Paradigms Of Equality

The most important thing in the late twentieth century is the rising of political philosophy and the wide spread of postmodernism. Today political philosophy is in its ascendant and becomes the most influential philosophical trend of thought, being discussed and studied all over the world, while postmodernism is coming to its end under the drastic criticism and cool reflection.The rising of political philosophy is symbolized by the emergence of new liberalism, while the emergence of new liberalism is symbolized by the publication of the book A Theory of Justice written by John Rawls. When we call"new"liberalism, we compare it with classical liberalism. Specifically speaking, the topic of discussion of new liberalism is different from the classical one. Classical liberalism focused on liberty, such representatives as Locke, T. Hobbes, J. J. Rousseau, Kant devoted themselves to the study and solution of the problem of liberty. The topic of new liberalism is, on the contrary, equality. Modern representatives of new liberalism, John Rawls, Robert Nozick, Ronald Dworkin, dedicate themselves to the solution of the problem of equality. The shift from the"liberty"of classical liberalism to the"equality"of new liberalism indicates the change of topic in western philosophy, which promotes the renaissance of political philosophy.Equality is not only the topic of discussion of new liberalism but also the contribution of new liberalism. For new liberalism, inequality at present society embodies mainly in economic field, that is to say, the difference of wealth and income cause giant inequality. New liberalism put forward"equal paradigm"to solve inequality in economic field, trying to realize equality of human society. This paper focuses on the study of the notion of equality to understand the basic idea, essence and ideal of new liberalism.