Abstract:
According to some egalitarian theorists, the ideal of social equality is embedded in many social relationships familiar to people in modern society. Friendship, they contend, serves as a paradigmatic example of social equality because it is fundamentally defined by two norms of equality: equal power or authority and equal consideration of interests. Moreover, equality in personal relationships can support equality in the political relationships among citizens. I challenge these claims and contend that friendship is not constituted by the two proposed norms of equality and is an inadequate model for political relationships.
Bio:
Joseph Chan is a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, Taiwan. He taught political theory in the Department of Politics and Public Administration at The University of Hong Kong for 30 years. From 2019 to 2022, he served as a Global Scholar and Visiting Professor at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, where he taught Confucian political philosophy. In 2024, he was elected an International Fellow of the British Academy. He is author of Confucian Perfectionism: A Political Philosophy for Modern Times (Princeton, 2014).
