The project in brief
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) initiatives have become increasingly under pressure in a polarised and hostile public debate. Therefore, I am investigating what the moral and social value of D&I is.
The primary motivation for D&I is of course to respect the human rights or minoritised people and promote their wellbeing. In addition, however, I believe that there are reciprocal benefits for individuals - not only does D&I protect the wellbeing of minoritised people, but it is also beneficial for the self-realisation of privileged people. Finally, there are benefits for society in general: EDI makes society healthier and more resilient and strengthens democracy.
I currently (September 2024 - August 2026) have a Leverhulme Research Fellowship titled Diversity Recognition as a Public Good..
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I have also started working on the topic of discrimination as a spin-off of this project
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Introduction
EDI advocates and practitioners, but many people in general assume that EDI is a good thing. There is not a lot of theoretical fundamental work on what the value of EDI is precisely. This makes EDI vulnerable to criticism from conservative perspectives and to the backlash we currently see especially in the USA.
Therefore, we need a robust account of the moral value of D&I. When looking into this, I found that there may be dispersed literature on this, especially in business and management areas, but not a real sustained debate. It seems that even in academia, the value of D&I is largely taken for granted rather than theorised.
My account of the moral value of diversity consists of three frameworks:
Therefore, we need a robust account of the moral value of D&I. When looking into this, I found that there may be dispersed literature on this, especially in business and management areas, but not a real sustained debate. It seems that even in academia, the value of D&I is largely taken for granted rather than theorised.
My account of the moral value of diversity consists of three frameworks:
- Wellbeing of minoritised people
- Recognition and intersubjectivity
- The public good of D&I
- Flourishing and intersubjective self-realisation
- Discrimination
- Intersubjective virtues
1. Flourishing and intersubjective self-realisation
What do people pursue in life? An intuitive answer would be "to be happy." But what happiness entails, has been a discussion in philosophy since the Ancient Greek philosophers.
Our contemporary notion of happiness is too subjective, too much focussed on feelings and mental states. A happy life is also not one in which we just are powerful, healthy, rich or beautiful; a happy life is one in which you use the things that you have well and are able to cope with misfortune. This conception of happiness is based on Aristotle, and is called eudaemonia or flourishing. For philosophers in this school of virtue ethics, flourishing consists of thinking about our lives and trying to live them well. This means living one's life in accordance with the virtues: we should act bravely, be just, be modest, act justly, etcetera.
Another conception can also be traced back to Aristotle, but has been developed separately, namely self-realisation. This means being the self that one truly is. (To be developed further
Our contemporary notion of happiness is too subjective, too much focussed on feelings and mental states. A happy life is also not one in which we just are powerful, healthy, rich or beautiful; a happy life is one in which you use the things that you have well and are able to cope with misfortune. This conception of happiness is based on Aristotle, and is called eudaemonia or flourishing. For philosophers in this school of virtue ethics, flourishing consists of thinking about our lives and trying to live them well. This means living one's life in accordance with the virtues: we should act bravely, be just, be modest, act justly, etcetera.
Another conception can also be traced back to Aristotle, but has been developed separately, namely self-realisation. This means being the self that one truly is. (To be developed further
1. The Wellbeing of Minoritised people
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First and foremost, EDI initiatives are driven by the concern for the wellbeing of minoritised people. It is a known phenomenon that minoritised people report lower wellbeing, suffer more from mental health issues, and experience "minority stress."
The main cause for this is direct or indirect, formal or informal, explicit or implicit stigmatisation and discrimination. So we need a robust account of nondiscrimination to build our D&I laws and policies upon. Current nondiscrimination laws in many countries make use of so-called "protected characteristics." For example, discrimination on the basis of sex, age, disability, or sexual orientation is prohibited. I argue that this way of framing the law is problematic, and many other conceptualisations of discrimination in the philosophical literature are actually problematic for similar reasons. We should rather take the moral equality of all persons as the point of departure of discrimination laws but also for our D&I policies. |
D&I promote the wellbeing of minoritised people. Our D&I-relevant laws and policies should be built on a robust account of nondiscrimination that starts from the moral equality of all persons. |
However important this focus on wellbeing and nondiscrimination, there are a few problems as well
- Migrants are called "aliens", political opponents are dehumanised, people from a different background are compared with vermin, and others (such as queer people) are ridiculed by radical conservatives. So, it is easy to deny minoritised people rights or entitlements to wellbeing and social standing.
- Mere nondiscrimination would allow privileged people to just 'tolerate' minoritised people without real engagement. This is insufficient; inclusion requires positive engagement as well.
- Concern for the wellbeing and entitlements of minoritised people is a 'reactive' argument: it only works for settings that already are diverse. It does not provide a 'proactive' argument for why diversity is valuable in the first place.
2. Recognition and intersubjectivity
Everyone wants to live a Good Live. Some conceptualisations of the Good Live in philosophy (such as happiness or flourishing) are insufficient, or so I argue. Based on theoretical psychology literature, we can best conceptualise this as self-realisation: we want to develop skills, gain experiences, exercise our autonomy, achieve personal goals, develop moral characteristics, gain self-esteem, ... Self-realisation is not a cerebral activity only, it also means to increase knowledge of ourselves as "living bodies" who experience the world and others.
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This self-realisation is essentially an intersubjective process; we can't do this without other people. Many goals we have, involve other people; interaction with other people gives us vital information to develop self-knowledge; and other people widen our horizon by giving us insights in identity-based experiences that we can't experience ourselves.
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Plurality is the condition of human action because we are all the same, that is, human, in such a way that nobody is ever the same as anyone else who ever lived, lives, or will live. |
However, in order to be able to do this, I need the other to recognise me as a subject, central to my own self-realisation. If the other would deny me this recognition by "reifying" me (for example, by sexism, racism, stigmatisation, prejudices, ...), then my self-realisation is impeded. This is the main reason why exclusion and discrimination are detrimental to minoritised people's wellbeing.
However, with this second paradigm, I am taking this recognition theory a step further. Recognition relations are reciprocal, so in order to advance their own self-realisation, the other needs me to recognise them as well. If they deny me recognition, I can't act as a subject, so I will be unable to, in turn, recognise them. Hence, when privileged people reify minoritised people, they impede their own self-realisation. They are not taking seriously the information about themselves that is reflected by minoritised people, or the experiences of minoritised people that may widen their own perspective on themselves and the world.
However, with this second paradigm, I am taking this recognition theory a step further. Recognition relations are reciprocal, so in order to advance their own self-realisation, the other needs me to recognise them as well. If they deny me recognition, I can't act as a subject, so I will be unable to, in turn, recognise them. Hence, when privileged people reify minoritised people, they impede their own self-realisation. They are not taking seriously the information about themselves that is reflected by minoritised people, or the experiences of minoritised people that may widen their own perspective on themselves and the world.
Because intersubjective recognition relations are reciprocal, we stand to benefit ourselves from recognising the other, because this forms the basis for our own self-realisation. |
So this is the second way in which D&I has moral value: because recognition relations are reciprocal, everyone's self-realisation benefits from not denying others the recognition they are due, and from rather taking seriously others' perspectives n and experiences that support it.
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3. Diversity as a public good
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The third framework explaining the moral value of D&I is based on the paradigm of public goods. Public goods are goods that benefit everyone. D&I is not only good for minoritised people, but for society or an organisation as a whole.
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Public goods are goods that benefit everyone in society. Typical examples are peace, shared knowledge, public sanitation, security, ... I propose that D&I is a public good as well. |
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What is Epistemic Diversity?
Epistemic diversity means that there are a lot of different viewpoints and perspectives. Someone’s ideas and opinions are coloured by their own experiences and their particular point of view. For example, my skin colour is white. I can try to imagine what it is to live in the UK as person of colour, but I can’t really know this completely. Therefore, it is important for me to talk to people of colour and include them in the debate to make sure that their perspective, because otherwise valuable information and insights will be lost. An example
Let me give an example from my own discipline, philosophy. The stereotype is largely true: philosophy as a discipline has long been dominated by white, middle-aged men with beards. It is only since the 1970s, I would say, that female voices and writers from a diverse background have been gaining a bit more prominence, and even now it’s still problematic to some extent. A important, almost sacred, philosophical or ethical principle is the principle of “individual autonomy.” In medical contexts, it is the patient, and only the patient as an individual, rational and autonomous being, who should decide about their treatment. However, at some point, feminist ethicists and philosophers came along who criticised this principle, because a patient is always in a relationship with their family, their carers, their context etcetera. While the principle of individual autonomy envisages a person alone on an island, these female authors started talking about “relational autonomy”, in which we take the context and relationships of people in consideration as well. This has been quite an important step in the debate, and it was and is still led by female philosophers. Without them, we may still have been considering “individual autonomy” a sacred principle. |
An important benefit for society at large is what is known as epistemic diversity. Including different voices and perspectives in the debate is not only necessary because everyone has an equal right to be heard, but also because it makes democratic decision-making stronger and it enriches a debate.
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If you only have one perspective, a debate is quite poor, quite hollow, it loses nuance and relevance. This happens with the so-called echo-chambers on social media. If you only talk to people who share your opinion, then your own opinion does not get challenged but only confirmed. In contrast, criticism is actually healthy to improve your ideas and arguments.
Research into D&I in business and management settings provides evidence that there are multiple benefits of having diverse teams in terms of productivity, problem-solving and interpersonal agendas.
But this is also the case for democracy: democracy is a "clash of ideas", so it benefits from including more views and perspectives. Moreover, this makes society more resilient: if we have a diverse range of ideas, we will also have more innovative solutions to social problems to our disposal. Furthermore, D&I improves the wellbeing of minoritised people, and the more wellbeing there is to go around, the better off a society collectively is.
Finally, there is also a pragmatic reason for inclusion: building society is hard work. By minoritising certain groups of people, we do not take their contribution to society seriously, so the work of building society is spread among fewer hands. Inclusivity, in contrast, builds a shared sense of citizenship. It allows people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse perspectives to contribute to the good of society - what Hegel called Sittlichkeit (ethical life). This, to close the circle, is to support everyone's self-realisation
Research into D&I in business and management settings provides evidence that there are multiple benefits of having diverse teams in terms of productivity, problem-solving and interpersonal agendas.
But this is also the case for democracy: democracy is a "clash of ideas", so it benefits from including more views and perspectives. Moreover, this makes society more resilient: if we have a diverse range of ideas, we will also have more innovative solutions to social problems to our disposal. Furthermore, D&I improves the wellbeing of minoritised people, and the more wellbeing there is to go around, the better off a society collectively is.
Finally, there is also a pragmatic reason for inclusion: building society is hard work. By minoritising certain groups of people, we do not take their contribution to society seriously, so the work of building society is spread among fewer hands. Inclusivity, in contrast, builds a shared sense of citizenship. It allows people from diverse backgrounds and with diverse perspectives to contribute to the good of society - what Hegel called Sittlichkeit (ethical life). This, to close the circle, is to support everyone's self-realisation
Isn't this hopelessly naive?
D&I are difficult; there is no denying this. Solidarity is easier with people with whom you share an identity or some important characteristics. Conversely, we currently see a tendency emphasising many negative beliefs about diversity, pointing out its failures. Think, for example, about the attention given to crimes of immigrants (and anti-migration sentiments in general) or the extremes of the "woke" community. First of all, the framing in these cases is wrong.
However, I do not want to deny that these social changes are challenging. On the one hand, diversity does pose difficult practical questions which need to be addressed - for example, should we tolerate everything in name of tolerance and diversity? How do we solve the so-called "culture wars"? Privileged people have benefitted from privileges which are now challenged by the demand for recognition of minoritised people. On the other hand, I argue that these challenges should be interpreted as a threat because in the long term, D&I benefits privileged people as well. Moreover, the dilemmas by multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion are actually not that difficult to resolve - at least on principle - on the basis of the frameworks regarding the moral value of D&I I elaborated above.
The main thing is that we should work towards giving people all the opportunities for people's self-realisation and wellbeing. That's the ultimate goal of society, so things that do not contribute to this can be reasonably rejected. It may be controversial, but on the basis of this criterion, it is not difficult to ban certain cultural practices that impede reasonable instances of self-realisations (especially intolerance, but also consumerism, genital mutilation, sexism, objectification, subjugation of women, criminalisation of homosexual practices, beauty ideals. etc.
However, I do not want to deny that these social changes are challenging. On the one hand, diversity does pose difficult practical questions which need to be addressed - for example, should we tolerate everything in name of tolerance and diversity? How do we solve the so-called "culture wars"? Privileged people have benefitted from privileges which are now challenged by the demand for recognition of minoritised people. On the other hand, I argue that these challenges should be interpreted as a threat because in the long term, D&I benefits privileged people as well. Moreover, the dilemmas by multiculturalism, diversity and inclusion are actually not that difficult to resolve - at least on principle - on the basis of the frameworks regarding the moral value of D&I I elaborated above.
The main thing is that we should work towards giving people all the opportunities for people's self-realisation and wellbeing. That's the ultimate goal of society, so things that do not contribute to this can be reasonably rejected. It may be controversial, but on the basis of this criterion, it is not difficult to ban certain cultural practices that impede reasonable instances of self-realisations (especially intolerance, but also consumerism, genital mutilation, sexism, objectification, subjugation of women, criminalisation of homosexual practices, beauty ideals. etc.
