Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Principle and Prudence: Rousseau on Private Property and Inequality

  • Article
  • Published:
Polity

Abstract

This article analyzes Rousseau’s political theory of private property, fills a lacuna in the literature, and develops a novel interpretation of Rousseau’s apparently contradictory remarks. Although Rousseau was critical of private property, he did not advocate a clear and easy solution to the problems he discerned. Instead, he put forth a highly differentiated perspective that was principled and pragmatic. He rooted the legitimacy of private ownership in an ideal theory of republican property rights, which refers primarily to the normative principle of reciprocity. In his opinion, a balance of private property rights is indispensable to a well-ordered society and a just republic not only because it binds the state, society, and citizen together, and not only because it secures the independence of individual citizens from each other, but also because it enhances political legitimacy and reciprocity. On these principled grounds, Rousseau’s theory rules out “collectivist” solutions as much as vast differences in wealth and “absolutist” theories of more or less unlimited private property rights. Instead, his theory builds on the republican idea of private property as a public political institution. Within this ideal framework, Rousseau allows for certain non-ideal deviations in particular circumstances on prudential grounds.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Immanuel Kant, Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, 1764, quoted in Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau, Kant and Goethe (Princeton: Kristeller and Randal, 1945), 6–7.

  2. James McAdam, “Rousseau: The Moral Dimensions of Property,” in Theories of Property: Aristotle to the Present, ed. Anthony Parel and Thomas Flanagan (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1979), 181–202; James McAdam, “Moral Dimensions of Property,” in Rousseau’s Response to Hobbes, ed. Howard R. Cell and James McAdam (New York: Peter Lange, 1988), 113. On these contradictions, also see Karlfriedrich Herb, “Autonom oder authentisch? Rousseau und die Ambivalenzen des modernen Bürgerseins,” Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik/Annual Review of Law and Ethics20 (2012): 93–104; Ryan P. Hanley, “Political Economy and Individual Liberty,” in The Challenge of Rousseau, ed. Eve Grace and Christopher Kelly (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 37–38; Bertil Fridén, Rousseau’s Economic Philosophy (New York: Springer, 1998), 120–21; Samuel Fleischacker, A Short History of Distributive Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 58–61; Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (London: Penguin Books, 1965); Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986); Lucio Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin (London: Monthly Review, 1972); Lester Crocker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, vol. I-II (New York: Macmillan, 1968); Jacob Leib Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (London: Secker & Warburg, 1952).

  3. Alexandre Chabert, “Rousseau économiste,” Revue d’histoire economique et sociale 42 (1964): 345–56.

  4. Allan Bloom, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in History of Political Philosophy, ed. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 559–80. On Rousseau’s awareness of these apparent paradoxes, see Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Letter to D’Alembert on the Theatre,” in Politics and the Arts, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1973), 131.

  5. Robert Wokler claims that Political Economy represents a different view on property than the other treatments by Rousseau, and believes this text to be influenced by Locke, but Wokler does not seek to reconcile or understand the sources of the contrasting views. See Robert Wokler, Social Thought of J.J. Rousseau (New York: Garland, 1987), 77, n89. Other studies have attempted to resolve apparent contradictions in Rousseau by noting his political prudence, but have not focused sufficiently on the issue of private property. See Ruth Weissbourd Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity: Machiavelli, Rousseau, and the Ethics of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 102–10.

  6. McAdam, “Rousseau: The Moral Dimensions of Property,” 181.

  7. For references to this argument, see Ryan P. Hanley, “Political Economy and Individual Liberty,” 37; and especially Robert Derathè, “Introduction: Discours sur l’économie Politique,” in Oeuvres Completes, Volume III, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 72–81.

  8. Christo Bertram, Rousseau and the Social Contract (London/New York: Routledge, 2004), 90.

  9. Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

  10. Chris Pierson, “Rousseau and the Paradoxes of Property,” European Journal of Political Theory 12 (2013): 409–24.

  11. Hanley, “Political Economy and Individual Liberty,” 34–56.

  12. In addition to the above cited works, this article also builds on work by earlier scholars who sought to reconcile Rousseau’s writings on private property, including Nannerl Keohane, “Rousseau on Life, Liberty and Property: A Comment on McAdam,” in Parel and Flanagan, Theories of Property, 203–20; Richard Teichgraeber, “Rousseau’s Argument for Property,” History of European Ideas2 (1981): 115–34; Ethan Putterman, “The Role of Public Opinion in Rousseau’s Conception of Property,” History of Political Thought 20 (1999): 417–37; Ethan Putterman, “Realism and Reform in Rousseau’s Constitutional Projects for Poland and Corsica,” Political Studies 49 (2001): 395–418; and Bloom “Jean-Jacques Rousseau.”

  13. On Rousseau’s contextualism in this respect, see also Teichgraeber, “Rousseau’s Argument”; Timothy O’Hagan, Rousseau (London: New York: Routledge, 1999); Fridén, Rousseau’s Economic Philosophy.

  14. Putterman, in “The Role of Public Opinion,” hints at some aspects of this argument when he stresses Rousseau’s idea of “legal title” and of “mutually agreed upon convention(s)” as rendering the peculiar form of legitimacy of private property (435). Putterman focuses above all on the question of the relation between property and public opinion. See also Klaus D. Schulz, Rousseaus Eigentumskonzeption. Eine Studie zur Entwicklung der bürgerlichen Staatstheorie (Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus, 1980).

  15. Pierson, “Rousseau and the Paradoxes of Property,” 416. Frederick Neuhouser, “Rousseau’s Critique of Economic Inequality,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 41 (2013): 193–225, stresses the significance of the political principles set out in the Social Contract for Rousseau’s reflections on the problem of economic inequality. For Neuhouser, these political principles can be derived from the two “fundamental interests” of citizens in well-being and in freedom.

  16. John Rawls, The Law of Peoples (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999), 7.

  17. Ibid., 11.

  18. Ibid., 13, 7.

  19. The distinction between ideal and non-ideal theory plays a crucial role in Rawls’s overall conception of political liberalism and political philosophy, as well. For more on the distinction in Rawls’s thought, see A. John Simmons, “Ideal and Nonideal Theory,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 38 (2010): 5–36; Laura Valentini, “On the Apparent Paradox of Ideal Theory,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 17 (2009): 332–55; Zofia Stemplowska, “What’s Ideal About Ideal Theory?” Social Theory and Practice 34 (2008): 319–40.

  20. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), 245 ff.

  21. Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 89.

  22. See also Arthur M. Melzer’s characterization of Rousseau’s general philosophical perspective as a “complex idealistic realism” that “structures his thinking on the deepest level” and allows him to “somehow combine the two opposite tendencies” of idealistic and realistic political theorizing, in Arthur M. Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau’s Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 25, 26.

  23. See, for instance, McAdam, “Rousseau: The Moral Dimensions of Property.”

  24. Fridén, Rousseau’s Economic Philosophy, 121.

  25. Teichgraeber, “Rousseau’s Argument for Property”, 121 ff; O’Hagan, Rousseau, 102 ff, cited above, note 13.

  26. Hanley, “Political Economy and Individual Liberty,” 38, original citation above, note 2.

  27. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 164, emphasis added.

  28. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Languages,” in Oeuvres Complètes Volume V, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964); Jacques Dehaussy, “La dialectique de la souveraine liberté dans le Contrat social,” Etudes sur le Contrat social (Paris: Association nord-americaine des etudes Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1964), 119–41.

  29. Bloom, “Rousseau’s Critique,” 146 ff. On the specific characteristics of “bourgeois society” from Rousseau’s perspective, see also Arthur M. Melzer, “Rousseau and the Problem of Bourgeois Society,” American Political Science Review 74 (1990): 1018–33; Ryan P. Hanley, “Commerce and Corruption,” 139–40; and Dennis Carl Rasmussen, The Problems and Promise of Commercial Society: Adam Smith’s Response to Rousseau (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008), 25.

  30. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 164, note 9.

  31. Ibid., 178.

  32. Ibid., 131.

  33. Particularly Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love.

  34. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 132.

  35. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract,” in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 364–65. Rousseau’s brief clause following this passage—“that if the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him beneath the condition he has left”—may indicate, however, that these moral improvements come mainly from a legitimate, republican contract.

  36. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 173.

  37. Ibid., 164, emphasis added.

  38. Rousseau, “The Social Contract,” 364–65, emphasis added.

  39. Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Peter Gay (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932), 75: “Rousseau created a new subject of responsibility … not individual man, but society.” Critics from the Church understood this. The archbishop of Paris, for instance, condemned Emile because it seemed to deny the dogma of original sin. See Cassirer, The Question, 74; O’Hagan, Rousseau, 38; Marc F. Plattner, Rousseau's State of Nature: An Interpretation of the Discourse on Inequality (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1979).

  40. Fidel Castro allegedly told a French journalist that Rousseau was his “teacher” and that he had fought Batista with the Genevan in his pocket. See Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin, 144.

  41. Bloom, stresses that Rousseau’s harsh critique of property and inequality “does not mean Rousseau is a communist or that he believed it is possible or desirable to do away with private property. He is far too ‘realistic’ to follow Plato’s Republic and abandon the sure motive of love of one’s own things. It does mean, however, that he strongly opposes the emancipation of acquisitiveness and that he argues against laissez-faire” (Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 152).

  42. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 207.

  43. For an early critique of the idea that Rousseau uses “nature” as an unqualified standard or as an absolute normative principle, see Arthur Lovejoy, “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Second Discourse,” in his Essays in the History of Ideas (New York: Capricorn, 1948).

  44. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Political Economy,” in Oeuvres completes, Volume III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 262–63. We leave aside here the further distinctions of various forms of life that can be derived from Rousseau’s different writings, particularly the distinction of different kinds of social and solitary forms. On this question, see Matthew D. Mendham “Gentle Savages and Fierce Citizens against Civilization: Unraveling Rousseau’s Paradoxes,” American Journal of Political Science 55 (2011): 170–87; and Laurence D. Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999). It is plausible that the question of property is of minor importance for the various forms of solitary life that Rousseau analyzes. However, insofar as Rousseau refers to the “actual laws of nature” when legitimizing property rights (see below), the most fundamental characteristics of property presumably are significant even within more solitary forms of life. Because of space constraints, we cannot further explore the intricacies of this topic in this article. We only can say that there is need for further work on how Rousseau connected his views of the natural origins of property to notions about solitary forms of individual emancipation.

  45. O’Hagan, Rousseau, 102.

  46. Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 11.

  47. This piece was originally submitted for a contest held by the Academy of Dijon for the best response to the question: “What is the source of inequality among Men and is it sanctioned by Natural Law?” The academy rejected Rousseau’s work because it exceeded length limitations, yet among his political and social writings it is widely read and arguably has received disproportionate attention from scholars.

  48. Some notable recent exceptions to the general trend include Bertram, Rousseau and the Social Contract; Hanley, “Political Economy and Individual Liberty”; and Pierson, “Rousseau and the Paradoxes of Property,” 414–15.

  49. Hanley, “Political Economy and Personal Liberty.”

  50. Rawls, The Law of Peoples, 7.

  51. Rousseau, “Political Economy,” 262–63.

  52. Ibid.

  53. Ibid., 263.

  54. Hanley, “Political Economy and Individual Liberty,” 42–47.

  55. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Poland,” in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 1010: “The citizens do not want to pay anything at all. But men who want to be free should not be the slaves of their purses; and where is the state when liberty does not have to be paid for, often very dearly?”

  56. Rousseau, “Political Economy,” 263. In these works, Rousseau often sounds like Edmund Burke. “Property,” writes Burke, “was not made by government, but government by and for it. The one is primary and self-existent; the other is secondary and derivative.” See Edmund Burke, Burke’s Politics, ed. Ross J.S. Hoffman and Paul Levack (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1949), 349. Rousseau, though he is not known much for it, said the same thing (about the role of government and the existence of private property) almost 25 years earlier, in a work usually cited for its attack on property.

  57. Rousseau, “Political Economy,” 242. Despite this obvious agreement, Burke characterized Rousseau’s writings on political topics as “on the whole ... so inapplicable to real life and manners that we never dream of drawing from them any rule for laws or conduct.” See Burke, Burke’s Politics, 389. For other differences, see Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity, 105–6. On Rousseau’s “quarrel with Locke” over the question of property in general, see Charles Vaughan, “Introduction,” The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau, 2 vols. (Oxford: Cambridge University Press, 1915); Teichgraeber, “Rousseau’s Argument for Property” 125–6; and Bertram, Rousseau and the Social Contract, 91–93.

  58. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 180–81.

  59. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume IV, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 259–62.

  60. Rousseau, “Political Economy,” 263; Rousseau, Emile, 271.

  61. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Geneva,” in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 293.

  62. Rousseau, “Political Economy,” 263.

  63. Ibid., 263.

  64. Ibid., 264.

  65. Ibid., 263.

  66. “What man loses by the social contract is his natural liberty and an unlimited right to everything he tries to get and succeeds in getting; what he gains is civil liberty and the proprietorship of all he possesses,” Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 364. O’Hagan suggests that property in this passage appears merely as “an acquisition of civil society which emerges alongside others in the balance sheet of SC I 8” (Rousseau, 103). Alternatively, one could interpret the significance of the context in which property is set as an indication of the crucial significance of property rights in a republic. O’Hagan’s overall argument that Rousseau might have de-emphasized property in the Social Contract primarily focuses on the pre-political right of the first occupant, which indeed appears less important in the Social Contract. At the same time, however, Rousseau clearly stresses the crucial significance of property rights as grounded in the political principle of reciprocity. See O’Hagan, Rousseau, 104–105.

  67. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 367.

  68. Fridén, Rousseau’s Economic Philosophy, 121.

  69. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 365.

  70. Ibid., 360.

  71. Ibid., 367.

  72. Ibid., 365.

  73. Consequently, this pivotal argument of Rousseau’s ideal theory of property implies a principal priority of politics over economics in questions of legitimacy—an argument that plays a significant role in the reception of Rousseau within the American political tradition. See Hans-Jörg Sigwart, “Rousseau in Amerika. Liberale Tradition und demokratischer Dissens im US-amerikanischen Selbstverständigungsdiskurs,” Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik—Annual Review of Law and Ethics 20 (2012): 209–16.

  74. This idea of reciprocity is also the crucial lesson Rousseau teaches Emile in the episode with the melons. Pierson rightfully highlights this episode as a particularly interesting passage regarding Rousseau’s understanding of property. See Pierson, Rousseau and the Paradoxes of Property, 415–16. Read within our interpretive framework, Emile primarily learns a lesson about reciprocity during his controversy with the gardener.

  75. Both Kant and Tocqueville stress the political nature of property rights and the importance of the idea of reciprocity. On Kant’s understanding of property, see Elisabeth Ellis, “Citizenship and Property Rights: A New Look at Social Contract Theory,” The Journal of Politics 68 (2006): 547–53. Regarding Tocqueville, see the following passage from Democracy in America, which almost seems to tacitly quote Rousseau’s argument in Emile, referred to in the previous footnote: “When a child begins to move among external objects, instinct leads him to put everything that comes within reach to his own use; he has no idea of the property of others, not even that of existence; but as he is informed about the cost of things and as he discovers that things can, in turn, be taken from him, he becomes more circumspect and ends by respecting in his fellows what he wants them to respect in him. What happens to the child concerning toys, happens later to the man concerning all the objects belonging to him. Why in America, country of democracy par excellence, does no one raise against property in general the complaints that often resound in Europe? Is it necessary to say? In America, there are no proletarians. Each person, having an individual possession to defend, recognizes in principle the right of property. In the political world, it is the same. In America the common man has conceived a high idea of political rights, because he has political rights; he does not attack the rights of others, so that no one violates his.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Historical-Critical Edition of De la démocratie en Amérique, ed. Eduardo Nolla, trans. James T. Schleifer (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund: 2010), 390.

  76. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 131. Elsewhere he writes that human beings have “a prodigious diversity of minds” by nature, “a particular temperament” and certain capacities, which determine the “genius and character” of each individual. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Julie,” in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume II, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 562–65.

  77. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 194.

  78. Rousseau’s attitude toward extreme inequality in general is not the focus in this article. Scholarly works that address this important topic include Joshua Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2010), 53, 117, 140, and 164; Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy, 165–66; and David Williams, Rousseau’s Plantonic Elightenment (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), 172–76.

  79. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 367.

  80. Rousseau, Emile, 841.

  81. Hanley opines that both the right of taxation and the government’s function to protect the citizens’ “natural” rights of private property arise from Rousseau’s “commitment to maximizing the sphere of negative freedom of the individual.” Moreover, Hanley contends that Rousseau’s alleged “egalitarian” inclinations in fact reflect “a counterintuitive libertarian foundation of a solicitude for the maximum possible protection of necessary property.” See Hanley, “Political Economy,” 42–48. This article diverges from Hanley’s analysis by emphasizing a fundamentally different principle: reciprocity. This changes the meaning of Rousseau’s argument about property and points to a different set of theoretical implications and its potential practical consequences. The level of “necessity” of the least well off, for instance, may be determined quite differently if the criteria include not only the absolute natural right of “self-preservation,” but also and primarily the citizens’ relational political right to the minimal material conditions for reciprocity with their fellow citizens. Consequently, the principle of reciprocity may also directly legitimize forms of taxation that aim at the redistribution of private property rights.

  82. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 381.

  83. It is hard to make any categorical statements about Rousseau’s views on revolution, which are outside the scope of this article. For a sustained and sophisticated discussion on the topic, see Hogel Ross Lauritsen and Mikkel Thorup, eds., Rousseau and Revolution (Camden: Bloomsbury, 2011).

  84. Rousseau, “Political Economy,” 264.

  85. For a recent work that explores Rousseau’s writings on Poland and Corsica, see Putterman, “Realism and Reform.”

  86. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Poland” in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 1002.

  87. Rousseau, “Poland,” 1002.

  88. Ibid., 1004.

  89. Ibid., 1010.

  90. Ibid., 1011.

  91. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Corsica,” in Oeuvres Complètes, Volume III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade (Paris: Gallimard, 1964), 931.

  92. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, General Idea of the Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (London: Freedom Press, 1878), 115–19.

  93. Christopher Kelly, “Rousseau and the Case for (and against) Censorship,” Journal of Politics, 59 (1997): 1246; James Miller. Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984).

  94. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 448.

  95. This distinction is not accounted for in McCormick’s otherwise excellent analysis of Rousseau’s interpretation of the Roman assemblies. See John McCormick, “Rousseau’s Rome and the Repudiation of Populist Republicanism,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 10 (2007): 3–27.

  96. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 445.

  97. Ibid., 446.

  98. Ibid., 447.

  99. In Poland, the institution was serfdom; in Corsica it was property and the exchange economy. This is entirely consistent with Rousseau’s thought on other subjects, such as censorship, where we observe the distinction between criticisms on the one hand, and arguments directly inciting to action on the other. See Kelly, “Rousseau and the Case for (and against) Censorship,” 1245. Rousseau railed against the corrupting effects of art, science, and education, yet did not mean that education, science, arts, and letters should therefore be eliminated.

  100. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 392, 403, 419; Bloom, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” 573–75. On Rousseau’s rejection of the “best regime” approach, and for an intriguing discussion of this topic in both Rousseau and Montesquieu, see David Williams, “Political Ontology and Institutional Design in Montesquieu and Rousseau,” American Journal of Political Science, 54 (2010): 525–42.

  101. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 403; Williams, “Political Ontology,” 531–32.

  102. Rousseau, “Social Contract,” 392, 403, 419. On Rousseau’s prudence, see Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity, Ch. 4, and Roger Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), Ch. 8. In this, as in other aspects, “Rousseau was not wholly in the Enlightenment, but he was of it,” as Peter Gay aptly portrayed Rousseau’s ambivalent relationship to the Enlightenment in Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation (New York: Norton, 1977), 529. See also Graeme Garrard, Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment (New York: State University of New York Press, 2003), 3.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Arizona State University,

    David S Siroky

  2. University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

    Hans-Jörg Sigwart

Authors
  1. David S Siroky
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Hans-Jörg Sigwart
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Additional information

The authors are grateful to Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh and three anonymous reviewers for constructive comments, and to A.J. Simmons and Marc Weigelt for excellent research assistance.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Siroky, D., Sigwart, HJ. Principle and Prudence: Rousseau on Private Property and Inequality. Polity 46, 381–406 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2014.13

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/pol.2014.13

Keywords

Search

Navigation