Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1755
This essay traces how inequality might have developed as humans moved from solitary lives into organized society. A striking passage imagines someone fencing off land and declaring it his own.
92 pages 1h 47m reading time
- One of the founding works of modern political thought, and a key text of the French Enlightenment.
- Argues that people in their natural state were simple, free, and roughly equal, and that society, not nature, made them unequal.
- Argues that private property, and the laws made to protect it, locked the rich and the poor into place and made inequality seem natural and permanent.
- Its attack on unfair privilege helped shape the ideas behind the French Revolution.
- It deeply influenced later critics of inequality, including Karl Marx, as well as early writers in anthropology (the study of human societies).
Lost the prize it sought
Rousseau wrote it for an essay contest in the French city of Dijon, but the judges chose another writer.
Planned on forest walks
Rousseau said he worked out its ideas during a week of long walks in the forest of Saint-Germain, near Paris.
Mocked by Voltaire
Voltaire teased Rousseau in a letter, joking that reading it made him want to walk on all fours.
A cold welcome at home
Rousseau dedicated it to his home city of Geneva, but the city's leaders received it coldly.
Translated from French