Rousseau's Discours sur l'inégalité - Context and Structure
- Created by: CaraPW
- Created on: 03-05-21 12:05
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- Rousseau discours sur l'inégalité - Context and structure
- Geneva
- Calvinist state surrounded by catholic constituencies - isolated and enclosed by walls
- Republic of unequal power 20,000 people
- Only 1500 were citizens - educated men, only they could be on state council and hold power
- Rousseau born as a man into the privileged group - very proud of being genevan, called himself 'the genevan citizen'
- Privileged group lived at the top of the hill, and the poorer at the bottom
- Anti-monarchy ideals, republican - very different to France
- Rousseau's family moved down the hill when his mother, part of the elite, died
- Rousseau
- had unusual early life with no proper education, was self-taught and admired ancient civilisations. Did most learning as a teenager
- Abandoned his children because they got in the way of his work
- Made articles for Diderot and D'Alembert's encyclopedie
- Known to be uncomfortable and awkward, especially around wealthy Parisians - had a UTI which made him uncomfortable in public
- Context of the work
- Second response to Academie de Dijon's annual essay competition
- Previously won with Discours sur les sciences et les arts, which attacked the basis of the enlightenment
- Reply to the critics of the first discourse - finished in summer of 1754
- Seen as too long by the Académie, didn't fit into half an hour of reading aloud, so didn't win
- Structure overview
- two parts with many paratexts
- Begins with dedicace to the republic of Geneva, then the préface, then an 'Avertissement sur les notes', then an exordium
- In the 'Avertissement sur les notes' section, he excuses himself for his long footnotes, but recommends reading them for those with the courage to read the text twice
- Nearly 50% of the text consists of paratexts, and needs to be read very slowly
- Overall documentation in stages of man's fall from their good natural state to an unequal social state
- Geneva
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