Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation the Inequality Among Mankind
    A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation the Inequality Among Mankind
    A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation the Inequality Among Mankind
    Audiobook3 hours

    A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation the Inequality Among Mankind

    Written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    Narrated by Alan Sklar

    3.5/5

    ()

    Switch to ebook

    About this audiobook

    Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men was written in response to a competition run by the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: What is the origin of inequality among men, and whether such inequality is authorized by natural law? Rousseau puts forth the concept of two types of inequity: natural/physical and moral/political. He focuses on moral inequality and its link to power and wealth. He also covers the areas of self-love, compassion for others, and free-agency, as well as their negative impact in the creation of civil society. In part two of the discourse, Rousseau follows the development of such qualities in mankind from savage man to the modern man.
    Jean-Jacques Rousseau [1712-1778] was a famous philosopher whose work strongly influenced the French Revolution and modern thought as a whole. His treatise “Emile” played a large role in the school of educational thought, and various other pieces impacted literary genres such as autobiography and modern fiction. He was also an accomplished composer, renowned for his operas and contributions to musical theory. Following his death, he was interred as a national hero in Paris' Pantheon.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAscent Audio
    Release dateMay 1, 2014
    ISBN9781469058399
    Author

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was one of the leading figures of the French Enlightenment. The author of popular novels such as Emile, or On Education (1762), he achieved immortality with the publication of philosophical treatises such as The Social Contract (1762) and A Discourse on Inequality (1754). His ideas would serve as the bedrock for leaders of both the American and French Revolutions.

    More audiobooks from Jean Jacques Rousseau

    Related to A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation the Inequality Among Mankind

    Related audiobooks

    Philosophy For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Fortune’s Fool

      Apr 16, 2020

      Fortune’s Fool
      4 min read

    • Article

      It’s Only Human Nature

      Feb 23, 2023

      ‘‘PEOPLE LIKE COLDPLAY and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people, Jeremy.” Super Hans, the crack-addicted dispenser of violence and wisdom in the noughties sitcom Peep Show and the Tory cleric, Jonathan Swift, might not be obvious bedfellows. T

      3 min read

    • Article

      It’s Only Human Nature

      Feb 23, 2023

      ‘‘PEOPLE LIKE COLDPLAY and voted for the Nazis. You can’t trust people, Jeremy.” Super Hans, the crack-addicted dispenser of violence and wisdom in the noughties sitcom Peep Show and the Tory cleric, Jonathan Swift, might not be obvious bedfellows. T

      3 min read

    • Article

      Being Human

      Jan 29, 2019

      Man is the only animal that laughs and weeps; for he is the only animal that is struck with the difference between what things are, and what they ought to be. We weep at what thwarts or exceeds our desires in serious matters; we laugh at what only di

      3 min read

    • Article

      Grappling With Evil

      Oct 28, 2021

      Grappling With Evil
      6 min read

    • Article

      Humans Are Wired for Goodness

      Aug 22, 2019

      Nicholas Christakis and I are on the same page: We would definitely sacrifice our lives to save a billion strangers, perhaps even several hundred million, plucked at random from Earth’s population. But, for sure, not a thousand strangers, or a millio

      15 min read

    • Article

      Differences Between Man And Woman

      Apr 22, 2019

      Is it enough to change laws, institutions, customs, public opinion, and the whole social context, for men and women to become truly equal? “Women will always be women,” say the sceptics. Other seers prophesy that in casting off their femininity they

      9 min read

    • Article

      The Myth Of Sisyphus

      Aug 10, 2020

      The Myth Of Sisyphus
      10 min read

    • Article

      The Myth of Rationality

      Mar 17, 2021

      Many years ago, I worked as a counsellor on a program that provided support to the families of sex offenders. In practice, that usually meant working with the wives of men convicted of child sexual offences. You might expect that my job would have co

      8 min read

    • Article

      Our Library

      Sep 25, 2023

      His father's boot Felled, dazed, silent, he has fallen; knocked full length on the cobbles of the yard. His head turns sideways; his eyes are turned towards the gate, as if someone might arrive to help him out. One blow, properly placed, could kill

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Belief System That Doesn’t Add Up

      Aug 26, 2021

      IMAGINE WAKING-UP TO DISCOVER oneself living in a theocracy; in workplaces and even when chatting with friends it becomes obligatory to signal one’s belief. Kids are subjected to indoctrination sessions at school. The national broadcaster schedules r

      4 min read

    • Article

      Freud the Essayist

      Jun 1, 2023

      Freud the Essayist
      15 min read

    • Article

      Identity

      Sep 6, 2021

      A lot of politics is about bringing people together to get things done, but the negative side is around division of us from them. In the United States, the divide between people of different political identities is hostile… people are now more concer

      3 min read

    • Article

      Wake Up To Reality!

      Oct 28, 2021

      Wake Up To Reality!
      5 min read

    • Article

      Equal Rights

      Nov 28, 2018

      Equal Rights
      13 min read

    • Article

      Power

      Jul 30, 2018

      How mild, by comparison with the despatches in the daily newspapers, will seem this chronicle of women’s militant struggle against political and social injustice in one small corner of Europe. Yet let it stand as it was written, with peace – so-calle

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Execution

      Mar 27, 2018

      The Execution
      4 min read

    • Article

      The Merit Trap

      Sep 1, 2018

      The Merit Trap
      21 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Discourse Upon the Origin and the Foundation the Inequality Among Mankind

    3.5/5

    10 ratings9 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Lately many of the ills of liberalism have been ascribed to Rousseau: "man being born free but everywhere is found in chains" and the myth of the noble savage. Reading Rousseau made me realize how distorted are some of the claims about his philosophy. He is definitely not the caricature which others make of him and his thought is original and well developed. Of course, some times is difficult to agree with what he says and others he is totally off.
    • 4/5
      Let us conclude then that man in a state of nature, wandering up and down the forests, without industry, without speech, and without home, an equal stranger to war and to all ties, neither standing in need of his fellow-creatures nor having any desire to hurt them, and perhaps even not distinguishing them one from another; let us conclude that, being self-sufficient and subject to so few passions, he could have no feelings or knowledge but such as befitted his situation; that he felt only his actual necessities, and disregarded everything he did not think himself immediately concerned to notice, and that his understanding made no greater progress than his vanity.It's actually quite amazing how wrong Rousseau was about human nature. Read and see for yourself.
    • 3/5
      Rousseau is a strange philosopher. Some of his idea are dangerous, too.For example, his theory of social contract doesn't provide any limitation to the power of the 'General Will': the opposite of the other equally famous theory, Locke's one, which requires some check and balances and doesn't have absolute power toward the citizens (the results are easy to see: Rousseau's legacy are Napoleon and Urss, Locke's the United States).Aside from that, Rousseau's account of the birth of human societies (the argument of this book) is bit fuzzy and misleading.I think that Hobbes' one -100 years older- is far more near to reality: the first societies arose out of men's desire of selfpreservation and this happend always with the absolute subjection of them to a central authority, a leader (though obviously Hobbes approves this absolute power and we do not).Rousseau brings a fundamental detail to this picture: the cause behind this association, the element that made an ever-continous (yer not very harmful) state of war a deep problem was agriculture.Agriculture pushed men toward bigger and hierarchical societies: those societies thus gained a remarkable advantage toward the less efficent ones, and started the age of slavery .
    • 3/5
      I have read that Rousseau's writings provided a basis for Karl Marx's beliefs; it is obviously true after reading Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.Although this text is heavily in the camp of communal, "I am my brother's keeper", modern economy has ruined man's nature, Rousseau comes through with a smattering of lines which any of America's Founding Fathers could have written. As a philosopher, and one not originally writing in English, Rousseau pens a comprehensible and easily read book. His arguments, however one may agree or disagree with, are neither convoluted nor flimsy; he proves his beliefs with profound insight. But again, his conclusions may not be completely correct or agreeable to all, they are instrumental in the foundation of any government.
    • 4/5
      Rousseau starts with the proposition that inequality is based on either natural or political reasons. He then fully expands on each. He takes us through the natural development of man into a social being. The natural man evolved enough to value the self, and then saw certain opportunities for interdependence, which led to society and man's growing softer all the way. Once social beings organize into groups, the strongest can and do prevail. Walking us through the natural development of man, Rousseau discusses the nature of mate selection, the development of skills, the learning of the use of fire, metallurgy, and agriculture. He refutes Hobbes assertion that man is inherently lacking in virtue -- in the state of nature, there is no virtue save strength and constitution. Rousseau also allows that man has a natural compassion that helped him become social. He is not totally "brutish." His explanation of property became the basis for property law, including the homesteading process in the USA. His summary of inequality: "In this state of affairs, equality might have been sustained, had the talents of individuals been equal, and had, for example, the use of iron and the consumption of commodities always exactly balanced each other; but, as there was nothing to preserve this balance, it was soon disturbed; the strongest did most work; the most skillful turned his labour to best account; the most ingenious devised methods of diminishing his labour: the husbandman wanted more iron, or the smith more corn, and, while both laboured equally, the one gained a great deal by his work, while the other could hardly support himself." [recorded quote sans name of translator] This inequality causes insecurity and by the end, we have Rousseau crying out against the trouble man has brought against himself in seeking personal property: war, piracy, illness (caused both by poor nutrition in the poor and indulgence by the rich), a weakened constitution, arranged marriage (between "ill-starred" couples), urban living, and abortion. Given the primacy of the state of nature grounded in pre-society, he doesn't give us much basis to solve the modern problem. If he focused more on the post-civilization's natural state, we would have a practical foundation, it seems. Still, this work was a key step in the evolution of political philosophy and it remains an important classic.
    • 4/5
      Duidelijk geniaal werk, maar zeker niet af. Mooi gedachtenexperiment dat de teneur van Rousseau’s stellingen duidelijk blootlegt: beschaving heeft verval meegebracht, maar er is geen weg terug.Gebruik diverse termen voor natuurmens: ‘sauvage”’, l’homme originel, l’homme naturelDikwijls verwijzing naar stammen in suriname en in caraïben
    • 4/5
      Duidelijk geniaal werk, maar zeker niet af. Mooi gedachtenexperiment dat de teneur van Rousseau?s stellingen duidelijk blootlegt: beschaving heeft verval meegebracht, maar er is geen weg terug.Gebruik diverse termen voor natuurmens: ?sauvage??, l?homme originel, l?homme naturelDikwijls verwijzing naar stammen in suriname en in cara?ben
    • 3/5
      I'm occasionally struck by how bad the great classics of political philosophy are. Consider that, when teaching philosophy, we spend an awful lot of energy convincing students that their arguments have to be tight, they have to avoid fallacies, they have to back up their reasoning, and they have to avoid special pleading. Then we give them Locke's treatises, or The Prince, or this great turd of philosophical unreason.

      That said, once you decide this isn't a work of philosophy, it gets much better; it's not. It's pretty clearly a work of rhetoric, seeking to persuade rather than to reason. The first part, in particular, is utterly ridiculous taken as an argument of any kind: we have no reason to think that human beings outside of society are happy vegetables, but that's how Rousseau presents them. His 'argument' is entirely inconsistent; one minute he says these 'savages' have no need of tools or weapons, since they can just eat acorns, the next minute he's happily supplying them with spears to fight off wild beasts. Taken as a rhetorical attack on previous state-of-nature theories, however, and on the idea that civilization is always all good, it's okay. It's too silly to be anything other than okay, but that's fine. Read it ironically, and it makes sense: Rousseau's picture is no sillier than Hobbes', or Locke's, and his name is a lot less silly than Pufendorf's.

      Part II is a bit more serious. Here Rousseau takes a lot from Hobbes (one of the few philosophically solid classics of political philosophy), his analysis tightens up, and we're suddenly faced with a whole bunch of fascinating questions: how did it happen that humans because social? how did it happen that some people get the power and wealth, while others get nothing? can that be justified?

      His answers aren't particularly good, but as a way of showing us how difficult and important these questions are--and, pace Hobbes/Locke/et al., how difficult they are to solve--Rousseau's book works very nicely. It's much harder to justify inequality than previous philosophers had argued (slash some philosophers still argue), it's much harder to provide a rational basis for human society than most of us like to think, and it's very hard indeed to imagine how human institutions came into being.

      Sadly, Rousseau seems to have led more people towards naturalism than away from it, even though you can easily read this book as an attempt to do the latter. The point about the 'state of nature' is that it probably never happened, not that we should return to it; if we can get out of the habit of thinking that there's some nature we can get back to, we can also get out of the habit of thinking we can justify our institutions and actions based on the 'fact' that they're 'natural.'
    • 3/5
      Very well reasoned and well argued, but coming from a 21st century perspective, I found it difficult to overlook Rousseau's lack of scientific rigor when he assumes contain key facts about the evolution of man. Overlooking that, his idea that property is the source of inequality and that the wealthy devised the State as a way to coerce the poor into defending the property of the rich is an interesting argument.