Description
Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (also known as the Second Discourse) tells the story of all human history to answer one simple question: how did we end up in such an unequal world? David explores the steps Rousseau traces in the fall of humankind and asks whether this is a radical alternative to the vision offered by Hobbes or just a variant on it. Is Rousseau really such a nice philosopher?
Free online version of text
Recommended version to purchase
Going deeper…
- Leo Damrosch, Jean Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius (2005)
- David Edmonds and John Eidinow, Rousseau’s Dog (2007)
- Pankaj Mishra, ‘How Rousseau predicted Trump’, The New Yorker (2016)
- (Audio) In Our Time, The Social Contract
See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.
A special episode in which David answers some of the audience's questions about the second series of History of Ideas. From how he chooses which writers and works to talk about, to whether Boris Johnson is the ultimate Benthamite and whether the idea of a pleasure machine isn't - in fact -...
Published 05/08/21
Judith Shklar’s Ordinary Vices (1984) made the case that the worst of all the vices is cruelty. But that meant we needed to be more tolerant of some other common human failings, including snobbery, betrayal and hypocrisy. David explores what she had to say about some of the other authors in this...
Published 04/20/21