From the playground bully to Rameses the Great, it is striking how freely, and with what zeal, we indulge the spirit of inequality. Having experienced unequal relationships of many kinds, we do not wonder at the immense range of sizes, shapes, and, of course, colors inequality has taken through the ages. By force of personality, by brute force, by natural law and divine right – not to mention hard work and a winning smile – everywhere we turn, some people are held up as better than the rest. There may be no one alive today who has not known institutionalized social hierarchy; perhaps no human has ever lived unaffected by the thought that one was superior to another.

It is hard to pin down just what we ought to mean by “egalitarian” (and so also with “inequality,” “hierarchy,” “ranking”), but a society of full equality may be an ideal never realized. Quite likely there has everywhere been a tendency for some people to accrue favor, prestige, and a recognized superiority. But while we can all attest to the weight of informal personal distinctions, hierarchy that derives from the ongoing structure of society is of a very different character, and from this has arisen one of the most enduring controversies of our intellectual tradition.