Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750)

What is the relation between science, art, and morality? Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s First Discourse, or Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750), argues that the progress of knowledge and culture has led to moral corruption rather than virtue. Written in response to the Academy of Dijon’s question — whether the advancement of the sciences and arts has purified morals — Rousseau offers a resounding no. He contends that intellectual and artistic achievements have fostered vanity, deceit, and decadence, making individuals more concerned with appearances and status than with genuine virtue. Rousseau sees the arts and sciences as tools that serve elites, reinforce social hierarchies, and distract people from their moral and civic responsibilities.

This argument, which challenged the dominant Enlightenment belief in progress, made Rousseau famous and controversial. He criticized philosophers and intellectuals for their hypocrisy, suggesting they used knowledge to seek status and power rather than genuine virtue or truth, thus masking their moral failings behind the illusion of intellectual superiority. Rousseau's critique of elitism, luxury, ambition, and intellectual vanity resonated with later thinkers and greatly influenced debates on modernity, making the First Discourse a pivotal work of his philosophical legacy.

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1. This will be the first meeting of a group reading from the writings of Rousseau. The first will be the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (aka The First Discourse), followed by the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Rousseau wrote on a wide variety of subjects, but we will first delve into his political theory. And, while the group will concentrate on Rousseau, we may also take a look at other writers of the French Enlightenment; i.e. Montesquieu, Diderot, and, although he was a bit earlier, Montaigne.
2. Please read the text in advance. (~25 pages)
3. This is the translation we will be using during the meetings: https://annas-archive.org/md5/9c70d9441bf70f896c87a1ccd668c0bd