LEAP 3 (2016)

Family Values: An Introduction
ANdREw wILLIAmS  

ICREA & Universitat Pompeu Fabra

The social, legal, and political institutions that constitute the family play a 
profound and unavoidable role in shaping individuals’ lives and distributing 
opportunities amongst them. They strongly inf luence our psychological 
development, including the acquisition of a sense of justice, as well as various 
cognitive skills, and our prospects of success in the competition for positions 
conferring authority and inf luence in the economy and the state. Those 
institutions also have non-instrumental importance insofar as we have 
weighty reasons to care about our capacity to enjoy love and intimacy both 
as adults and children, and the degree to which we are protected from 
various objectionable forms of control by other agents. Since the design of 
the family is malleable any reasonably complete political philosophy needs 
to ref lect on these and related issues. Fortunately, contemporary Anglo-
American political theorists have attempted to respond to this challenge. In 
recent years, some of the most notable contributions to the emerging debate 
have arisen v ia joint work by Harr y Brighouse and Adam Sw ift, leading 
eventually to the publication of their book, Family Values: The Ethics of 
Parent-Child Relationships (Brighouse and Swift, 2014).

Brighouse and Swift provide a sophisticated liberal egalitarian account 
of the essential role of the family in a just society. The account is distinctive 
in part because of the role it affords to the interests of parents in enjoying 
valuable relationships with their offspring as well as the interests of children 
and adults in being raised in families. At the same time as showing how their 
favored dual interest case for the family justifies parental partiality, the 
authors are keen to establish their account offers no support for the types of 
substantial inequality in opportunity characteristic of most societies.

These claims and others made by Brighouse and Swift raise a host of 
questions within ethics and political philosophy, several of which are pursued 
by the authors of the follow ing three thought-provoking papers. Sarah 
St roud ca l ls i nto quest ion some of t he ega l ita r ia n a ssu mpt ion about 
in herita nce that animate many recent discussions of justice and the family. 
Anca Gheaus focusses on the extent to an adult’s interest in parental authority 
over a child can plausibly ground its possession. Luara Ferracioli asks 
whet her Brighouse a nd Sw if t a re over-relia nt on a n idea l of persona l 
autonomy, and extends our attention to the interests of offspring in family 
membership over the course of their lives and not merely during childhood. 



LEAP 3 (2015)

The discussion concludes with a substantial response by Brighouse and 
Swift that elaborates their position, and defends it where necessary. 

The Editors hope the four papers advance debate on issues of pressing 
personal as well as public concern. They are grateful to all the participants 
for their commitment to the Sy mposium, and to Marcos Picchio for his 
invaluable administrative and philosophical assistance with the project.