice, Waldron tells us that basic
equality:
…does not necessarily require that surface-level principles of justice themselves be
principles of equality—though many will be—but it requires that justice should
address us all on equal terms. (pp. 47-48)

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 Book Review 7

Fair enough. But if the surface-level principles of justice need not themselves
be egalitarian, and basic equality is still supposed to be pulling its weight
behind the scenes, questions surely arise about what normative levers basic
equality is actually controlling. We are told that the function of basic equality
is to ensure that these surface-level principles address everyone, or that every-
one is classified as an equal subject of justice. That will not be consoling news
if the way in which everyone gets addressed is still consistent with surface-
level inegalitarian treatment. The requirement that justice addresses us all on
equal terms seems tantamount to the unremarkable truth that theories of
justice will address us all in different ways, depending on what they feel
inclined to say. Inclusion within the scope of justice does not prescribe any
particular provision within the theory of justice.
Furthermore, whether surface-level principles of justice should themselves
have an egalitarian character seems decidable within the scope of first-order
theorizing about justice, not by any distinctive distributive contribution
made by basic equality. Waldron tells us that basic equality ‘does its prescrip-
tive work at a second level, disciplining the way we approach costs and
benefits’ (p. 49). But it is hard to see what this disciplinary role really
amounts to. The resulting worry is that basic equality is a silent partner in
everything that really matters to moral and political theorizing. It nods every-
thing through—apart perhaps from theories which are committed to
Rashdall-discontinuities—but unwisely takes its nodding to be confirmation
that nothing could happen without it. A rubber stamp is not an active part of
the first-order normative mechanism. Even the rebuttal of Rashdall-disconti-
nuities need not owe all that much to the prescriptive work carried out by
basic equality: what we may have to do above all else on this score is to avoid
falsifications of what human beings are like, and to refuse to accept the
various distortions of racist outlooks. (See, again, Williams 2005, pp. 99-100.)
Waldron responds to such redundancy worries by enlarging the prescrip-
tive role for basic equality. He suggests that the acknowledgement of human
worth will inject immediate prescriptions into our normative theorizing. It is
helpful to approach moral situations, not just in ways which direct our im-
mediate efforts, but in a way which keeps basic equality, or the broader
human focus, in mind. Taking the New Testament story of the Good
Samaritan as an illustration, we are told that the Samaritan should not just
be on bleeding alert and suffering alert in his dealings with the stranger, but on
human alert as well (p. 80). Basic equality may also generate a hearing for
rights and a respect for autonomy (pp. 141-145). These are worthy aims. But
will utilitarians roll over for these arrangements? Since the rapprochement
between utilitarianism and basic equality has already been emphasized as a
sign of basic equality ’s significant presence in these normative theories, it is
not clear why utilitarians are now supposed to adjust their commitments to
accommodate it, because it is not clear what the normative pressure really
amounts to. Utilitarians will say—and do say—that they offer a theory of

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moral equality. Perhaps it is the wrong theory, but the basic equality project
does not offer any sharp prescriptions for its improvement. Basic equality
seems too insulated from first-order normative theorizing to insist on much
in the way of substantial corrections.
Waldron also thinks that basic equality can discipline certain impulses, or
temptations. This is of particular interest, for it is here we see how the theory
of scintillation is supposed to work. One of the aims of the theory of scin-
tillation, after all, is to assure us that the range properties picked out to serve
in the role of basic equality are not vulnerable to the scalar problem. Now the
scintillation approach to the scalar problem is concessive: Waldron does not
want the lower-order scalar property to be eliminated from the scene, but to
enjoy a complementary relationship with the higher-order range property.
Some types of moral labour require that we ascend to the range level, while
on other occasions we need the specificity of the first-order scalar level. The
two sets of properties can enjoy a fruitful collaboration, rather than a rela-
tionship of tense rivalry. Neither level needs to be elbowed aside. The mere
fact that we need to shuttle between the lower-order scalar level and the
higher-order range level in order to achieve the right explanatory balance
also places basic equality in a flattering light. It implies that there is explana-
tory work to do that can only be done by invoking the idea of basic equality.
Waldron’s main stock of examples for scintillation is centred on what we
should think about, and do about, very bad people (pp. 145-163). Take Hitler:
a brutal genocidal criminal. But Hitler was not merely a brutal genocidal
criminal, Waldron tells us; he was also a human being, with worth (p. 161).
The same goes for the other members of the rogues’ gallery of modern dic-
tators, such as Pol Pot and Josef Stalin, or for terrorists: they may be brutal
criminals who warrant punishment or violent resistance, but they too are
human beings, with worth (pp. 149, 151, 154). Waldron’s point is that the
worth of every individual places limits on how we can deal with them. They
cannot be torn apart, or treated as entirely morally inconsequential. Human
worth determines a limit to the scale of punishment we can inflict on each
other, while individuals’ actual moral records determines what we can do to
them within those limits (p. 171). Thus there is room for the happy cooper-
ation of properties at both the scalar level and the range level.
The earlier worry resurfaces here. This part of Waldron’s discussion un-
folds within a familiar area of non-ideal normative ethics: the area demar-
cated by the concepts of liability, punishment, retaliation, defence, and so on.
The theorists who study these areas have a working understanding of the
limits of punishment, and of the roles of proportionality and necessity in
limiting the possibilities of defensive attack or retaliation. Why does basic
equality get to play any particular role? The relevant considerations all seem
to be contained within the familiar first-order theorizing.
Another problem Waldron faces is that the application of the theory of
scintillation to this corner of non-ideal theory does not give him easy answers

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to questions about distributive justice. If basic equality is supposed only to

patrol the boundaries to the application of theories of justice, while first-
order scalar properties are allowed to direct the remaining justificatory work,
then the application of the theory of scintillation to distributive justice will
deliver only very moderate coverage. It will suggest that there should be limits
to the material squalor that any human being can be asked to face, and that
we can expect this safety net to be accompanied by many inequalities in the
middle of the distributive range. Waldron surely thinks that basic equality
can exercise a more potent egalitarian influence than this. It is less clear how
it will do so. Basic equality is a category which stands outside, not inside, the
relevant debates. That makes it difficult to see how it can force itself into these
debates and start calling the distributive shots. Again, the problem concerns
basic equality ’s relative detachment and insulation from first-order concerns.

5. Profound disability and the marginal problem

Waldron delays protracted engagement with the marginal problem until
Lecture 6. His particular focus is on the profoundly disabled, or those
humans who experience ‘radical failure of one or more of the very capaci-
ties…that are supposed to underlie basic human equality and that might
otherwise have dignity-conferring significance’ (p. 217). Waldron’s challenge,
as he sees it, is to avoid any simple appeal to human DNA, while including
these individuals within the scope of basic equality. There must be more
going for them than the mere fact that they are human.
Now, one central problem with the appeal to human DNA is that it is
going to be uninformative: we will be unable to recover anything very inter-
esting from squarely biological facts about DNA. We need to open up the
story, to relate it to concerns which are recognizably relevant to our practical
lives. The capabilities and narrative possibilities that Waldron has uncovered
in his investigations are supposed to fit the bill. But the profoundly disabled
will have lives in which the various capabilities and human narrative possi-
bilities will be notable chiefly for their absence. They will not realize these
possibilities, and that, yes, is undoubtedly a fact about them—but the same
fact holds for other individuals, such as tigers, trees, and boulders. It is
equally a fact about those individuals that they do not enjoy careers as
persons.
Waldron tells us that the missing possibilities are ‘material, not modal’
(p. 218). The condition of the profoundly disabled reflects damage to the
material bases of their agency. There is a material, biological basis to the
condition of the profoundly disabled, with an ‘organic infrastructure and
an evolutionary backstory ’ (p. 239). These bases are undoubtedly richer
than merely the appeal to human DNA. They may do something to support
Waldron’s various claims about human teleology, or the idea that humans,
regardless of how they actually fare, are in a robust sense born to a set of
possibilities, whether or not they actually realize them (p. 236). Moreover, the

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reference to the ‘material, not modal’ basis of disability is also meant to curb
our lamentation for individuals that might have been transformed into per-
sons, but were not. These quixotic individuals are familiar from some of the
literature on potentiality and moral status: think of Michael Tooley ’s kitten
which could be transformed into a kitten-person if only it was injected with
personhood serum (Tooley 1972, pp. 60-62; a critical discussion of Tooley ’s
views is offered in Lang 2012a).
The references to organic infrastructure and an evolutionary backstory are
supposed to put some distance between the actual condition of non-human
individuals that are transformed into persons in some more remote possible
world, and human beings who succumb to profound disability in the actual
world. Yet the outer limits of concern here are still governed by human DNA.
Even if the basis for moral considerability is material, not modal, the material
is human, and that is why this material is ultimately morally significant. The
boundary of basic equality will have been upheld by a criterion which has
already been tarred with the brush of chauvinism, or arbitrary or invidious
discrimination.
So is Waldron committed to thinking that there is something objectively
special about human DNA? Or at least that there may be something special
about human beings when the cultural and evolutionary story contained
within human DNA is unpacked and recounted in full? That seems to me
to be a less painful admission than Waldron’s official position permits. The
humanity of the profoundly disabled is deployed simply in order to fix the
outer limit of equal moral fellowship. As Waldron persuasively argues, we will
have other, more substantive, things to say about every individual within this
boundary, including those individuals we find pressed up against the bound-
ary itself. We will not be paying attention to their DNA; we will not be forced
to characterize them, blankly or coldly, merely as members of the species
Homo sapiens, or as token instantiations of human DNA, or as failed persons.
We will, rather, be paying attention to the experiential benefits they stand to
gain in their present condition, while keeping in mind the possibilities and
capabilities they might have had, but turned out not to have. We will be
treating them as individuals, with dignity, but simply in unfortunate circum-
stances or down on their luck. We will be mindful of their vulnerability, or
misfortune, or their significant kinship or association with members of the
human moral community whose path to full moral membership was more
straightforward. All this may reflect a form of speciesism, but perhaps the
sensible conclusion to draw is that speciesism does not deserve its reputation
as a moral bête noire. (See Williams 2006 and Lang 2012b for more on this.) A
commitment to it need not invite any comparison with racism. There is, or
may be, a difference between the status of all the individuals encompassed
by a moral community and the status of discriminations we make among
the individuals within this community. After all, racism and sexism are

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 Book Review 11

intra-community forms of discrimination. These forms of discrimination

rank human beings in arbitrary and unfounded ways.
Another way to go would be to opt for the conventionalist or decisionist
route which Waldron earlier dismisses. Perhaps there is something arbitrary
about the human boundary. The avoidance of arbitrary discrimination is
hugely significant within a moral community of individuals. It is less clear
that the boundary to that community needs itself to be fortified against the
taint of arbitrariness.

6. Conclusion
Waldron concedes, near the end of this book, that ‘it is all very complicated’
(p. 254, emphasis in original). And so it is. Waldron successfully brings to the
surface many complications and subtleties, and his dealings with them are
always sensible and thoughtful. But he did not convince me that his topic is a
strongly unified one.
The vast majority of us will insist that we are each other’s moral equals,
and we would surely distrust anyone who betrayed a reluctance to accept this
slogan. But that may be partly due to the fact that there is no very sharp cost
involved in signing up to it. Doing so may function as little more than the
expression of a general willingness to tackle malign forms of discrimination as
and where we find them.*

References
Arneson, Richard 1999, ‘What, if Anything, Renders All Human
Beings Morally Equal?’, in Dale Jamieson (ed.), Singer and His
Critics (Oxford: Blackwell).
Carter, Ian 2009, ‘Respect and the Basis of Equality ’, in Ethics 121.
Lang, Gerald 2012a, ‘Is There Potential in Potentiality?’, in
Philosophical Papers 41.
—— 2012b, ‘Discrimination, Partial Concern, and Arbitrariness’, in
Heuer Ulrike and Gerald Lang (eds), Luck, Value, and
Commitment: Themes from the Ethics of Bernard Williams
(Oxford: Oxford University Press).
Nussbaum, Martha 2007, Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality,
Species Membership (Oxford: Harvard University Press).
Rawls, John 1971, A Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University
Press).

* I would like to thank Pei-Lung Cheng and the editors for helpful comments on this
piece.

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 12 Book Review

Tooley, Michael 1972, ‘Abortion and Infanticide’, in Philosophy &

Public Affairs 2.
Williams, Bernard 2005, ‘The Idea of Equality ’, reprinted in
Geoffrey Hawthorn (ed.), In the Beginning Was the Deed
(London: Princeton University Press).
—— 2006, ‘The Human Prejudice’, in A. W. Moore (ed.), Philosophy
as a Humanistic Discipline, (London: Princeton University Press).

University of Leeds GERALD LANG

g.r.lang@leeds.ac.uk
doi:10.1093/mind/fzy019

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