Reading Rousseau's Second Discourse in the Light of the Question: What is the Source of Social Inequality?

Abstract Rousseau has been cast as someone who is primarily interested in developing a normative social and political philosophy based on the idea of a non‐inflamed form of amour‐propre, which consists in a desire for equal, as opposed to superior, social standing. On this basis it has been argued (1) that inflamed amour‐propre is the principal source of social inequality in his Second Discourse and (2) that the normative aspects of this text can be largely isolated from its descriptive ones. I argue against both claims by showing that the desire for independence provides an alternative principal source of social inequality, and that the Second Discourse points the way to a genuine critical theory precisely because it describes in narrative form dynamic, concrete social processes in such a way as to challenge the claims of ideal social and political theory, including attempts to interpret the Second Discourse itself primarily in terms of an independent normative social and political philosophy.