It was Rousseau's first successfully published philosophical work, and it was the first expression of his influential views about nature vs. society, to which he would dedicate the rest of his intellectual life.

Rousseau wrote Discourse in response to an advertisement that appeared in a 1750 issue of Mercure de France, in which the Academy of Dijon set a prize for an essay responding to the question: "Has the restoration of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?"

Rousseau had found the idea to which he would passionately dedicate the rest of his intellectual life: the destructive influence of civilization on human beings.

[2]: 24  Using examples from Athens, Sparta, and Rome, Rousseau wrote that the arts and sciences sap humans of their virtue and ability to defend against invasion.

The character explains that Rousseau was showing the "great principle that nature made man happy and good, but that society depraves him and makes him miserable....vice and error, foreign to his constitution, enter it from outside and insensibly change him."

The character describes the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences as an effort "to destroy that magical illusion which gives us a stupid admiration for the instruments of our misfortunes and [an attempt] to correct that deceptive assessment that makes us honor pernicious talents and scorn useful virtues.

Throughout he makes us see the human race as better, wiser, and happier in its primitive constitution; blind, miserable, and wicked to the degree that it moves away from it.

[2]: 42 Oddly, Rousseau, who claims to be motivated by the idea of bringing forth something to promote the happiness of mankind, sets most of humanity as his adversaries.

In one letter he described it as one of his "principal writings," and one of only three in which his philosophical system is developed (the others being the Discourse on Inequality and Émile), but in another instance he evaluated it as "at best mediocre.