AT the deepest levels of its theory of justice, egalitarian liberalism is committed to the moral equality of persons. A person's belief that she is morally less worthy than others is thus false, as is another person's belief that he is morally more important than others. People who form conceptions of the good that either incorporate such beliefs or depend on them will fail to attain knowledge of their good. I have been arguing that a culture which leads to this situation harms its members. However, people seldom explicitly avow the moral inequality of other persons. Many, if not most, people in modern democratic states sincerely believe in the moral equality of people who differ in terms of sex, race, or degree of ability. Yet sexist, racist, and ableist attitudes flourish at another level. Classist and heterosexist attitudes are perhaps more overt; open disparagement of the poor, for example, is common in political discourse. Explicit beliefs about moral inequality seldom feature in practical deliberation. People do not often think to themselves, “Other people are entitled to have X, but I don't matter as much ethically as other people do, so, though it would be good for my life, I don't believe that having X should be one of my ends.” So the question of how inegalitarian beliefs get incorporated into people's beliefs about value is an important one.

There are two ways to be inegalitarian. One is to deny the moral equality of persons openly. The other is to affirm equality, but to have the wrong interpretation of what “equality” means.