Chapter 6, A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Appendix Summary and Analysis

Rousseau acknowledges that man's current state includes more pain than pleasure, but it is not natural to him, but due to the state of nature. Men have labored yet there is so much suffering. Men's interests appear to conflict and so what is truly to the benefit of all seems in no one's private interest. It looks to many that society subsists on some gaining at others' expense. Rousseau suggests as an illustration for the reader to compare the state of the savage with that of modern man. Poverty, terrible deaths, calamities of war, brutality, torture, divorce, adultery; the list hardly ends. Rousseau then continues to list tragedies.

However, luxury brings liberal and mechanical arts, commerce, and letters and so on—but even these...