Modern democratic equality originated as biological species equality
Evidence
One can observe the parallel evolution of modern democracy and of specific forms of metaphysical materialism and idealism. Equality is sought for by the French materialists of the eighteenth century in the reduction of man to a category of natural history, an individual of a biological species, distinguished not by social and historical qualifications but by natural gifts, and in any case, essentially equal to his kind. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1292
Categorization
Category: Factual Claims
- XREF: This naturalizes-and-depoliticizes equality move is exactly what Said and postcolonial theory later critique in universalist humanism — direct bridge to Islamophobia readings.