In 1750 Rousseau won the Academy of Dijon award
for his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (Discourse on the Sciences and the
Arts, 1750), and in 1752 his opera Le devin du village (The Village Sage) was first
performed. In his prize-winning discourse and in his Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality Among Mankind (1755; trans. 1761), he expounded the view that science, art,
and social institutions have corrupted humankind and that the natural, or primitive, state
is morally superior to the civilized state (see Naturalism). The persuasive
rhetoric of these writings provoked derisive comments from the French philosopher
Voltaire, who attacked Rousseau’s views, and subsequently the two philosophers became
bitter enemies.
Rousseau left Paris in 1756 and secluded himself at Montmorency, where he wrote the
romance The New Heloise (1761). In his famous political treatise The Social
Contract (1762; trans. 1797) he developed a case for civil liberty and helped prepare
the ideological background of the French Revolution by defending the popular will against
divine right.