The Speech on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men , title original of the work sometimes also published like Of the Inequality among the men , is a test written by the writer and Philosophe Genevese of French language Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
History
This philosophical test was started in 1753 and was published in 1755, in answer on a subject of the Académie of Dijon entitled: “is Which the origin of the inequality among the men and if it is authorized by the natural law? ”Its participation in the contest is in the continuity of the Discours on sciences and arts for which it had already been preceded in 1750 by this same academy, but this time Ci it was somewhat criticized… In particular by Voltaire in a letter dated August 30th, 1755, and in which he writes: “I received, Sir, your new book against mankind (...) One forever employed such an amount of spirit to be wanted to return animals to us, it takes desire for walking to four legs when your work is read. ”
It acts, so to speak, of its first large philosophical text. Because he had somewhat repudiated the precedent which he judged being a naive work, and since this Discours on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men poses the bases of a philosophy of the Nature which he will still develop in social contract and Emile , one can thus admit that it is one of the turnings in the literary life of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
Presentation
Of the inequality among the men is a philosophical test of a hundred pages approximately, richly annotated by the author, introduced by a letter of praises to the République of Geneva like by a foreword of the author dated June 12th 1754.
It is accompanied, in many recent editions, of a virulent exchange between Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau where the first fustigates the optimistic vision of the Human nature of the second, like her vision of the man in company.
The text, finally, is brought by the question of the Académie of Dijon: “Which is the origin of the inequality among the men and if it is authorized by the natural law? ”, on which rests the whole test.
Study of text
A daring company
The foreword of Rousseau makes appear in good place the following question: “Which experiments would be necessary to manage to know the natural man; and which are the means of making these experiments within the company? ”The step of the author will be thus to define, by the reasoning and the conjecture, a model which could lead the primitive man to found the company in general, and its political systems in particular. It thus is not about an anthropological study before the hour, and the project does not have the role to establish scientific truth.
However, it should be noted that its work contains problems of the anthropology of today in particular by showing off-centring compared to its own culture. “When one wants to study the men, it is necessary to look close to oneself, but to study the man, it is necessary to learn how to carry its sight to far. ” It made remote glance, the conviction of the glance on the man. It is by discovering the characteristics of the various companies which one can discover the properties of the man. Thus, it is at the origin of the analytical method which characterizes anthropology.
The objective, if it is not that to found Certitude S, is thus at least to bring by a experiment of thought a legitimacy to powerful and a direction to the condition of oppressed.
The primitive question is thus to define the Nature even of the Homme. And with it, to bring a philosophical framework at the Natural state of .
The state of nature according to Rousseau
The Natural state of , for Jean-Jacques Rousseau, occupies an essential place in the philosophical questioning. The irony is that the author forever really given concise definition of this state: it is however in the Discours on the origin and the bases of the inequality among the men that the topic knows one of its thorough treatments:
Knowing if little nature and agreeing so badly on the direction the word law , it would be quite difficult to be appropriate of a definition of the law naturelle.
One starts by seeking the rules of which, for the common utility, it would be by the way that the men agreed between them; and then the name of natural law gives to the collection of these rules, without another proof that it although one finds who would result from their practice universelle.
Rousseau uses here a Principe of exclusion: he wants to thus give a framework so that natural man is the , thus excluding from this state of nature all that, in the beginnings, does not relate to it.
A political criticism
The step of the author is, more than to promote a République, to fustigate the political or social inequalities by showing that their cause is not that of nature.The first which, having enclosed a ground, was warned to say “This is with me”, and found people enough simple to believe it, was the true founder of the company civile.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, in the line of Of the social contract whom the futures Révolution naires will celebrate, celebrates a state such as its leaders are not with the top of the laws: it thus warns against the corruption and the deterioration of freedoms, as being basically leaning it of any political system.
It would be easy to prove that any government which, without corrupting itself neither to deteriorate, would go always exactly according to the end of its institution, would have been instituted without need, and which a country where nobody would elude the laws and would not deceive the magistrature, would need neither magistrates nor lois.
External bonds
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