Abstract

In this paper, I put forth a theory of discrimination that captures several structural dimensions of the phenomenon, which are sometimes pushed to the periphery of analysis. I do this by outlining a concept of discrimination, which aims to capture what many of us are concerned with in real life cases, and by exploring the different forms it can take, as well as its relation to moral wrongness and to social injustice. I thus propose that we should see discrimination, in the relevant sense, as a bridge concept: between the personal and the political, between criteria of moral wrongness and of social (in)justice, between, indeed, individualist and structural analyses of harms and inequalities.

I believe that it is this bridging feature which makes the concept distinctive and particularly useful, both within philosophy and more broadly in society (politics, law, civil society). My hope is that seeing discrimination in this way will allow for a more well-grounded and detailed understanding of our social world, by facilitating a more nuanced application of the concept to specific cases, and by allowing for a richer analysis of their moral and political-philosophical (and potentially even legal) status.