By Pablo Magaña, published November 2025
Introduction:
Can the ideal of relational equality—or, more generally, the relational approach to justice—be applied to animals? Animals have, across time and place, held different social statuses (e.g. as incarnations of gods to be worshiped or as plagues to be exterminated). And yet, in spite of this, the above question remains underexplored.
In this paper, we defend an optimistic answer, and make a twofold contribution. First, we formulate and thoroughly inspect three challenges to the extension of the relational framework to animals: (i) that they cannot engage in reciprocal interpersonal relationships (the ‘absence of social relations problem’), (ii) that, given animals’ lack of a sense of self-worth, it is not clear how social hierarchies between animals and humans could be objectionable (the ‘absence of understanding problem’), and (iii) that animals are not, or so at least many philosophers argue, humans’ moral equals (the ‘absence of moral equality problem’).
Second, we argue that these challenges, although important, can be answered. The relational framework, we argue, is flexible and rich enough to overcome the three challenges without losing normative attractiveness and substantive bite. If we are right, some social hierarchies between humans and animals may be objectionable on grounds of relational justice.