Unconditional Equals

by Anne Phillips

Why equality cannot be conditional on a shared human “nature” but has to be for all

For centuries, ringing declarations about all men being created equal appealed to a shared human nature as the reason to consider ourselves equals. But appeals to natural equality invited gradations of natural difference, and the ambiguity at the heart of “nature” enabled generations to write of people as equal by nature while barely noticing the exclusion of those marked as inferior by their gender, race, or class. Despite what we commonly tell ourselves, these exclusions and gradations continue today. In Unconditional Equals , political philosopher Anne Phillips challenges attempts to justify equality by reference to a shared human nature, arguing that justification turns into conditions and ends up as exclusion. Rejecting the logic of justification, she calls instead for a genuinely unconditional equality.

Drawing on political, feminist, and postcolonial theory, Unconditional Equals argues that we should understand equality not as something grounded in shared characteristics but as something people enact when they refuse to be considered inferiors. At a time when the supposedly shared belief in human equality is so patently not shared, the book makes a powerful case for seeing equality as a commitment we make to ourselves and others, and a claim we make on others when they deny us our status as equals.

Genres: Politics, Philosophy

160 pages, Hardcover

Published September 21, 2021

About the author

Anne Phillips is a professor in the department of government at London School of Economics and Political Science. Her areas of research include gender, democracy, culture, and economics.

Reviews

[Jake]

Just wanted to boost by saying I'm excited to read this book because what the philosophers call "appeals to nature" are at the very heart of the deep flaws in my own field, psychology, where (as with political theory) this dangerous form of argument is right now today and has for over a century had devastating real-world consequences that have killed, maimed and disabled untold millions of people, from the eugenics of the Progressive Era to the war on terror of today.

I'm also pleased by the mere prospect of the work because it's a project that requires constant renewal -- the great danger of appeals to nature are that they seem so, well, "natural" in our discourse, and the English-speaking world has spent a century finding new and more politically correct (in the original sense of that phrase, as Angela Davis used it) ways to continue making the argument that certain peoples are worthy of a range of abuses from neglect to programmatic destruction. In American psychology, one need look no further than the wild popularity of crypto-eugenicist Stephen Pinker's defense of the concept of 'human nature' in such execrable best-sellers as "The Blank Slate" and "Enlightenment Now."

With high hopes for Professor Phillips' continued success, J.

[KT · Rating 2 out of 5]

Felt it was too brief to do justice to such a broad and deep topic

[Adam Carter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The claim that humans are equals is distinct from the claim that human have moral status. Our moral status needs to be in some way the same despite our differences. I read this book having recently finished Waldron's One Another's Equals where I was dissatisfied with his response to the question what makes us equals. Phillips begins by arguing that any attempt to justify equality by pointing to some common property that makes us equals (as Waldron does) is futile. For Phillips, "invoking dignity or moral agency or a sense of justice seems to add little to the commonsense ability to pick out human from nonhuman." Worse, these properties have too often been co-opted to justify oppression.
For Phillips, it is enough to recognise someone as equal that they are "born to human parents, into a human community, and embedded in a network of social relations that include norms about what it is to treat someone as human". Phillips believes that we disrespect someone as a human when we probe even "deeper inside" them for a morally relevant property that they share with us. She explains how Frederick Douglass’s 1852 speech works to establish the humanity of slaves by its very refusal to reduce their humanity to a property that they share with their oppressors.
It is difficult to know whether Phillips' argument succeeds not least because she attempts to dismiss the main way of thinking about the problem of equality. That human equality is best thought of as a social construct is compelling, it is something we create when we refuse to let some humans dominate others. However, I am not sure that Phillips' improves on Arendt's account that human equality is more or less a matter of political necessity.

[José Pereira · Rating 2 out of 5]

I full-heartedly agree with Phillips that the discussion on what substantiates equality is pointless. It does seem impossible to find a shared feature that is non-exclusionary, specially if we are suspicious (as we should) of grade properties.
But her counter-suggestion is even more confused than the mainstream position. Phillips claims that we should see equality as being grounded on mutual commitments we make based on our experiences and common sense. It's hard to be this imprecise...What does Phillips mean with commitments - who makes them, why, and over whom? Which experiences and intuitions count? I'd think we shouldn't put much weight on the enormous biases and historical prejudices we harbour...
It's all pie in the sky, Phillips can't even give us a hint of what might justify a separation between humans and animals; although she really wants to make the point that politics and equality is a specifically human thing (?).
The lack of rigor of this main argument is present all throughout the book. Another example is Phillips’ analysis of prescriptions. She claims that we should focus on remedying injustices rather than on striving for justice but makes no distinction between the two.
These flaws make the book almost useless for people familiar with this literature. I can see it, however, as a good introduction to the concept of equality for non-philosophers.