314 deep freedom
be lightened, the power of the past over the future diminished, and
prophecy enabled to speak more loudly than memory.
The principle of deep freedom
In the design of institutions, deep freedom has priority over any form
of equality of circumstance. Equality of opportunity is a fragmentary
aspect of deep freedom.
Freedom and equality may be shallow or deep. Th ey are shallow to
the extent that they take the established institutional structure for
granted and are understood and implemented within the limits of that
structure. Th ey are deep insofar as they advance through the reor ga ni-
za tion of that structure.
Deep freedom is therefore freedom, grasped and realized through
change of our institutions and practices: not just through a one- time
change but through a practice that can generate future, ongoing change
in the institutional order of society. Deep freedom is thus also freedom
as understood within the bounds of what I earlier described as the con-
ception of a free society. Th e idea of deep freedom develops through an
interplay between the conception of a free society and the institutional
arrangements required to make that conception real. Th e conception
informs the making of the institutional alternatives. Th e making of the
alternatives prompts us to enrich and revise the conception.
According to a belief widespread at the time that this book was writ-
ten, the distinction between the Left and the Right, between progres-
sives and conservatives in politics, is chiefl y a diff erence between the
relative weights that they give to equality and to freedom. Th e left ists or
progressives would be those who accord priority to equality, fairness,
or social justice; the conservatives or liberals (in the contemporary Eu-
ro pe an sense) those who put freedom fi rst. Th is set of identifi cations
results from a confusion between shallow and deep freedom or equal-
ity. It is, moreover, false to the history of progressive or left ist ideas. We
should reject it; it both reveals and reinforces a misguided direction in
practical politics as well as in po liti cal thought.
Almost universally, the liberals and socialists of the nineteenth cen-
tury viewed equality as an aspect of freedom. Th eir core commitment