Hierarchies and the Complementarity of Authority and Equality

Authority involves hierarchy and is a component of many patterns of useful collective action, capacity-building for addressing needs, and social cooperation generally speaking. However, hierarchy has its drawbacks and it must be questioned from a normative point of view, in a critical manner. To a significant degree, the complexity of the matter originates in the fact that efficient and structured collective action is itself at the core of important normative concerns. Relational social ethics and the analysis of the sources of the most morally serious inequalities should play a role in addressing this complexity in a fruitful way, it is argued.