Rousseau: Discourse on the origin of inequality

Résumé du document

From Plato to Hobbes, many philosophers established the fact that the human nature is bad. For instance, while Machiavelli asserted that sometimes the prince ought to be cruel and should use violence to ensure the salvation of the State, Hobbes declared that a society should be created and a unique and extremely powerful authority ought to be recognized to put an end to the war against the common people engendered by the equality of men established in the state of nature. However, in his Discourse on the origin of inequality, Rousseau developed something truly different. Therefore, throughout this review, I will attempt to study Rousseau's theory about the establishment of human societies which led to the creation of inequalities among men.

Extraits

[...] Therefore, the passage from the state of nature to the civil state became necessary. All these steps which led human beings to associate themselves in societies could be summed up by this sentence of Rousseau: “from the cultivation of land, there necessarily followed the division of land; and from property once recognized the first rules of justice [introduced with the creation of a society]” (Cohen and Fermon: 308). As Hobbes, Rousseau thought that it was the reign of fear and of arbitrary domination which introduced the necessity of a social contract to guarantee peace between men as well as the preservation of their goods. [...]

[...] Indeed, in many respects, The Discourse on the origin of inequality appears as a diatribe against civilization. As his author wrote, example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm that the human race had been made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable youth of the world; and that all 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” (Cohen and Fermon: 311). [...]

[...] As he wrote, “such was the condition of man in his nascent stage; such was the life of an animal limited at first to pure sensations, and scarcely profiting from the gifts nature offered him, far from dreaming of extracting anything from (Cohen and Fermon: 302). Like Hobbes, Rousseau rejected the idea of a natural sociability of men developed by many philosophers such as Cicero in De Republica or Hugo Grotius. According to him, men were solitary and peaceful by nature, they did not naturally need others, they were self-sufficient. However, what led men to associate themselves in societies? [...]

[...] Therefore, in his Discourse on the origin of inequality, Rousseau described the process by which men became social. First of all, in the first steps of their developments, men began to establish stable relationships between each other with the creation of families[1] and then of particular nations[2]. Then, men stopped hunting and collecting food to nourish themselves and began to exploit the land cultivating it. The development of agriculture and then of metallurgy (wheat and iron which produced civilization) created new needs among men and then introduced the idea of property. [...]

[...] This led us to Rousseau's pessimistic conclusion: “such was, or should have been, the origin of society and laws, which gave new fetters to the weak and new forces to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of property and of inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious men henceforth subjected the entire human race to labor, servitude and misery” (Cohen and Fermon: 311). Therefore, according to Rousseau, the perfectibility of men continually created new needs which engendered the appearance of agriculture and metallurgy and then the introduction of property. This new notion led to many conflicts among men and then to the establishment of a civil society to put an end to them. [...]