Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

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Portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences, more commonly known as the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (French: Discours sur les sciences et les arts), is an essay by French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau arguing that the development of the arts and sciences had corrupted human morality. It was written in response to an advertisement that appeared in October 1749, in which the Academy of Dijon set a prize for essay responding to the question: "Whether the restoration of the Sciences and the Arts has had a purifying effect on morals." According to Rousseau, he first read the advertisement while walking to visit Diderot in prison at Vincennes, and he immediately had a revelation and began to write the essay. The essay was published in 1750 and won the Dijon prize, which granted Rousseau a substantial degree of fame.

Rousseau's argument was controversial, and drew a great number of responses. Rousseau himself answered five of his critics in the two years or so after he won the prize. Among these five answers replies to Stanislas, King of Poland, M. l'Abbe Raynal, and the "Last Reply" to M. Bordes. These responses provide clarification for Rousseau's argument in the Discourse, and begin to develop a theme he further advances in the Discourse on Inequality – that misuse of the arts and sciences is one case of a larger theme, that man, by nature good, is corrupted by the social environment. Inequality, luxury, and the political life are identified as especially harmful.

Rousseau's own assessment of the essay was ambiguous. In one letter he described it as one of his "principal writings," and one of only three in which his philosophical system is developed (the others being the Discourse on Inequality and Emile), but in another instance he evaluated it as "at best mediocre."^{[#endnote_camp9]}

References

• "Blair Campbell. "Montaigne and Rousseau's First Discourse." The Western Political Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1. (Mar., 1975), pp. 7-31.
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The Social Contract and Discourses. Trans. G.D.H. Cole. London: Everyman, 1993. Introduction referenced for general background.

Notes

1. Campbell, 9.

External link

• [Full text] of the Discourse in English, at the Online Library of Liberty

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