Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men (1753)

Since its beginnings as an intellectual movement against absolutism, the Enlightenment had become a formidable force of change by the mid-eighteenth century. Today Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) is considered one of the most influential and original of the Enlightenment writers due to his broad range of interests and talents. Yet in his lifetime, the public’s reception of his ideas was less certain, varying from widespread disdain to adulation. While embracing Enlightenment principles, Rousseau did not accept them at face value; instead, he subjected them to rigorous examination and critique. The document here reveals Rousseau as a man who was simultaneously of and ahead of his times. He wrote it in 1753 as part of an essay competition in which writers were invited to respond to the question, “What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by natural law?” Since the seventeenth century, political thinkers like Locke and Hobbes had argued that the origins of governments stemmed from a contract formed between “naturally” free and equal individuals. For Rousseau, the assumption that free individuals would willingly give up their freedom was based on faulty logic and as such, needed to be exposed to the light of reason. This is precisely what he set out to do in his essay. Only by tearing down the falsehoods on which contemporary society was based could people establish the right kind of political order.

From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men, trans. and ed. Helena Rosenblatt (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011), 42–43, 83–85, 87–91, 93–95.

It is of man that I am to speak, and the question I am examining tells me that I am going to be speaking to men; for such questions are not proposed by those who are afraid of honoring the truth. I will therefore defend with confidence the cause of humanity before the wise men who invite me to do so, and I will not be dissatisfied with myself if I prove worthy of my subject and my judges.

I conceive of two sorts of inequality in the human species: one which I call natural or physical, because it is established by nature, and which consists in the differences of age, health, strengths of body, and qualities of mind or soul; the other which one could call moral or political inequality, because it depends on a sort of convention and is established, or at least authorized, by the consent of men. The latter consists in the different privileges that some men enjoy to the prejudice of others, such as being richer, more honored, more powerful than they, or even making themselves obeyed by them.

One cannot ask what is the source of natural inequality, because the answer would be found in the simple definition of the word. Still less can one inquire if there would not be some essential link between the two inequalities; for that would be asking, in other terms, if those who command are necessarily better than those who obey, and whether the strength of the body or of the mind, wisdom or virtue, are always found in the same individuals, in proportion to power or wealth: a question perhaps good for slaves to discuss within hearing distance of their masters, but not suitable for reasonable and free men who seek the truth.

Precisely what, then, is at issue in this discourse? To mark, in the progress of things, the moment when, right replacing violence, nature was subjected to law; to explain by what marvelous chain of events the strong could resolve to serve the weak, and the people to buy an imaginary peace at the price of real felicity.

The philosophers who have examined the foundations of society have all felt it necessary to return as far back as the state of nature, but none of them has reached it. Some have not hesitated to ascribe to man in that state the notion of the just and the unjust, without bothering to show that he must have had that notion, or even that it would have been useful to him. Others have spoken of the natural right that each person has to preserve what belongs to him, without explaining what they meant by belonging. Still others, first giving the stronger authority over the weaker, had government arise immediately, without thinking of the time that must have elapsed before the words authority and government could have meaning among men. Finally, all of them, speaking continually of need, avarice, oppression, desires, and pride, transported to the state of nature ideas they acquired in society: They spoke of savage man and they described civil man. . . .

Let us therefore begin by setting aside all the facts, for they do not affect the question. The research that can be pursued on this subject should not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasonings better suited to clarify the nature of things than to show their real origin, like those our physicists make every day concerning the formation of the world. Religion commands us to believe that since God himself drew men out of the state of nature immediately after the creation, they are unequal because he wanted them to be, but it does not forbid us to form conjectures, drawn solely from the nature of man and the beings surrounding him, about what humankind could have become if it had remained abandoned to itself. That is what I am being asked, and what I propose to examine in this discourse. . . .

Second Part

Nascent government did not have a constant and regular form. The lack of philosophy and experience allowed only present inconveniences to be perceived, and one thought of remedying others only as they presented themselves. Despite all the labors of the wisest legislators, the political state remained forever imperfect because it was almost the work of chance, and because, as having begun badly, time revealed its defects and suggested remedies but could never repair the vices of the constitution. . . . At first, society consisted only of some general conventions, which all individuals pledged to observe, and by which the community became the guarantor for each individual. Experience had to show how weak such a constitution was, and how easy it was for lawbreakers to avoid conviction or punishment for faults of which the public alone was to be witness and judge; the law had to be evaded in a thousand ways; inconveniences and disorders had to keep multiplying before men finally thought of confiding to private individuals the dangerous trust of public authority, and committed to magistrates the care of enforcing observance of the deliberations of the people. For to say that leaders were chosen before the confederation was created and that the ministers of laws existed before the laws themselves is a supposition that does not permit of serious debate.

It would be no more reasonable to believe that at first peoples threw themselves into the arms of an absolute master without conditions and for all time, and that the first means of providing for the common security imagined by proud and unconquered men was to rush into slavery. In fact, why did they give themselves superiors if not to defend themselves against oppression, and to protect their goods, their liberties, and their lives, which are, so to speak, the constituent elements of their being? . . . It is therefore incontestable, and it is the fundamental maxim of all political right, that peoples have given themselves leaders to defend their liberty and not to enslave themselves. . . .

Our politicians propound the same sophisms about the love of liberty that our philosophers made about the state of nature; on the basis of the things they see, they judge of very different things which they have not seen, and they attribute to men a natural inclination to servitude because of the patience with which the men who are before their eyes bear their servitude, not realizing that it is as true of liberty as it is of innocence and virtue, that their value is felt only as long as one enjoys them oneself, and the taste for them is lost as soon as they are lost. . . .

As an untamed steed bristles its mane, stamps the ground with its hoof, and breaks away impetuously at the mere approach of the bit, while a trained horse patiently endures the whip and the spur, so barbarous man does not bend his head for the yoke that civilized man wears without a murmur, and he prefers the most turbulent freedom to tranquil subjection. Therefore it is not by the degradation of enslaved peoples that man’s natural dispositions for or against servitude must be judged, but by the marvels done by all free peoples to guard themselves from oppression. I know that the former do nothing but boast incessantly of the peace and quiet they enjoy in their chains. . . . But when I see the others sacrifice pleasures, rest, wealth, power, and life itself for the preservation of this sole good which is so disdained by those who have lost it; when I see animals born free and abhorring captivity break their heads against the bars of their prison; when I see multitudes of entirely naked savages scorn European voluptuousness and brave hunger, fire, the sword, and death to preserve only their independence, I sense that it is not for slaves to reason about liberty. . . .

Without entering at present into the research yet to be undertaken on the nature of the fundamental compact of all government, I here limit myself, in following common opinion, to consider the establishment of the body politic as a true contract between the people and the leaders it chooses for itself: a contract by which the two parties obligate themselves to observe laws that are stipulated in it and that form the bonds of their union. The people having, in regard to social relations, united all their wills into a single one, all the articles on which this will expresses itself become so many fundamental laws obligating all members of the state without exception, and one of these laws regulates the choice and power of magistrates charged with watching over the execution of the others. This power extends to everything that can maintain the constitution, without going so far as to change it. To it are joined honors that render the laws and their ministers respectable and, for the latter personally, prerogatives that compensate them for the difficult labors that good administration requires. The magistrate, for his part, obligates himself to use the power confided in him only according to the intention of the constituents, to maintain each one in the peaceable enjoyment of what belongs to him, and to prefer on all occasions the public utility to his own interest.

Before experience had shown or knowledge of the human heart had made men foresee the inevitable abuses of such a constitution, it must have appeared all the better because those who were charged with watching over its preservation were themselves the most interested in it. For the magistracy and its rights being established only upon the fundamental laws, should they be destroyed the magistrates would immediately cease to be legitimate, the people would no longer be bound to obey them; and since it would have been the law and not the magistrate that constituted the essence of the state, everyone would return by right to his natural liberty.

If one only paused to reflect on it attentively, this would be confirmed by new reasons, and it would be evident from the nature of the contract that it could not be irrevocable: For if there were no superior power which could guarantee the fidelity of the contracting parties or force them to fulfill their reciprocal engagements, the parties would remain sole judges in their own case, and each would always have the right to renounce the contract as soon as he found either that the other had violated its terms, or that the conditions ceased to suit him. It is on this principle that the right to abdicate can, it seems, be based. Now to consider, as we are doing, only what is of human institution, if the magistrate, who has all the power in his hands and who appropriates for himself all the advantages of the contract, nevertheless had the right to renounce his authority, then there is all the more reason that the people, who pay for all the faults of the leaders, should have the right to renounce their dependence. . . .

The different forms of governments owe their origin to the greater or lesser differences that were found among individuals at the moment of institution. If one man was eminent in power, virtue, wealth, or credit, he alone was elected magistrate, and the state became monarchical. If several men approximately equal among themselves prevailed over all others, they were elected jointly and there was an aristocracy. Those whose fortune or talents were less disproportionate, and who were the least removed from the state of nature, kept the supreme administration in common and formed a democracy. Time confirmed which of these forms was the most advantageous for men. Some remained solely subject to laws, others were soon obeying masters. Citizens wanted only to keep their freedom; subjects thought only of depriving their neighbors of theirs, since they could not bear that others should enjoy a good which they no longer enjoyed themselves. In a word, on one side were wealth and conquests, and on the other happiness and virtue. . . .

Political distinctions necessarily bring about civil distinctions. Growing inequality between the people and its leaders soon makes itself felt among private individuals, where it is modified in a thousand ways according to passions, talents, and circumstances. The magistrate cannot usurp illegitimate power without creating clients to whom he is forced to yield some part of it. Besides, citizens let themselves be oppressed only insofar as they are carried away by blind ambition; and looking more below than above them, domination becomes dearer to them than independence, and they consent to wear chains in order to give them to others in turn. It is very difficult to reduce to obedience someone who does not seek to command; and the most adroit politician would never succeed in subjecting men who wanted only to be free. But inequality spreads without difficulty among ambitious and cowardly souls, always ready to run the risks of fortune, and to dominate or serve almost indifferently, according to whether it proves favorable or adverse to them. Thus there must have come a time when the eyes of the people were so dazzled that their leaders had only to say to the smallest of men: Be great, you and all your progeny; immediately he appeared great to everyone as well as in his own eyes, and his descendants were exalted even more in proportion to their distance from him. The more remote and uncertain the cause, the greater the effect; the more idlers could be counted as family, the more illustrious it became. . . .

In discovering and following thus the forgotten and lost routes that must have led man from the natural state to the civil state; in reestablishing, along with the intermediary positions I have just noted, those that the pressure of time has made me suppress or that imagination has not suggested to me, every attentive reader cannot fail to be struck by the immense space that separates these two states. It is in this slow succession of things that he will see the solution to an infinite number of problems of morals and politics which the philosophers cannot resolve. He will sense that, the humankind of one age not being the humankind of another. . . . In a word, he will explain how the soul and human passions, altering imperceptibly, change their nature so to speak; why our needs and our pleasures change their objects in the long run; why, original man vanishing by degrees, society no longer offers to the eyes of the wise man anything except an assemblage of artificial men and factitious passions which are the work of all these new relations and have no true foundation in nature. What reflection teaches us on this subject, observation confirms perfectly; savage man and civilized man differ so much in the bottom of their hearts and inclinations that what constitutes the supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair. The former breathes only tranquility and liberty; he wants only to live and remain idle; and even the perfect quietude of the stoic does not approach his profound indifference for all other objects. On the contrary, the citizen, always active, sweats, agitates himself, torments himself incessantly in order to seek still more laborious occupations; he works to death, he even rushes to it in order to get in condition to live, or renounces life in order to acquire immortality. He pays court to the great whom he hates, and to the rich whom he scorns. He spares nothing in order to obtain the honor of serving them; he proudly boasts of his baseness and their protection; and proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain of those who do not have the honor of sharing it. . . . Such is, in fact, the true cause of all these differences; the savage lives within himself; the sociable man, always outside of himself, knows how to live only in the opinion of others; and it is, so to speak, from their judgment alone that he draws the sentiment of his own existence. It is not part of my subject to show how, from such a disposition, so much indifference for good and evil arises along with such fine discourses on ethics; how, everything being reduced to appearances, everything becomes factitious and deceptive: honor, friendship, virtue, and often even vices themselves, about which men finally discover the secret of boasting; how, in a word, always asking others what we are and never daring to question ourselves on this subject, in the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, politeness, and sublime maxims, we have only a deceitful and frivolous exterior, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness. It is sufficient for me to have proved that this is not the original state of man; and that it is the spirit of society alone, and the inequality it engenders, which thus change and alter all our natural inclinations.

I have tried to set forth the origin and progress of inequality, the establishment and abuse of political societies insofar as these things can be deduced from the nature of man by the light of reason alone, and independently of the sacred dogmas which give to sovereign authority the sanction of divine right. It follows from this exposition that inequality, being almost nonexistent in the state of nature, draws its force and growth from the development of our faculties and the progress of the human mind, and finally becomes stable and legitimate by the establishment of property and laws. It follows, further, that moral inequality, authorized by positive right alone, is contrary to natural right whenever it is not combined in the same proportion with physical inequality: a distinction which sufficiently determines what one ought to think in this regard of the sort of inequality that reigns among all civilized people; since it is manifestly against the law of nature, in whatever manner it is defined, that a child command an old man, an imbecile lead a wise man, and a handful of men be glutted with superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities.

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