The First and Second Discourses

Two prize essays that made Rousseau’s reputation, usually printed together. The First Discourse (Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, 1750) answers the Academy of Dijon’s question about whether the revival of the arts and sciences has improved morals with a flat no: learning and refinement have made men vainer, softer, and less free. The Second Discourse (Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men, 1755) reconstructs a state of nature in which man is solitary, healthy and without comparison, and argues that inequality, and with it most human misery, enters with property, agriculture and the settled comparison of oneself to a neighbour. Together they are the founding text of the counter-Enlightenment: an attack on progress mounted from inside the Enlightenment’s own methods.

Why it’s on the list: It closes McCord’s Renaissance and Enlightenment Political Thought section, after Machiavelli, Hobbes and Locke — the entry that supplies the strongest internal objection to the consent-and-property story the section has just built up.

Where I saw it: Brendan McCord’s Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List, in the Political Philosophy and the History of Ideas part, section Renaissance and Enlightenment Political Thought — a structured curriculum shared on X on March 9, 2026 and saved to Kyle’s Apple Note “Books To Read”. The full 211-entry transcription is on The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List.

Connections

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau — the author.
• Progress — the idea the First Discourse attacks head-on.
• John Locke — the state-of-nature account Rousseau’s Second Discourse is written against.
• The Philosopher-Entrepreneur Reading List — the curriculum this came from.