Two Concepts of Basic Equality

‘That all human beings are one another’s equals’ is generally taken to be the common basic, shared, premise of all contemporary political thought. This claim of ‘basic equality’ amongst human beings is supposed to be distinct from two other claims. First, it is intended to be distinct from the much more controversial claim of distributional equality. Secondly, it is distinct from its own basis. Basic equality denotes a normative property. The basis of basic equality, by contrast, is the non-normative property in virtue of which we have this normative property. According to this picture, therefore, within contemporary political thought we disagree bitterly about whether basic equality entails distributional equality, and if so what precisely is to be distributed. We also disagree about how to solve the difficult problem of what is the basis of our basic equality, if we believe it to be soluble at all. However, we all agree that all human beings are one another’s equals. This agreement forges the unity of contemporary political thought. It is the shared egalitarian plateau from whence all other arguments begin. In this paper, I shall argue that this unity is false. Our political thought is, in fact, deeply, and irrevocably, divided between at least two very different concepts of basic equality. They denote two very different meanings within the claim ‘That all human beings are one another’s equals’. And, whilst they are not in themselves logically inconsistent, they indicate two very different starting points for political thought. I shall call these concepts ‘Equal Worth’ and ‘Equal Authority’. Differentiating these two concepts is of great significance because it helps us identify the original source of many seemingly intractable disagreements within contemporary political thought, such as what is really driving the conflict between perfectionists and political liberals. In short, my call to arms can be summed up in the demand that political philosophers, never again, be allowed to claim ‘that all human beings are equals’ full stop. I demonstrate why they must be clear in what dimension they claim that we are equals – Worth or Authority (or perhaps something else). This is because it is upon this particular dimension that any argument culminating or beginning with the proposition of basic equality will always turn.