The Practice of Equality

!

Samuel Scheffler
New York University
[to appear in C. Fourie, F. Schuppert, and I. Wallimann-Helmer, Social Equality:
Essays on What it Means to be Equals (Oxford)]


1. Two Views of Equality
I will begin with a brief and stylized contrast between two different views
of equality, which I will call the distributive and relational views respectively.
These views do not exhaust the possible interpretations of equality, but versions
of both have played a prominent role in recent discussions. According to the
first view, equality is an essentially distributive value. We can directly assess
distributions as being more or less egalitarian, and justice requires that we strive
to achieve fully egalitarian distributions, except insofar as other values forbid it.
This is the view taken by Jerry Cohen when he says, I take for granted that there
is something which justice requires people to have equal amounts of, not no
matter what, but to whatever extent is allowed by values which compete with
distributive equality.
1
If one accepts this view, then the most important task is
to identify the proper currency of egalitarian justice. That is, the task is to
identify the thing that justice requires us to equalize (insofar as such equalization
is allowed by competing values).

*
Earlier versions of this article were presented to conferences at the University of
London and the Central European University and to a seminar at Columbia Law
School. I am indebted to Jnos Kis, Daniel Putnam, and Joseph Raz for helpful
critical comments.

1
G.A. Cohen, On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice, Ethics 99 (1989), at 906.
2
According to the second, relational view, equality is an ideal governing
certain kinds of interpersonal relationships. It plays a central role in political
philosophy because justice requires the establishment of a society of equals, a
society whose members relate to one another on a footing of equality. For those
who accept this view, one important task is to consider what kinds of institutions
and practices a society must put in place if it is to count as a society of equals.
The relevant institutions and practices will include those that govern the
distribution of goods within the society, and so the ideal of equality, understood
as an ideal that governs the relations among the members of society, will have
important distributive implications. But, according to this view, equality is a
more general, relational ideal, and its bearing on questions of distribution is
indirect. The relevant question, in thinking about equality and distribution, is
not What is the currency of which justice requires an equal distribution? It is,
rather, What kinds of distributions are consistent with the ideal of a society of
equals?
Defenders of the relational view have sometimes criticized the distributive
view for offering an inadequate account of the basis for our concern with
equality. The distributive view, it is said, represents equality as an excessively
abstract or arithmetic value. It makes it seem as if the fundamental egalitarian
concern is to secure conformity to a certain pattern of distribution for its own
sake. It fails to recognize that the real motivation for egalitarianism, both
historically and conceptually, lies in a commitment to a certain ideal of society, a
conviction that the members of society should relate to one another on a footing
of equality. Distributive equality matters, they claim, only because and insofar as
it is necessary in order to achieve a society of equals.
3
Yet the force of the relational view is open to doubt for at least two
reasons.
2
First, since defenders of this view agree that it too supports egalitarian
distributions of some kind, it may be obscure what substantive, normative
difference it makes whether one accepts the relational view or not. If the point is
simply that egalitarian distributive principles should be grounded in the ideal of
a society of equals, rather than presented as self-standing or grounded in some
other way, then it looks as if the relational view has no bearing on the choice of
the principles themselves. It is simply addressing a different question. So there
need be no conflict between the distributive and relational views.
Second, it may seem that the relational view, if fully spelled out, must
itself take a distributive form. For suppose that the members of society are
committed to the ideal of a society of equals and are determined to structure
their mutual relations in accordance with that ideal. How would they go about
doing this? The answer, it may seem, is that they would take care to ensure that
certain important goods, such as status, power, or opportunity, were distributed
equally within the society. That is what it would mean for them to achieve a
society of equals. But if that is correct, then the relational view is not really an
alternative to the distributive view but is rather a version of it. It is distinguished
from other versions not by placing less emphasis on distribution but by singling
out goods like status and power as the ones whose distribution should be the
object of egalitarian concern.

2
For versions of these objections, see Christian Seidel, Two Problems with the
Socio-Relational Critique of Distributive Egalitarianism, in Miguel Hoeltje,
Thomas Spitzley and Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was Drfen Wir glauben? Was
Sollen Wir Tun? Sektionsbeitrge Des Achten Internationalen Kongresses der
Gesellschaft fr Analytische Philosophie (Duisburg-Essen: DuEPublico, 2013),
pp. 525-535.
4
I believe that these two doubts can be allayed. Contrary to what the
second doubt suggests, the relational view is not a version of but is rather a
genuine alternative to the distributive view. And contrary to what the first
doubt suggests, the relational view does have a bearing on substantive,
normative questions. If we accept the relational view, this will affect the way we
think about the content of distributive justice. In order to establish these claims,
more must be done to develop the relational view. That is what I will attempt to
do here. Before I begin, two preliminary issues need to be addressed.
First, consider the distinction between prioritarianism, which holds that
benefits to those who are worse off matter more than benefits to those who are
better off, and forms of egalitarianism which hold that it is bad if some people
are worse off than others through no fault of their own. It is sometimes said that
prioritarianism is a non-relational view, because it is sensitive only to the
absolute levels of well-being of the affected individuals, whereas egalitarianism
is a relational view, because it is sensitive to essentially comparative judgments
about the relations among different individuals levels of well-being.
3
Here the
term relational is being used to mark a difference between two different
distributive views. Both prioritarianism and egalitarianism of the sort described
are distributive views, and the term relational is being used to distinguish
distributive views that are sensitive to comparative information from those that
are not. By contrast, I use the term to describe a view of equality that is not
distributive at all. What I call the relational view is not the view that
distributive principles should be sensitive to comparative information. It is a

3
For an example of such usage, see Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, Why
It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the
Priority View, Philosophy & Public Affairs 37 (2009): 171-199.
5
view according to which equality should not be thought of as a fundamentally
distributive value in the first place.
Second, although my sympathies lie for the most part with the relational
view, this does not mean that I regard questions of distribution as unimportant
or that I think economic inequality is unobjectionable. I believe that the levels of
economic inequality that prevail in my country and many others are
indefensible, and I am as convinced as anyone of the importance of distributive
justice. The relational view does not deny that equality has a bearing on
questions of distribution. Instead it holds that, in order to appreciate the bearing
of equality on distribution, one must begin by understanding equality as a
broader ideal that governs the relations among members of society more
generally. Rather than assuming that justice requires the equal distribution of
something and then asking what that something is, a relational approach asks
what the broader ideal of equality implies about distributive questions.
Defenders of the relational view believe that the case against distributive
inequality is strengthened rather than weakened if it is linked to a broader ideal
of this kind, because the ideal is more attractive than any purportedly egalitarian
distributive formula considered on its own. If egalitarian social and political
positions have roots in the idea of a society of equals, this gives them a critical
force that they would otherwise lack. Or so defenders of the relational view
believe. Whether they are right depends on whether the relational view can be
successfully fleshed out. That is what I will try to do in this essay.



6
2. Egalitarian Personal Relationships
I will first consider a non-political example. I do so advisedly. Equality is
a central political value, and its implications in political contexts will differ in
many respects from its implications in other contexts. Yet equality is not an
emergent value that appears for the first time at the political level, and we should
be able to see some connection between the way it functions in political contexts
and the way it functions elsewhere. It would be an objection to an account of
political equality if it allowed us to see no such connection. One of the
advantages of the relational conception is that it represents equality as a value
that applies to human relationships of many kinds, and we may learn things by
looking at its nonpolitical applications that will help us to understand how it
applies to the political case. So consider the assertion that a marriage or
partnership should be a relationship between equals. What might this mean?
Suppose we have two spouses or partners, each of whom is committed to
conducting their shared relationship on an egalitarian basis. How might this
affect the way they relate to each other? Presumably it will affect the attitudes
they have toward one another and the ways in which they are disposed to treat
one another, but what exactly will these effects be? A natural first thought is that
the participants in an egalitarian relationship will have a reciprocal commitment
to treating one another with respect. Each sees the other as a full-fledged agent
who has the capacities associated with this agential status. Each expects the
other to bear whatever responsibilities are assigned to a person in virtue of this
status and, similarly, each sees the other as entitled to make whatever claims
accrue to a person in virtue of this status. Moreover, neither participant is seen
by either of them as possessing more authority than the other within the context
7
of the relationship, and each sees the other as entitled to participate fully and
equally in determining the future course and character of the relationship.
If these initial speculations are on even roughly the right track, then one
thing that is already clear is that the ideal of an egalitarian relationship draws on
values other than equality itself. It draws on values such as reciprocity and
mutual respect, and on a conception of the rights and responsibilities of agents.
This might lead one to wonder whether the term egalitarian relationship is a
misnomer.
4
Fully spelled out, perhaps the idea of such a relationship appeals
entirely to values other than equality. This suggestion seems to me overstated.
What is true is that the ideal of an egalitarian relationship is a complex one, and
that several of its elements draw on values other than equality per se. This is an
important point, and I will return to it later. At the same time, the ideal also
includes some distinctively egalitarian elements, and in what follows I want to
discuss one that seems to me especially important.
In a relationship that is conducted on a footing of equality, each person
accepts that the other persons equally important interests understood broadly
to include the persons needs, values, and preferences should play an equally
significant role in influencing decisions made within the context of the
relationship. Moreover, each person has a normally effective disposition to treat
the others interests accordingly. If you and I have an egalitarian relationship,
then I have a standing disposition to treat your strong interests as playing just as
significant a role as mine in constraining our decisions and influencing what we
will do. And you have a reciprocal disposition with regard to my interests. In

4
I am indebted to an unpublished paper by Fabian Schuppert in which he
presses this question.
8
addition, both of us normally act on these dispositions. This means that each of
our equally important interests constrains our joint decisions to the same extent.
We can call this the egalitarian deliberative constraint. It is a distinctively
egalitarian element in the complex ideal of an egalitarian relationship.
Arriving at decisions that satisfy this constraint is not, in general, an easy
matter. Simply identifying the relevant interests that bear on a decision can be
difficult. And, of course, the interests of the participants may clash, and then
there will be a question about how to forge a joint decision in the face of conflict.
Different solutions may suggest themselves on different occasions. One strategy
that will sometimes be available is a strategy of splitting the difference. You want
badly to go to Paris for three weeks. I want just as badly to go for one week. We
split the difference and decide to go for two weeks. Another strategy that will
sometimes be available is a strategy of choosing the second-best. My first choice is
to go to Paris and my second choice is to go to Rome. Under no circumstances
do I want to go to London. Your first choice is to go to London and your second
choice is to go to Rome. Under no circumstances do you want to go to Paris. So
we decide to go to Rome. A third strategy is taking turns. I want to go to Paris;
you want to go to Rome. We decide to go to Paris this year and to Rome next
year. A fourth strategy is joint satisfaction. I want to go to Paris; you want to go
to Rome. So we decide to spend half our time in Paris and half our time in Rome.
A fifth strategy is one of trading off. Suppose we face two decisions that we
regard as being of roughly comparable importance: where to go on our holiday,
and whether to subscribe to the ballet or to the opera. I want to go to Paris; you
want to go to Rome. You want to subscribe to the opera; I want to subscribe to
the ballet. So we decide to go to Rome and subscribe to the ballet. A sixth
9
strategy is separation. I want to go to Paris; you want to go to Rome. So we
decide that we wont take a joint holiday. Instead, I will go to Paris, while you
will go to Rome.
5

Even in simple cases such as these, arriving at a decision may be a
significant deliberative task, because multiple solutions to the deliberative
problem may be available, and you and I may have different meta-preferences
among the strategies embodied in those solutions. In more complex cases that
implicate more important interests, satisfactory solutions of any kind may be
difficult to find, and so the deliberative task may be more challenging.
Moreover, different decisions may interact with one another in a variety of ways
that add further deliberative complexity.
Six additional complications should be noted. First, it should be clear
even from the simplified example just given that the egalitarian deliberative
constraint is best understood diachronically rather than synchronically. The
point is not that each decision taken individually must give equal weight to the
comparably important interests of each party. Sometimes this will be impossible
or undesirable. The point is rather that each persons interests should play an
equally significant role in determining the decisions they make over the course of
the relationship.
Second, I have said that the relevant notion of interests is a broad one that
includes needs, values, and preferences. We need not suppose that there are

5
These examples assume that the participants in the relationship are
economically well-off, inasmuch as they have the resources necessary for
expensive holidays and for opera or ballet subscriptions. However, I take this to
be an inessential feature of the examples. People with fewer resources could just
as easily face situations in which the strategies illustrated by these examples
would be available to them.
10
sharp dividing lines among these categories. But the inclusion of needs and
values along with preferences and other interests reminds us that sometimes
arriving at a joint decision in the face of conflict may be difficult or even
impossible. If you and I have diametrically opposed values, then in decisions
that implicate the opposing values none of the strategies mentioned above may
be available. If I am a pacifist and you are a warrior, there may be no possibility
of splitting the difference between us. Diachronic solutions like taking turns may
also be unacceptable if our values are sufficiently opposed. Deciding to honor
my values today and yours tomorrow wont work if honoring your values
amounts to a violation of my values whenever it is done. If I am an animal rights
activist and you are a hunter, then deciding that we will demonstrate against
animal experimentation today and go hunting tomorrow wont work. Even
separation may not always seem tenable. A joint decision that I will go to the
animal rights demonstration while you will go hunting may still seem to me an
intolerable compromise of my values. This gives people who want their
relationships to be conducted on a footing of equality a (defeasible) reason to
seek out others who share their most important values, at least for their most
comprehensive personal relationships.
There may sometimes be another alternative. I have said that the
egalitarian deliberative constraint applies to decisions made within the context of
an egalitarian relationship. However, it is not obvious when a decision counts as
being made within the context of the relationship. If I decide to demonstrate
against animal experimentation while you decide to go hunting, is it the case that
our respective decisions are made within the context of our relationship? That
may depend on the character of the relationship. In principle, one way of
11
preserving an egalitarian relationship in the face of conflicting values may be to
externalize the conflict by relegating the parties pursuit of their discordant
values to a space that is defined as being outside the relationship. This is similar
to the strategy of separation that may be used to satisfy the deliberative
constraint, but it differs in that here each of the parties can disclaim even the
limited endorsement of the others values that is involved in a joint decision to
separate. It is an interesting question under what conditions externalization of
this kind can be successful. At times it may seem artificial or self-deceptive. And
when conflicts of fundamental values are at stake, it may be unsustainable.
Third, however we assess the prospects for externalizing conflict in the
manner just described, it is important to emphasize that decisions made within
the context of an egalitarian relationship need not always be arrived at jointly.
Sometimes one of the parties to a relationship will be charged with the sole
responsibility for making such a decision. This can happen, for example, if the
other party is unavailable for joint deliberation, or if the parties have themselves
decided on a division of deliberative labor, in which, say, decisions of some
kinds are made by one of them while decisions of other kinds are made by the
other of them. But these exceptions arise against the background of a
presumption that each party is equally entitled to participate in decisions made
within the context of the relationship. This participatory requirement follows
from the more general point, noted earlier, that the parties to an egalitarian
relationship view each other as equally entitled to determine the future course
and character of the relationship. The participatory requirement can be modified
in cases like those mentioned but only in ways that are acceptable to the parties
themselves.
12
Fourth, my example of choosing a holiday destination may create the
misleading impression that the egalitarian deliberative constraint requires the
parties always to make decisions that will satisfy their interests (weighted for
importance) to an equal degree, as all the possible decisions mentioned in the
example do. But in this respect the example is unrepresentative. What the
deliberative constraint requires is that the comparably important interests of each
party should play a comparably significant role in influencing decisions made
within the context of their relationship. This does not mean that, in general, their
decisions must leave the parties equally well-off either in respect of those
interests or overall. To suppose otherwise is to overlook the heterogeneity of
peoples interests and the variety of ways in which their interests may constrain
the deliberative process.
How should the deliberations of the parties be influenced by the interests
of each in order to comply with the egalitarian deliberative constraint? The first
requirement concerns the way in which the parties interests shape their
deliberative priorities. The comparably important interests of each of them
should be assigned comparable priority when setting their joint deliberative
agenda, that is, when selecting the issues that will receive their joint deliberative
attention. In addition, the parties should display comparable tenacity and
imagination in seeking to address the comparably important interests of each of
them.
6
In these ways, they make manifest their view of one another as equals and
the equal seriousness with which they treat one anothers interests.

6
Stated more carefully, the point is that the parties should, when necessary,
display comparable tenacity and imagination in both cases. If one partys
interest proves easier to address then the others, they are not required to expend
13
Beyond this, there is the question of how the content of the parties
decisions should be influenced by their respective interests. There is no single
answer to this question. When the interests in question are values, then
satisfying those interests will mean different things in different contexts. This
is true even for a single individual who is not subject to the egalitarian constraint.
Sometimes satisfying a value may simply mean not acting in ways that are
inconsistent with it. In other contexts, it may mean acting in specific ways that
are demanded or required by the value. And in still other contexts, it may mean
acting in ways that are expressive or constitutive of the value. It follows that in
joint deliberations where the parties values are at stake, what the egalitarian
deliberative constraint requires cannot without distortion be described as
achieving an equal level of interest-satisfaction. Instead, what the constraint
requires is that the parties decisions should be equally sensitive to the diverse
implications of their actions for the values of each of them.
Similarly, an interest that takes the form of a need or preference rather
than a value may serve only to rule certain options out rather than to fully
determine the content of a decision. With interests of this kind, the equal
satisfaction model is again out of place. And the model fails even in cases where
the parties are explicitly attempting to fulfill a need or preference of one of them.
Consider a case in which they previously took action to address some need or
preference of the first party. Now the other party has a comparably urgent need
or preference. Here what the egalitarian constraint requires is that they should
make just as great an effort to satisfy the second partys need or preference as

superfluous effort in the easier case so as to equalize the levels of effort devoted
to the interests of each. I will take this qualification for granted in what follows.
14
they did with the first partys. It does not say their aim should be to ensure that
the second partys preference is satisfied to just the same extent that the first
partys was. For example, it does not require that if their conscientious decisions
about medical treatment led to a 70% reduction in the first partys chronic pain,
then their aim should now be to produce a 70% reduction in the second partys
pain. If, by making comparably conscientious efforts to secure good treatment,
they could achieve the complete elimination of the second partys pain, the
egalitarian constraint hardly forbids this.
The upshot is that the egalitarian deliberative constraint does not, in
general, require the parties to make decisions that will leave them equally well-
off either in respect of their immediately affected interests or overall. The fact
that all the decisions mentioned in the holiday-destination example do leave the
parties equally well-off results from special features of that example. In
particular, it is an example in which a) the parties are seeking to make a single,
circumscribed decision about a joint activity, b) the only interests bearing on the
decision are the parties symmetrical but conflicting preferences about one aspect
of that activity, c) there is an obvious metric for determining the extent to which
the preferences of each party have been satisfied, and d) there are multiple
options available that will leave the parties equally well-off in respect of their
conflicting preferences. Given these simplified decision parameters, it is natural
to suppose that the parties will choose one of the equalizing options. Even in this
case, however, they might choose otherwise without violating the egalitarian
deliberative constraint. They might, for example, flip a coin to decide on their
holiday destination. The egalitarian deliberative constraint does not require
them to make a decision that will leave them equally well-off. Rather, it requires
15
them to attend with equal urgency and determination to the comparable interests
of each of them. Given that they are deciding on a joint activity about which they
have comparable but conflicting preferences, that there is a well-defined metric
available for assessing how well candidate decisions satisfy those preferences,
that there are options available that will satisfy their preferences to an equal
degree, and that there are no other interests that need to be taken into account, it
is natural, though not strictly necessary, that they should make a decision that
will produce equal preference-satisfaction. But in many cases one or more of
these conditions will fail to obtain. In such cases, there is no general reason to
expect that the egalitarian constraint will require decisions that leave the parties
equally well-off with respect to preference-satisfaction or anything else.
The fifth complication is this. The egalitarian deliberative constraint tells
the parties something about how they should treat the comparably important
interests of each of them. But how are these judgments of importance to be
understood? Is the point that the parties should be guided by their own beliefs
about the importance of their interests, or is there some independent standard of
importance that applies? In practice, the parties have no choice but to rely on
their own judgments of importance (even if they consult others in forming those
judgments). Moreover, the very fact that one believes an interest to be important
can sometimes make it important. But what the deliberative constraint says is
that the parties should treat (what are in fact) the equally important interests of
each of them as having equal significance for their decisions. This standard of
importance is independent of and can diverge from their own judgments of
importance, even if they have no choice but to rely on those judgments. This
means they can be mistaken in thinking they have complied with the constraint.
16
Finally, the deliberative constraint is central to egalitarian relationships,
but if it is kept too clearly in view or interpreted too rigidly it can encourage a
kind of scorekeeping that may erode the quality of the relationship. If the
participants in a relationship are constantly preoccupied with making sure that
the comparably important interests of each of them are playing comparably
significant roles in determining their joint decisions, that may exclude forms of
intimacy and joint identification that give personal relationships much of their
value. So the trick is to ensure that the egalitarian deliberative constraint is
satisfied without itself becoming the focus of excessive attention.
It should be clear from the six complications I have discussed that
conducting and sustaining a personal relationship on a footing of equality is a
significant practical task. Indeed, relating to others as equals is best thought of as
a complex interpersonal practice. It is a practice that makes substantial demands
on the attitudes, motives, dispositions, and deliberative capacities of the
participants. There is no general formula or algorithm for determining how best
to engage in the practice. Instead, sustaining an egalitarian relationship requires
creativity, the exercise of judgment, and ongoing mutual commitment, and even
the sincere efforts of the parties are no guarantee of success, although success is a
matter of degree and should not be conceived of in all-or-nothing terms.

3. The Role of Distribution in Egalitarian Personal Relationships
What role do issues of distribution play in our understanding of
egalitarian relationships? Such issues might be thought of as arising in two
different ways. First, they might be thought of as internal questions that arise
within the context of an egalitarian personal relationship. As such, they present
17
practical challenges that must be addressed by the participants in the
relationship. Given a relationship that qualifies as egalitarian by some
independent standard, how are questions about the distribution of various goods
to be handled within the context of that relationship? Alternatively, questions of
distribution might be thought of externally, as questions about the best way to
characterize egalitarian relationships in the first place. It might be supposed that
in order to understand what an egalitarian relationship is, we need to ask what it
is that is distributed equally between the participants in such a relationship. This
alternative is in keeping with the second of the two doubts about that the
relational conception that I want to investigate. It assumes that the relational
conception, fully spelled out, must itself take a distributive form.
Let me begin by saying something about the external question. I have
characterized egalitarian relationships in practical and deliberative rather than
distributive terms. Equality, as I have described it, is ultimately a form of
practice rather than a normative pattern of distribution. An egalitarian
relationship is one in which the parties have certain attitudes, motives, and
dispositions with respect to one another. Among other things, they satisfy a
fundamental deliberative constraint when making decisions that fall within the
scope of their relationship. And the point is not that these attitudes, motives, and
dispositions must be distributed equally between the parties. Admittedly, the
relationship will not have an egalitarian character if one of the parties exhibits
the relevant attitudes and dispositions and the other does not. The attitudes and
dispositions must hold reciprocally. But neither will the relationship have an
egalitarian character if the parties possess those attitudes and dispositions to an
equal but low degree. If anything, the egalitarian aim is not to equalize the
18
relevant attitudes and dispositions but to maximize them: to ensure that both
parties exhibit them to the fullest.
It might be suggested that the description I have given is equivalent to
saying that egalitarian relationships are characterized by an equal distribution of
status between the participants. However, this formulation does little to suggest
the deliberative and practical dimensions of equality as I have described it and,
as I have just argued, an emphasis on equal distribution seems misplaced where
those dimensions are concerned. Of course, one might stipulatively define an
equal distribution of status as one that obtains when a relationship satisfies the
deliberative and attitudinal criteria I have outlined, but such a definition would
be artificial. The bare possibility of constructing a stipulative definition does not
show that there is any natural or interesting sense in which egalitarian
relationships are best understood in distributive terms.
This leads me to think that questions of the second, external kind are
misplaced. The way to understand what a relationship of equals is like is not to
ask what is distributed equally in such a relationship. The distinctive feature of
egalitarian relationships is not that there is an equal distribution of something. It
follows that, at least as applied to personal relationships, the second doubt about
the relational conception of equality is unfounded. It is not the case that the
relational conception, fully spelled out, must itself take a distributive form.
Internal questions, however, are not misplaced. Insofar as decisions about
how to use available resources arise within the context of an egalitarian
relationship, the egalitarian deliberative constraint will apply to those decisions.
Again, there are questions about when a resource allocation decision falls within
the scope of such a relationship. In some cases, it will be clear that the resources
19
in question belong jointly to the participants in the relationship and that
decisions about how to allocate them fall within its scope. In many ordinary
friendships, by contrast, it may seem clear that the participants have few if any
material resources in common, and that the decisions that each of them makes
about how to allocate his or her resources fall outside the scope of the
relationship. I do not in general expect to have a say in how my wealthy friend
decides to spend his money. But whether a resource allocation decision falls
within the scope of a relationship cannot always be settled solely by reference to
the prevailing legal regime of property and ownership. For one thing, we may
sometimes feel that an individual participant has taken advantage of the
prevailing regime to shelter resources, or exclude them from joint decision, in a
way that is incongruous with the egalitarian character of the relationship. In
addition, there may be cases in which we are in no doubt that certain resources
are the legal property of one of the participants, but we nevertheless believe that
his decisions about how to allocate his resources are incompatible with a
relationship of equals. If my wealthy friend regularly insists on going to more
expensive restaurants than I can afford and on paying the bill for both of us, then
I may feel that his allocative decisions, although legally unimpeachable, are
undermining the egalitarian character of our relationship. This suggests that
certain allocative decisions may fall within the scope of a relationship, in the
sense that matters for our purposes, even if the resources whose allocation is
under consideration belong exclusively to one of the participants.
Let us leave these complications aside, however, and focus on cases in
which the participants in a relationship of equals are considering how to allocate
resources that they jointly control. These decisions are subject to the egalitarian
20
deliberative constraint. Each participant accepts that the others comparably
important interests should play a comparably significant role in influencing the
allocation decisions that they make. This is a substantial constraint, even if we
assume that it applies diachronically rather than synchronically. In the context of
a face-to-face personal relationship, however, it seems unlikely that the
participants will attempt to satisfy the constraint through the self-conscious
application of a fixed distributive formula, such as a leximin principle or a
principle of equality of welfare or resources. It would seem more than a bit
peculiar if they did do this. There are several reasons why this is so. First, to rely
on such a formula would seem rigid and moralistic, and would raise concerns of
the kind noted earlier about excessive scorekeeping. Second, many of the
allocation decisions the participants are likely to face will be decisions about how
best to advance or protect their shared interests, whereas distributive formulae of
the kind mentioned are used to adjudicate among conflicting interests.
Finally, the participants are, by hypothesis, concerned to sustain their
relationship as a relationship of equals, and they are therefore concerned with
the ways in which their respective interests influence their joint decisions. This
means, to put it crudely, that they are concerned with the ways in which their
respective interests are treated as inputs of deliberation and decision. But
distributive formulae of the kind mentioned operate, in effect, on the outputs of
decision. Such a formula does not directly assess the role played in deliberation
by considerations about the respective interests of the parties. It looks instead at
the situation of the participants once a given decision is carried out and assesses
their comparative standing in respect of some dimension, such as welfare or
resources, which is thought to reflect their interests. Such assessments may
21
provide indirect evidence of the way in which considerations about the
participants interests influenced the decision-making process. But the
participants, with their normally extensive mutual knowledge and their direct
access to their own deliberations, are unlikely to regard these output measures as
being, in general, good proxies for the kinds of assessment of their deliberations
that matter to them. Why should they look at their overall situation once a
decision is carried out and make an inference on that basis about how they must
have deliberated? As a way of assessing their deliberations, this would be not
only indirect but also of limited reliability, since for two people to deliberate in
accordance with the egalitarian constraint it is neither necessary nor sufficient
that their overall situation once the decision is carried out should end up
satisfying any fixed distributive formula. There is, in general, no need for the
participants to rely on such indirect and unreliable inferences. They can ask
themselves directly whether the comparably important interests of each of them
played an equally significant role in influencing their decisions. Of course, they
can be mistaken about this, and output measures may serve as correctives to self-
deception and other forms of error. Distributive inequalities may be symptoms
that the participants internal deliberations violated the egalitarian constraint
even though they thought otherwise. But there is a difference between using
output measures to guard against self-deception and using them systematically
to satisfy the egalitarian deliberative constraint.
So, to repeat, the participants in a relationship of equals are unlikely,
when facing decisions about the allocation of their resources, to try to satisfy the
egalitarian deliberative constraint by applying a fixed distributive formula. On
the other hand, the deliberative constraint will itself exert pressure in the
22
direction of egalitarian distribution. If, in deciding how to allocate their
resources, the participants treat the comparably important interests of each of
them as having comparable significance, then a natural default assumption is
that they will end up devoting roughly equal resources to satisfying the
comparably important interests of each. And insofar as it makes sense to
compare the extent to which their interests are satisfied, a natural default
assumption is that their decisions will tend to produce roughly equal levels of
(weighted) interest satisfaction. The fact that the egalitarian deliberative
constraint exerts general pressure toward egalitarian distributions explains why
distributive inequalities can serve the corrective function just noted. But the
conclusion that the participants decisions will have distributively egalitarian
upshots is a defeasible one, and the reason it holds is not because they apply any
particular distributive formula in making their choices. It holds because they
regard the reasons generated by the comparable interests of each of them as
themselves being of comparable strength. That is the regulative principle
governing their deliberations.
It may seem that the participants in egalitarian relationships would have a
greater concern than I have acknowledged with distributive equality per se. They
would regard it as intrinsically important that equal resources be allocated to
meeting their respective interests, or that those interests be satisfied to an equal
degree. But I do not believe that a concern for the egalitarian character of their
relationship would lead them to be troubled by the bare fact of inequality in one
of these dimensions. Their primary concern, insofar as they wish to conduct
their relationship on an egalitarian basis, is with their attitudes toward one
another and with how seriously each takes the interests of the other in contexts of
23
deliberation and decision. If they were in other respects satisfied with the
egalitarian character of the relationship, then I doubt that the bare fact of
distributive inequality would, by itself, arouse their distinctively relational
concern.
7
By contrast, if one of the participants regularly flouted the egalitarian
deliberative constraint but strict distributive equality were somehow achieved
anyway (perhaps by luck or perhaps because it was imposed by an outsider),
then the egalitarian character of the relationship would be compromised despite
the fact that distributive equality had been achieved.
Let me pause to take stock. I began by identifying two doubts about the
relational conception of equality. The first turned on the thought that it makes
no normative difference whether one accepts the relational view or not, since in
either case egalitarian distributive principles will be needed and the relational
view has no bearing on the choice of such principles. The second turned on the
thought that the relational view, fully spelled out, must itself take a distributive
form. As applied to egalitarian personal relationships, we have seen that the
second doubt is unfounded. It is not true that the relational view must take a
distributive form. And the considerations we have just been rehearsing suggest
that, as applied to personal relationships, the first doubt is also unfounded. On
the relational view, there is strong general pressure within egalitarian personal
relationships toward rough distributive equality of some kind, but there is no
reason to think that such relationships are regulated by any fixed distributive

7
Of course, that concern would be aroused if the distributive inequality were so
great as to undermine their relationship as equals. And independently of a
concern for equality, they would presumably wish to avoid any distribution that
left one of them badly-off in absolute terms.
24
formula. So, a fortiori, there is no reason to think they are regulated by the same
formula that a purely distributive conception of equality might recommend.

4. A Society of Equals
Let me now turn back to the case of a society of equals. What light, if any,
can our discussion of personal relationships shed on the contrast between the
relational and distributive interpretations of social and political equality? Are
the two doubts about the relational conception any better founded in this case
than they are in the case of personal relationships? To begin with, I believe that a
version of the deliberative constraint that plays a central role in egalitarian
personal relationships is also central to the idea of a society of equals. In such a
society, each member accepts that every other members equally important
interests should play an equally significant role in influencing decisions made on
behalf of the society as a whole. Moreover, each member has a normally
effective disposition to treat the interests of others accordingly. So a society of
equals is characterized by a reciprocal commitment on the part of each member
to treat the equally important interests of every other member as exerting equal
influence on social decisions. This gives determinate content to the otherwise
vague thought that the members of such a society regard one another as equals.
It means that the equally important interests of each of them constrain social
decisions to the same extent. This is, I take it, a familiar ideal. And one has only
to consider its application to cases of racial or ethnic or gender hierarchy to see
that it has considerable critical force. To cite one topical example, it is this ideal
to which advocates of gay marriage appeal when they argue that the interests of
homosexuals in being able to marry are just as strong as the interests of
25
heterosexuals and, accordingly, that both sets of interests should be
accommodated in the same way in our laws and institutions.
Some of the problems that arise in thinking about egalitarian personal
relationships have straightforward parallels in thinking about a society of equals.
For example, questions about conflicting values and how to accommodate them
in egalitarian decision-making present challenges in both cases. And just as
there is a question about when a decision counts as being made within the
context of a personal relationship, so too there is a question about which
decisions count as social decisions or decisions made on behalf of the society
as a whole. Without attempting a complete answer to this question, it seems
safe to assume that decisions about a societys constitution, its laws, and the
design of its major social, political, and economic institutions all count as matters
of social or collective decision in the relevant sense.
However, as this last observation already suggests, there are also obvious
and important differences between personal relationships and the relations
among the members of a political society. These differences affect the way the
relational conception applies to the two cases. Let me mention some of the most
significant differences.
First, in contrast with personal relationships, few of the relationships
among the members of society are face-to-face relationships. No member of a
modern society is acquainted with more than a tiny fraction of the other
members. For the most part, the relations among the members of society have an
anonymous character. Second, one consequence of the anonymous character of
these relations is that the members of society do not in general have
individualized knowledge of the needs, preferences and values of their fellow
26
members. So in thinking about how to satisfy the deliberative constraint, they
have to rely heavily on normalized assumptions about the characteristic needs
and interests that members can be assumed to have.
Third, the anonymity of the relations among the members of society also
affects the character of their collective decision-making. Although their decisions
are subject to the egalitarian constraint, they are never arrived at through face-to-
face deliberations in which all members participate. This again contrasts sharply
with the case of personal relationships, in which face-to-face joint deliberations
and decisions are common. Yet the ideal of a society of equals remains subject to
the presumption that each participant in an egalitarian relationship is equally
entitled to participate in decisions made within the context of that relationship.
As noted earlier, this participatory requirement can be modified even in the case
of personal relationships, but only in ways that are acceptable to the participants
themselves. In developing the ideal of a society of equals, a crucial task will be to
determine how the participatory requirement should be modified to apply to the
large-scale deliberative processes that are needed in a society whose members
are largely anonymous to one another.
Finally, the anonymity of the relationships among the members of society
sets up pressure to establish clear boundaries to those relationships and clear
limits to the scope of the decisions that are thought to fall within them. The
members of society will be interested in preserving social space within which
they can conduct their face-to-face personal relationships and pursue their
conceptions of the good life without being subject to comprehensive regulatory
scrutiny from the perspective of an anonymous collectivity that lacks
individualized knowledge of its members needs, preferences, circumstances,
27
and values. This interest is reflected in the ubiquity of such distinctions as those
between the public and the private or between the political and the non-political.
It means that strategies of externalizing decisions treating them as falling
outside the context of a given relationship will have a special salience in
connection with the generic relations among the members of society.
Although the case of a society of equals differs in these respects from the
case of egalitarian personal relationships, the core content of the egalitarian
deliberative constraint continues to apply. In a society of equals, the comparably
important interests of each member are to constrain social decisions to the same
extent. This aspiration is reflected in the reciprocal attitudes and the normally
effective dispositions of each member. It is a complex aspiration and not one that
is easily satisfied, but it is an aspiration that is characteristic of an egalitarian
society and undertaking to satisfy it is a challenge that such a society accepts.

5. The Role of Distribution in a Society of Equals
As in the case of egalitarian personal relationships, the ideal of a society of
equals is not well-described in distributive terms. It is not the view that there is
something that should be distributed equally among the members of society.
Instead, it is a practical ideal concerning the kind of society the members want to
construct and the way they want to relate to one another. This ideal is reflected
in their attitudes and dispositions and, in particular, in their convictions about
the ways in which the interests of each of them should constrain social decision.
These attitudes are not themselves to be equalized but rather to be securely
entrenched in the motivational outlook of each member. As in the case of
personal relationships, then, external distributive questions are misplaced, and
28
attempts to characterize a society of equals in purely distributive terms are
bound to be procrustean. The defining feature of this type of society is not that
there is an equal distribution of something among the members. So in this case
as in the case of personal relationships, the second doubt about the relational
conception of equality is unfounded. It is not true that the relational conception,
as applied to society as a whole, must itself take a distributive form.
Once again, however, internal distributive questions are not at all
misplaced when thinking about a society of equals. Questions about the
distribution of social resources are of obvious importance for the members of
such a society. What binds the members to one another is their shared
participation in a common social framework, and they are especially concerned
with the way that framework structures the distribution of the resources that are
necessary for them to flourish. Here the egalitarian deliberative constraint is
once again relevant. In deliberating about the institutions and practices that
constitute the social framework, the members accept that the comparably
important interests of each of them should exert comparable influence on their
decisions. As in the case of personal relationships, this constraint exerts strong
pressure in favor of an egalitarian standard of distribution. For example, it is
difficult to see how a pure laissez-faire market system of the kind Rawls referred
to as the system of natural liberty could be reconciled with the egalitarian
constraint. Such a system allows the distribution of resources to be determined
to a very high degree by natural and social contingencies, such as peoples
natural attributes and the social circumstances into which they were born, which
themselves have no moral basis. This feature of the system is difficult to
reconcile with the egalitarian constraint, for it will inevitably compromise the
29
ability of some people to satisfy their basic interest in pursuing a conception of
the good life, while allowing other people to prosper in ways that satisfy no
comparably important interest.
But if the distributive implications of the relational conception are to this
extent the same in the case of a society of equals as they are in the case of
egalitarian personal relationships, there are also important differences between
the two cases. And these differences suggest that the first of the two doubts
about the relational conception may get more of a purchase in the case of a
society of equals. The central point is that some of the reasons for doubting
whether the participants in egalitarian personal relationships would rely on any
fixed distributive formula do not apply to a society of equals. For example,
concerns about moralism and scorekeeping seem less significant in this case.
And for the members of a society of equals, who lack the kind of direct
deliberative access that the participants in an egalitarian personal relationship
have, an output measure like a distributive formula, indirect though it is, may
be the best way of judging whether the egalitarian deliberative constraint has
been satisfied. For them, the fact that resources have been distributed equally
may be the best available indicator that the comparably important interests of all
of them constrained the processes of social decision to the same extent.
In addition, the anonymity of the relations among the members of society
militates in favor of a clear public standard to govern the distribution of
resources. Without the extensive mutual knowledge that is available at the level
of personal relationships, the members of society are unable to engage in the
kind of sensitive individualized consideration of one anothers interests that such
knowledge makes possible. Instead, they need a clear public standard governing
30
distribution: a standard they can all accept as an appropriate basis for judging
whether, on the bounded but vitally important range of issues that concern them
collectively as members, their shared egalitarian aspirations have been satisfied.
These considerations may serve to revive the first doubt about the
relational view of equality. Their tendency, it seems, is to suggest that the ideal
of a society of equals supports egalitarian distributive principles of some familiar
kind. But we still need to determine which principles in particular egalitarians
should accept, and that is precisely the question to which the distributive view is
addressed. The suspicion, then, is that there is no conflict between the
distributive and relational views; they are simply addressing different questions.
This suspicion is likely to be reinforced when one considers that the
egalitarian deliberative constraint seems to underdetermine the choice among
candidate distributive principles. As earlier observed, the deliberative constraint
exerts general pressure in the direction of egalitarian distribution, and it provides
a basis for rejecting non-egalitarian arrangements like the laissez-faire system of
natural liberty. It also provides strong grounds for opposing systems of
hereditary caste and privilege, and it vindicates the familiar complaint that we
do not live in a society of equals if our laws and policies are shaped to a
disproportionate degree by the interests of the rich and powerful. Beyond that, it
is not clear that the deliberative constraint provides a basis for selecting among
the different egalitarian distributive principles that have been proposed.
Although the participants in egalitarian personal relationships may not need
such a principle, a society of equals does need one: or, at any rate, it needs a
principled public standard to regulate distribution and provide a shared basis for
the justification of decisions made on behalf of the society as a whole. The
31
inability of the egalitarian deliberative constraint to determine such a principle
seems to confirm that it provides no alternative to the distributive conception.
I draw a different conclusion from the fact that the deliberative constraint
underdetermines the choice among candidate distributive principles. Recall that
the deliberative constraint is only one dimension of the broader relational ideal,
the ideal of a relationship among equals. If it is unclear whether a given
principle is compatible with the deliberative constraint, then the next question is
whether the principle is consistent with the broader ideal. And if two different
distributive principles both seem compatible with the deliberative constraint,
then the question is whether either of them coheres better than the other with the
idea of living together as equals. These are practical questions in the sense that,
in order to answer them, we must consider what it would actually be like to
carry on human relationships on the terms specified in the proposed principles.
Suppose, for example, that there is disagreement about whether or not
hedonistic act-utilitarianism is compatible with the deliberative constraint. One
side maintains that it is not, since hedonistic utilitarianism would permit a
persons fundamental interests to be sacrificed in order to maximize aggregate
welfare. In such a case, this side argues, the interests of the person who
undergoes the sacrifice are not exerting the same influence on social decision as
the comparable interests of those who are not sacrificed. The other side argues,
however, that the deliberative constraint is satisfied even in this case, because the
fundamental interests of the person who undergoes the sacrifice are being
assigned exactly the same weight in the overall hedonistic calculus as the
comparable interests of others. It is simply this persons bad fortune that his
interests are outweighed while theirs are not.
32
On a relational view, the way to make progress in resolving this
disagreement is to consider which sides position can be more readily reconciled
with the broader ideal of a society of equals. We saw earlier that, in such a
society, members have a reciprocal commitment to treat one another with
respect. They view one another as possessing the entitlements and
responsibilities associated with full-fledged agency. No member is seen as
possessing any more or less authority than the other members, except by virtue
of a division of responsibility that all can accept, and each member sees the other
members as entitled to participate fully and equally in determining the future
course and character of their shared relationship. According to a relational view,
the important question is whether utilitarian aggregation is compatible with this
ideal of society. This is not merely a question of logical consistency but also a
question about the human implications of living together on utilitarian terms.
Once the question is framed in this way, it seems clear to me, though I wont try
to argue the point here, that an unrestricted principle of utilitarian aggregation is
incompatible with the ideal of a society of equals.

6. Deeper Differences between the Distributive and Relational Views
Still, even the broader ideal may not fully determine the choice among
candidate distributive principles. But this is not an objection to the relational
view nor does it show that view to be normatively inert. Instead, it points to two
deeper differences between the distributive and relational views. First, as we
have seen, the relational view cannot be spelled out without reference to other
values. According to this view, equality is a complex ideal whose distinctively
egalitarian aspects cannot be identified, nor their appeal appreciated,
33
independently of their connections with the other values, such as reciprocity and
respect, that also help to define the ideal. This marks a subtle but significant
contrast with the distributive view, which takes the normative content of the
concept of equality to be located simply in the idea of an equal division, and
appeals to other goods or values, such as welfare or resources or status or
opportunity, only to determine the things to which the idea of an equal division
should be applied. To be sure, the choice among these candidate equalisanda
raises issues of principle concerning the role of values such as responsibility,
liberty, and desert in determining the distributive implications of equality.
Nevertheless, the idea that equality requires an equal division of something is
common ground among versions of the distributive view that differ on these
issues and so accept different equalisanda. They all take the normative content
of the concept of equality to be exhausted by the idea of a division of some
currency into equal amounts. In this sense, the distributive view, unlike the
relational view, treats equality as a normatively autonomous value.
The second, complementary difference between the two views concerns
the relevance of equality for questions of distributive justice. Both views agree
that, while equality is one of the values that helps to fix the content of justice, it is
justice rather than equality that provides the ultimate normative standard for
assessing distribution. But consider again the remark of Cohens that I quoted
earlier. Cohens position is that there is some currency of which justice requires
people to have equal amounts, at least to the extent that this is not prohibited by
the values that compete with equality in fixing the requirements of justice. This
implies that equality alone suffices to give us a distributive formula, albeit one
whose application may at times be limited because of conflicts with other values.
34
It follows that, in addition to being normatively autonomous, equality is also
distributively self-sufficient. Not only is its normative content exhausted by the
idea of an equal division by the idea there is something people should have
equal amounts of but, in addition, equality is capable all on its own of
generating a presumptively authoritative principle of distribution, albeit one that
may have to give way if, from the standpoint of justice, other conflicting values
trump equality in some cases. Once again, the relational conception takes a
different view. Not only do other values enter into the definition of equality, so
that equality is not normatively autonomous, but, in addition, equality so
understood need not by itself yield any fully determinate principle for regulating
the distribution of resources, not even a presumptive or prima facie one.
Although some candidate principles will be incompatible with the ideal of a
society of equals, that ideal may not fully determine the choice of a single
principle. This is unsurprising, according to the relational view, for there is no
reason to expect equality to be distributively self-sufficient. The regulative
principles governing distribution are the principles of distributive justice, and
those principles are answerable to a range of values, of which equality is just one.
None of these values need determine even a prima facie principle of distribution
on its own. In Rawlss representative formulation, the principles of justice
specify the fair terms of cooperation for free and equal persons. This does not
mean that we first establish what principles of distribution are required by
equality and then ask to what extent the competing values of fairness,
freedom, and cooperation restrict the application of that egalitarian principle. It
means that justice is the virtue that tells us how the distribution of resources
should be regulated so as jointly to accommodate all of these values. This is not
35
to deny that distributions can be assessed as more or less egalitarian in some
purely arithmetic sense. It is not, for example, to deny that we can use the Gini
coefficient to measure income inequality. It is rather to assert that equality as a
value, considered on its own and without reference to the other values that bear
on justice, need not yield a fully determinate distributive principle that enjoys
even prima facie authority.
It is tempting to conclude from this that the bearing of equality on issues
of distributive justice is weaker on the relational view than it is on the
distributive view. This would be a mistake. Consider, for example, the well-
known criticisms of various luck-egalitarian principles as having unacceptably
harsh or demeaning implications in some cases.
8
One reply by defenders of luck-
egalitarianism is to say that these criticisms do not show that it provides the
wrong account of distributive equality, only that equality may be overridden by
other values in some cases. From a relational perspective, however, this reply
misses the distinctively egalitarian character of the criticisms. The harshness of
unadorned luck-egalitarian principles is a reason for thinking that such
principles are incompatible with the ideal of a society of equals, so that they are
ruled out as unjust on specifically egalitarian grounds. Rather than speaking for
luck-egalitarian principles, albeit not decisively, equality speaks decisively
against them. Here it is the relational view rather than the distributive view that
has clearer implications for justice.
If what I have been saying is correct, then the first doubt about the
relational conception can be allayed even as it applies to the case of a society of

8
See, for example, the classic papers by Elizabeth Anderson, What is the Point
of Equality? Ethics 109 (1999): 287-387, and Jonathan Wolff, Fairness, Respect,
and the Egalitarian Ethos, Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (1998): 97-122.
36
equals. The relational conception understands the bearing of equality on issues
of distribution very differently than does the distributive conception. In
assessing a candidate distributive principle, the distributive conception will lead
us to ask whether that principle has correctly identified the currency of which
people should have equal amounts, whereas the relational conception will lead
us to ask whether the principle sets out plausible terms for regulating the
relations among the members of a society of equals. Although the general
tendency of the relational conception is to support strong limits on allowable
economic inequalities understood in purely arithmetic terms, and although the
relational conception confirms the need for a public set of principles to regulate
distribution, it insists that the requisite principles are given by justice and not by
equality. Equality by itself need not determine a distributive principle with even
presumptive authority. It is not normatively autonomous nor need it be
distributively self-sufficient. Although it is conceivable that the same
distributive principles will be selected no matter which conception of equality
one begins with, there is no reason to expect this and offhand it seems unlikely.
So if we wish to investigate the content of distributive justice, it matters which of
these conceptions of equality we accept.

7. Conclusion
As I said earlier, my sympathies lie for the most part with the relational
conception. However, I have provided little in the way of direct argument in its
favor. My aims have been more modest. I have tried to show two things. The
first is that the relational conception is an independent conception of equality,
which is not reducible to a version of the distributive conception. The second is
37
that it makes a difference which of these two conceptions we accept. If we accept
the distributive conception, we will see equality as a value that is essentially
concerned with distribution and which, on its own, generates a distributive
formula with presumptive authority. We will think it important to identify that
formula, which we may see as providing the core of an egalitarian conception of
justice. If we accept the relational conception, by contrast, we will see equality
as a broad practical ideal governing the structure of human relationships, an
ideal which itself draws on a variety of other values and which has a clear
bearing on questions of distribution but does not yield determinate principles of
distribution in isolation from other values. We will think it important to develop
this ideal across a broad front. Insofar as we are concerned with social and
political philosophy in particular, we will think it important to identify the kinds
of practices and institutions we would have to create, and the kinds of attitudes
and dispositions we would have to possess, in order for us to live in a genuine
society of equals.