Unconditional Equals

Contributor(s): Professor Anne Phillips | Drawing on her forthcoming book Unconditional Equals, Anne Phillips explores the dangers of treating equality as conditional on some supposedly shared human characteristic.
The claim to be regarded as an equal, or to consider others as our equals, is often explained by reference to some quality all humans are said to possess, something like rationality, a capacity for autonomy, or a sense of justice. This sounds inclusive, but this kind of justification sets up a test. Historically, many millions have been deemed to fail the test: women, the enslaved, the colonised, and those too poor to be considered fully human.
The legacy of this way of understanding equality continues today: in philosophical argument, in public policy, and in everyday talk. One of the consequences is that we cannot be confident of a shared belief in even ‘basic’ human equality, not to mention support for the kind of socio-economic equality usually associated with those on t