Rousseau first exposes in this work his conception of a human state of nature, presented as a philosophical fiction, and of human perfectibility, an early idea of progress. He then explains the way, according to him, people may have established civil society, which leads him to present private property as the original source and basis of all inequality.

The text was written in 1754 in response to a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law? Rousseau did not win with his treatise (as he had for the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences); a canon of Besancon by the name of Francois Xavier Talbert (l'abbe Talbert) did. Rousseau published the text in 1755.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

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