1 1 What is Basic Equality? Christopher Nathan It is commonplace to claim that our norms depend on the idea that we are basic equals; that each person has the same fundamental worth or status. In a variety of places, writers refer to this idea of ‘basic equality’ as the central source of our social and political norms. The idea arises in the literatures on distributive justice, discrimination, rights, deliberative democracy, biomedical ethics, and other areas of applied ethics. Thus, we say that goods should be distributed more equally because people have the same basic status. We argue that people’s equality grounds the principle that each has the same rights to political representation. We oppose discrimination for the reason that it expresses a claim of superiority, not equality. And we claim that people have the same rights, and that it is just as wrong to kill one person as it is to kill another, because of people's equal value. In this chapter I will defend the thesis that a commitment to basic equality involves a commitment to a claim about the proper method of political theory, and that a denial of basic equality, thereby, can similarly involve a claim about method. This point is of consequence. It opens the logical space for a position that defends egalitarian prescriptions (equal political representation, non-discrimination, more equal distributions of goods, and so forth), without starting with basic equality. In section 5 I sketch out some such possibilities. In contrast, a denial of basic equality is sometimes proposed as an objection to some given equality-related prescriptions. For instance, one hears arguments to the effect, “We’re all different, and so egalitarian distributions of goods aren’t warranted, and nor are equal rights.” One version of this inference supposes that people’s basic inequality should be reflected directly in our norms. Another supposes that the only argument in favour of egalitarian prescriptions must depend