Thomistic Essentialism, Racism, and Secular Accounts of Human Equality

Abstract: This article makes a case for why human equality and the wrongness of racism are best accounted for by the philosophical anthropology derived from Thomistic Essentialism. After presenting this view and explaining its contemporary application in the American civil rights struggle, the author briefly reviews three major secular alternatives: Ruse and Wilson’s Darwinian account; Rawlsian social contract theory; and Dworkinian ungrounded realism. He shows how the advocates of each, in their own way, rely on notions that are more at home with Thomistic Essentialism, even though each is offered by its champions as a way to ground human equality without appealing to the sort of rich metaphysical and theistic beliefs that Thomistic Essentialism entails and King and his allies took for granted.