On the Historical Emergence of Basic Human Equality

Abstract

Abstract Recent debates about basic human equality (BHE) in moral and political philosophy share a number of assumptions: (1) that BHE expresses a relationship of sameness with respect to humans’ fundamental status or worth; (2) that it operates as a normatively egalitarian premise of political argument; and (3) that is a definitively modern idea at odds with premodern assumptions of basic human inequality. This chapter challenges all of these assumptions by excavating the many different ideas of equality—as a relationship of balance, indifference, proportion, and parity—on offer in ancient Greece, Rome, and early Christianity. It argues that BHE emerged as an egalitarian premise in early modern England through a largely contingent process of conceptual conflation. Understanding this process can, in turn, shed light on certain objections pressed by critics of BHE today.