Should People Who Are Moral Equals Relate as Social Equals? Should People Who Are Not Moral Equals Relate as Social Unequals?

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Abstract It is often argued by relational egalitarians and others that we should relate as social equals—that is, that we should avoid relating to one another in socially in racist or sexist ways—because we are moral equals. In this chapter, I first analyse what it is for us to be morally and (rather differently) socially equal. Drawing on the analyses, I then ask whether our being moral equals entails that, invariably, we should relate as social equals. Then I argue that there are ways of our not being moral equals such that the requirement that we relate as social equals can be justified even if, in one of these ways, we are not moral equals. If my arguments for the last claim are successful, then, contrary to what many theorists have assumed, our commitment to social equality is robust across a variety of different claims about moral status, including denials of the equal moral status of all persons. This is to be welcomed, because despite the popularity of the view that all persons are moral equals, the philosophical literature on whether all humans have equal moral status is inconclusive.