The Basis for Equality (The Social Contract Part 5)
How are we equal?
TD;DR: Many have proposed their own justifications for fundamental human equality, although all are insufficient in some way. Yet equality is still not a useful fiction, as others have argued. What we have in equal capacity is our conscious freedom—our experience of agency. This equal freedom ensures that we are equal when bargaining in the social contract.
“Equality” as a term gets tossed around a lot. It’s often assumed but hardly analyzed and consequently misunderstood. For most of human history, fundamental human equality was viewed as non-sensical. Clearly, people are physically different. And many cultures have argued that there were significant cognitive or spiritual differences between people, both within and between groups.
Aristotle provided the intellectual justification for these inegalitarian intuitions through his concept of natural slavery. However, it wasn’t until the Enlightenment that there was a secular argument for equality between humans, although there was a notable delay in its implementation.
While people have different conceptions of what constitutes equal treatment or what type of equality people are due (legal treatment, opportunities, welfare, etc.), this article will discuss the grounds of human equality. Are we truly equal? If so, how? And what consequences does this type of equality have?
Proposed Basis of Equality
Thinkers have proposed many justifications for human equality. Yet each has been as unsatisfactory as the last.1
One of the pioneers of modern political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes, argued that it is human rationality and homicidal capacity that justifies equality. Since we are rational, self-interested beings who don’t want to die, and everyone has the capacity to kill us (even if we are Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson, anyone can kill us in our sleep), everyone should be treated as an equal in the social contract.
However, this explanation provides only a pragmatic reason for equality. It’s motivated by not wanting to be killed rather than recognizing a real, fundamental characteristic held equality by all. Philosophers have tried to find a justification for equality that meets this latter requirement.
Many philosophers have taken a capabilities approach. For example, Immanuel Kant argued that human equality rested on our moral emotions and ability to act on principle. Others, like John Rawls and Amartya Sen, have similarly argued that equality derives from our rationality and moral powers.
Of course, trying to justify equality on capabilities that exist in degrees is more of a justification for inequality. People differ in their intellectual abilities and moral capabilities. And wouldn't we want to provide privileged positions to the most moral and rational people? While some have tried (or, more appropriately, bent over backwards) to argue that our unequal capabilities justify equality, they haven't been successful.2
Some have argued that we are equal above a certain threshold of capabilities. Yet any threshold cutoff would likely be arbitrary. And our capabilities only exist in relative values. It doesn’t make sense for someone to have X amount of absolute intelligence or morality. There is only intelligence or morality relative within a group.
Additionally, justifying normative equality based on our moral faculties is circular. “We should morally consider others as equals since we are moral people that view others as equals.” There has to be something that makes our sense of equality moral.
Others, like Bernard Williams, argued that equality derives from an equal transcendental quality—something above any material characteristic. This may be in the form of equal dignity or an equal entitlement to respect. Yet this notion of equality is not helpful. It has no empirical basis, making it unfalsifiable (although Christian philosophers are still comfortable).
It also fails to set empirical boundaries that determine what beings exist on this equal plane. What we are equal in has to be something descriptive and morally relevant.
With all these explanations for egalitarianism proving inadequate, some have thrown up their hands and believe equality to be just a social preference.
Equality as a Fiction
Many are unsatisfied with these arguments for foundational egalitarianism and have instead taken the “equality nihilist” route. Equality nihilists argue that our concepts of equality (or inequality) in status are only social conventions, with none having any more inherent descriptive truth nor normative primacy over any other. Two examples of equality nihilists include Yuval Noah Harari and Plato.
In his 2011 book “Sapiens,” Harari argues that the principle that all men are created equal, as stated in the declaration of independence, is only a fiction. The idea of equality has only religious overtones rather than descriptive truth. He states that:
Just as people were never created, neither, according to the science of biology, is there a ‘Creator’ who ‘endows’ them with anything. There is only a blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose, leading to the birth of individuals. ‘Endowed by their creator’ should be translated simply into ‘born’.
According to this view, universal human equality is only a Christian principle that happened to be adopted by a majority Christian nation. And just as no religion can claim superiority over another, no concept of equality can either. Harari argues that equality is a good convention, but it’s still just a convention.
Plato, meanwhile, argued that society should seek to justify inequalities between people, namely between the philosophers-kings, guardians, and workers, through a noble lie.
Plato’s noble lie is that people’s metaphysical souls are fundamentally unequal, with the wise rulers having souls of gold, the brave warriors having souls of silver, and the industrious workers having souls of iron.
As the name implies, the noble lie is only a fiction meant to achieve Plato’s ideal hierarchical political regime. The idea of metallic souls isn’t true, only instrumental. Although some who recognize human differences in capabilities may find some merit in this “lie.”
However, the standard to weigh either Harari’s or Plato’s preferred fiction isn’t their truth value or moral status, but their usefulness.
Under this instrumental standard, our conception of human equality is only a social convention and subject to change based on pragmatic considerations. Equality nihilism says that both claims of egalitarianism and hierarchy are equally valid (that is, equally unsubstantiated). They are only fictions—products of human construction—and cannot be judged as inherently right or wrong based on any factual or moral standard.
Equality nihilism may sound appealing to those who can’t force themselves to believe the flawed justifications presented for equality. However, there is another, stronger rationale that justifies the inherent equality between people: equal freedom.
Equal Freedom
The freedom I am referring to here is agency freedom—being consciously aware of one’s own agency. And, of course, freedom isn’t some morally arbitrary characteristic. It’s the foundation of morality. This type of equality matters.
Kant’s notion of our ability to live up to our principles (what I call autonomous freedom) as the basis of equality is fairly similar. Yet equal agency freedom is about beings’ phenomenological sensation of free choice (what I call agency freedom).
This concept of equal freedom has advantages over the proposed justifications of equality described above. First, freedom does not exist on a continuum. It does not mean anything to say someone is "more conscious" or "more free" than another. It's like saying someone is "more alive" than another (which could be true metaphorically but not literally).3 Either a being is alive, or it is not. Similarly, either a being feels free, or it doesn't. Freedom is a binary.
Second, this conscious sense of agency is an objective state. It’s neither transcendental nor agent-relative. Whether a being experiences freedom is only a descriptive fact of nature. A being either does or does not have a sense of agency. And just as we can determine whether a being is alive or inanimate, we may be able to do the same to determine if it also has a conscious sense of agency.
Freedom’s objective status is also why valuing one’s own freedom requires valuing freedom generally (the basis for morality). This is no justification for distinguishing one objective property from another.
All we have when entering into the social contract is freedom, a feature we all have in equal measure. And this equal property we all contribute is what makes us all equal bargaining participants. And given that none of our descriptive, unequal characteristics would enter into the bargaining stage of the social contract, we all bargain with equal power.
Yet this is as far as our fundamental equality takes us. While we are equal in the bargaining stage, any resulting equality would be determined by what the social contract requires.
This may be equality in legal standing, opportunities, welfare, or something else. But what’s important is that this equality isn’t required by something fundamental in humans but by the social contract. We are only equal in initial bargaining power.
While I will argue that our bargaining equality would not likely lead to a social contract requiring strict economic equality between all parties, the contract would likely require some type of welfare state, as I will soon argue.
Now that the initial bargaining stage is set, we can now ask how the parties will go about creating the social contract.
Waldron (2017) reviews different arguments made on behalf of equality and shows each of their inadequacies, instead arguing that equality has no singular basis.
See the discussion of range properties in Waldron (2017).
Waldron (2017) pg. 116 considers consciousness as a basis for equality but doesn’t properly pursue it.