By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Identifying the Host Property, Part 2

LATERALITY IS A SIGNIFICANT CRITERION of human equality. To repeat with what we ended with in our previous blog posting, Coons and Brennan insist that the convention of human equality presupposes "a moral order that the self can freely embrace or reject as an ideal and thereby determine the degree of its own moral perfection." In addition, this order "precedes positive law and consists of correct treatments of other rational persons (and reflexively of the self)." (p. 54).

Coons and Brennan identify three orders in which man participates: a descendent moral order, a lateral moral order, and an ascendant moral order. The descendent moral order involves man's relationship with the order of creation beneath him (self/beast). The lateral moral order involves man's relationship with another of his kind (self/other). The ascendant moral order involves man's relationship with the Creator (self/God). (Coons and Brennan ignore the moral order of men with creatures above him, i.e., angels.)

Three Moral Orders: Ascendant, Descendent, and Lateral

For the purposes of identifying human equality, Coons and Brennan focus on the lateral moral order. There is no human equality between God and man, nor is there human equality between man and beast. "The relation of human equality can be ascribed only to human choosers who live in conscious interdependence with other human choosers." (p. 55)

Coons and Brennan turn to Chapter 1 of the book of Genesis to explain this laterality criterion. Before the creation of Eve, the only duties Adam had were ascendant and descendent. Adam had a duty to God, and he had his limited duties to animals associated with his dominion over them. He had not duty to any fellow human for the simple reason that there was no such other. In the lateral order, man was alone. But there existed in man--there had been created in man by God--a potential for accepting the duties to the lateral order. This quality remained dormant, as it were; it needed to be awakened, roused.

[S]o long as this one man stood "alone," his moral relationships, both ascendant and descendent, remained purely unilateral. Adam's moral capacity was dressed up for some other affair to which as yet he had received no invitation.

(p. 56) The creation of Eve, and even more specifically, the encounter of Adam with Eve after her creation by God, his recognition of her, rouses Adam's latent potency with respect to this lateral order. More, this arousal is reciprocal, since Eve's potency is likewise awakened by this mutual encounter and recognition.

Each awakens the other's latent potential for a lateral and reciprocal morality. . . . The ascendant and descendent duties to God and the lower orders remain, but, ever after the more immediate issue is what to do about her--and about him. And eventual about them.

(p. 57) In a manner of speaking, all of us share in this reciprocal encounter. It is more than a historical event: "It is a metaphor for the universal experience of the other."

Adam and Eve from the Escorial Beatus (ca. 950)

All who reach rationality bear the mark of engagement with other moral beings. The encounter becomes what we have called a "source relation" for "recognition," which is the second important aspect of the tale; it is the specific effect of the encounter as it generates the self's consciousness of a new form of moral relation. . . . Recognition is the grasp of the reality of lateral obligation.

(p. 57) Coons and Brennan call the lateral obligation reciprocity, that is to say, it engenders the Golden Rule. "The encounter triggers the recognition of [the lateral morality] of reciprocity." (p. 57) In understanding the moral obligation of reciprocity, one must reject any notion of a bargain-morality. The lateral moral obligation, the obligation of reciprocity, arises independent of any promise or bargain (it is in fact the source of the binding nature of of any promise made to the other, and so it pre-exists any compact or covenant between men). One must also not understand this in terms of "rights." This lateral morality is preeminently one of "duty."

It is not in rights but in our awakened capacity for moral self-perfection that we hope and expect to find the host property of the relation of human equality. Hence we speak of the capacity for reciprocity only as the power to accept or reject and order of duties we owe to one another.

(p. 58) It is a fact we modern ignore as we seem to have been more-and-more rejecting our inherited conventions: we shall never become perfect by demanding our right against others. Quite the opposite, we shall become perfect by demanding that we abide by our duty to others. Accepting this duty to the other, engaging in the duty of reciprocity, abiding and in pursuing this responsibility that the encounter with others engenders, living the life of within the strictures of the lateral order is an important component of self-perfection. It is, indeed, the root of the second of Christ's two great commandments, and is like unto the first commandment which relates to the ascendant order: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Matt. 22:36) No one can say he loves God, and yet hate his brother. (1 John 4:20) The lateral order is thus inextricably intertwined with the ascendant order.

This capacity of the self to accept or reject the lateral moral order, to shoulder the duties attendant to reciprocity is what Coons and Brennan, by exploring the clues provided by convention, tentatively identify as the host property of human equality. The capacity of whether or not we accept the obligations stemming from the Golden Rule, that is to say the natural moral law, then, is what may be the basis of our human equality.

By Nature Equal: How Are Men Created Equal? Identifying the Host Property, Part 1

IN THEIR EXPLORATION OF THE CONCEPT OF EQUALITY Coons and Brennan first begin with an exploration of the Western conventional belief in "human equality." The underlying assumption in the process that Coons and Brennan engage in is that the conventional belief provides clues of the underlying reality of human equality. In other words, the deeply-held conventional belief is evidentiary of reality. "As we have stressed, convention generally is a probe in the direction of reality." (p. 46) Before they hunt down their prey, which is a workable notion of "human equality" derived from conventional belief and, by proxy, reality, however, Coons and Brennan "clarify the quarry." That is, they set forth certain boundaries or guide posts which they suppose the concept of human equality will have. These they gather from a sort of amalgam of empirical observation, common sense, and critical thinking on of the matter.

As discussed in our prior posting, Coons and Brennan maintain that human equality is a relation, and it connects two persons who share a unique, and important, characteristic. The equality must be double, so that what is shared is both equal in possession and in degree. This characteristic shared by two or human beings is what Coons and Brennan call the host property. It anchors the relation that is human equality at both ends. "The host is the foundation, which, in combination with another host, generates relation." (p. 43) It is, furthermore, the "generative property" of that relation. (p. 43). This is depicted schematically below.

Relationship between Host Properties and Relation

In their efforts to identify what that host property might be, Coons and Brennan suppose that this human equality, whatever it is, is viewed as important, and nothing trivial. This immediately excludes any single equalities, any sorts of properties that Rawls describes as "range properties," that is, properties that men share in over a certain "range," i.e., do not enjoy in the same degree, but over a range. Thus rationality, which is an important possible candidate, is immediately excluded. Men are not equal in reason to the same degree, but enjoy reason over a certain range: between the fool and the sage there is a large expanse. Excluded from possible candidates are those qualities that men have that are similar or those that on the average men have. Men have to have uniformly such host property. Also excluded are double equalities that pertain to limited groups. "What the convention requires is a double equality that holds for the mass of mankind." (p. 42) These requirements exclude any empirically-measured property. That is, the "host property" for equality will not be "detectable by scientific observation." (p. 43).

Coons and Brennan spend some time in clarifying the relationship between the host property and the relation it generates. This they feel they have to do because relations are viewed as less "real" than the host property. There is a tendency to view relations (e.g., fatherhood, ownership, marriage) as not having the same reality as characteristics or properties (e.g., reason, the ability to laugh).

How can we simultaneously maintain both the independent status of the relation and its importance? The answer seems plain enough. Any intelligible interpretation of "human equality" will need to implicate both the relation and the property that generates it.

(p. 44) Moreover, the relation may be causative of a host property. That is, once two subjects enter into a relation a host property may arise that did not previously exist. "Insofar as a particular relation has this generative effect, we call it a 'source relation.'" (p. 44) The source relation awakens a host property. It makes active what was, before the relation, merely potential. Therefore, Coons and Brennan are on the lookout for both source relations and that particular form of relation they wish to identify as being that of human equality.

In our search for the host property, we will therefore be dealing with two interacting but distinctive forms of relation: (1) those relations that help to generate the host property for human equality; and (2) the specific relations that is human equality

(p. 45) Coons and Brennan then propose five criteria "plainly interrelated and overlapping in content" that they identify in custom and usage: (1) Importance, (2) Goodness, (3) Laterality, (4) Singularity, and (5) Uniformity.

1. Importance. Human equality is a significant relation generated by the sharing of some important property.
2. Goodness. Human equality is a positive relation arising from the capacity of each rational self to work its own moral perfection through free submission to the real good.
3. Laterality. This order of the good embraced or rejected by the self consists of correct behaviors regarding other rational persons (and reflexively the self).
4. Singularity. The relation that is human equality is distinct from any relation of equality among humans that might be based upon a capacity to accept moral obligation toward other beings such as God or animals.
5. Uniformity. The capacity of rational humans to accept or reject lateral obligations is uniform both in possession and degree.

(p. 46) Coons and Brennan point out that whatever human equality is by convention, it appears to be a moral quality, one related to both will and reason, and one related to an approach to the good, though obviously not will and reason itself, since these vary among human beings. Yet both will and reason are "elements of the self that are necessary (though insufficient) for the host property." (p. 52-53) The presupposition that the "host property" will contain the element of reason raises a problem since it appears to exclude those who, from illness, accident, or age "never have, and never will, think and choose; and those who will have the opportunity to do so only if they are allowed to be born." (p. 53) But the convention would appear to encompass these human beings that, for whatever reason, are bereft of the possession of reason and will.

In terms of laterality, Coons and Brennan define that criterion thus:

Human equality presupposes a moral order that the self can freely embrace or reject as an ideal and thereby determine the degree of its own moral perfection; this order precedes positive law and consists of correct treatments of other rational persons (and reflexively of the self).

This or a similar conception is necessary to the intelligibility of conventional human equality.

(p. 54) What Coons and Brennan suggest here is that the convention of human equality is predicated upon a belief of a natural moral law. Without an objective moral order that exists before man passed his first law or founded first custom (i.e., the natural law), there is no grounds for human equality. This would further suggest (though Coons and Brennan do not suggest it in this part of the text), that rejection of the existence of the notion of the natural moral law will lead to the rejection of the convention of human equality. Without an objective moral order independent of human will and reason, there is no such thing as human equality. Our concept of human equality is born from this objective moral order. Thus moral relativism contradicts and threatens the very convention we have of human equality.

We will discuss at greater depth the criterion of laterality in our next 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.