On the Origin of Inequality
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
“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.”
(Humanities 4)
Rousseau
• 1712-1778
• Born in Geneva
– Calvinism
– Converts back & forth
between Calvinism &
Catholicism
• Humanity naturally good,
importance of sentiment
over reason
– Forerunner of romanticism
2
If I had to choose my birthplace...
• Why start with all this?
• Size limited by the extent of human faculties, that is to say, limited
by the possibility of being well governed... (26-28)
– Minimal delegation/administration
– Can’t conceal vice, virtue known
– Familiarity leads to love of homeland
• I would have wanted to be born in a country where the sovereign
and the people could have but one and the same interest
– Only possible if they are one and the same government
– Democracy (“wisely tempered”) and the Popular Sovereign
• Transtemporal entity
• What is sovereignty?
• “We the People”
3
If I had to choose my birthplace...
• I would have wanted to live and die free, that is to say, subject to
the laws in such wise that neither I nor anyone else could throw off
their honorable yoke...
– The self-willed law is freedom
• Popular sovereignty
• No one above the law
– To be above the law is to have power over all others
• Not in a newly constituted republic
– Politics and habits
• Once people are accustomed to masters, they are no longer in a position to
get along without them.
– Neither in with nor in fear of conquest
– Laws changed infrequently
• It is above all the great antiquity of the laws that makes them holy and
venerable
4
Geneva
• You are neither rich enough to enervate
yourself with softness and to lose in vain
delights the taste for true happiness and solid
virtues, nor poor enough to need more
foreign assistance than your industry procures
for you. And this precious liberty which in
large nations is maintained only by exorbitant
taxes, costs you almost nothing to pursue. (29)
– The Golden Age
5
Part I: The State of Nature
• Of all the branches of human knowledge, the most useful
and least advanced seems to me to be that of man. (33)
– Politics & anthropology
– What are people like?
– They are naturally equal, but become better or worse, and this
is the root of inequality
• It is no light undertaking to separate what is original from
what is artificial in the present nature of man, and to have a
proper understanding of a state which no longer exists,
which perhaps never existed, which probably never will
exist, and yet about which it is necessary to have accurate
notions in order to judge properly our own present state
(34, my emphasis)
– Why is it necessary?
6
• Leaving aside therefore all the scientific books which teach
us only to see men as they have made themselves, and
meditating on the first and most simple operations of the
human soul, I believe I perceive in it two principles that are
prior to reason... (my italics)
– Everything other than this, even reason, is a social construct
• ...of which one makes us ardently interested in our wellbeing and self-preservation, and the other inspires in us a
natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially
our fellow man, perish or suffer. (35)
– Sentient, not rational
• Animals not needlessly mistreated
– Naturally, humans do harm only in self-defense
7
Two kinds of inequality
• I conceive of two kinds of inequality in the
human species: one which I call natural or
physical... The other may be called moral or
political inequality, because it depends on a
kind of convention and is established, or at
least authorized, by the consent of men. (3738)
– Moral = political
8
Nature is abundant
• The philosophers who examine society have all failed to discover
the true state of nature
– All of them, speaking continually of need, avarice, oppression, desires,
and pride have transferred to the state of nature the ideas they have
acquired in society. (38)
• Vs. Hobbes and scarcity
– Shelter, food, water all readily available
– Sex when humans encounter one another, without socially created
notions of beauty to interfere (56)
• Savage humans “eventually die without anyone being aware that
they are ceasing to exist, and almost without being aware of it
themselves.” (42)
– “Knowledge of death and its terrors is one of the first acquisitions that
man has made in withdrawing from the animal condition” (46)
9
• It is no great misfortune for those first men, nor, above all,
such a great obstacle to their preservation, that they are
naked, that they have no dwelling, and that they lack all the
useful things we take to be so necessary. (43)
– Most of our ills are of our own making. (42)
• Civilization preoccupied with remedying the problems that it itself has
caused.
• Men are wicked; a sad and continual experience dispenses
us from having to prove it. Nevertheless, man is naturally
good. (note 9, p. 89)
– Vanity, ambition, war make people unhappy & corrupt, desiring
luxury for release
• Medicine to treat a lifetime of bad food, vacations to ease your
nerves, entertainment to distract you
10
What’s the difference between man
and other animals?
• Nature alone does everything in the operations of an
animal, whereas man contributes, as a free agent, to
his own operations. The former chooses or rejects by
instinct and the latter by an act of freedom. (44)
• The faculty of self-perfection, a faculty which, with the
aid of circumstances, successively develops all the
others, and resides among us as much in the species as
in the individual. (45)
– Plasticity, can be improved or degraded from the natural
state.
– As soon as they are grown, animals are what they will
always be, but humans can change across their lives.
11
• Needs  Passions  Knowledge (46)
– The only goods [the savage man] knows in the universe are
nourishment, a woman, and rest; the only evils he fears
are pain and hunger
• New ideas could be transmitted only with speech, but
natural man does not have language. (48-51)
– Abstract ideas (“mind”, “beauty”, “justice”) require
language.
– Language requires thinking
– Language originates from primitive sounds of
communication. This would have taken a long, long time.
• Savage man lives alone.
12
Savagery and Innocence
• Which was the more necessary: an already formed society
for the invention of languages, or an already invented
language for the establishment of society? (51)
– Society is ultimately unnatural. (51)
• Morality is not natural (52)
– Savage man has no ideas of good and evil
– Morality as social convention
– Lovee, morality, pride, beauty, ambition, vanity, aggression,
dependence, tyranny, all socially constructed
• The duty of eternal fidelity serves merely to create adulterers... Even
the laws of continence and honor necessarily spread debauchery and
multiply the number of abortions. (57)
– While the savage may not be able to use his reason, reason
allows civilized man to abuse his faculties:
13
• While the savage may not be able to use his reason,
reason allows civilized man to abuse his faculties
• It is neither the development of enlightenment nor the
restraint imposed by law, but the calm of the passions and
the ignorance of vice which prevents [savages] from doing
evil. So much more profitable to these is the ignorance of
vice than the knowledge of virtue is to those. (53)
• Pity is the only natural virtue, and superior to any of those
imposed by society. (53)
14
The vice of Reason
• Reason is what engenders egocentrism, and
reflection strengthens it. Reason is what turns
man in upon himself. Reason is what
separates him from all that troubles him and
afflicts him. Philosophy is what isolates him
and what moves him to say in secret, at the
sight of a suffering man, “Perish if you will; I
am safe and sound.” (54)
15
The Vice of Reason
• Egocentrism ≠ love of self.
– Love of oneself is a natural sentiment
– Egocentrism is merely a sentiment that is relative,
artificial and borne of society, which moves each
individual to value himself more than anyone else,
which inspires in men all the evils they cause one
another, and which is the true source of honor. (note
15, p. 106)
• Jacking up the price on coffins, profiting by the suffering and
death of others. (note 9, p. 90)
• There’s no legitimate profit that can’t be surpassed by an
illegitimate one.
16
The Vice of Reason
• His fellow man can be killed with impunity underneath his window.
He has merely to place his hands over his ears and argue with
himself a little in order to prevent nature, which rebels within him,
from identifying him with the man being assassinated. Savage man
does not have this admirable talent, and for lack of wisdom and
reason he is always seen thoughtlessly giving in to the first
sentiment of humanity. (55)
• When there is a riot or a street brawl, the populace gathers together;
the prudent man withdraws from the scene. It is the rabble, the
women of the marketplace, who separate the combatants and prevent
decent people from killing one another.
• Pity is what carries us without reflection to the aid of those we see
suffering. (55)
– Pity is natural, and reason conquers nature
17
Independence and Liberty
• Imagination, which wreaks so much havoc among us, does not
speak to savage hearts; each man peacefully awaits the impetus of
nature, gives himself over to it without choice, and with more
pleasure than frenzy; and once the need is satisfied, all desire is
snuffed out. (56)
– True needs
• We do not desire what we are not in a position to know. (note 11, p. 46)
• Farming, being the most necessary profession, will enjoy the highest prestige
in virtuous societies and contempt in the most corrupt (note 9)
• In nature, tyranny is impossible
– You have to sleep sometime. (58)
• It is impossible to enslave a man without having first put him in the
position of being incapable of doing without another.
18
No Going Back
• As for men like me, whose passions have forever destroyed their
original simplicity... They will
–
–
–
–
–
Respect the bonds of their societies
Love and serve their fellow men
Obey the laws and authorities
Honor their rulers
They will animate the zeal of these worthy chiefs by showing them
without fear or flattery the greatness of their task and the rigor of
their duty.
• But they will despise no less for it a constitution that can be
maintained only with the help of so many respectable people, who
are desired more often than they are obtained, and from which,
despite all their care, always arise more real calamities than
apparent advantages. (note 11, p. 95)
19
Part II: Anthropology of Decline
• 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. What crimes,
wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would
the human race have been spared, had someone
pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and
cried out to his fellow men, “Do not listen to this
imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits
of the earth belong to no on!” (60)
– Too late by then
• Historical determinism
20
• “With a simple and solitary life, very limited needs, and the
tools they had invented to provide for them... Men enjoyed
a great deal of leisure time, they used it to procure for
themselves many types of conveniences unknown to their
fathers, and that was the first yoke they imposed on
themselves without realizing it, and the first source of evils
they prepared for their descendents.” (63)
– Leisure  luxury  corruption and enslavement
• A softer body and mind
– Conveniences become necessities
– “Being deprived of them became much more cruel than
possessing them was sweet” (63)
21
• Having previously been individual nomads and
now forming permanent dwellings, “men slowly
came together and united into different bands,
eventually forming in each country a particular
nation, united by mores and characteristic
features, not by regulation and laws, but by the
same kind of foods and by the common
influences of the climate.” (63)
– Culture prior to politics
– Nationalism
• What is a “nation”?
22
• Continued interaction w/others allows for the emergence
of relative concepts (61)
– Large vs. small, strong vs. weak, fast vs. slow, timorous vs. brave
– As individuals consider themselves in relation to other creatures
and challenge, the judge themselves favorably, planting the
seeds of pride
• The gaze: awareness of self
• Seeing that they acted alike, came to think that they
thought as he did (61)
– Theory of mind, roots of society
– Began to practice “rules of conduct” in interaction “for his
advantage and safety.” (61)
– Loose confederacies emerge, but only on an ad hoc basis. Still
no real concept of the future. (62)
23
The Gaze
• “People become accustomed to consider different objects
and to make comparisons.” (63)
– Ideas of merit and preference develop
• Ex: beauty
– Romantic love comes into being, and with it jealousy (64)
• “Discord triumphs”
• “Each one began to look at the others and to want to be
looked at himself, and public esteem had a value...” (64)
– The first step toward inequality and vice
– First preferences born of vanity and contempt, shame and envy
– Morality and punishment develop (65)
24
• Nonetheless, “this period of the development
of human faculties, maintaining a middle
period between the indolence of our primitive
state and the petulant activity of our
egocentrism, this may have been the happiest
and most durable epoch.” (65)
– Why?
25
• Comparative ability + demand for luxury =
necessity for cooperation (65)
– Cooperation  dependence (66)
• Agriculture and metallurgy lead to modern civilization
– Agriculture  division of land  law (66)
» Labor entitles the individual to the fruits of labor,
repeated plantings and harvestings of a field lead to
private property (67)
» Here the descent begins in earnest
26
• Natural inequalities become exacerbated, made
more powerful, more influential and more
permanent
– Strong do the most work, inventive are more efficient,
etc. (67)
• But people are evaluated not only on the quantity of
goods, but on the possession of other desirable
characteristics
• Intelligence, beauty, skill, etc.
• People are rewarded not for having these qualities, but for
being thought to have them.
– Deception is born (67)
27
• In nature the individual is free and independent, but in
society is the slave of his fellow men (67-68)
– Interdependence (even slavemasters need their slaves)
– But also dependent on others for selfhood.
• The individual feels a need to be thought of by others in a certain way
– Luxuries always become needs
• Those who do not cease land find themselves impoverished
without losing anything,
– Become dependent for sustenance on the rich
• Becoming slaves of the rich, help to subdue others into slavery
– Some turn to banditry (68)
• In this way, the Hobbesian state of nature develops, but there is
nothing natural about it
28
• In this chaos, the rich look to institutionalize
their advantage by taming the weak. (69)
– The state is born
• The persuasive lie that it is for mutual benefit (Hobbes)
– The rich man turns his enemies into his defenders
• “It is reasonable to believe that a thing was invented by
those to whom it is useful rather than by those to
whom it is harmful.” (71)
• “They all ran to chain themselves, in the belief that
they secured their liberty.” (70)
– False consciousness
29
• The establishment of government
“irretrievably destroyed natural liberty,
established forever the law of property and of
inequality, changed adroit usurpation into a
natural right, and for the profit of a few
ambitious men henceforth subjugated the
entire human race to labor, servitude and
misery.” (70)
30
• This society has an educative function
– War between governments
– “Prejudices that rank the shedding of human blood among the virtues.
The most decent people learned to consider it among their duties to
kill their fellow men. Finally, men were seen massacring one another
by the thousands without knowing why.” (70)
• Natural instincts for self-preservation and pity erased
• “Perfectibility”
• People sought freedom in government, but didn’t get it
– It is the same for liberty as it is for innocence and virtue: their value is
felt only as long as one has them oneself, and the taste for them is lost
as soon as one has lost them. (72)
• They give the name ‘peace’ to the most miserable slavery. (72)
– I sense that it is inappropriate for slaves to reason about liberty. (73)
31
Inalienable rights
• The right to property is only conventional, a result of
human action
– Thus, people can dispose of their property as they see fit
• But life and liberty are gifts of nature
– Everyone naturally has them
– They are so valuable that nothing else can compare, so it
“offends both nature and reason” to think that they can be
bartered away
• And certainly not by one’s ancestors (74)
• Government must not have begun with arbitrary power, as
this would only immediately reproduce the problem that
they were intended to solve, the law of the strongest.
32
• In places that retained the greatest level of natural
equality (by fortune or talent) democracy emerged (76)
– Least unnatural form of government
• In the most corrupt societies, people are so
conditioned to servitude that they will trade what little
liberty they have for luxury and serenity (76)
– Domination becomes more dear to them than
independence, and they consent to wear chains in order to
be able to give them to others. It is very difficult to reduce
to obedience someone who does not seek to command.
(77)
– Defenders of the homeland become its enemies, holding a
knife to the throat of the citizenry (79)
33
• Those who benefit from the social order “prize the
things they enjoy only to the extent that others are
deprived of them: and because, without changing their
position, they would cease to be happy, if the people
ceased to be miserable. (78)
– The corrupting power of the social gaze
– “The savage lives in himself; the man accustomed to the
ways of society know how to live only in the opinion of
others.” (81)
– “With everything reduced to appearances everything
becomes facetious and bogus: honor, friendship, virtue,
and often even our vices, about which we continually find
the secret of boasting.” (81)
34
• They seek to maintain the status quo by dividing
the people against themselves, “in opposition of
[the people’s] own rights and interests.” (79)
• In the final stage of inequality, “all private
individuals become equals again, because they
are nothing.” (79)
– The return to the law of the strongest
– A new state of nature, “the fruit of an excess of
corruption.” (79)
• Hobbes again
35
• The uprising that kills the sultan “is as lawful an act as
those by which he disposed of the lives and goods of
his subjects the day before. Force alone maintained
him, and force alone brought him down. (79)
– No one can complain of injustice, only misfortune
• What meaning does justice have under tyranny? Everything has
been reduced to appearance
• Moral inequality is not natural, it is a historical artifact
• Moral inequality is unnatural to the extent that it is not
proportionate to physical equality
– Children ought not lead men, fools the wise, or a few to
gorge while the many starve (81)
36