On the Origin of Inequality Jean-Jacques Rousseau

1. On the Origin of InequalityJean-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)

2. Rousseau • 1712-1778 • Born in Geneva • Calvinism • Converts back & forth between Calvinism & Catholicism • Humanity naturally good, importance of sentiment over reason • Forerunner of romanticism

3. 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”

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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?

7. 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 well-being 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

8. 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. (37-38) • Moral = political

9. 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)

10. 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

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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:

14. 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)

15. 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)

16. 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.

17. 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

18. 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.

19. 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)

20. 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

21. “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)

22. 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”?

23. 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)

24. 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)

25. 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?

26. 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

27. 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)

28. 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

29. 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

30. 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)

31. 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)

32. 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.

33. 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)

34. 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)

35. 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

36. 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)