The text was written in 1754 in response to a prize competition of the Academy of Dijon answering the prompt: "What is the origin of inequality among people, and is it authorized by natural law?" As with his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Rousseau answered in the negative. He did not win with his treatise (as he had for the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences); a canon of Besançon by the name of François Xavier Talbert (l'abbé Talbert) did. The Discourse on Inequality was written in part to contradict the claims made by Locke, Hobbes, and Pufendorf in their discussions of the state of nature.[1]: 49 Rousseau published the text in 1755.[2]
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