Unconditional Equals

Anne Phillips author

Format:Paperback

Publisher:Princeton University Press

Published:2nd May '23

Should be back in stock very soon

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Unconditional Equals cover

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all

For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals, political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality.

Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals.

"Unsettlingly brilliant. . . . Her work is proof positive of the richness of political theory in its authentically Aristotelian sense: as the abstract contemplation of politics for the sake of doing it better—if not always well."---Teresa M. Bejan, Boston Review
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Conceptually rich and compulsively readable.—David Livingstone Smith, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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ISBN: 9780691226163

Dimensions: unknown

Weight: unknown

160 pages