ABSTRACT
Liberal political philosophy is typically committed to two basic values, individual equality and individual autonomy. Recent conceptualizations of these values (relational egalitarianism and relational autonomy) have argued that they are “relational.” Relational approaches claim that certain forms of unjust social hierarchy, particularly oppression, are incompatible with equality and autonomy. They thus seem to introduce substantive moral commitments into the analysis of equality, autonomy, and liberalism itself. An important objection to relational approaches is that in importing substantive moral commitments, they are problematically perfectionist: they constitute disrespectful treatment of people holding conceptions of the good that are incompatible with the substantive morality implicit in relational approaches. This chapter unpacks the perfectionism challenge and argues that even if relational theories are committed to perfectionism, this is not morally problematic. The perfectionism implicit in relational approaches is compatible with a moral requirement of respect of persons.
