ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the ideal of equality distorts practical reasoning and has deeply counterintuitive implications. Moreover, an alternative view of distributive justice can give a better account of what egalitarians should care about than can any of the competing ideals of equality. The chapter challenges the assumption that the central concern of a theory of justice should be equality, at least when discussing the distribution of scarce resources. It offers six arguments for the claim that it is not equality itself, but other moral concerns, that egalitarians ought to care about in the allocation of scarce resources. The chapter assumes that Aristotle's Politics is best read as a refutation of general opinion. Because Aristotle's arguments are complex, a full defense of any reading of the Politics would require a much more detailed historical treatment than the author can supply here.
