Note: this is the last part (part 7, if you are keeping count!) of my review of Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality
Rousseau concludes his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (a/k/a “The Second Discourse”) with an appendix consisting of 14 beautifully-written and memorable paragraphs. In summary, Rousseau’s appendix restates the following themes from the main body of his Second Discourse proper:
- Rousseau’s $64 question and his zero-sum picture of society: First off, after comparing and contrasting modern man, i.e. man in the state of civilized society, who has become “wretched” and “wicked” (see Para. 1 & Para. 2 of the Appendix), with savage man, i.e. man in the state of nature, who was originally “naturally good” (Para. 2), Rousseau promptly poses the $64 question: how did man fall from his state of natural grace, so to speak? For his part, the Swiss author answers this key question by painting a zero-sum picture of “society”, or in the immortal words of Rousseau himself: “Thus it is that we find our advantage in the misfortunes of our fellow-creatures, and that the loss of one man almost always constitutes the prosperity of another” (Para. 2).
- Luxury: the greatest of all evils. Among the many evils of civilized society in Rousseau’s fevered mind, he especially singles out the problem of luxury goods. For Rousseau, the pursuit of luxury is not only “a remedy much worse than the disease it sets up to cure” (Para. 10); it is also “the greatest of all evils” (ibid.). Why? Because luxury goods “bring[] oppression and ruin on the citizen and the labourer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants with devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread famine and death wherever they blow” (ibid.). Okie, dokie …
- What is to be done? Rousseau concludes the appendix by asking another key question, perhaps the most important and poignant one of all: “What is to be done?” (Para. 14). That is, given man’s fall from secular grace (see item #1 above), how can we remedy our dire moral predicament? Alas, Rousseau’s reply is beyond banal or cliché. Although he concedes that we cannot go back to the state of nature, he utterly and totally fails to provide any practical method of actually remedying the evils of modern society:
As for men like me …, who can no longer subsist on plants or acorns, or live without laws and magistrates …., [we] will respect the sacred bonds of [our] respective communities; [we] will love [our] fellow-citizens, and serve them with all their might; we will scrupulously obey the laws, and all those who make or administer them; [we] will particularly honour those wise and good princes, who find means of preventing, curing or even palliating all these evils and abuses, by which we are constantly threatened; [we] will animate the zeal of their deserving rulers, by showing them, without flattery or fear, the importance of their office and the severity of their duty (Para. 14).
In other words, grin and bear it! Yeah, Rousseau might talk a good game, but at the end of his celebrated Second Discourse all we are left with is nothing but glittering generalities and banal clichés. Merci pour rien, Jean-Jacques …
prior probability 