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Niko Kolodny, The Pecking Order: Social Hierarchy as a Philosophical Problem, Harvard University Press, 2023, 496pp., $55.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780674248151.
Reviewed by James Wilson, University of Chicago
Since Elizabeth Anderson (1999) asked “What Is the Point of Equality?”, political philosophers have contended with the idea that there is something objectionable about standing in relations of inequality with others. For all the work on social equality in the last quarter-century, however, it remains difficult to specify what meaningful social equality (or inequality) is. Moreover, because so much writing about social equality is framed as part of a dispute among egalitarians, who take the value of equality for granted, it remains difficult to specify why social equality (or inequality) matters.
Niko Kolodny’s The Pecking Order makes substantial advances on both fronts. We have, says Kolodny, claims against inferiority—that is, against being subordinate to others in a social hierarchy constituted by asymmetries in power, authority,…
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