What do you think?
Rate this book
On the Social Contract Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Discourse on Political Economy
Jean-Jacques Rousseau writes, "Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains." This statement exemplifies the main idea behind "The Social Contract", in other words that man is essentially free if it weren't for the oppression of political organizations such as government. Rousseau goes on to lay forth the principles that he deems most important for achieving political right amongst people. Contained within this volume are also two discourses by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In "A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality" Rousseau examines the causes of the inequalities that exist among men concluding that it is the natural result of the formation of any civilization. In "A Discourse on Political Economy" Rousseau examines the nature of politics and their effect on people. These three works lay a solid foundation for the political philosophy of Rousseau and are a must read for any student of political science or philosophy.
Textbook Binding
54 people are currently reading
1428 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
February 13, 2024
His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment and later the French Revolution, yet it is through three pieces written within 8 years of one another that would be the most important. Rousseau’s Political Writings collects the essays Discourse on Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy, and The Social Contract that sees the development of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political thought and features how his contemporaries and later commentators have reacted.
In Discourse of Inequality, Rousseau after a long examination of how human society began focused on the creation of private property as the beginning of inequality and this created a corrupt modern world as well as illegitimate states—as alluded to in future writings. In the Discourse on Political Economy, was a furthering of some of Rousseau’s ideas in Inequality to a conclusion while ignoring others but the most important was that he proposed that the best way for a legitimate state to handle inequality is for essentially progressive taxation on income and wealth as he views luxury with distain and leading to corrupting of a legitimate state into an illegitimate one. Finally, The Social Contract Rousseau fully develops his systematic approach into how a legitimate state is established, organized, and run though they are more guidelines as each state’s environmental factors dictate which type of government—democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy—is best for it. The 173 pages in which Rousseau develops his ideas takes up a little over half the book, the second half the editors gave background to Rousseau’s life that influenced his thinking with selections from his own autobiography and the thoughts of his contemporaries and later commentators thought the later would focus on one intellectual thread they loved or hated while ignoring Rousseau’s careful balancing act. Overall Rousseau’s thoughts and the critical reaction they elicited from others made this little over 300-page book very informative in the development of political thought in the 18th century and beyond.
Rousseau’s Political Writings is both a good collection of three of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's most important political essays as well as thoughtful criticism from his contemporaries and later political commentators.
In Discourse of Inequality, Rousseau after a long examination of how human society began focused on the creation of private property as the beginning of inequality and this created a corrupt modern world as well as illegitimate states—as alluded to in future writings. In the Discourse on Political Economy, was a furthering of some of Rousseau’s ideas in Inequality to a conclusion while ignoring others but the most important was that he proposed that the best way for a legitimate state to handle inequality is for essentially progressive taxation on income and wealth as he views luxury with distain and leading to corrupting of a legitimate state into an illegitimate one. Finally, The Social Contract Rousseau fully develops his systematic approach into how a legitimate state is established, organized, and run though they are more guidelines as each state’s environmental factors dictate which type of government—democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy—is best for it. The 173 pages in which Rousseau develops his ideas takes up a little over half the book, the second half the editors gave background to Rousseau’s life that influenced his thinking with selections from his own autobiography and the thoughts of his contemporaries and later commentators thought the later would focus on one intellectual thread they loved or hated while ignoring Rousseau’s careful balancing act. Overall Rousseau’s thoughts and the critical reaction they elicited from others made this little over 300-page book very informative in the development of political thought in the 18th century and beyond.
Rousseau’s Political Writings is both a good collection of three of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's most important political essays as well as thoughtful criticism from his contemporaries and later political commentators.
March 30, 2025
edit: updated review!
Not really sure what to say. Incidentally, Rousseau's thoughts on education provided me with some interesting discussion points for an essay I was working on. His Romantic idealism is informative—I simply don't know if honest.
Some parts of his essays feel contradictory...? He seems full of reverance one moment, then utterly sneer at the concept of God the next
Side note, but I've never been a fan of judging a person's accomplishments by contrasting them against his/her own life, so what if he's a hypocrite when it comes to children—why try to reconcile his morals with the ones he proposes, you're not his biographer.
While Rousseau doesn’t advocate returning to primitive life, he urges society to recognize how institutions perpetuate injustice. The conclusion is that inequality is not natural but a product of human-made systems that must be reformed. Rousseau distinguishes between natural inequality and moral/political inequality, arguing that the latter was created by civilization.
In Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau outlines how a just government should function, emphasizing the general will—the collective good of the people—over private interests. Rousseau warns against tyranny, stressing that taxation should be proportional, and leaders must not abuse power. A recurring idea is that "the body politic… is a moral being possessed of a will,"
The Social Contract is Rousseau’s most famous work, proposing a model for a just society based on collective self-rule. He opens with THAT famously striking line, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,"
Rousseau's solution is a social contract where individuals surrender some freedoms to the community in exchange for shared laws that benefit all. Governments are merely administrators, and if they become oppressive, citizens have the right to rebel. Rousseau’s vision is radical: democracy isn’t just voting but active participation in shaping laws.
Not really sure what to say. Incidentally, Rousseau's thoughts on education provided me with some interesting discussion points for an essay I was working on. His Romantic idealism is informative—I simply don't know if honest.
Some parts of his essays feel contradictory...? He seems full of reverance one moment, then utterly sneer at the concept of God the next
Side note, but I've never been a fan of judging a person's accomplishments by contrasting them against his/her own life, so what if he's a hypocrite when it comes to children—why try to reconcile his morals with the ones he proposes, you're not his biographer.
While Rousseau doesn’t advocate returning to primitive life, he urges society to recognize how institutions perpetuate injustice. The conclusion is that inequality is not natural but a product of human-made systems that must be reformed. Rousseau distinguishes between natural inequality and moral/political inequality, arguing that the latter was created by civilization.
In Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau outlines how a just government should function, emphasizing the general will—the collective good of the people—over private interests. Rousseau warns against tyranny, stressing that taxation should be proportional, and leaders must not abuse power. A recurring idea is that "the body politic… is a moral being possessed of a will,"
The Social Contract is Rousseau’s most famous work, proposing a model for a just society based on collective self-rule. He opens with THAT famously striking line, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains,"
Rousseau's solution is a social contract where individuals surrender some freedoms to the community in exchange for shared laws that benefit all. Governments are merely administrators, and if they become oppressive, citizens have the right to rebel. Rousseau’s vision is radical: democracy isn’t just voting but active participation in shaping laws.
Read
September 12, 2007In Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau argues that inequalities of rank, wealth, and power are the inevitable result of the civilizing process. His sweeping account of humanity's social and political development epitomizes the innovative boldness of the Enlightenment, and it is one/ of the most provocative and influential works of the eighteenth century. This new translation by prize-winning translator Franklin Philip includes all of Rousseau's own notes, and Patrick Coleman's introduction builds on recent key scholarship, considering particularly the relationship between/ political and aesthetic thought.
December 14, 2023
These essays should be essential reading for all students, political or not. Why Rousseau is not today taught as a matter of course is revealed in the explosive contemporary relevance of the tract. Lively and
enjoyable…, if you’re into 18th century philo-political theses.
enjoyable…, if you’re into 18th century philo-political theses.
Read
November 8, 2022Did not read it all, only read Discourse on Inequality
Read for class
Read for class
June 4, 2022
Good volume to buy - 3 of Rousseau's unabridged major political works with some interesting essays by later writers.
January 8, 2025
The First Romantic
As one of the founders of what we now refer to as the Romantic period or the Romantic movement, we can also see in Rousseau one of the earliest critics of the what we are pleased to call the Enlightenment. When Rousseau claims, in brilliant aphoristic style, that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”, he is critiquing the Enlightenment project of reason and progress. His claim is that civilization has not, and cannot, live up to its promises. Instead of reason and progress, Rousseau finds ignorance and greed. Rousseau does not see the even darker side of the Enlightenment heritage, utilitarianism and nihilism, but this will come later. As valid as Rousseau’s critique of the alienation emanating for our technology dependent progress driven civilization is, he, like Marx, provides a solution that is worse than the problem.
Rousseau’s critical error in reasoning is in believing that the family is scalable to society. The family unit does not provide a model of or for society. The technical error in reasoning is that of reasoning by analogy. Analogy is the weakest form of argument. Such arguments are weak at best, and become progressively weaker as the points of similarity becomes fewer. Argument by analogy asks us to accept the argument based one thing being like some other thing. This ultimately relies on an appeal to intuition. We are asked to substitute intuition for reason. This is very seductive appeal of argument by analogy. Stronger arguments are made with direct argumentation via deduction, induction, abduction in conjunction with the verifiable facts of experience.
Contrary to Rousseau’s claim, the family is not the oldest and only natural form of government. In the family, it is precisely government which is not needed because the members of the family are personally known to each other. Government is needed to regulate, regularize and maintain non-personal relationships between autonomous societal actors possessing, at least in theory, equal legal and political rights.
For Rousseau, the family is a patriarchal structure. As an aside, it would be interesting to know how Rousseau’s views would have been different, if at all, if he accepted a matriarchal structure. All the same, each member of the family does not possess equal authority, in practice or in theory. In society, where all members are presumed equal, at least in theory before the law, government is needed to maintain this equilibrium. Rousseau’s notion that “Every man has naturally a right to everything he needs” is perfectly sensible given the small scale, intimate nature, and hierarchical structure of the family unit. This unit however, as well as the natural right to everything one needs, is not scalable to the heterogeneous, broad based, opportunity seeking and equality desiring impersonal nature of society. To this, Rousseau adds that the rights of individual owners to property must give way to the rights of the community in general. In the family, where parents provide for their children, this is feasible and in fact necessary. When applied to mass society, it creates the freeloader problem. Children are of course freeloaders and we do not mind for reasons that are too obvious to be stated.
In keeping with Rousseau’s style, to say nothing of my admiration of his flair, originality, wit, and sheer panache, I will pay him the greatest compliment by attempting to imitate him in terms of pithy aphorisms, I humbly offer:
1. Everywhere the benefits of liberty are praised, yet nowhere is it practiced
Or
2. Everywhere the failure of government is evident, yet everywhere the intervention of government is demanded
By number 1, I mean that liberty, in its various forms, is desirable as a universal theory though its practice is just as fraught with trouble and unintended consequences as is the equally noble notion of equality in its various incarnations. By number 2, I simply mean that ignorance is the mother of authority.
As one of the founders of what we now refer to as the Romantic period or the Romantic movement, we can also see in Rousseau one of the earliest critics of the what we are pleased to call the Enlightenment. When Rousseau claims, in brilliant aphoristic style, that “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”, he is critiquing the Enlightenment project of reason and progress. His claim is that civilization has not, and cannot, live up to its promises. Instead of reason and progress, Rousseau finds ignorance and greed. Rousseau does not see the even darker side of the Enlightenment heritage, utilitarianism and nihilism, but this will come later. As valid as Rousseau’s critique of the alienation emanating for our technology dependent progress driven civilization is, he, like Marx, provides a solution that is worse than the problem.
Rousseau’s critical error in reasoning is in believing that the family is scalable to society. The family unit does not provide a model of or for society. The technical error in reasoning is that of reasoning by analogy. Analogy is the weakest form of argument. Such arguments are weak at best, and become progressively weaker as the points of similarity becomes fewer. Argument by analogy asks us to accept the argument based one thing being like some other thing. This ultimately relies on an appeal to intuition. We are asked to substitute intuition for reason. This is very seductive appeal of argument by analogy. Stronger arguments are made with direct argumentation via deduction, induction, abduction in conjunction with the verifiable facts of experience.
Contrary to Rousseau’s claim, the family is not the oldest and only natural form of government. In the family, it is precisely government which is not needed because the members of the family are personally known to each other. Government is needed to regulate, regularize and maintain non-personal relationships between autonomous societal actors possessing, at least in theory, equal legal and political rights.
For Rousseau, the family is a patriarchal structure. As an aside, it would be interesting to know how Rousseau’s views would have been different, if at all, if he accepted a matriarchal structure. All the same, each member of the family does not possess equal authority, in practice or in theory. In society, where all members are presumed equal, at least in theory before the law, government is needed to maintain this equilibrium. Rousseau’s notion that “Every man has naturally a right to everything he needs” is perfectly sensible given the small scale, intimate nature, and hierarchical structure of the family unit. This unit however, as well as the natural right to everything one needs, is not scalable to the heterogeneous, broad based, opportunity seeking and equality desiring impersonal nature of society. To this, Rousseau adds that the rights of individual owners to property must give way to the rights of the community in general. In the family, where parents provide for their children, this is feasible and in fact necessary. When applied to mass society, it creates the freeloader problem. Children are of course freeloaders and we do not mind for reasons that are too obvious to be stated.
In keeping with Rousseau’s style, to say nothing of my admiration of his flair, originality, wit, and sheer panache, I will pay him the greatest compliment by attempting to imitate him in terms of pithy aphorisms, I humbly offer:
1. Everywhere the benefits of liberty are praised, yet nowhere is it practiced
Or
2. Everywhere the failure of government is evident, yet everywhere the intervention of government is demanded
By number 1, I mean that liberty, in its various forms, is desirable as a universal theory though its practice is just as fraught with trouble and unintended consequences as is the equally noble notion of equality in its various incarnations. By number 2, I simply mean that ignorance is the mother of authority.
March 30, 2011
Rousseau's meditation on the origin of social life is, like most social contract theory, a narrative of the move from a state of nature to a structured social order that goes through the process of a war of all against all. Rousseau's interesting and fundamental insight is that the social order is corrupting of essential human qualities. Definitely a pessimistic view of human liberation and its relation to society.
February 7, 2013
I'd like to be given the option of 4.5 stars on this. The material starts off dry, clinical, boring. It felt like a chore the 30 pages in, until the author started to loosen up on his style and infuse a little more rant into his opinions. That is when it became I became more invested, when the author seemed more invested as well. What a great book this turned out to be. I've learned a lot from it and really enjoyed the Discourse on Political Economy.
May 16, 2009
The Origin of Inequality was kind of laughable with his primitive man that existed completely outside of society. It was difficult to separate any valid arguments from that very flawed premise. Much more valuable for me was the Social Contract, which laid out some very important obstacles in the road to liberty within a governed society.
August 27, 2020
Rousseau is a bit of an odd duck, both in personality and philosophically. It was interesting to see how others reacted to his theory of the public good and general will in his time, along with future philosophers and theorists. I especially found his feud with Voltaire engaging- they’re so catty with each other. The critical commentary was mixed- I enjoyed half of the pieces they included.
June 30, 2018
Only read the Discourse on Inequality and had lots of in-depth and thought-provoking conversations about it in a college class. Mostly makes me feel smart to keep it on my shelf, but I probably won’t read it again anytime soon.
Read
September 23, 2010"Rousseau's Political Writings: Discourse on Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy on Social Contract (Norton Critical Editions) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1987)"
February 20, 2021
A classic, good to follow up with some John Dewey.
August 25, 2021
This ought to be required reading in school.
March 31, 2022
Still the best (and most entertaining) Enlightenment big-wig
Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews