Jean-Jacques Rousseau's A Discourse On Inequality

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In “A Discourse on Inequality,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau strongly critiques human nature and modernity. He exposes in his writing his notion of what he believes the state of human nature to be. Rousseau presents this state in a philosophical fiction, he also develops a depiction of what human perfection would be. He expresses many times how human development may represent the rise of man, yet, the rise of man leads the moral and psychological decline of mankind in a whole. Comparatively, man was born nothing but an animal. “Artificial faculties” such as language, sociability, and reason are factors leading man to become modern and no longer be in a state of human nature. Furthermore, Rousseau certainly develops a link between inequality and property,