It is widely accepted that parents have a fundamental moral obligation to consider and treat their children as each other’s equals. Yet the question of what grounds the equality of status among children in the eyes of their parents has so far been largely neglected in the literature on the philosophy of childhood and the ethics of parenthood. This paper fills this gap by developing a novel theory of the basis of filial equality: it argues that parents ought to consider (...) and treat their children as equals by virtue of loving them. Parental love is the basis of filial equality. (shrink)

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. (shrink)

In this article, I reply to Giacomo Floris, Adam Etinson, Daniel Corrigan, Luise Müller and Johannes Haaf.

Many theorists think that discrimination is wrongful because it involves treating discriminatees as if they have a lower moral status than others when in fact all people are moral equals. However, there are strong reasons, expounded by Peter Singer and others, to doubt that all people are indeed moral equals. While it may turn out that, ultimately, these reasons can be shown to be unsound, we cannot rule out the possibility that we are not all moral equals. If we are (...) not, discrimination cannot be wrong because it involves failure to treat people as moral equals. With this in mind, I propose two anti-inegalitarian accounts of the wrongness of discrimination – “anti-inegalitarian” rather than “egalitarian” because, strictly speaking, they do not posit equality of status, and “anti-inegalitarian” rather than “inegalitarian” because they reject almost all (and in the case of one of them, all) inequalities in status. These two accounts have many of the attractions of the moral equality account. Being immune to Singerian doubts about moral equality is also a strength of the accounts because it means that they are not hostage to the outcome of the intricate debate over moral equality. Lastly, the anti-inegalitarian accounts I propose are in some ways preferable to the moral equality account because they have certain implications for the wrongness of discrimination that an account given in terms of moral equality does not have, and which egalitarians so far have not theorized. (shrink)

In his recent book, Humanity without Dignity: Moral Equality, Respect, and Human Rights, Andrea Sangiovanni argues that the principle of moral equality should be grounded in the wrongness of treating others as inferiors insofar as this constitutes an act of social cruelty. In this short piece, I will raise two concerns about the rejection of social cruelty as the basis of moral equality: first, Sangiovanni’s account seems to give rise to disturbing implications as to how those beings that have basic (...) moral status relate to each other. Second, grounding moral equality in the rejection of social cruelty may fail to capture some wrongs qua violation of moral equality. (shrink)

Hardly anyone denies that (nearly) all human beings have equal moral status and therefore should be considered and treated as equals. Yet, if humans possess the property that confers moral status upon them to an unequal degree, how come they should be considered and treated as equals? It has been argued that this is because the variations in the degree to which the status‐conferring property is held above a relevant threshold are contingencies that do not generate differences in degrees of (...) moral status. Call this the contingency argument for the basis of moral equality. In this paper, I reject the contingency argument. Instead, I develop an attitude‐based account of the basis of moral equality: according to this account, the basis of moral equality lies in a fitting, basic, and independent moral attitude which is owed to human beings qua moral status‐holders, and provides a coherent and plausible explanation for why the variations above the threshold for moral status do not matter. (shrink)

Standard liberal theories of justice rest on the assumption that only those beings that hold the capacity for moral personality have moral status and therefore are right-holders. As many pointed out, this has the disturbing implication of excluding a wide range of entities from the scope of justice. Call this the under-inclusiveness objection. This paper provides a response to the under-inclusiveness objection and illustrates its implications for liberal theories of justice. In particular, the paper defends two claims: first, it argues (...) that both the CMP and the potential capacity for moral personality are bases of moral status. This pluralist account of the basis of moral status can broaden the scope of justice and provide a solid philosophical justification for the common-sense intuition that almost all human beings have a moral status that is different and superior to that of nonhuman animals. Second, contra what is commonly suggested, it contends that potential and actual moral persons have different and unequal rights, other things being equal. (shrink)

The question of the basis of human equality has recently gained increasing attention. However, much of the literature has focused on whether persons—understood as fully competent adults—have equal moral status, while relatively less attention has been devoted to the analysis of what grounds the equal moral status of those human beings who are not fully competent adults. This paper contributes to this debate by addressing the question of the equality of moral status between adults and children. Specifically, this paper has (...) three aims. First, it provides a conceptual map of this complex issue. Second, it argues that the challenges that have been raised against standard accounts of persons’ equal moral status are even more forceful when applied to the question of adults and children’s moral equality. Finally, it examines what a commitment to adults and children’s moral _inequality_ entails and what it does not, thereby showing that the justificatory role of the principle of moral equality is not as far-reaching as commonly assumed. (shrink)