The Stain

In his Discourse on Inequality, Jean-Jacques Rousseau references and agrees with “the wise Locke” (Rousseau 50), in determining that men eventually found property laws necessary to insure that everyone can own ample but not excessive plots of land. Rousseau illustrates that he who attempts to hold more land than he can work will be attacked by unsettled neighbors, thus he should not lay claim to a vaster stretch than he requires for his subsistence (Rousseau 158-159). Man’s establishment of written property laws were the eventual result of this notion, al...