This blog assignment requires you to read and comment on the text below. Your comment can be an interpretation of a quote from the text or a connection between texts and the topic being discussed. At the end of your comment, you must write an open-ended question you are curious about so that we can try to answer it during the seminar.
Our goal is to find meaning in this article through our collaborative efforts.
From Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men
by Jean Jacques Rousseau
I am going to speak about man, and I speak only to human beings who are not afraid of the truth.
I think there are two kinds of inequality among human beings. One I call natural or physical inequality, because it depends on differences in age, health, bodily strength, and intelligence. The other I call moral or political inequality because it depends on the laws which human beings have agreed to. These laws allow some people to have more wealth and power than others.
Everyone knows what the source of natural inequality is. It is nature. Some people also ask whether political inequality isn't based on natural inequality. Whether, in fact, those who have wealth and power aren't better in strength, intelligence, and moral virtue than those who don't have wealth and power. This is the sort of things that slaves say when they know their masters are listening. Free and reasonable people who are looking for the truth don't talk this way.
What then are we looking for? We are looking for that moment in the history of man when the idea of right took the place of strength and violence; when nature was subjected to law. We want to explain by what series of almost magical events the majority of the people who together are strong could be made to serve their rulers who are few and therefore weaker. We want to know why all human beings traded their real happiness for the imaginary security of living in political society.
Our goal is to find meaning in this article through our collaborative efforts.
From Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Among Men
by Jean Jacques Rousseau
I am going to speak about man, and I speak only to human beings who are not afraid of the truth.
I think there are two kinds of inequality among human beings. One I call natural or physical inequality, because it depends on differences in age, health, bodily strength, and intelligence. The other I call moral or political inequality because it depends on the laws which human beings have agreed to. These laws allow some people to have more wealth and power than others.
Everyone knows what the source of natural inequality is. It is nature. Some people also ask whether political inequality isn't based on natural inequality. Whether, in fact, those who have wealth and power aren't better in strength, intelligence, and moral virtue than those who don't have wealth and power. This is the sort of things that slaves say when they know their masters are listening. Free and reasonable people who are looking for the truth don't talk this way.
What then are we looking for? We are looking for that moment in the history of man when the idea of right took the place of strength and violence; when nature was subjected to law. We want to explain by what series of almost magical events the majority of the people who together are strong could be made to serve their rulers who are few and therefore weaker. We want to know why all human beings traded their real happiness for the imaginary security of living in political society.