Rousseau's Discours sur l'inégalité - Opening Section
- Created by: CaraPW
- Created on: 03-05-21 12:49
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- Rousseau's Discours sur l'inégalité - the introductory sections
- Dédicace
- Ironically dedicates his work to an unequal civil state
- Addresses Genevan citizens in second person
- Justifies dedication to Genevan Citizens (educated elite men)
- Partly classic flattery of Geneva
- Says that approach to equality and inequality in Geneva is closest to natural law
- Doesn't think it's perfect or natural, but is the best sort of unequal society
- There is bound to be inequality, because inequality comes from man
- Préface
- Identifies gap in reader knowledge that makes answering the essay prompt impossible
- We can't possibly know which laws are natural for man unless we know what man was like in their natural state - his discours will determine this
- Written in first person
- Exordium
- Distinguishes between natural and moral inequality
- In nature, there are human inequalities
- There is physical inequality, which is unavoidable, and is hardly felt at all in comparison to moral inequality
- Moral inequality is a fact of nature - "une sorte de convention" - he struggles to find a word for what it is that justifies inequality that is unjustifiable
- Uses his rhetorical skill in manipulating language to reinforce his message - makes us think that the concept is so incomprehensible that it's indescribable, but is more concrete with natural inequality
- First half written in the first person, then a switch to the second person using 'tu; halfway through, addresses single reader like a preacher would
- Use of voice and language
- Paradoxes - books of fellow men are supposedly filled with lies, but he tells us this in a book, gets around this by saying his book might have falsehoods because of inaccurate translation onto paper
- Says everything that comes from nature in his book is true
- Increasingly messiah-like voice throughout opening section
- Says human developments should have stopped earlier, but that we're not unrecognisable - he seems like a prophet
- Moments of optimism contrasting deep troughs of despair
- Causal chains communicated through 'retrograder' - we can't go back, people who come after should be nervous - communicates degradation
- Paradoxes - books of fellow men are supposedly filled with lies, but he tells us this in a book, gets around this by saying his book might have falsehoods because of inaccurate translation onto paper
- Dédicace
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