Abstract

Modern political theories agree that a society must treat its members equally in some respects, but they disagree over the respects, and the priorities among them. Nagel advances a strong equalitarian social ideal and presents a case for extending the reach of equality in a legitimate political system beyond what is customary in modern welfare states, and then reflects on the great difficulties, practical and moral, of doing so. He also calls into question the motivational viability of an egalitarian position based on the conception of Kantian unanimity advanced by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice.