Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on Inequality

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, a genevan philosopher, was a great influence on the movement known as Enlightenment. Through his political, educational and economic ideas, he gained a lot of admiration, and nowadays hes works are recognized as essential parts of the western history of philosophy.    

Before Emile or Social contract, Rousseau wrote his work, Discourse on inequality, or as its also commonly known, the Second discourse, as he entered into the competition held by the Academy of Dijon. The question that the participants needed to answer in their essay was the following: What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law? The essay he wrote for the competition has become a philosophical classic (even though it didnt get the first place in the competition) known as the Discourse on the origin of inequality. Building on his idea that the human being is benevolent by nature, Rousseau seeks to explain what is it that exactly causes inequality and maltreatment that exist. What is it that makes a person corrupt?         

"In fact, the real source of all those differences, is that the savage lives within himself, whereas the citizen, constantly beside himself, knows only how to live in the opinion of others; insomuch that it is, if I may say so, merely from their judgment that he derives the consciousness of his own existence."