Five-minute digest
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.
Top 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.
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.
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.
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.
Verified Quotes
Frequently cited
“Let us begin therefore, by laying aside facts, for they do not affect the question.”
Frequently cited
“I dare almost affirm that a state of reflection is a state against nature, and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal.”
“this is the faculty of improvement; a faculty which, as circumstances offer, successively unfolds all the other faculties, and resides among us not only in the species, but in the individuals that compose it”
Frequently cited
“It is therefore certain that pity is a natural sentiment, which, by moderating in every individual the activity of self-love, contributes to the mutual preservation of the whole species.”
Frequently cited
“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.”
“With the poet, it is gold and silver, but with the philosopher it is iron and corn, which have civilized men, and ruined mankind.”
“the savage lives within himself, whereas the citizen, constantly beside himself, knows only how to live in the opinion of others”
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.
- 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.
- First Part, on perfectibility
Rousseau asks why man alone is subject to dotage and answers that old age strips away the acquisitions of perfectibility.