Human inequality: the self-evident truth
Humans are obviously unequal. We can accept this while maintaining equality under the law.
Written by Bo Winegard.
Although I cannot be certain, I assume that the celebrated heroes of history were better men than I am. I say this not out of confession or humility, but because it is true. More generally, few truths seem more self-evident than that some men are better than others. Yet few propositions today encounter fiercer resistance. The mere assertion appears indecent, transgressive, even faintly malevolent. It certainly runs contrary to the popular interpretation of the soaring words that open the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...”
Yet, for my part, I can make no sense of the claim that all men are created equal unless it is understood as an assertion of political rights. More troubling still, the contemporary egalitarianism that so often invokes these words (while simultaneously despising their author) is not merely empirically false but pernicious, inspiring as it does a species of relativism whose refusal to judge reduces the world to an insipid mélange of mediocrity, where pop songs are celebrated with the same enthusiasm as the masterpieces of Mozart, where rap lyrics are analyzed with the same diligence as the poetry of Chaucer, where the dogmas of Christianity are mocked as readily as the profligate superstitions of New Age belief, and where the West is regarded as merely one civilization among others—notable, if at all, only for its violence and rapacity.
The dominant view today, it seems, is that any admission that some people, some things, or some cultures are better than others is not merely mistaken but morally dubious. “Who are you to judge?” has become our defiant slogan. Yet the case for equality is so frail that its defenders, when pressed, resort to fallacies, sophistries and moral hectoring, among which the motte-and-bailey is perhaps the most common. For these egalitarians begin with the bold claim that human beings are at least roughly equal in their traits and talents, only to retreat, when confronted with obvious counterexamples, to the more defensible but largely vacuous position that although men may differ profoundly in their abilities, they remain metaphysically or morally equal. Having abandoned their original assertion for one much more vaporous, they then frequently impugn the character of those who persist in dissent. “Are you saying that some human beings are inferior to others? How dare you!”
Well, yes and no. This is where precision becomes essential.
Human beings are not merely different; they are different in ways that are directly relevant for moral evaluation. Whatever one might make of equality in the afterlife, on our planet, men are manifestly unequal. I see no plausible way of escaping this conclusion. A talented neurosurgeon is better than a common thief. This example is extreme of course, but the principle applies mutatis mutandis to other comparisons. If the criminal is worse than the law-abiding citizen, then the saint is surely better than the average man. Once we admit the legitimacy of such judgments, the doctrine of human equality (metaphysical or otherwise) begins to look rather shaky.1
Empirical equality. The most expansive conception of human equality is empirical equality or the belief that human beings are, in some meaningful sense, equal in their traits and talents. Yet this doctrine is so clearly contradicted by ordinary experience that it is rarely defended without an intimidating veneer of jargon or a distracting catalog of qualifications. Nevertheless, it remains implicit in many progressive approaches to public policy and is still, in one form or another, a major feature of Marxism and other blank-slate theories of human nature, which treat man as almost infinitely malleable. Change the environment and you change human nature. Inequality is created, not natural. And it persists only because of the systemic injustices of our society.
Although only the most radical progressives explicitly embrace empirical equality, many otherwise moderate liberals hold to it insofar as they regard claims of significant sex or race differences with profound suspicion. Thus, if one points out that disparities between blacks and whites in the United States are partially caused by intelligence differences between blacks and whites, one is often accused of promoting racism. Similarly if one contends that institutions that are dominated by women may function less well than those dominated by men, one is accused of promoting misogyny. The sacred value of equality, though it violates the plain evidence of our senses, is hard to let go.
Metaphysical equality. One way to reconcile the obviously incorrect view that humans are equal with the longing that they be equal is to introduce the concept of metaphysical equality. People who hold this view often use poetic phrases such as that humans are “equal in the eyes of God” or that they have “equal dignity.” They argue that this kind of equality is perfectly consistent with human variation because metaphysical equality is not an empirical claim at all. At first, this might sound like a verbal consolation prize, a way of telling a terrestrial loser that all people are equal in heaven. Yet the doctrine is more powerful that that, for the rhetoric of metaphysical equality has inspired genuine moral concern, sacrifice and even revolution. I do not dismiss its effectiveness as poetry or propaganda, but I do not believe it withstands intellectual scrutiny.
Consider two profoundly different human beings: Heinrich Himmler, the architect of the sadistic SS, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the Protestant pastor who resisted Nazism at great personal cost. What, precisely, does it mean to say that these men were metaphysically equal?