Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
The first who fenced in a
piece of land and took it into his head to say: this is mine,
and who found
people simple-minded enough to believe him, was the true founder of
civil
society. How many crimes, wars, murders, how much hardship and misery and
how
many horrors would he have spared the human race who had pulled out the stakes
or filled up the ditch and called out to his fellow men: Beware of listening to
this deceiver;
you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and the
earth to no one".
Discourse on inequality
Discours sur l'inégalité
The socialisation of mankind which led individuals to
compare themselves with each other,
resulting in envy and ill-will, gloating
and overreaching, more appearance than reality and conflicts of interest....
The
idea of the "noble savage" was rejected by his contemporaries,
especially since
man was by nature burdened with original sin...
Rather,
Rousseau asks how collective action guided by moral instinct can become possible
in societies determined by competition.
Rousseau also assumes that in the
state of nature, people live in small communities essentially independent of
each other.
They have sufficient goods and are peaceful. In particular, humans
are not addicted to philosophy and science, nor to greed for luxury goods.
.....
The Aesthetics of Territorial Order in art