The present volume stems from our previous research on The Concept of Equity: A Diachronical Assessment (2007). The essays in this new collection demonstrate how lively and active the debate on equity has been and how difficult it is to find a concluding word on this topic. In literature a new idea concerning equity is slowly being shaped. The discourse offered by literature is of an alternative kind; we are reminded of the utopian function of equity in Plato's Republic, where it aims at transcending reality and the mimetic description of it. There is something mysterious about equity: we cannot grasp it easily in terms of rational argumentation. It is all about norm and its inversion; at the same time it is deconstructive. Thus sometimes equity appears to be beyond the sphere of reality and takes us into a mysterious and incomprehensible world.
