Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (French: Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes), also commonly known as the 'Second Discourse', is a work by philosopherJean-Jacques Rousseau.
Frontispiece and title page of an edition of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1754), published by Marc-Michel Rey in 1755 in Holland.
Rousseau first exposes in this work his conception of a human state of nature, broadly believed to be a hypothetical thought exercise and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way, according to him, people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality.
Context[edit]
The text was written in 1754 in response to a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law? Rousseau did not win with his treatise (as he had for the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences); a canon of Besançon by the name of François Xavier Talbert (l'abbé Talbert) did. Rousseau published the text in 1755.[1]
Argument[edit]
Rousseau's text is divided into four main parts: the dedication, the preface, an extended inquiry into the nature of the human being and another inquiry into the evolution of the human species within society. Also, there is an appendix that elaborates primarily on eighteenth century anthropological research throughout the text.[2] Rousseau discusses two types of inequality: natural, or physical inequality, and ethical, or moral inequality. Natural inequality involves differences between one human's body and that of anotherâit is a product of nature. Rousseau is not concerned with this type of inequality because he claims it is not the root of the inequality found in civil society. Instead, he argues moral inequality is unique to civil society and is evinced in differences in 'wealth, nobility or rank, power and personal merit.'[3] This type of inequality is established by convention. Rousseau appears to take a cynical view of civil society, where man has strayed from his 'natural state' of individual independence and freedom to satisfy his individual needs and desires.
His discussion begins with an analysis of a natural man who bears, along with some developed animal species, instincts for self-preservationâa non-destructive love of self (amour de soi même)âand a 'natural repugnance' to sufferingâa natural pity or compassion. Natural man acts only for his own sake and avoids conflicts with other animals (and humans). Rousseau's natural man is more or less like any other animal, with 'self-preservation being his chief and almost sole concern' and 'the only goods he recognizes in the universe' being food, a female, and sleep... Rousseau's man is a 'savage' man. He is a loner and self-sufficient. Any battle or skirmish was only to protect himself. The natural man was in prime condition, fast, and strong, capable of caring for himself. He killed only for his own self-preservation.
Natural man's anthropological distinction (from the animal kingdom) is based on his capacity for 'perfectibility' and innate sense of his freedom. The former, although translated as 'perfectibility,' has nothing to do with a drive for perfection or excellence, which might confuse it with virtue ethics. Instead, perfectibility describes how humans can learn by observing others. Since human being lacks reason, this is not a discursive reasoning, but more akin to the neurological account of mirror neurons. Human freedom does not mean the capacity to choose, which would require reason, but instead the ability to refrain from instinct. Only with such a capacity can humans acquire new habits and practices.
The most important feature of Rousseau's natural man is that he lacks reason, in contrast to most of the Western intellectual tradition. Rousseau claims natural man does not possess reason or language (in which reason's generation is rooted) or societyâand these three things are mutually-conditioning, such that none can come into being without the others.
Rousseau's natural man significantly differs from, and is a response to, that of Hobbes; Rousseau says as much at various points throughout his work. He thinks that Hobbes conflates human being in the state of nature with human being in civil society. Unlike Hobbes's natural man, Rousseau's is not motivated by fear of death because he cannot conceive of that end; thus fear of death already suggests a movement out of the state of nature. Also, this natural man, unlike Hobbes's, is not in constant state of fear and anxiety. Rousseau's natural man possesses a few qualities that allow him to distinguish himself from the animals over a long period of time.
The process by which natural man becomes civilized is uncertain in the Discourse, but it could have had two or three different causes. The most likely causes are environmental, such that humans came into closer proximity and began cohabitation, which in turn facilitated the development of reason and language. Equally, human 'perfectibility' could explain this change in the nature of the human being.[4] Rousseau is not really interested in explaining the development, but acknowledges its complexity.[5]
What is important is that with primitive social existence (preceding civil society), humans gain 'self-esteem' ('amour propre')[6] and most of the rest of Rousseau's account is based on this. Rousseau's critique of civil society is primarily based on psychological features of civil man, with amour propre pushing individuals to compare themselves with others, to gain a sense of self corresponding to this, and to dissolve natural man's natural pity.
The beginning of part two dramatically imagines some lone errant soul planting the stakes that first establish private property: 'The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, 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'.[7] But Rousseau then clarifies that this moment was presaged by a series of environmental and rational conditions that made it possible. For Rousseau, even the concept of private property required a series of other concepts in order to be formed.
Dedication[edit]
The work is dedicated to the state of Geneva, Rousseau's birthplace. On the face of the dedication, he praises Geneva as a good, if not perfect, republic. The qualities he picks out for praise include the stability of its laws and institutions, the community spirit of its inhabitants, and its good relations with neighboring states, neither threatening them nor threatened by them, and the well-behaved women of Geneva. However, this is not how Geneva truly was. This is the type of regime Rousseau wished for. The epistle dedicatory is a highly ironic and idealized version of the Geneva Rousseau really wanted. Also, his description is in great contrast with Paris, where he had spent many years previous to writing this discourse, and which he had left bitterly. Thus, his description of Geneva is in part a statement against Paris.[citation needed]
Citations[edit]
External links[edit]
Quotations related to Discourse on Inequality at Wikiquote
Works related to Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men at Wikisource French Wikisource has original text related to this article: Discours sur lâorigine et les fondements de lâinégalité parmi les hommes Rousseau Origins Of Inequality
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Summary
Rousseau prefaces his inquiry by distinguishing between two kinds of inequality. The first consists of physical inequality, the power of the strong over the weak, the fast over the slow, the young over the old, and so on. The second consists of what Rousseau calls âmoralâ inequalityâthe kind that comes from âmores,â or social conventions. Natural inequality comes, as the term suggests, from nature. Rousseau observes that it is a matter of self-evidence that there is no connection between the two, since it is rare that the most powerful and wealthy are also the same as the most deserving, and clarifies that that is not his question.
The question that Rousseau identifies instead is how nature became subject to law and convention, and natural inequalities were replaced by moral ones. How is it that the strong serve the weak?
Rousseau observes that the philosophers of his time have speculated what the first, ânaturalâ men were like, as to whether they were just, and have spoken about the ânaturalâ rights of manâto property, sayâwithout figuring out how notions of justice and property could have come about in nature. By describing natural man as greedy or violent, philosophers often simply project an image of man as he is now in society back into an earlier era.
Rousseau asserts that the âfactsâ of man as he was in nature, that is, before society, are beside the point, since they are unknowable. What will follow, he asserts, is a kind of thought experiment. Rousseau intends to imagine man as he must naturally be, before he has been âcorruptedâ by educationâthe age at which he would have wanted to stop.
Rousseau begins by stating that he will not describe manâs development out of the animal kingdom, or describe manâs literal origins, as, say, Aristotle has. For the sake of his experiment, Rousseau will assume that man, such as we are interested in him, ahs always physically existed as he has. In Rousseauâs view, man is the advantageous animal, physically capable of satisfying his hunger, his thirst, and finding rest. In nature, there was food and shelter everywhere.
By having to survive, find food, and rest, men had no chance to become unhappy. Men were physically strong, and adapted to their environment. Strong children survived, and became stronger, while the weak perished. By cultivating his body, he became self-sufficient, and had no need of technology.
Hobbes argues that natural man is violent and aggressive. The 17th-century German thinker Pufendorf had argued that natural man is cowardly. Rousseau agrees that man would have been frightened of anything unfamiliar to him, but he argues that natural man would quickly have recognized his superiority over the animals, and would not have feared them. Man has the advantage of being both strong and agile. Since women can carry their children, they have an advantage over animals that have to leave them behind to fend for them. As for old age, natural man faced it without fear, since the brutality of savage life shortened old age. Rousseau argues that modern man is probably more prone to illness than savage man, because of the idleness and rich food of the rich, and the over-work and starvation of the poor. In general, ânaturalâ men do not notice themselves as lacking everything that we, as civilized people, find indispensable.
Man slept little, and his thoughts were only of his own self-preservation. He had a crude sense of touch and taste, since those are sharpened by âsensuality,ââenjoyment for its own sakeâwhile, at the same time, his hearing, sight and smell were quite acute.
That is man as he existed physically. What about morally? Rousseau argues that animals are simply machines that nature has given the ability to protect themselves. Man is like an animal in that self-preservation is his goal, but unlike animals in that he acts freely, rather than automatically, to preserve himself. That is the source of manâs problems, because he is free to ignore the prescriptions of nature. Nature commands both men and animals, but men are free not to obey.
But with the will, man possesses another faculty that animals lackâthat of self-perfection. This is the faculty that leads to the development of all the others, and, paradoxically and tragically, also leads man to become more unhappy. Savage man has not yet used this faculty; he only perceives and feels. He had neither desires nor fears and so he didnât seek to know anything. His state of existence demands no foresight, since all of his material needs are satisfied by what is at hand, and there is nothing around him to arouse his curiosity. He lives in a perpetual present.
This self-perpetuating state now opens the question of how man was able to get from this state of nature to the current state, of knowledge and civilization. How could, say, agricultureâwhich requires planning, technology, and know-howâhave come about? And, still more, why would such a man have ever agreed to till a field for someone else? Or learn to spend his days working, instead of following his instincts? Even if he suddenly discovered philosophy, why would he ever want to use it? And, more to the point, how and why would human beings enlighten each other? They would never encounter each other, and, what was more, they would be unable to communicate.
Rousseau now turns to the origin of language. How could language have existed if these original, natural human beings were solitary? One possibility is that it was needed so that parents could speak to children. But here we have to be careful not to project the familial home, which Rousseau claims is a social invention, onto the state of nature, in which property did not exist. Men and women came together by chance, slept together, and parted. Mothers nursed their children, who then left when they were strong enough.
The first and most universal language, according to Rousseau, is the cry of pain, or the cry for help. That was used rarely, since it only came about in extreme situations. When human beings came into closer connection and needed to communicate, they used gestures and imitative sounds, to point to and imitate things that were present. Since such a language could only be used in close quarters, they soon started using audible sounds, which since they werenât limited to what was present, helped make language into a universal system. Now we run into the same problemâmen had to agree to do this, but they could only agree by means of language. There must have been some necessity for the change.
The first words must have had a much broader use than words today. Subjects were distinguished from verbs, substance (like tree) from attribute (like green). Substantives (nouns) were initially proper names. One tree was called A, the other called B, and only eventually were abstract concepts (trees in general) formed, since it takes time to notice the similarities between objects.
Rousseau argues that abstraction requires imagination, recollecting past encounters with objects and predicting future ones. It is only with the use of words and sentences that we can arrive at a general idea of something, since gathering individual examples of it only yields us those individual examples. General concepts could therefore only have come later. Natural man, Rousseau believes, lived in a world of endless singularity, while we tend to group things together and lose their particularities. Given the Herculean effort even to make such a language work, the possibility of eventually developing philosophy and mathematics seems nearly impossible. This leads Rousseau and his reader to the crucial question: was society needed to form language, or was language needed to form society?
This is a difficult question to answer because, considering manâs state as one of complete and immediate satisfaction, it is difficult to imagine what need he would have had of other people, since he only stood to lose by what society had to offer, i.e. subjugation to the will of others. Rousseau argues that morally, society is certainly worse than nature, since all of the benefits that it offers are more than offset by its ills.
Rousseau disagrees with Hobbes that, because natural man was not instinctively good, that he must have been evil. Rousseau observes that since, in the state of nature, it was easiest for man to look out for himself without hurting others, that state was probably the most peaceful. Hobbesâ error was to ascribe desires that society places in our mindsâgreed, for exampleâto primitive man. Hobbes describes man in his natural state as a robust child. Rousseau points out that this is a contradiction in terms, since to be robust means to be independent, and so free of the desires that come from others. Natural man isnât good, but neither is he evil. He has no knowledge of virtue or viceâhe just does what he feels inclined to do. His circumstances give him no cause to do evil.
Rousseau nonetheless acknowledges one natural virtue, a repugnance at seeing fellow human beings suffer. He calls this pity. It is natural because, being weak, human beings imagine themselves suffering when they see another human being suffer. Rousseau observes this phenomenon in animals, but he points out that it comes out of manâs natural instinct for self-preservation.
He contrasts this with our emotions in civilization, where we will weep at tragic plays, but not for the suffering of fellow human beings. All social virtues flow from this natural feeling, and all social ills from its suppression by reason. In fact, it is reason that lets man separate himself from his fellow human beings by convincing himself that if something bad is happening to someone else, he himself is safe.
Rousseau Second Discourse On The Origin Of Inequality Among Men
Rousseau identifies a second passion in man besides pity: sexual desire. He considers the possibility that sexual desire could have caused violence in the state of nature. He concludes that it is the laws put in place to curb these desires that actually create this violence. He distinguishes the physical feeling of love from its moral dimension, which causes it to fix on one single person. This latter aspect is borne of social custom. Violence is caused by attachment to a single person, and competition for them; natural man would not have had this preference, and so would not have had cause to become violent over the choice of partner. It is marriage that creates adulterers.
Given these suppositions about the state of nature, we see that natural inequality cannot be the cause of social inequality, since the state of nature kept men separate enough from one another, and gave them no cause for competition, so that that their relative inequalities mattered little.
Analysis
Many philosophers have commented on the strange proposition of the Discourse, which describes a state of nature that Rousseau admits from the outset is imagined, and as having no likely basis in historical fact. Karl Marx observed that Rousseau, and other thinkers of his time, like Adam Smith, began in their thinking with the fallacy that human beings were initially isolated individuals who joined together to form a society. In fact, Marx argues, human life has always been collective; it is only in society that human beings become individuals possessed of rights, property, etc. These thinkers simply take a contemporary state of affairs and project it back into the past. The twentieth-century Marxist philosopher Louis Althusser goes so far as to call the second Discourse a work of fiction. Indeed, at this time Rousseau was a published novelist, and we can see that he draws on his literary powers to make his description of man living in a kind of Garden of Eden as vivid as possible.
Why, then, does Rousseau begin with this image of nature? As Rousseau suggests, by imagining what life was like before human civilization existed, we can gain better insight into what civilization actually is, and what it means to belong to it. Since the whole point of civilization is to use our capacities to design and imagine to improve society, we can use this capacity to imagine a free state (the state of nature), and then compare that with the society we currently have. If we imagine a state in which we were free, in which our desires were satisfied, we will see that to belong to civilization is a state of constant subjugation, in which our wants and our happiness are at odds.
As members of society, the police protect us from harm, but only against other human beings with whom we would have no contact were we not members of society. We have access to technology that performs tasks for us, but we would have no need of these tasks if it were not for demands on us created by living in a technological society. Reason lets us control violent impulses; but these are, in turn, caused by societyâdesiring our neighborâs property, for example. Culture teaches us to cry at the suffering of imaginary people in plays and novels, while we ignore the suffering of our neighbors.
Most of the thinkers of Rousseauâs time, like Voltaire and Denis Diderot, assumed that he was joking. Why would anyone take the time to write a philosophical tract against philosophy? Reason, as they saw it, was the way out of the superstition of religion and the key to a better, happier society. What Rousseauâs longing picture of a lost state of nature reveals is that these cultural, scientific and technological advancements come at the cost of personal authenticity, of having access to our feelings and our instincts, which are, Rousseau argues, the true sources of our happiness.
Rousseau Second Discourse On The Origin Of Inequality Sparknotes
Though Rousseau does not explicitly say so, this view of nature has an obvious political corollary. If human beings were equal in this state of nature, it also follows that no existing social institutions are truly legitimateânot the Church, whose authority rests on the assertion that it administrates Godâs will on earth, and not the King, whose power, together with that of the aristocracy, was believed in Rousseauâs time to rest in their natural superiority over their fellow countrymen. It is no accident that Rousseauâs philosophy would deeply influence the architects of the French Revolution.
Other aspects of the Discourse would become central ideas of the Enlightenment. That man has a natural capacity to perfect himself flew directly in the face of the religious belief that man is naturally sinful, and would give rise to the modern notion of education. The notion that human beings have a natural capacity for pity would, despite Rousseauâs skepticism about the arts, prove to be a central aspect of the theater in Germany, where playwrights like Gotthold Ephraim Lessing believed that seeing the plights of people on stage could improve a personâs capacity to feel empathy.
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