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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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Two things are equal when one is neither more nor less than 
the other in an identified respect. When they are unequal, their 
inequality consists in one being more, the other less—one su- 
perior, the other inferior—in some respect. 

This understanding of equality and inequality remains con-
stant in all the dimensions in which things are related as equal 
or unequal. What differs as one distinguishes different dimen- 
sions is 

(1) the character of the subjects of which equality and 
inequality are predicated, 
(2) the mode of the predication, and 
(3) the qualifications attached to the predication. 

Let us consider each of these differences in turn. 

1. Personal and Circumstantial Equality 

The subjects being compared and regarded as equal or un- 
equal fall into two main categories: human beings and every-
thing else—all the external circumstances under which human 
beings live and act and whatever factors impinge upon their 
conduct and their welfare. I shall refer to the first category as 
human or personal equality and inequality, and to the second 
as circumstantial equality and inequality. 

Human equality and inequality can be further subdivided 
into that which arises from the endowments that persons bring 
into this world at birth and that which derives from their attain- 
ments—the attributes or characteristics they acquire in the 
course of their lives, the degree to which they develop their 
innate endowments, and the work of their hands and minds. 

Inequality in height exemplifies a human inequality that is 
genetically determined and so is an inequality between two 
persons that is a matter of native endowment. To whatever 
extent we are born with one or another degree of intelligence, 
human equality and inequality in this respect are also a matter 
of native endowment. 

Two human beings who start out equal in their genetically 
determined degree of intelligence may develop that endow- 
ment to different degrees, either through what they themselves 
do with their minds or because of the circumstances under 
which they are reared, trained, and educated. In either case, 
they may end up unequal in their mental attainments. One may 
know more than the other or have more skill in the use of his 
mind. 

Two persons born with the same capacity for engaging in a 
certain sport may, at a later stage in their lives, be unequal 
in the degree of their acquired skill in playing tennis or in 
swimming. 

One individual may put his native endowments to work in 
the production of wealth or other goods, while another, with 
equal endowments, may squander his talents, producing noth-
ing, or employ them less assiduously and efficiently, producing 
less. They must then be regarded as unequal in this respect. 

The personal equality or inequality that stems from the de- 
gree to which individuals are natively endowed in one way or 
another, let us call natural, as contrasted with the equality or 
inequality of human attainments, which can be referred to as 
acquired. All personal equalities and inequalities are either nat-
ural or acquired. 

When we turn from human equality and inequality, natural 
or acquired, to circumstantial equality and inequality, we con-
front the difference between the type of circumstantial equality 
or inequality that has come to be called equality or inequality 
of condition, and the type that has come to be called equality or 
inequality of opportunity. 

The difference between equality of condition and equality of 
opportunity can best be illustrated by a race in which individ-
uals all start out with no one affected by circumstances more or 
less favorable to winning the race. Their equality of opportu-
nity consists in an equality in the initial conditions under 
which they enter the race. When the race is run, these same 
individuals end up unequal. According to the speed with 
which they ran the race, one comes in first, another second, 
another third, and so on. If prizes are awarded, the gold, silver, 
and bronze medals represent an inequality of conditions, 
which is also sometimes called an inequality of results. 

The example I have used is complicated by the fact that the 
runners who enjoy an equality of opportunity with regard to 
external circumstances may enter the race unequal in their na-
tive endowments as competitors. Even if they are equal in their 
native endowments, they may enter the race unequal in the 
degree to which they, by exercise and training, have developed 
those endowments. Prior inequalities of endowment or attain-
ment will, of course, affect the inequality of resulting condi-
tions in spite of the equality of opportunity provided by the 
equal initial conditions under which they entered the race. 

That is why it is often pointed out that if human beings are 
granted nothing more than equality of opportunity, inequality 
of conditions is likely to result. The individuals who are better 
endowed or better trained are most likely to end up ahead of 
those less well endowed or trained. 

An equality of resulting conditions that is unaffected by 
equality of opportunity (enjoyed by individuals of unequal en-
dowment and attainment) may be achievable only by strenuous 
efforts on the part of society to see that its individual members 
are somehow given or granted such equality. When, for exam-
ple, all members of a society—or all with justifiable exceptions 
—are given the same political status, let us say that of citizen-
ship with suffrage, an equality of political condition results. 

Equality before the law is another example of an equality of 
condition that a society can establish. It does so when it accords 
equal treatment in the courts and in other aspects of the legal 
process to all individuals regardless of their inequalities of en-
dowment or attainment, regardless whether they are rich or 
poor, regardless of the ethnic group to which they belong, and 
so on. Such equality of treatment does not discriminate in any 
way among persons who differ from one another in a wide 
variety of respects that are irrelevant to the treatment they 
should receive in the legal process. 

Equality of condition may be either an equality in the status 
granted individuals, an equality in the treatment accorded 
them, or an equality with respect to their possession of one or 
another basic human good, such as political liberty, wealth, a 
healthful environment, or schooling. Their equal possession of 
such goods depends upon factors controlled by society, not 
entirely by themselves. 

For our present purposes, it will suffice to subdivide equality 
or inequality of conditions into three main categories: political, 
economic, and social. Equality of opportunity (which is an 
equality of initial as opposed to resulting condition) can be 
similarly subdivided. 

2 . Equality That Does Exist and Equality That Ought to Exist 

When we predicate equality or inequality of persons or con-
ditions, the predication may be either declarative or prescrip- 
tive. To say that two individuals are or are not equal in a certain 
respect is declarative. To say that they should or ought to be 
equal or unequal in a certain respect is prescriptive. 

In the sphere of human equality and inequality, prescriptive 
statements make no sense. We cannot say that human beings 
ought to be equal or unequal in any personal respect, neither 
with regard to their endowments nor with regard to their at-
tainments. All that we can meaningfully say, as a matter of fact, 
is that they are personally equal in this respect and unequal in 
that respect. 

It has been suggested that individuals, entering into associ-
ation with one another to form a community, should do so on a 
supposition contrary to fact; namely, that they are all personally 
equal in every important respect. This contrafactual supposi-
tion is defended on the ground that organized society can come 
into existence on the basis of a social contract only if all who 
enter into that contract suppose themselves to be completely 
equal. If a veil of ignorance about the facts, which permits them 
to make this contrafactual supposition, were not operative, it is 
thought that they would not agree to become participants in 
the social contract. 

The social contract is a myth that can be dismissed as unnec-
essary for the explanation of the origin of political communi-
ties. With it goes the veil of ignorance that is thought necessary 
for the formation of society by means of a social contract. There 
is no sense in saying that human beings ought to regard them-
selves as personally equal in all important respects when they 
know the facts to be quite the contrary. Human communities of 
all sorts, including states or civil societies, have come into ex-
istence and have been formed by individuals who enter into 
such associations in spite of their well-known and acknowl-
edged personal inequalities in many important respects. 

Turning from personal to circumstantial equality and ine-
quality, we find that both declarative and prescriptive state-
ments can be made with good sense. We can say that this group 
of individuals are or are not equal with respect to a given cir-
cumstance affecting their lives; or we can say that they ought or 
ought not to be equal in that respect. 

For example, those who, living under a constitutional gov-
ernment, are accorded the status of citizenship have an equality 
of status. They are all equal in their possession of the political 
liberty attendant upon that status. However, some members of 
that society may not be accorded the status of citizenship with 
suffrage. Then, as a matter of fact, the enfranchised and the 
disfranchised members of the society will be politically unequal 
—unequal in political status and unequal with respect to polit-
ical liberty. 

When this is factually the case, conflicting prescriptive pro-
posals may be advanced. Exponents of the democratic principle 
of universal suffrage may argue that all persons in a republic 
(or all with few justifiable exceptions) should be enfranchised. 
Opponents of universal suffrage, for one reason or another, 
may argue that the franchise should be restricted to persons 
having this or that special qualification, such as gender, skin 
color, or amount of property possessed. 

Justice enters into the picture as regulative only in the sphere 
of circumstantial equality and inequality, because only there 
can we make prescriptive proposals. 

Considerations of justice do not enter in the sphere of human 
equality and inequality where only declarative statements can 
be made and prescriptive proposals are impossible. Personal 
equality or inequality, natural or acquired, is neither just nor 
unjust. It is simply a matter of fact. 

It is pointless to say that if nature were just, human beings 
would be born equal in all important respects. Nature is neither 
just nor unjust in the gifts it bestows. Only human beings can 
be just or unjust in the proposals they advance with regard to 
an equality of conditions or with regard to an inequality of 
results. 

Where an inequality of conditions exists but ought not to 
prevail, justice may call for rectifying this by establishing an 
equality of conditions in its place. With regard to individuals 
who make unequal contributions by the work they do or the 
goods they produce, justice may call for an inequality of results 
in the rewards they receive. 

3 . Equality in Kind and Inequality in Degree 

We come finally to the most difficult and at the same time the 
most important qualification or distinction to be considered in 
our statements about equality, whether declarative or prescrip-
tive. It consists in the distinction between 

(a) an equality of conditions that exists or ought to exist without 
any attendant difference in degree and 
(b) an equality of conditions that exists or ought to exist but which 
is accompanied by differences in degree and so by inequalities 
among those who are equal in a given respect. 

The following example may make this clear. All who have the 
status of citizenship with suffrage are equal in their political 
condition and with respect to their possession of political lib-
erty. But when the members of a society are divided into the 
enfranchised and the disfranchised, an inequality of political 
conditions exists. If that is unjust, it can be rectified by estab-
lishing universal suffrage. 

When, with universal suffrage, all enjoy an equality of polit-
ical status, it may still remain the case that some citizens elected 
or appointed to public office exercise a greater degree of politi-
cal power than citizens who are not public officials. They are 
able to participate in the affairs of government to a higher de-
gree than ordinary citizens. Here, then, we have an equality of 
condition that is accompanied by differences in degree and so 
by inequality. 

All who are citizens have some degree of political power, 
since all through suffrage can participate in the affairs of gov-
ernment. But some citizens, through exercising the power 
vested in certain public offices, have more political power than 
others. 

Now let us consider a republic in which the suffrage is re-
stricted rather than universal. There the population will, first of 
all, be divided into two politically unequal segments—

(a) those who have the status of citizenship with suffrage and, 
consequently, political liberty and some degree of political power, 
and 
(b) those who do not have the status in question, and so 
have no political liberty and no degree of political power. 

There will be a second source of political inequality in the 
society we are considering. This time the political inequality 
will occur only among those who are politically equal. Equal 
because they all have suffrage, the enfranchised portion of the 
population will consist of persons who are unequal in the de-
gree of political power they possess. As citizens with suffrage, 
all will have some degree of political power, but some who have 
it will have more of it, and some less. 

The distinction that confronts us here can be summarized by 
saying that, in the sphere of circumstantial equality, equality 
prevails among those who have a certain condition, and ine-
quality prevails between the group that has it and the group 
that does not have it. This is an equality among all the haves and 
an inequality between the haves and the have-nots. In addi-
tion, among the haves, there may be differences in the degree 
to which they possess and enjoy the condition in question, 
some having more of it, some less. Here we are looking at an 
attendant inequality among the haves, one that exists between 
the individual who has more and the individual who has less. 

It is difficult to name the equality and inequality we have 
been considering. I propose to call the equality that prevails 
among haves an equality in kind, and the inequality between 
haves and have-nots an inequality in kind. In contradistinc-
tion, I propose to call the inequality among the haves, accord-
ing as one has more and one has less, an inequality in degree. 

If all persons are equal in their having the same specific 
human nature and, with that, the same species-specific prop-
erties, that is an equality in kind. But one person may be en-
dowed with a specific property to a higher degree than another. 
The resultant personal inequality of human beings, all mem-
bers of the same species but differing from one another as in-
dividuals, is an inequality in degree. 

In the sphere of circumstantial equality, both types of equal-
ity may prevail in fact. All members of a society may be equal 
in kind as haves in a certain respect, but they may also be 
unequal in degree, one being a have-more, another a have-less. 
It is also possible, though very unlikely, that, as a matter of 
fact, all may be equal in kind as haves without any accompany-
ing difference in degree. 

Those who would rectify the injustice of existent inequalities 
of condition differ radically in the proposals they advance. 

There are those who would defend the prescriptive judgment 
that, with respect to certain conditions, political, economic, or 
social, all should be equal in kind without any attendant ine-
quality in degree. All ought to be haves with respect to this or 
that important human good, but among the haves, none should 
have more and none have less. 

Opposed to them are those who would defend the prescrip-
tive judgment that, with respect to the same conditions, all 
should be equal in kind, adding that such equality in kind 
should be attended by inequalities in degree. While all ought to 
be haves with respect to the human goods in question, some 
ought to have more, and some less. 

Which of these two conflicting views is the correct view of 
what justice requires with respect to circumstantial equality— 
equality of status, treatment, possessions, and opportunity—is 
the question I shall attempt to answer in the following chapter. 
In closing this chapter, I cannot refrain from expressing my 
sympathy for readers who have struggled to read it carefully. I 
know they have found the treatment of equality difficult, more 
difficult than the treatment of liberty. I find it so myself. 

Though both are complex ideas, each embracing a diversity of 
modes, the dimensions of equality are a much more complex 
subject than are the kinds of liberty.