Equality in Political Philosophy [antikvár]

PrefaceA work of this scope, tracking a grand but elusive theme over many centuries, would quickly become unmanageable if it were not somehow circumscribed. The reader deserves to be forewarned of at least some of the limitations he will encounter. As the title indicates, this is a study of the discussion of equality in political philosophy. It does not examine in any but a cursory way the appearance of egalitarian ideas and sentiments at the less rarefied levels of political controversy. It does not deal with egalitarian movements or with the application of egalitarian ideas in various societies. Important as these matters are to a full understanding of egalitarianism as a phenomenon of history, they remain outside the bounds of this study.Nor will an effort be made in these pages to expound a new philosophy of equality; our purpose is only to examine those already offered. We shall follow chronological order, but not primarily to trace the filiation of ideas from one philosopher to another or to examine the relationship between ideas and environment. Our purpose is to demonstrate, with the help of textual explication most of all, the recurrence of several patterns of egalitarian thought throughout modern history. The chapters and the book as a whole have been designed with these patterns in mind. The reader should therefore not expect a compendium of egalitarian thought or comprehensive accounts of the work of the philosophers studied. Rousseau, for example, is represented here only by his second Discourse, although a full account of Rousseau's position would have to reconcile that early work with his later Social Contract and constitutional projects. The interpretation of Hegel would also be very different if later works were included