Jean Jacques Rousseau Discourse On Inequality

The subject of social inequality has been a long-standing and widely debated issue since the development of private property and task specialization in society. Even though hunter-gatherer societies witnessed relative social equality, over time the growth of prejudiced ideals rooted in mankind’s ability to obtain and utilize land became increasingly prevalent until distinctions involving factors such as sex, class, and race dominated society. Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s analysis of these conditions of society, titled Discourse on Inequality, seeks to outline the root causes of these differentiating elements as belonging to one of two kinds of inequality, either natural or moral. Rousseau’s examination of the way humans love in particular offers an explanation as to why these

Rousseau begins his investigation of the process of love by distinguishing the physical component, in which the physical act of union occurs, and the moral component, in which a man experiences a stronger emotional connection to a woman and appreciates her beauty; in addition, civilized man can experience both forms of love, while a savage man can only experience the physical constituent. A connection can be drawn between the Epic of Gilgamesh and Discourse on Inequality in the fact that enjoying only the physical aspect of love is viewed as barbaric or uncivilized; in Gilgamesh, Enkidu’s initial interest in Shamhat is purely physical, but through their prolonged union Shamhat was able to bring Enkidu into society and make him civilized, which is a hallmark of Rousseau’s distinction between physical and moral love. However, Rousseau's diction reveals an underlying layer of misogyny that detracts from his overall argument of moral inequality being a detriment to man’s progress and society as a whole. Rousseau chooses to describe moral love as,