A Rejection Of Intrinsic-Egalitarianism

Equality has often been considered a staple of Western liberalism and may be thought of as a valuable social good in and of itself. This essay seeks to examine and reject the arguments put forward in favour of an intrinsic value of equality and posits that equality is only valuable within the capacity that it leads to other social goods. In this sense, we can think of equality as a means to achieve some sort of end, rather than an end in itself. This paper draws upon the works of John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, Richard Arneson, Nils Holtug, and Larry Temkin, and discusses the use of various measures of equality to support the primary claim that equality is not intrinsically valuable.