Numerically equal definition12/31/2023 ![]() ![]() It is in Aristotle's discussion of political justice that he examines equality in a way that more closely resembles the usual meaning of the term today. In disputes over contracts, for instance, a judge must determine the differences in harms inflicted by the breaking of a contract and restore the position of equality by subtracting the profit the offender has reaped from the infraction ( Ethics, 1132a1–19). In his investigation into the virtue of justice in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle uses the Greek word for "equal" ( isos) but gives it a meaning that is more akin to "fairness." Equality is a state to be striven for, intermediate between giving someone more or less than he or she is due, relative to a specific activity or social realm. One of the most thorough of these early systematic explorations of equality was undertaken by Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.) in several of his works. The first systematic analyses of equality as a concept comes from the Greeks of the classical age, which is perhaps not surprising given their intense interest in mathematics. ![]() There was not one secret teaching for the elites and another for the people rather, all the teachings were available to all the people, and the covenant required the understanding and consent of all. At the founding of the second temple in Jerusalem, Jewish law became a kind of first social contract-quite literally in the public reading of the Torah and the people signing that they will live by these laws-establishing a direct relationship between all the Hebrew people and their God (see Ezra-Nehmiah). Unlike other well-known law codes of the age (e.g., the code of Hammurabi), Jewish law applied to all Hebrews equally, regardless of their sex or class (see especially Exodus 19–35 and Deuteronomy 12–26). The distance between a supremely powerful single God and humanity was most likely fundamental to this world-view, in which God's creations seemed relatively equal in comparison. While the Hebrews did not undertake an analysis of the concept of equality, the worldview and subsequent laws were steeped with a sense of equality unusual in the Western tradition at or before their time. For the purposes of understanding the concept of equality within the Western tradition, one has to look back to the two most influential strands of thought that inform the modern West: the Hebrew (and later Judeo-Christian) tradition and the Greek. ![]()
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