A discourse in inequality / translated with an introduction and notes by Maurice Cranston

ROUSSEAU's Discourse on the Origins of Inequality is dedicated to the sovereign citizens of Geneva, and pays homage to that republic in language which some readers have considered suspiciously fulsome. Rousseau describes his native city-state as a republic ideal in size, a place where no man is above the law, where age and experience have mellowed the constitution and where the right to legislate belongs to all the citizens:
Of all Rousseau's writings A Discourse on Inequality often referred to as his 'Second Discourse'-has perhaps been the most influential. While some of the works of his later years are more substantial, it is as the author of this work that. Rousseau has both been held responsible for the French Revolution and acclaimed as the founder of modern social science.

As Professor Cranston remarks in his Introduction to this new translation, 'In less than a hundred pages, Rousseau outlined a theory of the evolution of the human race which prefigured the discoveries of Darwin; he revolutionized the study of anthropology and linguistics, and made a seminal contribution to political and social thought.'