I categorically reject the presumption that egalitarianism, of whatever variety, is an ideal of any intrinsic moral importance. This emphatically does not mean that I am inclined generally to endorse or to be indifferent to prevailing inequalities, or that I oppose efforts to eliminate them. In fact, I support many such efforts. What leads me to support them, however, is not a conviction that equality of some kind is morally desirable for its own sake and that certain egalitarian goals are therefore inherently worthy. Rather, it is a more contingent and pragmatically grounded belief that in many circumstances greater equality of one sort or another would facilitate the pursuit of other socially desirable aims. So far as equality as such is concerned, I am convinced that it has no inherent or underived moral value at all.
(Harry Frankfurt, "Equality and Respect," Social Research 64 [Spring 1997]: 3-15, at 3 [endnote omitted])
