Select one of the passages below, and write an analytic exposition of the passage. You should explain the argument in the passage and how it fits into the broader argument of the text in which it appears.
Papers should be double-spaced, in 11 or 12 point font, and no more than 2 pages long. They should be submitted no more than one week after the text in which they appear has been discussed in class.
1. “Here, then, all our faculties developed, memory and imagination in play, pride [amour-propre] involved, reason activated, and the mind having almost reach the extent of the perfection of which it is susceptible. Here are all the natural qualities set in action, the rant and fate of each man based not only on the quantity of goods and the power to help or harm, but on the mind, beauty, strength, or skill, on merit or talents. And since these qualities are the only ones that could attract consideration, it was soon necessary to have them or to affect them. For one’s advantage, it was necessary to appear to be different from what one in fact was. To be and to appear became two entirely different things, and from this distinction came ostentatious display, deceitful cunning, and all the vices that followed in their wake.†(Rousseau, Second Discourse, p. 100)
2. “Things in this state might have remained equal if talents had been equal, and if, for example, the use of iron and the consumption of foodstuffs had always been exactly balanced. But the proportion, which nothing maintained, was soon upset. The stronger did more work, the more clever turned his work to better advantage, the more ingenious found ways to reduce his labor; the farmer needed more iron or the blacksmith more wheat; and, even though they worked equally, one person earned a great deal while another had difficulty staying alive. This is how natural inequality imperceptibly unfolds together with contrived inequality and how differences among men, developed by their different circumstances, make themselves more perceptible, more permanent in their effects, and begin to have a proportionate influence on the fate of individuals.†(Rousseau, Second Discourse, pp. 99-100)
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