While it has been argued that relational egalitarianism can capture the vulnerability to inequalities of people’s self-respect, the relationship between vulnerability and relational equality remains largely underexplored. In this chapter, I embark on this project, with a particular focus on risk. I argue that both risk and vulnerability capture situations in which there is a possibility of harm, but harm has not yet materialised and I claim that a number of situations in which one’s interests are at risk of harm matter for relational egalitarians. Sometimes risks and vulnerabilities amount to relationships of domination, in other cases exposure to risk, especially when unequal, signals a failure of the state to treat citizens as equals. Bringing together the literature on vulnerability and risk, which are rarely put in dialogue, is key in reflecting on the terms on which people are able to relate to each other as equals: this ex-ante outlook brings to the forefront the different ways in which risk and vulnerability not only can amount to objectionable forms of inequality but can also endanger equality. This, I argue, should lead relational egalitarians to regard the commitment to the robust protection of people’s equal status as central to their theory.

If society should treat its members as equals, how can they be unequal in the possession of some valuable goods? In this chapter, I develop a novel relational egalitarian answer to this question. I argue that relational egalitarians must hold that, whatever else distributive justice requires, it requires ensuring that persons have a sufficient, not equal, capability to function as equals in society. This is because directly pursuing equality of capabilities above the sufficiency threshold has the paradoxical effect of rendering individuals vulnerable to being singled out as ‘less competent’ agents, thereby creating a ‘pathogenic vulnerability’ to social disrespect. This, however, is inconsistent with the expressive demands of equal respect for persons. Therefore, at least a certain degree of distributive inequality is not only compatible with but also required by a commitment to the ideal of relational equality.

Chapter 13 COLLECTIVE SKILLS, PRACTICES, AND CULTURAL INNOVATION argues that, in order to make sense of the possibility of cumulative culture, we ought to distinguish between collective skills and individual or group skills. I argue that practices are partly grounded on cognitive states of agents, rather than entirely on individual and collective dispositions, if cumulative culture is possible. Collective intelligence is explained in terms of a theory of collective skills as productive practices.

This chapter explores two kinds of vulnerability which appear to cause a problem for neo-republicanism as a form of relational egalitarianism: the vulnerabilities involved in intimate and caring relationships, and those generated by complex economic and social processes like the global financial system. I argue that the standard neo-republican strategy of constraining arbitrary power can successfully account for the former; the value of the vulnerabilities involved in intimate relations depends on the presence of constraints which prevent power being exercised in ways which do not track relevant interests. But this approach is less successful in dealing with the latter kind of vulnerability, which generates cases in which agents can be subject to domination without suffering the loss of status, and accompanying inequality, usually characteristic of domination. I argue that while these cases count as exceptions to the standard relationship between non-domination and egalitarianism, neo-republicanism remains a form of relational egalitarianism.

This chapter addresses the second main challenge to Kant’s conception of autonomy: the sense that the opposition between nature and freedom renders the actuality of freedom unintelligible. Turning to the Inaugural Dissertation and the three critiques, the second chapter shows that tackling the problem requires us to first overcome a widespread misunderstanding of Kant’s notion of the intelligible world. The intelligible world is not a given world available to theoretical cognition but initially accessible only through practical cognition as a world that ought to be. The chapter develops a new interpretation of Kant’s use of the principle “ought implies can” to show how the moral self-consciousness of the ought provides the realm of freedom with a first degree of actuality that, however, remains insufficient on its own. For freedom to be truly realized, we have to realize our freedom in the natural world by endowing it with a different purposive form. The third Critique offers unrecognized resources to explain how such a realization may be possible. By means of its account of natural purposiveness and the feeling of life, it redescribes external and subjective nature in such a manner that we can see how freedom may take root in them. By means of its account of fine, Kant specifies the general form of processes through which we can transform given nature and produce a second nature expressive of ideas. The chapter closes by considering why Kant did not fully develop these resources and why freedom remains ultimately unreal in his own account, something especially obvious in his discussion of the highest good.

Relational equality theorists have drawn attention to the expressive dimensions of social and institutional hierarchies, highlighting the ways that expressive disrespect, for example by state institutions and officials can entrench social inequalities. Meanwhile, theorists of trust have drawn attention to the ways that agents who are disadvantaged or marginalised are often treated with presumptive distrust by social institutions and excluded from the trust economy. This paper draws on these insights, on empirical findings from the literature in social psychology on procedural justice, and on conceptions of vulnerability, to argue that expressive disrespect and presumptive distrust by state institutions is a form of injustice that can entrench vulnerability. The theoretical argument is supported and extended by discussion of a notorious example from the recent Australian context, Robodebt, a government scheme that was found to be illegal, which used automated decision-making technology to identify and claw back alleged overpayments to social welfare recipients.

Chapter 12 FROM PUZZLES OF CONTROL, LEARNING, AND FLEXIBILITY TO A THEORY OF SKILLS contends that in order to account for what makes skills distinctive, skills must involve standing knowledge states. I lay out a novel solution to the puzzle of learning by doing, which offers additional reasons to reject the doctrine of essentially intentional actions.