Introduction Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote a wide basis for debates with his theory of natural man regarding inequality that encompass political, natural, and economic debates. This paper will examine Rousseau’s notion of man’s inequality using the critical exegesis approach. The 1754 discourse on inequality proposed that to know about the failures of man, one needs to know more about the nature of man. Rousseau asked, “how shall we know the source of inequality between men, if we do not begin by knowing mankind? And how shall man hope to see himself as nature made him, across all the changes which the succession of place and time must have produced in his original constitution? How can he distinguish what is fundamental in his nature from the changes and additions which his circumstances and the advances he has made have introduced to modify his primitive condition?” 1 For Rousseau, the two kinds of men’s inequality are the natural or physical characterized by age, health, body strength, and mind or soul quality, and moral or political inequality relying on convention and will of men such as privileges and prejudices on riches, honor, power or position. 2 Rousseau placed high regard on “reasonable and free men in search of the truth” who disregard power, inequality, strength, and wealth. He observed men want, oppress, desire, and be proud of as influenced by society and that in men’s pursue of convenience, the man instead received more harm and “additional causes of their deeper degeneracy.” 3 Men also willed to excesses and resisted nature in spirit although he has the power to self-improve, as compared to other animals. However, he proposed that man is the only animal to return to a state of primitiveness or senility of which he acts lower than the beast. Rousseau compared men as, “The savage […] breathes only peace and liberty; he desires only to live and be free from labor […] Civilised man, on the other hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling and racking his brains to find still more laborious occupations: he goes on in drudgery to his last moment, and even seeks death to put himself in a position to live, or renounces life to acquire immortality […] always asking others what we are, […] we have nothing to show for ourselves but a frivolous and deceitful appearance, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom, and pleasure without happiness.” 4 Rousseau proposed that this human development and the gaining of culture-led men away from the “sensible voice within our nature.” 5 Man has burdened himself with the imperfection of the intellect and freedom. Along the way to convenience, he has developed ways and means, right and wrong processes evolving through time and practice. Thus, Rousseau wrote: Theory of Natural Man “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,” and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth be