Analysis of Rousseau’s view that equality can be achieved only if we sacrafice certain individual freedoms.
Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality puts forth the ideas about human beings as a part of nature, but distinct from their natural freedoms because of civilization and social organizations. Rousseau’s key idea is that in order to live with equality, we must be prepared to give up freedoms in order to work together so that a community structure can be co-produced. For Rousseau, personal freedom comes at too high a social cost, and so communitarianism is argued as a way to produce social equality.