Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

“But as long as we do not know natural man, we would try in vain to determine the law he has received or that which best suits his constitution.”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau adheres to the Enlightenment view that there is an objectively correct way to organize social institutions, which can be discovered through discovering the true nature of human beings. Since it is difficult to discover what human nature is, one of the best ways is through institutional trial and error—if one set of arrangements does not seem to be working, it reveals a discrepancy between it and human nature.

“It seems, in effect, that if I am obliged to do no harm to my fellow man, it is less because he is a reasonable being than because he is a sensitive being: a quality that, being common to beast and man, ought at least to give one the right not to be uselessly mistreated by the other.”

Rousseau rejects any essential moral difference between humans and animals. They are alike in wanting to preserve themselves and having the capacity to suffer. All the complex moral systems that humans have developed have taken them further from the natural law and resulted in people being less moral than animals.

“O man, whatever country you may come from, whatever your opinions may be, listen: here is your history as I believed it to read, not in the books of your fellow-men, which are liars, but in nature, which never lies.”

Most accounts of human origins are based on myth rather than a genuine inquiry into the truth. Rousseau makes this observation shortly after discussing the biblical account, and he seems to offer his account as an alternative to scripture. Among existing accounts of human origins, the Bible is by far the most significant for his audience. Yet, Rousseau implies it is false and that he found the truth by looking to nature rather than revelation.