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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2009
Rousseau has the reputation of being a radical egalitarian. I shall suggest that a more careful reading of his work shows him to have been hardly more egalitarian than Plato. He was undoubtedly disturbed by existing inequalities, especially as he observed them in France. He had an original and interesting theory about how inequality among men came into being; he also set out what he considered to be the connections between equality and freedom. As a champion of a certain idea of freedom, he wrote in favor of specific sorts of equality; even as Plato, as the champion of a certain idea of justice, wrote in favor of putting every man in his place. The great difference is that Plato believed that men were never equal, whereas Rousseau believed they had once been equal but no longer were.
To the proposition that all men are born equal he could be said to subscribe only in the sense that “all men were originally equal”. Rousseau argued that equality prevailed in the state of nature; but he also said it would be wrong to expect, even to desire such equality in civil society. In the final footnote to his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (hereinafter called the Second Discourse) he wrote (in 1753): “Distributive justice would still be opposed to that rigorous equality of the state of nature, even if it were practicable in civil society.”1
Commentators eager to claim Rousseau as an egalitarian, or proto-Marx, ignore this footnote; as for the opinions expressed in the Dedication to the Second Discourse, opinions no less at variance with egalitarian ideology, they tend to be dismissed as empty hyperbole, designed to ingratiate the philosopher with the authorities of Geneva at a time when he wanted to recover his rights as a citizen and burgess.
1 Rousseau, J. J., Oeuvres Complètes (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1964), III, p. 222Google Scholar (Hereinafter this work is referred to as O.C.; the translations are my own)
2 See Rousseau's correspondence with Pedriau, Jean, in Leigh, R. A., ed., Correspondence complète de J. J. Rousseau (Geneva and Oxford: Institut Voltaire, 1965–) III, pp. 55–64.Google Scholar
3 O.C. III, p. 111.
4 ibid.
5 O.C. II, p. 1136.
6 O.C. I, p. 61.
7 O.C. III, p. 164. Rousseau goes on to say: “How many crimes, wars, murders; how much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes and filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: ‘Beware of listening to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and that the earth itself belongs to no one.’” This is naturally a text much used by writers who see Rousseau as a proto-Marx.
8 ibid., p. 169.
9 ibid., p. 170.
10 ibid., pp. 188–189.
11 ibid., p. 141.
12 ibid., p. 351.
13 ibid., p. 364.
14 ibid.
15 ibid., p. 365.
16 ibid., p. 114.
17 ibid.
18 ibid., p. 406.
19 ibid., p. 112.
20 ibid., p. 406.
21 ibid., p. 116.
22 See: Aristotle, , Politics, trans. Sinclair, T. A. (Harmondsworth and N.Y.: Penguin Books, 1982) p. 319.Google Scholar
23 Rousseau, J. J., Lettre à Monsieur d'Alembert, ed. Fuchs, (Lille: Libraire Giard, 1948), p. 181.Google Scholar
24 O.C. III, p. 223.
25 ibid., p. 120.
26 See Cranston, M., Jean-Jacques (New York: W. W. Norton, 1983), pp. 205–207.Google Scholar
27 Rousseau, J. J.Emile, trans. Foxley, B. (New York: Dutton, 1974), p. 321.Google Scholar
28 ibid., p. 327.
29 ibid.
30 See Dodge, S. H., Constant, BenjaminPhilosophy of Liberalism (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), pp. 18–51.Google Scholar
31 In Rousseau's lifetime the population of Geneva was about 25,000, of whom only 1,500 were adult male citizens. See Binz, L.Brève histoire de Genève (Geneva: Chancellerie d'Etat, 1981).Google Scholar
32 Machiavelli, N., Discourses, trans. Walker, L. J., S. J. (Boston: Routledge, 1975), p. 258.Google Scholar
