Rousseau and David Hume: philosophical comparison

Rousseau stated that "Discourse is motto" in his book Discourse on Inequality. Does this quotation guide Rousseau's argument in the Discourse? If so, to what extent?

I actually do not see how it is related since 'Discourse' means a lecture or discussion.

On the other hand, it may guide his treatise in that the whole treatise is a critique on the conventional structural and societal differences between man.

According to Rousseau, "man is born equal but is everywhere in chains" by man's own design, meaning that man, in his natural state, is an animal like any other prompted by pity and self-survival for perseverance. Rousseau sounds like a per-darwinist. Man in this state is the ideal human. He is driven by his drive of perfectibility to improve himself and his condition, but he has no moral inclinations or principles, nor conscience as such. He has few needs, and little contact with others. He is happy.

Man is, however, a creature who is shaped by his surrounding. Natural forces such as earthquakes and famines drove him to all corners of the globe, where, forced to live amongst others, man developed a set of conventions. Reason and society developed simultaneously, but reason also became a negative element in that it enchained men with a set of societal rules (such as amour propre) that are more unnatural than liberating. Men, too, s tarted to compare themselves to others and to dominate others in order to boost their esteem.

The Discourse continues to show how physical inequality is soon replaced by moral inequality by rich expropriating property form poor and, in very Marxist terms, Rousseau describes how the rich oppress the poor and, in order to rationalize and entrench their superiority, make rules that the poor have to follow. These rules become the morals

Society, therefore, has gradually evolved form the free liberal state where humans initially lived in ignorant harmony to the last and incrementally reached stage of despotism that is dominated by materialism and wealth. The richer the man, the more powerful he is, and since he is the one who has set the laws -- the more the laws incline towards his advantage.

In effect, therefore, the discourse ends by showing that man has ruined his own race by taking an ignorant uncouth, yet blissful bunch of humans and transferring them into an economically unequal society of humans who are bound by moral laws to be subservient to a certain class of overlords.

In Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, David Hume discuss the relationship between sympathy, natural virtue, artificial virtue, and human nature. How (if at all) do they function in Hume's account of society?

Our moral evaluation of a person comes through our sentiments -- through that which gives us pleasure or repugnance and through which we see as beneficial for the well-ordering of society. So a negative characteristic such as theft, for instance, called by us a vice is called so since it disrupts the harmony of society, whereas, a 'virtue' such as charity is commended for its constructiveness. It is in this way too that the so-called vice accords repugnance whilst the so-called virtue gives pleasure. In fact, we distinguish between virtue and vice by means of the sentiments that we feel towards these attributes. All of the virtues, moreover, have societal value in that they are either agreeable or pragmatic to self and/or others. Vices have the reverse characteristics.

Sympathy is based on our own experiences and identification with a person. Seeing certain expressions on a person's face we associate them with our own internal feelings when evoking those same expressions. Furthermore, context also expands the feelings of sympathy such as when seeing someone undergo surgery. The vivacity of our perception is instinctively and unconsciously transferred to another so that we interpret context and expressions of the other as though they happen to ourselves.