Why Equality Matters

            (Photo: Scott*)

Sunday, 13 May 2012 00:00 By Michael A Peters, Truthout | News Analysis 

The history of equality from antiquity onward reveals that the notion of equality has been considered a constitutive feature of justice whether in its formal, proportional or moral sense. Until the 18th century, human beings were considered unequal by nature, an idea that collapsed with the introduction of the notion of natural right first developed by the Stoics and later in the New Testament Bible and both the Hebraic and Islamic traditions. The principle of natural equality only became recognized in the modern period beginning in the 17th century in the tradition of natural law as defined by Hobbes and Locke and in social contract theory first postulated by Rousseau. Kant's categorical imperative formulates the equality postulate of universal human worth and the idea is taken up formally in declarations and modern constitutions, notably the French "Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen" (1789) ("Déclaration des droits de l'Homme et du Citoyen")(1), the American "Declaration of Independence" (1776)(2), The US Constitution (1787)(3) and the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" (1948)(4). As Stefan Gosepath (2007) explained, "This fundamental idea of equal respect for all persons and of the equal worth or equal dignity of all human beings ... is accepted as a minimal standard by all leading schools of modern Western political and moral culture." It has not always been so.  READ MORE