# The 1755 discourse prints pity as a natural check on harm to the vulnerable

Date: 1755

## The fact

The second discourse treats pitié as a natural reluctance to see sentient beings suffer. It is not a relief agency.

## Context

Pity can be paternalist. It still names a claim of the suffering against indifference. Medium confidence on later humanitarian-law ancestry.

[Jean-Jacques Rousseau](/people/jean-jacques-rousseau) is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Official library, encyclopedia, or public-domain edition pages and an independent publisher independently describe this instrument.

Official or archival record: Discourse on the Origin of Inequality — public-domain English (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11136; Project Gutenberg).

## Significance

Printed natural pity is a [humanitarian-access](/drivers/humanitarian-access) heading, not a convoy.

Printed natural pity is a humanitarian-access heading, not a convoy.

## What is established and what is not

Established as a dated public record of this instrument.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.

## People

- Jean-Jacques Rousseau: https://factrail.ai/people/jean-jacques-rousseau

## Drivers

- Humanitarian Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/humanitarian-access

## Sources

- https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/11136
- https://doi.org/10.1017/ccol9780521572651

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/jjr-pity-inequality-humanitarian