Rousseau's Discours sur l'inégalité - Part 2
- Created by: CaraPW
- Created on: 03-05-21 18:58
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- Rousseau's discours sur l'inégalité - Part 2
- Language
- Opens with a rhetorically forceful sentence in the thrid person, very direct
- Metaphor of fermentation caused by new leaven for primitive society - symbolic of a souring in growth out of nature, presenting a poisonous, man-made mixture
- Despotism metaphor - personified as "tête hideuse" - devours good, trampling honest people in its path - monster imagery, we are equal in our subjugation
- anaphora of 'c'est ici' - despotism sounds close and advancing, it is in the near future or even now
- Metallurgy and architecture
- People couldn't do both metal work and farming, so metalworkers and famers became interdependent
- Farming was characterised by land division. property ownership grew , and laws are needed to stop people stealing, and to enforce these laws so all would follow them
- The rich instated a civil government to enforce laws, finalising a civil society - all members of the society happy about the development - all ran into their chains, believing they were securing their freedom
- People lacked the experience to foesee the dangers the development of government would bring
- Contract between rich and poor and chosen leaders was established on false grounds by the rich - only interests were protecting the property of the rich
- Quarrel with Pufendorf
- Pufendorf believes that just because you can sell or give away possessions, you can give your freedom - it is a belonging
- Rousseau argues that the objects you give away become meaningless to you once you've sold them, and this isn't the case with freedom
- Freedom and civil society
- Freedom is given by nature and cannot be given away, it's not property but a natural right held by each person
- When we give our freedom away to rulers and have no say in who governs us, we give our freedom against our true nature - this happens in civil society
- Over time, government has become less and less legitimate, and the final stage of arbitrary rule is despotism - same laws that gave life to social institutions are their abuse
- The answer to the prompt
- Essay constitutes a chain of reasoning, each part is important in the sequence - however does contradict himself that different parts are the full cause at different stages of the discourse
- Answer to the essay question is that although a small part of inequality is natural, most inequality today is moral, having no legitimate basis in moral law
- Primitive society
- First person to build shelter was strongest and smartest, couldn't be fought against so instead they followed suit
- Humans divided labour and became dependent on one another - made shelter (age des cabanes)
- Formed out of necessity to pool resourced when forced to
- Good because it created domestic relationships and made humans quite equal
- Under pressure of comparison, amour de soi meme turned into amour propre, and social tastes emerged
- Honour emerged, and esteem for others was the first step towards inequality
- Primitive people found that if they stocked surplus food that others needed, they'd become more powerful, thus the notion of property was born
- Natural man couldn't help but become primitive man, but primitive man only became social man because of the faculté de se perfectionner
- Language
- Primitive society
- First person to build shelter was strongest and smartest, couldn't be fought against so instead they followed suit
- Humans divided labour and became dependent on one another - made shelter (age des cabanes)
- Formed out of necessity to pool resourced when forced to
- Good because it created domestic relationships and made humans quite equal
- Under pressure of comparison, amour de soi meme turned into amour propre, and social tastes emerged
- Honour emerged, and esteem for others was the first step towards inequality
- Primitive people found that if they stocked surplus food that others needed, they'd become more powerful, thus the notion of property was born
- Natural man couldn't help but become primitive man, but primitive man only became social man because of the faculté de se perfectionner
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