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Christian Schemmel
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Christian Schemmel
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Relations
C H R I S T IA N S C H E M M E L
Justice and Egalitarian
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Schemmel, Christian, 1977– author.
Title: Justice and egalitarian relations / Christian Schemmel.
Description: New York : Oxford University Press, 2021. |
Series: Oxford political philosophy |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifers: LCCN 2020043862 (print) | LCCN 2020043863 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780190084240 (hardback) | ISBN 9780190084264 (epub)
Subjects: LCSH: Equality. | Social status. | Social justice. |
Discrimination—Moral and ethical aspects. | Liberalism.
Classifcation: LCC HM821 .S24 2021 (print) | LCC HM821 (ebook) |
DDC 303.3/72—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043862
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020043863
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190084240.001.0001
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed by Integrated Books International, United States of America
For Miriam, Francesco, and Sara

Contents
Acknowledgements  ix
PA RT I . L I B E R A L R E L AT IO NA L E G A L I TA R IA N I SM
1. Justice and Egalitarian Relations 3
1.1. Introduction 3
1.2. Liberal Social Justice and Relational Egalitarianism: Te Project  5
1.3. Plan of the Argument  10
1.4. Relational Equality When and Where?  18
2. Distributive and Relational Equality 22
2.1. Introduction 22
2.2. Distributive Egalitarianism: Currency Teories of Equality 23
2.3. Five Ways of Treating People 27
2.4. A Preliminary Objection: Justice Is Not All Tat Matters 29
2.5. Difering Institutional Causal Involvement 31
2.6. Difering Institutional Attitudes Expressed in Treatment 38
2.7. Conclusion 53
3. Liberal Non-Domination 55
3.2. Equality of Power and Social Cooperation 59
3.3. Te Injustice of Domination 63
3.4. Republican Conceptions of Justice as Non-Domination 78
4. The Demands of Liberal Non-Domination 94

4.2. Domination, Narrow and Wide 95
4.3. Te Intensity of Non-Domination 101
4.4. Why Not Just Maximize (Equal) Non-Domination? 110
4.5. Realizing Liberal Non-Domination 115
4.6. Conclusion: Distributing Non-Domination? 123
5. Relational Equality beyond Non-Domination 127
5.2. Te Insufciency of Non-Domination 129
5.3. Pluralist Social Egalitarianism  132
5.4. Relation-Sensitive Metrics 144
5.5. Conclusion 161
viii Contents
6. Social Status, Self-Respect, and Opportunity  162

6.1. Introduction  162
6.2. Social Status Norms  164
6.3. Te Diverse Efects of Status Norms  173
6.4. Te Injustice of Status-Induced Opportunity Loss  188
6.5. Conclusion: Treating Others as Inferior, With and Without Norms  193
PA RT I I . I M P L IC AT IO N S
7. Political Equality  199
7.2. Two False Starts  201
7.3. Te Grounds and Shape of Political Equality  208
7.4. Restricting Political Equality  218
7.5. Conclusion: Dworkin and Democracy  225
8. Distributive Justice  232
8.2. Relational Egalitarianism and Distributive Justice: Te Problem  233
8.3. Justifying Distributive Inequality  236
8.4. Distributive Inequality, Domination, and Political Inequality  242
8.5. Social Status and Distributive Inequality  247
8.6. Relational Equality and Equality of Opportunity  252
8.7. Conclusion  256
9. Health Inequality  258
9.2. Health and Social Cooperation  261
9.3. Unjust Health Inequalities  266
9.4. Objections: Undercoverage, Exclusion, and Discrimination?  282
Conclusion  288
C.1. Challenging Liberal Relational Egalitarianism  288
C.2. Applying Relational Egalitarianism  290
C.3. International Justice and Beyond  294
Bibliography  301
Index  315
Acknowledgements
Tis book has changed shape and content so many times that it is a real chal-
lenge to encompass in my thanks all those who contributed to its develop-
ment. Tanks for written comments, or extended personal conversations, on
part of this manuscript, or on material that led up to it, go to Sara Amighetti,
Peter Balint, Rainer Bauböck, Barbara Buckinx, Ian Carter, Emanuela Ceva,
Francesco Chiesa, Richard Child, Stephanie Collins, Christine Chwaszcza,
Julian Culp, Steve de Wijze, Holger Döring, Rainer Forst, Carina Fourie,
Anca Gheaus, Sarah Gof, Stefan Gosepath, Robert Jubb, Andrew Lister,
Daniel McDermott, Emily McTernan, David Miller, Darrel Moellendorf,
Martin O’Neill, James Pattison, Tomas Pogge, Miriam Ronzoni, Andrea
Sangiovanni, Rainer Schmalz- Bruns, Fabian Schuppert, Shlomi Segall,
Liam Shields, Cynthia Stark, Hillel Steiner, Adam Swif, Patrick Tomlin,
Laura Valentini, Bas van der Vossen, Kristin Voigt, Ivo Wallimann-Helmer,
Jo Wolf, two anonymous referees for Politics, Philosophy & Economics, two
anonymous referees for Social Teory and Practice, and two anonymous ref-
erees for Oxford University Press, in particular for their excellent suggestions
on how to restructure parts of the manuscript. Tanks also to my editor
Peter Ohlin, and Sam Freeman, for their patience in waiting for it, and very
helpful advice in the fnal stages. I have benefted from conversation with,
and probing questions by, too many others to list here, including audiences
in Amsterdam, Bad Homburg, Baltimore, Bergen, Bologna, Braga, Florence,

Frankfurt, Göttingen, Jerusalem, London (UCL, KCL, and LSE), Manchester,
Oxford, Pavia, Southampton, York, Warwick, and Zurich. Special thanks go
to Miriam Ronzoni, for all her support, and to Francesco and Sara. While
their arrival substantially delayed the birth of this book, they kept reminding
me that there are much more important things in life.
Parts of chapters 3, 4, and 6 were written during a Senior Research
Fellowship at the Centre for Advanced Studies ‘Justitia Amplifcata—
Rethinking Justice’ in Bad Homburg/Frankfurt and Berlin. My thanks go to
the Directors of the Centre, Stefan Gosepath and Rainer Forst, and to all of
its staf.
x Acknowledgements
Chapter 2 is an adapted and extended version of ‘Distributive and

Relational Equality’, Politics, Philosophy & Economics 11 (2012), 123–148.
Chapter 8 is an adapted and revised version of ‘Why Relational Egalitarians
Should Care About Distributions’, Social Teory and Practice 37 (2011), 365–
390; very small parts of it also appear in chapter 6. Chapter 6 (section 6.3.2)
draws extensively on material frst published in ‘Real Self-Respect and Its
Social Bases’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49 (2019), 628–651. Small parts
of ‘Social Equality—or Just Justice?’, in Social Equality—On What It Means
to Be Equals, eds. Carina Fourie, Fabian Schuppert, and Ivo Wallimann-
Helmer (New York: Oxford University Press 2015), pp. 146–166, appear in
chapters 5 and 6.
PART I
E GA L ITA R IA NI SM
LIBE R A L R E L AT IONA L
1
1.1. Introduction
Relations of unequal power and domination, and hierarchies of social status,

characterize the societies we live in. Tey constitute the main obstacle to
achieving a society of equals, and one that is diferent from economic in-
equality, even though the two ofen go hand in hand. Even if all had equal
economic resources, this would not amount to a society of equals as long
as some had arbitrary power over others and inegalitarian norms of social
status deprived some of fair opportunities to acquire and enjoy social esteem
for their traits, skills, pursuits, and projects.
Tis book provides a theory of how concern for egalitarian relations of
non-domination and social status can be incorporated into a liberal concep-
tion of social justice, and lay a strong claim to constituting the most demand-
ingly and stringently egalitarian components of such a conception. Its aim
is to convince liberals that they should be relational egalitarians, and rela-
tional egalitarians that they should be liberals—and to convince those who
remain unpersuaded by well-rehearsed philosophical arguments that justice
requires people to get equal amounts of some good to be distributed, such
as resources, or welfare, or equal opportunity to acquire these, that there is
a better conception of egalitarian justice which they have strong reason to

consider, and hopefully sign up to. Hardly anybody denies that people are
fundamentally each other’s moral equals; and not many deny that this basic
equality grounds a claim to stand, at the very least within the society of which
one is a member, as a social and political equal. Taking these commitments
seriously requires us to put stringent egalitarian constraints on the structure
of important social and political relations of power and status, and thereby to
make sure that the diferent social and economic outcomes these generate are
signifcantly egalitarian, too—or so the argument will seek to show.
Te book argues that expressing respect for the freedom and equality of
individuals in social cooperation requires stringent protections against dom-
ination. It develops a substantive, liberal conception of non-domination
Justice and Egalitarian Relations. Christian Schemmel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190084240.003.0001
4 Liberal Relational Egalitarianism
tied to cooperation among free and equal persons, and argues that non-
domination is a particularly urgent, but not the only, concern of social jus-
tice. Both its substantive nature and its account of the place of its demands
within relational egalitarianism set it apart from, and render it superior to,
neo-republican accounts of non-domination, which seek to reduce social
justice to questions of non-domination. It also develops an account of the
wrong of norms of status inequality, showing how status-induced foreclosure
of important social opportunities is a social injustice in its own right, in ad-
dition to the role of status inequality in enabling domination, and the threats
it poses to individuals’ self-respect. It applies these core requirements of lib-
eral relational egalitarianism to political, economic, and health justice, and
works out its implications for these domains: they amount to demands for
far-reaching forms of equality in all three of them, which can rarely, if ever,
be overridden by competing concerns.
Tis systematic account and defence of liberal relational egalitarianism
builds on an in-depth engagement with several diferent literatures: literature
on the kind of equality, if any, demanded by justice, which has mostly taken
the form of a debate between relational and distributive egalitarians; litera-
ture about the nature of the value of social equality, which, in part, precedes
the former, questions whether that value is best, or exclusively, accounted for
by justice, and holds that reliance on diferent, fundamental values of equality
and community is necessary; and neo-republican literature about the nature
and demands of non-domination, and its connection to justice, which ofen
proceeds by seeking to distance neo-republicanism from liberal egalitarian
theories of justice, while nevertheless claiming broadly liberal credentials.
Tese literatures have mostly developed in isolation from each other. Recent
scholarship has started to bring them into contact, but as of yet no systematic
attempt to integrate them has been made. Te book takes full account of the
signifcant advances recently made in each of them, brings them together,
and thereby seeks to advance all of them.
Tis completes the frst overview of the project. In order to give a fuller in-
troduction to its key features, ambitions, and motivations, the remainder of
this chapter proceeds as follows. Section 1.2 gives more depth to the theoret-
ical challenges which justice-based relational equality faces, by showing how
it seeks to weave together two concerns—social justice and social equality—
which have, for the most part, been treated as separate matters in the history
of modern political thought. Section 1.3 outlines how the book answers these
challenges, by contrasting its ambitions to that of the three main families
Justice and Egalitarian Relations 5
of theoretical interlocutors just mentioned, and providing a more detailed

outline of the arguments of each chapter and of how they contribute to the
overall argument of the book. Section 1.4 concludes by delineating the scope
of the theory to be developed, and the kind of social scenario it is intended
to yield requirements of social justice for: in the frst instance, for a society
characterized by a reasonably well-functioning institutional structure ca-
pable of organizing social cooperation by enabling and sustaining a complex
division of labour. Tis does not rule out that it can be extended and applied
to matters of international and global justice, too, but that extension is a task
for another day.
1.2. Liberal Social Justice and Relational Egalitarianism:

Te Project
Political thought about justice, and later social and distributive justice, and
political thought about relations of social equality have traditionally, and in
some respects up to the present, been separate, and have travelled on dif-
ferent roads. Briefy taking stock of these diferences puts some of the main
challenges, as well as prospects of relational equality as a central requirement
of social justice, into sharper focus. If successful, such a view would be able
to account properly for the objectionable nature of key inegalitarian social
relations—for their injustice—and to explain, from this starting point also,
when, and why, which kinds of unequal distributions of goods are unjust.
However, unlike more traditional social egalitarian views, it would be able to
do so while remaining a liberal theory which does not tell individuals how to
lead their own lives, which does not put forward a vision of the good com-
munal life directing and dictating the content of individual conceptions of
the good, rather than merely constraining them in order to continuously
safeguard everybody else’s freedom and equality.
Te philosophical project of this book is thus that of showing that liberal
social justice can be home to a demanding conception of egalitarian relations,
and that such a conception can be arrived at from premises thinner than
those traditionally endorsed by many social egalitarians—whether or not
such a conception also has good prospects of political success, in the sense
of being capable of persuading as many people as possible, whatever their
fundamental value outlooks, to sign up to it. A conception of egalitarian rela-
tions as a matter of social justice is not consonant with most of the history of
political thought, in which the latter has generally been restricted to the pro-
tection, and later also distribution, of property, and the former connected to
encompassing visions of the good society as one where positive relationships
of equality prevail. Yet a connection of both within a specifcally liberal con-
ception of social justice is an attractive and worthwhile prospect. It is a novel
road in political thought, worth trying out.
Te idea of social, or distributive, justice, according to which the primary
task of justice for a state is to provide all individuals—at least within a given
society—with both the liberty and the means needed to be a full partici-
pant in that society, is a relative latecomer in the history of Western political
thought. Te demand that the state not only should ensure that people enjoy
personal security and the protection of their property, but also should set up
the societal order in such a way as to take appropriate care of everybody’s
material situation frst rose to prominence in the socialist thinking of the
nineteenth century which accompanied the acceleration of industrializa-
tion in key Western countries such as Britain, France, and, with some delay,
Germany.1 Enlightenment thinking, the French Revolution of 1789, and the
rapid displacement of traditional orders by industrialization made it possible
to see the basic political and economic order of society as itself an appropriate
object for deliberate political action and design, rather than simply having to
be taken over by tradition. Tis is the birth of the contemporary concept of
social justice, or at least of all its necessary presuppositions, as ranging com-
prehensively over the set-up of a given society, being primarily entrusted to
the state, and demanding not only that everybody’s personal freedom and
property be preserved, but also that everybody be enabled, by that order, to
command an appropriate share of resources (understood in the widest sense
of the term) so as to be an active and free participant in it.2

Tought about social equality as a value governing social and political re-
lations predates these developments considerably—but without any clear
1 Te idea that the state may, and ought to, use coercive taxation to guarantee a basic minimum of
material means for everybody appears somewhat earlier, in Kant’s work; Kant 1996 [1797], p. 101.
However, Kant did not seem to regard this task as one of ‘distributive justice’; Kantian ‘distributive
justice’ refers, somewhat idiosyncratically, to the determination and securing of rights (mainly to
property) by enforceable and impartially administered public law, as opposed to a state of nature;
ibid., pp. 86, 90. Most other thinkers understood distributive justice, in the Aristotelian tradition, to
be about the distribution of ofces and privileges among those citizens of a polity, who, through per-
sonal excellence, merited them; Aristotle 2000, Book V.
2 See Fleischacker 2004, pp. 105, 125; Johnston 2011, pp. 3f and ch. 7; and Fleischacker 2004, chs.
1 and 2, on how, before, basic material provision was generally regarded as a matter for duties of
charity, which did not translate into rights of recipients.
connection to justice. Renaissance writers such as Tomas More presented

utopian societies characterized by simplicity of lifestyle and social equality
as withering social criticism of what they saw as the decadence and cor-
ruption of the social and political life of their times.3 Tey did not argue for
their ideals as conceptions of justice, as seeking to specify how social or-
ders, or governments, ought to treat individuals by way of right. Later egali-
tarian movements, like the Levellers in seventeenth-century England, fused
Christian belief in equality before God and specifc egalitarian visions of po-
litical life. Te Diggers (or True Levellers), led by Gerrard Winstanley, espe-
cially stressed the connection between calls for greater political equality and
greater socio-economic equality as a necessary condition for it.4 Rousseau
argued, on grounds of liberty, for a model of radical direct democracy, and
for the claim that substantial social and material inequalities pervert societal
relations5 and undermine the viability of democracy.6
In these movements in political thought, there was a development from
utopian visions towards a conception of equality understood specifcally
as a social and political value, tightly connected to republican and demo-
cratic forms of government, and viewed as both desirable, because liberty-
preserving and -enhancing, and, at least in principle, feasible. However, there
was still little connection between such a value of equality and concern about
socio-economic inequality as a matter of justice. Rousseau’s view does make
a case for an intrinsic connection between law-making through egalitarian
and direct democracy and the preservation of every citizen’s civil liberty, es-
pecially through the protection of property. But he regarded putting limits
on socio-economic inequality as important mainly to ensure proper demo-
cratic governance—not because failing to do so also means negating individ-
uals their fair share of the social product, in addition to political inequality.7
Later on, socialist thought transformed and widened such an ideal of
equal political standing to a more encompassing and general ideal of living
3 More 2003 [1516]. Utopia also has some very inegalitarian features, such as a form of slavery for
convicted criminals; ibid., p. 82.

4 Winstanley 1973; for discussion, see Fleischacker 2004, p. 43 n. 52. For recent discussions of
Leveller thought about work relations and the proper place of markets, see Anderson 2017a, and the
critical responses to her account included there.
5 Rousseau 1984 [1755].
6 Rousseau 1968 [1762]; see especially p. 96: ‘[N]‌o citizen shall be rich enough to buy another, and
none so poor as to be forced to sell himself.’ How much material inequality exactly was meant to be
ruled out by this is an open question.
7 Rousseau nowhere discusses distributive justice in any detail, and understands it, along
Aristotelian lines (see fn. 1) as requiring distributions according to personal merit (as measured, ac-
cording to him, by services rendered to the state); 1984 [1755], p. 171.
as social equals.8 It emphasized solidarity and communality, and refused

to accept personal competition and confict as inevitable features of social
life, against much of the liberal tradition, which saw the main task as that
of managing, rather than eradicating, these features. Important parts of the
socialist movement did regard the just distribution of the fruits of social la-
bour as a primary socialist, or social democratic, concern. Marx subjected
this focus on distribution to withering criticism for, in his view, failing to re-
alize and stress how revolutionizing the modes of societal production would
bring about a wholly diferent, much more desirable, set of social relations
which would characterize the communist society to come.9 ‘Ofcial’ Marxist
socialism eschewed framing this ideal in terms of an alternative conception
of social justice, and generally privileged social scientifc analysis and theory
of history over moral argument. However, ‘ethical’ (as opposed to ‘scientifc’)
socialists did advocate a relationship ideal of social and political equality on
moral grounds. Particularly notable is the work of the English socialist R. H.
Tawney, who put forward an ideal of an egalitarian society, ultimately under-
written by Christian belief in the equal and infnite value of all individuals,
as a society not characterized by hierarchical and divisive norms of social
status, or dominatory power relations.10
Such a position is, in some respects, a forerunner of contemporary social
egalitarian positions,11 and it could also be regarded as the basis for a distinct
conception of social justice. However, that would be an ‘ethically socialist’
conception all the way down. It would rest on a perfectionist, comprehensive
vision of solidarity among equals as the chief human good to be achieved in
social life.12 Tat is not in line with a more liberal understanding of justice,
which restricts itself to demanding that everybody’s rights be respected, and
justifed claims honoured, because this is what individuals’ status as free and
equal members of society demands, whatever more particular view of the
human good, if any, we endorse.
Much of contemporary liberal egalitarian theorizing has, in the wake of
Rawls’s work, sought to justify egalitarian concern without any appeal to
such perfectionist, communitarian visions of the individual and social good.
Its distinctive reinterpretation and development of liberal thought stresses
8 For a reasonably representative early socialist view, see Proudhon 2011 [1846].
9 Marx 2000 [1875]. See section 2.2.
10 Tawney 1931; for an overview of the main features of Tawney’s egalitarianism, see Wolf 2013.
11 See especially the ‘pluralist social egalitarian positions’ analysed in c hapter 5.
12 See Wright 1987, p. 138.
the connection between an account of moral personhood which is intended

to be more neutral, and broadly shareable, spelled out in terms of possession
of the two fundamental moral powers of a capacity for a sense of justice, and
the capacity to develop, pursue, and revise a conception of the good,13 and
the task of social justice, which requires ensuring that each member of so-
ciety is both free from obstruction by others and enjoys sufcient, and not
too unequal, material means to live her life according to her own conception
of the good.
Tis is the bridge between liberal insistence on respect for personal autonomy
and egalitarian conceptions of social justice in much of contemporary liberal
egalitarianism: it is the former that ultimately underpins the latter, not any par-
ticular perfectionist vision of the individual and social good of living together as
social equals, beyond continuously ensuring (roughly) equal substantive liberty
to live one’s life as one sees ft.14
Initially, in the Teory of Justice, Rawls sought to spell out this link on the
basis of a less well-developed conception of the person, by drawing on a pri-
marily distribution-centred perspective on social justice, and emphasizing
the question of which goods individuals ought to be entitled to get in a suit-
ably equal manner. Indeed, the connections Rawls established between the
requirement of respecting personal autonomy and distribution-oriented
welfare economics accounted for a signifcant part of the inaugural suc-
cess of the theory.15 Other liberal egalitarians, most notably Dworkin in his
13 For a representative formulation of the second moral power and its implications, see Rawls
1996, p. 72: ‘Citizens think of themselves as free in three respects: frst, as having the moral power to
form, to revise and rationally to pursue a conception of the good; second, as being self-authenticating
sources of valid claims; and third, as capable of taking responsibility for their ends.’
14 A note on neutrality, non-perfectionism, and the shareability of political ideals: a neutral, non-
perfectionist view insists that the use of political power in pursuit of justice must not be justifed on
the basis of its furthering any particular conception of what constitutes a good (individual or com-
munal) life; a political, non-comprehensive view further aims to deliver such requirements of justice
on the basis of a set of moral ideas (about personhood, and society) which form, or are at least capable
of forming, the basis of an overlapping consensus between diferent comprehensive philosophical
doctrines about the good life, the nature of society, and the grounds of personhood; see Rawls 1996,
and Quong 2010, pp. 15f, for a helpful taxonomy of diferent liberal views.
Te view developed in this book certainly aims to be non-perfectionist and compatible with a
broad array of diferent, and potentially competing, conceptions of the good, and in this sense, to
be broadly shareable. It also draws on ideas about personhood and the nature of society that have
been developed, and refned, by Rawls in his search for a political conception of justice in the sense
outlined earlier. However, it is not itself pitched, and developed, as a political ideal in this sense. It
would certainly be nice if liberal relational egalitarianism could be the object of consensus among
fundamentally diferent comprehensive philosophical doctrines, but no argument to this extent will
be made, and its success does not crucially depend on it.
15 Rawls 1999a. In later works, Rawls’s focus shifs more clearly from the question of just
distributions to the question of how free and equal members of a liberal democratic society should
relate to each other; see Rawls 1996 (and 2001). It therefore ofers various points of departure for
contribution to the ‘equality of what’ debate, tied their ideal of justice even
closer to the recipient-oriented focus characterizing modern welfare eco-
nomics.16 Much of contemporary liberal egalitarianism thus interpreted the
political value of egalitarian justice in almost exclusively distributive terms,
and therefore largely eclipsed the question of appropriately egalitarian social
and political relations.
It is this focus on distribution whose shortcomings will be analysed in the
next chapter, and will be used as a starting point for the development of a
liberal conception of egalitarian relations as matters of social justice. Yet, as
seen, much of distributive egalitarianism is motivated by the aspiration to
remain true to liberal conceptions of the person and of society, according to
which it is up to individuals themselves to decide what is good for them, and
up to them collectively to enable each other to do so (roughly) equally. Tis is
an aspiration worth keeping.17
1.3. Plan of the Argument
Te aim of the book is constructive. It is to put forward a proposal for a lib-

eral conception of social justice which accords centre stage to egalitarian
relations, and to bring it into dialogue with rival theories of social justice
and equality. Terefore, its aim is not to refute these theories, but to show
what they are missing. As noted, three kinds of theories serve as primary
interlocutors; it is worth introducing them in somewhat more detail to pin
down the main contrasts with liberal relational egalitarianism, before out-
lining how the argument of the book will develop and defend this contrasting
position.
Te frst are views which regard the main task of theories of social jus-
tice as that of specifying a just distribution of goods. Te most important
members of this family are luck egalitarian theories, whose main demand is
to shield individuals from the unequal impact of all factors which are beyond
relational egalitarian arguments. Some of these will be taken up, and discussed, in subsequent
chapters. However, while the view to be developed in this book is certainly broadly Rawlsian (see fn.
14), Rawls scholarship is not its focus.
16 Dworkin 2000, chs. 1 and 2, which specify an auction of resources as the fairest initial situation
for distributive justice, and draw on the works of Léon Walras.

17 Similar ambitions are shared by some contemporary neo- republicans—but not achieved, as
chapters 3 and 4 will demonstrate.
their own control (‘brute luck’) on their lives, and to compensate them, up to
equality, for the impact of those factors whose diferential impact cannot be
fully neutralized.18 Luck egalitarianism is based on a specifc understanding
of fairness: fairness requires equal distributive outcomes (unless individuals
are themselves responsible for divergences from equality); luck egalitarians
disagree among themselves about the proper currency for these outcomes
(resources, opportunity for welfare, capabilities, or something else).
In recent debates, the idea of relational egalitarianism mainly gained trac-
tion as a source of objections to luck egalitarianism.19 However, while there
has been some positive development of diferent versions of the relational
egalitarian ideal,20 there is as of yet no worked-out proposal for a theory of
social justice encompassing egalitarian relations. And there is no proposal
at all as to how diferent kinds of them might ft within a specifcally lib-
eral framework for social justice. For all the criticisms they received, distri-
butive egalitarians, and luck egalitarians in particular, are right to want to
know much more about that alternative; and especially about whether it re-
ally conficts and competes with their ideal as much as relational egalitarians
tend to claim. Perhaps luck egalitarianism can itself sufciently account for
relational egalitarian considerations.21
Piling up general objections to luck egalitarianism achieves little in an-
swering these challenges; our focus will be on what exactly it is about
relations of equality and the reasons for which they are demanded that distri-
butive and luck egalitarian theories cannot capture. Te demands of liberal
relational egalitarianism are themselves based on fairness, but on a diferent
understanding of it. Ensuring fairness in the terms of social cooperation does
not reduce to aiming at the right distributive outcomes, of whatever kind, but
requires focusing on individuals’ position in relations of power and status,

and putting stringent constraints on their structure, of the kind that will be
outlined in a moment.
Te second set of interlocutors are, as noted, neo-republican theories of
liberty, justice, and democracy, which have fourished over the last decades,
18 See Dworkin 2000, chs. 1 and 2; Cohen 1989; and Arneson 1989 for the probably best-known
developments of the luck egalitarian ideal.

19 See especially Anderson 1999 and 2010b; and Schefer 2003a, 2003b, and 2005.
20 See, for example, Fourie et al. 2015; and Mason 2012.
21 For a recent exploration of diferent versions of the relational egalitarian ideal which largely
afrms its compatibility with luck egalitarianism, and argues that at least some such versions can
be understood as variants of distributive egalitarianism, see Lippert-Rasmussen 2018b (and further
section 5.4).
and ofen present themselves as alternatives to liberal egalitarianism—in

part because they draw on diferent sources of inspiration in the history of
political thought. Te view developed in this book and neo-republicanism
have some signifcant overlaps.22 However, they construe the concept of
domination diferently, and one of the main contentions of this book is that
suitably wide-ranging, equal, and deep protection against domination over
central areas of individual lives can be better justifed on grounds of a liberal
conception of society and the person; a conception which main proponents
of neo-republicanism, such as Pettit,23 explicitly seek to eschew. Because of
its broader focus on the fair structuring of social cooperation, it is also able to
account for other social egalitarian demands which neo-republicans tend to
ignore or neglect.
Te third are theories of social equality which regard equality in social re-
lations as a positive ideal of social life, as something that contributes value
to individual lives, or instantiates a good society, or community24—and
not as requirements of social justice, or fairness. Tese views are the most
clear-cut contemporary successors of the historical ideals of social and po-
litical equality as a value apart from justice which were briefy surveyed in
the preceding section. Here, we will see that the implications of a liberal,
justice-based, view of social equality focusing on the elimination of certain
types of relational inequalities, rather than on celebrating the positive per-
sonal and impersonal value of social equality, are so far-reaching that there
is good reason to think that reliance on such a positive ideal is dispensable—
especially as it incurs its own problems.25 However, just as with distributive
and luck egalitarianism, the aim is not a comprehensive refutation of neo-
republicanism and free-standing social egalitarianism, but to use them as
counterfoils for working out, and defending the credentials of, liberal rela-
tional egalitarianism.
Since the book aims not only to develop a reasonably complete such liberal
ideal, but also to show that it has far-reaching and plausible implications for
political and distributive justice, it is divided into two parts. Part I (chapters 1–
6) works out core concepts and requirements: the expressive concept of
22 Recent scholarship has begun to examine similarities as well as diferences between neo-
republicanism and social egalitarianism; see especially Schuppert 2015; Laborde and Garrau 2015;
Anderson 2017a; and Kolodny 2019.
23 Pettit 1999a, 2012, and 2014.
24 See, for example, Miller 1998; Mason 2012 and 2015; and Cohen 2009.
25 A note on terminology: throughout this book, ‘relational equality’ and ‘social equality’ are used
interchangeably.
justice that the ideal relies upon; its interplay with liberal conceptions of so-
ciety and the person; the concept of domination and its rightful place within
liberal social justice; the resulting array of requirements to equal protection
against domination; and, fnally, the role of egalitarian norms of social status
in warding of domination, securing self-respect, and keeping important so-
cial opportunities open to all.
Part II (chapters 7–9) develops the implications of these relational egali-
tarian requirements for three domains of social justice, broadly conceived.
Te frst two are rights to participate as an equal in institutions of political
decision-making, and requirements of distributive justice governing the dis-
tribution of income, wealth, and opportunities to attain generally favourable
social positions in society. Tese domains merit a central place: any concep-
tion of justice that is to count as a serious contender has to have determinate
and plausible implications for at least these two areas, so it has to be shown
that this is the case for liberal relational egalitarianism. To these, the second
part adds an investigation of its implications for health and healthcare. Tis is
a particularly important topic, as one might worry that an ideal of relational
equality is too narrowly concerned with the quality of social and political re-
lations to be able to satisfactorily capture our concern with these goods, and
with health inequalities, in particular. If it can, however, it has a strong claim
to being able to serve as a reasonably complete conception of the dimensions
in which social justice should be stringently and demandingly egalitarian.
Part I: Liberal Relational Egalitarianism

Chapter 2 develops the expressive perspective. It shows that the way so-
cial and political institutions treat individuals and groups is of irreducible
importance to justice, and that this consideration cannot be satisfactorily
accounted for by more traditional distributive theories of egalitarian jus-
tice, which focus on according individuals equal shares of justice-relevant
goods; paradigmatically goods such as resources, opportunity for welfare, or
basic capabilities. It makes a case for the special relevance for justice of the
attitudes expressed by institutions in the treatment of those subject to their
power, as that expression constitutes its meaning. Tat meaning is particu-
larly salient where the treatment gives rise to, or shores up, power and status
hierarchies between diferent individuals and groups.
While chapter 2 makes clear that power relations between individuals, and
institutions and individuals, are a central subject of social justice, the expres-
sive perspective does not, by itself, yield determinate answers to the question
of which kind of power relations exactly are required by justice, and which
are unjust. Chapters 3 and 4 tackle this question. Chapter 3 connects the ex-
pressive perspective to a liberal framework for social justice aiming at fair
cooperation between individuals as free and equal, and derives a resulting
liberal conception of non-domination from it, as demanded by respect for
such freedom and equality. Domination consists of the asymmetrical ca-
pacity of one agent to arbitrarily interfere in the choices of another; interfer-
ence is arbitrary when it is not forced to respect others’ prima facie relevant
claims arising out of cooperation. Tis conception of domination is in-
debted to recent neo-republican scholarship, but it improves neo-republican
frameworks for theorizing non-domination as a matter of social justice, in
two important respects. First, it shows that non-domination is not the only
concern of relevance to social justice, but only one among others—albeit one
with a justifed claim to priority. Second, it yields a substantive conception of
non-domination which gives a more determinate and plausible account of
which choices and interests protection against domination has to range over,
and shows how the liberal core ideas of personhood and society are essential
for ensuring requirements of far-reaching, and intensive, protection.
Chapter 4 develops these requirements of liberal non-domination. It
shows how exactly they extend to protection against dominatory groups as
well as against power relations which are not mediated by any kind of au-
thority. It then demonstrates how diferent choices and interests, such
as those falling under the basic liberties, connected to intimate personal
relationships, or at stake in resource-intensive programs and policies to en-

hance life options, call for diferent kinds and thresholds of protection, and
how the liberal conception is better placed to account for this than repub-
lican conceptions demanding the maximization of non-domination (in-
dependently of their disagreements about the construal of the concept of
domination and its scope, tackled in the preceding chapter). It also requires
that all protection be itself appropriately respectful of people’s moral agency.
Te chapter concludes by demonstrating how these liberal requirements of
non-domination give a wide policy mandate to combat domination not only
by setting up the right kinds of formal institutions, but also by fostering a so-
cietal ethos, and social norms, of non-domination, and argues that liberals
have no good reason to be worried by such a wide mandate.
Chapters 5 and 6 then take on the extension of liberal relational egalitar-

ianism beyond non-domination. Chapter 5 compares the liberal approach
to two important and powerful rival views which seek to argue, and account
for, social and political relations of equality in a diferent way—and could,
if successful, cover a wider array of such relations. Te frst is the pluralist,
free-standing social egalitarian approach, which regards the value of social
equality as going beyond, and sometimes perhaps even conficting with, so-
cial justice. Te second are relation-sensitive distributive egalitarian views,
which enlarge the metrics of distributive justice beyond the traditional
conceptions criticized in chapter 2, so as to incorporate fair shares of the var-
ious goods at stake in egalitarian relations, because of the distinctive con-
tribution to the individual good, or to opportunities for it, that these are
supposed to make. It shows that the best versions of pluralist social egalitar-
ianism fail to give liberals a mandate to seek to shape society according to its
demands, while relation-sensitive distributive conceptions either fail to cap-
ture what is distinctive about relational goods, or fail to yield demands which
are recognizably egalitarian. Both results corroborate the case for the liberal
approach to relational equality based on respect for freedom and equality in
cooperation. However, the analysis also confrms that this conception must
demand more than non-domination, and, in particular, be able to account
for the wrong of inegalitarian norms of social status, as well as the connec-
tion between (in)egalitarian relations and the crucial psychological good of
self-respect.
Chapter 6 undertakes the required extension. It develops an account of
esteem-based norms of social status, and analyses the kinds of injustices
that inegalitarian such norms may engender, or constitute. Tere are three
of them. First, norms of social status can enable, or aggravate, domination,

because there is ofen a tight link between perceived authority and social
status. Second, they can harm self-respect. Where they do, this is a partic-
ularly stringent reason to combat them. However, closer analysis of self-
respect and its crucial role in underpinning individual autonomy reveals
that not all inegalitarian norms of social status can be classifed as threats
to self-respect without threatening precisely that role: self-respecting indi-
viduals are capable of resisting at least some threats to their self-worth, so
requirements to protect self-respect have to aim at shoring up this capacity,
not at shielding individuals from all possible threats. Self-respect thus yields
particularly stringent requirements, but not all inegalitarian norms of so-
cial status violate them. Tird, such norms can be unjust, even when not
engendering domination, or harming self-respect, where they deprive indi-

viduals of important social opportunities. Losing such opportunities due to
norm-coordinated, self-sustaining disesteem by others is a threat to one’s
equal standing in social cooperation which is not present when these oppor-
tunities go missing due to other causes. Tis is thus a genuinely relational
egalitarian rationale for combating these norms which is both accessible to
liberals and does not encounter any of the problems besetting the rival views
analysed in the preceding chapter.
Part II: Implications
Chapter 7 investigates which requirements of political equality liberal rela-

tional egalitarianism gives rise to, and which status these should have vis à
vis other requirements of social justice. It argues that it requires, for reasons
of both non-domination and equal respect for persons’ frst moral power of
a sense of justice, a demandingly egalitarian conception of rights to political
participation, along the lines of the Rawlsian requirement of the ‘fair value of
all of the equal political liberties’,26 and that this requirement enjoys a quali-
fed priority over other requirements of justice. However, as liberal relational
egalitarianism is, as demonstrated in Part I, a substantive conception of so-
cial justice, it must, in principle, be open to some restriction, should this be
strictly necessary to fulfl such other requirements.
Te chapter goes on to identify the conditions governing the justifcation
of such restrictions. It argues that, while some special, circumscribed insti-
tutional practices such as constitutional review stand a good chance of ful-
flling them, they very likely rule out any ground-level political inequality
between citizens in salient real-world circumstances. Tis is because other,
egalitarian strategies for improving the quality of democratic input by citi-
zens have to be tried frst, and such strategies will almost always be available.
Te chapter concludes with a critical analysis of Ronald Dworkin’s account
of political equality, which is the most worked-out such account to be found
among primarily distribution-centred theories of justice. It shows that, de-
spite claims to the contrary, it cannot do justice to the expressive value of
democratic rights, and thus fatally underplays the importance of political
26 Rawls 1999a, p. 198.

equality. Tis strengthens the case against such distribution-centred theories

made in Part I.
Chapter 8 develops the implications of liberal relational egalitarianism
for the distribution of goods produced by social cooperation. It shows
that there are not only strong instrumental reasons to set stringent limits
to inequality of income, wealth, and opportunity, on grounds of both non-
domination and social status, but also, contrary to what both many critics
and proponents of relational equality argue, strong non- instrumental,
expressive reasons to do so: since participants in social cooperation are
equals, all inequalities in social goods need to be justifed by justice-relevant
reasons even where they do not lead to domination between individuals,
or the emergence of inegalitarian status norms. As the book delivers an ac-
count of the place of requirements of relational equality within liberal so-
cial justice, and not a complete account of the latter, it is consistent with
some disagreement about other components of justice, and thus also with
some disagreement about which reasons to permit distributive inequality
are good enough where domination and status inequality are not at stake.
However, this does not mean that the requirement is weak, but only that it
awaits further confrontation with such candidate reasons for inequality.
So, unlike many distributive views, such as luck egalitarianism, liberal
relational egalitarianism does not object directly to any kind of material
inequality between people, whatever its cause (apart from responsible in-
dividual choices). But it does undertake a concentric attack on material in-
equality in society as well as on its sources in power inequality, through a
plurality of rationales.
Chapter 9 takes on the special goods of health and healthcare. As noted,
this is a particularly important area because it might be thought that rela-

tional egalitarianism sufers from a kind of ‘social relation fetishism’, and has
little to say about this good, and of the good of healthcare, whose importance
for individual lives is evident. Te chapter argues that it has distinctive, and
plausible, implications for these goods, too. First, it yields a clear ordering
of the injustice of diferent kinds of health inequalities: inequalities caused
by inegalitarian relations which are independently unjust are more unjust
than those caused by other social processes, which in turn are more unjust
(unless justifed according to the model developed in the preceding chapter)
than those not so caused. Te resulting requirements ft well with impor-
tant strands in public health research on the social determinants of health.
Second, the cooperation-based framework underlying the conception also
requires universal provision of healthcare, independently of the causes of in-

dividual health defcits, and relational egalitarians need not, and should not,
be committed to prioritizing patients with socially caused health defcien-
cies at the point of delivery of treatment. Prioritizing the fght against socially
caused health inequalities, in terms of public health spending, research, and
overall coverage of the healthcare system is, against that, not only permitted,
but required.
If the arguments of Parts II are sound, they signifcantly strengthen the ar-
gument for a liberal justice-based conception of egalitarian relations made in
Part I. In political theory and philosophy, detailed analysis of what the adop-
tion of a conception of social justice and equality would amount to, overall
and in real world societies, drawing also on research in the social sciences,
is an essential stage in its justifcation.27 Working out the resulting demands
for concrete institutional and policy domains, about which many of us have
strong political convictions, thus makes, if things go well, for a much stronger
case for the conception. If things do not go well, it establishes at least that it is
worth engaging and disagreeing with, because it is relevant.
1.4. Relational Equality When and Where?
To conclude this introductory chapter, we need to delineate with some more

precision the target of the relational egalitarian requirements of liberal social
justice to be developed—that is, we need to specify the context for which
these requirements are meant to deliver direct and stringent guidance for so-
cial and political action. Tis clarifes, inter alia, where we should locate the
theory on a spectrum of ‘ideal’ versus less ideal, or non-ideal theories.28

As we will see, subsequent chapters develop these requirements by seeking
to answer the questions of which role these should play for fairly structuring
social cooperation among individuals conceived of as free and equal, and
which form they have to take in order to play it. Tese kinds of questions
27 Tis kind of justifcatory methodology, according to which the justifcation of principles of po-
litical morality draws not only on moral judgements and intuitions, but also on social theories, is that
of ‘wide refective equilibrium’; see Daniels 1996, chs. 1–3.
28 Te debate about the distinction between ideal and non- ideal theory has reached dizzying
heights of conceptual sophistication, and these remarks are not in any way intended as an original
contribution to it. Tey only serve to specify the scope and primary target of liberal relational egali-
tarianism. For two overviews, see Stemplowska and Swif 2012, and Valentini 2012; for recent criti-
cism of the distinction, see Levy 2016; and for a prominent criticism of ideal theory as liable to serve
the group interests of the privileged, see Mills 2017, ch. 5.
are natural to ask for domestic societies as we know them, characterized by

at least basically functioning state institutions; that is, by an institutional
order capable of coordinating diferent agents and institutions to implement
a fairly comprehensive set of diferent policies governing a complex social
division of labour—and capable of reforming such societies towards more
justice. But this is not just, as a matter of fact, the scenario that many readers
will fnd themselves in. Such an institutional order, and division of labour,
are essential for liberal social justice, for the general requirement of enabling
all to fully participate in society to take the liberal form of fairly enabling all
to develop, pursue, and revise their own conception of the good, against the
background of a society ofering a very wide and diverse range of opportuni-
ties for doing so (chapter 3, section 3.2). Terefore, it will be taken as the par-
adigm scenario in subsequent chapters, to which the resulting requirements
are most directly applicable, and where they are stringent.
Tis is, of course, in at least one sense, quite an ideal scenario. It may not be
fully ideal because, for the presence of such an order, it is not required that all
individuals within such societies comply with its demands.29 Functioning in-
stitutional orders are robust enough to deal with some, non-trivial, amount
of individual non-compliance. Still, such conditions are by far not fulflled
in all societies around the globe; nor is a fully functional international order
governing the relations between diferent societies present. Developing rela-
tional egalitarian requirements for global, transnational, international (and
intergenerational) justice is a task for another day. Te shape of that task as it
presents itself to liberal relational egalitarians will be discussed only briefy in
the Conclusion. By then, all substantive relational egalitarian requirements
for the original target scenario will have been put on the table, so it is easier
to devise hypotheses about how they may apply to, or have to be modifed for,
these domains.
Furthermore, even when we restrict our view to single societies, there
are other, signifcantly less ideal scenarios for theorizing justice that we can
think of. What counts as a more or less urgent matter of justice will change
with these. If functioning institutions are missing, then, arguably, the frst
demand of justice is to put these in place, and undertaking this efort could
require, at least for a time, signifcant violations of the relational egalitarian
requirements this book puts forward. Similarly, it will argue throughout
that relational egalitarian requirements have a strong claim to be the most
29 ‘Full compliance’ is an important feature of Rawls’s defnition of ideal theory; 1999a, p. 6.

stringent requirements of equality (see, for example, sections 4.3.3, 7.3,

8.4–8.6, 9.3), compared to other egalitarian demands, such as distributive
demands of no consequence for the structure of social and political relations
(insofar as there is any case for these at all). But this does not mean that they
cannot be trumped by some more urgent non-egalitarian requirements, such
as requirements of basic sufciency.30
However, if such reasonably favourable conditions are in place, then the
contention of this book is that relational egalitarian requirements are indeed
urgent requirements: that they are action-guiding, and identify pressing
kinds of injustice in need of social and political counteraction, right here and
now. Tis is illustrated also by the fact that they are, mostly, negative, reac-
tive requirements: they condemn domination and inequality of social status,
and defne a situation of their absence as just. Tey focus on a set of social
and political evils with which we are familiar in contemporary societies, and
call for reactions to these. Tis is another possible sense in which we can call
the theory ‘non-ideal’, and one of the reasons why it is consonant with the
demands of many real-world egalitarian movements, such as movements for
gender, sexual, racial, and ethnic equality, and for the abolition of hierarchies
of social class. Tese movements take the evil of unequal social and polit-
ical standing as their starting point. Tey tend to focus less on describing the
desirable nature of positive relations of equality. Of course, one particular
substantive reason for the negative formulation of many of the demands of
the liberal conception is precisely its liberal nature: once a set of demanding
constraints ruling out structural inequality is in place, it is up to individuals
themselves to decide how they want to conduct their relations within them
(see especially section 4.3 in chapter 4).31
Because of this structural, and largely negative, focus, the theory also has
signifcant diagnostic value:32 it specifes not only which requirements a so-
ciety has to fulfl in order to instantiate relational equality, as a matter of so-
cial justice. Tese requirements can also serve, in many cases, to understand
30 For example, if some urgent needs are unfulflled, such as basic nutritional needs, and we
face a choice of either fulflling these or combating some domination, then we should arguably, in
many cases, choose the former even if the domination in question is more than trivial (basic needs
shortfalls could, of course, be due to domination, and regularly cause further domination).
31 Some argue that it is generally easier to identify injustice than justice (see Sen 2009), and there-
fore to identify just social equality as absence of certain social inequalities; Wolf 2015, pp. 213f.
Identifying severe injustice certainly seems easier than identifying precise justice, at least most of the
time. I remain agnostic about whether there is anything in a negative focus as such that makes such
identifcation easier.
32 For an account of diagnostic non-ideal theory, see Anderson 2010a, pp. 3f.
the specifc nature, gravity, and difering dimensions of injustice, and more
so than the requirements yielded by ideal theories of distributive justice
specifying perfectly just distributions (see especially chapter 2, and section
4.6 in chapter 4).33 Unequal subjection to the arbitrary power of others,
and to status norms decreeing one’s social inferiority, have, in their inju-
rious meaning, a special dimension of injustice: they constitute expressive
wrongs,34 and their gravity does not only depend on the material importance
of the goods, or opportunities, which individuals might thereby be denied.
To an account of this expressive perspective we now turn.
33 See Bidadanure and Axelsen 2019, pp. 343f. on this contrast and the diagnostic focus of impor-
tant strands of social egalitarianism.

34 For the distinction between expressive wrongs and (mere) expressive harms, see Voigt 2018,
p. 446.
2
Distributive and Relational Equality
2.1. Introduction
Many of the liberal egalitarian theories of justice that have been dominant in
political philosophy since the publication of Rawls’s A Teory of Justice con-
ceive of equality as a distributive ideal. In particular, luck egalitarianism—
the view according to which the role of brute luck in people’s life ought to
be equalized as a matter of justice (see section 1.3 in c hapter 1)—has been
prominent in discussions of justice and equality over the last three decades
or so. Tis book makes a case for relational equality instead; for a concep-
tion of egalitarian social and political relations as central concerns of social
justice.1 Tis chapter motivates the search for such a conception: it argues
that distributive views of equality cannot account for the specifc importance
to justice of the way that social institutions create or maintain inequalities
between individuals in society—how institutions treat individuals, as op-
posed to which patterns of distribution they bring about. Tat treatment sets
people up as social and political equals, when things go well, and slots them
into hierarchies, when they do not. In developing this objection, it makes
clear what is distinctive about a relational outlook on equality, and how it is
diferent—already at the level of the concept of justice employed, not only at
the level of difering conceptions of justice—from distributive views. It thus

prepares the ground for the development of a justice-based conception of re-
lational equality in the subsequent chapters.
Te argument draws on, and further develops, Tomas Pogge’s critique
of ‘purely recipient- oriented’ conceptions of justice.2 Such conceptions
view social justice as a matter of what individuals are entitled to get, rather
than of how social and political institutions are to treat those to whom they
apply. Section 2.2 argues that distributive conceptions of equality are purely
1 For main contributions to the debate between relational and distributive egalitarians, see
Anderson 1999 and 2010a; Schefer 2003a, 2003b, and 2005; and responses by Arneson 2000;
Dworkin 2002, especially pp. 113–118, and 2003.
2 Pogge 1995 and 2003.
Justice and Egalitarian Relations. Christian Schemmel, Oxford University Press (2021). © Oxford University Press.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190084240.003.0002
Distributive and Relational Equality 23
recipient-oriented theories. Section 2.3 presents a counterexample to purely

recipient-oriented theories devised by Pogge. Tis example constitutes the
basis for the following discussion. Section 2.4 raises, and wards of, a per-
emptory objection that concedes that the ways institutions treat people have
intrinsic moral signifcance, but disputes that what is at stake in such cases
is justice. Section 2.5 explores a frst possible interpretation of the critique of
distributive theories qua purely recipient-oriented theories: that they neglect
the intrinsic importance to justice of the way institutions cause advantages
and disadvantages. It argues that this causal interpretation, while not wholly
unsuccessful, has only limited reach. Section 2.6 argues that a diferent inter-
pretation of the critique is more successful: according to it, what is primarily
justice-relevant about the way institutions treat people is the attitude towards
individuals and groups, and their standing towards each other, that is ex-
pressed in institutional action. Te section brings together and links recent
research on distributive justice, on collective responsibility, and on expres-
sive theories of law and state action. It discusses what it means for an institu-
tion to express attitudes that are relevant to justice and why distributive views
cannot account for such attitudes.
If the argument of the chapter is successful, it shows that the weaknesses
of distributive egalitarianism make the development of such a justice-based
conception of relational equality a worthwhile enterprise, and clarifes some
of the conditions that such a conception has to fulfl in order to be successful.
Te subsequent chapters then develop this conception.
2.2. Distributive Egalitarianism: Currency Teories

of Equality
In a general form, the objection to distributive egalitarianism that this

chapter discusses is that it cannot account properly for the relational dimen-
sion of justice: it fails to object to unequal relations as a potential problem
of justice in its own right, that is, to power and status diferences independ-
ently of their distributive consequences. Variants of this complaint have been
brought forward as a criticism of liberal distributive egalitarianism by many
writers, recently especially by feminists. Perhaps the most famous of these
recent criticisms was formulated by Iris Marion Young, who argues that the
liberal ‘distributive paradigm’ does not properly recognize and tackle struc-
tural injustice as exemplifed in the ‘fve faces of oppression’: exploitation,
marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and subjection to sys-

temic violence.3 Elizabeth Anderson has taken up this point in her criticism
of luck egalitarianism.4 Te concern is not new. Indeed, the frst to bring it
forward was Marx, who argued that the Gotha Programme of the German
Social Democratic Party from 1875 wrongly concentrated on the ‘fair distri-
bution’ of material benefts in society, rather than on the qualitative transfor-
mation of social relations at which communism aims.5 But it is a concern that
has many facets, and it is not clear what precisely its core is.
For example, some criticisms are concerned with the supposed com-
mitment of distributive egalitarianism to tackle injustices solely by means
of cash transfers, and a consequent failure to take into account other reme-
dies, such as changes in the social environment of disadvantaged individuals.
In this form, it is an objection to an exclusive focus on redistribution. For
example, some of Anderson’s objections to luck egalitarianism depend on
taking luck egalitarians to be committed to cash transfers as the only remedy
to injustice, and to be unable to recommend, for example, measures that
would enhance the social inclusion of the disabled.6 Tis is not, however, a
promising version of the relational objection. Distributive egalitarians, such
as Ronald Dworkin, G. A. Cohen, or Richard Arneson, are not committed to
redistribution as the only remedy to injustice. Setting up a specifc ideal of
distributive equality as a target a society should aim at implies no such com-
mitment; it only implies a commitment to such measures as will best bring
about the preferred form of equality. Tat might, depending on the case, well
be a change in social circumstances rather than individualized cash transfers.
Concern about redistribution as the only remedy to injustice thus does
not go to the heart of the matter. Te core of the relational objection to
distributivism is not that the latter ofers the wrong remedies to injustice, but,
at a prior stage, that it is not able to identify properly the intrinsic moral im-
portance of the way social and political institutions act. Tat is to say that how
institutions treat people has relevance to social justice that is independent of,
or at least not reducible to, the distributive efects of such treatment. Tis is
still a broad way of putting the objection, and I will further narrow it down as
the argument proceeds.
3 Young 1990, pp. 48–63.

4 Anderson 1999, p. 312. She replaces ‘powerlessness’ and ‘systemic violence’ with ‘domination’ and
‘status hierarchy’.
5 Marx 2000 [1875]. See 1.2.
6 See Anderson 1999, pp. 305f., and p. 333.
To do that, it frst needs to be specifed in a more precise manner what

I mean by a distributive egalitarian theory, and which theories fall in this
category. Distributive egalitarian theories share a commitment to three prin-
ciples of equality. Te frst principle of equality is the abstract principle of
the equal moral worth of persons: Persons, qua being persons, belong to
the same moral category, so that diferences in their entitlements of justice
cannot be justifed by arguing that they have intrinsically diferent moral
status, for example, because some are born aristocrats, or into purportedly
higher or lower castes. Te second principle is more concrete, and mandates,
in Dworkin’s famous formulation, that persons are entitled to equal concern
by social and political institutions in the assignment of benefts and burdens.
Finally, the third principle of equality spells out the distributive requirement
according to which people are entitled to some form of equality in the distri-
bution of a certain currency, such as resources, or opportunity for welfare.
Te frst two egalitarian principles are ofen said to form the ‘egalitarian
plateau’ on which debates about justice in contemporary moral and polit-
ical philosophy take place.7 Te interesting step for the present argument
follows now: distributive egalitarian theories, such as Dworkin’s ‘equality of
resources’ and (the earlier) Arneson’s ‘equal opportunity for welfare’ go on
to argue that the best interpretation of the ideal of equal concern is to regard
people as entitled to equal shares of a distribuendum. What it is that is to be
distributed equally—which metric or currency to adopt—is the subject of
the ‘equality of what’ debate that was sparked by Sen’s lecture of the same
name.8 Luck egalitarian theories are motivated by the principle that bad
brute luck inequalities—that is, inequalities in life factors that are not due to
circumstances that people can reasonably be held responsible for—are un-
just. Hence, as a matter of justice, brute luck ought to be equalized, or at least

signifcantly mitigated. What counts as a relevant brute luck disadvantage
is determined by reference to the respective currency of equality. Diferent
currencies, or metrics, have been proposed by diferent members of the dis-
tributive egalitarian camp, such as resources,9 opportunity for welfare,10 or a
broader notion of access to advantage, a mixture of welfare and resources.11
7 Kymlicka 2002, p. 5.
8 Sen 1979.
9 Dworkin 2000.
10 Arneson 1989 and 1990.
11 Cohen 1989 and 2004; see also Cohen 1993, p. 25, for a related notion of ‘midfare’. Te possibility
of distributive theories incorporating concern for equal social relations alongside more traditional
individualist currencies, such as resources, or opportunity for welfare will be discussed in 2.6.2, and
important recent attempts to do so analysed in 5.4 (chapter 5).
Diferent luck egalitarians arrive at diferent accounts of what individuals are

distributively responsible for, and therefore at diferently demanding egal-
itarian theories. But, insofar as these diferences can be traced back to dif-
ferent proposed currencies of equality, they show an underlying agreement
that what is required is equality in some currency. Furthermore, distributive
egalitarian theories in the sense used here do not need to demand strict dis-
tributive equality, or perfect equality of opportunity of some form.12 What is
needed is merely that a third-stage principle of distributive equality is part of
its foundations, so that distributive equality in some currency is taken as the
baseline, departures from which can be justifed either because they are due
to individual choices, or for certain other qualifed reasons, for example, be-
cause they are overall better for everybody.13
Te smooth transition from the second to the third principle of equality
makes clear that participants in this debate share a consensus about the un-
derlying concept of justice: they agree that fnding out what social justice
requires is a matter of fnding out what people are entitled to get. Pogge calls
this underlying concept of justice ‘purely recipient-oriented’;14 I adopt this
term. Tis, rather than a focus on redistribution, is the core feature of dis-
tributive theories. Such theories could also be called allocative, currency, or
metric theories; I keep the term ‘distributive’ because this is the feature of
such views that its critics have the most fundamental objection to. It is essen-
tial to such theories that they have to measure individual advantage or dis-
advantage according to the respective metric in order to ascertain whether
unjust inequality exists; individual shares are of ultimate concern under such
theories.
12 In his later works, Dworkin claims that a principle of full equalization of brute luck does not
form part of his theory; it merely requires that ‘people be made equal, so far as this is possible, in their
opportunity to insure or provide against bad luck’; Dworkin 2003, p. 191. Tis does not make the pre-
ceding characterization of distributive egalitarianism inapplicable to his theory, because the devia-
tion from strict brute luck equality may be due to the excessive costs of trying to bring it about, which
is itself a distributive consideration; see Dworkin 2002 (and see 2.5). However, Dworkin also argues
that the consolidated version of his theory regards distribution merely as one dimension of equality
among others of independent importance, political equality in particular, which might confict with
the distributive dimension; Dworkin 2000, ch. 4, and 2003, pp. 195f. For discussion of this point, see
fn. 69 in this chapter.
13 Te distributive viewpoint is, of course, shared by a large variety of non-egalitarian theories as
well, such as prioritarianism; Parft 1991 (to a variant of which Arneson has converted afer his initial
focus on equal opportunity for welfare; see Arneson 2000 for his endorsement of ‘responsibility-
catering prioritarianism’), or utilitarianism. I focus on distributive egalitarian views because holding
a commitment to some kind of equality constant makes it easier to show that the relational objection
is indeed an objection to distributivism as such.
14 Pogge 2003, p. 143.
Terefore, when it comes to the question of how to achieve equality, dis-

tributive egalitarians might well be concerned about transforming social
structures, institutions, and relations. But their reason for this is based on
the distributive state of afairs of justice-relevant goods that such transform-
ations would generate. Other justice or injustice judgements are derivative
from this; actions and agents are just or unjust insofar as they promote just or
unjust distributions.15
It is because of this feature that they cannot capture what is distinctively
unjust about relations of inequality, and will therefore also ofen recommend
the wrong remedies, and overlook the right ones—as we will see later in this
chapter, and in subsequent chapters focusing on these remedies.
However, initially, the case for such distributive accounts seems very
strong. Tey seem to have the attractive feature of ofering a simple and ra-
tional method for assessing the justice of social and political institutions:16 it
is rational to look at how their performance afects individuals’ distributive
shares, and to regard institutional design as a matter of achieving the best
possible distribution, according to the respective theory. Afer all, it seems
plausible that, from a justice perspective, social and political institutions are
merely instrumental to the goal of achieving social justice.
2.3. Five Ways of Treating People
Drawing on the account of distributive theories as purely recipient-oriented

theories, the remainder of this chapter explores the variant of the relational
critique according to which such theories problematically ignore the way
that institutions treat individuals. Consider the following example, devised

by Pogge. Assume, plausibly, that health is a basic good that a distributive
theory regards individuals as entitled to. Now
[distinguish fve] diferent scenarios in which, owing to the arrangement

of social institutions, a certain group of innocent persons is avoidably de-
prived of some vital nutrient V—the vitamins contained in fresh fruit, say,
which are essential to good health. Te [fve] scenarios are arranged in
order of their injustice, according to my preliminary intuitive judgment.
15 See ibid., p. 147.

16 Pogge 1995, pp. 242–246.
In scenario 1, the shortfall is ofcially mandated, paradigmatically by the

law: legal restrictions bar certain persons from buying foodstufs containing
V. In scenario 2, the shortfall results from legally authorized conduct of pri-
vate subjects: sellers of foodstufs containing V lawfully refuse to sell to
certain persons. In scenario 3, social institutions foreseeably and avoidably
engender (but do not specifcally require or authorize) the shortfall through
the conduct they stimulate: certain persons, sufering severe poverty within
an ill-conceived economic order, cannot aford to buy foodstufs containing
V. In scenario 4, the shortfall arises from private conduct that is legally pro-
hibited but barely deterred: sellers of foodstufs containing V illegally refuse
to sell to certain persons, but enforcement is lax and penalties are mild. In
scenario 5, the shortfall arises from social institutions avoidably leaving un-
mitigated the efects of a natural defect: certain persons are unable to metab-
olize V owing to a treatable genetic defect, but they avoidably lack access to
the treatment that would correct their handicap.17
Call this the V example. Tis example is supposed to appeal to our intuitions
about the justice-relevance of the way institutions treat people. Imagine also
that the extent of the health shortfall and the number of deprived people are
exactly the same in all fve scenarios; this is essential to the claim that the
quality of institutional treatment is of moral importance in itself, independ-
ently of its efects. I fnd myself in rough intuitive agreement with Pogge. In
any case, what is needed for the argument of this chapter is not that the pro-
posed preliminary ordering is exactly right, but that some such ordering is
right—for example, that scenario 1 is indeed much more unjust than sce-
narios 4 and 5—and that distributive theories cannot account for this.18
If the V example has signifcance, one ought to be able to explain what it

is exactly in the institutional treatment of individuals that has such justice-
relevance independent of its distributive efects. Pogge does not analyse the
dimensions of the diferent scenarios that account for the intuitive diference
between them in any detail. He merely suggests that the intuition that the
17 Pogge 2008, pp. 47f., his emphases (also, with slight verbal diferences, in Pogge 2003, p. 156).
Te original quotation also lists a sixth scenario, in which certain people cause their V deprivation
themselves, and institutions fail to react to this. I leave it aside, because this chapter focuses on the
specifc shortcomings of luck egalitarian theories qua distributive theories, and does not discuss the
relationship between responsibility for personal choices and distributive justice; for tensions be-
tween such responsibility for choice and maintaining relational equality, and possible ways to resolve
them, see 5.4.2 in chapter 5.
18 For example, we will see, in c
hapters 3 and 4 on non-domination, that, depending on just how
defcient protection against discrimination is in scenario 4, it may be more unjust than scenario 3.
V example seeks to engage has two dimensions: the way institutions cause
goods shortfalls, and the attitudes that are implicit in institutional action.19
Sections 2.5 and 2.6 will discuss these in turn. But before that, a possible re-
joinder on the part of distributive egalitarianism has to be addressed.
2.4. A Preliminary Objection: Justice Is Not All

Tat Matters
Tis rejoinder is that examples such as the V scenarios indeed succeed in

pointing out that diferent modes of institutional treatment have intrinsic
moral signifcance; but that this signifcance is not a matter of justice, but of
diferent moral considerations. Tus, they do not present an objection to dis-
tributive theories, because such theories are only intended to account for the
requirements of justice on institutions, not for all moral considerations that
may apply to them.20
Two points can be made in response to this objection. Te frst insists that
what is at stake in treatment cases such as the one introduced earlier is intui-
tively well described as a justice concern. Te second argues that an approach
that integrates the treatment dimension into an account of the requirements
of social justice on institutions has important theoretical advantages over an
approach that regards the treatment and distributive dimensions as funda-
mentally distinct.
To the frst point, then: Few people would want to deny that it is important
that one not only receives one’s fair share of goods, but also that one is treated
justly by others. For example, if you and I are to divide a bundle of resources
among ourselves, and I do not consult you as to how you think they should
be distributed, but just go ahead distributing it the way I think is fair, it seems
plausible to hold that I am treating you unjustly, because you have a claim
to be heard on issues that matter to you: I am violating a procedural right of
yours. Similarly, the V scenarios may be described as involving violations of
rights—for instance, in scenario 1, a right not to be discriminated against.
At the very least, it seems natural to describe institutional action in these
scenarios as wronging the members of the concerned group. Institutions are
19Pogge 2008, p. 48.

20For an argument against regarding justice as the only value applying to institutions, see
Goodin 2007.
violating what looks like legitimate claims the group members have. To be
sure, these are only preliminary refections about some intuitively plausible
ways of relating justice, wronging, and treatment. But they sufce to shif the
burden of proof back to the objector who seeks to argue that what is at stake
here cannot, in principle, be about justice, since it is not about distributions.21
Second, a distributive egalitarian might react to this counter-reply by pro-
posing distribution and treatment as diferent spheres within justice. Along
these lines, G. A. Cohen, in his fnal works, mentions that there are matters of
justice that are nevertheless ‘outside distributive justice, such as the just and
unjust treatment of individuals with respect to their liberty and privacy’.22
Tis response has the advantage that it accounts for the intuition that treat-
ment has a justice dimension. However, it has the disadvantage that it is not
clear, on this view, how the treatment and distributive dimensions of justice
are to be related. Note how having to balance the distributive outcome di-
mension with the treatment dimension of social justice would do away with
one of the advantages of purely recipient-oriented theories discussed previ-
ously: the rationality of focusing on the outcomes produced by institutions
when assessing their justice performance.
Partisans of the distributive model may retort that this rationality is not a
reasonable expectation on their views, and that the relational objection takes
them to argue for a more ambitious position than they actually do. However,
the likely upshot of a view that regards distributive and non-distributive jus-
tice as two separate subjects of investigation is that the two dimensions have
to be balanced case by case, without any further general theoretical guidelines
as to how to undertake this balancing.23 An integrated relational view that
managed to unite these two dimensions under an overarching framework
for social justice would be a theory with greater explanatory power. It would
have the theoretical advantage of accounting for more of our convictions
about justice, by making its outcome-and treatment-oriented dimensions
21 See Bidadanure and Axelsen 2019, p. 337: a further argument showing ‘why one should prefer a
narrow conception of egalitarian justice to an inclusive and ramifed one’ is needed.

22 Cohen 2008, p. 6. Cohen 2011 further suggests that there may be unjust distributions against
which, however, nobody has a ‘legitimate complaint’, p. 129.

23 See Meijer and Vandamme 2019, p. 321, for resulting practical disadvantages in terms of loss of
action-guiding value. However, the relevant disadvantage is not merely practical, as isolating diferent
domains also means forgoing opportunities to examine their connections, which could strengthen
justifcation; see what follows in the main text. Cohen does not discuss the question whether, and
how, on his account, distributive and non-distributive justice are related in any detail, but his com-
mitment to ‘radical pluralism’ speaks for his endorsing case by case balancing; 2008, pp. 4f. Similarly,
Cohen 2011 contains no attempt to spell out how distributive justice and ‘legitimacy’ in distribution
(see fn. 22) are related.
shed light on each other. Furthermore, it would have the practical advantage,
by accounting for these two dimensions of justice and their interplay in one
unifed set of principles, of having a better claim to practical pre-eminence,
or priority, of these principles for assessing social and political institutions
over other considerations—and therefore of also ftting better with the wide-
spread conviction that justice, as a political value, enjoys a special stringency
not shared by other values.24 So there is a reason to look for such an inte-
grated overarching conception.
Of course, it cannot be guaranteed that this enterprise of integration will
succeed; similarly, it cannot be guaranteed that any pre-theoretical intuitions
about the special stringency of justice do not simply have to be given up, in
the end. Te issue will reappear, in diferent guises, in subsequent chapters
(chapter 3, 3.2, and chapter 5, 5.3); all that this section has established is that
there is good reason to try, and hence to doubt the peremptory force of the re-
joinder that the V example does not apply to distributive egalitarian theories.
2.5. Difering Institutional Causal Involvement
So what is it about the institutional treatment of people that has independent

justice-relevance: the way they cause distributive outcomes, or the attitudes
they express in their actions? Tis section discusses the causal interpretation
of the relational claim: other things being equal, good shortfalls are more ob-
jectionable the more institutions are ‘materially involved’25 in causing them,
and distributive egalitarianism cannot account for that. In the V example,
this contrast is exemplifed by the low injustice rank of scenario 5, in which
institutions merely fail to react to a genetically caused health inequality;

from there, the degree of causal involvement of social institutions increases
up to scenario 1, which exemplifes maximum such involvement: actively
depriving the individuals in question of V through an explicitly discrimina-
tory law. Or so the claim has to go. Te remainder of this section will argue
that this characterization of the relational dimension of justice is of too lim-
ited reach to do all, or even most, of the work required to sustain the rela-
tional objection.
24 See, for example, Nagel 1997, p. 303, and Arneson 2008a, p. 378: ‘In ordinary English usage, the
term ‘justice’ tends to be applied to what the speaker regards as a paramount value and also an all-
things-considered value’.
25 Pogge 2003, p. 157.
Te example appeals to a morally salient distinction akin to the familiar

distinction between negative duties and positive duties. Tis distinction
mandates that, others being equal, actively causing an objectionable outcome
is worse than merely letting it happen. What is involved in the example must
be congenial in spirit to that distinction, but more complex, since it invites us
to rank the difering scenarios on a scale of assessment, on which particular
cases can allegedly be ordered according to the degree, or quality, of causal
involvement.26
Te distinction between negative and positive duties certainly has great
intuitive weight in cases of individual conduct. We regularly object more
strongly to a positive, intentional individual action that brings about a cer-
tain outcome than to mere inaction in the face of such an outcome—to use
a worn-out example, throwing a child that cannot swim into a lake is more
objectionable than not saving it when it merely fell into the lake, even though
the outcome is the same in both cases: death. In the individual case, we regard
individual omissions as equally problematic as individual action leading to
the same outcome only if we think that the individual in question had a spe-
cial responsibility to prevent that outcome; for instance, a parent who lets her
small child starve to death in order to get rid of it is precisely as responsible
for its death as if she had shot it.
Nothing similar is true for state action. Fulflling the standards of justice
is not a special responsibility a state has on top of its personal life; from the
point of view of theories of justice, it is its very purpose of existence.27 Putting
these two considerations together, it is plausible to suppose that inaction on
the part of individuals is less problematic especially if there is a state that
does in fact take care of maintaining standards of social justice. Tus, the
moral signifcance of this distinction seems to be much less in cases of insti-

tutional action.28 From the perspective of social justice, social and political
institutions exist primarily to implement standards of justice; so why should
it matter in itself whether institutions actively bring about goods shortfalls,
from the point of view of the recipients of these goods, or merely fail to
react to such outcomes? As mentioned, Pogge concedes the plausibility of
26 Ibid.
27 See Nagel 1991, p. 100.
28 Hosein argues that the special responsibilities of states cannot override pre-existing rights of
individuals not to be harmed, so that the distinction has signifcance where these are at stake; 2014,
p. 258. Tis seems correct, but we are here interested in the theoretically prior question of what the
distinction itself contributes to answering the question of which rights individuals have against the
state, and which are more important than others.
this perspective,29 but still thinks the causal interpretation strong enough to
overcome it.
Against that, I shall argue that the question of causation has weight only
in the special case of sorting naturally generated from socially generated
inequality—scenario 5 versus scenarios 1–4. It cannot account for the intui-
tive diferences between the exclusively social scenarios 1–4.
2.5.1. Natural and Social Inequalities
Te V example ranks scenario 5, the failure of social institutions to treat a

genetic defect causing V defciency, as the least unjust, and that seems plau-
sible. It also mentions the reason for that: the inequality in question is nat-
ural, and hence not, or at least less, within the domain of responsibility of
social institutions. Te issue of natural versus social inequalities has re-
ceived a fair bit of attention in recent literature about equality. For example,
Elizabeth Anderson claims that luck egalitarians have missed the point of
equality by focusing on compensation for natural inequalities, such as
inequalities in talents or physical attractiveness, instead of objecting to social
hierarchy, which is by defnition socially caused.30 It is also of importance
in Rawls’s theory of social justice, even though his comments about the ‘ar-
bitrary efects of the natural lottery’31 have inspired luck egalitarians: Rawls
proposes a principle of fair equality of opportunity requiring that persons
of equal natural talent, and of the same willingness to use them, have equal
opportunity to attain desirable social positions, regardless of their class back-
ground. And this principle enjoys lexical priority over the diference prin-
ciple, which takes care of the case of naturally unfortunate individuals, who
lack talents.32 Tus, he regards inequalities due to social background as more
unjust than social inequalities of equal extent that are due to underlying nat-
ural inequalities.33
29 Pogge 1995, pp. 241–247.

30 See Anderson 1999, pp. 288, 309, 312f.
31 Rawls 1999a, p. 64.
32 Ibid., pp. 62–65.
33 See Nagel 1997, p. 310. See also Pogge 1995, pp. 247–250. Te tortuous formulation is necessary
because Rawls argues that natural inequalities per se are not unjust at all: ‘the natural distribution is
neither just nor unjust’; 1999a, p. 87. In later work, Rawls entertains the suggestion that the priority
ordering between these two principles should perhaps be weaker than lexical; 2001, p. 165, fn. 44; but
any form of priority sufces to illustrate the general point.
As Nagel puts it, ‘every society is in the business of transcending the

state of nature, but how far it is obliged to resist the diferential impact of
fate and natural variety is a difcult question.’34 Te V example plausibly
assumes that tackling natural health defciencies and vulnerabilities is one
of the most prominent aims of society, because all humans are vulnerable to
health risks to some extent. But there is a good reason for holding that jus-
tice should be less concerned with health inequalities that do not stem from
social processes, as in scenario 5, than with those that do, as in scenarios 1–4
(see c hapter 9, section 9.3). Tis reason is that there is an irremediable ten-
sion between the liberal idea that societal cooperation has to guarantee to all
those who are under a duty to cooperate the social conditions, especially the
liberty, necessary to choose a conception of the good from a suitably wide
array of possibilities, and to pursue and modify it, and the idea that people
ought to be compensated for disadvantages, whatever their cause (apart from
their own choices), up to equality. Duties to such compensation may unduly
restrict the array of possible conceptions of the good open to cooperators,
and take on the character of a substantive goal for their lives, rather than
embodying merely constraints on the pursuit of their own conception of the
good. If natural inequality is both pervasive and difcult to remedy, such
compensation might amount to a requirement of self-sacrifce on the part of
the initially advantaged.
Terefore, in order to avoid this confict, a liberal conception of justice has
to limit its concern with distributive inequalities in some principled manner.
Limiting concern with natural inequality seems one good way of doing this,
since it achieves the desired aim while at the same time fulflling the intuitive
requirement that recourse to such a restriction is not available if a society
has itself caused a morally relevant inequality: if I am causally responsible

for your disadvantage, I cannot claim that compensating you would unduly
restrict my opportunities. At this point, it is not necessary to validate one
particular liberal theory relying on a version of the natural-social distinc-
tion.35 It is enough to note that the general idea of such theories is sound.
As seen, one theory that does limit the scope of objectionable inequality in
such a way is Rawls’s, which limits egalitarian concern to socially produced
goods.36 Distributive egalitarianism misses the importance of the cause of
34 Nagel 1997, p. 305.
35 See further chapter 9, and Aas and Wassermann 2016 for an instructive discussion building on,
and improving, Nagel’s 1997 account.
36 Pogge calls Rawls’s view ‘semi-consequentialist’, because it restricts the scope of distributivism in
such a manner; 2003, pp. 154f. I am not convinced that Rawls’s theory in its fnal form lends itself to a
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Balloon
observation, and instructions on the subject of
work in the basket
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Title: Balloon observation, and instructions on the subject of work in

the basket
Author: United States. War Department. Division of Military

Aeronautics
Release date: October 23, 2023 [eBook #71934]
Language: English
Original publication: Washington: Government Printing Office, 1918
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK BALLOON

OBSERVATION, AND INSTRUCTIONS ON THE SUBJECT OF
WORK IN THE BASKET ***
Transcriber’s Note
Larger versions of most illustrations may be seen by right-
clicking them and selecting an option to view them separately,
or by double-tapping and/or stretching them.
BALLOON OBSERVATION
and INSTRUCTIONS
on the subject of
WORK IN THE BASKET

❦
Issued by the
Division of Military Aeronautics
U.S. Army
¶ A free translation of the French booklet
“Instructions au sujet du Travail en Nacelle,”
and an added discourse on Balloon
Observations
WASHINGTON
GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
AUGUST, 1918
PART I.
BALLOON OBSERVATION.
INTRODUCTORY NOTE.
In this pamphlet will be laid down the general principles and also
the limitations which govern observation from balloons. Balloon
observation includes more than actual artillery observation. (See
“Employment of Balloons.”)
The details of cooperation between balloons and artillery are
issued from time to time by the General Staff in the form of
pamphlets. Whatever the system ordered at the time, there are
certain principles which do not change.
In artillery observation it can not be emphasized too strongly that
success depends both on—
1. The efficiency of the balloon observers, including an intimate
knowledge of the ground within view.
2. An intimate knowledge by artillery commanders of the
possibilities and limitations of balloon observation.
The limitations of balloon observation are—
1. Distance from the target.
2. Height of observer.
3. Visibility.
Distance from the target is inevitable, but can be lessened by
advanced positions and winch tracks. During active operation it has
sometimes been possible to approach balloons within 4,500 meters
(4,921 yards) of the line.
The low height of the balloon compared with an aeroplane is a
drawback, as it brings a question of dead ground and exaggerated
perspective.
Visibility is the determining factor of the balloon’s usefulness. In
very high winds, very misty or cloudy weather, observation is
impossible, and owing to its stationary nature the balloon can not, by
any special effort on the part of its observers, overcome unfavorable
conditions in the same way as is possible in the case of aeroplane
observation.
On the other hand, a balloon flying at a height of 1,500 meters
(1,640 yards) and 7,000 meters (7,651 yards) from the line, under
favorable weather conditions, combines in a marked degree many of
the advantages of air and ground observation.
In the first place, glasses can be used. Secondly, the balloon
observer can converse direct with the battery commander by
telephone. Apart, therefore, from ease and certainty in reporting
observations, the telephone system enables an elastic program of
work to be drawn up and admits of personal conversation between
the battery commander and the observer, often permitting mistakes
or misunderstandings to be cleared up during shoot instead of
afterwards.
Finally, owing to the continuous nature of his observation from
the same spot, the balloon observer is able to learn his country in the
greatest detail and can keep a close watch on suspected roads or
areas of country.
LIAISON BETWEEN BALLOONS AND

ARTILLERY
The work of balloons is principally with the artillery, and close
liaison between these two branches is indispensable if the best
results are to be obtained. This close liaison should be promoted on
the following lines:
(a) Balloon companies should each, as far as possible, be
allotted specific artillery organizations. This facilitates telephone
communication, prevents duplication of liaison work, and leads to a
far more intimate and personal liaison than does any other method.
(b) Balloon observers must visit batteries frequently, and
sometimes be attached for short periods. Shoots should be
discussed, especially if unsuccessful. Observers should prepare and
take with them when visiting batteries a list of targets which are
clearly visible from the balloon and on which they can observe
effectively. Similarly, artillery commanders should let balloon
observers know of any further targets which they especially wish to
engage, as work previously prepared on the ground saves time and
gives better results.
(c) Artillery officers should visit the balloon and make ascents.
They will thus become acquainted with the extent of view from the
balloon and the ability and difficulties of the observers.
EMPLOYMENT OF BALLOONS.
In view of the above, the work most suitable for balloons is as
follows:
GENERAL SURVEYANCE OF ENEMY’S ACTIVITIES.
(a) Reporting modifications of enemy defensive organization;

detecting movements of convoys and trains. Their importance and
itineraries, locating infantry signals, and all other activities such as
revealed by fires, smokes, dust, trails, etc.
(b) Spotting active hostile batteries and reporting hostile shelling.
Reporting hostile shelling is a duty for which balloons are especially
suitable, as they are favorably situated to observe both the flash of
the gun and the fall of the shell. From this information it is possible to
direct not only neutralizing fire on the hostile battery, but often also to
establish the caliber of the guns and the arc of fire of the battery.
RANGING AND ADJUSTING OF FIRE.
(a) Observing fire for destruction on all targets, counterbattery, or

bombardment.
(b) Reporting fleeting targets and observing fire on them.
(c) Observing for registration fire.
(d) Observing fire on the enemy’s communications.
(e) Cooperation with aeroplanes.
PART II.
WORK IN THE BASKET.

[Translation of French document, “Instructions au sujet du Travail en Nacelle,” a
publication of French G. Q. G., 1918, by Lieut. Kellogg.]
The rapidity and precision of the work in the basket depend not
only on the natural gifts of the observer, but also very largely on his
methods of work.
The object of the following instructions is to tell the student
observers the general methods they should follow and to explain the
use of these methods.
The principal operations which they must be able to execute
rapidly are as follows:
1. Orientation and general reconnaissance of the terrain.
2. Spotting points on the ground seen on the map and points on
the map seen on the ground.
3. Observation of fire.
Chapter 1.
ORIENTATION AND GENERAL
RECONNAISSANCE OF THE TERRAIN.
This is the operation which the observer executes on his first

ascension in a new sector; this is how it should be conducted.
1. Rapidly look over the terrain around the ascensional point in
order to orient the map.
This is done by finding in some direction from the ascensional
point a line giving an easily identified direction (a road, an edge of
woods, etc.). Orient the map so as to make this line on the map
parallel to the line on the ground.
The map can also be oriented by means of the compass.
2. Locate the horizontal projection of the balloon.
The observer may know already the winch position, but the
balloon is carried off horizontally from the winch sometimes as much
as 400 or 500 meters (436 to 545 yards). Thus it is essential not to
confuse the winch position with the horizontal projection of the
balloon. If this is done, errors will be made in the operations which
we are going to discuss later, where we make use of this known
point.
It is pretty hard to materialize definitely the vertical line passing
through the basket. The effect of the wind and the movements of the
balloon make it impossible to use a plumb line. The observer has to
find his projection on the ground by leaning first from one side of the
basket and then from the other in order to diminish the chances of
error. An approximation of 25 or 50 meters is sufficiently accurate for
the general reconnaissance which it is necessary to make.
3. Leaving the region beneath the balloon, acquaint yourself,
step by step, with the most prominent points in different directions—
masses of woods, villages, etc.
There are two methods—by the process of cheminement or
tracing landmarks and by the process of direct alignment.
The process of “cheminement” or tracing consists in following
outlines, such as roads, streams, or hedges, identifying as you go
along details of the terrain which these lines pass through or near.
On account of the deformations due to the effect of perspective and
to the unevenness of the ground, and particularly on account of the
deformation of angles, if it is a winding road, this method often leads
to errors; it should be employed only in certain cases defined below:
The process of “direct alignment” consists of studying the
terrain by following successive directions from the balloon position.
We call the “alignment” of a point the trace, on the terrain, of the
vertical plane passing through this point and through the eye of the
observer; in perspective vision, when the observer determines the
point in question, this alignment would appear to him a vertical line.
On the map it is nothing more than the straight line joining the point
under consideration to the vertical projection of the balloon.
The method of alignment, then, consists in first identifying the
most prominent points near the balloon and finding, by cheminement
or tracing, the lines running from these points. A point found
directly by cheminement should not be considered as definitely
determined until its alignment has been verified.
This first reconnaissance is not to study the terrain in all its
details, but only to fix in the memory a certain number of prominent
points scattered throughout the sector in order to facilitate later work.
These points should be very distinct, visible to the naked eye,
and of characteristic forms, so that there will be no danger of
confusing them with others—masses of woods, important villages,
etc. Roads with borders of trees, large paths for hauling supplies,
when taken together, are very valuable for quickly finding others.
Chapter II.
SPOTTING OF POINTS.
Generalities.—In all spotting operations, whether working from

the map to the terrain or vice versa, the difficulty is due to the fact
that the situation of the point has to be found on a two-dimension
surface.
The best method of work will be, then, that which suppresses as
quickly as possible one of these dimensions and to conduct the
research on a straight line.
Any point can be placed on the terrain or on the map if you know
the following elements:
1. Its “direction” or alignment.
2. Its situation on this alignment—that is, its “range.”
In oblique vision, a digression in direction is always much more
apparent than a digression of the same size in range. Thus the
direction of a point can be identified with more facility and
precision than its range. For these reasons, the following methods
consider two distinct phases in all spotting operations:
1. Investigation of direction.
2. Investigation of range.
The investigation in direction always comes first, as it is
easier, and its result makes the investigation for range easier.
LOCATING ON THE GROUND AN OBJECT
SEEN ON THE MAPS.
If it is a question of a very visible point (cross-roads, an isolated
house, a corner of woods, etc.), the spotting can be done almost
immediately, it was found in the general reconnaissance of the
terrain, which was discussed in chapter 1.
If, on the contrary, the point under consideration is difficult to find
(a piece of trench in a confused and cut-up region, a battery
emplacement, etc.), we must have recourse to a precise method.
1. RESEARCH IN DIRECTION.
Join on the map the projection of the balloon and the center of
the objective. Identify this direction on the terrain by finding on the
alignment a prominent point. This line can be drawn in the basket. It
is a good thing to draw the alignment on a vertical photograph
of the objective also, in order to have a greater number of
reference points than the map could give.
2. INVESTIGATION OF RANGE.
Identify on the map (or photo) two points, one situated over and
one short of the objective. Narrow down this bracket step by step
until the object is recognized.
As this investigation of the range is the more difficult, observers
must be warned against certain methods which are to be absolutely
avoided—
1. Never identify the range of a point by comparing it with
that of a near-by point situated on a different alignment.
If these two points are not at exactly the same height, the
deformations due to oblique vision can falsify their apparent relative
range. The point farthest away can even seem nearer, and the
nearest point farther away.
Fig. 1 Fig. 2
Example (fig. 1).—Suppose there are two trees, A and B, A

being nearer the balloon and higher than B. It can happen that, in
oblique vision (fig. 2), B having its image B´ and A its image A´, the
depression of the image B´ is more than that of A´. In this case, the
observer will be tempted to believe that the tree B is nearer him than
the tree A.
2. All oblique alignment in investigating the range must be
absolutely avoided.
Oblique alignment means a line connecting two points on the
map and not passing through the horizontal projection of the balloon.
You might be tempted to use an alignment to find the range of an
objective after having determined the direction. The process would
consist in finding on the map two points so placed that the straight
line between them passes through the objective, visualizing this line
on the terrain, and placing the objective at the intersection of this
visualized line and the direct alignment. This result, which would be
accurate if the ground were absolutely flat, is made erroneous by the
unevenness of the terrain. On account of this, the oblique alignment
does not pass, in oblique vision, through the same points as its
horizontal projection on the map.
Fig. 3
Example (fig. 3).—On the map C is the objective, A and B two

points so situated that the line AB passes through C, and EF the
direct alignment, or the line balloon objective. The line AB coincided
on the terrain, with the trace of the vertical plane passing through A
and B. In oblique vision (fig. 4) it is different. The line A′C′B′ is a
curve which follows the irregularities of the ground, and the point C′
is not on the oblique alignment A′B′.
Fig. 4
LOCATING ON THE MAP AN OBJECT SEEN

ON THE GROUND.
1. Determine first on the map the approximate region where the
objective is seen.
A result which you can obtain very quickly, thanks to the points
which you had found in your first reconnaissance of the terrain.
2. Investigation of direction.
This operation consists in determining the alignment of the
objective. As this alignment is a straight line, you only have to know
two points. One of them could be the horizontal projection of the
balloon; but you must realize that this position is always changing a
little, and it is hard to determine it with absolute precision. It is better
to carry on the operation independent of this position, which means
applying the following method:
Choose on the alignment of the center of the objective two
points, one over and one short, and easily identifiable on the
map. Draw with a pencil in the region of the objective the
alignment thus obtained. These points should be, as far as
possible, precise details of the terrain, such as a corner of woods, an
angle of a house, a place where roads or trenches cross, an isolated
tree, etc. When the alignment of the objective does not pass through
any such points, the difficulty can be overcome by determining in
what proportions it cuts a known element, such as an edge of woods
or a hedge, provided this element is plainly perpendicular to the
direction of observation.
This direction can be approximated to the extent of the thickness
of the pencil mark. On its accuracy the final result depends. The
difficulty lies in materializing the alignment—that is, the vertical line
through the center of the objective—in order to lessen the chances
for mistakes. Student observers should have frequent practice in this
exercise.
When the point to be found is near the edge of the map it is
sometimes necessary to take both reference points between the
balloon and the objective; this should be avoided as much as
possible, because it is apt to be less exact than when the objective is
bracketed by its reference points.
Thus (fig. 5), two reference points A and B determine the
alignment AB, O, the objective, is situated at some point between A
and B. An error AA′ in the spotting of one of these points leads to a
smaller error in the position of the objective OO′—that is, smaller
than AA′.

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Justice and Egalitarian Relations

Justice and Egalitarian Relations

Oxford Political Philosophy publishes books on theoretical and applied political

Iris Marion Young

Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press

© Oxford University Press 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

You must not circulate this work in any other form

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

For Miriam, Francesco, and Sara

4. The Demands of Liberal Non-​Domination 94

6. Social Status, Self-​Respect, and Opportunity  162

in Amsterdam, Bad Homburg, Baltimore, Bergen, Bologna, Braga, Florence,

Chapter 2 is an adapted and extended version of ‘Distributive and

Relations of unequal power and domination, and hierarchies of social status,

a better conception of egalitarian justice which they have strong reason to

of theoretical interlocutors just mentioned, and providing a more detailed

1.2. Liberal Social Justice and Relational Egalitarianism:

of the term) so as to be an active and free participant in it.2

connection to justice. Renaissance writers such as Tomas More presented

convicted criminals; ibid., p. 82.

as social equals.8 It emphasized solidarity and communality, and refused

the connection between an account of moral personhood which is intended

1.3. Plan of the Argument

Te aim of the book is constructive. It is to put forward a proposal for a lib-

for distributive justice, and draw on the works of Léon Walras.

requires focusing on individuals’ position in relations of power and status,

developments of the luck egalitarian ideal.

and ofen present themselves as alternatives to liberal egalitarianism—​in

Part I: Liberal Relational Egalitarianism

relationships, or at stake in resource-​intensive programs and policies to en-

Chapters 5 and 6 then take on the extension of liberal relational egalitar-

of them. First, norms of social status can enable, or aggravate, domination,

engendering domination, or harming self-​respect, where they deprive indi-

Part II: Implications

Chapter 7 investigates which requirements of political equality liberal rela-

26 Rawls 1999a, p. 198.

equality. Tis strengthens the case against such distribution-​centred theories

this is a particularly important area because it might be thought that rela-

requires universal provision of healthcare, independently of the causes of in-

1.4. Relational Equality When and Where?

To conclude this introductory chapter, we need to delineate with some more

theory on a spectrum of ‘ideal’ versus less ideal, or non-​ideal theories.28

are natural to ask for domestic societies as we know them, characterized by

29 ‘Full compliance’ is an important feature of Rawls’s defnition of ideal theory; 1999a, p. 6.

stringent requirements of equality (see, for example, sections 4.3.3, 7.3,

tant strands of social egalitarianism.

the level of difering conceptions of justice—​from distributive views. It thus

recipient-​oriented theories. Section 2.3 presents a counterexample to purely

2.2. Distributive Egalitarianism: Currency Teories

In a general form, the objection to distributive egalitarianism that this

marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and subjection to sys-

3 Young 1990, pp. 48–​63.

To do that, it frst needs to be specifed in a more precise manner what

just. Hence, as a matter of justice, brute luck ought to be equalized, or at least

Diferent luck egalitarians arrive at diferent accounts of what individuals are

Terefore, when it comes to the question of how to achieve equality, dis-

2.3. Five Ways of Treating People

Drawing on the account of distributive theories as purely recipient-​oriented

that institutions treat individuals. Consider the following example, devised

[distinguish fve] diferent scenarios in which, owing to the arrangement

15 See ibid., p. 147.

In scenario 1, the shortfall is ofcially mandated, paradigmatically by the

4. The Demands of Liberal Non-Domination 94

6. Social Status, Self-Respect, and Opportunity  162

and ofen present themselves as alternatives to liberal egalitarianism—in

relationships, or at stake in resource-intensive programs and policies to en-

engendering domination, or harming self-respect, where they deprive indi-

equality. Tis strengthens the case against such distribution-centred theories

theory on a spectrum of ‘ideal’ versus less ideal, or non-ideal theories.28

the level of difering conceptions of justice—from distributive views. It thus

recipient-oriented theories. Section 2.3 presents a counterexample to purely

3 Young 1990, pp. 48–63.

Drawing on the account of distributive theories as purely recipient-oriented

29 Pogge 1995, pp. 241–247.