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Analysis Of The Origins Of Inequality By Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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Analysis Of The Origins Of Inequality By Jean-Jacques Rousseau
In his 1755 discourse on 'The Origins of Inequality', Jean-Jacques Rousseau argues his conception of the natural state of mankind, and its subsequent corruption throughout the progress towards civil society. Whilst Rousseau's idealism can be targeted as unrealistic, and his criticisms of the state potentially destabilising to certain societies, ultimately he makes a valid philosophical argument against tyranny which helps found republican political values.

Rousseau depicts man in his natural state as innocent and good, blaming the invention of property as the root of societal inequalities and lamenting the sacrifice of liberty required of members of a state. Rousseau's early man is deemed non-confrontational, concerned only with 'self-preservation'
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