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Thoughts on Equality and Society: Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche

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Thoughts on Equality and Society: Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche
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Thoughts on Equality and society;
Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche.

Equality is the concept of everyone being equal in a certain state, with equality there would be little to no biased opinions, no fighting over wealth, and just a free world where everyone can live amongst one another and still obey the laws without worrying about social structure or who is better than someone else. Many different philosophers have spent years on trying to figure out where inequality first started and what is morally just. In particular Rousseau in his Discourse on the origin of Inequality1, Nietzsche on the Genealogy of Morals2, and Plato in The Republic3, all consider the question of whether human beings are equaled in all political and morally situations. Rousseau believes that there are two sorts of inequality, one that he considers natural or physical in the state of nature. For example the age as to which someone is or the strength that someone may have compared to another. The other is the inequality in society. The advantages someone has over another in society by what they do for a living, or how much money they have, or even if someone is obeyed more than the other (Discourse, p. 23). Rousseau believes that we are never in our naturally state when we are in a society, he believes that our naturally 2
Well-being is to be living in the woods alone only going for our bare necessities. We did not have to rely on society to get what we needed as we were fine with just eating what we could and sleeping under whatever tree we wished (Discourse, p. 26). It was if mankind was like an animal, just doing as they wished not interfering with anyone else. Men would pass by his kids not even realizing who they were because after you were done with what you wanted you just kept going, there were no families, you didn’t have to look after anyone. People didn’t even know what it was to die, as they only knew of what pain was. The knowledge of death and the fear of

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