This edition includes a modern introduction and a list of suggested further reading.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (the Second Discourse) is one of the most important works of social philosophy of the Enlightenment. The Discourse is recognized today as a provocative and radically innovative text that anticipated anthropology, Marxist theory, the passionate rhetoric of Romanticism, and more broadly, an entire modern spirit of discontent with civilization. The debate in which Rousseau engaged himself with the Second Discourse was already well established in the mid-eighteenth century: inequality and its relation to natural law. His answers, however, were anything but familiar, and they retain a remarkable freshness and urgency for the contemporary reader.
About the author
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is, in the view of many, the greatest prose stylist of the eighteenth century. He is also the most significant political theorist of the Enlightenment (of particular note are the Discourse on Inequality and the Social Contract), the greatest theoretician of education (with Emile), and author of eighteenth-century France’s most successful novel, Julie or the New Heloïse. He also made important contributions to music, theater, and botany.