The Practice of Equality∗

Samuel Scheffler

New York University

[to appear in C. Fourie, F. Schuppert, and I. Wallimann-Helmer, Social Equality: Essays on What it Means to be Equals (Oxford)]

1. Two Views of Equality

I will begin with a brief and stylized contrast between two different views

of equality, which I will call the distributive and relational views respectively.

These views do not exhaust the possible interpretations of equality, but versions

of both have played a prominent role in recent discussions. According to the

first view, equality is an essentially distributive value. We can directly assess

distributions as being more or less egalitarian, and justice requires that we strive

to achieve fully egalitarian distributions, except insofar as other values forbid it.

This is the view taken by Jerry Cohen when he says, “I take for granted that there

is something which justice requires people to have equal amounts of, not no

matter what, but to whatever extent is allowed by values which compete with

distributive equality.”1 If one accepts this view, then the most important task is

to identify the proper “currency” of “egalitarian justice.” That is, the task is to

identify the thing that justice requires us to equalize (insofar as such equalization

is allowed by competing values).

* Earlier versions of this article were presented to conferences at the University of London and the Central European University and to a seminar at Columbia Law School. I am indebted to János Kis, Daniel Putnam, and Joseph Raz for helpful critical comments. 1 G.A. Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice,” Ethics 99 (1989), at 906.

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According to the second, relational view, equality is an ideal governing

certain kinds of interpersonal relationships. It plays a central role in political

philosophy because justice requires the establishment of a society of equals, a

society whose members relate to one another on a footing of equality. For those

who accept this view, one important task is to consider what kinds of institutions

and practices a society must put in place if it is to count as a society of equals.

The relevant institutions and practices will include those that govern the

distribution of goods within the society, and so the ideal of equality, understood

as an ideal that governs the relations among the members of society, will have

important distributive implications. But, according to this view, equality is a

more general, relational ideal, and its bearing on questions of distribution is

indirect. The relevant question, in thinking about equality and distribution, is

not “What is the currency of which justice requires an equal distribution?” It is,

rather, “What kinds of distributions are consistent with the ideal of a society of

equals?”

Defenders of the relational view have sometimes criticized the distributive

view for offering an inadequate account of the basis for our concern with

equality. The distributive view, it is said, represents equality as an excessively

abstract or “arithmetic” value. It makes it seem as if the fundamental egalitarian

concern is to secure conformity to a certain pattern of distribution for its own

sake. It fails to recognize that the real motivation for egalitarianism, both

historically and conceptually, lies in a commitment to a certain ideal of society, a

conviction that the members of society should relate to one another on a footing

of equality. Distributive equality matters, they claim, only because and insofar as

it is necessary in order to achieve a society of equals.

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Yet the force of the relational view is open to doubt for at least two

reasons.2 First, since defenders of this view agree that it too supports egalitarian

distributions of some kind, it may be obscure what substantive, normative

difference it makes whether one accepts the relational view or not. If the point is

simply that egalitarian distributive principles should be grounded in the ideal of

a society of equals, rather than presented as self-standing or grounded in some

other way, then it looks as if the relational view has no bearing on the choice of

the principles themselves. It is simply addressing a different question. So there

need be no conflict between the distributive and relational views.

Second, it may seem that the relational view, if fully spelled out, must

itself take a distributive form. For suppose that the members of society are

committed to the ideal of a society of equals and are determined to structure

their mutual relations in accordance with that ideal. How would they go about

doing this? The answer, it may seem, is that they would take care to ensure that

certain important goods, such as status, power, or opportunity, were distributed

equally within the society. That is what it would mean for them to achieve a

society of equals. But if that is correct, then the relational view is not really an

alternative to the distributive view but is rather a version of it. It is distinguished

from other versions not by placing less emphasis on distribution but by singling

out goods like status and power as the ones whose distribution should be the

object of egalitarian concern.

2 For versions of these objections, see Christian Seidel, “Two Problems with the Socio-Relational Critique of Distributive Egalitarianism,” in Miguel Hoeltje, Thomas Spitzley and Wolfgang Spohn (eds.), Was Dürfen Wir glauben? Was Sollen Wir Tun? Sektionsbeiträge Des Achten Internationalen Kongresses der Gesellschaft für Analytische Philosophie (Duisburg-Essen: DuEPublico, 2013), pp. 525–-535.

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I believe that these two doubts can be allayed. Contrary to what the

second doubt suggests, the relational view is not a version of but is rather a

genuine alternative to the distributive view. And contrary to what the first

doubt suggests, the relational view does have a bearing on substantive,

normative questions. If we accept the relational view, this will affect the way we

think about the content of distributive justice. In order to establish these claims,

more must be done to develop the relational view. That is what I will attempt to

do here. Before I begin, two preliminary issues need to be addressed.

First, consider the distinction between “prioritarianism,” which holds that

benefits to those who are worse off matter more than benefits to those who are

better off, and forms of egalitarianism which hold that it is bad if some people

are worse off than others through no fault of their own. It is sometimes said that

prioritarianism is a non-relational view, because it is sensitive only to the

absolute levels of well-being of the affected individuals, whereas egalitarianism

is a relational view, because it is sensitive to essentially comparative judgments

about the relations among different individuals’ levels of well-being.3 Here the

term ‘relational’ is being used to mark a difference between two different

distributive views. Both prioritarianism and egalitarianism of the sort described

are distributive views, and the term ‘relational’ is being used to distinguish

distributive views that are sensitive to comparative information from those that

are not. By contrast, I use the term to describe a view of equality that is not

distributive at all. What I call “the relational view” is not the view that

distributive principles should be sensitive to comparative information. It is a 3 For an example of such usage, see Michael Otsuka and Alex Voorhoeve, “Why It Matters That Some Are Worse Off Than Others: An Argument against the Priority View,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 37 (2009): 171-199.

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view according to which equality should not be thought of as a fundamentally

distributive value in the first place.

Second, although my sympathies lie for the most part with the relational

view, this does not mean that I regard questions of distribution as unimportant

or that I think economic inequality is unobjectionable. I believe that the levels of

economic inequality that prevail in my country and many others are

indefensible, and I am as convinced as anyone of the importance of distributive

justice. The relational view does not deny that equality has a bearing on

questions of distribution. Instead it holds that, in order to appreciate the bearing

of equality on distribution, one must begin by understanding equality as a

broader ideal that governs the relations among members of society more

generally. Rather than assuming that justice requires the equal distribution of

something and then asking what that something is, a relational approach asks

what the broader ideal of equality implies about distributive questions.

Defenders of the relational view believe that the case against distributive

inequality is strengthened rather than weakened if it is linked to a broader ideal

of this kind, because the ideal is more attractive than any purportedly egalitarian

distributive formula considered on its own. If egalitarian social and political

positions have roots in the idea of a society of equals, this gives them a critical

force that they would otherwise lack. Or so defenders of the relational view

believe. Whether they are right depends on whether the relational view can be

successfully fleshed out. That is what I will try to do in this essay.

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2. Egalitarian Personal Relationships

I will first consider a non-political example. I do so advisedly. Equality is

a central political value, and its implications in political contexts will differ in

many respects from its implications in other contexts. Yet equality is not an

emergent value that appears for the first time at the political level, and we should

be able to see some connection between the way it functions in political contexts

and the way it functions elsewhere. It would be an objection to an account of

political equality if it allowed us to see no such connection. One of the

advantages of the relational conception is that it represents equality as a value

that applies to human relationships of many kinds, and we may learn things by

looking at its nonpolitical applications that will help us to understand how it

applies to the political case. So consider the assertion that a marriage or

partnership should be a relationship between equals. What might this mean?

Suppose we have two spouses or partners, each of whom is committed to

conducting their shared relationship on an egalitarian basis. How might this

affect the way they relate to each other? Presumably it will affect the attitudes

they have toward one another and the ways in which they are disposed to treat

one another, but what exactly will these effects be? A natural first thought is that

the participants in an egalitarian relationship will have a reciprocal commitment

to treating one another with respect. Each sees the other as a full-fledged agent

who has the capacities associated with this agential status. Each expects the

other to bear whatever responsibilities are assigned to a person in virtue of this

status and, similarly, each sees the other as entitled to make whatever claims

accrue to a person in virtue of this status. Moreover, neither participant is seen

by either of them as possessing more authority than the other within the context

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of the relationship, and each sees the other as entitled to participate fully and

equally in determining the future course and character of the relationship.

If these initial speculations are on even roughly the right track, then one

thing that is already clear is that the ideal of an egalitarian relationship draws on

values other than equality itself. It draws on values such as reciprocity and

mutual respect, and on a conception of the rights and responsibilities of agents.

This might lead one to wonder whether the term ‘egalitarian relationship’ is a

misnomer.4 Fully spelled out, perhaps the idea of such a relationship appeals

entirely to values other than equality. This suggestion seems to me overstated.

What is true is that the ideal of an egalitarian relationship is a complex one, and

that several of its elements draw on values other than equality per se. This is an

important point, and I will return to it later. At the same time, the ideal also

includes some distinctively egalitarian elements, and in what follows I want to

discuss one that seems to me especially important.

In a relationship that is conducted on a footing of equality, each person

accepts that the other person’s equally important interests – understood broadly

to include the person’s needs, values, and preferences – should play an equally

significant role in influencing decisions made within the context of the

relationship. Moreover, each person has a normally effective disposition to treat

the other’s interests accordingly. If you and I have an egalitarian relationship,

then I have a standing disposition to treat your strong interests as playing just as

significant a role as mine in constraining our decisions and influencing what we

will do. And you have a reciprocal disposition with regard to my interests. In

4 I am indebted to an unpublished paper by Fabian Schuppert in which he presses this question.

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addition, both of us normally act on these dispositions. This means that each of

our equally important interests constrains our joint decisions to the same extent.

We can call this the egalitarian deliberative constraint. It is a distinctively

egalitarian element in the complex ideal of an egalitarian relationship.

Arriving at decisions that satisfy this constraint is not, in general, an easy

matter. Simply identifying the relevant interests that bear on a decision can be

difficult. And, of course, the interests of the participants may clash, and then

there will be a question about how to forge a joint decision in the face of conflict.

Different solutions may suggest themselves on different occasions. One strategy

that will sometimes be available is a strategy of splitting the difference. You want

badly to go to Paris for three weeks. I want just as badly to go for one week. We

split the difference and decide to go for two weeks. Another strategy that will

sometimes be available is a strategy of choosing the second-best. My first choice is

to go to Paris and my second choice is to go to Rome. Under no circumstances

do I want to go to London. Your first choice is to go to London and your second

choice is to go to Rome. Under no circumstances do you want to go to Paris. So

we decide to go to Rome. A third strategy is taking turns. I want to go to Paris;

you want to go to Rome. We decide to go to Paris this year and to Rome next

year. A fourth strategy is joint satisfaction. I want to go to Paris; you want to go

to Rome. So we decide to spend half our time in Paris and half our time in Rome.

A fifth strategy is one of trading off. Suppose we face two decisions that we

regard as being of roughly comparable importance: where to go on our holiday,

and whether to subscribe to the ballet or to the opera. I want to go to Paris; you

want to go to Rome. You want to subscribe to the opera; I want to subscribe to

the ballet. So we decide to go to Rome and subscribe to the ballet. A sixth

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strategy is separation. I want to go to Paris; you want to go to Rome. So we

decide that we won’t take a joint holiday. Instead, I will go to Paris, while you

will go to Rome.5

Even in simple cases such as these, arriving at a decision may be a

significant deliberative task, because multiple solutions to the deliberative

problem may be available, and you and I may have different meta-preferences

among the strategies embodied in those solutions. In more complex cases that

implicate more important interests, satisfactory solutions of any kind may be

difficult to find, and so the deliberative task may be more challenging.

Moreover, different decisions may interact with one another in a variety of ways

that add further deliberative complexity.

Six additional complications should be noted. First, it should be clear

even from the simplified example just given that the egalitarian deliberative

constraint is best understood diachronically rather than synchronically. The

point is not that each decision taken individually must give equal weight to the

comparably important interests of each party. Sometimes this will be impossible

or undesirable. The point is rather that each person’s interests should play an

equally significant role in determining the decisions they make over the course of

the relationship.

Second, I have said that the relevant notion of interests is a broad one that

includes needs, values, and preferences. We need not suppose that there are

5 These examples assume that the participants in the relationship are economically well-off, inasmuch as they have the resources necessary for expensive holidays and for opera or ballet subscriptions. However, I take this to be an inessential feature of the examples. People with fewer resources could just as easily face situations in which the strategies illustrated by these examples would be available to them.

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sharp dividing lines among these categories. But the inclusion of needs and

values along with preferences and other interests reminds us that sometimes

arriving at a joint decision in the face of conflict may be difficult or even

impossible. If you and I have diametrically opposed values, then in decisions

that implicate the opposing values none of the strategies mentioned above may

be available. If I am a pacifist and you are a warrior, there may be no possibility

of splitting the difference between us. Diachronic solutions like taking turns may

also be unacceptable if our values are sufficiently opposed. Deciding to honor

my values today and yours tomorrow won’t work if honoring your values

amounts to a violation of my values whenever it is done. If I am an animal rights

activist and you are a hunter, then deciding that we will demonstrate against

animal experimentation today and go hunting tomorrow won’t work. Even

separation may not always seem tenable. A joint decision that I will go to the

animal rights demonstration while you will go hunting may still seem to me an

intolerable compromise of my values. This gives people who want their

relationships to be conducted on a footing of equality a (defeasible) reason to

seek out others who share their most important values, at least for their most

comprehensive personal relationships.

There may sometimes be another alternative. I have said that the

egalitarian deliberative constraint applies to decisions made within the context of

an egalitarian relationship. However, it is not obvious when a decision counts as

being made “within the context of the relationship.” If I decide to demonstrate

against animal experimentation while you decide to go hunting, is it the case that

our respective decisions are made “within the context of our relationship?” That

may depend on the character of the relationship. In principle, one way of

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preserving an egalitarian relationship in the face of conflicting values may be to

externalize the conflict by relegating the parties’ pursuit of their discordant

values to a space that is defined as being outside the relationship. This is similar

to the strategy of separation that may be used to satisfy the deliberative

constraint, but it differs in that here each of the parties can disclaim even the

limited endorsement of the other’s values that is involved in a joint decision to

separate. It is an interesting question under what conditions externalization of

this kind can be successful. At times it may seem artificial or self-deceptive. And

when conflicts of fundamental values are at stake, it may be unsustainable.

Third, however we assess the prospects for externalizing conflict in the

manner just described, it is important to emphasize that decisions made within

the context of an egalitarian relationship need not always be arrived at jointly.

Sometimes one of the parties to a relationship will be charged with the sole

responsibility for making such a decision. This can happen, for example, if the

other party is unavailable for joint deliberation, or if the parties have themselves

decided on a division of deliberative labor, in which, say, decisions of some

kinds are made by one of them while decisions of other kinds are made by the

other of them. But these exceptions arise against the background of a

presumption that each party is equally entitled to participate in decisions made

within the context of the relationship. This participatory requirement follows

from the more general point, noted earlier, that the parties to an egalitarian

relationship view each other as equally entitled to determine the future course

and character of the relationship. The participatory requirement can be modified

in cases like those mentioned but only in ways that are acceptable to the parties

themselves.

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Fourth, my example of choosing a holiday destination may create the

misleading impression that the egalitarian deliberative constraint requires the

parties always to make decisions that will satisfy their interests (weighted for

importance) to an equal degree, as all the possible decisions mentioned in the

example do. But in this respect the example is unrepresentative. What the

deliberative constraint requires is that the comparably important interests of each

party should play a comparably significant role in influencing decisions made

within the context of their relationship. This does not mean that, in general, their

decisions must leave the parties equally well-off either in respect of those

interests or overall. To suppose otherwise is to overlook the heterogeneity of

people’s interests and the variety of ways in which their interests may constrain

the deliberative process.

How should the deliberations of the parties be influenced by the interests

of each in order to comply with the egalitarian deliberative constraint? The first

requirement concerns the way in which the parties’ interests shape their

deliberative priorities. The comparably important interests of each of them

should be assigned comparable priority when setting their joint deliberative

agenda, that is, when selecting the issues that will receive their joint deliberative

attention. In addition, the parties should display comparable tenacity and

imagination in seeking to address the comparably important interests of each of

them.6 In these ways, they make manifest their view of one another as equals and

the equal seriousness with which they treat one another’s interests.

6 Stated more carefully, the point is that the parties should, when necessary, display comparable tenacity and imagination in both cases. If one party’s interest proves easier to address then the other’s, they are not required to expend

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Beyond this, there is the question of how the content of the parties’

decisions should be influenced by their respective interests. There is no single

answer to this question. When the “interests” in question are values, then

“satisfying” those interests will mean different things in different contexts. This

is true even for a single individual who is not subject to the egalitarian constraint.

Sometimes “satisfying” a value may simply mean not acting in ways that are

inconsistent with it. In other contexts, it may mean acting in specific ways that

are demanded or required by the value. And in still other contexts, it may mean

acting in ways that are expressive or constitutive of the value. It follows that in

joint deliberations where the parties’ values are at stake, what the egalitarian

deliberative constraint requires cannot without distortion be described as

achieving an equal level of interest-satisfaction. Instead, what the constraint

requires is that the parties’ decisions should be equally sensitive to the diverse

implications of their actions for the values of each of them.

Similarly, an interest that takes the form of a need or preference rather

than a value may serve only to rule certain options out rather than to fully

determine the content of a decision. With interests of this kind, the equal

satisfaction model is again out of place. And the model fails even in cases where

the parties are explicitly attempting to fulfill a need or preference of one of them.

Consider a case in which they previously took action to address some need or

preference of the first party. Now the other party has a comparably urgent need

or preference. Here what the egalitarian constraint requires is that they should

make just as great an effort to satisfy the second party’s need or preference as

superfluous effort in the easier case so as to equalize the levels of effort devoted to the interests of each. I will take this qualification for granted in what follows.

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they did with the first party’s. It does not say their aim should be to ensure that

the second party’s preference is satisfied to just the same extent that the first

party’s was. For example, it does not require that if their conscientious decisions

about medical treatment led to a 70% reduction in the first party’s chronic pain,

then their aim should now be to produce a 70% reduction in the second party’s

pain. If, by making comparably conscientious efforts to secure good treatment,

they could achieve the complete elimination of the second party’s pain, the

egalitarian constraint hardly forbids this.

The upshot is that the egalitarian deliberative constraint does not, in

general, require the parties to make decisions that will leave them equally well-

off either in respect of their immediately affected interests or overall. The fact

that all the decisions mentioned in the holiday-destination example do leave the

parties equally well-off results from special features of that example. In

particular, it is an example in which a) the parties are seeking to make a single,

circumscribed decision about a joint activity, b) the only interests bearing on the

decision are the parties’ symmetrical but conflicting preferences about one aspect

of that activity, c) there is an obvious metric for determining the extent to which

the preferences of each party have been satisfied, and d) there are multiple

options available that will leave the parties equally well-off in respect of their

conflicting preferences. Given these simplified decision parameters, it is natural

to suppose that the parties will choose one of the equalizing options. Even in this

case, however, they might choose otherwise without violating the egalitarian

deliberative constraint. They might, for example, flip a coin to decide on their

holiday destination. The egalitarian deliberative constraint does not require

them to make a decision that will leave them equally well-off. Rather, it requires

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them to attend with equal urgency and determination to the comparable interests

of each of them. Given that they are deciding on a joint activity about which they

have comparable but conflicting preferences, that there is a well-defined metric

available for assessing how well candidate decisions satisfy those preferences,

that there are options available that will satisfy their preferences to an equal

degree, and that there are no other interests that need to be taken into account, it

is natural, though not strictly necessary, that they should make a decision that

will produce equal preference-satisfaction. But in many cases one or more of

these conditions will fail to obtain. In such cases, there is no general reason to

expect that the egalitarian constraint will require decisions that leave the parties

equally well-off with respect to preference-satisfaction or anything else.

The fifth complication is this. The egalitarian deliberative constraint tells

the parties something about how they should treat the comparably important

interests of each of them. But how are these judgments of importance to be

understood? Is the point that the parties should be guided by their own beliefs

about the importance of their interests, or is there some independent standard of

importance that applies? In practice, the parties have no choice but to rely on

their own judgments of importance (even if they consult others in forming those

judgments). Moreover, the very fact that one believes an interest to be important

can sometimes make it important. But what the deliberative constraint says is

that the parties should treat (what are in fact) the equally important interests of

each of them as having equal significance for their decisions. This standard of

importance is independent of and can diverge from their own judgments of

importance, even if they have no choice but to rely on those judgments. This

means they can be mistaken in thinking they have complied with the constraint.

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Finally, the deliberative constraint is central to egalitarian relationships,

but if it is kept too clearly in view or interpreted too rigidly it can encourage a

kind of scorekeeping that may erode the quality of the relationship. If the

participants in a relationship are constantly preoccupied with making sure that

the comparably important interests of each of them are playing comparably

significant roles in determining their joint decisions, that may exclude forms of

intimacy and joint identification that give personal relationships much of their

value. So the trick is to ensure that the egalitarian deliberative constraint is

satisfied without itself becoming the focus of excessive attention.

It should be clear from the six complications I have discussed that

conducting and sustaining a personal relationship on a footing of equality is a

significant practical task. Indeed, relating to others as equals is best thought of as

a complex interpersonal practice. It is a practice that makes substantial demands

on the attitudes, motives, dispositions, and deliberative capacities of the

participants. There is no general formula or algorithm for determining how best

to engage in the practice. Instead, sustaining an egalitarian relationship requires

creativity, the exercise of judgment, and ongoing mutual commitment, and even

the sincere efforts of the parties are no guarantee of success, although success is a

matter of degree and should not be conceived of in all-or-nothing terms.

3. The Role of Distribution in Egalitarian Personal Relationships

What role do issues of distribution play in our understanding of

egalitarian relationships? Such issues might be thought of as arising in two

different ways. First, they might be thought of as internal questions that arise

within the context of an egalitarian personal relationship. As such, they present

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practical challenges that must be addressed by the participants in the

relationship. Given a relationship that qualifies as egalitarian by some

independent standard, how are questions about the distribution of various goods

to be handled within the context of that relationship? Alternatively, questions of

distribution might be thought of externally, as questions about the best way to

characterize egalitarian relationships in the first place. It might be supposed that

in order to understand what an egalitarian relationship is, we need to ask what it

is that is distributed equally between the participants in such a relationship. This

alternative is in keeping with the second of the two doubts about that the

relational conception that I want to investigate. It assumes that the relational

conception, fully spelled out, must itself take a distributive form.

Let me begin by saying something about the external question. I have

characterized egalitarian relationships in practical and deliberative rather than

distributive terms. Equality, as I have described it, is ultimately a form of

practice rather than a normative pattern of distribution. An egalitarian

relationship is one in which the parties have certain attitudes, motives, and

dispositions with respect to one another. Among other things, they satisfy a

fundamental deliberative constraint when making decisions that fall within the

scope of their relationship. And the point is not that these attitudes, motives, and

dispositions must be distributed equally between the parties. Admittedly, the

relationship will not have an egalitarian character if one of the parties exhibits

the relevant attitudes and dispositions and the other does not. The attitudes and

dispositions must hold reciprocally. But neither will the relationship have an

egalitarian character if the parties possess those attitudes and dispositions to an

equal but low degree. If anything, the egalitarian aim is not to equalize the

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relevant attitudes and dispositions but to maximize them: to ensure that both

parties exhibit them to the fullest.

It might be suggested that the description I have given is equivalent to

saying that egalitarian relationships are characterized by an equal distribution of

status between the participants. However, this formulation does little to suggest

the deliberative and practical dimensions of equality as I have described it and,

as I have just argued, an emphasis on equal distribution seems misplaced where

those dimensions are concerned. Of course, one might stipulatively define an

equal distribution of status as one that obtains when a relationship satisfies the

deliberative and attitudinal criteria I have outlined, but such a definition would

be artificial. The bare possibility of constructing a stipulative definition does not

show that there is any natural or interesting sense in which egalitarian

relationships are best understood in distributive terms.

This leads me to think that questions of the second, external kind are

misplaced. The way to understand what a relationship of equals is like is not to

ask what is distributed equally in such a relationship. The distinctive feature of

egalitarian relationships is not that there is an equal distribution of something. It

follows that, at least as applied to personal relationships, the second doubt about

the relational conception of equality is unfounded. It is not the case that the

relational conception, fully spelled out, must itself take a distributive form.

Internal questions, however, are not misplaced. Insofar as decisions about

how to use available resources arise within the context of an egalitarian

relationship, the egalitarian deliberative constraint will apply to those decisions.

Again, there are questions about when a resource allocation decision falls within

the scope of such a relationship. In some cases, it will be clear that the resources

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in question belong jointly to the participants in the relationship and that

decisions about how to allocate them fall within its scope. In many ordinary

friendships, by contrast, it may seem clear that the participants have few if any

material resources in common, and that the decisions that each of them makes

about how to allocate his or her resources fall outside the scope of the

relationship. I do not in general expect to have a say in how my wealthy friend

decides to spend his money. But whether a resource allocation decision falls

within the scope of a relationship cannot always be settled solely by reference to

the prevailing legal regime of property and ownership. For one thing, we may

sometimes feel that an individual participant has taken advantage of the

prevailing regime to “shelter” resources, or exclude them from joint decision, in a

way that is incongruous with the egalitarian character of the relationship. In

addition, there may be cases in which we are in no doubt that certain resources

are the legal property of one of the participants, but we nevertheless believe that

his decisions about how to allocate his resources are incompatible with a

relationship of equals. If my wealthy friend regularly insists on going to more

expensive restaurants than I can afford and on paying the bill for both of us, then

I may feel that his allocative decisions, although legally unimpeachable, are

undermining the egalitarian character of our relationship. This suggests that

certain allocative decisions may fall within the scope of a relationship, in the

sense that matters for our purposes, even if the resources whose allocation is

under consideration belong exclusively to one of the participants.

Let us leave these complications aside, however, and focus on cases in

which the participants in a relationship of equals are considering how to allocate

resources that they jointly control. These decisions are subject to the egalitarian

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deliberative constraint. Each participant accepts that the other’s comparably

important interests should play a comparably significant role in influencing the

allocation decisions that they make. This is a substantial constraint, even if we

assume that it applies diachronically rather than synchronically. In the context of

a face-to-face personal relationship, however, it seems unlikely that the

participants will attempt to satisfy the constraint through the self-conscious

application of a fixed distributive formula, such as a leximin principle or a

principle of equality of welfare or resources. It would seem more than a bit

peculiar if they did do this. There are several reasons why this is so. First, to rely

on such a formula would seem rigid and moralistic, and would raise concerns of

the kind noted earlier about excessive scorekeeping. Second, many of the

allocation decisions the participants are likely to face will be decisions about how

best to advance or protect their shared interests, whereas distributive formulae of

the kind mentioned are used to adjudicate among conflicting interests.

Finally, the participants are, by hypothesis, concerned to sustain their

relationship as a relationship of equals, and they are therefore concerned with

the ways in which their respective interests influence their joint decisions. This

means, to put it crudely, that they are concerned with the ways in which their

respective interests are treated as inputs of deliberation and decision. But

distributive formulae of the kind mentioned operate, in effect, on the outputs of

decision. Such a formula does not directly assess the role played in deliberation

by considerations about the respective interests of the parties. It looks instead at

the situation of the participants once a given decision is carried out and assesses

their comparative standing in respect of some dimension, such as welfare or

resources, which is thought to reflect their interests. Such assessments may

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provide indirect evidence of the way in which considerations about the

participants’ interests influenced the decision-making process. But the

participants, with their normally extensive mutual knowledge and their direct

access to their own deliberations, are unlikely to regard these output measures as

being, in general, good proxies for the kinds of assessment of their deliberations

that matter to them. Why should they look at their overall situation once a

decision is carried out and make an inference on that basis about how they must

have deliberated? As a way of assessing their deliberations, this would be not

only indirect but also of limited reliability, since for two people to deliberate in

accordance with the egalitarian constraint it is neither necessary nor sufficient

that their overall situation once the decision is carried out should end up

satisfying any fixed distributive formula. There is, in general, no need for the

participants to rely on such indirect and unreliable inferences. They can ask

themselves directly whether the comparably important interests of each of them

played an equally significant role in influencing their decisions. Of course, they

can be mistaken about this, and output measures may serve as correctives to self-

deception and other forms of error. Distributive inequalities may be symptoms

that the participants’ internal deliberations violated the egalitarian constraint

even though they thought otherwise. But there is a difference between using

output measures to guard against self-deception and using them systematically

to satisfy the egalitarian deliberative constraint.

So, to repeat, the participants in a relationship of equals are unlikely,

when facing decisions about the allocation of their resources, to try to satisfy the

egalitarian deliberative constraint by applying a fixed distributive formula. On

the other hand, the deliberative constraint will itself exert pressure in the

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direction of egalitarian distribution. If, in deciding how to allocate their

resources, the participants treat the comparably important interests of each of

them as having comparable significance, then a natural default assumption is

that they will end up devoting roughly equal resources to satisfying the

comparably important interests of each. And insofar as it makes sense to

compare the extent to which their interests are satisfied, a natural default

assumption is that their decisions will tend to produce roughly equal levels of

(weighted) interest satisfaction. The fact that the egalitarian deliberative

constraint exerts general pressure toward egalitarian distributions explains why

distributive inequalities can serve the corrective function just noted. But the

conclusion that the participants’ decisions will have distributively egalitarian

upshots is a defeasible one, and the reason it holds is not because they apply any

particular distributive formula in making their choices. It holds because they

regard the reasons generated by the comparable interests of each of them as

themselves being of comparable strength. That is the regulative principle

governing their deliberations.

It may seem that the participants in egalitarian relationships would have a

greater concern than I have acknowledged with distributive equality per se. They

would regard it as intrinsically important that equal resources be allocated to

meeting their respective interests, or that those interests be satisfied to an equal

degree. But I do not believe that a concern for the egalitarian character of their

relationship would lead them to be troubled by the bare fact of inequality in one

of these dimensions. Their primary concern, insofar as they wish to conduct

their relationship on an egalitarian basis, is with their attitudes toward one

another and with how seriously each takes the interests of the other in contexts of

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deliberation and decision. If they were in other respects satisfied with the

egalitarian character of the relationship, then I doubt that the bare fact of

distributive inequality would, by itself, arouse their distinctively relational

concern.7 By contrast, if one of the participants regularly flouted the egalitarian

deliberative constraint but strict distributive equality were somehow achieved

anyway (perhaps by luck or perhaps because it was imposed by an outsider),

then the egalitarian character of the relationship would be compromised despite

the fact that distributive equality had been achieved.

Let me pause to take stock. I began by identifying two doubts about the

relational conception of equality. The first turned on the thought that it makes

no normative difference whether one accepts the relational view or not, since in

either case egalitarian distributive principles will be needed and the relational

view has no bearing on the choice of such principles. The second turned on the

thought that the relational view, fully spelled out, must itself take a distributive

form. As applied to egalitarian personal relationships, we have seen that the

second doubt is unfounded. It is not true that the relational view must take a

distributive form. And the considerations we have just been rehearsing suggest

that, as applied to personal relationships, the first doubt is also unfounded. On

the relational view, there is strong general pressure within egalitarian personal

relationships toward rough distributive equality of some kind, but there is no

reason to think that such relationships are regulated by any fixed distributive

7 Of course, that concern would be aroused if the distributive inequality were so great as to undermine their relationship as equals. And independently of a concern for equality, they would presumably wish to avoid any distribution that left one of them badly-off in absolute terms.

24

formula. So, a fortiori, there is no reason to think they are regulated by the same

formula that a purely distributive conception of equality might recommend.

4. A Society of Equals

Let me now turn back to the case of a society of equals. What light, if any,

can our discussion of personal relationships shed on the contrast between the

relational and distributive interpretations of social and political equality? Are

the two doubts about the relational conception any better founded in this case

than they are in the case of personal relationships? To begin with, I believe that a

version of the deliberative constraint that plays a central role in egalitarian

personal relationships is also central to the idea of a society of equals. In such a

society, each member accepts that every other member’s equally important

interests should play an equally significant role in influencing decisions made on

behalf of the society as a whole. Moreover, each member has a normally

effective disposition to treat the interests of others accordingly. So a society of

equals is characterized by a reciprocal commitment on the part of each member

to treat the equally important interests of every other member as exerting equal

influence on social decisions. This gives determinate content to the otherwise

vague thought that the members of such a society regard one another as equals.

It means that the equally important interests of each of them constrain social

decisions to the same extent. This is, I take it, a familiar ideal. And one has only

to consider its application to cases of racial or ethnic or gender hierarchy to see

that it has considerable critical force. To cite one topical example, it is this ideal

to which advocates of gay marriage appeal when they argue that the interests of

homosexuals in being able to marry are just as strong as the interests of

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heterosexuals and, accordingly, that both sets of interests should be

accommodated in the same way in our laws and institutions.

Some of the problems that arise in thinking about egalitarian personal

relationships have straightforward parallels in thinking about a society of equals.

For example, questions about conflicting values and how to accommodate them

in egalitarian decision-making present challenges in both cases. And just as

there is a question about when a decision counts as being made “within the

context of” a personal relationship, so too there is a question about which

decisions count as “social decisions” or decisions “made on behalf of the society

as a whole.” Without attempting a complete answer to this question, it seems

safe to assume that decisions about a society’s constitution, its laws, and the

design of its major social, political, and economic institutions all count as matters

of social or collective decision in the relevant sense.

However, as this last observation already suggests, there are also obvious

and important differences between personal relationships and the relations

among the members of a political society. These differences affect the way the

relational conception applies to the two cases. Let me mention some of the most

significant differences.

First, in contrast with personal relationships, few of the relationships

among the members of society are face-to-face relationships. No member of a

modern society is acquainted with more than a tiny fraction of the other

members. For the most part, the relations among the members of society have an

anonymous character. Second, one consequence of the anonymous character of

these relations is that the members of society do not in general have

individualized knowledge of the needs, preferences and values of their fellow

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members. So in thinking about how to satisfy the deliberative constraint, they

have to rely heavily on normalized assumptions about the characteristic needs

and interests that members can be assumed to have.

Third, the anonymity of the relations among the members of society also

affects the character of their collective decision-making. Although their decisions

are subject to the egalitarian constraint, they are never arrived at through face-to-

face deliberations in which all members participate. This again contrasts sharply

with the case of personal relationships, in which face-to-face joint deliberations

and decisions are common. Yet the ideal of a society of equals remains subject to

the presumption that each participant in an egalitarian relationship is equally

entitled to participate in decisions made within the context of that relationship.

As noted earlier, this participatory requirement can be modified even in the case

of personal relationships, but only in ways that are acceptable to the participants

themselves. In developing the ideal of a society of equals, a crucial task will be to

determine how the participatory requirement should be modified to apply to the

large-scale deliberative processes that are needed in a society whose members

are largely anonymous to one another.

Finally, the anonymity of the relationships among the members of society

sets up pressure to establish clear boundaries to those relationships and clear

limits to the scope of the decisions that are thought to fall within them. The

members of society will be interested in preserving social space within which

they can conduct their face-to-face personal relationships and pursue their

conceptions of the good life without being subject to comprehensive regulatory

scrutiny from the perspective of an anonymous collectivity that lacks

individualized knowledge of its members’ needs, preferences, circumstances,

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and values. This interest is reflected in the ubiquity of such distinctions as those

between the public and the private or between the political and the non-political.

It means that strategies of externalizing decisions – treating them as falling

outside the context of a given relationship – will have a special salience in

connection with the generic relations among the members of society.

Although the case of a society of equals differs in these respects from the

case of egalitarian personal relationships, the core content of the egalitarian

deliberative constraint continues to apply. In a society of equals, the comparably

important interests of each member are to constrain social decisions to the same

extent. This aspiration is reflected in the reciprocal attitudes and the normally

effective dispositions of each member. It is a complex aspiration and not one that

is easily satisfied, but it is an aspiration that is characteristic of an egalitarian

society and undertaking to satisfy it is a challenge that such a society accepts.

5. The Role of Distribution in a Society of Equals

As in the case of egalitarian personal relationships, the ideal of a society of

equals is not well-described in distributive terms. It is not the view that there is

something that should be distributed equally among the members of society.

Instead, it is a practical ideal concerning the kind of society the members want to

construct and the way they want to relate to one another. This ideal is reflected

in their attitudes and dispositions and, in particular, in their convictions about

the ways in which the interests of each of them should constrain social decision.

These attitudes are not themselves to be equalized but rather to be securely

entrenched in the motivational outlook of each member. As in the case of

personal relationships, then, “external” distributive questions are misplaced, and

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attempts to characterize a society of equals in purely distributive terms are

bound to be procrustean. The defining feature of this type of society is not that

there is an equal distribution of something among the members. So in this case

as in the case of personal relationships, the second doubt about the relational

conception of equality is unfounded. It is not true that the relational conception,

as applied to society as a whole, must itself take a distributive form.

Once again, however, “internal” distributive questions are not at all

misplaced when thinking about a society of equals. Questions about the

distribution of social resources are of obvious importance for the members of

such a society. What binds the members to one another is their shared

participation in a common social framework, and they are especially concerned

with the way that framework structures the distribution of the resources that are

necessary for them to flourish. Here the egalitarian deliberative constraint is

once again relevant. In deliberating about the institutions and practices that

constitute the social framework, the members accept that the comparably

important interests of each of them should exert comparable influence on their

decisions. As in the case of personal relationships, this constraint exerts strong

pressure in favor of an egalitarian standard of distribution. For example, it is

difficult to see how a pure laissez-faire market system of the kind Rawls referred

to as “the system of natural liberty” could be reconciled with the egalitarian

constraint. Such a system allows the distribution of resources to be determined

to a very high degree by natural and social contingencies, such as people’s

natural attributes and the social circumstances into which they were born, which

themselves have no moral basis. This feature of the system is difficult to

reconcile with the egalitarian constraint, for it will inevitably compromise the

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ability of some people to satisfy their basic interest in pursuing a conception of

the good life, while allowing other people to prosper in ways that satisfy no

comparably important interest.

But if the distributive implications of the relational conception are to this

extent the same in the case of a society of equals as they are in the case of

egalitarian personal relationships, there are also important differences between

the two cases. And these differences suggest that the first of the two doubts

about the relational conception may get more of a purchase in the case of a

society of equals. The central point is that some of the reasons for doubting

whether the participants in egalitarian personal relationships would rely on any

fixed distributive formula do not apply to a society of equals. For example,

concerns about moralism and scorekeeping seem less significant in this case.

And for the members of a society of equals, who lack the kind of direct

deliberative access that the participants in an egalitarian personal relationship

have, an “output measure” like a distributive formula, indirect though it is, may

be the best way of judging whether the egalitarian deliberative constraint has

been satisfied. For them, the fact that resources have been distributed equally

may be the best available indicator that the comparably important interests of all

of them constrained the processes of social decision to the same extent.

In addition, the anonymity of the relations among the members of society

militates in favor of a clear public standard to govern the distribution of

resources. Without the extensive mutual knowledge that is available at the level

of personal relationships, the members of society are unable to engage in the

kind of sensitive individualized consideration of one another’s interests that such

knowledge makes possible. Instead, they need a clear public standard governing

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distribution: a standard they can all accept as an appropriate basis for judging

whether, on the bounded but vitally important range of issues that concern them

collectively as members, their shared egalitarian aspirations have been satisfied.

These considerations may serve to revive the first doubt about the

relational view of equality. Their tendency, it seems, is to suggest that the ideal

of a society of equals supports egalitarian distributive principles of some familiar

kind. But we still need to determine which principles in particular egalitarians

should accept, and that is precisely the question to which the distributive view is

addressed. The suspicion, then, is that there is no conflict between the

distributive and relational views; they are simply addressing different questions.

This suspicion is likely to be reinforced when one considers that the

egalitarian deliberative constraint seems to underdetermine the choice among

candidate distributive principles. As earlier observed, the deliberative constraint

exerts general pressure in the direction of egalitarian distribution, and it provides

a basis for rejecting non-egalitarian arrangements like the laissez-faire system of

natural liberty. It also provides strong grounds for opposing systems of

hereditary caste and privilege, and it vindicates the familiar complaint that we

do not live in a society of equals if our laws and policies are shaped to a

disproportionate degree by the interests of the rich and powerful. Beyond that, it

is not clear that the deliberative constraint provides a basis for selecting among

the different egalitarian distributive principles that have been proposed.

Although the participants in egalitarian personal relationships may not need

such a principle, a society of equals does need one: or, at any rate, it needs a

principled public standard to regulate distribution and provide a shared basis for

the justification of decisions made on behalf of the society as a whole. The

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inability of the egalitarian deliberative constraint to determine such a principle

seems to confirm that it provides no alternative to the distributive conception.

I draw a different conclusion from the fact that the deliberative constraint

underdetermines the choice among candidate distributive principles. Recall that

the deliberative constraint is only one dimension of the broader relational ideal,

the ideal of a relationship among equals. If it is unclear whether a given

principle is compatible with the deliberative constraint, then the next question is

whether the principle is consistent with the broader ideal. And if two different

distributive principles both seem compatible with the deliberative constraint,

then the question is whether either of them coheres better than the other with the

idea of living together as equals. These are practical questions in the sense that,

in order to answer them, we must consider what it would actually be like to

carry on human relationships on the terms specified in the proposed principles.

Suppose, for example, that there is disagreement about whether or not

hedonistic act-utilitarianism is compatible with the deliberative constraint. One

side maintains that it is not, since hedonistic utilitarianism would permit a

person’s fundamental interests to be sacrificed in order to maximize aggregate

welfare. In such a case, this side argues, the interests of the person who

undergoes the sacrifice are not exerting the same influence on social decision as

the comparable interests of those who are not sacrificed. The other side argues,

however, that the deliberative constraint is satisfied even in this case, because the

fundamental interests of the person who undergoes the sacrifice are being

assigned exactly the same weight in the overall hedonistic calculus as the

comparable interests of others. It is simply this person’s bad fortune that his

interests are outweighed while theirs are not.

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On a relational view, the way to make progress in resolving this

disagreement is to consider which side’s position can be more readily reconciled

with the broader ideal of a society of equals. We saw earlier that, in such a

society, members have a reciprocal commitment to treat one another with

respect. They view one another as possessing the entitlements and

responsibilities associated with full-fledged agency. No member is seen as

possessing any more or less authority than the other members, except by virtue

of a division of responsibility that all can accept, and each member sees the other

members as entitled to participate fully and equally in determining the future

course and character of their shared relationship. According to a relational view,

the important question is whether utilitarian aggregation is compatible with this

ideal of society. This is not merely a question of logical consistency but also a

question about the human implications of living together on utilitarian terms.

Once the question is framed in this way, it seems clear to me, though I won’t try

to argue the point here, that an unrestricted principle of utilitarian aggregation is

incompatible with the ideal of a society of equals.

6. Deeper Differences between the Distributive and Relational Views

Still, even the broader ideal may not fully determine the choice among

candidate distributive principles. But this is not an objection to the relational

view nor does it show that view to be normatively inert. Instead, it points to two

deeper differences between the distributive and relational views. First, as we

have seen, the relational view cannot be spelled out without reference to other

values. According to this view, equality is a complex ideal whose distinctively

egalitarian aspects cannot be identified, nor their appeal appreciated,

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independently of their connections with the other values, such as reciprocity and

respect, that also help to define the ideal. This marks a subtle but significant

contrast with the distributive view, which takes the normative content of the

concept of equality to be located simply in the idea of an equal division, and

appeals to other goods or values, such as welfare or resources or status or

opportunity, only to determine the things to which the idea of an equal division

should be applied. To be sure, the choice among these candidate equalisanda

raises issues of principle concerning the role of values such as responsibility,

liberty, and desert in determining the distributive implications of equality.

Nevertheless, the idea that equality requires an equal division of something is

common ground among versions of the distributive view that differ on these

issues and so accept different equalisanda. They all take the normative content

of the concept of equality to be exhausted by the idea of a division of some

“currency” into equal amounts. In this sense, the distributive view, unlike the

relational view, treats equality as a normatively autonomous value.

The second, complementary difference between the two views concerns

the relevance of equality for questions of distributive justice. Both views agree

that, while equality is one of the values that helps to fix the content of justice, it is

justice rather than equality that provides the ultimate normative standard for

assessing distribution. But consider again the remark of Cohen’s that I quoted

earlier. Cohen’s position is that there is some currency of which justice requires

people to have equal amounts, at least to the extent that this is not prohibited by

the values that compete with equality in fixing the requirements of justice. This

implies that equality alone suffices to give us a distributive formula, albeit one

whose application may at times be limited because of conflicts with other values.

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It follows that, in addition to being normatively autonomous, equality is also

distributively self-sufficient. Not only is its normative content exhausted by the

idea of an equal division – by the idea there is something “people should have

equal amounts of” – but, in addition, equality is capable all on its own of

generating a presumptively authoritative principle of distribution, albeit one that

may have to give way if, from the standpoint of justice, other conflicting values

trump equality in some cases. Once again, the relational conception takes a

different view. Not only do other values enter into the definition of equality, so

that equality is not normatively autonomous, but, in addition, equality so

understood need not by itself yield any fully determinate principle for regulating

the distribution of resources, not even a presumptive or prima facie one.

Although some candidate principles will be incompatible with the ideal of a

society of equals, that ideal may not fully determine the choice of a single

principle. This is unsurprising, according to the relational view, for there is no

reason to expect equality to be distributively self-sufficient. The regulative

principles governing distribution are the principles of distributive justice, and

those principles are answerable to a range of values, of which equality is just one.

None of these values need determine even a prima facie principle of distribution

on its own. In Rawls’s representative formulation, the principles of justice

specify the fair terms of cooperation for free and equal persons. This does not

mean that we first establish what principles of distribution are required by

equality and then ask to what extent the “competing” values of fairness,

freedom, and cooperation restrict the application of that egalitarian principle. It

means that justice is the virtue that tells us how the distribution of resources

should be regulated so as jointly to accommodate all of these values. This is not

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to deny that distributions can be assessed as more or less egalitarian in some

purely arithmetic sense. It is not, for example, to deny that we can use the Gini

coefficient to measure income inequality. It is rather to assert that equality as a

value, considered on its own and without reference to the other values that bear

on justice, need not yield a fully determinate distributive principle that enjoys

even prima facie authority.

It is tempting to conclude from this that the bearing of equality on issues

of distributive justice is weaker on the relational view than it is on the

distributive view. This would be a mistake. Consider, for example, the well-

known criticisms of various “luck-egalitarian” principles as having unacceptably

harsh or demeaning implications in some cases.8 One reply by defenders of luck-

egalitarianism is to say that these criticisms do not show that it provides the

wrong account of distributive equality, only that equality may be overridden by

other values in some cases. From a relational perspective, however, this reply

misses the distinctively egalitarian character of the criticisms. The harshness of

unadorned luck-egalitarian principles is a reason for thinking that such

principles are incompatible with the ideal of a society of equals, so that they are

ruled out as unjust on specifically egalitarian grounds. Rather than speaking for

luck-egalitarian principles, albeit not decisively, equality speaks decisively

against them. Here it is the relational view rather than the distributive view that

has clearer implications for justice.

If what I have been saying is correct, then the first doubt about the

relational conception can be allayed even as it applies to the case of a society of 8 See, for example, the classic papers by Elizabeth Anderson, “What is the Point of Equality?” Ethics 109 (1999): 287-387, and Jonathan Wolff, “Fairness, Respect, and the Egalitarian Ethos,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 29 (1998): 97-122.

36

equals. The relational conception understands the bearing of equality on issues

of distribution very differently than does the distributive conception. In

assessing a candidate distributive principle, the distributive conception will lead

us to ask whether that principle has correctly identified the currency of which

people should have equal amounts, whereas the relational conception will lead

us to ask whether the principle sets out plausible terms for regulating the

relations among the members of a society of equals. Although the general

tendency of the relational conception is to support strong limits on allowable

economic inequalities understood in purely arithmetic terms, and although the

relational conception confirms the need for a public set of principles to regulate

distribution, it insists that the requisite principles are given by justice and not by

equality. Equality by itself need not determine a distributive principle with even

presumptive authority. It is not normatively autonomous nor need it be

distributively self-sufficient. Although it is conceivable that the same

distributive principles will be selected no matter which conception of equality

one begins with, there is no reason to expect this and offhand it seems unlikely.

So if we wish to investigate the content of distributive justice, it matters which of

these conceptions of equality we accept.

7. Conclusion

As I said earlier, my sympathies lie for the most part with the relational

conception. However, I have provided little in the way of direct argument in its

favor. My aims have been more modest. I have tried to show two things. The

first is that the relational conception is an independent conception of equality,

which is not reducible to a version of the distributive conception. The second is

37

that it makes a difference which of these two conceptions we accept. If we accept

the distributive conception, we will see equality as a value that is essentially

concerned with distribution and which, on its own, generates a distributive

formula with presumptive authority. We will think it important to identify that

formula, which we may see as providing the core of “an egalitarian conception of

justice.” If we accept the relational conception, by contrast, we will see equality

as a broad practical ideal governing the structure of human relationships, an

ideal which itself draws on a variety of other values and which has a clear

bearing on questions of distribution but does not yield determinate principles of

distribution in isolation from other values. We will think it important to develop

this ideal across a broad front. Insofar as we are concerned with social and

political philosophy in particular, we will think it important to identify the kinds

of practices and institutions we would have to create, and the kinds of attitudes

and dispositions we would have to possess, in order for us to live in a genuine

society of equals.