Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Rousseau's answer to a prize question set by the Academy of Dijon in 1753 on the origin of inequality among men and whether natural law authorises it. He distinguishes natural inequalities of strength or age from moral or political ones created by convention. Part One strips away everything society has added in order to imagine human beings in a state of nature: solitary, healthy, without language or developed reason, moved by self-love (amour de soi) and pity, and set apart from animals by freedom and perfectibility. Hobbes and others, he argues, had projected social vices back onto natural man. Part Two traces the fall: settled families, comparison and the craving for esteem (amour-propre), then agriculture, metallurgy and property, beginning with the first person who fenced off land and declared it his own. The wealthy then persuaded the poor to accept a social contract that fixed their inequality in law. Long notes add speculation about travellers' reports, apes and early peoples.

It is a founding text of social criticism, and its questions about property, status-seeking and whether civilisation improves us are still argued over.