Anthony Laden (Illinois – Chicago) "The Practice of Equality"

Abstract: Several decades ago, Catharine MacKinnon asked the wonderful question, “What is an equality question a question of?” In asking her question, she hoped to draw our attention to the fundamental difference between thinking of equality in terms of non-discrimination and equality in terms of non-domination. This paper takes up MacKinnon’s question by reflecting on a certain set of dialectics in discussions of equality in the last several decades, and in particular, by pivoting around some recent work of Rainer Forst. Forst links up a view of justice (and thus equality) as a matter of relationships (and thus of non-domination) with a view of justice in terms of what he calls the right to justification. I suggest that this approach makes clear a certain dialectical progression that points beyond Forst’s work towards what I call an intersubjective conception of justice, and I explore some of the contours of this further position. The position I invite you to consider has implications not only for how we think of equality, and thus how we answer MacKinnon’s question, but how we think of the practice of political philosophy more generally.