This study will examine the political theories of Plato, Martin luther, John Locke and Karl Marx with respect to the concept and practice of equality. Each of these writers, because of the political and social atmosphere of their respective eras, attempts to bring about change in the practice and/or understanding of the nature of equality in those eras.
Martin Luther is responding to the spreading corruption of institutions, from politics to the Church. Luther's political theory is always subordinate to his religious theory. He most adamantly opposes the system of indulgences which the Church had established as a means of absolving sinners of their sinfulness. However, Luther is generally opposed to the increasing earthliness of the Church and its role as justifier of the corrupt social and political processes of the time. The system of indulgences is merely the most gross manifestation of that worldliness on the part of the Church. What the Church was doing with indulgences, humans in general, including political rulers, were also doing--namely, trying to take the place of God:
They actually think they have the power to do and command their subjects to do, whatever they please. And the subjects are led astray and believe they are bound to obey hem in everything. it has gone so far that the rulers have ordered the people to put away books, and to believe and keep what they prescribe. In this way they presumptuously set themselves in God's place, lord it over men's conscience and faith, and put the Holy Spirit to school according to their mad brains (Luther 365).
In other words, these men, in the world of the church and in the secular realm of society and politics, have put themselves above other men. They value themselves so highly that, as Luther says, they put themselves above even God. This inequality, based on what Luther saw as a sinful and blasphemous set of lies and presumptions, is what Luther sought to correct t...