Inequality as a challenge in the Western cultural and civilizational paradigm

Abstract

The article focuses on the problem of social inequality in the Western cultural and civili-zational paradigm. It is noted that in the history of Western philosophy and culture, there have always been two different approaches to understanding inequality. The first path of elitism involved the apology for inequality, proposing ideas of aristocracy (inequality within a single society) or racial domination (inequality between peoples and civilizations). This phil-osophical tradition can be called traditional-authoritarian (Plato, Aristotle) or romantic-conservative (H. Chamberlain). The second way is egalitarian, which insists on creating a society built on the idea of equality (the philosophy of liberalism and Marxism). If representa-tives of the liberal wing of egalitarianism (Locke, Bentham) focus on the justification of a society of equal opportunities with an emphasis on natural human rights, the tradition of Marxism tends to consider social contradictions caused by inequality as antagonistic. There-fore, protest, revolution, rebellion become a specifically Western way of eradicating inequali-ty (Marx, Camus). At the same time, the article notes that the deep worldview basis of this way of solving the problem of inequality is the nihilistic nature of Western civilization, its "Faustian spirit" (Spengler).