Why does man have to answer to those who are in power around them? Who writes the rules for who gets to have power and who has to serve? Where does the convention of power and might come from? Is it possible to change the system in order to make it fit those who are under it better? Where does a right come from? These are all questions that challenge the very fabric of society, and these questions have answers that can either unite a people or destroy a nation. Each person should have an answer to each of these questions that satisfies their own level of curiosity, morality, and social responsibility. Whether or not he intended for his work to have the kind of impact that it did, Jean Jacques Rousseau changed the way that the world would talk about the subject of inequality. Before Rousseau, man had an understanding of how the world worked and man’s place within that order that had been passed down for the last 2000 years from the time of Plato and Aristotle. Rousseau saw the need for a change and a revolution for the old system. There had been plenty of questions and thoughts about inequality before him, but it was not until the work of Rousseau that there were any kinds of plausible, or contrary, answers besides those common ones given. The topics and ideas that he investigated and that will be investigated in this paper were the source of inequality and power, different types of inequality, and also a solution to the problem of inequality.
At this point, a division of terms is needed. Throughout Rousseau’s work and in this paper, the terms “natural” or “naturally” are used to talk about things that derive within man and in his actions without any outside influence. The natural actions and habits of man are those that are instinctual to the human race. They are a part of the fabric of man. When a quality of a man is talked about as being natural, it would be a quality within the genetics of that man. These qualities would have nothing to do with the man himself, but rather the randomness of genetics or gifts from God. These traits are commonly shared between all men no matter where or when they are born. The terms “unnatural” or “unnaturally” are used to talk about things that derive outside of man or based upon the influences upon a man. These would be learned behaviors experienced through interactions with others and the world. When referring to the qualities of man, these would be learned or earned characteristics of a man. These traits have more to do with the place that a man is born, or position earned. These have to do with man’s place in society. These traits are based upon the society or civilization that a man is born into and are not shared among all men. The quality of these traits’ changes throughout time and location.
In order for Rousseau to have any kind of impact on this subject, he would have to start at the beginning and acknowledge a common idea of inequality from the perspective of the church. “Religion commands us to believe that, God Himself having taken men out of a state of nature immediately after the creation, they are unequal only because it is His will they should be so” (334). Starting with the basis for a religious argument, Rousseau goes after how inequality must be because of the will of God. This was the common notion since the day of Aristotle and continued through the church age through the work of Augustine. By saying that it is because of God that inequality exists, it does remove man’s responsibility for the problem and allows the men who have the highest rank or position to continue to be in their positions without guilt. Rousseau takes up the argument and places at least some of the responsibility upon man. “All power comes from God, I admit; but so does all sickness: does that mean that we are forbidden to call in the doctor” (389). Switching to the other side of the argument and looking at the idea of power, Rousseau takes a different approach to the same problem. By juxtaposing power to sickness, he is drawing the correlation to the problem that the inequality of power is just as bad as sickness. There are few who would argue the case that just because God is sovereign over sickness that man should not do all that he can in order to heal the sick. It is actually commanded in the Bible to care for the sick, and Jesus Himself healed the sick. Just as it is good for a doctor to heal the sick, so should men act in order to help those who are being treated unfairly due to the inequality within the system. He is likening himself to one who is doing the work of healing the sick by trying to find a balance to power. Even if God is the one who is responsible for the power and inequality in the world, how is it that it came about? Is there an overarching cause to it that Rousseau noticed?
Before introducing inequality, Rousseau addresses man’s innate condition in The Social Contract. He posits that “Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.” (387). By starting with the fact that man is born free, this has to be, at least in some case, true in Rousseau mind. Man is naturally free. Once man is born though, that is where the chains start to add up. Even if a man thinks that he is the master over some people, there are still more people over him. This is the way that Rousseau sees society working. He sees it starting the first day of life, “The most ancient of all societies, and the only one that is natural, is the family: and even so the children remain attached to the father only so long as they need him for their preservation” (387). When a child is born to his parents, he is naturally under the father’s rule. From the first day of life, there is inequality within nature. Rousseau did see an end to the father’s rule when the child grew to the point of not being dependent upon the father. This would have been the time in a man’s life that Rousseau’s idea of the noble savage came about. A natural man would live out his life free from all societies and structures around him, at least for a time. This independence did not last long. Rousseau again noticed that it was natural for man to go and seek to build things. “The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society” (348). When the first man made a claim upon that land that those around him did not immediately tear down was the starting point of society. This was the start of possession. This is also the start of inequality, the ability to claim land and others to go along with your claim. He is making the case that property rights are the beginning of civilization with this statement, and it leads to inequality. If one person has a tract of land, it does necessarily mean that someone else cannot have the same tract of land. This progression of claiming land to the founding of civil society shows the pervasiveness of inequality within a society and how easy it is for it to take over people’s lives.
From here, it would be helpful to understand the different types of inequality that Rousseau saw within the world in order to better understand what system he was trying to fight and to fix. The quotes that follow are where the understanding of the terms “natural” and “unnatural” are derived for the division of this paper. To look first at the broader context that he saw for the subject:
I conceive that there are two kinds of inequality among the human species; one, which I call natural or physical, because it is established by nature, and consists in a difference of age, health, bodily strength, and the qualities of the mind or of the soul: and another, which may be called moral or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of convention, and is established, or at least authorised by the consent of men. This latter consists of the different privileges, which some men enjoy to the prejudice of others; such as that of being more rich, more honoured, more powerful or even in a position to exact obedience. (333)
He first introduces a concept of inequality that is innate within natural man that could be summed up by a basis of genetics. The differences between each person are the difference between age, health, strength, and mental ability all depends upon when one is born and their parents. Education could play some role in the mental abilities, but Rousseau does not account for that. The other type of inequality is what he calls moral or political inequalities. These are the types of advantages that a man can earn within a society. Riches, honor, power, and position are all things based upon one’s place within a culture and society and how one works and builds with his fellow man. It is interesting that he does say that the political inequality is at least authorized by the consent of man. It is not something that comes about by the will of one person, but rather by the consent of the populace. This also ties back to the idea that when the first man claimed his property, those around him could have said no to him, yet they did not. Here again, riches, honor, power, and position can all be taken away if the people would just say that they do not recognize the way these things work within a society. He does further define this second category of inequality in this way:
These differences are of several kinds; but riches, nobility or rank, power and personal merit being the principal distinctions by which men form an estimate of each other in society, I could prove that the harmony or conflict of these different forces is the surest indication of the good or bad constitution of a State. I could show that among these four kinds of inequality, personal qualities being the origin of all the others, wealth is the one to which they are all reduced in the end; for, as riches tend most immediately to the prosperity of individuals, and are easiest to communicate, they are used to purchase every other distinction. (360)
He again starts with a similar list of qualities that lead to inequalities within a society. He does make a judgement of a state, though without clear distinctions, that the conflict and harmony within these difference forces of inequality i.e. riches, nobility or rank, power, and personal merit, does move to show if the constitution of a state is good. One could assume that the conclusion that he would draw is that peace within a people would showcase a good constitution, while war, murders, and fighting would be an example of a bad constitution. It is also interesting to notice his reduction of all these traits. He sees wealth as the summary of these four attributes since wealth has the ability to buy any of these that are lacking within a person.
His concept of wealth is also an interesting topic that relates to this discussion of inequality. “Before the invention of signs to represent riches, wealth could hardly consist in anything but lands and cattle, the only real possessions men can have. But, when inheritances so increased in number and extent as to occupy the whole of the land, and to border on one another, one man could aggrandise himself only at the expense of another” (353-354). The only true riches that he notices at the time was having land and cattle. He saw and thought that the land was full due to an extension of inheritance and power that the only way that a man could make himself better was at the expense of someone else. To him, wealth and riches is a zero-sum game. By seeing it this way, it does lead one to think of it as an inequality because one has to take from someone else in order to better oneself. This would be wrong if it were the case. This understanding of wealth does help to justify and explain his view on inequalities because his goal through all of this is to uphold the natural operations of the human soul.
Throwing aside, therefore, all those scientific books, which teach us only to see men such as they have made themselves, and contemplating the first and most simple operations of the human soul, I think I can perceive in it two principles prior to reason, one of them deeply interesting us in our own welfare and preservation, and the other exciting a natural repugnance at seeing any other sensible being, and particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death. (330-331)
If man, in the depths of his soul, wants to protect himself and cause no one else pain, harm, or death, then the idea of enriching one’s own life at the expense of another is just plain wrong. This is what Rousseau is trying to fix through his work.
Having shown that inequality is natural and varying in types, Rousseau sets out to fix what he can in order to make the world a better place:
I shall end this chapter and this book by remarking on a fact on which the whole social system should rest: i.e., that, instead of destroying natural inequality, the fundamental compact substitutes, for such physical inequality as nature may have set up between men, an equality that is moral and legitimate, and that men, who may be unequal in strength or intelligence, become every one equal by convention and legal right. (394)
He is not looking to ignore the natural inequalities that come about from things that are higher than him, yet he is setting out to correct them. He wants man to be equal, no matter their physical nature, by way of convention and legal right. He wants to change the political system to honor all men equally. He is asking to do away with the system that is based upon riches, honor, power, and position and instill a system that values men all equally. He doubles down on this thought as well with a footnote:
Under bad governments, this equality is only apparent and illusory: it serves only to keep the pauper in his poverty and the rich man in the position he has usurped. In fact, laws are always of use to those who possess and harmful to those who have nothing: from which it follows that the social state is advantageous to men only when all have something and none too much. (395)
He is not looking for a system that is fake or only has the appearance of equality. He is not looking to keep the poor in the streets and the rich in his castle. He is looking for a new type of state, one that evens the playing field, so that all have something. The way that he sees to do that is through good legislation executed by a good government. One that is run by the people and for the people.
Rousseau’s work has inspired future generations to work towards a community free from oppression. He could see that inequality was a natural thing. One that man is born with and if not careful, man could add to the problem through the influence of corrupt society. Inequalities do take on several different forms and realizing each of these and how they manifest within society is important. Once the forms are identified, they can start to be solved. Finally, Rousseau did see a solution to this problem of oppression. He saw a future that men could make for all men to be equal, in spite of their inequalities. He saw good laws enforced by good governments as the answer to the end of the betterment of all.
Works Cited
Rousseau, Jean Jacques. On the Origin of Inequality; On Political Economy; The Social Contract. Great Books of the Western World. Ed. Mortimer J. Adler, Philip W. Goetz, and J. V. Prichard. Trans. Thomas Nugent and G. D. H. Cole. Second Edition. Vol. 35. Chicago: Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; Robert P. Gwinn, 1990. Print.