‘We Are All Free and Equal’: An Argument for the Basic Proposition

This paper provides a positive argument for what I shall call the basic proposition . This proposition is that we are all free and equal, and by ‘free and equal’ I mean that we all have equal fundamental authority over ourselves, and no one else. Each person is their own master, and their own master alone. The basic proposition, if true, entails what I shall call the basic problem of politics: how can we justify the legitimate state authority (and/or coercive power), given each persons’ own fundamental authority over themselves? The basic proposition, so understood, sits at the foundation of much of our social, political and legal thought. Arguably, it is the motivating premise that unites philosophers as diverse as classical social contract theorists, anarchists, deliberative democrats, libertarians, and, most prominently, political liberals. [1] They all simply disagree about how to solve the problem that it creates (if they believe it is soluble at all). However, the basic proposition is rejected by a number of philosophers who we may broadly dub ‘perfectionists’. [2] These philosophers believe that all this talk about ‘authority over oneself’ is at best false, at worst incoherent. Authority can only be over others, and the legitimacy of any agent’s authority (and/or coercion), whether it be the state or anyone else, rests on that agent’s capacity to promote the true good of its subjects, that is, their conformity with the reasons for action that they really have. It does not matter, fundamentally, whether an authority-agent’s subjects have (or would have, hypothetically or constructively) authorised its power. After all, this would make the authority-agent’s legitimacy dependent upon justifying itself to subjects who have entirely false conceptions of the good, that is, those who have false beliefs about the reasons that they have for action; and, why on earth would they need to do that? Why, indeed. The attempts to respond to this question, particularly by political liberals, have simply not been convincing. Some have sought to justify the basic proposition as a demand of the ‘respect’ that we owe one another (or our dignity, or some other cognate). [3] However, these philosophers have then failed to explain not only why respect for persons entails respect for their false views, but also why this value, if it is truly a value at all, is completely supreme over all other values. Some have claimed that the basic proposition is the unquestionable premise of contemporary political culture. [4] However, these philosophers have then not only failed to explain its very evident questioning by the perfectionists themselves, but also why its cultural acceptance or not matters at all with respect to its justification. Others have created vast new controversial metaphysical systems, which are only as convincing as their new controversial metaphysical premises. [5] And finally, some have merely obviated between defeatist quietism and unhelpful bold assertion. [6] All this seems to leave the perfectionists with the upper hand. This is because the perfectionists put forward a set of fairly plausible, commonsense, ‘realist’ premises about the nature of reasons, rationality and justification, and have a fairly convincing argument that these entail the rejection of the basic proposition. Yes, this does leave the perfectionists in the prima facie awkward position of rejecting the claim that we are all ‘free and equal’. However, the perfectionists only need counter that the meaning of basic freedom and equality has been misunderstood. It has nothing to do with the distribution of ‘fundamental authority’, and instead means something more like that the individual welfare of each of us has equal moral value, and an important part of each individual’s welfare is their autonomy. [7] In this paper, I shall invert this state of play. I shall take the very set of realist premises about reasons, rationality and justification held by the perfectionists, and aim to prove the opposite conclusion: the truth of the basic proposition. This paper is in five sections. First, I define the realist premises that I attribute to my perfectionist interlocutors, Joseph Raz and David Enoch. Second, I define the basic proposition as an elaborated claim within this framework. Third, I state three structural facts about our natural epistemic position that I also take to be acceptable to the perfectionists. Fourth, given the realist premises and these facts, I contrast the perfectionist view and my own. Finally, I offer my positive argument in favour of the latter position. I conclude with some brief reflections on how my argument, if sound, bears fruit on a related topic: the basis of basic equality. [1] Macedo, (1990), 36-7; Waldron, (1993); Quong, (2010), 2-3. Eg. Locke, (2003); Wolff, (1970); Cohen, (1997), 69; Nozick, (1974); Rawls, (1993). [2] Raz, (1975), (1979), (1986), (1995), (1998), (2006), (2012); Enoch, (2011); (2013). See also, Hurka, (1993); Wall, (1998); Arneson, (2000). [3] Eg. Larmore, (1996), 136; Kamm, (2007), 247. [4] Eg. Quong, J., (2011), 100-101, 315-317; Dreben, (2003), 340. [5] Eg. Darwall, (2006). [6] Eg. Nagel, (1995); Estlund, (2008), 52. [7] Or, one can aim to dismiss equality as a substantive ideal altogether: Raz, (1986), 217ff.