How should relational egalitarians think of social relations? Intergenerational justice and the Argument from Temporal Non-Overlap

Social relations play a crucial role in relational egalitarian accounts of justice. Intuitively, however, we can stand in relations of justice to future generations with whom we do not overlap in time and to whom we for that reason are not socially related. This is the background to the Argument from Temporal Non-Overlap and its conclusion that relational egalitarianism offers an incomplete theory of justice. I rebut attempts to resist the argument, or its conclusion, based on Sommers’ distinction between relationships and social relations; Karnein’s Rawlsian account of intergenerational social cooperation; and the distinction between the ground and the content of norms of justice. More generally, I suggest that relational egalitarians face a dilemma in trying to specify what qualifies as social relations from the point of view of justice in such a way that, plausibly, social relations form the content and ground of obligations of justice, but that relations between individuals that do not qualify as social in this sense do not.