Note: this is part 3 of my review of Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1754)

Thus far, we have surveyed Rousseau’s “Dedication to the Republic of Geneva” as well as the preface to his Discourse on Inequality, so we are now ready to jump into the main body of the Discourse proper, which is subtitled “A Dissertation on the Origin and Foundation of the Inequality of Mankind”. In summary, Rousseau’s Dissertation begins with a few opening paragraphs (seven in all). Here, in this short amount of space, Rousseau accomplishes two major tasks: he tells us why he is writing this work, and he describes his method of reasoning.

1. Motivation: Rousseau reveals what is motivating his work in the fourth paragraph of this opening section: “To mark, in the progress of things, the moment at which right took the place of violence and nature became subject to law, and to explain by what sequence of miracles the strong came to submit to serve the weak, and the people to purchase imaginary repose at the expense of real felicity” (Para. 4). In plain words, Rousseau is going to explain the emergence of modern commercial society.
2. Method: Rousseau is not only going to explain the emergence of modern commercial society; he is going to start his analysis with something called “the state of nature” — a mythical time when men (and women?) were free. According to Rousseau, previous writers who have invoked “the state of nature” have committed a major fallacy: they have “transferred to the state of nature ideas which were acquired in society; so that, in speaking of the savage, they described the social man” (Para. 5). How will Rousseau himself escape this error?

Rousseau concludes this opening part of the Dissertation with a startling admission: he will not waste his time with historical facts: “Let us begin then by laying facts aside …. The investigations we may enter into … must not be considered as historical truths, but only as mere conditional and hypothetical reasonings, rather calculated to explain the nature of things, than to ascertain their actual origin; just like the hypotheses which our physicists daily form respecting the formation of the world” (Para. 6). Wait! Is Rousseau trying to say that history is “social constructed”? Is Rousseau thus the first post-modernist? Either way, Rousseau’s analogy to science is inapt, since science consists of “falsifiable” claims and propositions, i.e. ideas that can actually be tested.

I will be attending a research seminar at the University of Florida this weekend, so I will resume my review of Rousseau on Monday, Jan. 22.