Kolodny on discrimination

According to Niko Kolodny, the commonplace claim that individuals ‘have claims to non-discriminatory social institutions and forms of treatment’ can be fully explained by neither appeals to claims against invasion, nor by an interest in improvement. To adequately explain the claim to non-discrimination we must appeal to the claim against inferiority. However, while the claim against inferiority explains important aspects of this commonplace, other aspects of it cannot be fully explained by the three claims in Kolodny’s triad (i.e. claims to non-invasion, improvement, and non-inferiority). Hence, by Kolodny’s own lights a deeper form of pluralism than the one embodied in his triad is needed to account for claims to non-discrimination. This has implications both for discrimination theory and for how we should regard Kolodny’s overall project in political philosophy.