I will begin my survey of Jean-Jacques Rousseau below the fold with three not-so-random fragments or extracts from his celebrated Second Discourse:

1. PASSAGE #1: “As long as men were content with their first rustic huts, as long as they were limited to making their clothing out of skins sewn together with thorns or fish bones, adorning themselves with feathers and shells, painting their bodies with various colors, perfecting or embellishing their bows and arrows, using sharp-edged stones to make some fishing canoes or some crude musical instruments; in a word, as long as they applied themselves exclusively to tasks that a single person could do and to the arts that did not require the cooperation of several hands, they lived as free, good and happy as they could in accordance with their nature would permit them; and they continued to enjoy among themselves the sweet rewards of independent intercourse. But as soon as one man needed the help of another, as soon as one man realized that it was useful for a single individual to have provisions for two, equality disappeared, property came into existence, labor became necessary. Vast forests were transformed into smiling fields which had to be be watered with men’s sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon to germinate and grow with the crops.” (Rousseau, op cit., reprinted in Cohen 2018, p. 292)
2. PASSAGE #2: “Thus we find here all our faculties developed, memory and imagination in play, ego-centrism looking out for its own interests, reason rendered active, and the mind having nearly reached the limit of the perfection of which it is capable. We find here all the natural qualities put into action, the rank and fate of each man established not only upon the basis of the quantity of goods and the power to serve or harm, but also on the basis of mind, beauty, strength, or skill, on the basis of merit or talents. And since these qualities were the only ones that could attract attention, he was soon forced to have them or affect them. It was necessary, for his advantage, to show himself to be something other than what he was in fact was. Being something and appearing to be something became two completely different; and from this distinction arose grand ostentation, deceitful cunning, and all the vices that follow in their wake. On the other hand, although man had previously been free and independent, we find him, so to speak, subject, by virtue of a multitude of fresh needs, to all of nature and particularly to his fellowmen, whose slave in a sense he becomes even in becoming their master; rich, he needs their services; poor, he needs their help; and being midway between wealth and poverty does put him in a position to get along without them. It is therefore necessary for him to interest them in his fate and to make them find their own profit, in fact or in appearance, in working for his. This makes him a two-faced and crooked with some, imperious and harsh with others, and put him in the position of having to abuse everyone he needs when he cannot make them fear them and does not find it in his interests to be of useful service to them. Finally, consuming ambition, the zeal for raising [his] relative level of fortune, less out of a real need than in order as to put himself above others, inspires all men with a wicked tendency to harm one another, a secret jealousy all the more dangerous because, in order to strike its blow in greater safety, it often wears the mask of benevolence; in short, competition and rivalry on one hand; opposition of interest[s] on the other, and always with the hidden desire to profit at the expense of someone else. All these ills are the first effect of property and the inseparable offshoots of incipient inequality.” (Rousseau, op cit., reprinted in Cohen 2018, pp. 293-294)
3. PASSAGE #3: “… savage man and civilized man differ so greatly in the depths of their hearts and in their inclinations, that what constitutes the supreme happiness of the one would reduce the other to despair. Savage man breathes only tranquility and liberty; he wants simply to live and to rest easy; and not even the unperturbed tranquility of the Stoic approaches his profound indifference for any other objects. On the other hand, the citizen is always active and in a sweat, always agitated and unceasingly tormenting himself in order to seek still more laborious occupations. He works until he dies; he even runs to his death in order to be in a position to live, or renounces life to in order to acquire immortality. He pays court to the great whom he hates and to the rich whom he scorns. He stops at nothing to obtain the honor of serving them. He proudly crows about his own baseness and their protection; and proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain about those who have not the honor to taking part in it. What a spectacle for the Carib are the difficult and envied labors of the European minister! How many cruel deaths would that indolent savage not prefer to the horror of such a life, which often is not mollified even by the pleasure of doing good. But in order to see the purpose of so many cares, the words power and reputation would have to have a meaning in his mind; he would have to learn that there is a type of men who place some value on the regard the rest of the world has for them, and who knows how to be happy and content with themselves on the testimony of others rather than on their own. Such, in fact, is the true cause of all these differences; the savage lives in himself; the man accustomed to the ways of society is always outside himself and knows how to live only in the opinion of others. And it is, as it were, from their judgment alone that he draws the sentiment of his own existence. It is not pertinent to my subject to show how, from such a disposition, so much indifference for good and evil arises, along with such fine discourses of morality; how everything reduced to appearances, everything becomes factitious and bogus; honor, friendship, virtue, and often even our vices, about which we eventually find the secret of boasting; how, in a word, always asking others what we are and never daring to question ourselves on this matter, in the midst of so much philosophy, humanity, politeness, and sublime maxims, we have merely a deceitful and frivolous exterior: honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.” (Rousseau, op cit., reprinted in Cohen 2018, pp. 296-297, emphasis in the original)

Why have I singled out these three specific passages from Rousseau’s celebrated Second Discourse? As it happens, these very same selections also caught the attention of a young Adam Smith. The Scottish philosopher not only devotes a third of his “Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review” (first published in 1756 and available here) to Rousseau; he also transcribes these same three extracts in his 1756 letter! [1] Why did Smith include these three lengthy passages in particular, and what did he think of them? (To be continued …)

[1] As an aside, Adam Smith’s 1756 letter is significant for two additional reasons. First, he was just 23 years old when he penned this letter. Second, it was one of first publications. (His first published piece was a review of Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary published in pages 54-65 of the 1755 issue of the short-lived Edinburgh Review.)