A Discourse on Inequality (Classics)
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In A Discourse on Inequality Rousseau sets out to demonstrate how the growth of civilization corrupts man’s natural happiness and freedom by creating artificial inequalities of wealth, power and social privilege. Contending that primitive man was equal to his fellows, Rousseau believed that as societies become more sophisticated, the strongest and most intelligent members of the community gain an unnatural advantage over their weaker brethren, and that constitutions set up to rectify these imbalances through peace and justice in fact do nothing but perpetuate them. Rousseau’s political and social arguments in the Discourse were a hugely influential denunciation of the social conditions of his time and one of the most revolutionary documents of the eighteenth-century.
About the Author
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU was born in Geneva in 1712. Abandoned by his father at the age of ten he tried his hand as an engraver's apprentice before he left the city in 1728. From then on he was to wander Europe seeking an elusive happiness. At Turin he became a Catholic convert; and as a footman, seminarist, music teacher or tutor visited many parts of Switzerland and France. In 1732 he settled for eight years at Chambéry or Les Charmettes, the country house of Madame de Warens, remembered by Rousseau as an idyllic place in the Confessions. In 1741 he set out for Paris where he met Diderot who commissioned him to write the musical articles for the Encyclopédie. In the meantime he fathered five children by Thérèse Levasseur, a servant girl, and abandoned them to a foundling home. The 1750s witnessed a breach with Voltaire and Diderot and his writing struck a new note of defiant independence. In his Discours sur les sciences et les arts and the Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité he showed how the growth of civilization corrupted natural goodness and increased inequality between men. In 1758 he attacked his former friends, the Encyclopaedists, in the Lettre à d'Alembert sur les spectacles which pilloried cultured society. In 1757 he moved to Montmorency and these five years were the most fruitful of his life. His remarkable novel La nouvelle Héloise (1761), met with immediate and enormous success. In this and in Émile, which followed a year later, Rousseau invoked the inviolability of personal ideals against the power of the state and the pressures of society. The crowning achievement of his political philosophy was The Social Contract, published in 1762. That same year he wrote an attack on revealed religion, the Profession de foi du vicaire savoyard. He was driven from Switzerland and fled to England where he only succeeded in making an enemy of Hume and returned to his continental peregrinations. In 1770 Rousseau completed his Confessions. His last years were spent largely in France where he died in 1778.
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First Sentence
CONVINCED as I am that none but a virtuous citizen is entitled to render his country honours it can acknowledge, I have laboured for thirty years to earn the right to offer you public homage; and the present happy occasion making up in part for what my efforts alone would fail to achieve, I have come to believe that I might be allowed in this case to act upon the promptings of the zeal which inspires me rather than with the right which ought to be my authorization. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
CONVINCED as I am that none but a virtuous citizen is entitled to render his country honours it can acknowledge, I have laboured for thirty years to earn the right to offer you public homage; and the present happy occasion making up in part for what my efforts alone would fail to achieve, I have come to believe that I might be allowed in this case to act upon the promptings of the zeal which inspires me rather than with the right which ought to be my authorization. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
It is almost impossible to overestimate the importance of Rousseau's thought upon the world's history and ideas, and although The Social Contract and The Discourse on the Arts and Sciences are easier and more satisfying reads, this is definitely worth a look. In it you will find the seeds of many of Marx's ideas (e.g. property being the basis of inequality) as well as one of the most unique insights into 'natural man' that any political philosopher has ever produced. Natural man has never been so individual as Rousseau presents him here. Fluently written, passionately written and created with his usual style, this is Rousseau doing what he did best - being polemic
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Great condition book, a few of the pages at the front were coming off the spine but nothing irregular for an old book. Thanks!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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8 reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Essential Philosophy
13 April 2010
Format:Paperback
Discourse on Inequality is one of the most shockingly original writings in the history of thought - so original Samuel Johnson famously argued Rousseau could not have been serious, and many, including admirers, have agreed. Its argument that people are born free and pure only to be corrupted by society flies in the proverbial face not only of philosophy but of civilization itself. It was all the more shocking during the Enlightenment, when society, not least via Rousseau's many fellow philosophers, was more self-congratulatory than ever. His depiction of our fall from grace is spellbinding and hard to put down; those who think philosophy is dry and boring will truly be surprised. This is essential for anyone even remotely interested in philosophy, politics, or history.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A profound examination of the human condition
8 Jun 2008
Format:Paperback
This is a book I picked up and began reading. It was probably the most
interesting book I have ever read. It was my introduction to the Classic
texts and remains my favorite.
interesting book I have ever read. It was my introduction to the Classic
texts and remains my favorite.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
A historic and important document.
12 Feb 2003
Format:Paperback
A historic document with still validity in our days, where many of the reasons appointed by Rousseau as the causes of the inequality between men, are deeply felt today in our societies.
Sure, the limitations of the scientific knowledge at the time (1757), coupled with the intransigence of the Catholic dogmas in what regards some possible evolutionary view, restricts in great measure the range of Rousseaus' thought. In Rousseau's view, these inequalities should be ascribed to the modern spirit of emulation, which distorts the primeval feeling of self-fulfillment found on the very primitive societies of yesterday, where there was happiness among its members, thus turning human happiness today and at the time of Rousseau as a function of one's attainement vis-à-vis the other's, which is something very conspicous in our lives of today, where we seem to live totally in function of prescribed standards of comsumption and leisure. A necessary reading for the student of the social facts.
Sure, the limitations of the scientific knowledge at the time (1757), coupled with the intransigence of the Catholic dogmas in what regards some possible evolutionary view, restricts in great measure the range of Rousseaus' thought. In Rousseau's view, these inequalities should be ascribed to the modern spirit of emulation, which distorts the primeval feeling of self-fulfillment found on the very primitive societies of yesterday, where there was happiness among its members, thus turning human happiness today and at the time of Rousseau as a function of one's attainement vis-à-vis the other's, which is something very conspicous in our lives of today, where we seem to live totally in function of prescribed standards of comsumption and leisure. A necessary reading for the student of the social facts.
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