Distributive Egalitarianism as Aspirational Justice

Abstract

Abstract A standard framing of the debate over the value of equality casts distributive egalitarians against relational egalitarians in disagreement about what kind of equality matters non-instrumentally: Distributive egalitarians think egalitarian justice non-instrumentally favors an equal distribution of some good(s) among individuals; relational egalitarians think it non-instrumentally favors some kind of egalitarian social relationships. This chapter sketches a systematic pluralist account on which both kinds of equality matter non-instrumentally, and begins the work of defending this pluralistic picture by demonstrating its practical and theoretical usefulness. In particular, this chapter defends the picture by showing that it enables distributive egalitarians to give powerful defenses against persistent objections to the view that distributive equality matters in its own right. It is concluded that relational egalitarians therefore can accept the pluralist picture—and distributive egalitarianism contextualized within it—notwithstanding their battery of objections to distributive egalitarianism generally.