By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Identifying the Host Property, Part 3

SINGULARITY IS THE NEXT CRITERION that Coons and Brennan explore in their survey of the Western convention of human equality. Having tentatively identified the host property of human equality to be the capacity of the self to accept or reject the duty of the lateral moral order (the duty of reciprocity) that arises from man's encounter with another of his kind, Coons and Brennan explore whether this tentatively-identified host property is sufficiently singular or unique as to form the foundation of human equality. Whether the host property is sufficient singular to meet the criterion of singularity is closely related to whether it meets the criterion of importance.

Coons and Brennan perceive the convention of human equality to spring from a certain dignity in man, one that is derived or is based upon a "discrete metaphysical status." (p. 58) Either the relation itself, or the host property from which that relation springs, must relate to a unique metaphysical feature in man if we are to be true to the Western convention.

Creation of Eve by Michelangelo
Sistine Chapel

Before his encounter with Eve, Adam had the power of moral commitment: he had moral duties to God, and he had some attenuated moral obligation to creation arising from his dominion over them. Following his encounter with Eve, however, this moral capacity in man underwent a radical awakening, a transformation. It was as if Adam was a complete man only in potentia, potentially, until his encounter with Eve, whereafter he became complete man in actum, in act. The transformation is so fundamental one can say that, in a manner of speaking, in Adam's encounter with Eve, humanity was born. It was not good for man to be alone, the Scriptures say God said within himself, implying that man's good required that there be more than one of his kind and that there be lateral obligations that arise from such encounter with another of his kind. Thus, this relation of Adam and Eve is a source relation because it is the cause or source of a host property. It would appear that the relation between Adam and Eve is what gives rise to the host property which Coons and Brennan have tentatively identified, that being the capacity of the self to accept or reject the duty of the lateral moral order (the duty of reciprocity) since it did not exist but in potentia before such relation. (pp.44, 59) This relation in fact meets the singularity criterion that Coons and Brennan had, at the outset of their investigation, set forth as an indicium of the host property of human equality. It is distinct from the ascendant and descendent moral orders, however important they may be.

[T]he relation of mutually conscious persons is a metaphysical novum. It literally springs into existence with the encounter [between Adam and Eve]. . . . [W]e have . . . [through Adam] encountered the homo sapiens next door and in her discovered a different kettle of moral fish.

(p. 60) Coons and Brennan insist that this source relation that gives rise to the host property of reciprocity presupposes an objective moral order, one independent of the will of Adam, that is, one independent of the will of man. Man is not the measure of the lateral order, but must discover it, must recognize it, and must conform to it.

Here arises a problematic. With increasing frequency in the West, the notion of a preexisting and objective moral order has been rejected. We are increasingly skeptical, increasing relativistic in our ethic. The rejection of an objective moral order is endemic in our academia, our intelligentsia, our media, and our political and legal institutions. There is a disintegration of our moral fiber, of our received conventions. As such, the convention upon which Coons and Brennan rely to identify human equality is seriously threadbare. Even if we still tenuously hold on to the convention that such an objective moral order exists, a "preinstitutional source" of morality, such a hold is accidental, as we have lost our theory of such an order. (p. 63) We have forgotten the natural law. It is as we have become Kakure Kirishitan: over time our Christ appears more and more like Buddha, our Mary more and more like Kannon, and our Pater noster sounds more and more like a Buddhist chant. Only instead of replacing Christianity with Buddhism, Christianity has been displaced with secularism, materialism, relativism, individualism, all products of a modernity that has sloughed of its Christian past with greater and greater relish and greater aggressiveness. Did the Christian faith leave the Kakure Kirishitan, and if it did, when? After so many planks of different wood have been replaced from the original, when does the Ship of Theseus lose its original character? When is it no longer the same ship? How much of our original convention remains? Are we as a society no longer Christian? No longer Western? Are we as a society no longer believers in an objective moral order? Are we as a society all relativists, all skeptics? Has that critical point been reached? It is a matter of debate.

If one concludes that belief in a natural and/or revealed order of morality is no longer typical, then for that individual our conclusion that Americans believe the convention defining human equality to be a statement of truth is simply wrong. Indeed, even the shared definition of equality could have evaporated along with the belief in an unchosen morality--another victim of modernity

(p. 64) Whether supported by the consensus of convention or not is ultimately immaterial as to whether this objective moral exists. If the consensus of convention no longer supports that there is a reality beyond mere convention, but the consensus of convention is now that all is convention, that says nothing about the real. It simply means that our convention is no longer reflective of, and, like an old and feeble man has become blinded to, the reality that is out there.

Coons and Brennan then recapitulate the results of their exploration before they turn to the last criterion of the host property that they have identified as the likely foundation of human equality: that is the criterion of uniformity.

If it exists, human equality will be a relation springing from the capacity to commit to the lateral good. In exercising this choice individuals assign meaning to themselves, forging a principal portion of their identity. Thus the specific capacity to accept or reject the search for the content of our obligation to others confronts us as both an opportunity and fate. It is opportunity insofar as the freedom to seek correct behavior makes moral self-perfection an option; it is fate insofar as that choice either to honor to to flout this obligation is inescapable. Each of us determines whether the dignity of others shall be honored; in so doing we settle our own identity. This capacity is the obvious host for the relation of equality, but only if it satisfies the final criterion of uniformity

(p. 65)

That will be the exploration of our next blog posting.

By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Definitions

THE EQUALITY OF MAN IS A MODERN commonplace, a deep-seated, deeply-held convention among all of us in the Western world: indeed, perhaps it is something that extends universally, in various degrees, among men as a fundamental moral truth, one may almost say a self-evident one. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" rolls off our tongues as gingerly as the Twelve Tables rolled off Cicero's, or the adhān off the lips of an Arabic muezzin. Pace Jefferson and his mellifluous Declaration of Independence that continues to inspire with its rhetoric and its doctrine, that men are created equal is not, in a strict philosophical sense, self-evident, i.e., a fact that requires no proof. As the German jurist Arnold Brecht put it:

Sometimes the eighteenth-century argument that all men . . . are "born equal" is still heard today in the somewhat more precise form that . . . all men are by birth "in the same plight." . . . This [argument] needs proof in order to be scientifically acceptable. It is not self-evident. On the contrary, it obviously needs correction or modification, for it would prove much more than merely the equality of human beings: all animals are in the same plight from birth.

(p. 38, quoting Arnold Brecht, Political Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959, 309-11)) Human equality would appear to be a moral truth; it does not appear to be an empirical truth at all, but a spiritual or philosophical or moral one, one beyond the pale of one-dimensional materialism. "Moral powers are nonempirical." (p. 38) Science shall never convince us of man's fundamental equality; its only suggestions are, as we shall see, constrained by their materialism, trivial, and so unable to answer the question in any satisfactory sense. Modernity's insistence on human autonomy, on existential self-definition, has made the problem of discovering what it is that makes us equal even worse. If we have the power to define who we are (existence over essence as these folks insist) do we share anything at all that may be said to be equal? Yet we insist, with a fervor and zeal akin to faith, and we maintain and declare, no less than the Jew his Shema Yisrael or the Muslim his Shahada, that men are fundamentally equal. And if one were to say in public that men are not equal, but by nature unequal, he would be treated as a pariah, right next to a Holocaust denier.

But the problem persists: How many of us, despite our mumbling of this credo, can state or express in what this fundamental equality consists? Is it reason? That is the most frequent candidate. But are we not unequal in the gifts of reason? How can something that is so manifestly variant be the source for equality? Why should an Einstein be treated equal to a man with a lobotomy? What is often even more inexplicable, is that those most insistent on equality of result (those who push for prescriptive or normative equality), such as the liberal egalitarians and relativists like John Rawls and Ronald Dworkin, have the least to say about what it is that makes men equal and the least justification for their leftist political agendas. What they say is either banal or is simply uncritically assumed. In some cases, they admit they are still looking for that elusive descriptive equality upon which their prescriptive political policies supposedly rely. (John Rawls famously wrote "we still need a natural basis for equality." Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 508 (p. 24))

And then there are the outright deconstructionists, modern sophists and cynics, who deconstruct, that is destroy, by prying, prying, and prying shared values until nobody believes anything anymore.

Guided by a fascinating book entitled By Nature Equal: The Anatomy of a Western Insight (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999) by Berkeley Professor John E. Coons and Villanova Law School Professor Patrick M. Brennan, we shall explore two men's answer to this important question. What is it that we mean when we say that all men and women are equal? They seek the answer, not in sociological, political, or empirical, or idealistic ways. They seek, and they offer, an ontological, philosophical and universal definition of what we mean by human equality.

Professor John E. Coons

We shall spend this first blog posting addressing some important distinctions and definitions.

First of all, we must come to terms with the notion of relation. Coon and Brennan insist: "Equality is, indeed, some kind of relation." (p. 8) What is a relation? It is something real (that is something more than just a word, something extra-mental) that arises only between two or more persons. If there is just one of us, there is no relation between us and another, and it is senseless to talk of equality. One cannot be equal with himself, he must be equal in reference to another. That is why equality, if it exists, must be a relation. Relations of all kinds exist. For example, if I become a father, then there is a relation between my daughter or son and me that did not exist before I became a father. If I become the owner of a house, a develop a relation with a thing that did not exist before. This relation of father-daughter, or of homeowner, is something real, something more than a concept in one's mind. Similarly, there is a relation between me and every other human being, a relation of equality. Though it is something different and other than the ontological persons between which it exists, a relation is nevertheless something real, a tertium quid, a third thing between two or more persons. One has to accept the existence of a relation, despite the fact that it eludes classification, resists analysis, and even (among the philosophical nominalists such as William of Ockham) belief as something real. And yet, Friar Bill, it moves, e pur si muove!

With respect to the term equality, we must first distinguish between two general types of equality: descriptive equality and prescriptive or normative equality. The difference between these two kinds of equality is perhaps the difference between is and ought. Descriptive equality is an equality that is among men. Coons and Brennan adopt a definition by Peter Westen for descriptive equality when they define it as the "comparitive relationship that obtains between two or more distinct persons or things by virtue of their having been jointly measured by a relevant standard of comparison and found to be undistinguishable by that standard." (p. 24) (citing Peter Westen, Speaking of Equality: An Analysis of the Rhetorical Force of "Equality" in Moral and Legal Discourse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 39) On the other hand, prescriptive equality attempts to answer the question of how humans ought to be, not how humans are. Thus, when people talk of equal distribution (such as when then-Presidential candidate Barack Obama told "Joe the Plumber" "I think when you spread the wealth around, it's good for everybody") or affirmative action so as to equalize for past or alleged past injustices or grievances we are dealing with prescriptive or normative equality. The only equality we are interested in here is descriptive equality. What relation is it that exists that makes us equal? Not what can we do to make us equal (If such a thing is even desirable)? We are not interested at this time in going down the path of egalitarianism or its justification, its merits or its demerits.

When it comes to descriptive equality we must also distinguish between false, trivial, double, and human equalities.

Professor Patrick McKinley Brennan

A claimed equality is false when it is an attribution that is made to an individual, isolated self, a singleton, an autonomous individual outside of any relation. This follows from the view that equality is a relation. There must be two or more persons of which equality speaks for it to be true; otherwise, it is false. Thus, the statement: "Equality is the capacity of an individual for reasoned choice" (p. 10) This is a statement of false equality because it is not made in reference to another person.

A claimed equality is trivial when it refers to a property that is possessed (or that is not possessed) by, or is common to, two or more persons without reference to degree of such possession. We may say that two people possess reason, or wealth, or any other quality or thing. While these are statements of equality they end up being trivial because it turns out that, more important than the invariant quality of possession, is the variable degree of possession, and the degree of possession is almost always is unequal. It is the proverbial tail (equal possession) wagging the dog (unequal degree of possession). This means that the fact of possession is trivial in comparison to the degree of possession and so becomes trivial as an expression of equality. So when we say that the village idiot and Albert Einstein both possess reason and therefore are equal, it is manifest that the degree of reason varies wildly between them to the point where the difference in degree in reason between them pales the common possession of reason and so the shared or common relation is trivial. The equality between them is likewise trivial. To be adequate as a description of equality, the quality or capacity we reference must be one that is equal in both possession and degree. That is, it must be a double equality of possession and degree, and not a single equality of possession alone. Which brings us to our next definition. But before we go there, we need to pause and address a popular error among liberals in the issue of descriptive equality.

Liberals (or perhaps just good Kantians) such as John Wilson, or, more notoriously, Supreme Court Associate Justice Anthony Kennedy have often pointed to the asserted ability of man to be autonomous as the source for descriptive equality. Thus men are equal because, in the words of John Wilson, "every man has an equal ability to frame his own world view," a claim that is "a factual one." Or in the words of Associate Justice Kennedy in his opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey:

These matters, involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment ["equal protection"]. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the State.

Can such moral relativism, such extreme autonomy be the basis for human equality? The short answer (assuming such moral relativism even exists or makes sense) is "no" because the descriptive equality asserted is a false equality. It is a false equality because it relates to an individual equality, not a relational one. Moreover, even if somehow re-written so as to be relational (e.g., the common possession of all individuals to define the good for themselves), it is a trivial equality because it is a single equality and not double. It is an equality the degree of which varies among men:

If rational humans were free to invent the terms of morality, there would, indeed, be a form of equality existing among them. Unfortunately it would be a wholly trivial equality . . . . [Such an equality] among autonomous selves is one of possession only; it is a single, not a double equality. Indeed, if humans all have this crucial property--this capacity to justify a choice simply by making it--they will have it in wildly varying degrees. . . and these abilities are dramatically variant. If value is self-determined, those who by nature or circumstance are relatively more creative in devising alternatives will have a wider set of life options. Humans will not be equal, but unequal.

(p. 30) The homosexual libertine, who answers to no one but himself, will be invariably possess more of this autonomy than a mother who takes care of her household of five children. (Here one sees how perverse it is to build a notion of equality on an alleged autonomy to define one's morality. Such a notion rewards the vicious and the selfish and punishes the virtuous and the selfless.)

A double equality is an equality that is shared or possessed by two persons in the same degree. Thus we have a relation of equality both of possession and degree. Two Olympians who tie for first place in the 100 meter dash have a relation of double equality in the relation of swiftness, as they possess the property in equal degree. While such double equalities are common among limited persons or groups (for example humans with an IQ of 100), they are often inadequate when applied to the race as a whole (where there are humans with an IQ of below 100 and humans with an IQ of above 100). Often, a double equality can be adduced among all humans that is trivial (e.g., that all men have an X chromosome).

Human equality is a special form of double equality that Coons and Brennan seek to find, and claim that they do find in their book. Ultimately, they identify human equality as the "relation arising from the uniform capacity of rational persons to perfect themselves morally by committing to the search for the real lateral good."(p. 13)

This definition of equality will be the focus of our next few blog postings.