Discourse on Inequality

Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (French: Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes), also commonly known as the "Second Discourse", is a 1755 treatise by philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on the topic of social inequality and its origins.

He then explains the way in which, in his view, people may have established civil society, and this leads him to conclude that private property is the original source and basis of all inequality.

The text was written in 1754 in response to a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: "What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law?"

The Discourse on Inequality was written in part to contradict the claims made by Locke, Hobbes, and Pufendorf in their discussions of the state of nature.

Instead, he argues moral inequality is unique to civil society and is evinced in differences in "wealth, nobility or rank, power and personal merit.

Natural man's anthropological distinction (from the animal kingdom) is based on his capacity for "perfectibility" and innate sense of his freedom.

The most important feature of Rousseau's natural man is that he lacks reason, in contrast to most of the Western intellectual tradition.

The most likely causes are environmental, such that humans came into closer proximity and began cohabitation, which in turn facilitated the development of reason and language.

[6] What is important is that with primitive social existence (preceding civil society), humans gain amour propre[7]("self-esteem", "self-love", or "vanity") and most of the rest of Rousseau's account is based on this.

[1]: 55 The beginning of part two dramatically imagines some lone errant soul planting the stakes that first establish private property: "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".

The inequality that began with the establishment of private property was progressively exacerbated into slavery, despotism, and corruption.

Also, his description is in great contrast with Paris, where he had spent many years previous to writing this discourse, and which he had left bitterly.