A Discourse on Inequality (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Author), Maurice Cranston (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 5, 1985 | Series: Penguin Classics

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.

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French (translation)

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 Chambery 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 Encyclopedie. In the meantime he fathered five children by Therese 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'inegalite 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 a 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 Heloise (1761), met with immediate and enormous success. In this and in Emile, 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.

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 18 and up
  
• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (February 5, 1985)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140444394
• ISBN-13: 978-0140444391
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #221,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #22 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > History & Surveys
  • #47 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Political
  • #48 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Philosophy > Ethics & Morality

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Philosophy, April 13, 2010

By 

Bill R. Moore (New York, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Discourse on Inequality (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:

5.0 out of 5 stars A profound examination of the human condition, June 7, 2008

By 

Raymond F. Donahue (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Discourse on Inequality (Penguin Classics) (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.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A historic and important document., February 12, 2003

By 

Roberto P. De Ferraz "ferraz9" (Sao Paulo, Brazil) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: A Discourse on Inequality (Penguin Classics) (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.