Abstract
This paper is not about equality. It is about egalitarianism and about principles of equality. I shall not discuss or question the sense in which men are or should be equal. Nor will I query any claims that men are or should be equal in some respects or others. I shall, however, try to explain the sense in which a political morality can be said to be egalitarian and to unravel the presuppositions of egalitarianism. The starting point is the existence within the western cultural heritage of an egalitarian tradition. Certain moral and political theories have come to be thought of as egalitarian. I shall suggest that one should distinguish between rhetorical and strict egalitarian theories and that the latter are marked by the special role that principles of a certain kind which I shall call principles of equality have within their framework. Principles of equality, it will become evident, form a part of many non-egalitarian theories, and in all of them they form an egalitarian element. It is when they dominate a theory that it is a strictly egalitarian theory.
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