Equality and Respect

Abstract

/. 1. let me begin with a preliminary caution, and with a statement of intent. I propose to deal here with issues that pertain to the alleged moral value of equality. So far as I am aware, nothing that I shall say concerning these issues implies anything of substance as to the kinds of social or political policies that it may be desirable to pursue or to avoid. My discussion is motivated exclusively by conceptual or analytic concerns. It is not inspired or shaped by any social ideology or political interest. 2. I categorically reject the presumption that egalitarianism, of whatever variety, is an ideal of any intrinsic moral importance. This emphatically does not mean that I am inclined generally to endorse or to be indifferent to prevailing inequalities, or that I oppose efforts to eliminate them. In fact, I support many such efforts. What leads me to support them, however, is not a conviction that equality of some kind is morally desirable for its own sake and that certain egalitarian goals are therefore inherently worthy. Rather, it is a more contingent and pragmatically grounded belief that in many circumstances greater equality of one sort or another would facilitate the pursuit of other socially desirable aims. So far as equality as such is concerned, I am convinced that it has no inherent or underived moral value at all.1