by Tim Sommers
“Mankind was first taught to stammer the proposition of equality” – “Everyone is equal to everyone else” – “In a religious context, and only later was it made into morality,” Nietzsche wrote. Elsewhere, he called “human equality,” or “moral equality,” a specifically “Christian concept, no less crazy [than the soul],” moral equality “has passed even more deeply into the tissue of modernity…[it] furnishes the prototype of all theories of equal rights.”
There is some evidence for this view.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident,” says America’s Declaration of Independence, “that all men [sic] are created equal…” “Self-evident” is not in the first draft. It appears in Benjamin Franklin’s, not Jefferson’s, handwriting. Franklin apparently struck out what Jefferson had written and replaced it with “self-evident” – a philosopher’s word. Jefferson had written “sacred & undeniable.” His first draft also specified that people weren’t just created as equals, but that it was “from that equal creation [that] they derive their rights inherent & unalienable.” (We should also note that, ironically, though quite typically, Jefferson equates human equality with equality between men, in fact, he implicitly presupposes that only white, property-owning men or equals. Equality has excluded as well as included.)
Nietzsche isn’t the only one who thinks that moral equality is a Christian idea. The “Judeo-Christian idea of equality,” that “All humans are of equal and positive worth because of some intrinsic property,” Louis Pojman has argued, “must be grounded in a transcendent reality, one that is not discoverable apart from religious authority.”
If true, this is a problem. All modern moral theories, and all contemporary theories of justice, presuppose that, in some sense, we are all moral equals. Especially right now, beset as we are, by Christian Nationalists and other fascists, trying to overturn our Constitutional order, I hope we don’t have to appeal to religion to justify, the “Égalité” in “Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.”
The influential philosopher/lawyer Ronald Dworkin argued that all contemporary theories of justice share the same “egalitarian plateau.” His student Will Kymlicka concurred in a way that didn’t seem nearly as relevant when he wrote in 2002 as it does now, saying “Some theories, like Nazism, deny that each person matters equally. But such theories do not merit serious consideration.”
So, is moral equality a Christian idea?
The Christian Bible references the idea that we are equals in several places. For example, that we are all made in God’s image (Genesis 1:26-28) and that we are equal before the law of God. (John 3:16) The official, modern Catholic position was laid down in the 1878 encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris by Pope Leo XIII (albeit, like the Declaration, in sexist language): “…in accordance with the teachings of the Gospels, the equality of men consists in this: that all, having inherited the same nature, are called to the same most high dignity of the sons of God, and that, as one and the same end is set before all, each one is to be judged by the same law…”
But moral equality was not invented by Christians. Early Christians seem to have gotten the idea from the Stoics. I’ll come back to that. In the meantime, here’s pretty definitive proof that moral equality is not particularly Christian.
In the Islamic tradition the following is treated as authentic “hadith” (a saying of the Prophet that does not appear in the Koran): “O people, your Lord is one and your father Adam is one. There is no favor of an Arab over a foreigner, nor a foreigner over an Arab, and neither white skin over black skin, nor black skin over white skin, except by righteousness. Have I not delivered the message?”
The first principle of the Buddhist ethics is often characterized as the “principle of universal equality.”
Here are a few excerpts from sacred Hindu texts. “No one is superior, none inferior. All are brothers….” (Rig Veda V.60.5); “He who sees all beings in the Self itself, and the Self in all beings, feels no hatred by virtue of that wisdom.” (Ishavasyopanishad 1.6); “He who has gained yogic integration with equal vision everywhere, perceives the Self as abiding in all beings, and all beings as dwelling in the Self.” (Bhagavad Gita 6.29)
Indigenous American Chief Joseph of the Nez Percé made his case for equality to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879 like this. “Treat all men alike. Give them the same law…All men were made by the same Great Spirit Chief. They are all brothers. The Earth is the Mother of all people, and all people have equal rights upon it.”
The Book of Mormon says that “there should be an equality among all men.” (Mosiah 27)
“The concept of equality is central to the ancient Zoroastrian faith” (the oldest known monotheistic religion on the planet), according to the Federation of Zoroastrian Associations of North America.
I could do this all day. But, so, okay, it’s not specifically a Christian idea, but it sure seems to be a religious idea. Is Pojman right that it “must be grounded in a transcendent reality, one that is not discoverable apart from religious authority”?
I don’t think so. Again, most scholars think that early Christians picked up the idea from the Stoics who based their belief in the equality of all persons on our common, shared rationality. Hobbes, on the other hand, based human equality on our “roughly equal” ability to kill or physically overcome one another in the State of Nature (especially given that everyone has to sleep some times). Rawls said, “Those who can give justice, are owed justice.” Bentham expanded the circle of moral equality to include nonhuman animals by saying, “The question is not, Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? But, Can they suffer?”
Moral equality is not based on the obviously false claim that we are all alike – or equal in every way. Nor is it based on the claim that all humans possess some ineffable, transcendent something that we got from God. It’s based on the idea that there is at least one morally relevant way in which we are alike that qualifies us for equal treatment (or treatment as equals) in certain ways.
Despite what Pojman and Nietzsche claim, many Christian theologians say themselves that moral equality is based on the fact that we have “all…inherited the same nature.” In other words, the argument is not typically that it is in having been created by God that we are, therefore, equals (despite what Jefferson said). It’s that we were, in fact, created by God, in such a way that, our given a nature makes us equals in some relevant way.
Here’s why I think this is worth writing about. I think people, even smart people (maybe, especially smart people), give in to an easy cynicism about moral notions in general, and equality in particular. For example, I received an otherwise smart and insightful comment on a prior article that began, “Rights are clearly imagined.” Well, I don’t think that’s clear. I don’t believe that the hard-headed, realistic thing to think is that moral concepts are imaginary or wishful thinking or a hangover from religion that we are still recovering from. I think cynicism about right and wrong and equality is the last thing we need right now. So, keep in mind, that morality and moral equality are not somehow less realistic concerns simply because they are more abstract and complicated. Maybe, it will help to recall that Hobbes says that the basis of human equality is our ability to murder each other in our sleep. That seems like a realistic concern.