ABSTRACT
Rousseau develops an initial critique of civilization as a process of alienation already in the Discours sur les sciences et les arts. Denis Diderot encourages the work, which would establish Rousseau as a prominent philosopher amongst the Enlightenment movement, during discussions that take place at Vincennes, where Diderot was imprisoned for his Lettre sur les aveugles. This chapter discusses the theoretical controversies located in the immediacy of Diderot's historical context, so as to demonstrate that the incompatibilities between Diderot and Bertolt Brecht were already prefigured in the contrasts between Rousseau and Diderot. For Rousseau, inequality articulates itself as a problem of a theatrically structured sociality. Slavery is inevitable to social being, because dependency on the other's gaze enslaves masters and slaves alike. Rousseau's thought has been identified as a precursor to the conception of alienation developed in Marx's early work.
