equality

The article describes the comparative analysis of the concepts of democracy put forward by the representatives of the alternative directions of Russian philosophy at the end of XIX and first half of XX centuries. The author of the article notes the development of the ideas of democracy, observed and described in ancient Greek philosophy, by such thinkers of the Enlightenment as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Charles-Louis Montesquieu, and others.

The article is devoted to the study of the problem of the doctrinal identification of freedom and inequality by classical liberalism and neoliberalism. Identifying the features of the naturalistic and theological approaches to the manifestation of inequality in human communities, the author notes the philosophical justification of the legal argumentation of inequality in the theories of natural law and the social contract of modern thinkers.