Japan offers a case-study of intensified imperialism in the modern world. Legal, moral, and ethical considerations have not sufficed to restrain leaden faced with pressing problems, the solutions to which seem to demand aggressive action. The internal disturbances during the month of February 1936 must add to the importance of any study of the forces which underlie Japan’s expansionist policies; for if these forces are based on factors more fundamental than the militarist ambitions of cliques in the army and navy, even a swing to liberalism will not necessarily induce any vital or substantial change in the objectives of foreign policy. If the essentials of that policy are dictated by deep and widespread domestic conditions, the only apparent remedy for which is some kind of outlet in Asia and intensified industrialization a mere change in the tone of government does not promise anything approaching a reversal of policy. Dr. Hindmarsh’s study attempts to discover these fundamental motivations and realistically to portray their determining influence on the acts and attitude of the nation's leaders.

An enduring theme of Western philosophy is that we are all one another’s equals. Yet the principle of basic equality is woefully under-explored in modern moral and political philosophy. In a major new work, Jeremy Waldron attempts to remedy that shortfall with a subtle and multifaceted account of the basis for the West’s commitment to human equality.

What does it mean to say we are all one another’s equals? Is this supposed to distinguish humans from other animals? What is human equality based on? Is it a religious idea, or a matter of human rights? Is there some essential feature that all human beings have in common? Waldron argues that there is no single characteristic that serves as the basis of equality. He says the case for moral equality rests on four capacities that all humans have the potential to possess in some degree: reason, autonomy, moral agency, and the ability to love. But how should we regard the differences that people display on these various dimensions? And what are we to say about those who suffer from profound disability—people whose claim to humanity seems to outstrip any particular capacities they have along these lines?

Waldron, who has worked on the nature of equality for many years, confronts these questions and others fully and unflinchingly. Based on the Gifford Lectures that he delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 2015, One Another’s Equals takes Waldron’s thinking further and deeper than ever before.