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Justice is often thought to require that students receive educations that are, in some important sense, equal. I lay out, and raise questions about, an argument that seems to support this conclusion. The questions I raise about the argument suggest that what justice requires is not equality, but adequacy, of education. More specifically, I contend that justice demands that education be motivationally adequate. It must position students to appreciate and be moved by the intrinsic interest of the subjects they are studying and by the extrinsic rewards that come with age-appropriate mastery of them. I then argue that, if an education is to satisfy this condition, students must have reasonable faith that the educational system and society's distributive scheme satisfy robust standards of fairness. (Contains 7 notes.)

In CAPITAL in the Twenty-First Century, French economist Thomas Piketty analyzes wealth accumulation and inequality under advanced capitalism. Moralists and students of papal thought will need to come to grips with its argument, particularly since Pope Francis's Evangelii gaudium is said to have posed radical criticisms of economic inequality. This article puts Piketty into dialogue with Francis's critique of economic inequality by arguing, first, that Piketty uncovers the kinds of inequality of which Catholic social teaching must take account, and second, that Francis's work contains the resources needed to show the moral significance of Piketty's findings. The argument for this second conclusion shows what is and is not radical in Evangelii gaudium's treatment of economic inequality. Keywords CAPITAL in the Twenty-First Century, Catholic social teaching, economic inequality, Evangelii gaudium, Pope Francis, property-owning democracy, solidarity, Thomas Piketty, In 2013, two men who had been largely unknown outside their professional circles burst onto the global scene: Pope Francis and French economist Thomas Piketty. (1) So meteoric were their [...]