We have fertilisation

And so, a new blog is born. Check out The Zygote, a more politically enthused affair than Jotunheim ever was. The main aim, in a nutshell, is to get people all fired up about contemporary politics, but I will also be taking a less theoretically heavy approach, and will comment upon my own personal experiences outside of the study. In a sense, then, I can’t pre-determine what will appear there.

Death of the Giants

Seeing as the final battle with the Aesir has come, and the Giants are vanquished, there is no use for Jotunheim anymore. If anyone is listening, watch this space for a new blog.

For Shame

Right, I haven’t blogged in a while, so I don’t know how many people are tuning in to this thing any more. But here goes anyway.

Some people might find this a bit boring, but I’ve spent a lot of time reading recently (I know, I know, just after completing a 3 year degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics… chalk it up to insanity), and I just read a book by the masterful (but, sadly, late) philosopher (and, like me, Balliol Old Member), Bernard Williams, which I was so impressed by I wanted to tell someone else about. Unfortunately, my parents could only stand about five minutes of me talking about it (they are not the most philosophically inclined), so I thought I’d put my reaction up here for anyone who might be interested. The book, if you were wondering, is called Shame and Necessity (follow the link: there are new copies for ~£13 and second-hand ones for as little as £6).

The first thing to say is that it is a remarkably short book (a mere 167 pages, minus the appendices). What makes this all the more remarkable is the ground covered, and the breadth of the discussion, in these pages, without losing much in terms of analytical precision, focus, and accuracy. A summary of the topics discussed would take me several hundred words, so I shall only point to some broad themes. First and foremost in S & N, Williams is attempting, and pretty successfully manages, to debunk a form of historical analysis of “our” (that is, us moderns’) relationship to the ancient Greeks: what he labels the “progressivist” account (for want of a better term). This account basically says that the Greeks did not possess the same conceptions of agency, responsibility, freedom of the will, and so forth; if they had them at all, they did not have what we might call a distinctively “moral” appreciation of these notions, and insofar as they did not, their ethical thought was impoverished. Williams picks this doctrine apart, occasionally pointing out the sheer shoddiness of some manifestations of this view. For example, on page 22 we hear that commentators (he mentions Snell and Voigt in particular) have claimed that Homer did not endow his characters with the capacity to make decisions; that Homer lacked the concept of a decision-making individual, or an agent. This he follows with a quote from Homer:

Deiphobos wondered two ways,

whether to draw back and find some other high-hearted

Trojan to be his companion, or whether to attempt him singly.

And as he thought, this way seemed best to him,

to go for Aineias.

As Williams rightly asks, “what is it that Snell thought was lacking?”

But this is not the end of the argument (it is in fact right at the start of the chapter on agency), and he proceeds to delve into the various presuppositions that, e.g., Snell has brought to the table which enable him to make such a blindingly obvious error in interpretation. This takes him on to a discussion of the dualism between body and soul, Kantian rational autonomy, and other (disasterous) uniquely modern moral concepts.

It is in the context of this dismantling project that Williams brings in the concepts of the book’s title; they are central concepts to Greek ethical thought, that have somewhat been overlooked or thought to be a source of error through the lens of modernity. Shame, he argues, has been treated as a superficial desire not to lose face, which motive is basically concerned with the evaluations of others directed at one’s actions. This, in Kantian terminology, makes it a heteronomous consideration: that is, a action-guiding rule which relies on the wills of others. Immanuel Kant argued that the only truly moral maxims for action were autonomous, – prescribed by one’s own will – and with this notion operating in the background, thinkers have condemned the ancient Greek culture, partially based as it was on shame, for making an apparently nonmoral notion central to their form of life. Williams rips this structure apart, showing that the treatment of shame is superficial; and that, rather, the notion occupying its place in our ethical thought (courtesy of Christianity) – guilt – cannot by itself deliver a substantive basis for ethical decision-making, because it looks only outward, towards a judge or a victim, and does not provide enough of a mirror, so to speak, with which to reflect on ourselves, and how we might improve.

I will not try to summarise any more of the book, for I cannot do it justice. The discussion of necessity is equally enlightening, and there is a lot, lot more besides. Just go read it! I am tempted to say that it is a philosophical masterpiece, but that may reflect my own large degree of sympathy with Williams’ outlook, and the extent to which I take it for granted that the Kantian moral project is both psychologically unrealistic and ethically objectionable. At any rate, it is wonderfully written, and contains some of the most insightful descriptions of nuanced ethical conceptions that I think I’ve come across (see especially the appendix on the distinction between shame and guilt). The only “shame” (haha, sorry… ahem) about the book is that it is not longer!

N.B. In other Bernard Williams-related news, there is a video of him on YouTube now, talking about Peter Singer’s concept of speciesism and the “ever-widening circle” (and why, of course, it is all a load of rubbish) I’m not sure I agree with all Williams’ arguments, – he seems, for example, to move from the fact that a utilitarian concentration solely on suffering is unrealistic, to the conclusion that that animals suffer is not a good reason for vegetarianism, a somewhat dubious move – but he does do a wonder demolition job on Singer. My favourite joke runs (roughly) as follows: Singer’s position on abortion and infanticide is the same as the pro-lifers, but the other way up. They both argue “if abortion, then infanticide”, but they take it as an objection, and he takes it as encouragement”. Ho ho ho. Anyway, check it out.

Sir Bernard A O R Williams

Giving Senses to Notions

The wry wit of Jerry Fodor, mocking a particular trope of Oxford philosophy:

I haven’t a clue what it is to give a sense to a notion; the notion of giving a sense to a notion hasn’t been given a sense, either in this context or, as far as I know, in any other. (I’ve been told that senses are sometimes given to concepts at Oxford after the gates close to visitors; but that may be a leg-pull.)

Cribbed off of his review of Putnam’s ‘Threefold Cord’, posted on the LRB website.

Why ID Cards are a Bad Idea

First thing’s first. I’m back from hiatus after, oh, about a month taken out doing my Finals (which went ok-ish: though I really can’t say if I met the boundary I need to get into Cambridge next year). So welcome me with some comments, you fuckers.

Secondly, I’m going to come out swinging. Constantly, I hear in the press about how the ID card scheme is an awful Orwellian contraption, that so-called “function creep” will allow it to develop into a totalitarian’s wet-dream, and so on (e.g.). To my mind, this is by far and above the least important feature of the proposed ID card system. More pressing than any of these vague worries (which I suspect are relatively ill-founded), is the effect that the system is likely to have on race relations, and the status of other minority groups in Britain. When the Equality and Human Rights Commission have raised worries about ID cards, it has invariably been that OF COURSE white people are not going to feel the need to get them (unless they are mandatory – and even then they will not feel the need to carry them). Those who are likely to feel the need to possess and carry them are ethnic minorities, including British nationals, foreign nationals, asylum seekers; I imagine particularly in the present climate, Muslims falling into any of these groups. These are the groups likely to shoulder the burden of their cost (as the cards cost money to register details on the data-base). Moreover, and more important, these groups will feel more like they are living in a two-tier society, needing – unlike Whitey – to carry around proof of their legitimate residence and citizenship.

Other nasty aspects include the way in which nomads or gypsies are hit particularly hard: every time you move area, you MUST (on pain of receiving a £1000 fine) update your residency status with the card register. This costs money; a small amount for the wealthy middle-classes, but a significant sum (in the region of tens of pounds) for such groups. Thus, they are likely to try and avoid paying them, and inevitably some will be caught, and be locked up, or potentially have their possessions taken away.

Another horrible effect comes from my experiences travelling round Romania. Having met and talked to quite a few homeless people, they have told me how the local police use ID cards as a method of bullying and oppressing them. The police have the power to confiscate your card, making it impossible for the homeless to move area without being fined a sum they can’t pay. This is used as a tactic to confine and pressurise homeless communities and individuals, giving local police ridiculous levels of power and control over what is already a dejected and socially stimatised and excluded group.

So I say: fuck this stupid talk about 1984. The real Big Brother is not the one who has your details on file (it would not be hard for the government to get ahold of all your details, if they so wished, you know): the real Big Brother is the one seeking to create a divisive, stratified society, where there is one law for the white, wealthy bourgeoisie, and another for the rest. This is where the opposition to such an awful scheme should lie, and I’d like to see more critics bringing these points up in the quite important (I’d said monumental) public debate.

Putnam, Functionalism, and XYZ

Fellow LEMMings may know that Putnam is responsible for (at least) two influential views in the philosophy of mind, viz. (1) semantic externalism, and (2) machine-table functionalism. Now today I was browsing through the Wikipedia article on functionalism, where I read quite an interesting argument that sets (1) and (2) against each other, and I thought it was so devious that it was worth recounting to Jotunheim readers. Here goes.

 A standard argument to (1) runs thus. Imagine that in some distant solar system, there is a planet which is near-as-dammit identical in environment and ecosystem to our own. On this planet, there is a ubiquitous stuff, exhibiting all the observable, everyday properties of water. However, if scientists were to investigate it, they would find out that this stuff does not have the molecular structure H₂O, but some rather more complex internal constitution, which can be abbreviated to XYZ. Imagine further that this planet has inhabitants who have no notion of ‘internal structures’, as their science is not yet developed enough. Thus their experience of this substance would be identical to the experience of water for pre-scientific Earthlings.

 However, claims Putnam, we want to say that the content of their concepts would be different. That is, although their experiences of H₂O and XYZ are identical, and (we might add) their brain-states when they think of or perceive these substances are identical, they do not refer to, or mean the same, by the concepts they have of these substances. Thus meanings cannot be wholly constituted by internal states, hence semantic externalism. Now, I will not pass comment on the plausibility of this claim, but rather want to look at its relation to another of Putnam’s theories; viz. functionalism.

According to functionalism, mental states are identical with functional states, where functional states are  – at least in Putnam’s view - states that specify, given a series of inputs, what outputs are to be generated (the inputs to the system include psychological and physiological stimuli, and the outputs include psychological and behavioural changes). Now, on this story one’s concept of water has a functional role (it leads one to drink water when thirsty, for example, or bringing the concept to mind makes one need to piss more desperately if one’s bladder is full), and this role, if specified fully, exhaustively identifies the state. However, one might think that the concept of the substance XYZ, just because it exhibits all the same properties as water (barring some unknown scientifically discoverable constitution) will play the same functional role in the life of the alien doppleganger as the pre-scientific concept of water has done in our Earthling. But we have said that states that play the same functional role are identical under functionalism, and so the concept of water and the concept of the alien substance will be identical. And this contradicts Putnam’s requirement that their contents be different, as they pick out substances which are different at the micro-level.

This is a neat argument; I’m amazed to have found it on Wikipedia! Anyway, hope that was some food for thought. Over and out.

Hobbes on Physical Disability

Persuant to my post on egalitarianism, it has been pointed out to me by fellow PPEist Sam Zeitlin that Hobbes does in fact discuss the treatment of the physically disabled in the Leviathan:

And whereas many men, by accident unevitable, become unable to maintain themselves by their labour; they ought not to be left to the Charity of private persons; but to be provided for, (as far-forth as the necessities of nature require,) by the Lawes of the Common-wealth. For as it is Uncharitablenesse in any man, to neglect the impotent; so it is in the Soveraign of the Common-wealth, to expose them to the hazard of such uncertain Charity.
- ed. R. Tuck, (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), p. 239.

A quick examination of Chapter 6 reveals what is meant by Charity:

Desire of good to another, BENEVOLENCE, GOOD WILL, CHARITY.
- ibid., p. 41.

Furthermore, in Chapter 9 of Human Nature, Hobbes says:

There is yet another passion sometimes called love, but more properly good will or charity. Than can be no greater argument to a man, of his own power, than to find himself able not only to accomplish his own desires, but also to assist other men in theirs…
- quote pinched from Hobbes: Morals and Politics, D.D. Raphael, (Routledge, 1977), p. 43.

Now, what are we to make of all this? Well, Hobbes thinks that the Sovereign ought to provide for the physically disabled because it is the charitable thing to do. Charity, moreover, is a passion; a desire to do what is good for others. Thus Hobbes is arguing that the Sovereign ought to exhibit good passions, or desires, which extend to caring for the well-being of the “impotent”. To me, this sounds remarkably like the sympathy answer that I gave in my essay on egalitarianism (see prior post). But if anyone else has any theories on what Hobbes is up to, I’d like to hear them.

Happy Birthday to a Legend!

Well, yesterday anyway… Yesterday was the birthday of local Balliol legend, a Mr. Robert Mark Hargrave. Bob (for anyone who doesn’t know) is a resident philosophy tutor, who lectures extensively on the philosophy of language, and in particular the problem of finding a proper system of classification for conditionals (or “if”-sentences). For anyone who doesn’t know why this problem is important, it is because “if”-sentences mark processes of reasoning, and so a classification of conditionals is, eo ipso, a system of classification for our forms of reasoning.

Other than this, he is also a strong advocate of the Humean perspective in philosophy, which diminishes the scope of Reason, and tries to account for human faculties and concepts in terms of their natural function in the life of man as an, albeit particularly sophisticated, animal. He has influenced many important contemporary philosophers, many of whom have thanked him for his insight in journal articles and books: to my knowledge, the list includes Quassim Cassam (leading Kantian, epistemologist, and Knightbridge Professor at Cambridge University); Jeremy Waldron (premiere political philosopher, defender of liberalism, and Professor of Law and Philosophy at the New York University School of Law); Galen Strawson (Philosopher at Reading, son of Peter Strawson); and Bill Brewer (Philosopher at Warwick, head of phil. grad. studies).

Turning from Bob’s philosophy to his character, he is, simply put, a very strong, impressive personality. He has a deep, gruff voice (serrated with spiky coughs), and a slow, but inexorable manner of developing a point. He is a compelling orator and remarkably quick-minded, with an ability to show you the wide-links and the big picture, whilst missing nothing of the precision and detail necessary to flesh out his arguments fully. As a friend, he is very funny, with a sharp, cynical wit, and a cornucopia of hilarious anecdotes up his sleeve. He is also generous and humane, helping people when they turn to him with personal problems, and willing to offer advice where he can.

So, Happy Birthday Bob!

 

IR is a bitch

Here is Joe Nye on the debate between the realists and liberals in International Relations:

 Who’s right? Both are; and both are wrong… Because it involves changeable human behaviour, international politics will never be like physics… (Understanding International Conflicts, p. 6).

So basically it is a completely unscientific discipline in which the major theories are clearly wildly overblown. Right, and this is supposed to get me to want to read about it? Why can’t IR theorists just admit that there is no such thing as a theory of how the world works, and stick to analysing particular institutions in an historical context, which would be far more sensible? Gah!

Egalitarianism, Theology, and Naturalism

The following is an essay provoked by my reading of (most of) Jeremy Waldron’s God, Locke, and Equality. Several of the thoughts contained within have been floating around in my head for a while, ever since I realised that the fundamental problem with modern debates on equality (à la Ronald Dworkin et al.) is that they severely violate plausible constraints on human nature, and that such a violation will serve to damage any normative theory of abstract political concepts (as Hume in effect points out with respect to Locke’s contractualist theory of political rights and obligations). Anyway, hopefully you will enjoy my first substantial post so far on this blog!

EDIT: I have revised chunks of this essay, in the light of further reflection. Furthermore, after reading a bit about Hume’s account of sympathy with others who are not physically/mentally equal, I think I wouldn’t quite construe sympathy the Humean way. However, this is incidental to my essay, and does not disturb the thesis that natural sentiment might be able to provide what Hobbes’ account by itself cannot. It just means we must work with an account of sympathy that is perhaps slightly different to Hume’s.

* * * * *     * * * * *     * * * * *

In his God, Locke, and Equality (hereafter G,L&E), Jeremy Waldron asserts that he does not “think [that] it is clear that we – now – can shape and defend an adequate conception of basic human equality apart from some religious foundation.” ((Cambridge: CUP, 2002), p. 13). By “basic equality”, Waldron means the notion of the fundamental equal moral worth of all human beings – often characterised as the treatment of one another as equals; a concept which is, he notes, assumed unquestioningly by contemporary (secular) debates about what sort of egalitarianism egalitarians should support (this debate takes off from Ronald Dworkin’s discussion in “What is Equality? 1″ and “What is Equality? 2″). His challenge is a powerful one: failure to provide a secular explication of the concept of basic equality thus conceived would be a major blow to the assumptions of contemporary egalitarian debate, given that this debate proceeds (or seems to proceed) on thoroughly secular terms. In other words, I am in full agreement with Waldron’s assertion that contemporary political theory has neglected to articulate and defend a conception of basic equality, and that its doing so is “a failure of argument on a very broad front indeed.” (G,L&E, p. 3).

Waldron is not the only philosopher to have made such a complaint about recent egalitarian debate. In an article criticising so-called “luck egalitarianism” (a popular conception of distributive equality), Samuel Scheffler asserts that the modern debate about the distributive implications of egalitarianism is logically secondary to the debate about equality as a “moral ideal” which “claims that human relations must be conducted on the basis of an assumption that everyone’s life is equally important, and that all members of a society have equal standing.” (’What is Egalitarianism?,’ in Philosophy & Public Affairs 31, (2003): 5-39, p. 22). Scheffler’s motivations are not here religious, which highlights that such a criticism of the recent debate is not only available to those who entertain a highly theological conception of human equality. What is unique about Waldron’s challenge is that he thinks that, whereas the theologically-inclined egalitarian has a defensible conception of basic human equality available (to be found in the writings of John Locke), the secular theorist cannot deliver on this front; she just doesn’t have the intellectual resources (at least, he tentatively forwards this thesis). This is the claim that I will attempt to refute in this essay. To do so, I will invoke a certain mode of explanation of political conceptions which I take to be prevalent in the works of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume, a mode I shall entitle the ‘naturalistic’. The naturalistic form of explanation stands opposed to the theological, which appeals to supernatural entities (or, at least, a supernatural entity), by maintaining that all phenomena, including moral phenomena, can be understood as the result of physical, and other naturally describable, processes.

In order to apply such a general thesis to the particular area of explaining equality, we must focus on a narrow, precisely defined question. Fortunately, Waldron outlines the arena of debate in Chapter 3 of his book. The central problem, I take it, is as follows. It is clear that, of all the beings alive in the world, only a very small subset of them are to be counted as fundamentally one another’s equals (in the moral sense, already defined). And it is a natural thought that these beings must share some common property, or properties, which counts them in, as it were, as a member of the group of equals. Animals which do not exhibit this property, let us call it D (following Waldron), are not on all fours, morally speaking, with (normal) human beings. We might put this, as Waldron does (p. 70), by saying that the concept of basic equality supervenes on some descriptive property, D, such that the concept applies to all beings who satisfy this property (definition: properties of type P supervene on properties of type Q iff a thing cannot change its P-properties without changing its Q-properties: thus, a thing cannot change in its status as an equal without some alteration in the underlying property, which we have called D). Our problem, then, is explaining the relationship between this property, and the concept of basic moral equality: that is to say, our task is to explain why it is that beings with this property are counted as one another’s equals.

Before outlining the naturalist answer, I want first to look at Locke’s own theory. Locke proposes that the property underlying our ascription of moral equality to certain beings, our property D, is their possession of rationality. This at first might seem a poor answer, as beings can vary in their levels of rationality: some are mentally quicker, some have a more capacious intellect, and so on. Thus it would seem that, rather than a basis for equality, we have a basis for segregating people according to their intellectual and rational powers.

However, Waldron, observing this difficulty, argues that Locke has a way around it. Rationality for Locke is cashed out in terms of one’s powers of abstraction, by which it is meant the capacity to form general thoughts and concepts on the basis of experience. We might wonder why Locke thinks that it is the power of abstraction that is key to the notion of moral equality, and it is here that the theology enters the fray. In Locke’s words, it is because anyone with power to abstract has “Light enough to lead them to the Knowledge of their Maker, and the sight of their own Duties”. (Essay, Introduction). There is a connection in this to Locke’s argument for the existence of God, which he believes is an argument anyone with a modicum of rationality, the power to notice the “Wisdom and Power” in the world, can follow, and perhaps even light on themselves. Our power of rationality is such that we cannot fail to see that the Divine must be behind nature’s workings, and so anyone with this rationality is in epistemic contact with God, and, as a corollary, with the natural law; that is, the moral law that applies to all made in God’s image. So this epistemological fact has a moral conclusion; as Waldron puts it: “As a creature who knows about the existence of God and who is therefore in a position to answer responsibly to His commandments, this is someone whose existence has a special significance.” (p. 80).

We might, however, wonder whether this explanation of the concept of equality – indeed, this way of explaining the deployment of any moral concept – is satisfactory. Locke’s account relies on the existence of objective moral facts, our epistemic access to which has a direct normative force. However, it has been persuasively argued (in John Mackie’s Ethics, and by many since) that there is a tension between the supposed objectivity of moral facts, which makes them independent of our consciousness, and the motivational force of moral judgements, according to which they constitute reasons for action. It does not seem possible that a range of facts might be wholly independent of consciousness, and yet have a necessary link to reasons for action, which are essentially motivational conscious states. However, criticism of the Waldron/ Locke account will be left aside for now, for it would take us into the expansive territory of meta-ethics, and we have enough to be getting on with.

We have, I believe, enough of an exposition of Locke’s theological account of basic equality for us to work with. Now, as has been noted, the central problem, which holds as much for the naturalist as for the theological theorist, is the question of why certain beings are included in the ambit of equality; what commonly shared property is it that our judgement of their moral equality supervenes on, and why? As I have said, I will argue that conceptions of basic equality are not the sole possession of theological thinkers, but can equally be advanced by naturalists who purge their foundations of any appeal to divinity. One such naturalist is the early modern theorist Thomas Hobbes, who, although religious, did not base his notion of the basic equality of humanity on theological foundations in the manner of Locke. Hobbes’ own avowal of the basic moral equality of all human beings comes in his ninth “Fundamentall Law of Nature”, against pride: “That every man acknowledge other for his Equall by Nature.” (Leviathan, ed. Richard Tuck, (Cambridge: CUP, 2006), p. 107).

It might be thought initially that this is not quite a moral principle of equality; that Hobbes is not asking us to recognise each other as on all fours morally, but rather, he’s asking us to recognise that we are on all fours as far as physical and mental abilities are concerned (though the injunction to so recognise others might still be considered a moral imperative). However, if one reads the passage carefully, it is clear that this cannot be right. In his rejection of Aristotle’s doctrine of natural inequality, Hobbes characterises it as the thesis that

some [are] more worthy to Command, meaning the wiser sort (such as he [Aristotle] thought himselfe to be for his Philosophy; ) others to Serve (meaning those that had strong bodies, but were not Philosophers as he; ) (ibid.)

What matters about the Aristotelian doctrine is that some are more worthy to command, this worthiness being based on their superior intelligence (their “Philosophy”). When Hobbes goes on to object – “as if Master and Servant were not introduced by consent of men, but by difference of Wit: which is not only against reason; but also against experience” – he is, therefore, rejecting the idea that some are more worthy to command in virtue of their superior mental abilities. It is true that his rejection of this doctrine is based on his belief that people are (roughly) equal in their mental capacities; however, what must be noticed is that in rejecting the thesis of natural inequality, he is also rejecting the moral inequality, the worthiness of some to rule over others, which Aristotle took to follow.

It is plain, then, that Hobbes’ descriptive property, D, which he bases his notion of moral equality upon, is the natural equality of people in their powers, which is something he takes as a basic premise of his enterprise: “Nature hath made men so equall, in the faculties of body, and mind; as that… when all is reckoned together, the difference between man, and man, is not so considerable, as that one man can thereupon claim to himselfe any benefit, to which another may not pretend, as well as he.” (ibid., p. 87).

It might seem prima facie that we are faced with the same initial difficulty encountered by Waldron in his reconstruction of Locke, viz. that people can, and do, vary in these capacities: some are far stronger, others far more intelligent, and these are the sort of inequalities that we wish to abstract from in our theory of moral equality. In order to get around this problem, we must make a similar move to that which Waldron made in his interpretation of Locke: that is, we must specify a property which, although its precise form may vary, is possessed equally by all who possess it (this is called a ‘range property’: compare, ‘being in England,’ which is possessed equally but differently by both Manchester and London). It seems to me that the central range property in Hobbes is the power to direct one’s own life as one sees fit – forming projects, entering into contracts, and living in civil society in conformity with its laws, of one’s own will: we will call this property the power of autonomy.

(One immediate objection might present itself: namely, Hobbes goes on in the Leviathan to suggest we install a nearly omnipotent Sovereign monarch, and this seems very little like he believes in the power of autonomy. However, this objection is misconceived: I am suggesting that Hobbes thinks we have a natural power of autonomy; this does not contradict the fact that he thinks the only way we will establish a stable polity is by removing people’s civil autonomy, and placing it in the hands of an all-powerful Leviathan. I leave it to the reader to judge whether Locke’s point about polecats and foxes has an application to Hobbes’ doctrine of civil authority).

Textual evidence for this interpretation is as follows. In rejecting the Aristotelian view that some are naturally more worthy to rule than others, Hobbes argues thus: “…there are few so foolish, that had not rather governe themselves, than be governed by others: Nor when the wise in their own conceit, contend by force, with them who distrust their owne wisdome, do they alwaies, or often, or almost any time, get the Victory.” (ibid., p. 107). His point, I take it, is that some human beings cannot be naturally more fit to rule than others, for if this were so, it would be generally recognised, and people would surrender themselves to the rule of these special class of people (or, if people did not surrender willingly, surely this special class would be able to “get the Victory”, i.e. come into power over others).

This, in fact, seems to be much the same point as is made at the start of Chapter XIII, where Hobbes argues that human equality in physical and mental faculties implies that individuals are equally able to direct themselves concerning their ends, and thus will come into conflict when they both desire the same thing: “From this equality of ability, ariseth equality of hope in the attaining of our Ends… therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which… they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies…” (ibid., p. 87). If one side of the dispute were so naturally superior to the other, then they could force the other to concede that superiority; or, if they are still too proud, dominate them. As it is, such a stable situation is not available: equality of ability leads to diffidence, and diffidence leads to Warre.

Now we have demonstrated Hobbes’ criterion to be equal capacity for self-regulated action, we must ask why he believes moral equality to supervene upon it. Hobbes’ argument for the adoption of the ninth law of nature – indeed, his argument for the adoption of all the laws of nature – is that they are “Articles of Peace,” which will lead the way out of the State of Warre: they have a stabilising effect on society, and, cumulatively, will make internal conflict and instability unlikely. However, this seems to me open to two powerful objections. Firstly, at most, all we have discerned is a practical connection; viz., that if we do not adopt a moral stance of the equal worthiness of others to regulate their own lives, society will be weakened (because we will seek to impose our own will on those who we think of as naturally inferior). This is not quite to demonstrate a moral connection between the natural power of autonomy and our treatment of others as equals. Secondly, Hobbes’ specification of autonomy includes physical ability: indeed, it has to, as the reason it becomes important to recognise beings as one another’s equals is that they have the power to destabilise society by coming into conflict with others. This, however, seems to suggest that Hobbesian regime need not treat the severely physically disabled as equals with the rest of society, as they are unable to threaten others sufficiently: they do not have effective autonomy – power to direct their own lives – without the assistance of special provisions.

In order to overcome these objections, I will appeal to a concept introduced by yet another early modern naturalist, David Hume (it will take a while to expound this Humean point in order to see its relevance, so bear with me). Hume, in expounding his account of political concepts such as justice and property, advances the notion of an “artificial virtue”. Now, the word “artificial” carried for Hume a different sense to the one we might ascribe it today; if something was artificial it was an artifice of reason. Thus he says that “[t]he remedy [to the problem of living in society] is not deriv’d from nature, but from artifice; or, more properly speaking, nature provides a remedy in the judgement and understanding, for what is irregular or incommodious in the affections.” (A Treatise of Human Nature, (Dover, 2003), p. 347). Another way of describing such ‘virtues’, which make social life possible, are as conventions, rationally constructed or invented so as to circumvent disturbances. I intend to see the concept of the moral equality of human beings as an artificial virtue in Hume’s sense: that is, our treating one another as moral equals is a convention which becomes engrained in well-ordered societies, and which develops precisely because human beings are equally capable of regulating and organising their own affairs, and generally do better when they do so.

With Hume, I maintain that the artificial virtues of society come to be because of their general usefulness in regulating social affairs. If a rule which ensures that people respect others’ natural autonomy is put in place, it promotes the good of individuals in that society, by allowing them to pursue their projects on an equal footing to everyone else, exercising their natural capacity to do so. Once this rule becomes well-entrenched, moral sentiments which we naturally feel towards other human beings become annexed to it, and the notion of basic equality develops; that is, we develop a concept of others having a moral, or perhaps spiritual, worth that is on a par with our own. I am well aware that in forwarding this Humean account I am partially rejecting Hobbes’ stance, as Hobbes held that we have very little, if any, natural fellow-feeling. However, the idea that we have such natural sentiments does not contradict any part of Hobbes that I have made use of: these sentiments are, by themselves, not able to sustain an orderly social arrangement, and so still require a rule-based and institutionalised respect for others’ autonomy.

Now, how does this Humean development help us account for (a) the moral link between autonomy and equal worth, and (b) the inclusion of the severely physically disabled in the ambit of moral equality? With regards to (a), the point is that although the concept of moral equality may have developed to supervene on autonomous individuals for pragmatic reasons, we have also developed a rich vocubulary in connection with that association which allows us to defend our belief in the fundamental equality of human persons. We talk, do we not, of the indignity involved in being subjected to the will of another; of the dehumanising nature of oppression; of the empowerment that comes from emancipatory movements, and so on, and so forth. This sort of egalitarian discourse seems deeply connected to the idea of autonomy, and the capacity to direct one’s own affairs; to lead one’s own life. It is on such grounds, and using such a vocabulary, that we justify the fundamental moral equality of all human beings.

The point bears reiteration: it is not the threat that if we do not treat each other as equals, then society will be less stable that justifies treating one another as such. That threat explains why we treat one another thus, but it cannot do any normative work. Instead, we justify moral equality, on this account, in precisely the vocabulary that has arisen to enshrine and protect the institution: the language of one’s will being accorded an equal status to those of others. If it is asked what justifies using this vocabulary, I admit that there is no answer. But why should we expect there to be? If we cannot get others to connect their natural sentiments of fellow-feeling to a moral notion of equality, then there is no further debate to be had with them, only conflict.

Turning to point (b), we may notice that, on the amended Humean account, the extension of the concept of moral equality is widened by our sympathy with those who have certain natural needs and desires. The severely physically disabled, although not able to achieve their aims or live their lives without special provisions, yet have the same intrinsic desire to organise and regulate their own lives, and are able to do so if social provisions are set aside for this. As the notion of moral equality becomes a moral, rather than a dry, institutional, concept because of our sympathising with the needs and desires of others to regulate their own lives, we reason that we ought to treat the physically disabled as equals, and we ought to do so by furnishing them with the provisions necessary for them to exercise the power of autonomy.

In conclusion, it is illegitimate of Waldron to contend that the secular political theorist has no account of what underwrites our basic equality: on the contrary, she has available a wide range of concepts and arguments for supporting the liberation and equality of historically or presently oppressed groups. The evolution of this discourse is complex, but Hobbes and Hume offer us the promise of a thoroughgoing naturalistic account, which in no way invokes a special relationship to supernatural agencies. Indeed, combining thoughts to be found in both these thinkers can, I believe, lead to an adequate secular theory of moral equality. At the very least, I believe that this account points in the right direction. If the contemporary debate about equality is to respond to Waldron’s challenge, which it must do if it is to rest on satisfactorily worked out assumptions, then it is to such a promise that, I believe, it must turn.