Everyone who speaks the present language properly must be in favor of 'justice', and deontologists like to make use of this verbal consensus by appealing to one or more 'principles of justice'. (Some of them even subsume, or used to subsume, everything that is or might be good or right under justice.) Since the principle of utility can definitely in theory lead to a very unequal or 'unjust' distribution of good and evil, antiutilitarians have correctly argued that a principle of utility could never be the sole, basic standard of right and wrong. However, a methodically adequate normative doctrine must not in its principles assign a normative value to something that is already normative or evaluative in itself. Thou shalt be just dogmas do not add anything to anyone's substantive knowledge or insight. (This is not to say that someone who starts from a so-called 'principle of justice' cannot later formulate what 'e means in descriptive terms.)

Unlike 'principles of justice', the traditional so-called 'principle of equality' does make a factual notion into a normative one and is therefore from this point of view methodically adequate. This in itself does evidently not tell us how the principle must be interpreted, nor does this in itself make it into a morally acceptable one. It has thus been argued that egalitarians employ two completely different conceptions of equality: one in which proportions should be kept equal when looking at factors like people's merits or needs, and one in which the people concerned are made equal, as it were, in a certain respect. In the former case it is said to be 'the impartial use of a proper criterion' which counts. Such words implicitly refer to the principle of relevance, which need not surprise us as the principle of relevance is often regarded or treated as a principle of equality. In the latter case equality is said to be a desirable outcome in itself. This is the traditional egalitarian claim which demands our attention in particular here.

Quite a few objections raised against the traditional principle of equality do not so much concern equality as a doctrinal value but rather the relationship between a doctrinal value like equality and the kinds of right we have called "rights of personhood". Thus certain theorists have complained that under egalitarian rule people's personal talents, whether inborn or not, would become the property of the whole community. And --it has been added-- why not make transplantable organs into a public good to be distributed in such a way that those who were less fortunate get their equal share? In such criticism two issues are confused, altho the traditional egalitarian is not able to tell them apart either. Firstly, there is the question of what is extrinsically a person's own, that is, what belongs to 'im as a person. The right to one's own body (with its talents) vis-à-vis other people is an extrinsic right of personhood. But secondly, there is the question of what a person should or should not do, with or without 'er body. It is this intrinsic side of morality which tells us that we should declare our solidarity, and act in sympathy with, the less fortunate. We must do so by distributing what no-one extrinsically owns in the best way, and by asking ourselves and other owners of extrinsic property to contribute to a better distribution of goods. The egalitarian ideal has often degenerated into authoritarianism, but it can only degenerate into authoritarianism for those who do not recognize equality as an intrinsic perfective value, a value to be chosen by people who are equal. Even tho we respect people's freedom and the property of their bodies, this does not amount to a status quo ideology, for also our recognition of what are people's extrinsic property rights is founded in normative metadoctrinal, not in factual-modal, considerations.

Other objections raised against the principle of equality concern its effect on people's well-being (apart from questions of their rights). In itself this is a problem of any pluralistic doctrine, and of any monistic doctrine in which an action may be beneficent or right in one respect and maleficent or wrong in another. The argument from well-being does only apply to a monistic egalitarianism in which equality is the sole value or sole intrinsic value. One claim is that equality dissolves the special relationship between the producer and 'er product. Everything a person produces would be for the common good, and the realization of 'er desires, or the satisfaction of 'er needs, would almost entirely depend on the productivity of others. Contrary to this it has been said that it is also a human need to manage the satisfaction of one's own needs on one's own. (Egalitarianism has at once been blamed for treating people as consumers and for forcing them to produce for others.) In this kind of argument the measures which may be necessary to promote equality where inequality exists, are taken to be means in themselves, but the principle of equality does not proscribe the realization of one's own desires or the satisfaction of one's own needs. When it teaches that a situation in which actions, whether individual or collective ones, have led to inequality in outcome is bad, it does not say that the sort of action involved is bad, but the resulting inequality. Equality in itself does not preclude that everyone produces 'imself what 'e needs: a community or society which is individualistic in this respect is neither better nor worse from the standpoint of equality. (Empirically speaking, it might as well be argued that it is in a state of complete socioecenomic equality that most people have the opportunity to be productive and creative on their own, altho no-one will in such a state have so much opportunity as the happy minority in a state of great inequality.)

When it is attempted to reach equality by means of collective action, it cannot be required that everyone produce and make use of the same products so long as there are given needs and desires which are different. It would promote inequality and be exclusivistic, if solely the needs or desires of one particular group (such as the majority) were taken into account, and not those of other groups. To exclusively distribute oranges, where only a part of the human beings concerned like or prefer oranges, is to favor those who prefer oranges and to hurt those who like or prefer other products (let us say, of the same price). Likewise, to have everything produced collectively, where only a part (however great) of the human beings concerned prefers to have everything made for them, is to favor 'consumers' and to hurt those who have pleasure in producing things themselves. What egalitarianism needs is a guideline when equality in one respect is inequality in another respect; yet, such does not mean that equality would not be a value.

(Note that we touch on a seeming discrepancy between egalitarianism and inclusivism here. For whereas egalitarianism stresses equality, inclusivism implicitly recognizes and even seems to stress differences between people or other primary things. It might look as if it is exclusivism which furthers unity and equality. But appearances are deceptive: exclusivism first draws an irrelevant divide and then ignores or maltreats what is on one side of the divide. Exclusivism's purported 'unity and equality' is therefore always a partial one. Inclusivism, on the other hand, does not assign an exclusive status to the given needs, desires or preferences of any human being or group of human beings in particular and is thus fully compatible with the kind of egalitarianism here propounded.)

A favored kind of argument against utilitarianism is that utilitarians would have to prefer a situation in which A and B both had 11 units of happiness and C nothing to one in which all three of them had 7 units. Similarly, a favored kind of argument against egalitarianism is that egalitarians would have to prefer a situation in which A, B and C each had 7 units of happiness (or well-being) to one in which A and B both had 7 units and C 11 units. (The former example of 11, 11 and 0 is then suddenly not used anymore.) But is the fact that someone prefers the division 7-7-11 to the division 7-7-7 an argument against the principle of equality? Of course not: at the most it is an argument against monistic egalitarianism. For any egalitarian doctrine which is not monistic, the distinction between equality and inequality can solely be illustrated in an adequate and sincere manner by varying the difference-catenary quantity and by studying the effect this has on people's preference or opinion, while keeping all other quantities constant. (Physicists could never have discovered the relationship between the temperature and the pressure of a mass of gas if they had not held it at constant volume at the same time.) Taking the necessary methodical precautions, a division like 10-10-10 must be compared with divisions like 9-10-11 and 0-10-20. Anyone who then still maintains that equality does not count at all (that is, other things being equal) does not have 'our normative intuitions'.

The principle of equality only assigns a superior value to equality when compared with inequality, and not with any particular level on which the equality is to be maintained. In practise the modal conditions may be such that equality can only be realized at a lower level, but it is then these modal conditions which should be blamed for making it impossible to realize equality at a higher level. Consider, for example, the case that there are three persons, A, B and C, who start with 10 units of happiness or well-being each, and imagine that something happens to A so that 'e loses, say, 3 units. On the principle of equality alone the division 9-9-9 would then be a better one than the actual division 7-10-10. But antiegalitarians might want us to consider a situation now in which it is possible to transfer 1 unit from B to A, and another from C to A, while it is not B and C's fault either that A lost 'er 3 units. If it is nevertheless possible to reduce B and C's number of units, altho impossible to increase A's number of units, then --the argument may run-- an egalitarian will have to prefer the division 7-7-7 to 7-10-10. (We are asked to forget about the ceteris paribus clause.) Even if the egalitarian is not of the monistic type, 'e will still have a reason to prefer 7-7-7 to 7-10-10. This may seem odd in a case like this, yet it is quite reasonable when taking into account that a principle like equality does not apply to one isolated case with exceptional modal conditions but to a great variety of cases.

Those who decide from one case that there would not be any reason to prefer 7-7-7 to 7-10-10 (given that there is not any relevant difference between A, B and C, and in addition to the reason to prefer 7-10-10 to 7-7-7 because it yields more units in total), never have such an egalitarian reason. All other things being equal, they will not have any reason either to prefer, for example, 10-10-10 to 1-10-19. If it is no-one's fault that A lost 'er 9 units (even not A's own fault), and if C acquired 'er 9 additional units without stealing anything from A, people should on a nonegalitarian conception of justice be wholly satisfied with such a situation, so long as 1 unit is 'just' enough to stay alive or 'just' too much to die.