Amour-Propre's Inequality

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Rousseau argues excellently for amour-propre’s role in establishing an unjust society and overall inequality. Rousseau begins his theory by introducing the two sentiments that humans are subject to, amour-de-soi and amour-propre. Amour-de-soi is an unfettered, personally derived, love of one’s self. A love that is derived from one’s own idea of what it means to be human and to be alive, a feeling of self-preservation. On the contrary, amour-propre is a self-love derived from what others think of you. This type of self-love is formed by the opinions of others and is entirely destruction to humans. These two ideas, especially amour-propre, are important to his explanation of the origin of inequality. Rousseau, after laying out the two types of …show more content…

At this point amour-de-soi is not entirely out of the picture but almost entirely obsolete. The place where humans went wrong, in terms of solidifying their own demise, is when they begin to rely on each other, rather than rely on themselves for sustenance, the introduction of metallurgy and agriculture accentuates this. Once metallurgy and agriculture arise the small physical inequalities that were not a problem before are taken advantage of. A stronger person is able to plow and harvest the fields and therefore are more able to exponentially abuse their advantage over time. Now that humans are able to harvest land deduction leads humans to claim the lands as their own, thus the need for laws and justice. Progress and technology put some ahead of others and also creates divisions within a particular society. Harmful artificial inequalities follow from benign natural inequalities. Amour-propre’s role in founding inequality is solidified in the last part of Rousseau’s theory with the foundation of society, because the rich have an illicit incentive to harm others but have the most to lose from constant war they are able to seduce the poor into a unequal society were the rich keep what they have and poor do as well, without war. The poor give up their natural freedoms and succumb

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