According to Rousseau the true originator of civil society was the first man to enclose a piece of land and called it his own, i.e. the birth of property ownership. There were in any event many changes that occurred between that first step towards “society” and the savage man that Rousseau first describes. The progress towards civil inequality was a result of many different events throughout our anthropological history.
With the growth of the brain man had advanced rapidly and in many ways. Physical attributes weakened as a result of gathering together in small groups, language developed, at the same time the family was born. Gender roles were instituted making women subservient to men, different sentiments grew, love jealously, respect, power, authority, pride etc, all as a result of gathering together and recognizing similarities between each other. Rousseau believes this was the first step towards vice (49) which leads to unhappiness and the loss of innocence.
There were a series of “revolution” or pivotal point in man’s developmental history, the first being as a result of the invention and the use of tools. Technological development led to psychological and behavior changes i.e. the development of sentiments of pride, power, and authority to name a few. The reason for human interaction had changed, instead of interaction out of pity; interaction became forced because of these new sentiments.
Eventually man realized there were benefits in working in groups in contrast to working alone. This was a significant realization; Rousseau refers to this as the second revolution that was as a result of metallurgy and agriculture. “It is iron and wheat that have civilized men and ruined the human race”. (51) It is from the division of land for agriculture that Justice was born to delegate what belongs to whom. It is agriculture and metallurgy that allowed natural inequality to fuel civil inequality (53).
Governments were formed reflecting the state of the individuals in a particular area. If one individual was “eminent in power, virtue, wealth or prestige” a monarch was formed. If several individuals shared in prestige an aristocracy was formed. A less disproportionate group, who, had “least departed from the state of nature, kept the supreme administration and formed a democracy.” (64)
In summary Rousseau believes that there is very little inequality in nature. Inequality is a result of the development of man’s “faculties and the progress of the human mind,” as a result inequality becomes legitimatized by the invention of “property and laws.” (71)
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I feel that another main contributer to the progress towards inequality was the sense of competition. Once man started to claim land and nature as his own, other's started to get jealous. They started to think in the way that if "this man owns this amount of land, why dont I own any land?" With this new sense of competition growing in the heads of man it made man start working against eachother instead of with eachother. This gave birth to inequality and a early form of government.
I said this before but it seems odd that Rousseau believes progress and competition come in pairs. The impression I got was that if the mind progresses competition will come with it, and this competition leads to inequality. But this hardly seems like progress at all if these new mental abilities come at the expense of physical ones as well as being at the expense of other men. I would like to know what his solution is or if the two things are inseparable.
People were beginning to live in communities, and were noticing differences between the society. They began to desire public esteem. This is the first step to both inequality and civilization. It's obvious that Rousseau isn't a big government advocate because he says that although it claims to unite and free people, and give them what they truly deserve, it really just takes away our freedom and binds us. However, I wonder if he's suggesting that the only way to be equal, is without things such as communities and politics. he says that the savage man wants tranquility and liberty, and lives in himself which produces these things. the civilized man is always active, working for power and reputation. he lives in the opinion of others. On pg 53, he mentions natural inequality which manifests itself with inequality caused by the socialization process. however, i can't help but to think that although savage man may seem to have a more equal existence with others, its simply because he's secluded, and doesn't notice the strengths and weaknesses that others have.
I agree on the point John is making, that man started to work against each other because jealousy caused it. But in my opinion there cannot be concluded from this that the “working against each other” caused the early form of government. Government means creating civil codes to regulate the competition, to make the competition fairer. Government comes to exist because the more powerful competitors want to rule over the weaker ones.
Chris’s question seemed interesting and I want to propose a solution for the situation of progress and competition being separate from each other. If you think about an example, progress and competition always need to interfere at some point. Let’s say two men want to built a new house for their family. At the beginning both work hard and gain more experience, so they improve their skills and therefore the quality of the building improves. Since human beings interact with each other both man compare their building techniques. Now the jealousy factor is present, since there is jealousy a competition between both man starts, about which house will be nicer and better at the end. We can therefore say that progress and competition always need to go together, since jealousy is a human characteristic and will be present. The presence of jealousy in the human nature is the connection between progress and competition.
It was a hard read through and I am not sure that I got everything that Rousseau wanted to convey. Anyway in the class it was established that the inequality here is regarding civil matters, thus it is without saying that it must have been civilization that brought it upon mankind. Still I kind of think that natural law does allow for such an inequality to exist, as we can see in animals, which live in herds or groups there is one that is dominant, which is kind of a political or wealth inequality to me. This is due to physical equality but it is the direct result of nature.
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