• Jean Jacques Rousseau Child Development

A provocative essay that challenged the superiority of civilized society and modern government, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin. Diatribe against property in the second Discourse, in which he chastises the first self-declared landowner as an impostor and the person responsible for many of society's shortcomings,9 Rousseau.

Translator’s NoteIn this text, the explanatory notes which appear at the end of the document are provided by the translator. Thepresence of such notes is indicated by an asterisk in the text which links to the relevant note. Rousseau’s notes —indicated by an Arabic numeral in brackets in the text — also appear at the conclusion of the main text. The numeralslink directly to the appropriate note.

Editorial insertions into the text by the translator are indicated by squarebrackets, e.g., inserted comment. Some of Rousseau’s longer paragraphs have been divided up into shorter units.Where Rousseau has provided a Latin quotation, this text has the English translation, with a link to the originalLatin in the footnote. Historical NoteJean–Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778), the very famous French philosopher and writer, prepared his Discourse onInequality (also called the Second Discourse) as an entry in a competition organized by the Academy of Dijon in 1754.He had won first prize in a previous competition (in 1750) with his Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (the FirstDiscourse), a victory which had helped to make him famous. The Second Discourse did not fare so well in thecontest.When the Second Discourse was published again in 1782, Rousseau inserted a few short minor additions into the text.These are included here but are not indicated. To the Republic of GenevaMagnificent, most honorable, and sovereign lordsConvinced that only the virtuous citizen may justifiably give his native land honours which it can accept, I havebeen working for thirty years to become worthy of offering you public homage; and since this happy occasion supplementsin part what my efforts have not been able to accomplish, I believed that I would be permitted here to follow the zealwhich animates me rather than the right which ought to act as my authorization. Having had the good fortune to be bornamong you, how could I reflect on the equality which nature has set among men and on the inequality which they haveinstituted, without thinking about the profound wisdom with which both of these, happily combined in this State, worktogether in a manner most closely approaching natural law and most favourable to society to maintain public order andthe happiness of individuals? PrefaceThe most useful and the least advanced of all human areas of knowledge seems to me to be the knowledge of man, and I venture to say that the only inscription on the temple at Delphi contained a precept moreimportant and more difficult than all the fat books of the moralists.

Jean Jacques Rousseau Child Development

Thus, I considerthe subject of this Discourse one of the most interesting questions which philosophy could propose, and, unfortunatelyfor us, one of the thorniest for philosophers to resolve. For how can we know the source of inequality among men, if wedo not begin by understanding men themselves?

And how will man succeed in seeing himself the way nature made him,through all the changes which the succession of time and events must have produced in his original constitution, and indisentangling what man retains of his own origins from the things which circumstances and his progress have added to orchanged in his primitive condition? Just like the statue of Glaucus, which time, the sea, and tempests have sodisfigured that it looks less like a god than a ferocious animal, the human soul, altered in the bosom of society by athousand causes constantly renewed, by the acquisition of a multitude of knowledge and mistakes, by the changes whichhave taken place in the constitution of the body, and by the constant shock of the passions, has, so to speak, changedits appearance to the point where it is almost impossible to recognize.

And in the place of a being always actingaccording to certain and invariable principles, in the place of this divine and majestic simplicity which its Authorimpressed upon it, we no longer find there anything but a delirious understanding and the twisted contrast of passionwhich believes it is reasoning.What is even more cruel is that all the progress in the human species constantly takes it further away from itsprimitive state. Notice on the NotesI have added some notes to this work in accordance with my lazy habit of working on this and that. These noteswander sometimes so far from the subject that it is not good to read them with the text. So I have deposited them atthe end of the Discourse, in which I have tried to follow as best I can the most direct route. Those who have thecourage to start again will be able to entertain themselves a second time by beating the bushes and striving to movethrough the notes. There will be little harm done for those others who do not read them at all. I am to speak about man, and the question which I am examining shows me that I am going to be speaking to men; forone does not propose questions like this when one is afraid of honouring the truth.

Second PartThe first man who, having enclosed off a piece of land, got the idea of saying “This is mine” and found peoplesimple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, what wars, what murders, what miseriesand horrors would someone have spared the human race who, pulling out the stakes or filling in the ditch, had cried outto his fellows, “Stop listening to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to everyone and theearth belongs to no one.” It seems very likely that by that time things had already come to the point where they couldno longer continue as they had been. For this idea of property, which depends on many previous ideas which could onlyhave arisen in succession, was not formed in the human mind all of a sudden.

A good deal of progress had to take place— acquiring significant industry and enlightenment, transmitting and increasing them from one age to the next — beforearriving at this last stage in the state of nature. So let us resume these matters further back in time and try togather under a single point of view this slow succession of events and knowledge, in their most natural order.Man’s first sensation was that of his own existence, his first care his own preservation.

The productions of theearth provided him all the necessary help; instinct prompted him to make use of them. Hunger and other appetites madehim try in turn various ways of life. One appetite invited him to perpetuate his species, and this blind inclination,lacking all heart-felt feeling, produced only a purely animal act.

(1) Herodotus tells the story that after the murder of the false Smerdis, when the seven liberators of Persia hadassembled to discuss the form of government which they would give the state, Otanes firmly declared his preference fora republic, a recommendation all the more extraordinary from the mouth of a satrap since, in addition to the claimwhich he could make to the empire, aristocrats fear more than death a form of government which requires them to respectmen. Ontanes, we can well believe, was not listened to at all and, seeing that they were going to proceed to theelection of a monarch and not wishing to obey or to command, willingly gave up his right to the crown to the othercontestants, requesting as his total compensation that he and his posterity could be free and independent, a conditionwhich the others granted him. If Herodotus did not tell us of the restriction which was set on this privilege, it wouldbe necessary to assume it. Otherwise, Otanes, not recognizing any sort of law and not having to account to anyone,would have been all-powerful in the state and stronger than the king himself. But there was hardly any indication thata man capable of remaining content with such a privilege in a case like this was capable of abusing it. In fact, we donot see that this right ever caused the least trouble in the kingdom, either on the part of the wise Otanes or of anyof his descendants. (3) The changes which a long practice of moving on two feet could have produced on the structure of man, therelationships one still observes between his arms and the anterior limbs of quadrupeds, and the conclusion derived fromtheir way of moving could have given birth to doubts about the style which must have been most natural for us.

Allchildren begin by moving on four limbs and require our example and lessons from us to learn to stand upright. There areeven some savage nations, like the Hottentots, who neglect their children considerably and leave them to move along ontheir hands for such a long time that later they have plenty of trouble getting them to straighten up; the children ofthe Caribs in the Antilles do the same.

There are several examples of human quadrupeds, and I could, among others,refer to that child who was found in 1344 near Hesse, where he had been nourished by wolves and who used to say laterat the court of Prince Henry that, if he had been the only one involved, he would have preferred to return among themrather than live among men. He had acquired the habit of moving like these animals to such an extent that it wasnecessary to attach pieces of wood to him which kept forcing him to stand upright and balanced on his two feet. It wasthe same with the child who was found in 1694 in the forests of Lithuania and who lived among the bears. He did notshow, says M.

De Condillac, any indication of reason, moved on his hands and feet, had no language, and formed soundswhich were nothing like those of a man. The little savage of Hanover who was led some years ago to the English court,had all the difficulty in the world forcing himself to walk on two feet, and in 1719 two other savages were found inthe Pyrenees, who ran through the mountains in the manner of quadrupeds. With respect to the objection one could makethat this takes away from us the use of our hands, from which we derive so many advantages, apart from the fact thatthe example of monkeys demonstrates that the hands can be used very effectively for both tasks, that would only provethat man can give his limbs a more convenient purpose than that of nature, and not that nature has destined man to movedifferently from what it teaches him to do.But there are, it seems to me, much better reasons to put forward in order to maintain that man is a biped.

First ofall, even if it is shown that at first he could have been structured differently from how we see him and nonethelesscould become what he is, that would not be sufficient to conclude that that is how it was done. For, after having shownthe possibility of these changes, it would still be necessary, before we accept them, at least to demonstrate theirprobability. In addition, the fact that the arms of a man appear to have been able to serve him as limbs when necessaryis the only observation in support of that system, in the face of a large number of others which oppose it. (4) If there exists among my readers a scientist bad enough to make difficulties for me concerning this assumptionof the natural fertility of the earth, I am going to reply to him with the following passage:“Since plants take for their nourishment much more material from air and water than they derive from the earth, itcomes about that by rotting they return to the earth more than they have taken from it. Moreover, a forest holdsrainwater by stopping vaporizing.

Thus, in a wood which has been preserved a very long time without being touched, thelayer of earth which provides vegetation would increase considerably. But animals return less to the earth than theytake from it, and, since men consume enormous amounts of wood and plants for fire and other uses, it follows that thelayer of vegetative earth in an inhabited land must always grow smaller and become finally like the terrain of ArabiaPetraea northern Arabia, and like that of so many other provinces of the East, which is, in fact the climate with themost ancient inhabitations, where one finds only salt and sand, for the fixed salt of plants and animals remains, whileall the other parts disappear into the air.” M. De Buffon, Hist. Nat.One can add to this the established fact of the number of trees and plants of every species which fill almost allthe deserted islands which have been discovered in the last centuries and what history teaches us about the immenseforests which had to be felled all over the earth as it was inhabited and civilized. On this point I will make threeadditional remarks, as follows. First, if there is a sort of plant which could make up for the loss of vegetativematerial created by the animals, according to the reasoning of M.

De Buffon, that is, more than anything, the treeswhose tops and leaves gather and absorb more water and vapour than the other plants. Second, the destruction of thesoil, that is, the loss of material appropriate to vegetation, has to accelerate proportionately as the earth is morecultivated and the more industrious inhabitants consume every sort of plant species in greater abundance. My third andmost important comment is that the fruits of trees provide animals with nourishment more abundantly than can otherplants, an experiment I made myself by comparing the products of two plots of land equal in size and quality, onecovered with chestnut trees and the other sown with wheat. (5) Among quadrupeds, the two most universal distinctions of the voracious species are derived from the shape of theteeth and the structure of the intestines. The animals which live only on plants all have flat teeth, like the horse,the cow, the sheep, and the hare, but voracious animals have pointed teeth, like the cat, the dog, the wolf, and thefox.

As for the intestines, the frugivorous animals have some, like the colon, not found in voracious animals. It seemstherefore that man, having teeth and intestines like frugivorous animals, should naturally have been placed in thisclass.

This opinion is confirmed not merely by anatomical observations. The great works of antiquity also stronglyfavour it. “Dicearchus,” states St. Jerome, “tells us in his Books of Greek Antiquities that under the reign of Saturn,when the earth was still fertile by itself, no man ate meat, but they all lived on fruit and vegetables which grewnaturally” (Book 2, Adv.

Jovinian Against Jovinianus). This view is also supported by what several modern travelershave reported. Francois Coreal, among others, states that most of the inhabitants of the Lucayes taken by the Spaniardsto the islands of Cuba, Santo Domingo, and elsewhere, died from eating flesh. One can see from this that I amoverlooking a number of useful points which I could put to good use. For since the prey is almost the only uniquesubject of combat among carnivorous animals and since the frugivores live amongst each other in a continual peace, ifthe human species was in the latter group, it is clear that it would have found it very much easier to subsist in thestate of nature and much less need and occasion to leave it. (6) All forms of knowledge which require reflection, all those which are acquired only by linking ideas and whichare perfected only in stages, seem to be completely beyond the grasp of savage man, for lack of communication withthose like him, that is to say, for lack of the instrument which serves for this communication and of the needs whichmake it necessary.

His knowledge and industry are limited to jumping, running, fighting, stone throwing, and treeclimbing. But if, on the one hand, these are the only things he does, on the other hand, he does them much better thanwe do, who do not have the same need as he does. And since these activities depend only on physical exercise and arenot affected by any communication or any progress from one individual to another, the first man could have been just asadept at them as his last descendants.The accounts of travelers are full of examples of the power and the vigour of men among the barbaric and savagenations.

These reports give no less praise to their dexterity and agility. And since the only things necessary toobserve these matters are eyes, nothing prevents us from accepting in good faith what visual witnesses certify in thismatter. I draw at random some examples from the first books which come to hand.“The Hottentots,” says Kolben, “have a better understanding of fishing than do the Europeans of the Cape. They are equally adept with nets, hooks, and spears, in coves as well as in rivers. With noless ease they catch fish in their hands. Their skill in swimming is incomparable.

The way they swim is somewhatsurprising and entirely appropriate to them. They swim with their bodies upright and their hands stretched out of thewater, so that they look as if they are walking on land. (7) “The life span of horses,” says M. De Buffon, “is, as with all the other species of animals, proportional to thelength of time they spend growing.

Man, who takes fourteen years to grow, can live six or seven times as long, that is,ninety or one hundred years; the horse, whose growth is complete in four years, can live six or seven times as long,that is, twenty-five or thirty years. The examples which could go against this rule are so rare that we should not lookupon them as exceptions from which we can derive any conclusions, and just as big horses complete their growing in lesstime than delicate horses, so they do not live as long and are old at the age of fifteen years.”. (8) I believe I see another difference between carnivorous and frugivorous animals, one even more general than theone I mentioned in the note to page 163 note 5 above since this one includes birds. The difference consists in thenumber of the young, which never exceed two in each litter for the species which live only on plants but which isusually greater for voracious animals. It is easy to recognize nature’s purpose in this matter by the number of teats,which is only two in each female of the first group, like the mare, cow, doe, ewe, and so on, but which is always sixor eight in the other females, like the bitch, cat, wolf, tigress, and so on.

Also the hen, goose, and duck, which areall voracious birds, as well as the eagle, sparrow-hawk, and owl, lay and hatch a large number of eggs, something whichnever happens with the pigeon, turtle dove, or birds which eat absolutely nothing but grain — these hardly ever lay andhatch more than two eggs at a time. The reason we can ascribe to this difference is that the animals which live only ongrasses and plants spend almost the whole day feeding, and, being forced to spend so long nourishing themselves, couldnot have enough time to suckle several young, whereas the voracious animals, eating their meals almost instantaneously,can more easily and more frequently return to their young and to the hunt and make up for the loss of such a largequantity of milk. One could make a great many particular observations and reflections about these matters, but this isnot the place for that, and it is sufficient for my purposes to have shown in this section the most general system ofnature, a system which provides a new reason for taking man out of the class of carnivorous animals and setting himamong the frugivorous species.

(9) A famous author, weighing the good and bad things of human life and comparing the two amounts, has found thatthe latter far surpassed the former and that, all things considered, life was a rather poor gift for man. I am notsurprised at his conclusion.

He drew all his arguments from the constitution of civil man: if he had gone back tonatural man, we can judge that he would have found very different results and would have noticed that man has hardlyany ills other than those which he has given himself and that nature would have been justified. It is not withouteffort that we have succeeded in making ourselves so unhappy. (11) That appears to me to be absolutely evident, and I am unable to understand where our philosophers could deriveall the passions which they ascribe to natural man. With the sole exception of physical necessity, which nature itselfdemands, all our other needs are what they are only from our habits, before which they were not needs, or from ourdesires, and one does not desire what one is not in a condition to understand. From this it follows that since savageman desires only things which he knows and knows only things which he is capable of possessing or which are easy toacquire, nothing should be as tranquil as his soul and nothing as limited as his mind.

Back to text. (12) In Locke’s On Civil Government I find an objection which appears to me too specious for me to be allowed tokeep it hidden.Since the goal of the social interaction between male and female,” says this philosopher, “is not simply toprocreate but to continue the species, this interaction must last, even after procreation, at least as long as isnecessary for the nourishment and the survival of the offspring, that is, until they are capable of supplying their ownneeds themselves.

We see that the creatures inferior to man constantly and strictly observe this rule which theinfinite wisdom of the Creator has established for the works of His hands. (13) I will take good care not to embark on philosophical reflections which one can make on the advantages anddisadvantages of this institution of languages.

It is not for me to be allowed to attack vulgar errors, and men ofletters respect their prejudices too much to endure patiently my alleged paradoxes. So let us permit those people tospeak for whom it has not been made a crime to dare to take the side of reason against the opinion of the multitude.And nothing of the happiness of the human race would go away, if, when the disaster and confusion of so many languageshave been done away with, mortals should cultivate one art and it were permitted to explain anything by signs, motions,and actions. But now it has been so established that the condition of animals which are popularly believed to be brutesis far better than ours in this respect, since they signify their feeling and thoughts without an interpreter morereadily and perhaps more happily than any mortals can, especially if they use a foreign language. (14) In demonstrating how ideas of discrete quantity and of its relationships are necessary in the least importantarts, Plato with reason mocks the authors of his time who claimed that Palamedes invented numbers at the siege of Troy,as if, says this philosopher, Agamemnon could have been ignorant up to then of how many legs he had. In fact, we sensethe impossibility of society and the arts reaching the stage where they were already at the time of the siege of Troywithout men having the use of numbers and calculation. But the need to know numbers before acquiring other knowledgedoes not make their invention easier to imagine.

Once the names of the numbers are known, one can easily explain whatthey mean and bring out the ideas which these names represent, but to invent them, one must, before conceiving thesesame ideas, be, as it were, familiar with philosophical meditations, trained in thinking about beings according totheir essence alone and independent of all other perception, a very difficult and very metaphysical abstraction,scarcely natural, but without which these ideas could never have been carried from one species or genus to another, norcould numbers have become universal. A savage could consider his right leg and his left leg separately or looked atthem together under the indivisible idea of a couple, without ever thinking that he had two of them. For therepresentative idea which pictures an object for us is one thing, and the numerical idea which determines it isanother. Even less could he have counted up to five, and although, by placing his hands one against the other, he wascapable of noticing that the fingers corresponded exactly, he was still very far from thinking about their numericalequality.

He did not know the sum of his digits any more than the sum of his hairs, and if, after he was made tounderstand what numbers are, someone had said to him that he had as many digits on his feet as on his hands, perhaps hewould have been extremely surprised, when he compared them, to discover that that was true. (16) It is a very remarkable thing that during all those years that Europeans have been tormenting themselves tobring savages from various countries of the world to their way of life they have not been able to win over a singleone, not even with the assistance of Christianity. For our missionaries have made some of them Christians but havenever civilized men. Nothing can overcome the invincible repugnance which they have against our customs and living inour manner.

(17) One could make an objection against me that in such a chaos, instead of willfully murdering each other, menwould have scattered, if there were no boundaries to their dispersion. But, first of all, these boundaries would haveto have been at least the limits of the world, and if one thinks about the excessive population which results from thestate of nature, one will judge that the earth in this condition would not have taken long to become covered with mencompelled in this way to remain collected together. In addition, they would have dispersed if the evil had been quickand the change something which happened from one day to the next.

But they were born under the yoke. They werehabituated to bear it when they felt its weight, and they were content to wait for an opportunity to shake it off.Finally, since they were already accustomed to the thousands of goods which forced them to remain together, dispersionwas not as easy as in the first days, when each man, having no need of anything except himself, decided what to dowithout waiting for another man’s consent. (18) Marshal de Villars used to tell the story that in one of his campaigns, when the excessively corrupt dealing ofone of the food contractors made the army suffer and grumble, he scolded him sharply and threatened to have him hanged.“This threat does not concern me,” the scoundrel brazenly answered him, “and I am very pleased to tell you that theydon’t hang a man who has at his disposal a hundred thousand crowns.” “I don’t know how that came about,” the marshaladded naively, “but in fact he was not hanged, although he deserved to be strung up a hundred times.”.

(19) Distributive justice would still be against this rigorous equality in the state of nature, even if werepractical in civil society. And as all the members of the state owe it their services in proportion to their talentsand their strengths, the citizens, in their turn, should be distinguished and favoured in proportion to their services.A passage of Isocrates must be understood in this sense, the one in which he praises the first Athenians for havingwell understood how to distinguish which was the more advantageous of the two sorts of equality: one which consisted ofdividing the same advantages equally among all the citizens, and the other of distributing them according to each man’smerit. These skilful politicians, the orator adds, banned that unjust equality which establishes no difference betweenbad and good men and committed themselves inviolably to the one which rewards and punishes each man according to hismerit. But, first of all, there has never existed a society, no matter what degree of corruption it could have reached,in which people make no distinction between good and bad men.

And in the matter of morals, where the law cannotestablish a measurement sufficiently precise to serve as a rule for the magistrate, the law very wisely, in order notto leave the fate or the rank of the citizens to the discretion of the magistrate, does not permit him to judgepersons, allowing him to judge nothing other than actions. There are no morals so pure that they can endure censors,other than those of the ancient Romans, and similar tribunals would have soon wreaked havoc among us. It is up topublic esteem to establish the difference between the evil and good men; the magistrate only judges matters of explicitrights. But the people are the true judge of morality, an honest and even enlightened judge on this point — one who isabused sometimes but never corrupted. The ranks of the citizens thus ought to be regulated, not on the basis of thepersonal merit, which would allow the magistrate the means to make an almost arbitrary application of the law, but onthe basis of the actual services they have rendered the state, which are susceptible to a more exact assessment.

,SignatureJean-Jacques Rousseau (:,:; French:; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a philosopher, writer and composer. His influenced the progress of the throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the and the development of modern political, economic and educational thought.His and are cornerstones in modern political and social thought. Rousseau's (1761) was important to the development of preromanticism and in fiction.

His (1762) is an educational treatise on the place of the individual in society. Rousseau's autobiographical writings—the posthumously published (composed in 1769), which initiated the modern, and the unfinished (composed 1776–1778)—exemplified the late-18th-century ', and featured an increased focus on and introspection that later characterized modern writing.Rousseau befriended fellow philosophy writer in 1742, and would later write about Diderot's romantic troubles in his Confessions. During the period of the, Rousseau was the most popular of the philosophers among members of the. He was interred as a national hero in the in Paris, in 1794, 16 years after his death. Les Charmettes, where Rousseau lived with from 1735 to 1736, now a museum dedicated to RousseauVirtually all our information about Rousseau's youth has come from his posthumously published Confessions, in which the chronology is somewhat confused, though recent scholars have combed the archives for confirming evidence to fill in the blanks. At age 13, Rousseau was apprenticed first to a and then to an engraver who beat him.

At 15, he ran away from Geneva (on 14 March 1728) after returning to the city and finding the city gates locked due to the curfew.In adjoining he took shelter with a Roman Catholic priest, who introduced him to, age 29. She was a noblewoman of Protestant background who was separated from her husband. As professional lay proselytizer, she was paid by the King of to help bring Protestants to Catholicism. They sent the boy to, the capital of Savoy (which included Piedmont, in what is now Italy), to complete his conversion. This resulted in his having to give up his Genevan citizenship, although he would later revert to Calvinism in order to regain it.In converting to Catholicism, both De Warens and Rousseau were likely reacting to Calvinism's insistence on the of man. Leo Damrosch writes: 'An eighteenth-century Genevan liturgy still required believers to declare 'that we are miserable sinners, born in corruption, inclined to evil, incapable by ourselves of doing good'. De Warens, a by inclination, was attracted to Catholicism's doctrine of forgiveness of sins.Finding himself on his own, since his father and uncle had more or less disowned him, the teenage Rousseau supported himself for a time as a servant, secretary, and tutor, wandering in Italy (Piedmont and Savoy) and France.

During this time, he lived on and off with De Warens, whom he idolized and called his ' maman'. Flattered by his devotion, De Warens tried to get him started in a profession, and arranged formal music lessons for him. At one point, he briefly attended a seminary with the idea of becoming a priest.Early adulthood. Palazzo belonging to Tommaso Querini at 968 Cannaregio that served as the French Embassy during Rousseau's period as Secretary to the AmbassadorFrom 1743 to 1744, Rousseau had an honorable but ill-paying post as a secretary to the Comte de Montaigue, the French ambassador to. This awoke in him a lifelong love for Italian music, particularly opera:I had brought with me from Paris the prejudice of that city against Italian music; but I had also received from nature a sensibility and niceness of distinction which prejudice cannot withstand. I soon contracted that passion for Italian music with which it inspires all those who are capable of feeling its excellence. In listening to barcaroles, I found I had not yet known what singing was.

1791Ten years later, Rousseau made inquiries about the fate of his son, but no record could be found. When Rousseau subsequently became celebrated as a theorist of education and child-rearing, his abandonment of his children was used by his critics, including and, as the basis for ad hominem attacks. Beginning with some articles on music in 1749, Rousseau contributed numerous articles to and 's great, the most famous of which was an article on political economy written in 1755.Rousseau's ideas were the result of an almost obsessive dialogue with writers of the past, filtered in many cases through conversations with Diderot. In 1749, Rousseau was paying daily visits to Diderot, who had been thrown into the fortress of under a for opinions in his ' ', that hinted at, a belief in,. According to science historian, Rousseau saw the concept of natural selection 'as an agent for improving the human species.'

Rousseau had read about an essay competition sponsored by the to be published in the Mercure de France on the theme of whether the development of the arts and sciences had been morally beneficial. He wrote that while walking to Vincennes (about three miles from Paris), he had a revelation that the arts and sciences were responsible for the moral degeneration of mankind, who were basically good by nature. Rousseau's 1750 was awarded the first prize and gained him significant fame.Rousseau continued his interest in music. He wrote both the words and music of his opera ( The Village Soothsayer), which was performed for in 1752.

The king was so pleased by the work that he offered Rousseau a lifelong pension. To the exasperation of his friends, Rousseau turned down the great honor, bringing him notoriety as 'the man who had refused a king's pension'. He also turned down several other advantageous offers, sometimes with a brusqueness bordering on truculence that gave offense and caused him problems. The same year, the visit of a troupe of Italian musicians to Paris, and their performance of 's, prompted the, which pitted protagonists of French music against supporters of the Italian style. Rousseau as noted above, was an enthusiastic supporter of the Italians against and others, making an important contribution with his Letter on French Music.Return to Geneva On returning to Geneva in 1754, Rousseau reconverted to and regained his official Genevan citizenship.

In 1755, Rousseau completed his second major work, the Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (the ), which elaborated on the arguments of the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. —In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical ' as a normative guide.Rousseau criticized for asserting that since man in the 'state of nature. Has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue'. On the contrary, Rousseau holds that 'uncorrupted morals' prevail in the 'state of nature' and he especially praised the admirable moderation of the Caribbeans in expressing the sexual urge despite the fact that they live in a hot climate, which 'always seems to inflame the passions'.Rousseau asserted that the stage of human development associated with what he called 'savages' was the best or optimal in human development, between the less-than-optimal extreme of brute animals on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilization on the other. '.Nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal of civil man'. Referring to the stage of human development which Rousseau associates with savages, Rousseau writes:Hence although men had become less forbearing, and although natural pity had already undergone some alteration, this period of the development of human faculties, maintaining a middle position between the indolence of our primitive state and the petulant activity of our egocentrism, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more one reflects on it, the more one finds that this state was the least subject to upheavals and the best for man, and that he must have left it only by virtue of some fatal chance happening that, for the common good, ought never to have happened.

The example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm that the human race had been made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable youth of the world; and that all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species.' The perspective of many of today's environmentalists can be traced back to Rousseau who believed that the more men deviated from the state of nature, the worse off they would be. Espousing the belief that all degenerates in men's hands, Rousseau taught that men would be free, wise, and good in the state of nature and that instinct and emotion, when not distorted by the unnatural limitations of civilization, are nature's voices and instructions to the good life.

Rousseau's 'noble savage' stands in direct opposition to the man of culture. Stages of human developmentWikiquote has quotations related to:Rousseau believed that the savage stage was not the first stage of human development, but the third stage.

Rousseau held that this third savage stage of human societal development was an optimum, between the extreme of the state of brute animals and animal-like 'ape-men' on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilized life on the other. This has led some critics to attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the, which conclusively showed misrepresents Rousseau's thought. Rousseau's view was that morality was not embued by society, but rather 'natural' in the sense of 'innate'. It could be seen as an outgrowth from man's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise emotions of compassion or empathy. These are sentiments shared with animals, and whose existence even acknowledged. Rousseau (1755), Holland, frontispiece and title pageRousseau's ideas of human development were highly interconnected with forms of mediation, or the processes that individual humans use to interact with themselves and others while using an alternate perspective or thought process.

According to Rousseau, these were developed through the innate perfectibility of humanity. These include a sense of self, morality, pity, and imagination. Rousseau's writings are purposely ambiguous concerning the formation of these processes to the point that mediation is always intrinsically part of humanity's development.

An example of this is the notion that as an individual, one needs an alternative perspective to come to the realization that they are a 'self'.In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of, a positive self-love, into,. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for, combined with the human power of. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. Rousseau was not the first to make this distinction.

It had been invoked by, among others.In the Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of had made governments more and had crushed individual; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true by replacing it with, and suspicion.In contrast to the optimistic view of other figures, for Rousseau, has been inimical to the well-being of humanity, that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in can man be ennobled—through the use of reason:The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. — Horace Walpole's letter to H.S. Conway, dated 12 January 1766.

In those days in Europe the recipient had to pay for the postage for any mail received.Rousseau's letter is atrocious; it is to the last degree extravagant and inexcusable.But do not believe him capable of any falsehood or artifice; nor imagine that he is either an impostor or a scoundrel.His anger has no just cause, but it is sincere; of that I feel no doubt. Here is what I imagine to be the cause of it.

I have heard it said, and he has perhaps been told, that one of the best phrases in Mr Walpole's letter was by you, and that you had said in jest, speaking in the name of the King of Prussia, 'If you wish for persecutions, I am a king, and can procure them for you of any sort you like,' and that Mr Walpole.had said you were its author. If this be true, and Rousseau knows of it, do you wonder that, sensitive, hot-headed, melancholy, and proud.he has become enraged?