Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

The Norton Library edition of Rousseau’s Discourse features an inviting and readable translation by Julia Conaway Bondanella that makes the text accessible to the modern English reader while faithfully preserving the power and clarity of Rousseau’s voice and style of argumentation. A thorough introduction by Frederick Neuhouser—"one of the most brilliant philosophical readers of Rousseau that we have” (Christopher Brooke)—provides historical and intellectual context for the Discourse and its major arguments. Annotations throughout the text clarify obscure or ambiguous terms and references.

Julia Conaway Bondanella is Professor Emeritus of French and Italian at Indiana University where she was Associate Dean of the Honors College and taught courses on Italian and Renaissance literature, Western literature and thought, and the history of ideas. She served as Assistant Director of the National Endowment for the Humanities and President of the National Collegiate Honors Council. She is author of Petrarch’s Dream Visions and Their Renaissance Analogues; co-editor of The Macmillan Dictionary of Italian Literature; co-editor and co-translator of The Italian Renaissance Reader; and translator and co-editor of Rousseau’s Political Writings. With Peter Bondanella, she is co-editor and co-translator of Cellini’s My Life and Machiavelli’s Discourses on Livy and co-editor of Dante’s Purgatorio and Paradiso. Frederick Neuhouser has taught philosophy at Harvard University, the University of California, and Cornell University. He is now Professor of Philosophy and Viola Manderfeld Professor of German Language and Literature at Barnard College in New York City. He has written two books on Rousseau: Rousseau's Critique of Inequality, a guide to reading the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality; and Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love, on the dangers and redemptive potential of amour-propre. He is also the author of two books and numerous articles in post-Kantian German philosophy and is Permanent Fellow at the Center for Humanities and Social Change at the Humboldt Universität, Berlin. His current project, inspired by the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, is on what we mean when we call a society "sick."