Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Summary

The Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men is Jean-Jacques Rousseau's answer to a prize question set by the Academy of Dijon in 1753: what is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by natural law? Rousseau's essay did not win the prize, but it was printed at Amsterdam by Marc-Michel Rey in 1755 with a dedication to the Republic of Geneva, a preface and extensive notes. The library's text, from the Harvard Classics (1910), gives the Dijon question, the opening address and the two parts of the discourse; the translator is not named, and the dedication, preface and Rousseau's notes do not appear in the stored file. Rousseau distinguishes natural or physical inequality, differences of age, health, strength and mind, from moral or political inequality, which rests on convention: wealth, honour and power. He proposes to set aside the historical facts and reason hypothetically about what human beings would be if stripped of everything society has given them, noting that Scripture teaches that the first man never lived in such a state. The First Part portrays natural man as a solitary, healthy animal of the forest, with few needs, no language, no property and no lasting ties. Against Hobbes, Rousseau argues that such a creature would be neither warlike nor wicked. Two principles prior to reason govern him: love of his own preservation and pity, a natural repugnance at seeing any sensitive being suffer. What separates him from the beasts is free agency and the faculty of self-improvement, or perfectibility, which makes all later progress possible and is also the source of human misery. Rousseau dwells on the difficulty of explaining the invention of language and concludes that the state of nature contained very little inequality. The Second Part opens with the famous figure of the first man who fenced a plot of ground and said This is mine. Rousseau then traces a long conjectural history: huts and families, a first revolution; a period of nascent society, with singing and dancing before the huts, which he calls the happiest and most durable epoch; then metallurgy and agriculture, the division of labour and property in land. Comparisons and the desire for esteem breed vanity, envy and a gap between rich and poor, and the resulting state of war leads the rich to propose a contract of peace and law that secures their own possessions. Governments and magistrates follow, and abuse transforms legal power into arbitrary power. Rousseau summarizes three stages: rich and poor, powerful and weak, master and slave. Despotism completes the circle, where all are again equal because all are nothing. He ends by contrasting the savage, who lives within himself, with the civilized man who lives in the opinion of others.

Plot or Argument

• The question and the two inequalities

  Rousseau restates the Dijon question, separates natural inequality from the moral or political kind, and explains that he will reason hypothetically, setting facts aside, about man as he would be without society.

• First Part: the physical life of natural man

  Natural man is robust, solitary and self-sufficient, with few needs and few diseases; Rousseau argues that many human ills are the product of social life and its inequalities of labour and diet.

• First Part: freedom, perfectibility and language

  Human beings differ from animals by free agency and by the faculty of self-improvement, which unfolds the other faculties over time. Rousseau examines how hard it would be to invent language and general ideas without society.

• First Part: self-love and pity against Hobbes

  Natural man is not wicked for lack of the idea of goodness; love of self-preservation is tempered by pity, which in the state of nature takes the place of laws, manners and virtue. Love in its moral, exclusive form is an artificial sentiment.

• Second Part: property and the first societies

  The first man who enclosed land founded civil society. Families, huts and settled villages bring the happiest epoch, but public esteem, comparison and the arts of iron and grain lead to the division of land and lasting inequality of fortune.

• Second Part: the rich man's contract and government

  The state of war between rich and poor leads the rich to propose institutions of justice and peace that bind all equally and so secure existing possessions. Magistrates are chosen, power becomes hereditary, and legal authority turns arbitrary.

• Conclusion: three stages and the man of opinion

  Inequality moves from rich and poor to powerful and weak to master and slave, and despotism returns all to a false equality. The savage lives within himself; social man lives only in the judgment of others, with honour without virtue and pleasure without happiness.

Lessons

• A history told as a thought experiment

  Rousseau says plainly that his researches are hypothetical and conditional, not historical truths, and that Scripture describes the first man as never living in a state of nature. Readers should notice what such a conjectural history can show and what it cannot prove.

  • Why does Rousseau begin by laying aside facts?
  • How does he use reports of travellers and animals while claiming not to write history?
  • Can a story about how things might have happened teach us something true about how things are?

• Pity before reason

  Against Hobbes, Rousseau places pity, the repugnance at another's suffering, among the first principles of human nature. He argues that it moderates self-love, preserves the species, and does for natural man what laws and virtue do for citizens.

  • What evidence does Rousseau offer that pity is natural?
  • How does he contrast the maxim of pity with the Golden Rule?
  • Is compassion enough to make people good, or must it be formed by reason and law?

• Perfectibility, blessing and curse

  Rousseau names the faculty of self-improvement as the mark of humanity, yet makes it the source of almost every misery. Progress in arts, language and reason is also progress in vanity, dependence and inequality.

  • What does Rousseau say happens to man in old age that does not happen to beasts?
  • Why does he call the period of nascent society the happiest epoch?
  • Is Rousseau against progress, or against something that came with it?

• Living in the opinion of others

  The closing pages trace inequality to the desire for esteem and comparison, which make social man live outside himself. Rousseau's final contrast between the savage and the citizen turns a question of political economy into a question about the soul.

  • What does Rousseau mean by saying the citizen knows only how to live in the opinion of others?
  • How do the singing and dancing before the huts begin the desire for public esteem?
  • Where do you see the desire to be seen shaping choices today?

Context

Rousseau wrote in the age of the French Enlightenment and of the natural-law philosophers Grotius, Pufendorf, Hobbes and Locke, who had each imagined a state of nature to explain the origins of political society. Travel accounts from Africa, Asia and the Americas fed European curiosity about so-called savage peoples. A citizen of Geneva living in Paris, Rousseau had already broken with the optimism of many of the philosophes in his Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750).

Composition

The Academy of Dijon announced its question in November 1753. Rousseau later wrote in the Confessions that he worked out the argument on walks in the forest of Saint-Germain. The prize went to the Abbé Talbert. Rousseau published the discourse with Marc-Michel Rey of Amsterdam in 1755, prefacing it with a dedication to the Republic of Geneva dated 1754 and adding a preface and long notes. The library text reprints the Harvard Classics version (1910), whose translator is not named; that edition's introductory note, written by an unnamed editor, is included.

Reception

Voltaire acknowledged his copy in a famous letter of 1755, saying that reading it made one want to walk on all fours. The discourse prepared the ground for The Social Contract (1762) and influenced Kant, the Romantics, and later social theorists including Marx and Lévi-Strauss, who called Rousseau the founder of the sciences of man. Scholars continue to debate whether Rousseau meant his state of nature as an ideal to which humanity should return; he himself denied this in later writings, and readers on the left and the right have drawn very different lessons from it.

Comparisons

• the-social-contract

  The Social Contract takes up where the Discourse ends: if the rich man's contract was a deception, Rousseau asks what form of association could make citizens free under law through the general will.

• leviathan

  Rousseau directly answers Hobbes, arguing that the war of all against all describes social man projected back into nature, and that natural man is moved by pity rather than fear and pride.

• second-treatise-of-government

  Locke grounds property in labour mixed with the earth and calls government a protection of property; Rousseau's man who fences the land and says This is mine retells the same origin as the beginning of misery.

• the-wealth-of-nations

  Smith reviewed the Discourse in 1756 and shared Rousseau's interest in the division of labour and the desire for esteem, but judged commercial society a road to the general prosperity of the poor.

• rousseaus-confessions

  The Confessions recount the composition of the Discourse and dramatize the same contrast between an inner self and life in others' opinion.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• The opening distinction between natural and moral or political inequality.
• Rousseau's warning that his account is hypothetical, and his remark about the books of Moses.
• The argument against Hobbes about pity and self-love in the First Part.
• The singing and dancing before the huts, where the desire for public esteem begins.
• The rich man's speech proposing laws and peace, and the three stages of inequality.

Key terms and names

State of nature

The condition of human beings before society and government; Rousseau imagines it as solitary and peaceful rather than warlike.

Perfectibility

Rousseau's word, translated here as the faculty of improvement: the human capacity to develop new faculties, which brings both progress and misery.

Pity

A natural repugnance at seeing another sensitive being suffer, which Rousseau places before reason as a check on self-love.

Self-love

In this translation, the desire for self-preservation; Rousseau distinguishes it from the vanity bred by comparison in society.

Moral or political inequality

Inequality established by convention, such as wealth, honour and power, as opposed to natural differences of age or strength.

Academy of Dijon

The provincial learned society whose prize questions prompted both of Rousseau's discourses.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension What are the two kinds of inequality Rousseau distinguishes, and which one is he asking about?
2. Comprehension What two principles does Rousseau say are prior to reason in natural man?
3. Comprehension What are the three stages of inequality Rousseau names near the end?
4. Interpretation Why does Rousseau think Hobbes described citizens when he meant to describe savages?
5. Interpretation Is the rich man's proposal of laws and peace a fraud, a reasonable bargain, or both?
6. Interpretation Why does Rousseau call the time of huts and families the happiest epoch rather than the earlier state of nature?
7. Big Question Is the human desire to be esteemed by others the root of inequality, and can it be turned to good?

Faith Connections

• Genesis 2-4 (Scripture)

  Rousseau admits that Scripture shows the first man receiving precepts from God and never living in a state of nature; Genesis tells the origin of human misery as a fall from obedience, with Cain, the first murderer, building the first city.

• Galatians 5:26 (Scripture)

  Paul warns against vainglory, provoking one another and envying one another, the very passions Rousseau traces from public comparison to lasting inequality.

• Augustine, City of God XV.1 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine traces the earthly city to Cain and the love of self; set beside Rousseau, he locates the trouble in the will rather than in the invention of property.

• Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q. 96, a. 3-4 (Great Conversation)

  Aquinas holds that even in the state of innocence there would have been inequality of gifts and a kind of government directing free men to the common good; this offers a contrast to Rousseau's near-equality of nature.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Natural inequality among humans is slight; nearly all inequality of wealth and power arose through social development, property, comparison and law; what arises by convention is not authorized by natural law when it does not track natural differences; therefore the inequality of civilized nations, in which a handful choke with superfluities while the multitude lack necessities, is contrary to the law of nature.

Rhetorical device: apostrophe. In the opening address Rousseau turns from his judges to speak directly to all humankind, calling on man of whatever country to hear his history read in the book of nature.

Debate: Resolved: that the invention of private property did more harm than good to the human race.

Memory Work

The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, "This is mine," and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.

Writing Prompts

Essay: Rousseau claims pity is a natural sentiment that does the work of law in the state of nature. Using the First Part, explain his argument and evaluate whether pity alone can ground morality.

Comparison with Leviathan: Compare Hobbes's state of nature in Leviathan, chapter 13, with Rousseau's in the First Part: what does each think human beings are like before government, and what follows for politics?

Medical Lens

In the First Part Rousseau offers a short polemic on health: natural man, he argues, is robust and has few diseases besides wounds and old age, while civilized life produces illness through idleness for some, overwork for others, rich food, hunger, sleeplessness and the passions. He asks whether life expectancy is any longer where medicine is most cultivated, and praises the way injured animals heal with no surgeon but time. These claims belong to an 18th-century debate about regimen and luxury and rest on conjecture and travellers' reports; they should be read as moral argument rather than epidemiology. The remark that human beings alone fall into dotage, losing what perfectibility gave them, is an early philosophical reflection on dementia and aging.

• First Part, on sickness

  Rousseau lists the diseases produced by inequalities of labour, diet and passion and argues that most of our ills are of our own making.

  Public Health Sanitation Starvation Nutrition Mind Body
• First Part, on medicine

  He questions whether medicine lengthens life, describes wild animals healed without surgeons or drugs, and concedes that medicine well administered helps social man.

  Physicians Doctors
• First Part, on perfectibility

  Rousseau asks why man alone is subject to dotage and answers that old age strips away the acquisitions of perfectibility.

  Aging Senescence

Creative Prompts

• Essay

  Compare Rousseau's account of the first man who fenced a field with Locke's account of property in the Second Treatise, and argue which better explains the origin of property.

• Dialogue

  Write a conversation between Hobbes and Rousseau on whether natural man is fearful and warlike or solitary and compassionate, drawing on the First Part.

• Classroom

  Make a timeline of Rousseau's conjectural history from the solitary savage to despotism, marking each revolution and the new inequality it brings.

Further Reading

• Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  The prize-winning first discourse (1750) that launched Rousseau's critique of civilization.

• The Social Contract, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

  Rousseau's account of a legitimate political association.

• Rousseau's Social Contract, Christopher Bertram

  Readable guide that also covers the argument of the second discourse.

• Jean-Jacques, Maurice Cranston

  First volume of Cranston's biography, covering Rousseau's early life to 1754.