Amour-propre
At Rousseau’s, *amour-propre* is a relative, artificial sentiment born in society, which leads each individual to value themselves above all others. It arises from comparison: as soon as people live together, each measures themselves, seeks to be noticed, preferred, esteemed, and derives their own worth from the gaze of others. Absent in the state of nature, it is the hinge of the *Discourse*: it is from this shift from *love of self* to *amour-propre* that moral inequality emerges, along with the host of evils people inflict on one another.
L’amour-propre n’est qu’un sentiment relatif, factice et né dans la société, qui porte chaque individu à faire plus cas de soi que de tout autre, qui inspire aux hommes tous les maux qu’ils se font mutuellement et qui est la véritable source de l’honneur.
Self-love (amour-propre) is the pivotal passion of the Discourse. A “fictitious sentiment born in society,” it has no place in primitive man: “in our original state, in the true state of nature, self-love does not exist.” And for good reason: it is “a sentiment rooted in comparisons,” which the savage—seeing himself as the sole spectator of his own life—is in no position to make. It takes communal living, the proximity of others’ gazes, for it to take root.
Its mechanism is that of comparison. “Reason engenders self-love, and reflection strengthens it”: as soon as one measures oneself against others, the desire to outvalue them arises. “Being and appearing became two entirely different things,” and from this split between being and seeming spring ostentation, deceit, and envy. Man ceases to live within himself, instead living in the eyes of others, borrowing even the sense of his own existence from their judgment.
Not to be confused with self-preservation (amour de soi), which Rousseau explicitly forbids conflating. Self-preservation is natural, absolute, oriented toward survival; self-love is artificial, relative, oriented toward precedence. One seeks to live, the other to dominate. The entire anthropology of the Discourse hinges on this shift: inequality among men does not arise from some original vice, but from this belated passion, where one’s worth is measured by the gaze of others.