“Nihil est tam inaequale quam aequalitas ipsa.”
Nothing is so unequal as equality itself.
(Pliny the Elder)
Equality has established itself as the great rallying cry of the modern age — the symbolic banner under which civil, social, and political battles are waged. It embodies a noble aspiration: a fairer, more inclusive, more humane society.
Yet in the shift from principle to ideology, from operative criterion to unquestionable dogma, equality has assumed the character of a contemporary myth.
And a myth, by its very nature, is not subject to scrutiny. It is not debated: it is celebrated. It is not problematised: it is repeated, invoked, defended. Thus, equality today is more often believed in than practised, more proclaimed than realised. It is frequently mistaken for justice, as if the two were interchangeable — when in truth, they represent fundamentally different logics.
Formal equality implies treating everyone the same.
Justice, by contrast, in its substantive sense, requires treating each person according to their specific circumstances: their merits, their needs, their responsibilities, their context.
Justice demands discernment. Equality tends toward uniformity. A fair distribution is never perfectly symmetrical: it requires measure, proportion, and a complex understanding of human reality.
This gap between equality and justice gives rise to a series of modern paradoxes.
To give everyone the same, when starting points are vastly unequal, does not produce fairness — it risks perpetuating, or even exacerbating, existing inequalities.
It is the illusion of apparent fairness that displaces the substance of real justice.
Formal equality, when applied without sensitivity to context, can generate new forms of injustice — all the more insidious for being cloaked in the reassuring garb of fairness.
Pliny the Elder grasped this paradox long before the birth of modern democracies.
His aphorism — “nihil est tam inaequale quam aequalitas ipsa” — is not a display of cynicism, but a profound observation: treating everyone identically may mean ignoring essential differences among individuals, and thus perpetuating hidden injustices.
Modernity, in elevating equality to the status of an absolute principle, runs the risk of losing sight of the true essence of justice: the capacity to distinguish, to recognise asymmetry, to act not through simplification, but through understanding.
In the name of uniformity, complexity is lost.
And so, what began as a liberating ideal can — if not carefully guarded — become a new form of moral conformism.
A secular religion, composed of proclamations and rhetorical rituals, which, rather than correcting injustice, conceals it beneath the comforting veil of superficial parity.