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4 Susan Dunnincreasing decadence, because as all individuals become attached to theirprivate interests, they turn away from the public good.’’ ∏ And in 1748, thegreat political philosopher Montesquieu had also faulted the ‘‘manufactures,commerce, finances, wealth, and luxury’’ of the modern world for displacingcivic and political virtue. π But Rousseau’s attack on modernity was far moreconsistent and ambitious—and more psychologically acute—than that ofthe other philosophes, and it is he alone who can be credited with composingthe jolting introduction to one of the most original, provocative, and farreachingchallenges to Western society ever undertaken.The first seeds of a powerful, world-historical Revolution had beenplanted. The ‘‘paradoxes’’ of the First Discourse exploded ‘‘like a bombshell,’’wrote the English economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill. ∫‘‘Rousseau produced more effect with his pen,’’ Lord Acton said, ‘‘thanAristotle, or Cicero, or St. Augustine, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or any otherman who ever lived.’’ Ω Of all the great philosophes of the French Enlightenment—Montesquieu,Diderot, Voltaire—it was Rousseau who wouldhave the most profound and enduring impact on history, not only on theRevolution in France but on almost all modern, democratic movements forpolitical liberation. He was the most radical political theorist of his times,the most utopian. But it was also Rousseau who unwittingly set the stage forthe totalitarian states of the twentieth century, for ‘‘one-party democracy,’’and for communitarianism gone haywire.How can this paradox be explained?rousseau’s discourse on inequalityThree years after composing his First Discourse, Rousseau leaped at thechance to add a further dimension to his political philosophy. The DijonAcademy was proposing another intellectual competition. This time thesubject concerned the origins of inequality. Rousseau’s entry, his Discourseon the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind (1753), alsoknown as the Second Discourse, occupies a pivotal place in his thought. Onthe one hand, it looks back to the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, givinga historical and theoretical explanation for the decadence and corruption hediagnosed in eighteenth-century French society. On the other hand, it looksforward to his next great work, The Social Contract, by suggesting thenecessity of finding an alternate, healthier path along which society andcitizens can evolve.Why had inequality become so rooted in society, Rousseau asked him-