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sampatpete's review against another edition
4.0
The only thing holding this back from being 5 stars is that it's catastrophically wrong about a lot of straight up anthropological facts. But he tried really hard. And said some very pretty words.
tashtonnes's review against another edition
4.0
Apparently this is a really small essay book and apparently I had already read like 90% of this- aside from the intro and conclusion- in extracts?????? The more u know
And I mean if ur expecting me to say something about the essay- it's really interesting but Rousseau makes you do most of the thinking, connecting the dots, extrapolating etc. kind of just a jump off point really
And I mean if ur expecting me to say something about the essay- it's really interesting but Rousseau makes you do most of the thinking, connecting the dots, extrapolating etc. kind of just a jump off point really
isabelawith1l's review against another edition
2.0
Although Rousseau presented a lot of good points and a cohesive argument, I did not like this essay very much.
haoyang's review against another edition
I highly recommend reading this! I certainly did not find myself agreeing with everything that Rousseau wrote but I found it a really compelling, well-written and 'enlightening' piece about mankind's accelerated perversion after leaving the state of nature and entering the state of society.
A few reviewers have criticised this discourse for being overly reliant on rhetoric and while I do see the validity in that, I think one should take into account that there was little, if any, scientific research on the origins of mankind (Darwin was not around yet) so much of what Rousseau could say about the state of nature could only be guesswork (which is actually pretty accurate).
The other criticism is that Rousseau is too idealistic about the 'state of nature', a concept some are even sceptical of. In my opinion, Rousseau does not paint an idealistic picture of the state of nature, nor does he promote a return to it; instead, he seeks to highlight the depravities of the modern age and contrast that with the purity of our ancestors. How is that false? Also, the state of nature most certainly exists, at least as Rousseau described it -- pre-language, pre-society, when humans lived as individual hunters and were only motivated by primordial, carnal needs like food and reproduction. We were animals once and that is a scientific fact anyways, no?
My main complaint with the discourse is that the main idea of inequality is not defined at the very start and it can also be pretty challenging to spot Rousseau's thesis. Taking the title at face value, I expected the work to be on modern inequalities of his time like socioeconomic inequality (in France, there were the 3 estates) and slavery. However, the philosophical discourse takes the shape of an anthropological exploration, without the scientific evidence that we have today. At times, the ideas that he raises also remind me of Homo Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (the one that comes to mind is the 'progress trap'). In spite of, or because of that, I was all the more engrossed and impressed by the work -- much of his analysis and evaluation actually made sense to a 21st-century reader! And where anthropological works tend to be inadequate, Rousseau's Discourse attempts to shed light on the fundamental changes in human nature, or in his words, "to strip man naked".
To do that, Rousseau visits the state of nature in Part 1. Personally, my conception of the state of nature was more or less aligned with the Hobbesian view that life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", in other words, something we should be glad we have escaped from. But Rousseau offers a different interpretation of the state of nature, an arguably more nuanced one.
For Rousseau, the state of nature is characterised by an interest in self-preservation and the lack of social attachments. Indeed, this mirrors Hobbes' view that life was solitary, in that our ancestors had no family nor romantic relationships; in fact, relationships were simply meant for progeniture. All we did was hunt, forage, hide from predators, mate with fellow 'humans' and hide from other stronger 'humans'. This theme of solitude would be one of Rousseau's main arguments against modernity; when people had little to no attachment to others, they had no dependence on anyone else, and that gave them freedom.
Read the following excerpt:
"I should be glad to have explained to me, what kind of misery a free being, whose heart is at ease and whose body is in health, can possibly suffer. I would ask also, whether a social or a natural life is most likely to become insupportable to those who enjoy it. We see around us hardly a creature in civil society, who does not lament his existence: we even see many deprive themselves of as much of it as they can... In instinct alone, he had all he required for living in the state of nature; and with a developed understanding he has only just enough to support life in society."
So were our ancestors really more miserable than us? To be honest, this is a question that I have been thinking about every now and then as of late. Yes, we have seen so much Progress in our creations and inventions, and in our thought. But are we really better off than we were in the past? Perhaps if we consider the material side of life, security and physical health and what not, then I think we certainly are in the brightest epoch ever. Yet, have we considered the proliferation of mental illnesses as a sign of something fundamentally wrong with the modern psyche? It is also interesting to note how novel diseases only started plaguing the human race once we settled into agricultural civilisations, and famines and scarcity became a problem to be reckoned with. With Progress, we have also invented problems for ourselves, some of which we may never be able to solve. Alas, Rousseau does not recommend a return to the state of nature -- that's impossible.
Before I go on about the transition from the state of nature to the state of society, I'd like to note down the two inequalities that Rousseau identifies in mankind. Firstly, there is natural inequality, which is simply the difference in strength, intellect, etc. and secondly, there is moral inequality, which is the inequality in privileges (wealth, political power) as set out by conventions.
In the state of nature, according to Rousseau, there is hardly any inequality. If you're weaker than another human being, you'd just hide in a tree or find another place to be (if I'm not wrong); after all, all humans were interested in self-preservation and there was frankly nothing to get from killing another human being unless you were a cannibal. I think this is something that isn't very contentious.
So when did inequality start increasing? When we entered the state of society.
But when did we enter the state of society? When our faculties developed to the extent that we started claiming parts of the earth as private property. In Rousseau's opinion, the progress of inequality followed three stages: 1) the establishment of laws and the right of property, 2) the institution of the magistracy, and 3) the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power. With the first, there emerged the distinction between rich and poor; powerful and weak; master and slave.
I'll try to outline the progression as simply as I can, and I hope I haven't misunderstood too much.
When the first ambitious human claimed his property, there followed inequity. In the interest of self-preservation, others followed suit, and this was when natural inequality accentuated the differences in their ability to claim and defend their property. This would then become a self-perpetuating cycle, where natural inequalities are worsened by institutional inequality with the establishment of codes of conduct (the law) to protect private property.
The institution of the magistracy signified the endowment of a select group of humans with the power to enforce laws in order to protect property. This is the origin of the state. Whereas social contract theorists argue that the state was birthed as a result of a compromise between the now-out-of-the-state-of-nature humans and their leaders in which they exchanged some of their freedoms for security, Rousseau provides an interesting counter-argument. He asserts that the state was conceived of by the rich as a means to exploit the poor to defend their property. After all, would those without property require security?
Now, I think both arguments can coexist. While Locke's social contract proves more compelling in explaining the formation and sustaining of feudal societies, Rousseau's view arguably makes more sense for the time before the first political community existed and before everyone owned property. Hmm.
On to the final stage of inequality, the conversion of legitimate authority to arbitrary power. I'm not entirely sure what Rousseau meant by this but if I remember correctly, this final stage concerned the consolidation of political power in family dynasties or the elites. Hence, rather than being instituted by the people to protect their interests, government became arbitrary and tyrannical. I guess he was thinking of absolute monarchies when he wrote this.
Hence, with these three stages of inequality, mankind exists the largely equal state of nature to the dramatically unequal state of society. According to Rousseau, the state of society is one where humans begin to depend on others, forming various relationships (social, economic, political), and we begin to compare ourselves to others. This is where one of his more abstract and less germane ideas comes into play -- the idea that vanity increases our vulnerability to pain.
When one accumulates property, luxury becomes a necessity, for both the rich and those who aspire to become rich. This materialist yearning makes is such that it is more cruel to be deprived of our possessions that we are pleased to possess them, hence increasing our vulnerability to pain. While I don't know how this is relevant to inequality, I really liked the following quote:
"... the rich are so sensitive in every part of their goods."
Indeed, the well-to-do are the ones who need the state, the military, the police more than anyone else because inherently, it simply does not make sense for them to own things that ultimately do not truly belong to them. Absolute monarchs lose political power when their political power is seized by force; it is perfectly legitimate for that which was not theirs to begin with to be taken away from them. And I guess this fear must exist for the rich. Even though they do have legitimate claims to ownership, there is little moral support for the existence of their wealth when there are quarters of the world starving.
Which brings me to Rousseau's point that moral inequality clashes with natural right whenever it is not proportionate with physical inequality.
"It is contrary to the law of nature that children should command old men, fools wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with superfluities while the starving multitudes are in want of the bare necessities of life." (Cool how this prefigures Marxist ideas)
Being a radical, Rousseau also writes that the rich are only happy with their wealth because the dispossessed, the destitute, the poor exist. Without that contrast in society, what can anyone even make of their wealth and status? Personally, I do not think rich people are all sadistic but there must certainly be some truth in Rousseau's damning critique of the accruement of wealth. If we had no one else to compare ourselves with, would we still feel so great about owning so much property? And if there was no measure of poverty or wealth, would we still feel the compulsion to earn more, buy more? That I'm inclined to refute those statements and argue for the fundamental human desire to be in possession of more, more, more, seems to suggest that greed is something fundamentally human. And greed probably was not a thing in the state of nature, perhaps because we were only interested in self-preservation.
To conclude, Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality brings us back, philosophically, to the state of nature (when man was equal) to our current state of nature (one that is rife with inequalities) and provides theories for the emergence and worsening of inequalities as well as a welcome critique of economic elites, then and now.
A few reviewers have criticised this discourse for being overly reliant on rhetoric and while I do see the validity in that, I think one should take into account that there was little, if any, scientific research on the origins of mankind (Darwin was not around yet) so much of what Rousseau could say about the state of nature could only be guesswork (which is actually pretty accurate).
The other criticism is that Rousseau is too idealistic about the 'state of nature', a concept some are even sceptical of. In my opinion, Rousseau does not paint an idealistic picture of the state of nature, nor does he promote a return to it; instead, he seeks to highlight the depravities of the modern age and contrast that with the purity of our ancestors. How is that false? Also, the state of nature most certainly exists, at least as Rousseau described it -- pre-language, pre-society, when humans lived as individual hunters and were only motivated by primordial, carnal needs like food and reproduction. We were animals once and that is a scientific fact anyways, no?
My main complaint with the discourse is that the main idea of inequality is not defined at the very start and it can also be pretty challenging to spot Rousseau's thesis. Taking the title at face value, I expected the work to be on modern inequalities of his time like socioeconomic inequality (in France, there were the 3 estates) and slavery. However, the philosophical discourse takes the shape of an anthropological exploration, without the scientific evidence that we have today. At times, the ideas that he raises also remind me of Homo Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari (the one that comes to mind is the 'progress trap'). In spite of, or because of that, I was all the more engrossed and impressed by the work -- much of his analysis and evaluation actually made sense to a 21st-century reader! And where anthropological works tend to be inadequate, Rousseau's Discourse attempts to shed light on the fundamental changes in human nature, or in his words, "to strip man naked".
To do that, Rousseau visits the state of nature in Part 1. Personally, my conception of the state of nature was more or less aligned with the Hobbesian view that life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short", in other words, something we should be glad we have escaped from. But Rousseau offers a different interpretation of the state of nature, an arguably more nuanced one.
For Rousseau, the state of nature is characterised by an interest in self-preservation and the lack of social attachments. Indeed, this mirrors Hobbes' view that life was solitary, in that our ancestors had no family nor romantic relationships; in fact, relationships were simply meant for progeniture. All we did was hunt, forage, hide from predators, mate with fellow 'humans' and hide from other stronger 'humans'. This theme of solitude would be one of Rousseau's main arguments against modernity; when people had little to no attachment to others, they had no dependence on anyone else, and that gave them freedom.
Read the following excerpt:
"I should be glad to have explained to me, what kind of misery a free being, whose heart is at ease and whose body is in health, can possibly suffer. I would ask also, whether a social or a natural life is most likely to become insupportable to those who enjoy it. We see around us hardly a creature in civil society, who does not lament his existence: we even see many deprive themselves of as much of it as they can... In instinct alone, he had all he required for living in the state of nature; and with a developed understanding he has only just enough to support life in society."
So were our ancestors really more miserable than us? To be honest, this is a question that I have been thinking about every now and then as of late. Yes, we have seen so much Progress in our creations and inventions, and in our thought. But are we really better off than we were in the past? Perhaps if we consider the material side of life, security and physical health and what not, then I think we certainly are in the brightest epoch ever. Yet, have we considered the proliferation of mental illnesses as a sign of something fundamentally wrong with the modern psyche? It is also interesting to note how novel diseases only started plaguing the human race once we settled into agricultural civilisations, and famines and scarcity became a problem to be reckoned with. With Progress, we have also invented problems for ourselves, some of which we may never be able to solve. Alas, Rousseau does not recommend a return to the state of nature -- that's impossible.
Before I go on about the transition from the state of nature to the state of society, I'd like to note down the two inequalities that Rousseau identifies in mankind. Firstly, there is natural inequality, which is simply the difference in strength, intellect, etc. and secondly, there is moral inequality, which is the inequality in privileges (wealth, political power) as set out by conventions.
In the state of nature, according to Rousseau, there is hardly any inequality. If you're weaker than another human being, you'd just hide in a tree or find another place to be (if I'm not wrong); after all, all humans were interested in self-preservation and there was frankly nothing to get from killing another human being unless you were a cannibal. I think this is something that isn't very contentious.
So when did inequality start increasing? When we entered the state of society.
But when did we enter the state of society? When our faculties developed to the extent that we started claiming parts of the earth as private property. In Rousseau's opinion, the progress of inequality followed three stages: 1) the establishment of laws and the right of property, 2) the institution of the magistracy, and 3) the conversion of legitimate into arbitrary power. With the first, there emerged the distinction between rich and poor; powerful and weak; master and slave.
I'll try to outline the progression as simply as I can, and I hope I haven't misunderstood too much.
When the first ambitious human claimed his property, there followed inequity. In the interest of self-preservation, others followed suit, and this was when natural inequality accentuated the differences in their ability to claim and defend their property. This would then become a self-perpetuating cycle, where natural inequalities are worsened by institutional inequality with the establishment of codes of conduct (the law) to protect private property.
The institution of the magistracy signified the endowment of a select group of humans with the power to enforce laws in order to protect property. This is the origin of the state. Whereas social contract theorists argue that the state was birthed as a result of a compromise between the now-out-of-the-state-of-nature humans and their leaders in which they exchanged some of their freedoms for security, Rousseau provides an interesting counter-argument. He asserts that the state was conceived of by the rich as a means to exploit the poor to defend their property. After all, would those without property require security?
Now, I think both arguments can coexist. While Locke's social contract proves more compelling in explaining the formation and sustaining of feudal societies, Rousseau's view arguably makes more sense for the time before the first political community existed and before everyone owned property. Hmm.
On to the final stage of inequality, the conversion of legitimate authority to arbitrary power. I'm not entirely sure what Rousseau meant by this but if I remember correctly, this final stage concerned the consolidation of political power in family dynasties or the elites. Hence, rather than being instituted by the people to protect their interests, government became arbitrary and tyrannical. I guess he was thinking of absolute monarchies when he wrote this.
Hence, with these three stages of inequality, mankind exists the largely equal state of nature to the dramatically unequal state of society. According to Rousseau, the state of society is one where humans begin to depend on others, forming various relationships (social, economic, political), and we begin to compare ourselves to others. This is where one of his more abstract and less germane ideas comes into play -- the idea that vanity increases our vulnerability to pain.
When one accumulates property, luxury becomes a necessity, for both the rich and those who aspire to become rich. This materialist yearning makes is such that it is more cruel to be deprived of our possessions that we are pleased to possess them, hence increasing our vulnerability to pain. While I don't know how this is relevant to inequality, I really liked the following quote:
"... the rich are so sensitive in every part of their goods."
Indeed, the well-to-do are the ones who need the state, the military, the police more than anyone else because inherently, it simply does not make sense for them to own things that ultimately do not truly belong to them. Absolute monarchs lose political power when their political power is seized by force; it is perfectly legitimate for that which was not theirs to begin with to be taken away from them. And I guess this fear must exist for the rich. Even though they do have legitimate claims to ownership, there is little moral support for the existence of their wealth when there are quarters of the world starving.
Which brings me to Rousseau's point that moral inequality clashes with natural right whenever it is not proportionate with physical inequality.
"It is contrary to the law of nature that children should command old men, fools wise men, and that the privileged few should gorge themselves with superfluities while the starving multitudes are in want of the bare necessities of life." (Cool how this prefigures Marxist ideas)
Being a radical, Rousseau also writes that the rich are only happy with their wealth because the dispossessed, the destitute, the poor exist. Without that contrast in society, what can anyone even make of their wealth and status? Personally, I do not think rich people are all sadistic but there must certainly be some truth in Rousseau's damning critique of the accruement of wealth. If we had no one else to compare ourselves with, would we still feel so great about owning so much property? And if there was no measure of poverty or wealth, would we still feel the compulsion to earn more, buy more? That I'm inclined to refute those statements and argue for the fundamental human desire to be in possession of more, more, more, seems to suggest that greed is something fundamentally human. And greed probably was not a thing in the state of nature, perhaps because we were only interested in self-preservation.
To conclude, Rousseau's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality brings us back, philosophically, to the state of nature (when man was equal) to our current state of nature (one that is rife with inequalities) and provides theories for the emergence and worsening of inequalities as well as a welcome critique of economic elites, then and now.
crunden's review against another edition
5.0
The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said 'This is mine', and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.
isabelawith1l's review against another edition
2.0
Although Rousseau presented a lot of good points and a cohesive argument, I did not like this essay very much.
quirpele's review against another edition
2 stars is giving him the benefit of the doubt, maybe there was something insightful or important in between all the weird outdated anthropology. abandoned after about 50 pages.
Content Warnings
Moderate: Racism