Jean Jacques Rousseau Moral Inequality

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a French philosopher from the 18th century where his political philosophy influenced the overall development of modern political and educational thought. One of his most famous pieces was the book he wrote the 2nd discourse. In this book, Rousseau talks about the origin of inequality among men/women, where he attempts to demonstrate that modern moral inequality is unnatural and unrelated to the true nature of man/woman. Rousseau believes it would be a mistake to think we could save ourselves through the escape back to nature, that our best option for this is to create a new social contract which is the concept of the general will. The general will is a political theory which the will collectively aims at the common …show more content…
Evil, greed, and selfishness emerged when human society began, as people formed social institutions they developed immoral characteristics. Rousseau believed the social institutions of private property also led to inequality, that this encouraged extreme greed and self-interest and rewarded people with greed and luck. This began when people started fencing off their property saying it was theirs and having people agree with them. Private ownership of property destroyed peoples character and regarded a person without property to be the most non corrupt. Another problem that Rousseau believed inequality started was when people with talents, such as people who brought advances in science, technology, and commerce, started to produced more and earned more than people who didn’t have talents. Those who had talent to create new products people desired for, as a result they acquired property and goods while people without talents became competitive, rivalrous, power-hungry, prestige seeking, and desirous for superiority over people. This transformed people from being isolated with limited wants into warlike creatures. Rousseau also argued in the 2nd discourse that it was wrong to change something without asking everyone if they wanted to change it, he thought people did not have the right to rise above …show more content…
One of the inequality problems stated in the second discourse was private property. People with talents received more property than people without talents. In the general will this will be fixed by having property distributed equally among the people, this will end the inequality of people who had more property were more powerful than the people who had less property and would result in less power. This would also end people with greed and self-interest of getting more property because everyone would have equal amount of property and there would be no reason for people to have these traits as everything would be equal. Peoples characters would not be destroyed and that everyone would be free, they would be close to being back to a state of nature and that every man would be wise and free. Another thing the general will can fix would be the inequality of talents being more powerful than people without talents. Those with talents would not receive or gain more than people without talents as they are helping the collections of people than just themselves. The advances will help the group as a whole but won’t benefit the person who gave the advance itself. There wouldn’t be a desire for the people with talents and people wouldn’t become competitive, rivalrous, power-hungry, prestige seeking, and desirous for superiority over people as people with talents and people without will be all
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