Customer Reviews

A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation Of The Inequality Among Mankind

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1 star:		(1)

 

 

In this work / the author does a fine job of presenting a theory on the inequalities of man. It is his first publication and it does seem to show less refinement than later works. This piece is much shorter than Emile but it echoes of it. It is sort of Darwinian / just a century before Darwin. I give this an A minus. It is highly recommended.

Okay, so Rousseau's deal is that in his totally imaginary (which he freely admits) State Of Nature, people are good and happy because they don't have to deal with each other -- it's only when people come into contact with each other that they become unhappy and status competitions begin, so society should be working for a point where... people won't come into contact with each other anymore? It's barely even an interesting thought experiment anymore, as it's been so frequently parroted by modern nostalgia for a simpler time when, really, there weren't many people in the world and even fewer of them that each individual knew to care about. This isn't great philosophy: he's using a false premise to essentially complain about the way he chose to live his life.