Rousseau’s Observations on Inequality and the Causes of Moral Corruption

• DOI: 10.1177/1065912919892619
• Published date: 01 March 2020
• Date: 01 March 2020
• Author: Kendra A. Tully,John T. Scott
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919892619

Political Research Quarterly

2020, Vol. 73(1) 184 –195

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912919892619

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Article

Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s passionate attack on inequali-

ties political, social, and economic, his critique of reign-

ing governments in the name of democracy, and his

questioning of the authority of science or philosophy in

defense of moral virtue shook the century of Enlightenment

and the aftershocks are still felt today. Beginning with his

controversial argument in the Discourse on the Sciences

and the Arts (1750) that the advancement of the sciences

and the arts have corrupted morals, over the course of a

little more than a decade Rousseau produced a series of

works in which leveled further charges against modern

society with increasing boldness. And he ultimately paid

for his boldness when the publication in 1762 of Emile,

or On Education and the Social Contract resulted in the

condemnation of his works, an order for his arrest, and

his flight into a life of wandering exile. If the seeds of his

critique of modern society can be glimpsed in the

Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, especially in ret-

rospect, the full scope of his critique is not evident there.

In this paper, we examine a neglected but important writ-

ing in which Rousseau first brings together his diverse

but interrelated preoccupations with the various forms of

inequality—political, social, economic, and philosophical

—and, moreover, one of the rare occasions on which he

does so among his works: the Observations by Jean-

Jacques Rousseau of Geneva on the Reply Made to His

Discourse (1751).

The Observations was a reply to a critique of his prize

essay by the King of Poland, and it was the first full-scale,

and lengthiest, contribution by Rousseau to the polemical

exchange in which he defended the Discourse on the

Sciences and the Arts. Rousseau himself considered it to be

a significant yet overlooked work: “Up to the present, this

piece, which somehow or other has made less commotion

than my other writings, is a unique work in its type”

(Confessions, 1990-2010, 5: 307). The importance of the

Observations is further signaled by the fact that it is the

first writing where he claimed ownership of his works by

naming himself as author, in this case of both the

Observations and the initially anonymous Discourse, an

unusual practice during a time when anonymity was the

norm and a perilous one for Rousseau (see Kelly 2003,

esp. 20–21). What little scholarly analysis the Observations,

and the other polemical writings, has received centers on

the question of the relationship between the first Discourse

and Rousseau’s later writings. On one hand, some scholars

argue that his prize essay contains the most important ele-

ments of his thought, including the critique of inequality

developed in the Discourse on Inequality (e.g., Black

2009; Campbell and Scott 2005; Goldschmidt 1974;

Gourevitch 1972; Masters 1968; Strauss 1947). On the

other hand, some interpreters maintain that the Discourse

892619PRQXXX10.1177/1065912919892619Political Research QuarterlyTully and Scott

research-article2019

1Department of Political Science, University of California, Davis, USA

Corresponding Author:

John T. Scott, Department of Political Science, University of

California, Davis, One Shields Ave., Davis, CA 95616, USA.

Email: jtscott@ucdavis.edu

Rousseau’s Observations on Inequality

and the Causes of Moral Corruption

Kendra A. Tully1 and John T. Scott1

Abstract

Rousseau’s passionate attack on inequalities political, social, and economic, his critique of reigning governments in the

name of democracy, and his questioning of the authority of science or philosophy in defense of moral virtue shook

the century of Enlightenment and the aftershocks are still felt today. We examine a neglected but important writing

in which he first brings together his diverse but interrelated preoccupations: the Observations, his lengthiest defense

of the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts. We analyze the argument in the Observations regarding the causes of

moral corruption, taking our cue in part from several structural anomalies. These textual anomalies reveal two causal

arguments: first, a political argument identifying inequality as the first cause of corruption, and, second, an argument

about the corrupting effects of philosophy on religious faith and popular morality related to the first argument through

a common concern with pride and inequality.

Keywords

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, inequality, religion, enlightenment