ABSTRACT
Liberty and equality have turned out in the last hundred years or so to be twin concepts, building, however, a pair nearly as conflict-laden and possibly doomed – as in the case of 'real socialism' in the former Soviet bloc – as the Cain-Abel brotherhood. The equality of all human beings before God, introduced by Christendom, but also present in Judaism and Islam, is a big cultural shift, though it remained socially and politically ineffective – except in Christian charities over the centuries and later in the Christian social movements of the nineteenth and twentieth century. The individual and her/his rights substituted the state and the duties it imposed legitimately on the citizens. Humans may struggle and die for freedom, but they never encounter it in their daily lives, in which they have to do with the concrete forms freedom can take: liberties.
