Discourse On The Origin Of Inequality By Jean Louis Rousseau Summary

Rousseau believed that to uplift ourselves out of the state of nature, man must partake in the course of being the sovereign that provided the protection. The contrast between Rousseau’s concepts and those of the liberals of his time, originated with different understandings and interpretations of the state of nature. Classical liberal thinkers like Thomas Hobbes defined the state of nature as an unsafe place, where the threat of harm to one’s property was always an existent. He

Rousseau sees the first step of exiting the state of nature and getting closer to origin of tyranny is when man decides to leave the lifestyle of being alone and always wandering to settling down and making a house and trying to provide for his basic needs and the ones that are not as necessary as: nourishment, rest, shelter and self-preservation. This is the stage where you see the element playing a part in man’s life and in the way civil society came to be. Man is no longer just worried about himself he has to provide not only for himself but for his entire family which he is searching for. Natural man or savage man lives within himself whereas Rousseau argues that civil man lives in the judgement of others. This is one of the big reasons has to how inequality fomed. All the inequalities Rousseau does take about or basically economic things that happen in nature. This type of economic ineuality is among the many other inequalities but is one of many that inequality originated from. If man had stayed restricted to working by themselves they would have remained free, healthy, good and happy as

Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality of Men, discusses the beginning and development of inequality of individuals. Rousseau seeks to discern whether the unequal treatment of men is dictated by natural laws or if it is a man made creation. When Rousseau analyzes humans in the state of nature, he claims we are all animalistic by nature. Humans in the state of nature are motivated by self-preservation much like animals and also pity. The difference between man and animals according to Rousseau is man’s perfectibility. Because man has very minimal needs in the state of nature, no concept of morality and limited interaction with other individuals, he is generally happy. Because in the state of nature man embodies the quality of perfectibility, he is able to adapt with his environment. As nature drives men to leave certain areas it forces them to learn new skills as they come in to contact with one another more often. As man connects with more and more individuals around him he becomes aware that he has more needs. As men begin to live in societies with more people they start comparing themselves to those around them and self-preservation and pity are no longer their main goals. Now, they have to do more work in order to be happy such as raise to greater heights then their fellow humans. Moral inequality is created as division of labor and property rights are invented. Owning property allows the rich to take advantage of the poor, leading to unstable relations

3.) In some ways I agree with Rousseau, but I do not agree with his larger claims in this piece. Rousseau branches off of the theories of other previous philosophers but assigns gender roles within human nature. Rousseau generalizes the roles of men and women by assigninh hunting roles to men as well as their power over women. He studies the roles of human nature as a whole and organizes society into two main categories: rich and poor. Although this seems valid for his time period, today's society includes a middle class that represents the majority of the

Rousseau views on human nature as an evolving person in their self. Rousseau wants the reader to see the human nature in themselves and also understand how it has evolved while reading the inequality of men. Men and animals are very similar to one another, however; men can talk. We cannot really understand how animals communicate with us. We wouldn’t understand what they are saying. In the state of nature, pity and self-preservation is mostly what men worry about. A man evolves, mentally,

99). Rousseau viewed property as a right “which is different from the right deducible from the law of nature” (Rousseau, p. 94). Consequently, “the establishment of one community made that of all the rest necessary…societies soon multiplied and spread over the face of the earth” (Rousseau, p. 99). Many political societies were developed in order for the rich to preserve their property and resources. Rousseau argues that these societies “owe their origin to the differing degrees of inequality which existed between individuals at the time of their institution,” (Rousseau, p. 108). Overall, the progress of inequality could be constructed into three phases. First, “the establishment of laws and of the right of property” (Rousseau, p. 109) developed stratification between the rich and poor. Then, “the institution of magistracy” and subsequently “the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power” (Rousseau, p. 109) created a dichotomy between the week and powerful, which ultimately begot the power struggle between slave and master. According to Rousseau, “there are two kinds of inequality among the human species…natural or physical, because it is established by nature…and another, which may be called moral or political inequality, because it… is established…by the consent of men,” (Rousseau, p. 49).

Rousseau’s state of nature differs greatly from Locke’s. The human in Rousseau’s state of nature exists purely as an instinctual and solitary creature, not as a Lockean rational individual. Accordingly, Rousseau’s human has very few needs, and besides sex, is able to satisfy them all independently. This human does not contemplate appropriating property, and certainly does not deliberate rationally as to the best method for securing it. For Rousseau, this simplicity characterizes the human as perfectly free, and because it does not socialize with others, it does not have any notion of inequality; thus, all humans are perfectly equal in the state of nature. Nonetheless, Rousseau accounts for humanity’s contemporary condition in civil society speculating that a series of coincidences and discoveries, such as the development of the family and the advent of agriculture, gradually propelled the human away from a solitary, instinctual life towards a social and rationally contemplative

In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau depicts a scathing review of the state of equality in the world. Rousseau depicts man’s slow devolution to a society ruled by a few while the majority laments in inequality. He depicts how “The extreme inequality in our society,” is demonstrated by “excessive idleness among some, excessive labor among others,” (Rousseau 51). Rousseau notes this political inequality, or difference in social status, was absent in the era of savage man, and later asserts that the regression to political inequality originated with the transition to civil society. Rousseau’s claim that political inequality arises from man’s transition to life in civil society is a sound assertion because in civil society, man develops new desires, each with their

Rousseau’s beliefs in human nature are that all humans are born with good intent. Rousseau says “Hence although men had become less forebearing…… the development of human faculties, maintaining a middle position between the indolence of our primitive state and the petulant activity of our egocentrism……. the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species.” (Wikipedia. Theory of human nature) as he says the steps toward perfecting one can lead to the downfall of an entire species. Rousseau believed that the savage stage was not the first stage of human development. But it was indeed the third. It was the middle between the brute animals and/or animal-like “ape-men and complete civilized life (Wikipedia. Theory of human nature). That is Rousseau’s beliefs about human nature.

Men in the state of nature, Rousseau argues, is very similar to an animal. Man feels nature’s commands and follows them--- he has no reason not to. There are two impetuses that nature gives to man: “one makes us ardently interested in our well-being and our self-preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow man, perish or suffer”(p.14). These two forces are the only ones that push man.

In contrast, Rousseau had a generally positive view on human nature though a rather negative view on modern society. He proposed that humans had once been solitary beings and had learned to be political. He believed that human nature was not fixed and was subject to changed. Likewise, he believed that man was good when in a state of nature, but was corrupted by society as shown in his quotation, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Also differentiating himself from other humanists, Rousseau taught that the sciences and the arts were not beneficial to man. Rousseau believed the general will must always be right and to obey the general will is to be free.

The state of nature can be characterized as the state before civil society, before government where all men agreed to enter into a social contract. Locke and Rousseau both believed that men were not savages as some might believe. The state of nature was in some cases even better than what we have become today. In fact, both Locke and Rousseau believed that in the state of nature all men had natural rights and followed natural God given or inherent laws that signified the freedom of men from tyranny.

By setting aside all the facts, Rousseau creates a state of nature that proves man to be naturally free and good. Once Rousseau sets aside the facts he creates a story that shows man should be “discontented with your present state, for reasons that herald even greater discontent for your unhappy Posterity, you might perhaps wish to be able to go backwards” (133). This is true because man is free. Rousseau starts by “stripping this being, so constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he may have received, and of all the artificial faculties he could only have acquired by prolonged progress” (134). Man in his beginning is unsophisticated and irrational nothing more than “an animal “(134). But, in nature man has no authorities. In nature “men, dispersed among them [other animals], observe, imitate their industry, and so raise themselves to the level of the Beasts’ instinct, with this advantage that each species has but its own instinct, while man perhaps having none that belong to him, appropriates them all, feeds indifferently on most of the various foods” (134-135). Men learn from other animals and imitate their moves but are forced to

Rousseau’s view on the state of nature is interpreted as a forest, and refers to the “savage man”. He begins by explaining how he relates man to an animal he states “when I strip that being… I see an animal less strong than some, less agile the others, but all in all, the most advantageously organized of all” (Discourse of Inequality, 47). Rousseau believes that if you would leave man in the wild he would

On the other hand, Rousseau is of the idea that human beings are good in nature but they are latter to be vitiated by the political societies which are not part of the man’s natural state. Men need to live in collaboration and help each other to face life challenges. However, with the establishment of political and social institutions, men begin to experience inequalities as a result of greed. Rousseau claims that, in man’s natural state, they only strive for the basic needs and once those needs are satisfied they are contented in that state (Hobbes & Malcolm, 2012). Additionally, Rousseau points out that after the inception of social and political institutions, humans began to be self-centered