Western societies adopted a belief in universal human equality only after many centuries of intellectual and cultural evolution. The West owes its egalitarian outlook to Jewish and Christian ideas about human dignity, and to Enlightenment-era thinkers who built on those ideas to make their case for limiting the use of state power to enforce particular notions of correct thinking.
Judeo-Christian Thought, Classical Liberals, and Modern Egalitarianism
By Peter J. Hill
This
article
appeared in
the Summer 2017 issue of The Independent Review.
Culture and SocietyEconomic InequalityEconomyGovernment and PoliticsLaw and LibertyPhilosophy and ReligionPolitical Theory
Other Independent Review articles by Peter J. Hill | ||
Summer 2022 | Free Enterprise Environmentalism | |
Spring 2020 | The Keynesian Revolution and Our Empty Economy:Were All Dead | |
Spring 2014 | Are All Commons Tragedies?:The Case of Bison in the Nineteenth Century | |
[View All (7)] |