Abstract
The belief that all human beings are ‘moral equals’ is widespread within the canon of Western liberal philosophy. However, it is unclear precisely what ‘moral equality’ or its associate terms mean, what grounds our ‘moral equality’ and what the implications of being ‘moral equals’ are. In this paper, I distinguish between three ways of understanding ‘moral equality’: the ‘buck-passing’, ‘explanatory’ and ‘reverse-explanatory’ accounts. The buck-passing account of moral equality is in parallel with Scanlon’s buck-passing account of value. It holds that ‘moral equality’ is not a metaphysically fundamental concept and simply amounts to having other properties shared equally by all human beings that constitute the reasons for why we ought to treat all human beings equally in certain respects. The explanatory account understands the concept of ‘moral equality’ as metaphysically fundamental and explanatory of why human beings who are the same in certain respects have the same entitlement to x. The reverse-explanatory account also sees ‘moral equality’ as metaphysically fundamental but holds that the explanatory relationship goes the other way round: moral equality is explained by how we ought to act. I argue that the buck-passing account is a more accurate way of understanding moral equality.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
By ‘descriptive properties that might be thought to ground our “moral equality”’‚ I mean characteristics of human beings that are considered as determinative of our ‘moral status or standing’, including subjectivity, intelligence, ability to feel pain, etc. This can be distinguished from the normative implications of our’moral equality’, e.g. to enjoy equal rights or entitlements.
Westen (1982) believes that the principle of equality can only avoid the tautology charge if equal treatment is achieved by either uniformly granting or uniformly denying treatment to everyone. Equality would be a moral, not logical, absurdity if it did not specify any treatment other than equal treatment since it would also allow leveling down. In other words, the principle of equality would either fall victim to the tautology charge or a moral, not logical, absurdity charge.
Some philosophers consider moral status as deciding who is to be granted a voice in public policy decisions. See, for instance, Husi (2017).
I thank an anonymous reviewer for raising these two concerns to me.
Some other problems of the range property argument proposed include that it seems arbitrary where we should draw the thresholds for each range. The inability to draw a precise threshold is problematic because ‘there will be cases in which it is unclear where it applies’ (Ebert 2018, p. 81). This problem is heightened when there is a huge gap as to how we ought to treat those above and below the threshold, and it seems unacceptable that such an important decision depends on an arbitrary choice of threshold (Ebert 2018, pp. 81–82). For more details, see Ebert (2018).
Steinhoff (2014) also discusses several other accounts of ‘moral equality’ or its associated terms in his chapter.
On the other hand, Andrea Sangiovanni (2017, p. 3, emphasis in original) provides a reverse-explanatory account in support of moral equality, where he argues that our commitment to moral equality is ‘both defined in terms of and grounded in a rejection of inequality’. He elaborates on his position as follows: ‘[f]irst, equal moral status is constituted by or consists in a bundle of rights against certain kinds of inferiorizing treatment (rather than the other way around), and, second, our commitment to moral equality is explained by or grounded in the rejection of inferiorizing treatment as socially cruel (rather than the other way around)’ (Sangiovanni 2017, p. 103, emphasis in original). However, this way of understanding moral equality strips moral equality from serving any purpose: many scholars see the point of having the concept of moral equality as to determine which types of inequality are wrong and why. By defining moral equality in terms of a rejection of inequality, Sangiovanni’s account is both at odds with how the concept has been used and the perceived purpose of having such a concept. It is unclear why a theory of moral equality appears so important in contemporary Western liberal philosophy if it is just another way of saying that inequality should be rejected. For further discussions on the problems of Sangiovanni’s account, see Floris (2019).
This differentiates my account from Wittwer (2014), who argues that the concept of moral worth is irrelevant to the debate between egalitarianism and anti-egalitarianism.
References
Arneson, R. 2013. Egalitarianism. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/egalitarianism/. Accessed February 2, 2019.
Arneson, R. 2014. Basic equality: Neither acceptable nor rejectable. In Do all persons have equal moral worth?, ed. U. Steinhoff, 30–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Christiano, T. 2014. Rationality, equal status, and egalitarianism. In Do all persons have equal moral worth?, ed. U. Steinhoff, 53–75. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Christman, J. 2018. Autonomy in moral and political Philosophy. In The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy, ed. E. N. Zalta, (spring 2018 edn). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2018/entries/autonomy-moral/. Accessed February 1, 2020.
Cruft, R. 2004. Rights: Beyond interest theory and will theory? Law and Philosophy 23: 347–397.
Ebert, R. 2018. Mental-threshold egalitarianism: How not to ground full moral status. Social Theory and Practice 44(1): 75–93.
Floris, G. 2019. On the basis of moral equality: A rejection of the relation-first approach. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22: 237–250.
Griffin, J. 2008. On human rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Horta, O. 2017. Why the concept of moral status should be abandoned. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20: 899–910.
Husi, S. 2017. Why we (almost certainly) are not moral equals. The Journal of Ethics 21(4): 375–401.
Nathan, C. 2014. What is basic equality? In Do all persons have equal moral worth?, ed. U. Steinhoff, 1–16. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Raz, J. 1986. The morality of freedom. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Sangiovanni, A. 2017. Humanity without dignity: Moral equality, respect and human rights. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Scanlon, T. 1998. What we owe to each other. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Steinhoff, U. 2014. Against equal respect and concern, equal rights, and egalitarian impartiality. In Do all persons have equal moral worth?, ed. U. Steinhoff, 142–172. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sher, G. 2014a. Equality for inegalitarians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sher, G. 2014b. Why we are moral equals. In Do all persons have equal moral worth?, ed. U. Steinhoff, 17–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Waldron, J. 2011. Does ‘equal moral status’ add anything to right reason? NYU School of Law, Public Law Research Paper No. 11–52, 1–18.
Waldron, J. 2017. One another’s equals: The basis of human equality. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Westen, P. 1982. The empty idea of equality. Harvard Law Review 95(3): 537–596.
Wittwer, H. 2014. The irrelevance of the concept of worth to the debate between egalitarianism and non-egalitarianism. In Do all persons have equal moral worth?, ed. U. Steinhoff, 76–95. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Acknowledgement
I would like to thank Uwe Steinhoff, Alexander Green, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on earlier drafts of the paper. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Department of Philosophy Research Seminar, the University of Hong Kong. I would like to thank the participants for their comments.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Yim, E.LL. A Buck-Passing Account of ‘Moral Equality’. Res Publica 27, 25–40 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-020-09458-0
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11158-020-09458-0