A Discourse On Inequality

A fascinating examination of the relationship between civilization and inequality from one of history’s greatest minds The first man to erect a fence around a piece of land and declare it his own founded civil society—and doomed mankind to millennia of war and famine. The dawn of modern civilization, argues Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this essential treatise on human nature, was also the beginning of inequality. One of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, Rousseau based his work in compassion for his fellow man. The great crime of despotism, he believed, was the raising of the cruel above the weak. In this landmark text, he spells out the antidote for man’s ills: a compassionate revolution to pull up the fences and restore the balance of mankind. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

The searing indictment of man-made inequality in all its many forms that Rousseau offers in Discourse on Inequality is a must-read for philosophy buffs and supporters of social justice. This artfully composed argument sets forth the core elements of Rousseau's philosophical views, including his unique take on Hobbes' concept of nature and natural law.

Rousseau first exposes in Discourse on the Origin of Inequality his conception of a human state of nature, presented as a philosophical fiction and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way, according to him, people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712 – 1778) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the 18th century, mainly active in France. His political philosophy influenced the Enlightenment across Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the overall development of modern political and educational thought.

The Second Discourse examines man in the true "state of nature," prior to the formation of the first human societies

This book evaluates Rousseau's arguments concerning why inequality exists in society and why it poses dangers to human well-being.

Published in 1998, this volume consists of 16 edited papers presented at an Anglo-French conference on inequality in France in March 1997. The purpose of this book is to bring together ideas and perceptions of inequality in the two countries across several areas including multi-ethnicity, education, social work, housing and health, presented by experts in these fields and in cultural studies. The purpose is not comparative in the traditional sense, but rather to analyze the different meanings amd conceptions that apply to inequality in France and Britain and to demostrate how these differences affect policies as well as what is considered to be legitimate grounds for policy intervention. This approach to social policy in Europe pays attention to the cultural meanings of concepts like inequality and demonstrates that comparative social policy can only be properly productive when it acknowledges that key words like poverty, inequality, citizenship, social rights and insertion/exclusion carry with them quite different ideological, moral and social meanings in two countries such as Britain and France.

Are humans unique? This simple question, at the very heart of the hybrid field of biological anthropology, poses one of the false of dichotomies—with a stereotypical humanist answering in the affirmative and a stereotypical scientist answering in the negative. The study of human biology is different from the study of the biology of other species. In the simplest terms, people's lives and welfare may depend upon it, in a sense that they may not depend on the study of other scientific subjects. Where science is used to validate ideas—four out of five scientists preferring a brand of cigarettes or toothpaste—there is a tendency to accept the judgment as authoritative without asking the kinds of questions we might ask of other citizens' pronouncements.