Jean-Jacques Rousseau
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU  Macroknow Library
   

   
Discourse on Inequality. "As we trace the march of inequality in these various revolutions, we find that the establishment of law and the right of property was the first stage, the institution of the magistrate the second, and the transformation of legitimate into arbitrary power the third and last. Thus, the status of rich and poor was sanctioned in the first age, that of strong and weak in the second, and in the third that of master and slave, the ultimate degree of inequality to which all the others at last lead until new revolutions dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to legitimacy."1a
AUGUSTINE PAINE RAND


       
   
The Social Contract. "Man was born free, and everywhere he is in chains."2a PLATO VOLTAIRE

" . . . [T]rue democracy has never existed and never will."2b PASCAL

"The political body, like the human, begins to die as soon as it is born, and carries within it the causes of its own destruction."2c FREUD


       
   
       
   

* Italics in the original.

1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Translated by Franklin Philip. Edited with an Introduction by Patrick Coleman. Franklin Philip, 1994. Patrick Coleman, 1994. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.
a
Part II, at 78-79.

2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse on Political Economy and The Social Contract. Translated with Introduction and Notes by Christopher Betts. Christopher Betts, 1994. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1994.
a
Book I, at 45.
b
Book III, at 101.
c
Book III, at 121.

MK-BOOKS-ROUSSEAU-1998