Waldron on Basic Equality
Jeremy Waldron (New York University – School of Law) has posted Basic Equality on SSRN. Here is the abstract:
This
is a three-part study and defense of the idea of basic human equality.
(This is the idea that humans are basically one another’s equals, as
opposed to more derivative theories of the dimensions in which we ought
to be equal or the particular implications that equality might have for
public policy.) Part (1) of the paper examines the very idea of basic
equality and it tries to elucidate it by considering what an opponent
of basic human equality (e.g. a philosophical racist) might hold. It
explores the idea of there being no morally significant fundamental
divisions among humans (of the kind that some people insist on as
between humans and others animals). Part (2) considers whether basic
human equality must be based on some descriptive similarity among us
(naturalistic or metaphysical); it considers the positions of a number
of thinkers who have denied this. Part (3) considers John Rawls’s
conception of basic equality in terms of range properties. (Being in
Ohio is a range property; Columbus and Cincinnati are both equally in
Ohio even though even though Columbus is in the center of the state,
while Cincinnati is just over the river from Kentucky.) It explores the
application of this Rawlsian idea to the descriptive properties that
might be thought relevant to human equality. This three part paper is a
rather technical philosophical exploration. And it is just a beginning;
we need much more work on the idea of basic equality. Some of the
energy that has gone into discussions of equality as a policy aim (e.g.
in the Dworkin/Sen literature or in the literature surrounding Rawls’s
Difference Principle) needs to be devoted to this more fundamental
conception.
And from the paper:
The idea of a "range property"
should be understood as an intensional relation between properties. Instead of saying that R is a
range property if R is binary and there is a scalar property, S, such that R applies to a range of
cases covered by S, we say something like this:
RP*: R is a range property with respect to S if R is binary and there is a scalar
property, S, such that R applies to individual items in virtue of their being within a
certain range on the scale connoted by SThe advantage of this formulation is its emphasis on the point that the relation between R and S
is essential to the understanding of R.
And:
Suppose one were to emphasize something
like the capacity for reason as the relevant range property. One might deal with the case of
infants, not by expanding oneís notion of reason to include the mental operations of a month-old
baby, but by defining a relation between an infantís capacities (both actual and potential) and the
capacities indicated within the ambit of a somewhat narrower range property focused on mature
reason. This is what John Locke does in regard to reason. Locke says:
Children, I confess, are not born in this full state of Equality, though they are born to it.
Their Parents have a sort of Rule and Jurisdiction over them, when they come into the
World, and for some time after; but it is but a temporary one. … The Power, then, that
Parents have over their Children, arises from that Duty which is incumbent on them, to
take care of their Off-spring, during the imperfect state of Childhood. To inform the
Mind, and govern the Actions of their yet ignorant Nonage, till Reason shall take its
place, and ease them of that Trouble, is what the Children want, and the Parents are
bound to. … Thus we are born Free, as we are born Rational; not that we have actually the
Exercise of either: Age, that brings one, brings with it the other too. And thus we see how
natural Freedom and Subjection to Parents may consist together, and are both founded on
the same Principle.
Despite its complexity, an account like this is much more sensible than the sort of Peter Singer
approach which insists on asking, "What is the relevant difference in actual capacity between an
adult chimpanzee and a human infant (or a severely intellectually disabled human adult) in virtue
of which the human has more value and commands more respect than the chimpanzee?"
This is an important paper. It addresses a fundamental and thorny problem in political morality and normative legal theory–the fundamental basis for equality of persons or humans. Download it while its hot!
Source: Lawrence Solum
