Inequality According to Rousseau In his Discourse on Inequality Rousseau strips humankind down to its initial state in an attempt to find the foundation of inequality. He pursues this foundation in hopes of being able to answer his larger question, when was the “moment at which right took the place of violence and nature became subject to law”. In other words, when does natural law give way to inequality. This paper will provide a comprehensive look at Rousseau’s attempt at answering that question and discovering the origins of inequality, while elaborating on some of the deficiencies of his arguments.
The Dedication Rousseau writes a lengthy dedication to begin this essay. The recipient of his dedication is the Republic of Geneva. Right …show more content…
He expresses that he is going to tackle the origins of inequality as a whole by first tackling what the natural man is. That strategy setups up the thought experiment that Rousseau works his way through in this essay. Rousseau claims that to know the origins of inequality, one first must know the origins of mankind. He also asserts, that knowing the origins of mankind has only become more and more difficult as time has progressed since man has become more civilized and has grown farther away from the natural state. Throughout the rest of the essay, Rousseau focuses on reverting man back to that natural state and examining inequality from that perspective. After laying out his intentions, Rousseau is again very direct in stating that the arguments he is utilizing are hypothetical and risk some conjectures. He even goes as far as to say that he is not attempting to solve any issues, merely just bring attention to them. Another important aspect that Rousseau attends to in this introductory section is concept of natural laws. He questions what others have held to be knowledge of the natural laws and concludes that the natural laws are hard to know because the state of nature itself is hard to know. He settles on two principles that he classifies as “prior to reason”, self-preservation and a natural repugnance towards seeing others of the same species suffer or die (empathy). One last thing
The Dedication Rousseau writes a lengthy dedication to begin this essay. The recipient of his dedication is the Republic of Geneva. Right …show more content…
He expresses that he is going to tackle the origins of inequality as a whole by first tackling what the natural man is. That strategy setups up the thought experiment that Rousseau works his way through in this essay. Rousseau claims that to know the origins of inequality, one first must know the origins of mankind. He also asserts, that knowing the origins of mankind has only become more and more difficult as time has progressed since man has become more civilized and has grown farther away from the natural state. Throughout the rest of the essay, Rousseau focuses on reverting man back to that natural state and examining inequality from that perspective. After laying out his intentions, Rousseau is again very direct in stating that the arguments he is utilizing are hypothetical and risk some conjectures. He even goes as far as to say that he is not attempting to solve any issues, merely just bring attention to them. Another important aspect that Rousseau attends to in this introductory section is concept of natural laws. He questions what others have held to be knowledge of the natural laws and concludes that the natural laws are hard to know because the state of nature itself is hard to know. He settles on two principles that he classifies as “prior to reason”, self-preservation and a natural repugnance towards seeing others of the same species suffer or die (empathy). One last thing