A Discourse on Inequality
by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Maurice Cranston (Translator, Introduction by, Notes by)
ISBN-10: 0140444394
ISBN-13: 9780140444391
$11.00
Book Specs
Binding
UK-B Format Paperback
Publisher
Penguin Classics
Published on
Feb 5, 1985
Edition
1st Edition
Dimensions
7.78x5.03x0.47 Inches
Weight
0.32 Pounds
About the Book
In A Discourse on Inequality Rousseau sets out to demonstrate how the growth of civilization corrupts man's natural happiness and freedom by creating artificial inequalities of wealth, power and social privilege. Contending that primitive man was equal to his fellows, Rousseau believed that as societies become more sophisticated, the strongest and most intelligent members of the community gain an unnatural advantage over their weaker brethren, and that constitutions set up to rectify these imbalances through peace and justice in fact do nothing but perpetuate them. Rousseau's political and social arguments in the Discourse were a hugely influential denunciation of the social conditions of his time and one of the most revolutionary documents of the eighteenth-century.