The Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy and Law is delighted to host Professor Steven Wall for the third lecture in the 2024/25 Lecture Series in Practical Agency.

Title

Natural Aristocracy and the Rejection of Political Equality

Abstract

This paper sympathetically explores natural aristocracy – roughly, the view that those who are most competent to rule have a claim to rule. I introduce the main argument for natural aristocracy that I will present, which I will refer to as the fittingness argument for political rule, and distinguish it from a closely related instrumentalist argument for inegalitarian political relations. I explain the relevant fittingness relation, clarifying both the notion of ability to rule and the claim to rule that it purportedly grounds. I then consider the objection that inegalitarian political relations constitute an objectionable status inequality and discuss the positive relational value of inegalitarian political arrangements that are justified on grounds of fittingness. I conclude by outlining the limits of the fittingness argument for political rule and explain how it can be reconciled with some sound considerations that speak in favor of democratic political arrangements.

Author Bio

Steven Wall is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona, where he is also a member of the Center for the Philosophy of Freedom. He is the author of Liberalism, Perfectionism and Restraint and Enforcing Morality. He is the current editor of Oxford Studies in Political Philosophy.