Author: Mcmahon, Darrin M.
Publisher: Paidos
Pages:574
A fascinating history of the idea of equality and its evolution across the centuries, from its roots in Antiquity to the crisis we face today. Inequalities proliferate in our world, immense and of many different kinds—economic, racial, identity-based, national. But how can we remedy them if we do not fully understand what equality means? We have fought for it throughout history, yet it has always been a horizon viewed with skepticism. Equality is the definitive intellectual history of this concept, in which Darrin M. McMahon traces its origins and definitions on a global scale, from the dawn of humanity to the present, including pivotal periods such as the Enlightenment. Each era, each doctrine—from the world’s major religions to politics, including the ancient world—and each figure—modern revolutionaries, socialists, Nazis, fascists, postwar reformers and activists—has given it its own meaning. McMahon not only offers a masterful study of why equality matters and why we keep reformulating it again and again, but also provides us with the tools we need to undertake that same exercise and imagine equality for our own age and moment.