On the Origin and Basis of Human Inequality

Author: (French) Rousseau
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-07-01
Features: In this essay written for the competition of the Academy of Dijon, Rousseau, on the one hand, draws on anthropological materials about savages at the time, and on the other hand, employs dialectical imagination to review the historical process of humanity's transition from a natural state to a social state. The guiding principle: the history of human progress is also the history of human decline; and the establishment of private property is the key link that leads to human inequality and its consequences. This essay can be considered the preface to Rousseau's entire political philosophy.