Rousseau's Critique of Inequality

Frederick Neuhouser is Professor of Philosophy at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author of Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition (2008), Actualizing Freedom: The Foundations of Hegel's Social Theory (2000), and Fichte's Theory of Subjectivity (Cambridge, 1990).

• Introduction; 1. Nature is not the source of social inequality; 2. Amour propre is the source of social inequality; 3. The normative resources of nature; 4. Judging the legitimacy of social inequalities; 5. The contemporary relevance of Rousseau's critique.

'For two decades now Frederick Neuhouser has been one of the most brilliant philosophical readers of Rousseau that we have, and his new book offers a masterly reconstruction of the central argument of the Second Discourse. Solid in exposition, tightly argued throughout, and compelling in the details, Neuhouser shows clearly - as so much of the scholarship does not - just what Rousseau's answers in fact were to the two questions he set himself to answer: what is the origin of human inequality, and does it have its foundations in the natural law?' Christopher Brooke, University of Bristol