How Can We Be Equals?

That all human beings are one another's moral equals is taken by many to be the fundamental premise of contemporary moral, political and legal theory. It is also the demand of individuals and groups to be treated as equals that drives much of political practice and protest today. However, what does such a claim of 'basic equality' between human beings mean? How can it possibly be true, given that we are unequals in almost every other aspect of our lives? And, who, exactly, is meant to fall within its scope?
This volume brings together leading thinkers on basic equality to address these questions. Collectively, they explore the concept of equality in history and criticism, analysing and presenting solutions to the most pressing challenges that have been raised against the principle.

Giacomo Floris is British Academy Fellow in Philosophy at the University of York. His main areas of research are in contemporary moral and political philosophy, with a particular interest in theories of moral status and basic equality, and theories of relational equality and distributive justice. His work has appeared in various journals, including Philosophical Studies, Journal of Ethics, European Journal of Political Theory, and Ethical Theory and Moral Practice.
Nikolas Kirby is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Glasgow. Previously, he was Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow, Departmental Lecturer in Philosophy and Public Policy, and Director of the Building Integrity Programme, Blavatnik School of Government, Oxford University. He was also a Democracy Visiting Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University.

- Part I - Meaning: History and Critique - 1: Teresa Bejan: On the Historical Emergence of Basic Human Equality - 2: Jeremy Waldron: Basic and Relational Equality - 3: Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen: Should People Who Are Moral Equals Relate as Social Equals? Should People Who Are Not Moral Equals Relate as Social Unequals? - 4: Andrea Sangiovanni: Is There a Thing Called Moral Equality? (And Does It Matter if There Isn't?) - Part II - Justification: Grounding and Scepticism - 5: Ian Carter: Basic Equality and the Contexts of Opacity Respect - 6: Thomas Christiano: Equal Moral Status and the Collective Nature of Rationality - 7: Nikolas Kirby: Basic Equality: Worth, Luck and Weight - 8: Agnieszka Jaworska and Julie Tannenbaum: Equality and Moral Status: Challenges to Their Grounding - 9: Anne Phillips: When Equality Needs No Justification - Part III - Scope: Inclusion and Marginalisation - 10: Giacomo Floris: The Basis of Children's Moral Equality - 11: Eva Feder Kittay: Basic Human Moral Equality - 12: George Sher: First Among Equals - 13: Richard Arneson: Basic Equality, Rational Agency Capacity, and Potentiality