英文摘要 |
While the evolutionary course of human history is complex, the direction has been towards elevating the worth of the human being. Since the French Revolution, human rights emerged as a universal value, with Liberty and Equality as its core concepts. The Late-Qing Dynasty revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen preached equality and liberty, and the slogan of human rights was a constant theme in his proposals. This paper compares and evaluates the rights of equality put forth by Sun, Rousseau, Engels and Rawls. Rousseau proposed that there are two types of inequality: natural inequality and ethical inequality. The latter is caused by the appearance of private property, which would cause redistributive inequality, and aggravate natural inequality. Sun Yat-Sen’s theory of equality only takes the political aspect, with political reform as its only goal. His explanations regarding the concept of equality only tends toward political civil rights, and ignores social, economic and cultural aspects of inequality. Engels proposed three divisions of labor to explain how divisions of labor strengthened productivity, but caused increased wealth inequality. Extreme wealth inequality became a problem after the industrial revolution. The importance of the theory of equality thus became of importance. Sun Yat-Sen’s theory of equality ignored Engel’s analysis of the three divisions of labor, and only considered the methods of distribution in the pre-industrial, agricultural society. Sun attempts to improve methods such as collective farming and equal distribution of land, but these improved methods could only provide short term remedies instead of long term solutions. His policy of equal distribution of land demonstrates equalitarianism, which limits the fulfillment of the individual potential, and hence not true equality. Sun Yat-Sen’s civil rights principle preaches "true equality," which is indeed a core concept of equality. Yet, true equality does not mean that everyone’s achievements and rewards are the same. True equality lies in protecting basic right of survival, providing essential education and healthcare, allow individuals to fulfill their potentials, more reward for more work. |