Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

The belief that societies should aspire to treat their members more equally, in both a formal and a material sense, has a central place in modern thought. The idea that human beings are fundamentally equal to one another is, in contrast, a very old one. But for centuries this idea found expression primarily in religious belief, in the notion that everyone is equal in the eyes of God. It was only when the relatively rigid social hierarchies of the ancien regime broke down, and mobile and fluid societies centred on the market economy emerged in their place, that equality became a social ideal with practical force. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the ideal manifested itself in demands for equal rights before the law, and equal rights to participate in politics. In the twentieth century, equality of these kinds was taken for granted (in theory if not always in practice) in all advanced societies, and attention was focused on a new demand: for social equality.By social equality is meant the idea that people should be treated as equals in all the institutional spheres that affect their life-chances: in their education, in their work, in their consumption opportunities, in their access to social services, in their domestic relations, and so forth. But what does it mean to be treated equally? Broadly speaking there have been two answers to this highly controversial question, ... log in or subscribe to read full text