Cover: Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men, 1st Edition by Jean Jacques Rousseau; translated; edited; and with an introduction by Helena Rosenblatt

Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men

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First  Edition©2011  Jean Jacques Rousseau; translated; edited; and with an introduction by Helena Rosenblatt

ISBN:9781319242701

ISBN:9780312468422

About

Challenging the superiority of civilized society and modern government, Rousseaus Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men stands today as one of the most important political texts in Western history. Discover why the criticisms of human nature, political hierarchy, and private property were so controversial in Rousseaus time yet today are hailed as a foundation of democracy through related primary documents.

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Table of Contents

Foreword

Preface
 
PART ONE. INTRODUCTION: The Life and Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Rousseaus Beginnings: The Road to the Second Discourse
The Origins of Political Authority Before Rousseau
Rousseaus Bombshell: The Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality
     The State of Nature
     The Steps to Society
     The Invention of Property
     Anthropology, Psychology, and Evolutionary Biology
     Rousseau and Gender
     Reception of the Second Discourse
     “Citizen of Geneva”: The Dedication
Rousseaus Later Life and Legacy
     Rousseau and the French Revolution
     The Social Contract and Its Paradoxes
 
PART TWO: Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva
Dedication
Preface
Notice about the Notes
First Part
Second Part
Rousseaus Notes
 
PART THREE. RELATED DOCUMENTS
1. Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet, Politics Drawn from Holy Scripture, 1709
2. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, 1651
3. Samuel Pufendorf, On the Duty of Man and Citizen, 1673
4. John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, 1690
5. George-Louis Leclerc Buffon, Discourse on the Nature of Animals, 1753
6. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Of the Social Contract, 1762
7. Maximilien Robespierre, Eulogies to Rousseau, 1790s
8. Benjamin Constant, Principles of Politics, 1810
 
Appendixes
     A Jean-Jacques Rousseau Chronology (1712-1794)
     Questions for Consideration
     Selected Bibliography
 
Index

Jean Jacques Rousseau

Helena Rosenblatt

Helena Rosenblatt (PhD, Columbia) is a professor of history at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. A specialist in European intellectual history, she is the author of Liberal Values: Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion (2008) and Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 1749-1762 (1997), and she is the editor of The Cambridge Companion to Constant (2009).