Chapter 2 On the Origin and Basis of Human Inequality Introduction

"I think it was in 1753 when the Academy of Dijon issued a call for papers on 'The Origin of Inequality in Man.' I was moved by the profound subject, and I was amazed that the Academy dared to propose such a subject. Well, Since it had the courage to propose it, and I might well have the courage to study it, I signed up for it. "In order to facilitate my thinking on this profound subject, I made a journey of seven or eight days to St. Depicting the outline of the history of that era. I ruthlessly refuted the boring lies in the world; I boldly exposed people's nature that has changed due to the progress of time and things; 'Compared with the natural man, from the so-called 'perfection of man', the true source of human suffering is pointed out. My soul, inspired by these sublime meditations, ascended to the realm of the gods. In that realm, I saw In the direction of error, misfortune, and evil, where my kind have gone astray through their obstinacy, I cried out to them, in a faint voice they could not hear: 'You are all Unreasonable people, you who constantly blame nature, know that all your pain comes from yourself'.

"My 'On Inequality' is the result of such meditations. This treatise is more in line with Diderot's interests than all my other writings, and his opinion on this work has given me a lot of advice for me. It is also the most beneficial. However, I am afraid that this article can only be understood by a small number of readers in Europe, and I am afraid that none of these readers is willing to talk about it. This article was originally written for recruitment, so I sent it to the Academy of Sciences, but I had already expected that I would not win the prize, because I knew that the prize money of the Academy of Sciences was never set up for articles like mine."

Rousseau thus described in his Confessions how the treatise was composed.He guessed right, and at the beginning of 1754, the Academy of Sciences awarded the prize to the anonymous Father Darbyer.Soon after, Rousseau got the opportunity to return to Geneva.He left Paris on June 1, 1754.A dedication to this work had been drawn up, which he completed on the road, with the concluding note "June 16th at Chambery."He had intended to ask permission from the Government of Geneva to present this dedication to his country; he later abandoned that plan, fearing refusal.As a result, he published his dedication without consulting anyone.This dedication is dedicated to the National Assembly, that is to say, to all citizens.At that time, the relationship between the officials and the people was bad, and this incident aroused suspicion among the officials.This dedication "only made me many enemies in Parliament and the envy of not a few among the bourgeoisie".

In Geneva, Rousseau met the bookseller Ley, who later became the publisher of Rousseau's works.Although Rousseau's temperament was difficult to get along with others, Lai Yi became his loyal friend.After Ley received Rousseau's manuscript of this paper in October 1754, he returned to Amsterdam.By April, 1755, the treatise was being printed in Amsterdam. On June 19, Laiyi obtained the permission of Marelbe, and shipped the book to France. In mid-August, 1,700 copies were shipped to Paris and sold by the bookseller Pissau.Another 200 copies were sent to Geneva.Later, in 1759 and 1762, Ley changed hands and this paper was reprinted twice.When the author was alive, people have seen the future

?Translations in three languages ​​through legal procedures ②. The controversy aroused by this second treatise was not so extensive as that aroused by "On Science and Art". In its October 1755 issue of the French Mercury Magazine, "A Letter from the Citizen of Geneva, Philopolis (real name Charles Bonnet)" was published, and Rousseau promptly replied.In the same year Voltaire's famous letter thanking Rousseau for his book (written on August 30, 1755) was also published: "No one has ever used such great wisdom to try to turn us into animals. After reading your book, it really makes people want to walk on four feet."

Rousseau objected to this letter by saying that he never intended to return man to barbarism. Rousseau's first treatise was on ethical issues.The second treatise was a treatise on politics, and as soon as it was published Rousseau was immediately recognized as a great political thinker.This book was by no means accidental, and from the time of his sojourn in Venice in 1743 the author had been planning to write a colossal work on political institutions. "Since then my horizons have been greatly opened by the study of the history of ethics. I have seen that everything comes down to politics, and that, whatever interpretation we may make, the appearance of a people is entirely determined by its It is determined by the nature of the government. Therefore, the great question of 'what government is the best that people can have', I think can be reduced to this question: What kind of government can make people the most moral , the wisest, the most learned, the best (best should be taken in a broad sense) of the people? I think this question is very close to the other question, though not identical to each other, viz.: always the most observant What kind of government is the government of law? From this question arises 'What is law?' and a series of questions of equal importance."

This passage clearly points out that, at least before Rousseau met Mrs. Dudette, political issues were the central issues in his thinking.In this way, he must have read the classics on politics at that time: such as Aristotle's "Politics" and Plato's "Republic", and his thinking was greatly influenced by these works.Among the works of modern people, Rousseau had read the treatises of natural law school Grotius and Pufendorf. The Dutchman de Groot (that is, Grotius) published the "Law of War and Peace" in 1625, so he is famous.This work of Grotius was once developed by the German Pufendorf.Pufendorf is the author of "Natural Law and International Law" (eight volumes), and he published a compendium in 1673: "Man and the Duties of Citizens".

The works of these two jurists had already been translated into French by the French Protestant Barberac in the early eighteenth century.Barberac, in order to disseminate the teaching of these two jurists, took great pains to explain it plainly, in a common way, and to make it less difficult to understand, and in some cases to correct it. Finally, Burlamaki, the Genevan author of "Principles of Natural Law" (1747) and "Principles of Political Law" (1751), also popularized the teachings of the above-mentioned two jurists without adding anything new. s things. The great merit of the natural law schools is that they destroyed the doctrine of theocracy.These Protestants had worked hard to save the country from the theological influence of Catholicism, so their teachings gained legal status in Protestant countries in the eighteenth century.All these Protestants imagined a supposed state of nature in which all men were free and equal; and that for the transition to civilization men entered into a contract, either voluntarily or As a last resort (for example, due to the rights of the conquerors), all submit to a political authority.In this kind of contract, people can ask to formulate some clauses to guarantee freedom, from which various fundamental laws have been produced.So the source of sovereignty is the people; and those who maintain the doctrine of theocracy believe that all power is from God.According to St. Paul "all power comes from God".As for the exercise of sovereignty, it can take various forms between the two extremes (absolute monarchy and universal democracy).Grotius Slipfendorf was a representative of the bourgeoisie in the seventeenth century and a supporter of the absolute monarchy.As for Barberac and Burramaki, they were no longer absolutists in the eighteenth century; they recognized the right of the people to resist tyranny.But they don't become democrats for that.Rousseau, who was preparing to write a book on "Political Institutions", read their works, adopted some of the main principles of their teachings, and at the same time rose against them.In "The Social Contract" (Volume II, Chapter II), he denounced Grotius for "depriving the people of all rights"; Barack included, was bought by the monarch, because "truth is not a path to fame, and the people give them neither ministers or professors, nor annuities" (ibid., vol. 2, Chapter two).

It can be seen that, on the one hand, Rousseau is the successor of the natural law school, and at the same time is their enemy, because they are not democrats. Rousseau also read Hobbes (1588-1679).Hobbes was a profound and authoritative thinker, in his two books "On the Citizen" (1642) and "Leviathan" (1651), he established a unique theory of absolute monarchy. theory.Starting from the premise of materialism, Hobbes pointed out that in the state of nature, "man is like a wolf to man", while the theorists of the school of natural law, after Aristotle, believed that man is born with social nature. of.According to Hobbes' theory, in order to avoid the tragic result of a long-term war state-death, people make a contract with each other, according to this contract, people unconditionally hand over the supreme power to rule them to a third party (individual or group).Thus the state becomes a monster, a Leviathan, with all religious and secular powers; it cannot be unjust, because the law is the expression of its will.

Hobbes at once had many enemies: first, the supporters of absolute monarchy, because he gave it a material basis; second, the opponents of absolute monarchy, because he justified tyranny.But "Leviathan" was translated into French in the middle of the seventeenth century, and it still had a great influence in France at that time.There is also a book "Leviathan" in Bao Xuai's library.Because Hobbes came to such political conclusions, the encyclopaedists would of course oppose him.When Rousseau wrote "On Inequality", he also had the same opinion as his friends.His conception of the state of nature was the exact opposite of Hobbes's; he vehemently opposed the theory that man would voluntarily throw himself into the arms of a tyrant.In essence, however, Rousseau is closer to Hobbes than to the natural law school.If the statement "man is like a wolf to man" is not true in a state of nature, it is, according to Rousseau, true in society.Most of Rousseau's descriptions of the passions that cause misfortune to people in society are due to Hobbes.Later, Rousseau reread Hobbes' works, and further discovered the depth of knowledge of this "one of the rarest and best geniuses in the world". The "Social Contract Theory" is more influenced by Hobbes than "On Inequality".This scrupulous scholar of genius was against all compromise, so he must have won Rousseau.

At the time of the publication of this treatise, Rousseau was, on the face of it, closer to Lockerbie than Hobbes. Hobbes was a British bourgeois who supported the absolute monarchy in the middle of the seventeenth century.Locke (1632-1704) was originally loyal to the Stuart royal family and was later exiled by them.Locke's hatred of the tyrant was intensified by the repeal of the Edict of Nantes (1685).When Locke returned to England (1688) with William III, Prince of Orange, he became a ideologue of a moderate monarch on the origin and underlying institutions of human inequality.Although his genius was far less than that of Hobbes, he was a typical representative of the British bourgeoisie who compromised with the nobility at that time.This compromising attitude is everywhere in Locke's writings.He acknowledged divine revelation, but appealed as much as possible to natural reason.He opposed various theories that justified slavery, opposed the absolute monarchy, and believed that the people had the right to revolt against tyranny; however, he created the famous theory of separation of powers in an attempt to reconcile the contradiction between the monarchy and the sovereignty of the people.Locke also admitted that human beings had a state of nature, but in the state of nature, people had already obeyed reason; at that time, individuals already had some rights, one of which was ownership based on labor; to ensure the exercise of these rights.So Locke is a theoretician of bourgeois liberalism. Locke's "Treatise on Government" (1690) was translated into French by the Frenchman Coste in the early eighteenth century.Locke enjoys a high reputation.Voltaire made Locke known to the masses.Montesquieu was also greatly influenced by Locke.The encyclopaedia respected Locke as a master, and Rousseau also praised him as "the wise Locke" (see page 119 of this book).Rousseau adopted some of Locke's arguments against Hobbes, that is to say against tyranny.In fact, Rousseau's proposition was opposed to Locke's, and the depth of this opposition was later prominently displayed in "Theory of the Social Contract".The most important point is this: Rousseau completely opposed the state of nature and the state of society. He denied all the justifications made by nature for social organization and its institutions, especially private property; while Locke's entire effort was to make private property based on natural law. Rousseau was naturally acquainted with Montesquieu, but the "Spirit of Laws" did not have a great influence on the treatise "On Inequality".Moreover, Rousseau's book "Political Institutions" is intended to discuss laws in general, that is to say, to discuss the principles of public law in accordance with the methods of Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, etc.; its research object It is completely different from the "spirit of the law". "The Spirit of Laws" is a treatise on positive law. "On Inequality" involves a whole psychology very close to that of the sensationalist Condillac.Rousseau joined Condillac after 1743.Condillac's "On the Origin of Human Knowledge" was published with the help of Rousseau (1746).Rousseau also read the author's "system theory".Although Condillac's "Essay on Sensation" (1755) had not yet been published when Rousseau wrote "On Inequality," Rousseau must have known the thesis of this long-prepared work.Naturally, it is impossible to know to what extent Condillac influenced Rousseau.We can only prove that their minds are the same on many points.In short, this question does not make us doubt the originality of the book "On Inequality", because Condillac confines himself to the study of the development of human reason through "individuals", while "On Inequality" studies the development of human reason through various social , to make rational real history.However, it is still very meaningful for us to point out the source of Rousseau's psychological materialism.Rousseau began as early as 1756 a work entitled "The Ethics of Sensation," or "Materialism of the Sage," which no doubt ceased at the moment of his complete break with the Encyclopaedia. of. Since, according to Rousseau himself, Diderot had advised him when he drafted this treatise (see p. 29 of this book), it can be seen that this treatise was also influenced by the Encyclopedia.But between the two friends it was difficult to distinguish which thoughts belonged to which.Human beings have developed through millions of years in nature. This basic concept is pointed out in "Explanation of Nature" (Thoughts 58).Diderot pointed out: "Among the Ganibalds and Metontus, people are like wild animals in the wilderness and in the forest"; Diderot must have drawn Rousseau's attention to the role of emotion in human development.But there is a basic difference between Diderot and Rousseau, from which people can see the root of the later ideological conflict between the two.According to Diderot, man is naturally a social creature.Before engaging in social life, people lived in groups.So the state of nature and the state of society are not completely opposite. But in 1755 neither Diderot nor Rousseau, of course, was aware of the possible consequences of the intellectual antagonism between them.When Grimm introduced "On Inequality" in his "Literary Letter", he still praised this essay very much. At that time, Grimm expressed precisely Diderot's thought. We should also explain who inspired Rousseau to describe man in the state of nature.The natural man described by Rousseau is not entirely original.Under slavery, people still retain the memory of a time when life was freer.Therefore, many Greek and Latin poets used the Golden Age as their theme, and sang the happy and peaceful life of that age.Rousseau at least read the works of Latin poets.Among these poets we should especially mention Huckletius ("On the Nature of Things", V. 925-1135), who described man in a barbaric state with the most vivid style.He states that the savage is stronger than the civilized man, and, on the whole, no less unfortunate than the civilized man. In modern times, the thesis "The savage is good" has been expounded continuously from Montaigny onwards (cf. Montaigny's Essays, On the Ganibalds, chap. 1, § 31). , this is well known to Rousseau.We say this is a "thesis", not a "myth" (as some people say).It is not an illusion common to all these peoples that countless sailors, merchants, and missionaries have returned from their travels with savage peoples, with the utmost admiration of their moral qualities, and their contempt for those of civilized nations.Undoubtedly the eighteenth-century philosophers took advantage of the travellers' accounts, and embellished them as best they could, to prove that man can be good without Christianity; Attacking Christianity gives people more happiness.But the accounts of those travelers were also based on facts: they described the conditions of the people who lived in the primitive communist society, and they found in them some virtues that have been lost in our society.What is there in common between Tacitus and Finnemur Kuber?However, the virtues of courage and loyalty to the collective described by the Germans in the former are also shown in the Iroquois described by the latter.It would therefore be incorrect to regard the travelers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries as poor simple-minded people.Their arguments can still be seen in this "On Inequality", and give this treatise a certain degree of truth.Among these travellers, the missionaries gave the most interesting reports, because they were the most cultured people, and they had no need to praise the ignorant savages, so those accounts are more true and reliable. that's it. Rousseau has read the accounts of many travellers, and he has read Baron La Chontain's "Memoirs of North America" ​​(1703).La Hontain is an adventurous soldier who, tired of life in Europe, goes to live with the North American Indians.What caused the corruption of Europeans? He wrote: "That is because they have 'yours' and 'mine', have laws, judges and priests ... [and, besides] private property ... is the social disorder of Europeans. One source." (Memoirs, Volume 3) Rousseau also read the book "The Chronicle of the Antilles Inhabited by the French" (2 volumes in total, 1667) written by Father Didiert. All his knowledge about the Galaibo people came from this book. obtained in the book.Not sure if Rousseau read ?Father Ba's "A New Journey to the Isles of America " (6 volumes, 1722). But he had read La · Gong Daming's "Travel in South America " (1745), see also "Travel diary to Ecuador by order of the king " (1751). He is "Compilation of Travel Chronicles "(1746 -1770), a colossal compilation published under the auspices of Father Plevost.Rousseau continued to read this compilation after the publication of this treatise.This point, in the 1782 edition of "On Inequality ” is proved in this edition, for in this edition Rousseau cites some new references, such as the account of the Spaniard Colea, which was edited only in 1757 at Plevost. published in this compilation of . But Rousseau most often read the works of Bifon.Bi Feng was the greatest authority in science at that time.Rousseau had read Buffon's "The Principles of the Land" and "The Natural History of Man" (1749), and he had read the first volumes of "Quadrupeds".In the author's notes of this book, almost all the discussions on various issues of human and animal anatomy are influenced by Bi Feng.In particular, the chapter "Variation of Human Race" in Bi Feng's "Natural History of Man" interested him the most, and this chapter was written based on the many accounts of travelers. Finally, I would like to add that there were many utopian descriptions of human nature in the eighteenth century.Such a description can already be read in Fenelon's "Deremark".Deremark's novel describes the poetic life of the Bedige people, who don't know what private property is, but they enjoy freedom (end of volume 7).Rousseau respected Fineron very much because he was familiar with Fineron's works. But all this is not enough to explain the content of this paper.Rousseau systematically read many books.Through every sentence of his treatise, you can see some of his memories of other writers, and Rousseau developed his thinking activities in these memories.One of the peculiarities of his genius was that he always directed his thoughts at someone.He quotes Locke in refutation of Hobbes; conversely, he quotes Hobbes in refutation of Locke, perhaps.So we can find many theories that can be compared with each other, some of which have been pointed out in our added notes.But it would be extremely absurd to think that Rousseau was plagiarizing someone else's work.He rethought all the materials he found elsewhere, integrated them into his own, and finally completed a masterpiece of dialectics.It is necessary to quote a large part of what Engels said here.Engels pointed out: "On Inequality" and Diderot's " ?Mo's nephew " is a masterpiece of dialectics in the eighteenth century ( "Anti-Dühring ", French translation, p. 52), and later, Engels formulated this idea (ibid., p. 169): "...Even Rousseau's theory of equality...would not have been established without the midwife's work of Hegel's negation of negation—and this was more than twenty years before Hegel was born. Rousseau's doctrine Far from being ashamed of this role, it may be said to brilliantly reveal its dialectical origin in its first formulation. Man is equal in the savage state of nature. Since Rousseau has made language As a perversion of the state of nature, he has every reason to add to the animal-man the equality of the animals within the same species. . . . There is a specialty, that is, the ability to tend to perfection and development, and this ability becomes the cause of inequality. In this way, Rousseau saw that the generation of inequality is progress. But this progress contains confrontation, It is regressive at the same time. 'All subsequent progress (referring to the departure from the state of nature) is only a superficial progress in the direction of personal perfection, but in fact they lead to the decline of human beings. ... The invention of two technologies, metallurgy and agriculture, brought about this great change." (Conversion of virgin forests to arable land, but at the same time poverty and slavery due to the establishment of private ownership.) 'What makes people civilized but makes them go down is gold and silver for poets, but iron and grain for philosophers'. "A step forward in civilization comes a step forward in inequality. The institutions which society accompanies civilization, build up for itself, become • Come to an institution with the opposite mission. 'The reason why the people have a leader is to defend their own freedom, not to make themselves enslaved. This is an indisputable fact, and it is also the basic criterion of all political laws'. "But these chiefs necessarily became the oppressors of the people, and they aggravated the oppression to such an extent that the inequality which had reached extremes was transformed again into its opposite, and became the cause of equality, before the despots all were equal. , that is to say, everyone is equal to zero. 'Here is the apex of inequality, the end point that closes a circle that meets the beginning from which we started.Here all individuals are equal precisely because they are equal to nothing, and subjects have no other law than the will of the sovereign'. "But the despot is master only so long as he can use violence, so: 'When he is expelled, he cannot complain of violence...Violence sustains him; violence overthrows him. All things are thus proceed in the natural order'. "In this way inequality is transformed into equality again, but not into the ancient natural equality of primitive people without language, but into the equality of a higher social convention. The oppressor is oppressed, which is the negation of negation. "So, in Rousseau's book, we can not only see the same discussion as Marx's in "Das Kapital", but also see a series of detailed descriptions by Rousseau that are similar to those used by Marx. The same dialectic: an essentially antagonistic, contradictory process, the transformation of each extreme towards its opposite, and finally, the negation of the negation which is the nucleus of everything. Thus, although in 1754 Rousseau could not use the 'black Geer's idiom' to speak, but in any case he was deeply infected with the plague of Hegelianism, dialectics of contradiction, logos, theological logic, etc., twenty-three years before the birth of Hegel .” It should surprise no one that the academic critics are ignorant of this Engels article.If they had read Engels' passage, at least they could have avoided many mistakes in interpretation.Some, for example, after Voltaire (whose letter to Rousseau at least had the virtue of brevity and wit) assert that Rousseau unreservedly extols the superiority of the barbarian; Schinz: "Rousseau's Thought", 1929 edition) thinks that the natural man imagined by Rousseau is completely an ideal about the future man. Rousseau is deeper than that.While other philosophers of his time conceived of progress as a continuous chain, a regular ascent, Rousseau had discovered the antagonism of progress itself.This is not because he has a greater genius than people like Diderot, but because his class position makes him feel more deeply than others the suffering of the people under the weight of exploitation. Of course, there are still many places worthy of discussion in this paper.His method may seem very strange: in order to describe the primitive savage life, he hid alone in the forest of Saint-Germain to think!What an abstract method!Totally unrealistic utopian dream!It is for this reason that Taine regards the writings of eighteenth-century thinkers as full of fantasies, which he believed to be responsible for causing the terrible events of 1789. ? Difu's commotion should be responsible.At first glance, Rousseau's paper makes Taine say this, it seems not without reason. In fact, Rousseau's method corresponds to that which Diderot once explained: "We have three main approaches: observing nature, thinking and experimenting." ① See "Selected Works of Diderot", Volume 2: "Interpretation of Nature", Section 15. About the experiment, it is not the question that should be discussed by the research object of this thesis.Rousseau just hoped that scientists would one day perform such experiments (see p. 64 of this book).As for observation, that refers only to the accounts of travelers.We see that Rousseau has made extensive use of such accounts.However, the contradictions, flaws, and inaccuracies in these accounts surprised him so much that he would like to have some real philosophers do a serious study of "man" (see pages 172-177 of this book).Prior to this, Rousseau was only satisfied with the accounts of merchants and missionaries.But these people will never discover the solitary savage (it goes without saying), so Rousseau has to rely on fantasy.But we can at least be sure that he possessed every possible reference material. Rousseau's reflections finally lead him to imagine a lonely savage, which is obviously completely unreal.No scholar still doubts that primitive man lived in groups all the time.So Rousseau's barbarian is just an abstract concept.This abstract person is actually a social person, but Rousseau uses imagination to strip away everything that society imposes on him.Man is thus represented as an animal so adapted to primitive life that it is no longer possible to understand how he can enter into social life.Moreover, in order to prevent man from transitioning from a barbaric state to a social state, various obstacles have naturally been arranged. Therefore, to take just one example, the appearance of language cannot be explained, and Rousseau can only ask the spirit to explain it. Rousseau's thesis certainly has these weaknesses, but we should not be too demanding, nor should we blame Rousseau for not being able to discover the dialectical unity of man and nature before Marx.Marx pointed out that man transforms himself while transforming nature.It is therefore social labor, production, that unites man and nature.Rousseau opposed nature and society from a metaphysical point of view, but this was only because he was limited to the level of thinkers at that time. It would be naive to blame him for failing to become a Marxist. On the other hand, since Rousseau has dealt with this first stage, that is, from the solitary savage to the first appearance of human society, his dialectical genius, so brilliantly explained by Engels, has emerged. , our whole spirit is unconsciously attracted by this sketch of the historical development of mankind drawn by Rousseau, so that we have to read until the appearance of tyranny.Therefore, although the second part of the treatise is less famous and less cited than the first part, we feel that the second part is superior to the first part. But we do not deny the significance of Rousseau's creation of this imagined savage.To understand Rousseau at this point, one should start from the notion of inequality that has always been his central thought.We can say that the entire oeuvre of Rousseau can be understood as a kind of plea against social inequality, a plea put forward by representatives of the petty bourgeoisie who cannot transcend the contradictions of the time and are always struggling in these contradictions. When discussing the origin of inequality, Rousseau revealed that inequality is based solely on the emergence of private ownership: he did not think that the emergence of private ownership was a disaster.In this he stands in opposition to all the thinkers who have influenced him, all the thinkers of his time.Among them, of course, should not be included those who have already proposed communism: for example, Maisliere, Morelli, Mabry, etc.But none of these men can compare with Rousseau in genius. In this way, Rousseau will inevitably deny the statement that private property originated from nature, and therefore must reconsider the content of the natural state advocated by the natural law school.All thinkers, except Hobbes, have endeavored to discover all the possibilities of social development from man in the state of nature; thus they have rashly maintained that society and its institutions, especially private property, are derived from nature. generated from.On the contrary, Rousseau denied the inviolability of private ownership as a natural and inevitable fact, and only regarded private ownership as a historical fact.At the same time, he also regards the development of reason, passion, and all human abilities as historical facts. 既然卢梭对自然状态中的人始终保持着这种形而上学的观念，因之，这种自然状态的内容几乎是一无所有了。传统的人类本性中的一切，差不多都已经归属于历史的范畴。任何一种社会制度，都不能在自然中找到它的基础了。如果人是不幸的，那是由于一些社会的、政治的原因，这些原因和事物的性质毫不相干。那么，如果实行一些新的政治原则，重新缔造人类的幸福是完全可能的。 我们只有这样来观察，才能把“论不平等”一书置于它在卢梭全部著作中应占的地位上。在这篇论文里，我们首先可以看出的是个人主义的激发，不久，继之而来的则是对国家最严格的统治的服从（“社会契约论”）。在卢梭的著作里，无疑地有些矛盾，但是那些矛盾并不是偶然的，矛盾的词句并非毫无关联地出现于这一或那一著作中。这乃是资产阶级思想上的矛盾，资产阶级社会的矛盾。这些矛盾潜伏在卢梭的每一部著作中。由于卢梭深入钻研的结果，他是觉察到这一点的。“社会契约论”便是为求解决这种矛盾的一个动人的然而终归无效的努力。我们可以依照这篇论文的内容把人类历史用这样的略图来说明： 一、起初，孤独的野蛮人是一个有局限性、和平而善良的动物；但无所谓幸福，因为幸福需要先有对幸福的观念才能感觉到。 二、最初的人类社会，是人类最幸福的时代（参看本书第１２０—１２１页），这个时代表现着比自然状态前进了一步，但是人类没落的最初征象也开始显露出来了。 三、“人所形成的人”，私有制的出现。富人为了保护他们的财产，便想借助于每一社会集团里面的一切人们所缔结的契约创造出国家来。但这种契约是骗人的契约。它逐渐地把人引到暴君政治上。本论文的最后几页是作者针对着他那个时代的社会而写的。 四、由于这种骗人的契约导致这样的结果，卢梭才想创立一种真正的契约来代替它。根据这一契约每一个人牺牲他的全部自由，以便保存他的全部自由。 由此我们可以看出在“社会契约论”和“论不平等”之间，没有任何矛盾，而前者可以说是后者的引伸。 卢梭的功绩在于他按照辩证的方法描绘了社会历史的轮廓。由于思想的谨严；由于分析的精细和深刻；由于文笔的精彩；由于热情激动的词锋的锐利，他写出了他那个时代的主要权威著作之一。这部杰作直到今天还感动着进步的人们的心，因为我们很少看到其他的书籍曾经同样深刻而雄辩地刻划了马克思所谓精神错乱的状态，也就是建筑在私有制基础上的整个社会中人类精神的贫困。 有关研究卢梭的参考书 如果把凡是关于论述卢梭的书籍都收集起来，足以摆满许多高大的书橱。可是，令人惊奇的是，其中竟没有一本真正好的卢梭传记，总之，没有一本是能和安得列·比利所写的“狄德罗传”或“巴尔扎克传”相比拟的。很多批评家，往往只根据卢梭在他的“忏悔录”里关于他私生活的一些暴露，便把卢梭看作是性情古怪或少年时代生活荒唐的人，而忘掉了他的著作在历史上的伟大作用，这是一种令人遗憾的倾向。 关于研究卢梭的书，我们认为拜纳尔·格罗居森所写的那本①是用法文写的最好的一本。不幸的是，这本书的内容颇为枯燥，里面不过是一些简单的笔记，而且这些笔记因为作者亡故而中断了。但是这本书的作者对卢梭的作品，却有一种深刻的认识，他能以高度的智慧和非常健康的思想解释卢梭的著作。 关于本论文，可以参看：让·莫瑞尔写的“论不平等的渊源”一文（“卢梭年谱”，第５卷，第１１９—１９８页）。这篇文章还有参考的价值，但它主要的内容只是罗列了一些琐碎的事实；在所有关于政治学问题上，它则远不如罗伯尔·德拉戴所写的对我们非常有用的一部渊博的著作：“卢梭和他同时代的政治学”（巴黎，１９５０年）。此外，我们还可以参看在上面引证过的亚当著的“卢梭与狄德罗”一文。 我们所用的本文是依照弗昂审定的版本：“让·雅克·卢梭政治著作集”（两卷集，英国剑桥１９１５年版）。弗昂审定本论文的本文时，是以三种不同的版本为根据的：１、１７５５年本：２、都·贝陆编的１７８２年（著者死后）出版的“卢梭全集”本，这个版本内的本文是曾经卢梭自己修正和补充过的；最后，是１８０１年本，这个版本大约是根据卢梭自己订正过的抄稿排印出来的。 以上三个版本只在一些细节上有所不同。至于我们所引的“忏悔录”，用的是格罗克劳德版本（绿皮古典丛书，１９４７年版）。 第戎科学院征文题目： “人类不平等的起源是什么？人类的不平等是否为自然法所认可？” “不应当在变了质的事物里而应当在合乎自然法则的事物里来观察自然。” 见亚里士多德：“政治学”，第一卷，第二章。 关于附注的说明 我有一个时作时辍的懒惰习惯，所以我写成本论文以后，又添加了一些注解。这些注解，有时离题很远，不适于和本文一齐阅读，因此我把它们放在本文的后面了。在本文里，我尽可能地保持简练。有勇气重读一遍这篇论文的人，一定有兴趣搜寻我未尽的余意，浏览一下注解；其他的人，根本不读这些注解，也没什么妨碍。