What is Inequality
In European history, who first wrote about it and what did they say?
Application - Where did Europeans learn about inequality?
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Summary 🎧 (Including Audio)
1. What is Inequality
In the most basic terms, Inequality is
the quality of being unequal or uneven: such as
a: social disparity
b: disparity of distribution or opportunity
c: lack of evenness
d: the condition of being variable1
While we most commonly associate conversations of inequality to that of income, it actually represents a much broader list of things like inherited status, access, power systems, and concentrations of influence.
Today’s question isn’t why are we unequal, but why did European philosophers in specific begin talking about it in the first place?
2. In European history, who first wrote about it and what did they say?
In a moment, I hope to make it clear why I am focusing on European philosophy.
In the meantime, suffice to say that anyone with a western-style education has been exposed to the works of philosophers like Hobbs, Locke, and Rousseau.
Each of these writers broached the topic of inequality around the same time (important to note) each with a unique perspective.
They all had to reckon with their own version of a thought experiment in which they asked, “what is the true state of nature?”
“It is pity in which the state of nature takes the place of laws, morals and virtues, with the added advantage that no one there is tempted to disobey its gentle voice.”
― Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality2
“Life is nasty, brutish, and short”
― Thomas Hobbes3
“The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”
—John Locke4
3. Application
Interestingly, Europeans were not particularly keen on writing about inequality, the states of nature, social contracts, and political theory to this point (at least not since the rise of the Holy Roman Empire).
So here is the question for us today, why did multiple philosophers suddenly begin asking questions about these topics around the same time?
The answer: European encounters with Indigenous communities in North America.
There is a strong casual chain we can argue for in which the enlightenment is the result of various Indigenous American thinkers influencing European thought.
“The Indians, whom we call barbarous, observe much more decency and civility in their discourses and conversation, giving one another a fair silent hearing till they have quite done; and then answering them calmly, and without noise or passion.”
—John Locke5
Let’s do a deep dive in the summary below (audio version included!)
4. Click for More
The majority of today’s post is inspired by the book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow. (Special thank you to
for turning me on to the book!)The book is a compilation of emails the two anthropologists exchanged over the course of their careers regarding the origins of the question of inequality in European philosophy.
Their findings directly attribute everything from the Enlightenment, to the French revolution, to the American War for Independence to the influence of Indigenous American thinkers such as Kondiaronk of the Huron-Wendat people.
5. Summary 🎧
In 1753 Jean-Jacque Rousseau entered an essay contest at the Academy of Dijon in France. 6
His essay Origin of Inequality among Men was substantial for two reasons.
It marks the first formal conversation regarding inequality among European philosophers
It ignites a small revolution in political philosophy that was to culminate in events in like the French Revolution and the American War for Independence.
Rousseau found himself situated amidst the European “Age of Reason” or the Enlightenment.
This period was built upon discourse and conversation. Discourse that
“Took place largely in cafes and salons. Many classic Enlightenment texts took the form of dialogues; most cultivated an easy, transparent, conversational style clearly inspired by the salon.”
—The Dawn of Everything pg. 37
If the conversation was ignited with Rousseau’s essay, an essay which most likely itself originated in the cafes and solons of Enlightenment-era Europe, our question today then is where did the conversation about inequality come from in the first place?
The simplest answer to this question would appear to be works like the Jesuit Relations of New France.
Books such as these were essentially dispatches from Jesuit missionaries living amongst various American Indigenous people (most predominantly the Huron-Wendat).
These missionaries spent decades learning the languages of communities like the Wendat with the express intention of reasoning with them in order to convert them to Christianity.
Instead, once they developed the skills necessary to manage intellectual discourse with Wendat thinkers, they more often found themselves (secret) converts to their perspectives on community, equality, and quality of life.
Of course, these positions were not explicitly affirmed in the discourses read widely among Europeans, but their accounts were so jarringly different from the European approach to governance and politics that readers could not help but to take note.
It appears that among many Indigenous American communities, there existed an immediate repulsion, if not comical disbelief, at the way that Europeans would arbitrarily impose authority upon the other.
Kings? Generals? Governors?
To the Wendat, for example, these roles were as comical as they were suspicious.
What’s even more imporatnt, is that the Jesuits would not only share American ideas, but also intellectual methods.
If you remember, earlier we said that cafe discourse and conversation was the vehicle of the enlightenment. In fact, this itself was a skill modeled by prodigious American thinkers like Kondiaronk.
Kondiaronk is simply a well-known orator who often faced European leaders in public debates. His skill is indicative of many not only among his nation, but other neighboring communities as well.
The direction of these debates often took on the form of imagination.
This was a skill central to people like the Wendat and completely foreign to French generals, governors, missionaries, and intellectuals.
In fact, it would appear that people such as the Wendat would spend hours honing their capacity for sophisticated dialogue in order to imagine other political realities for the themselves.
In these public discussions, often assisted my mind altering/expanding plants, communities would continuously push the boundaries of politics—communal structures in which connection and compassion were baked in from the beginning, for example.
In the way that modern entrepreneurs ceaselessly imagine new economic possibilites or product-market-fit, many American communities ceaselessly imagined political realities for themselves.
Thus, highly sophisticated and resilient social systems emerged that led to a freedom and happiness completely foreign to the European visitors to the region.
Accounts with orators and philosopher-statesman like Kondiaronk were common shared widely among enlightment-era readers in Europe.
In everything from arbitrary authority to Christianity, Kondiaronk would take the position of the rational-skeptic, challenging long sacred and accepted notions.
And so we sit today as the heirs of a very conflicting crossroads.
A society whose freedoms we owe largely to thinkers like Kondiaronk.
And whose ills we owe largely to the perils of imperialism, colonialism, and greed.
And as we conclude the the conversation we began last week, I believe our call to action is to cultivate imagination.
So often we find ourselves thinking our country is the greatest on earth, that our way of life is better than others, that we are inherently superior to other people, that we are on a never-ending journey upwards toward progress.
When we think like this, we discount the lessons of the past and mute our own capacity for imagination for the future.
So today I challenge you to open your mind to all possibilites—not just the ones we’ve been taught to see.
Until next time,
Matt
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/inequality
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1349452-it-is-pity-in-which-the-state-of-nature-takes#:~:text=Learn%20more)-,%E2%80%9CIt%20is%20pity%20in%20which%20the%20state%20of%20nature%20takes,to%20disobey%20its%20gentle%20voice.%E2%80%9D
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/10122.Thomas_Hobbes
https://www.thoughtco.com/john-locke-quotes-4779304
ibid
https://frenchazilum.blogs.bucknell.edu/terms-to-know/notable-people/jean-jacque-rousseau/