ON THE PROBLEM OF NATURE
IN ROUSSEAU’S THOUGHT
by
Leslie Lee Heng Wee
A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements
for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
© Copyright by Leslie Lee Heng Wee (2015)
ii
On the Problem of Nature in Rousseau’s Thought
Leslie Lee Heng Wee
Doctor of Philosophy
Graduate Department of Political Science
University of Toronto
2015
Abstract
The problem of nature is arguably the central problem in
Rousseau’s thought. It may be posed in the form of the question,
“Whether and how nature remains a standard for human social li fe?”. Two
influential, and opposing, schools of thought have emerged in response to
this question. These are the naturalist and the historicist interpretations,
which answer the question in the affirmative and in the negative
respectively. Each school proceeds on i ts own terms, laying stress on
different parts of Rousseau’s corpus to advance its view. As a result ,
scholars across the interpretive divide talk past one another, leaving the
nature-history debate in Rousseau’s thought mired in an impasse.
This dissertation injects a new impetus into the debate by putting
forward a naturalist interpretation based entirely on historicist premises.
It therefore offers a considered response to, and a sympathetic refutation
of the historicist interpretat ion, while revising at the same time the
contours of existing naturalist interpretations in fundamental ways. With
a focus on the Discourse on Inequality and Emile , the dissertation treats
in succession the themes or problems of history, nature, and society in
iii
Rousseau’s thought. It also calls upon the natural man living in the state
of nature and the natural man living in the state of society from the
Rousseauian cast of characters to illustrate how nature continues to serve
as a standard for human social li fe.
iv
Table of Contents
Abstract i i
Note on Citations v
Chapter One Introduction: The Nature-History Debate
in Rousseau’s Thought 1
Chapter Two The Problem of History: On the Historici ty
of the Pure State of Nature in Rousseau’s Thought 36
Chapter Three The Problem of Nature: On the Standard
of Naturalness in Rousseau’s Thought 64
Chapter Four The Problem of Society: Reconstituting the Man of
Nature in Society (I) 93
Chapter Five The Problem of Society: Reconstituting the Man of
Nature in Society (II) 120
Chapter Six Conclusion 141
Bibliography 147
v
Note on Citations
In this dissertation, ancient texts are cited according to scholarly
conventions. In the case of Aristotle, therefore, Bekker numbers will be
used.
Texts from the modern period – with the exception of Rousseau’s –
are also cited with these conventions in mind. Taking Hobbes’s Leviathan
for example, the ci tation will appear as follows: Hobbes, Leviathan ,
Chapter XIII.3 – 4.
Finally, because Rousseau’s corpus will be cited frequently, the
following abbreviations will be employed in parentheses with the relevant
page number(s) included, for in-text citation purposes:
C The Confessions
D Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues
E Emile, or On Education (or Emile)
EOL Essay on the Origin of Languages
FD Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (or First
Discourse)
LA Letter to d’Alembert on the Theatre
PN Preface to Narcissus
SC On the Social Contract (or Social Contract)
SD Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of
Inequality (or Second Discourse).
vi
All of the editions or translations of the primary texts consulted are
listed in the bibliography.
1
1. Introduction: The Nature-History Debate in Rousseau’s Thought
“Ici repose l’homme de la nature et de la vérité .” So reads the
inscription that adorns Rousseau’s tomb, epithets culled from his oeuvre ,
a pithy description of the man whose legacy is not so amenable to such
easy characterisation. Consider, for instance, the voluminous secondary
literature that Rousseau leaves in his wake. There is a Rousseau for
everyone: a social Rousseau, a political Rousseau; Rousseau Platonised,
Rousseau Kantianised; Rousseau Romanticised, Rousseau
psychoanalysed. 1 Each persuasion seizes upon a particular aspect of the
1 For an in terpre ta t ion o f Rousseau tha t highlights the soc ial d imension o f h is
thought , see Judi th N. Shklar , Men and Ci t i zens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social
Theory , (London: Cambr idge Univers i ty Press, 1985) and John Charve t , The Social
Prob lem in the Ph ilosophy of Rousseau , (Cambr idge : Cambr idge Univers i ty Press,
1974) . The for tunes o f the poli t ica l Rousseau have been subjec t to much controversy.
For an unfavourab le assessment, see Jacob L. Talmon, The Orig ins of Total i tarian
Democracy , (New York: Praeger , 1960) ; a more balanced t rea tment may be found in
James Mil ler , Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy , (New Haven: Yale Univers i ty Press,
1984) .
Char les W. Hendel , Rousseau: Moral is t , 2 vo ls. , (London: Oxford Universi ty
Press, 1934) , r emains the class ic sta tement o f Rousseau’s P latonism. See David L.
Will iams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enl ightenment , (Univers i ty Park, Pennsylvania:
Pennsylvania Sta te Univers i ty Press, 2007) , which fol lows in th is t r adi t ion. For
l i tera ture tha t t r eats the Rousseauian corpus as a prolegomenon to Kantian e thics, see
Erns t Cassire r , The Quest ion of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , t ranslated by Peter Gay,
(New York: Columbia Universi ty Press , 1954) , and Erns t Cassirer , Rousseau, Kant ,
2
human that Rousseau either embodied or gave life to. But regardless of
the intellectual garbs in which we prefer to dress our Rousseaus, they are
all cut from the same cloth. For however we choose to deck our
Rousseaus, we invariably do so after coming to some conclusion on the
role and place of nature in his thought. This is true even if the problem of
nature is not at the heart of our specific enquiries. Nature is the
underlying thread which binds the patchwork that is Rousseau scholarship.
Every attempt will be made to put the problem of nature at the front
and centre in these pages, and given that in Rousseau’s thought the
and Goethe , t ranslated by James Gutmann, Paul Oskar Kr iste l ler , and John Herman
Randal l , J r . , (New York: Harper & Ro w, Publ i shers, 1965) . For a d i f ferent account o f
Rousseau’s influence on Kant , see Richard L. Velkley, Freedom and the End of
Reason: On the Moral Foundation o f Kant’ s Cri t ical Phi losophy , (Chicago:
Univers i ty o f Chicago P ress, 1989) . For a broader s tudy o f Rousseau’s inf luence on
German Idea l i sm, see Richard L. Velkley, Being af ter Rousseau: Phi losophy and
Cul ture in Quest ion , (Chicago : Universi ty o f Chicago Press, 2002) .
An assessment o f Rousseau’s inf luence on Romant ic ism may be found in
I rving Babb it t , Rousseau and Romantic ism , (New York: Houghton Miff l in , 1947) . For
a t reatment o f Rousseau that puts the man before the thinker , see Ronald Grimsley,
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Study in Sel f-Awareness , (Cardi ff : Univers i ty of Wales
Press, 1961) , and Jean Starobinski , Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and
Obstruct ion , t ranslated by Arthur Goldhammer, (Chicago : Universi ty o f Chicago
Press, 1988) .
Las t ly, these and o ther s trands o f Rousseau’s thought are discussed in Cl i f ford
Orwin and Nathan Tarcov (eds .) , The Legacy of Rousseau , (Chicago: Universi ty o f
Chicago Press, 1997) .
3
problem of nature is inseparable from the question of human origins, this
dissertation is therefore situated within the nature-history debate in
Rousseau scholarship. The debate draws its force from Rousseau’s state
of nature teachings in his Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of
Inequality among Men (hereafter the Second Discourse , abbreviated as
SD). Fundamental disagreements persist over the ramifications of these
teachings, between naturalist interpreters on the one hand and historicist
interpreters on the other, between those who insist that nature remains a
standard for human social li fe, and those who argue otherwise. 2 Such is
the contentiousness of the debate that even scholars who find themselves
on the same side of the interpretive divide quibble over the manner in
which the proverbial colours are nailed to the mast. All agree, however,
that in his state of nature teachings Rousseau engineered a profound
encounter between political theory and the historical sense.
For Hobbes and Locke, the significance of the state of nature is
juridical rather than historical in character. It is above al l a heuristic
device by which to demarcate the boundaries of civil society and establish
the respective rights and obligations between man and society. The
emancipation from our prepolitical condit ion was undertaken to protect by
positive law the natural right of self-preservation which though
2 To be sure, there are scholars who find the debate meaningless. One example
is Jonathan Marks, who in his Perfect ion and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean-
Jacques Rousseau , argues tha t the dist inc t ion between na ture and his tory in
Rousseau’s thought i s base less. We wi l l review his work in de ta i l shor t ly.
4
inalienable was not unassailable in the state of nature. Man’s ultimate
deliverance lay in the construction of a political order which would
rel ieve him of the inconveniences and dangers he faced there. On these
grounds the state of nature amounted to nothing more than a negative
standard in the estimation of Hobbes and Locke. Rousseau’s restoration of
the state of nature as a positive standard is made possible by bringing into
view the historical question which his predecessors failed to grasp in its
entirety:
The philosophers who have examined the foundations
of society have all felt the necessity of going back to
the state of nature, but none of them has reached it .
Some have not hesitated to attribute to man in that
state the notion of the just and unjust, without
troubling themselves to show that he had to have that
notion or even that i t was useful to him. Others have
spoken of the natural right that everyone has to
preserve what belongs to him, without explaining
what they meant by belong . Still others, giving the
stronger authori ty over the weaker from the first ,
have forthwith made government arise, without
thinking of the t ime that must have elapsed before the
meaning of the words “authority” and “government”
could exist among men. All of them, finally, speaking
continually of need, avarice, oppression, desires, and
5
pride, have carried over to the state of nature ideas
they had acquired in society: they spoke about savage
man and they described civil man. (SD , 102)
Rousseau’s critique of Hobbes and Locke is notable because it is upon the
very terms of their argument that their assessments of the state of nature
stand in need of correction. No departure from our original condition is
necessary favourable as it is to the natural right of self-preservation (SD ,
128 – 130). It only appears otherwise to Hobbes and Locke because their
portrait of the natural man l iving in the state of nature is befuddled with
anachronisms: the latter is of society even though he is not in society
given the manifold passions which they foist on him. By contrast,
Rousseau’s natural man is pained neither by need nor oppression, and is
insensible to the stings of pride and avarice (SD , 133 – 134). This is the
Rousseauian incantation of the natural goodness of man. Nature made man
happy and good, and it is society that makes him bad.3
But Rousseau’s praise of nature goes yet further, at least according
to some. It is one thing to rate the way of life of primitive man as happier
than ours but quite another thing altogether to employ i t as the touchstone
by which to judge our unhappiness (SD , 192 – 193, 104). It is in this
double sense that Rousseau rehabil itates the state of nature teachings:
3 This i s not to say tha t Rousseau d isavo wed po l i t ics or the necessi ty o f c ivi l
soc iety. But the Rousseauian ci ty is necessary only as a correct ive to the mal formed
civi l socie t ies of h is t ime , no t as a correct ive to the s ta te o f nature tou t court a s i t is
in the case for Hobbes and Locke.
6
firstly, by standing Hobbes and Locke’s estimation of the state of nature
on its head, and secondly, by offering it as a standard for how men ought
to l ive. Whether and how this last is possible or impossible is the subject
of the nature-history debate. For Rousseau’s cri tique of society is based
upon a conception of nature so rudimentary it beggars belief that it can
also function as a healing to men already so far removed from their
original condit ion. Reason was rendered in Hobbes and Locke to be
nothing more than a handmaiden of the passions to which it was formerly
mistress. Despite this reversal, reason was still regarded as a natural,
human faculty.4 Reason’s fall from grace was deepened further as a result
of Rousseau’s radical historicisation of the human condition in which
only the passions – and minimal ones at that – are natural , and whose
development is necessary for the first flowering of reason (SD , 115 – 117).
When Hobbes averred that “the thoughts are to the desires as scouts and
spies” 5 he unwitt ingly described how complex and perplexing human
passions came to be, the development of which Rousseau recounts in his
own state of nature teachings. So basic are the needs of life in the
Rousseauian state of nature, and thus, so easily are the natural passions
sated that the development of reason appears fortuitous (SD , 105 – 106,
126 – 128). In a word, natural man is pre-rational and therefore pre-moral.
4 Thomas Hobbes , Leviathan , Chapter I I , V; John Locke, Second Trea ti se , §6 .
5 Hobbes, Leviathan , VII I .16.
7
How then can nature, revealed to be sub-rational and sub-moral, ever be a
standard for human social l ife?
The problem may be posed more starkly. Though a simple and
limited brute, the first man was nevertheless a history-making animal,
capable of changing himself and the world around him. Rousseau
describes this potential in terms of the faculty of self-perfection, a
species characteristic that sets man apart from other animals in the
decisive sense:
In every animal I see only an ingenious machine to
which nature has given senses in order to revitalise
itself and guarantee itself, to a certain point, from all
that tends to destroy or upset it . I perceive precisely
the same things in the human machine, with the
difference that nature alone does everything in the
operations of a beast , whereas man contributes to his
operations by being a free agent … But if the
difficulties surrounding all these questions should
leave some room for dispute on this difference
between man and animal, there is another very
specific quality that distinguishes them and about
which there can be no dispute: the faculty of self-
perfection, a faculty which, with the aid of
circumstances, successively develops al l the others,
and resides among us as much in the species as in the
8
individual. By contrast an animal is at the end of a
few months what i t will be all its life; and its species
is at the end of a thousand years what it was the first
year of that thousand. (SD , 113 – 115).
It is to the development of this faculty that man owes his humanity. All
that we are today is due to perfectibility, the effects of which are
irreversible (SD , 114 – 115). Man must therefore move onwards and
upwards once perfectibility is set in motion. “[H]uman nature does not go
backward, and it is never possible to return to the times of innocence and
equality once they have been left behind” (D , 213): there can be no return
to nature in the strict sense of the word (SD , 201 – 203).6 Having left the
state of nature, man must somehow find his own way in this world. True,
the departure from the state of nature may have been accidental (SD , 140
– 141, 150 – 151). But this is not to say that man is simply a creature of
his environment. With the development of reason, man is capable of
shaping i t in turn. For better or for worse, he becomes the arbiter of his
own fate. Ultimately Rousseau’s state of nature teachings are
emancipatory. In this respect (the idea of) nature is just one of the many
casualties in man’s eternal quest for self-realisation.
6 This is a l so to say that Rousseau i s no pr imi t ivist , a l though he i s o f ten
regarded as such. In th is connec tion, see Arthur L. Lovejoy, “The Supposed
Pr imit ivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequali ty,” Modern Phi lology , vo l .21 no.2 ,
November 1923, pp.165 – 186.
9
These are the problems that any naturalist interpretation of
Rousseau’s thought, of which this dissertation is one, must surmount.
Admittedly the task ahead is daunting, but it is not without
encouragement. For the epithet ‘natural man’ is not conferred exclusively
on the original man of nature; it is also an epithet that Rousseau claims
both for himself and the eponymous hero of Emile (C , 3 – 4; E , 205).
Thus the view that natural man is condemned to live only within the
confines of the state of nature, or what is the same, that nature is
irrelevant as a standard for human social life, is not as straightforward as
it seems. Be that as it may, the objective here is to supply a definite
rather than a definitive account of the problem at hand since for a variety
of reasons the nature-history debate is and will continue to be a l ive issue
in Rousseau scholarship. Given the ambiguity of nature in Rousseau’s
thought there are as many views as there are commentators willing to
stake their claims. These are questions of interpretat ion pure and
disinterested, if this last is possible at all . Moving beyond these
considerations, there is also the matter of intellectual tastes and
predilection. True perhaps of Rousseau more than any other thinker we
engage his thought with our hearts as much as with our heads for more
than any other thinker Rousseau elicits the response of both our intel lect
and our sentiments. The territories that we traverse – Nature on the one
side and History on the other – are foundational and fundamental ideas,
cornerstones in our intel lectual and cultural furniture. Rousseau remains
so captivating a figure in the history of Western thought in part because
10
of his influence in breathing new life into the very ideas by and over
which part isans of the present debate fight. That these opposing
worldviews have come to bear the stamp of Rousseau’s thought may be
put down to the complexity and the complications of his twin goals of
achieving some practical good while staying true to his theoretical
convictions, the attempt on his part to concoct an appeal of the worthiness
of the good life that is consistent with a non-teleological conception of
nature. In view of these reasons the problem of nature in Rousseau’s
thought has all the makings of an inconclusive debate. Notwithstanding
this i t is hoped that this dissertation will help break the impasse that
currently grips the nature-history debate in Rousseau scholarship. The
question whether and how nature remains a standard for human social li fe
will guide this inquiry throughout. We will survey the literature next, so
as to provide a context for the present interpretation which will answer
the question at hand in the affirmative.
*****
Thus far I have spoken of the nature-history debate in Rousseau
scholarship indulgently by ignoring its critics. Hence it is fit ting that we
begin a review of the literature by discussing the detractors from without
before proceeding to examine the disputants from within. In his
Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau ,
Jonathan Marks argues that the distinction between nature and history,
11
however forcefully stated in the Second Discourse , is dubious. According
to Marks, natural man is without question a figure of history, whether as a
consequence of shaping the world around him or being in turn shaped by
it . Rousseau’s “description of natural man in the Second Discourse is shot
through, in ways he could not have fai led to notice, with historically
acquired trai ts.” 7 In short, nature in the Second Discourse is already
historicised.
For this reason Rousseau could not have meant for his readers to
take the nature-history dichotomy seriously. It is nothing more than a
rhetorical device that Rousseau exploited to good effect , too well in
Marks’s view, considering the blind al leys into which generations of
Rousseau scholars have been led, thus missing altogether Rousseau’s true
practical intention. The more extreme among these accounts typically
corrupt Rousseau’s understanding of politics with the propensity to
defang or envenom the political either by taking him to preach the
romantic withdrawal from polit ics or to justify the evils of the totalitarian
impulse respectively. To Marks’s mind Rousseau is al together more
moderate. By way of uncovering the principle behind Rousseau’s
constructive projects, Marks at tempts to dispel what he considers to be
the “excesses of Rousseauism.”8
7 Jona than Marks, Perfec t ion and Disharmony in the Thought o f Jean-Jacques
Rousseau , (New York: Cambridge Universi ty Press, 2005) , p .28 .
8 Marks, Perfect ion and Disharmony , p.16.
12
It is convenient at this point to introduce into our discussion
another longstanding problem in Rousseau’s thought. This is the
opposition between the individualist and the collectivist Rousseau, or
between the social and polit ical Rousseau from which we obtain the
distinction between man and citizen. 9 These two dichotomies, nature-
history on the one hand and man-citizen on the other, are inextricably
linked in Marks’s interpretation of Rousseau. This is also true of my own
reading of Rousseau or of the nature-history debate in Rousseau
scholarship in particular, although with differing conclusions.10 With this
in mind I wil l focus on Marks’s treatment of the relationship between
these two dichotomies in my attempt to (re)establish the meaningfulness
of the nature-history dichotomy in Rousseau’s thought.
To come back to Marks, his call ing into question the nature-history
dichotomy leads him at the same t ime to doubt the efficacy of the man-
9 Shklar ’s Men and Cit izens remains the class ic work to consul t . See also
Arthur M. Melzer , The Natura l Goodness o f Man: On the Sys tem of Rousseau’s
Thought , (Chicago: Univers i ty o f Chicago Press , 1990) , and Tzve tan Todorov, Frail
Happiness: An Essay on Rousseau , t r ans la ted by John T . Scot t and Robert D.
Zaretsky, (Universi ty Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania Sta te Univers i ty Press, 2001) ,
where the d ist inct ion be tween the pol i t ica l and non-po li t ical ways o f l i fe i s
maintained.
10 Suff ice i t to say fo r the moment tha t in my view, the correspondence
between these two d icho tomies hinges on Rousseau’s reject ion o f c lassical pol i t ical
na tura l i sm. I wi l l t ake this mat ter up in the next two chapters.
13
citizen dichotomy as a means by which to arrive at the heart of
Rousseau’s constructive project. 11 This is where the novelty of Marks’s
approach comes into effect. For even as he rejects the stark al ternative
between individualism on the one hand and collectivism on the other,
Marks ingeniously fuses the respective ways of l ife of man and ci tizen in
his, so to speak, middle-of-the-road thesis. The latter he calls the ‘savage
pattern’, the source of which is found in Rousseau’s praise of the Golden
Age in the Second Discourse (SD , 146 – 152). “This praise implies not
only that collective existence is compatible with a high degree of
independence of individuals but also that this compatibility makes
possible the best state for man.”12 Marks makes the further claim that the
‘savage pattern’ is replicated throughout Rousseau’s constructive projects,
even in those exclusive domains hitherto associated with the radical
11 Obviously the man-ci t izen dichotomy is not universal ly accep ted by every
Rousseau scho lar . Tracy Strong precedes Marks in th is respec t , and the fol lo wing
quo te captures his opposi t ion to the d icho tomy well : “T he passage in which
[Rousseau] asser t s that humans are composi te comes in a dra f t o f Emile ( ‘we are no t
precise ly double but composi te ’) …The a im, fo r Rousseau, i s c lear ly to be human and
c i t izen, the fi r s t o f which comes from a na tura l educat ion and the second fro m a
soc ial educat ion.” See Tracy B. Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Po li t ics o f the
Ord inary , (T housand Oaks, Ca li fo rnia : Sage Pub licat ions , Inc. , 1994) , p .15.
12 Marks, Perfect ion and Disharmony , p .60.
14
separation between man and citizen. 13 In short, Marks’s Rousseau is
immersed in “the attempt to describe and perpetuate ways of l ife in which
elements of both alternatives are present,” 14 as opposed to the
pathological attachment to extreme individuality or extreme sociability
espoused by the man-citizen dichotomy.15
Now, it is not possible to refute Marks comprehensively at this
point , for to engage him in the minutiae of his arguments would be a
13 Marks, Perfect ion and Disharmony , pp .65 – 82.
14 Marks, Perfect ion and Disharmony , p .11.
15 Another scholar who emphasises the admixture or fus ion o f the pr iva te and
the publ ic in Rousseau’s construc t ive thought , ra ther than i t s c lear separat ion, i s
Mark Cladis. T he spir i t of h is approach i s obvious from these l ines: “T his quest ion,
the ques t ion o f restorat ion or redemption, dominated much o f Rousseau’s thought . He
posed two d i ffe rent , even contrary, remedies : a pub lic path and a p r iva te path …
Ult imate ly, he recognised the necessi ty o f bo th the public and p r iva te l i fe even as he
deta i led the inevitable confl ic t be tween them … This th ird pa th – the middle way o f
mixed loves – we f ind in Rousseau’s most famous works, The Soc ial Contract and
Emile . To unlock these pivota l works , the midd le way provides a nove l and useful
in terpret ive key … Jud ith Shklar , perhaps our f ines t s tudent o f Rousseau, concluded
that Rousseau ca l led on his readers to make a choice between being ‘men’
( independent moral beings) or ‘c i t izens’ (dependent soc ial beings) . My conc lusion i s
that Rousseau ul t imately cal led us to become both …” See Mark S. Cladis, Publ ic
Vis ion, Pr iva te Lives: Rousseau, Rel ig ion, and 21 s t-Cen tury Democracy , (Oxford:
Oxford Univers i ty Press , 2003) , pp.6 – 8 .
15
diversion from putting on paper my own thesis, and it is only by doing the
latter that I hope to demonstrate why the nature-history debate remains
relevant to Rousseau scholarship. Neither is it plausible to reinstate the
nature-history debate in Rousseau scholarship based on a refutation of
Marks’s thesis alone. However that may be, I have highlighted Marks’s
work because it is a thoughtful and provocative contribution to the debate
(despite his view that the lat ter lacks substance). By raising some
considerations against the ‘savage pattern’ I hope to convince my readers,
at least provisionally, that the nature-history distinction in Rousseau’s
thought is more than the rhetorical flourish which Marks takes it to be.
We are already familiar with Marks’s position that Rousseau
himself did not take seriously the strict bifurcation between the
individualist and the collectivist ways of life that he is so famous for
promoting. But the very considerations that Marks raises in praise of the
‘savage pattern’ – and in condemnation of the man-citizen dichotomy in
Rousseau’s thought – only has the effect of highlighting how, rather, it is
the former that appears problematic. At best , the easy compatibility
between the ways of life of man and citizen that Marks’s pattern
purportedly stands for trivial ises Rousseau’s disagreement with
Enlightenment politics and its attendant morality. At worst, the pattern
mirrors the very problem that Rousseau sets out to resolve through the
dichotomy, by valorising an existence which flits from one world to
another at will and with ease. In other words, there are good reasons why
the categories of ‘man’ and ‘citizen’ are meaningful in Rousseau’s
16
thought. While there is no intent here to privilege Rousseau’s political
writ ings over his non-political ones, I will rely on the former to illustrate
the point at hand.
In spite of his critique of classical political naturalism Rousseau’s
standards of citizenship are exceedingly high. This is one of the
paradoxes of his thought. True, Rousseau seeks to bring about a
symbiosis between the private and the public in his political teachings.
But while Marks thinks it possible to preserve the integri ty of the private
even within the public sphere,16 I understand the nature of this symbiosis
differently. In Rousseauian poli tics there is no distinction between the
private and the public. (This, in a nutshell, is Rousseau’s crit ique of
Enlightenment polit ics). The private good is the common good; the
common good is the private good. Only on this basis is Pedaretus able to
accept with cheer that there sits on the council for which he ran
unsuccessfully Spartans more capable than he; indeed, only with the
displacement or the destruction of the private realm so understood can a
mother celebrate the city’s victory in war without flinching at the news of
her sons dying in battle (E , 40). For Marks to conflate the political with
the non-poli tical way of life in the guise of the ‘savage pattern’ is to ride
roughshod over Rousseau’s peculiar understanding of politics.
Two examples, the first taken from the Letter to d’Alembert and the
second from the Second Discourse and the Essay on the Origin of
16 See Marks, Perfec t ion and Disharmony , pp .74 – 82, in par t icular .
17
Languages , will serve to clarify the point . They are alike in that both may
be described as communal dances but their palpable differences outweigh
this superficial similarity. In the former, individuals lose themselves in
the collective, the many melt into One. With no regard for distinction or
rank officers and soldiers of the Saint-Gervais regiment break into dance.
The absolute spontaneity of the affair is matched by the perfect
choreography of five or six hundred of men moving in rhythm. Dancers
and spectators alike are swept up by this public spectacle. Women and
children soon join in despite the time of the night. For the young Jean-
Jacques who watches from his window, mesmerised, it issues in the
injunction ‘aime ton pays’ (LA , 135 – 136). Although no less passionate
the tenor of the second example is altogether different. Rather than an
outpouring of patriotic sentiment, the second dance is but a cry of the
heart that whispers, ‘aimez moi’ (EOL , 274). 17 Individuals part icipate in
the communal dance only to better show forth themselves as individuals.
Each desires to be distinguished from the many. “Each one began to look
at the others and to want to be looked at himself …” (SD , 149).
Rousseau certainly speaks of polit ics as a realm unto itself . As I
have tried to show with reference to the temper of the citizen in the
examples above, man and citizen are not cognate entities. This may be
17 See Joel Schwar tz , The Sexual Pol i t ics o f Jean-Jacques Rousseau , (Chicago:
Univers i ty o f Chicago P ress, 1984) , for a detai led examinat ion o f the relat ion
between po li t ics and sexua li ty in Rousseau’s thought .
18
corroborated by a cursory examination of the task which Rousseau
ascribes to the Legislator:
One who dares to undertake the founding of a people
should feel that he is capable of changing human
nature, so to speak; of transforming each individual ,
who by himself is a perfect and soli tary whole, into a
part of a larger whole from which this individual
receives, in a sense, his li fe and his being; of altering
man’s constitution in order to strengthen i t; of
substi tuting a part ial and moral existence for the
physical and independent existence we have al l
received from nature. He must, in short, take away
man’s own forces in order to give him forces that are
foreign to him and that he cannot make use of without
the help of others. (SC , 68)
It should be emphasised that the act of transforming men into citizens is
not limited to the moment of founding and that its effects should, ideally,
be permanent. For as Rousseau continues:
The more these natural forces are dead and destroyed,
and the acquired ones great and lasting, the more the
institution as well is solid and perfect. So that if each
citizen is nothing, and can do nothing, except with all
the others, and if the force acquired by the whole is
equal or superior to the sum of the natural forces of
19
all the individuals, i t may be said that legislation has
reached its highest possible point of perfection. (SC ,
68)
This is the upshot of Rousseau’s disagreement with classical
political naturalism, or to put it differently, his agreement with Hobbes’s
conception that man is by nature the apolitical animal. Nevertheless the
means by which Hobbes and Rousseau coaxes the individual to care for
the political community is instructive. Hobbes’s man is enticed to concern
himself with the common good through a system of rewards and
punishments (and so, the good of a part icular individual is in constant
tension with the good of the political community). Rousseau’s man on the
other hand becomes a political animal only as a result of a great
transformation which goes beyond carrot-and-stick inducements.
According to Rousseau, the making of the citizen requires the unmaking
of human nature, of man as he is.
If on these grounds we are compelled to restore the distinction
between the ways of life of man and cit izen in Rousseau’s thought, then
there is sufficient cause to reconsider the soundness of Marks’s ‘savage
pattern’, since they are mutually exclusive. 18 In turn, because the
18 For an al ternate cr i t ique o f Marks’s ‘savage pat tern’, one that focuses
str ic t ly on the exege tica l mer i t s o f such a reading, see Heinr ich Meier , “The
Discourse on the Or igin and the Foundations o f Inequal i ty among Men: On the
Intent ion o f Rousseau’s Most Phi losophica l Work,” Interpre tat ion , vo l .16 no.2 ,
20
theoretical foundations of the pattern require the evisceration of nature-
history distinction in Rousseau’s thought, Marks’s assessment of the
validity of the nature-history debate is open to question. To restate the
matter, the continued relevance of the man-citizen dichotomy in
Rousseau’s thought lends support to my view, contra Marks, that the
nature-history debate in Rousseau scholarship is meaningful. With this in
mind, we shall turn our attention next to the dispute between the two
camps of scholars that make up this debate.
*****
Although compelling avenues of research have been uncovered by
scholars on both sides of the interpretive divide, there is litt le by way of
meaningful dialogue between them since neither engages the other on its
own terms. Thus the two communities of scholars talk past one another,
their positions hardening over time, making i t more difficult to initiate a
dialogue. This state of affairs can be explained more concretely with an
examination of established and representative works drawn from the
literature. For the present purpose two will suffice, one from each
interpretive camp. The works in question provide a useful frame of
reference since, in my opinion, they are located at the extreme ends of the
Winter 1988 – 89, pp.214 – 216. See Marks, Perfec t ion and Disharmony , pp .64 – 65,
for a response to Meier ’s reading.
21
nature-history debate. In other words, they define the utmost limits of the
debate, staking out positions that are directly antithetical to each other.
Consequently they are particularly instructive, so far as meaningful
generalisations al low, to grasp how naturalist and historicist interpreters
contrive to set the terms of the debate. The parallel treatment that both
works give to Emile – the putative ‘natural man l iving in the state of
society’ – will provide an entrée into this very dynamic, the recognition
of which is essential to any endeavour to reinvigorate the debate.
We shall begin with Laurence D. Cooper’s Rousseau, Nature, and
the Problem of the Good Life , which may be taken as the high-water mark
of the naturalist interpretation. For while others have maintained that
nature remains a formal standard for human social life – the psychic
harmony or wholeness of the original man of nature is the inspiration here
– Cooper argues that the standard is also substantive in character. 19 To
live life in accordance with nature, then, goes beyond living in a manner
that is simply analogous with the original human condition. More
crucially the key ingredient of such a life, and what makes it worthy of its
name, is a specific element that is present in every iteration, across space
and time. That element is amour de soi , which is preponderant in every
man of nature. (According to Cooper, the naturalness of both the original
man of nature and the Rousseau of the autobiographical writings is wholly
19 Laurence D. Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Life ,
(Univers i ty Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Universi ty Press, 1999) , pp.10 –
11.
22
constituted by amour de soi . Only in Emile is an admixture of amour de
soi and amour-propre present . The action of the natural education, then,
consists in harnessing the energies of amour-propre in service of amour
de soi). He in whose soul amour de soi prevails is natural; he in whose
soul amour-propre prevails is not natural. Thus the continued relevance
of the life in accordance with nature turns on the preservation and the
promotion of amour de soi in the face of the corrupting influence of
society.20
It is precisely in satisfying this condition that the substantive
similarity between the men of nature becomes the fount of substantive
differences between them. For the preservation and the promotion of
amour de soi in the context of society requires the guidance of conscience,
a principle of soul that is latent in the original man of nature, and which
is roused into life only with the development of reason. Conscience is key
to this enterprise because it marshals our acquired faculties and
dispositions in support of the l ife in accordance with nature. Indeed,
Cooper considers conscience as the wellspring of morality and much else
besides, the comprehensive education that Emile receives being evidence
of its power and fecundity. On this basis Cooper establishes the true
expansiveness of Rousseau’s conception of nature, from which the
20 Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , pp .54 – 59.
For a more recent in terp reta t ion o f Rousseau tha t i s a l so centred around se l f -love, see
Freder ick Neuhouser , Rousseau’s Theodicy o f Sel f-Love: Evi l , Ra tiona li ty , and the
Drive for Recogni t ion , (New York: Oxford Univers i ty Press, 2008) .
23
substance of human flourishing is derived.21 Two categories of naturalness
thus emerge: savage naturalness on the one hand, and civil ised
naturalness on the other. To be sure, Cooper stresses the primacy of
savage naturalness, without which civilised naturalness is impossible. 22
But the possibili ty of such a thing as civilised naturalness demonstrates
that man’s stature as the history-making animal does not render nature
impotent or irrelevant as a standard for human social li fe.
Historicist interpreters dispute this conclusion in a number of ways,
sometimes at variance with each other. Thus differences and
disagreements proliferate in this camp as much as the other. They are
united only by the view that the role of history is of singular importance
to Rousseau’s thought. A brief word is necessary here to outline, in the
main, the two ways by which history displaces nature. The role of history
in Rousseau’s thought may be understood either through the prism of
historicism, that which denotes the temporali ty and mutability of all
things human, or its opposite in the fashion of a philosophy of history,
where over time the meaning and ends of human concerns become
intel ligible. Ernst Cassirer’s The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau ,
which is the classic formulation of the neo-Kantian interpretation of
Rousseau’s thought, may be taken as an example of the latter strain. For
21 Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , pp .80 – 105.
22 Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , pp .61 – 64,
183 – 185.
24
in his understanding of Rousseau it is possible, in the end, to derive
meaning and standards from history, which may be reduced to the
following maxim: true freedom can only be found in morality, and the
highest expression of morality can only be found in the good society
under the rule of law. 23 Despite appearances to the contrary, therefore,
historicist interpreters of this i lk share a crucial attribute with their
naturalist cousins in that they reject anti-foundationalist readings of
Rousseau. Objective standards can be discovered, whether in the past or
in the future, whether in nature or through History. 24 For this reason we
would be better served to examine other historicist interpretations of
Rousseau’s thought that depart from their naturalist counterparts in a
more fundamental way so as to obtain a panoramic view of the debate
before us.
Based on the parameters established above, Asher Horowitz’s
Rousseau, Nature, and History may be regarded as the rightful flag-bearer
of the historicist interpretat ion. For Horowitz’s Rousseau offers no
assurance that man will in t ime receive the guidance necessary to
23 See Cass irer , The Quest ion of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , pp .55 – 59, 62 – 65.
24 However this may be, see Melzer , The Natural Goodness of Man , p .91, n .3 ,
and p .169, n . 29 , for some considerat ions against the Kantian read ing o f Rousseau.
25
extricate him from his desperate situation.25 In this connection Horowitz
credits Rousseau for laying bare the twin evils of alienation and
repression that have plagued mankind. 26 This revelation would have
remained hidden from view had Rousseau adopted the prevail ing
conceptions of nature during his time according to which it is either
wholly fixed and static or wholly open-ended and indeterminate. His keen
appreciat ion of the interplay between biology and culture led him instead
to the conclusion that on their own each of these conceptions only capture
a partial t ruth. For though permanent the expression and satisfaction of
man’s bodily needs and desires are contingent upon the social realities of
a given time and place. In other words, Rousseau holds that nature and
history are bound together in a mutually constitut ive relationship. Labour
or work, the supreme art of man, functions as the intermediary and the
locomotive of this relationship. Through this social process, man
transforms himself and his world. 27 However man’s productive powers,
taken in the broadest sense, have only resulted in a vale of tears. This is
established by Rousseau’s historical anthropology, which is in essence a
25 Asher Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and His tory , (Toronto: Univers i ty of
Toronto Press, 1987) , pp.248 – 249.
26 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , p .128.
27 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , pp .80 – 85.
26
study of the different social-economic orders that man has devised
throughout history for his relief, but to no avail.28
Unfortunately man cannot undo all the violence that he has wrought
on himself. For according to Horowitz, the praxis of personhood and
community is predicated upon some form of denaturation. In other words,
the very definition of our humanity necessitates an estrangement from
nature that is in every respect, final and irrevocable. From this point of
view the appeal to nature as a standard for human social li fe is
unintelligible. Indeed, one cannot embark on a return to nature without
renouncing his humanity.29 (The original man of nature is natural, but not
fully human). 30 The most that man can hope for in his present
circumstance is to reduce the chasm between nature and history, that is to
say, to negotiate as best he can the disjuncture between biology and
culture. Where Horowitz is concerned, Emile is natural insofar as he
embodies the Rousseauian principle of the natural goodness of man, the
teaching that man is not by nature evil . Nature is thus absolved of al l
responsibility for the ills of civilisation. But this is extent of nature’s role
in the human drama: it has no part to play in the remedy that must now be
sought. With this last in mind Horowitz distinguishes between necessary
28 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , pp .128 – 134.
29 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , pp .32 – 33.
30 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , pp .66 – 67.
27
and excess denaturation, or between benign and malignant forms of
denaturation. 31 In his judgement only Emile – one among the three of
Rousseau’s literary creations he discusses – is free of excess denaturation.
(Horowitz considers Julie and the Rousseauian citizen as fai led attempts
since the overwhelming demands of virtue, whether private or civic,
inevitably lead to self-repression. In contrast , Emile does not deny
himself in the articulation of his desires, nor is he compelled to dominate
others in pursuit of these desires). 32 To restate the matter, the necessary
denaturation of which Horowitz speaks requires a truce to be struck
between the individual and society – as an individual Emile takes his
place in society without being reduced to it . Whether his education
contains the seeds of a new social-economic order (the society in which
Emile lives remains corrupt) Horowitz thinks Rousseau leaves as an open
question, the answers to which are up to us, not nature or History, to
determine.33
*****
31 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , pp .213 – 215.
32 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , pp .164 – 165, 204 – 206, 225 –
240.
33 Horowi tz , Rousseau, Nature, and History , pp .247 – 249.
28
Quite clearly Cooper and Horowitz hold incompatible views on the
import of Rousseau’s state of nature teachings, the most fundamental of
which concerns the relevance of nature as a standard for human social l ife.
It is worth examining in greater detail how these views are formulated,
that is to say, to make explicit the methodological approaches, to use this
term loosely, that inform or justify the respective interpretations outlined
above. Now both Cooper and Horowitz accept the centrality of the state of
nature teachings in Rousseau’s thought. In other words, both forge a
connection between these teachings (what are often referred to as
Rousseau’s critical or diagnostic thought) and his constructive or
prescriptive thought (the example in this case being the parallel treatment
of Emile). It is the manner in which this connection is made that proves to
be contentious. For our purpose we will concentrate on Cooper’s
formulation of this connection, which is characterist ic of existing
naturalist interpretat ions, whether formal or substantive. In time it will be
argued that this formulation is philosophically or theoretically
questionable. At present the goal is to pave the way for a restatement of
the naturalist interpretation of Rousseau’s thought, one that is perhaps
more faithful to the revolutionary character of his state of nature
teachings, and which may on this basis result in a more considered, and
thus, a more forceful objection to the historicist interpretation.
Earlier it was noted that Rousseau’s state of nature teachings, the
object of which is the discovery or recovery of the original human
condition, entailed a hollowing out of the human person as we know him.
29
Man is thus revealed in his pristine, denuded form, more animal than
human in his deportment. Just how relentless this purge is thought to be
varies from one interpretive cause to the next. For in this matter the
bounds of nature and history are coextensive: one advances to the extent
that the other recedes. As we have seen, Horowitz holds that nothing from
the pure state of nature that could function as a standard for human social
life survives this purge. Rousseau’s discovery of the original human
condition highlights not the immutabil ity of nature as such but the
enduring permanence of history or artifice. On the other hand, Cooper
manages to salvage something from Rousseau’s purge of all that is
art ificial or conventional in man. Indeed, it may be said that as a result of
this purge nature comes into view amidst the detritus of history. Nature is
invincible, and the accretions of time are powerless to efface i t . So
whereas in the former nature withers in the shadow of history, in the
latter nature endures in spite of i t .
Be that as it may, in Cooper’s hands the state of nature teachings
fal l short of providing an adequate theoretical justification of nature as a
standard for human social life. Important as the teachings are to him, they
ultimately point beyond themselves to a supplementary account for the
continued relevance of the life in accordance with nature in the state of
society. As the putative man of nature in society Emile is enlisted to
serve this end in Cooper’s interpretat ion of the nature-history debate.
This is the crux of the distinction that Cooper draws between savage
naturalness on the one hand, and civilised naturalness on the other. In
30
other words, Cooper adheres to a biparti te conception of nature according
to which there is a nature ‘high’ and ‘low’. However much civilised
naturalness draws upon savage naturalness, the point remains that the
naturalness of the man of nature in society is differentiated from the
naturalness of the original man of nature. Emilean naturalness, as it were,
is conceptually distinct in i ts own right . Thus in Cooper’s interpretation a
separate and additional account of this standard of naturalness is required.
This dissertation provides an alternate (naturalist) interpretation
that eschews the need for such an account. Instead it makes the argument
for the continued relevance of nature as a standard for human social life
on the basis of Rousseau’s state of nature teachings alone. No distinction
is made here between the naturalness of the man of nature in society and
the naturalness of the original man of nature. In other words, the
distinction between these two types of naturalness is superfluous. One is
either natural or not natural – the standard of naturalness in Rousseau’s
thought does not admit differences of type or gradation. The (single)
standard of naturalness in question is derived from the man-citizen
dichotomy in Rousseau’s thought, the theoretical foundations of which
are, in turn, established by Rousseau’s study of the original human
condition. In a word, the natural man l iving in the state of nature and the
natural man living in the state of society are natural simply because they
are man and not ci tizens. (To be sure, Rousseau provides a different
art iculation or formulation of what it means to be man and not citizen –
or bourgeois for that matter – in Emile , and the education outlined there
31
is necessary so that this standard, extracted wholly from the state of
nature, can be observed scrupulously even in the state of society).
But this critique is not aimed solely at Cooper since other major
naturalist interpreters share the same shortcoming. For in their own way
interpreters who hold that nature remains a formal standard for human
social li fe also abide by the view that the difference between the man of
nature in society and the original man of nature is philosophically
decisive. (This is usually expressed in terms of some conception of human
flourishing, where the harmonious development of Emile’s faculties
corresponds with or supersedes the psychic harmony or wholeness of the
original man of nature).34 Thus like Cooper these naturalist interpreters do
not recognise the state of nature teachings as an exhaustive theoretical
account of the man of nature in society. The originality of this
dissertation, then, lies in the reformulation of the naturalist interpretat ion
on entirely new grounds.
In my view, this (re)interpretation also has the merit of engaging
historicist interpreters on their own terms by accepting the (implici t)
premise that the state of nature teachings are the sole and exclusive centre
34 See, for ins tance, Melzer , The Natura l Goodness of Man , pp .92 – 93, and
Cl i f ford Orwin, “Rousseau on the Sources o f Ethics,” in Norma Tho mpson (ed.) ,
Inst i l l ing Eth ics , (Lanham, Maryland : Rowman & Li t t le fie ld Pub li shers, Inc. , 2000) ,
pp.72 – 74. In this regard, both Melzer and Or win fo l lo w Strauss’s interpreta t ion o f
Rousseau. See Leo Strauss, Natura l Righ t and History , (Chicago: Univers i ty o f
Chicago Press, 1971) , pp.252 – 293.
32
of Rousseau’s reflections on whether nature is capable of furnishing a
standard for human social li fe. By extracting the standard of naturalness
from nowhere else but the thickets of the state of nature, this dissertation
wrestles more deeply with the acute historical sense that Rousseau
injected into his thought than existing naturalist interpretations. As such,
it is less likely to be dismissed out of hand by historicist interpreters, and
this might go some way in moving the nature-history debate in
Rousseau’s thought past the present stalemate.
*****
We will conclude this chapter with an overview of the dissertation.
Taken together, the chapters that follow will put forward the thesis that in
spite of the “great difference” (E , 205) between Emile and his primitive
predecessor, they are equally natural according to the standard of
naturalness established exclusively in Rousseau’s state of nature
teachings. Each chapter contributes to this effort cumulatively by
addressing in turn the discrete but related themes or problems of history,
nature, and society respectively. (Two chapters are dedicated to the lat ter).
Thus the problem of nature in Rousseau’s thought – whether and how
nature remains a standard for human social li fe – must be considered in
tandem with the problems of history and society.
Chapter Two examines the problem of history, that is , whether and
how knowledge of the original human condition may be obtained. For the
33
standard of naturalness to be established with any credibility, proof that
the state of nature in Rousseau’s thought is real rather than hypothetical
must be provided. This is available in the shape of Rousseau’s doctrine of
perfectibility, an exercise in philosophical anthropology that deduces
what man in his original condition must have been from what he is today.
Thus the solution to the problem at hand is theoretical rather than
empirical in character. All the same, the standard of naturalness in
Rousseau’s thought is derived from this insight into the way of life of the
original man of nature.
Chapter Three takes up the problem of nature by elaborating upon
this standard, which is contained in the man-citizen dichotomy in
Rousseau’s thought, the most developed expression of modern poli tical
conventionalism and consequently, the most thoroughgoing critique of
classical political naturalism. Whether one is or is not natural may be
determined by this dichotomy. By the same measure, the longstanding
question whether Emile is a citizen in the making may also be resolved.
In short , the life in accordance with nature is inherently anti-political –
he who is natural is man, not ci tizen. Understood in these terms, the
citizen is denatured , and the bourgeois, the denizen of society who is a
mish-mash of man and citizen, is unnatural .
Chapters Four and Five deal with the complications that the
problem of society – how men become bad for themselves and bad for
others – poses to the life in accordance with nature so understood, all
with a view to account for the “great difference” (E , 205) between Emile
34
and his primitive predecessor. It is worth rei terating that whereas existing
naturalist interpretations regard this difference as the fount of a
secondary or supplementary standard of naturalness that is unique to
Emile, I take it instead to be a necessary condit ion for the satisfaction of
the (single) standard of naturalness in Rousseau’s thought. In other words,
these chapters clarify what it is that makes the man of nature in society
who he is , by drawing out the crucial distinction between him and the
original man of nature that is not readily apparent from the man-citizen
dichotomy. In this connection the bourgeois, the very personification of
society, will play a significant role in our analysis. For ultimately the
decisive difference between the man of nature in society and the original
man of nature can only be grasped in light of the fundamental difference
between the man of nature in society and the man of society. Suffice it to
say for the moment that this difference revolves around the inner
workings of Emile’s soul, which the tutor must modify if the
reconstitution of the man of nature in society is to come to pass. This is
the theoretical contribution of Emile to the problem of nature, which
contribution makes the good life possible amidst men who are good
neither for themselves nor for others.
Finally, the conclusion will take stock of these findings. While the
present interpretation is decidedly naturalist in character, there I wil l
offer a brief reflection on the ecumenical approach that I have adopted in
this dissertation, and its larger significance for Rousseau’s thought
generally.
35
*****
36
2. The Problem of History: On the Historicity of the Pure State of
Nature in Rousseau’s Thought
The purpose of this chapter is to establish the historici ty of the
pure state of nature in Rousseau’s thought. Without this account in place
what is most serious and arresting about Rousseau’s thought loses i ts
lustre. 35 For one thing the credibility of nature as a standard for human
social li fe rests upon an accurate conception of the original human
condition. In the absence of such an account the appeal to nature as a
standard of any sort is rendered meaningless. Thus the problem of history
in Rousseau’s thought – whether and how Rousseau obtains knowledge of
the original human condition – is especial ly significant for naturalist
interpreters. In other words, the investigation of the problem of nature in
Rousseau’s thought must begin with a treatment of the problem of history
so defined. Understood in these terms the present approach departs from
the not uncommon view that Rousseau’s account of the state of nature in
the Second Discourse is entirely conjectural . While there is textual
evidence to support this view (SD , 92 – 93), here it must be considered
that Rousseau was compelled to pass his effort off as such in order to
35 See Strauss, Natura l R ight and History , p .267, n .32 , for a more incis ive
sta tement . There, Strauss argues tha t “[ i] f Rousseau’s account o f the s ta te o f na ture
were hypo the t ical , hi s whole pol i t ical teaching would be hypothet ica l ; the prac t ical
consequence would be p rayer and pat ience and not d issat i s fac t ion and, wherever
possib le , r e form.”
37
navigate his way back to our beginnings without tripping over the
theological dogmas that overlay i t . Suffice it to say that this concession
to the reigning orthodoxies of the day, designed to avoid arousing the
rancour of the authori ties, is the source of much of the confusion
surrounding the status of the pure state of nature in Rousseau’s thought.36
And yet to hear Rousseau speak of it the problem of history, while
so crucial to resolve in order to know (the nature of) man, presents an
insuperable obstacle:
The most useful and least advanced of all human
knowledge seems to me to be that of man; and I dare
say that the inscription of the temple of Delphi alone
contained a precept more important and more difficult
than all the thick volumes of the moralists. Thus I
consider the subject of this Discourse one of the most
interesting questions that philosophy might propose,
and unhappily for us, one of the thorniest that
philosophers might resolve: for how can the source of
36 For a br ie f but useful b ibl iographic survey o f the var ious interpre t ive
posi t ions on the histor ic i ty o f Rousseau’s account o f the sta te o f na ture , see Marc F.
P lat tner , Rousseau’s S ta te of Nature: An Interpretat ion of the Discourse on
Inequali ty , (DeKalb: Northern I l l inois Univers i ty Press, 1979) , pp.17 – 22. See a lso
Chr is topher Kelly, “Rousseau’s ‘Peut-Etre ’ : Ref lec t ions on the Status o f the State o f
Nature,” Modern Inte l lectual His tory , vo l .3 no.1 , Apri l 2006, pp .75 – 83 , fo r a more
recent t reatment o f th is problem.
38
inequality among men be known unless one begins by
knowing men themselves? And how will man manage
to see himself as nature formed him, through all the
changes that the sequence of time and things must
have produced in his original constitut ion, and to
separate what he gets from his own stock from what
circumstances and his progress have added to or
changed in his primitive state? (SD , 91)
The gravity of the task before Rousseau may be described as follows:
every snapshot of history emerges from a history of its own. How is it
possible for anyone, then, to pick his way through the innumerable
revolutions of time and circumstance that have changed man irrevocably
from what he must have been in his original condition? For that matter,
how can the original human condition be demarcated with any certainty
when, in this sea of changes, one period of human history blends
imperceptibly into another? Above and beyond the question of Rousseau’s
intention to try his hand at the problem of history – the magnitude of
which, according to Rousseau, philosophers before him have failed to
grasp (SD , 102) – there is also the question of his ability to succeed at it .
Despite the enormity of the task at hand, the thesis of this chapter is that
Rousseau’s conception of the pure state of nature is philosophically
robust. More to the point , it will be argued that the resolution of the
problem of history is fundamentally theoretical in character. Nor can it be
otherwise, for the nature of this problem is such that it does not lend
39
itself to an empirical solution, as we shall soon see. In this connection,
perhaps the more intriguing aspect of the problem of history is not that
Rousseau managed to solve it , which he must if the ostensible purpose of
the Second Discourse is to be fulfilled, but how.
Among scholars who maintain that Rousseau’s account of the pure
state of nature is historical in character, one group stands out for the
distinctiveness if not for the peculiarity of their claims. According to
these scholars, the notes which Rousseau appended to the text of the
Second Discourse are especially important if we are to apprehend his true
thoughts on the problem of history. Such is the significance accorded to
these notes that the references there to what we might recognise today as
precursors of cultural and physical anthropology are taken by these
scholars as a mark of their importance to the discovery of the original
human condition.37 These claims will be examined in greater detail in the
next section, where I will argue that the contributions of cultural and
37 The scholars in quest ion a re Roger D. Masters and Marc F. P la t tner .
Bibl iographic re ferences to the par t icular s o f the ir argument as they relate to the
contr ibution o f the incip ient forms o f cul tural and physica l anthropology towards the
reso lut ion o f the prob lem of history in Rousseau’s thought wi l l be provided as and
when these a re discussed in the fol lowing sec t ion. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The
Firs t and Second Discourses , t ransla ted by Roger D. Maste rs and Judi th R. Masters ,
p .245, n .85 , for a shor t t r ibute to Rousseau’s inf luence upon contemporary
anthropological s tud ies. See also Claude Lévi -Strauss , Struc tural Anthropology ,
vol .2 , t ransla ted by Monique Layton, (London: Penguin Books Ltd . , 1997) , pp.33 –
43.
40
physical anthropology to the problem at hand are overstated. Following
that , I will show how Rousseau’s doctrine of perfectibility is the
Archimedean point that makes possible the discovery of the pure state of
nature. In other words, i t is philosophical anthropology, not cultural or
physical anthropology, that provides the decisive breakthrough in the
resolution of the problem of history.
*****
In Note J of the Second Discourse Rousseau poses the problem of
human history with daring and audacity:
Among the men we know, whether by ourselves, from
historians, or from travellers, some are black, others
white, others red; some wear their hair long, others
have only curly wool; some are almost entirely hairy,
others do not even have a beard. There have been, and
there perhaps still are, nations of men of gigantic size;
and apart from the fable of the Pygmies, which may
well be only an exaggeration, it is known that the
Laplanders, and above all the Greenlanders, are well
below the average size of man … All these facts, for
which it is easy to furnish incontestable proofs, can
surprise only those who are accustomed to look solely
at the objects surrounding them, and who are ignorant
41
of the powerful effects of the diversity of cl imates,
air , foods, way of life, habits in general , and above
all the astonishing force of the same causes when
they act continually upon long sequences of
generations … All these observations upon the
varieties that a thousand causes can produce and have
in fact produced in the human species make me
wonder whether various animals similar to men, taken
by travellers for beasts without much examination,
either because of a few differences they noted in
exterior conformation or solely because these animals
did not speak, would not in fact be true savage men
whose race, dispersed in the woods in ancient times,
had not had an opportunity to develop any of its
potential faculties, had not acquired any degree of
perfection, and was still found in the primitive state
of nature. (SD , 203 – 204)
Capitalising on the travel literature of his time, Rousseau liberates
himself from the authori ty of the ancients and the strictures of orthodoxy
in one fell swoop, free at last to probe squarely into the distant human
past . The source in question is Antoine François Prévost’s Histoire
Générale des Voyages , an anthology of European travel writings to which
Rousseau refers at length. For Masters and Plattner, Note J is definitive
proof of Rousseau’s intention to provide a historical account of the pure
42
state of nature. 38 It is also held that there Rousseau indicates how this
insight may be ascertained. This is the purported recourse to what may be
considered as embryonic forms of cultural and physical anthropology. For
the veracity of these claims appeal is made to the very function of the
notes, which they regard in not so many words as a crucial exposition of
what Rousseau intended to convey to his select audience. Masters and
Plattner further claim that this feature of the notes is characterist ic of
Rousseau’s presentation of his thought where he distinguishes between
two types of readers – one philosophic and the other non-philosophic –
conveying a different teaching to each.39
On Rousseau’s part, he does advertise the importance of the notes
to a particular kind of reader with whom he wishes to communicate.
Indeed, he goes so far as to say that the notes are not for the consumption
of every reader (SD , 98). Thus there is no dispute that the notes do add a
layer of meaning to the Second Discourse . The real question, however, is
how are the notes to be interpreted in line with the function that Rousseau
ascribes to them. It is submitted that it makes lit tle sense for Rousseau,
38 P lat tner sta tes th is po int more emphatical ly than Masters . See Plat tner ,
Rousseau’s S tate of Na ture , p .23. Cf. Roger D. Masters, The Pol i t ica l Philosophy o f
Rousseau , (Pr ince ton, New Jersey: Pr inceton Universi ty Press , 1968) , pp .115 – 117.
39 See Masters, The Pol i t ical Ph ilosophy o f Rousseau , pp .106 – 111, and
Plat tner , Rousseau’s S ta te of Nature , pp .23 – 25. See also Leo Strauss, “On the
Intent ion o f Rousseau,” Social Research , vol .14 no.4 , December 1947, pp.455 – 487.
43
who years earlier preached against the unbridled dissemination of science
or knowledge in his First Discourse , to reveal his considered thought in
the notes simply, that it be literally read off the page. Surely this would
be a facile way either to conceal his true teachings from his vulgar
readers or to convey his true teachings to his philosophic ones. In the
‘Notice on the Notes’ Rousseau uses the hunting term “battre les
buissons” to describe what lies in store for the intrepid among his readers.
It is left for them to ferret out the meaning of the notes, taking care to
negotiate between the body of the text where Rousseau “tried [his] best to
follow the straightest path” (SD , 98) and the notes which meanders from
it. There is no doubt that Masters and Plattner are well acquainted with
this feature of the notes. Be that as it may, it does not follow that their
assessments of the value of cultural and physical anthropology towards
the resolution of the problem of history are above question. In other
words, there are good reasons to suggest that Note J could be read with
more care than what Masters and Plattner gave it .
We overestimate the value of cultural anthropology if we think that
it is indispensable for unlocking the problem of history for, at best , it can
only take us so far back in time.40 This impediment is not readily apparent
40 To be sure, P la t tner i s himsel f aware o f the l imita t ions o f cul tura l
anthropology in this regard. This i s why he goes on to say tha t Rousseau’s study o f
beas ts i s crucial to h is s tud y o f the or igina l human condi t ion. See Plat tner ,
Rousseau’s S tate of Na ture , p .73. I d isagree wi th Plat tner on the last po int . Unl ike
the per manence o f the ir cond it ion in to which beas ts are consigned , man on the o ther
44
since in Note J Rousseau was more candid about the limitations of its
extant practitioners than about those rooted in the practice of cultural
anthropology itself . Nevertheless this should not distract us from the
fundamental issue at stake. True, in i ts current state cultural anthropology
is unable to give a good account of itself . Thus Rousseau recommends its
cultivation in the hands of (modern) philosophers whose judgement we
have no reason to doubt when they declare that an anthropomorphic
animal is actually human (SD , 211 – 213). But however sure the verdict of
these philosophers, it is altogether a different matter from Rousseau’s
original speculation that pongos are not only human but may be “true
savage men … still found in the primitive state of nature” (SD , 204).
Precisely because, as Rousseau contends, the effects of the environment
are unrelenting (SD , 203), chances that there may still be found primitive
man in the purest sense of the word, that is to say, man issued from the
hands of nature untouched by perfectibili ty, are next to nothing. Whether
men and societies are more al ike today than in times past as Rousseau
thinks they are (SD , 203 – 204), cultural anthropology simply bears
witness to the long march of time which have carried them far away from
their original condit ion. Cultural anthropology cannot tell us what the
first humans were like, or how they lived.
hand i s per fec t ib le (SD , 114 – 115) . In o ther words, any s imi lar i ty in the behaviour
between man and beast i s incidenta l , and the condit ion o f beas ts canno t p rovide a
rel iable insight into the or igina l human cond it ion.
45
The same impediment undermines the appeal to physical
anthropology which Masters and Plattner take Rousseau to lodge
surreptitiously in Note J. It is in essence a mating experiment between
what ordinari ly passes for a human and a non-human primate, the point of
which is to prove that some primates such as those mentioned in the
Histoire might actually be human.41 That here in Note J Rousseau appears
in good faith to offer a solution to the question of his own devising in the
Preface concerning the necessary experiments one must undertake to
“achieve knowledge of natural man” (SD , 93) confers an air of scientific
respectability to the proposal at hand. Indeed, what appears at first blush
to be a most radical idea conceived in the name of science adds to the
mystique of the proposal if not to Note J in its entirety. Yet a moment’s
consideration puts paid to this idea. For even if successful, the mating
experiment only confirms that the anthropomorphic animal in question
was misidentified as such. It cannot tell us how old or ancient this newly
discovered human specimen might be. In other words, physical
anthropology lacks the wherewithal to provide a definitive account of
how men were like in the original human condition. Finally, we must also
take into consideration the context of this salacious proposal , which was
impishly concocted to mock the contributors of the Histoire and others
41 See Masters, The Pol i t ical Ph ilosophy o f Rousseau , pp .115 – 116 ; Rousseau,
The Firs t and Second Discourses , p .245, n .82; and Plat tner , Rousseau’s S tate o f
Nature , pp .24 – 25 .
46
like them who are ridiculed by Rousseau for being the “crudest observers”
(SD , 208).
To go beyond the parameters of Note J there is a compell ing reason
why the significance of cultural and physical anthropology is overstated.
Consider the conditions which Rousseau attaches to their eventual
realisat ion. (This is also to say that their use for Rousseau would be
limited). 42 Whatever guise they assume in the Second Discourse , each
requires as a precondition for its success the active participation of the
philosopher, whether to oversee an experiment the likes of which has
never been at tempted before, or to undertake a voyage into the known but
badly-studied regions of the world. But philosophers in turn require the
goodwill of the powerful in the former, and the generosity of the rich in
the latter (SD , 93, 208 – 209, 211 – 213). Both, however, cannot be
counted upon to support a philosophic endeavour whose essential aim is
to uncover the injustice of human social inequality the primary
beneficiaries of which are the rich and the powerful (SD , 174 – 175). In
any case, it was alone in the forests of Saint Germain where Rousseau
unveiled the secrets of time, without the assistance of the rich or the
powerful:
In order to meditate on this great subject at my ease I
made a trip of seven or eight days to St. Germain with
Therese, our landlady, who was a good woman, and
42 This i s a l so indicated in Strauss, Natural Righ t and His tory , pp .268 – 269.
47
one of her friends. I count this excursion as one of
the most pleasant ones of my life. The weather was
very fine; these good women took over the efforts and
the expense; Therese amused herself with them, and I,
without a care in the world, came in at meal times to
be cheerful without restraint. All the rest of the day,
deep in the forest , I sought, I found the image of the
first times whose history I proudly traced; I made a
clean sweep of the petty falsehoods of men, I dared to
strip naked their nature, to follow the progress of
time and things that have disfigured it , and comparing
the man of man with the natural man, to show them
the genuine source of his miseries in his pretended
perfection. (C , 326)
All things considered Note J cannot be taken as Rousseau’s (unqualified)
endorsement of cultural or physical anthropology. Neither can serve his
authorial purpose to provide a historical account of the pure state of
nature nor assist ours as his readers to ascertain the fruits of his
discovery. Indeed, their limitations indicate just how intractable the
recovery of the original human condition is. To cut the Gordian knot
Rousseau must elsewhere turn, to what exactly we shall see next.
*****
48
Despite its shortcomings the Histoire does at least lend credence to
Rousseau’s tantalising suggestion that the march of t ime is not
synchronous. Men are not everywhere the same (SD , 211). But striking as
the latitudinal differences between societies may be, what is of greater
philosophical import are the longitudinal changes that take place within
particular societ ies. As Rousseau notes the Frenchmen of his time no
longer resemble their forebears in physical appearance (SD , 203 – 204).
By the same measure, however exotic the newly discovered peoples of
Africa, the Americas, and Asia must have appeared to European eyes, i t is
not inconceivable that they too must have differed greatly from their
forebears. Of the differences between an indigene and a European cultural
anthropology has much to teach us. To learn rather of the changes that the
human species is capable of undergoing (or has undergone) we must turn
instead to philosophical anthropology. For Rousseau it is this universal
susceptibil ity to change and development that is decisive. Beneath the
superficial heterogeneity of men and societies there runs a single thread
from which the rich tapestry of life is spun. This is the species
characteristic of perfectibility (SD , 114 – 115), on which basis Rousseau
is able to provide a philosophically robust conception of the original
human condition.43
43 I owe this insight to Prof. Cli f ford Or win, who provides a very br ie f outl ine
of the argument that fo l lows in the Canadian Journal o f Po li t ical Science , vol .13
no.2 , June 1980, pp.412 – 413. See a lso Velkley, Freedom and the End o f Reason ,
pp .54 – 58.
49
In the previous chapter I alluded to Rousseau’s radical
historicisation of the human condition as the foundation of his state of
nature teachings. There the issue was framed in the context of Rousseau’s
quarrel with Hobbes and Locke. To restore the matter to its true
dimensions, a more comprehensive view is required. For here we come
face-to-face with one of those signal moments in the history of ideas the
result of which carved out a new intellectual terrain for subsequent
thinkers to negotiate. At the heart of this theoretical revolution lies the
Rousseauian doctrine of perfectibility, which altered the way we
understand ourselves by reconceptualising human nature. Our immediate
interest is to see how, with perfectibility as his sole guide, Rousseau is
able to chart his way back to the pure state of nature. To do justice to the
magnitude of this endeavour it will be helpful to reconstruct a slice of
intel lectual history and consider Rousseau’s part in it the character of
which betrays his tortured relationship with ancient and modern thought.
Nothing better illustrates the ambiguity of Rousseau’s intellectual
complexion than the implications arising out of the doctrine of
perfectibility.
The Rousseauian doctrine of perfectibility is quite simply the
culmination of the early modern assault on reason traditionally conceived.
Consequently it also presided over the complete rehabilitation of the
passions which in their natural state are innocuous if not wholesome. That
perfectibility had a hand in both developments is not incidental. After all ,
50
the doctrine is governed by a dialectical relationship between reason and
passion:
Whatever the moralists may say about it , human
understanding owes much to the passions, which by
common agreement also owe much to it . It is by their
activity that our reason is perfected; we seek to know
only because we desire to have pleasure; and it is
impossible to conceive why one who had neither
desires nor fears would go to the trouble of reasoning.
(SD , 115 – 116)
It is the reciprocal influence which each has on the other that drives the
motor of history. Thus by virtue of unfurling the accretions of time
Rousseau is indubitably led to his prize, the pure state of nature. In sum,
the Rousseauian doctrine of perfectibility is a novel (de)construction of
the human person, discrediting prior accounts which presupposed human
nature to be static. When pressed into service perfectibility is capable
alike of demonstrat ing how man has become what he is today, and
disclosing what he must have been like in time immemorial. According to
this new understanding of man, the human person is much more malleable
a creature than previously thought, and when divested of all his acquired
characteristics, much less endowed in his original constitution as we shall
see.
If Rousseau succeeded where others have failed, it was due in part
to Hobbes, who himself fell at the last hurdle. For the insights into the
51
pure state of nature which the doctrine of perfectibility afforded Rousseau
follow from the correction of Hobbes’s inconsistent study of the workings
of the human soul. For his part Hobbes was moved to inquire into the
latter in order to establish the political art on unassailable grounds. In
what manner Hobbes fulfils this ambition remains a matter of dispute. We
shall not be detained by the question whether or not Hobbes’s political
teachings are derived from his broader philosophical commitments.44 The
point is that Hobbes made imperative the consideration of the claims
which human passions make on politics. For Hobbes the problem of
politics is revealed in full by the chief and universal human aversion, the
fear of violent death, whose primeval energies must be harnessed for the
success of his political project. 45 Implicit in this procedure is the view
that the individual is prior to the political community. Hobbes therefore
rejected the claims of classical (and medieval) political naturalism which
crystallised around the thought of Aristotle, or the view that the political
community is prior to the individual . 46 Thus in Hobbes we witness the
coming of age of modern polit ical conventionalism, its cradle, the state of
44 For a general t reatment of the interpre t ive di f fe rences in Hobbes
scho larship , see D. D. Raphael , Hobbes: Mora ls and Poli t ics , (London: George Al len
& Unwin Ltd. , 1977) , pp .73 – 87.
45 Hobbes, Leviathan , XI .4 , XIII .14.
46 Aris to t le , Poli t ics , 1253a19-29 .
52
nature, a prepolit ical condit ion that challenges the classical tenet that
man is by nature a social and political animal.
To justify his view that man is not naturally sociable and thus
advance the cause of modern political conventionalism, Hobbes had to
dislodge reason from the pride of place which classical thought granted it .
For according to Aristotle, man is the social and political animal without
equal because he alone among gregarious animals possesses speech. This
is fundamental equipment for political li fe since it al lows men, in concert
with their fellows, to distinguish good from evil and justice from
injustice, reason being coeval with speech. 47 Hobbes is altogether less
sanguine about the contribution of reason to political li fe. Because most
men regard themselves as wiser than their fellows, and this includes their
political masters, the deliberation of public affairs only tends to the
dissolution of the political community. Rather than bind men together,
reason pits them against each other. Thus against the machinations of
reason the Hobbesian sovereign must arm himself.48 At any rate, not man
47 Aris to t le , Poli t ics , 1253a8-19 . Here, i t would a lso be useful to quo te
Hobbes. “T he Greeks,” he wr i tes, “have but one word, logos , for bo th speech and
reason ; not that they thought there was no speech wi thout reason, but no reasoning
wi thout speech …” See Hobbes, Leviathan , IV.14.
48 I t i s t rue tha t reason plays a fundamenta l ro le in Hobbes’s pol i t ica l thought
by putt ing in to e ffec t the t rans i t ion from the s ta te o f nature to civi l soc iety. However ,
the minds o f men must be shackled in civi l socie ty proper . Pub lic reason is
53
but irrational creatures are the political animals par excellence . Since
they lack reason, Hobbes contends that they are by nature best suited for
political life, having little or no occasion for quarrel. In effect Hobbes’s
disenthronement of reason stands the intellectual ramparts of classical
political naturalism on their head. The standard of modern polit ical
conventionalism is raised on the debris of reason.
And yet in Rousseau’s estimation, Hobbes did not go far enough.
For all the force of Hobbes’s critique of Aristotle there remains a limited
but significant point of agreement between them. The link between reason
and sociability Hobbes unreservedly severs. 49 But Hobbes at bottom
accepts the Aristotelian premise that reason sets man apart from the
animals. Therefore i t is left to Hobbes to redefine the ambit of reason,
having stripped it of its former powers. On the basis of his psychological
hedonism Hobbes assigns reason a relatively modest function: man
reasons only at the behest of the passions. 50 Thus, however i ll-directed
synonymous wi th the reasoning o f the sovereign, whose author i ty in mat ter s o f
doctr ine or r ight thinking is absolute . See Hobbes, Leviathan , XII I .2 , XII I .14,
XVIII .9 .
49 Hobbes i s unique among po li t ical ant ina tural i st s in th is regard . See A. John
Simmons, “Theories o f the State ,” in Donald Ruther ford (ed.) , The Cambridge
Companion to Early Modern Philosophy , (Cambridge: Cambr idge Universi ty Press,
2006) , pp.250 – 273.
50 Hobbes, Leviathan , VII I .16.
54
Aristotle may find its use in Hobbes’s thought, man remains a creature of
reason. Taken together, Hobbes’s critique of Aristotle is actually founded
upon a concession to Aristotle. In Rousseau’s determination the
possibility exists that these two elements are at odds with each other,
with drastic consequences for Hobbes’s state of nature teachings. The
crux of Rousseau’s objection may be stated as follows: Hobbes did not
meditate sufficiently on the question of the origin and development of the
passions and reason. By failing to pry into the genealogy of the human or
social passions, Hobbes did not go far enough in his purge of reason. If
Rousseau is able to prove his conjecture, then the glory of being the first
to discover the (pure) state of nature belongs not to Hobbes but to him.
Rousseau begins by acknowledging his debt to Hobbes: Rousseau’s
improvement over Hobbes is founded upon a concession to Hobbes.
Rousseau defers to Hobbes’s formulation concerning the relationship
between reason and passion by holding that the former goes wherever the
latter leads (SD , 116). Rousseau only adds that the very interplay between
reason and passion points to the ineluctable conclusion that the first
human passions must by definition be prerational:
The passions in turn derive their origin from our
needs, and their progress from our knowledge. For
one can desire or fear things only through the ideas
one can have of them or by the simple impulsion of
nature; and savage man, deprived of every kind of
55
enlightenment, feels only the passions of this last
kind. (SD , 116)
Reason being the child of desire, any passion with the tincture of reason
cannot be natural. Hobbes was therefore wrong to include in man’s
original constitution appetites and aversions which require the tutelage of
reason such as vainglory on the one hand and the fear of violent death on
the other (SD , 129). So long as self-preservation is the first care of
primitive man (SD , 142), his concerns are no different from animal
concerns. While Rousseau concedes that the passions owe their
development to reason, he argues that their origin stems from a different
source altogether. This he locates in our physical needs which in the pure
state of nature must have ranged no further than food, repose, and sex (SD ,
116).
Having established this much Rousseau proceeds to draw out the
implications for the status of reason in human life. At any point in history
the human endowment of reason cannot have been more than what is
necessary for the conception and the gratification of the passions, whether
natural or acquired. And since our natural or original needs in no way
depend on reason for their conception on the one hand and are so easily
satisfied on the other, Rousseau postulates in Note K that the cognitive
capacity of primitive man must be limited indeed:
With the sole exception of the physically necessary,
which nature itself demands, al l our other needs are
such only by habit, having previously not been needs,
56
or by our desires; and one does not desire that which
he is not capable of knowing. From which i t follows
that savage man, desiring only the things he knows
and knowing only those things the possession of
which is in his power or easily acquired, nothing
should be so tranquil as his soul and nothing so
limited as his mind. (SD , 213)
In short, the mind of primitive man is as simple as his original needs.
Thus primitive man had no natural reason, at least not of the quality
which Aristotle and Hobbes thought characteristic of man. True, very
quickly man had to rely on his wits in order to survive, whether to acquire
the necessities of li fe or to defend himself against his natural predators
(SD , 142 – 143). However unnatural reason is to man, however
unsophist icated his mind, there was no lack of stimulus for i t to develop.
But this does not gainsay Rousseau’s contention that insofar as the
original desires and fears of man are animal-like, so are his powers of
reasoning. It would be superfluous, not to say incongruous, for the first
men to have had the capacity to reason like philosophers while existing
on the plane of animals:
Should we want to suppose a savage man as skilful in
the art of thinking as our philosophers make him;
should we, following their example, make him a
philosopher himself, discovering alone the most
sublime truths and making for himself, by chains of
57
very abstract reasoning, maxims of justice and reason
drawn from love of order in general or from the
known will of his creator; in a word, should we
suppose his mind to have as much intelligence and
enlightenment as he must and is in fact found to have
dullness and stupidity, what utili ty would the species
draw from all this metaphysics, which could not be
communicated and which would perish with the
individual who would have invented it? What
progress could the human race make, scattered in the
woods among the animals? (SD , 119)
Thus in the pure state of nature there is no meaningful distinction
to make between man and animal in essentials of mind and body.
Although man is set apart from beasts by virtue of the faculty of self-
perfection, it is this very human trait which leads Rousseau to assert that
the first men lived no differently from animals. Primitive man dwells at
the level of necessity which guarantees at minimum the preservation of
the individual and the propagation of the species. On the basis of the
doctrine of perfectibility, therefore, Rousseau maintains that men in the
original human condition could not have been embroiled in the bit ter and
interminable disputes that are so central to and characteristic of Hobbes’s
state of nature teachings.51 What Hobbes gave an account of rather, from
51 Hobbes, Leviathan , XII I .3 – 13.
58
Rousseau’s point of view, is the advanced as opposed to the pure state of
nature, the essence of which he agrees with. For only at this point in the
state of nature does it degenerate into a state of war, to which civil
society is a necessary corrective (SD , 157 – 161). In his own state of
nature teachings Rousseau supplies the link between these two periods of
the prepolitical condition by arguing that men were led out of the pure
state of nature by a series of chance accidents. ( It is this portion of
Rousseau’s account of the state of nature that is conjectural in
character). 52 But in his original condition man is much further removed
from the need for civil society than Hobbes posits. Not even force or the
law of the strongest – that crudest form of rule between one man and
another – has a hold in the pure state of nature (SD , 138 – 140). Indeed,
in his original condit ion man has no need for or thought of his fel low men.
Limited to their original needs, men have no reason to consort with each
other. As Rousseau elsewhere notes, our needs separate us. It is our
passions that bring us together, the development of which time and
circumstances conspire against (EOL , 245 – 246). Adopting Hobbesian
premises, but pursuing them to their logical conclusion, Rousseau arrives
at a portrait of the pure state of nature that departs significantly from
52 Therefore commentators who hold tha t Rousseau’s account o f the sta te of
na ture i s conjec tura l are par t ia l ly cor rec t . On this point , see Strauss, Natural Righ t
and History , p .267, n .32 . Rousseau asser t s , ho wever , that the hypothe t ical account o f
the advanced s ta te o f na ture does no t de tract from the fundamenta l teachings o f the
Second Discourse (SD , 140 – 141) .
59
Hobbes’s (SD , 128 – 130). The (pure) state of nature is far from being a
state of war or enmity. More than Hobbes – and other modern social
contract theorists for that matter – Rousseau demonstrates just how
unnecessary and artificial the need for civil society is from the standpoint
of the original human condition.53
Consequently, i t is Rousseau’s articulat ion of the claims of modern
political conventionalism that serves as the most searing critique of
classical political naturalism. According to Aristotle, the attainment of
full self-sufficiency is the end or purpose of the city or poli tical
community. By this measure other smaller human communities such as
households and villages remain deficient and are therefore inferior to the
political community. This is also to say that outside of the political
community men are unable to lead fully self-sufficient lives. 54 Rousseau
inverts this classical teaching by arguing how in the original human
53 At this po int o f the discussion, i t i s appropr ia te to mention a unique
trea tment o f the issue at hand, which treatment revo lves around the claim tha t
Rousseau’s approach to the study o f human history i s ac tua l ly quite ec lect ic in
charac ter . In other words, i t has been argued tha t a l l o f the three methods enumera ted
above, namely, the doct r ine o f per fec t ib i l i ty, cul tural anthropo logy, and physical
anthropology, have been summari ly incorpora ted by Rousseau in his por t rai t o f the
sta te o f na ture . See Robert Wokler , “Per fec t ib le Apes in Decadent Cultures :
Rousseau’s Anthropo logy Revisi ted ,” Daedalus , vol .107 no.3 , Summer 1978, pp.107 –
134.
54 Aris to t le , Poli t ics , 1252b27-1253a1 .
60
condition, that is to say, in the condition furthest removed from civil
society, man is sufficient unto himself. He even claims that so self-
sufficient is primitive man that it would be more of an unequal contest for
civil ised man to fight him unarmed than armed:
The savage man’s body being the only implement he
knows, he employs it for various uses of which,
through lack of training, our bodies are incapable; our
industry deprives us of the strength and agil ity that
necessity obliges him to acquire. If he had an axe,
would his wrist break such strong branches? If he had
a sling, would he throw a stone so hard? If he had a
ladder, would he climb a tree so nimbly? If he had a
horse, would he run so fast? Give civilised man time
to assemble al l his machines around him and there
can be no doubt that he wil l easily overcome savage
man. But if you want to see an even more unequal
fight, put them, naked and disarmed, face to face, and
you will soon recognise the advantage of constantly
having all of one’s strength at one’s disposal , of
always being ready for any event, and of always
carrying oneself, so to speak, entirely with one. (SD ,
106 – 107)
Indeed, in no other time in history is one man so entirely without need for
another (SD , 126 – 127). Thus in Rousseau’s view man has no need for
61
the political community precisely for the same reason that Aristotle
asserts that the polit ical community is necessary – the attainment or the
enjoyment of full self-sufficiency. Now it is true that what Aristotle and
Rousseau mean by the concept of self-sufficiency differs greatly. For
Aristotle, the political community is fully self-sufficient because it is
capable of supplying the condit ions necessary for the good life. As
Aristotle understands it , the components of the good life go beyond the
necessities of l ife, and include opportunities for the exercise of virtue
which other human aggregations, such as the household and the village,
cannot provide.55 For Rousseau on the other hand, primitive man is fully
self-sufficient because he has in his physical being alone all that he needs
to preserve himself. In the pure state of nature which is prerational and
therefore premoral, Rousseau speaks of the virtue of primitive man in
terms of his ability to contribute towards the satisfaction of the bare
necessities of li fe:
It seems at first that men in that state, not having
among themselves any kind of moral relationship or
known duties, could be neither good nor evil , and had
neither vices nor virtue: unless, taking these words in
a physical sense, one calls vices in the individual the
qualities that can harm his own preservation, and
virtues those that can contribute to it; in which case,
55 Aris to t le , Poli t ics , 1253a8-39 .
62
it would be necessary to call the most virtuous the
one who least resists the simple impulses of nature.
(SD , 128)
It should also be noted that in each of these cases where self-sufficiency
obtains, Aristotle and Rousseau would describe the situation as natural.
Once again there are manifest differences between the Aristotel ian and
the Rousseauian conception of nature. But that ‘nature’ is understood
differently here only serves to underl ine the point that in Rousseau’s view,
primitive man is happy, free, and whole despite being “without clan,
without law, [and] without hearth.”56 For Rousseau, he who is no part of a
city is neither a beast nor a god, but man simply as he was found in the
pure state of nature.
*****
Our primary concern in this chapter was to establish the historicity
of the pure state of nature in Rousseau’s thought. In particular we
examined the philosophical defensibility of Rousseau’s conception of the
original human condition. This is the problem of history, the contours of
which to Rousseau’s mind were misrepresented by generations of
philosophers. It was therefore left to him to pose the problem of history
anew with unparalleled incisiveness, and having done so, he believed
56 Aris to t le , Poli t ics , 1253a4-5 .
63
himself to have pursued it relentlessly to the end. As was suggested,
Rousseau’s success in unveiling the original human condition is a
theoretical feat of the first order, given the not inconsiderable
philosophical obstacles which he had to surmount. And yet the successful
resolution of the problem of history presents a complication for the
establishment of nature as a standard for human social li fe. Following in
the footsteps of his early modern predecessors in their rejection of the
traditional view that nature is teleological, Rousseau equates the natural
with the original rather than with its end or perfection (SD , 91 – 93). This
approach to the study of nature is of course intimately connected with the
historical sense which Rousseau brings to bear on his state of nature
teachings. But it is not entirely clear how the way of life of primitive man,
more animal than human in every respect, is capable of furnishing a
standard that remains relevant to us today. In other words, the foregoing
analysis seems to support the contention of historicist interpreters that
marooned from the state of nature, man must find his own way in this
world. It is with this in mind that we turn our attention to the next chapter,
where we will see how a standard of naturalness may be extracted from
Rousseau’s state of nature teachings despite the difficulty at hand.
*****
64
3. The Problem of Nature: On the Standard of Naturalness in
Rousseau’s Thought
Rousseau’s thought is perhaps the last great philosophical at tempt
to ground the conception of the good l ife in the appeal to nature. To this
end Rousseau effected the return to nature, facilitated by his successful
negotiation of the problem of history in the Second Discourse . But the
historical inquiry initiated there cannot be taken as an unequivocal
endorsement of the broader philosophical concern that sanctioned i t . In
other words, whether and how nature remains a standard for human social
life becomes not less but more contentious an issue despite or precisely
because of the resolution of the problem of history. Far from settl ing the
problem of nature, the resolution of the problem of history deepens it .
The difficulty may be stated as follows. The Rousseauian return to nature
implies a prior abandonment of nature on the part of the tradition. The
repudiation of nature as a standard for human social li fe, led by a raft of
early modern thinkers, is therefore pre-Rousseauian. 57 Yet it is not the
pre-Rousseauian abandonment of nature but the Rousseauian return to
nature that bears the hallmarks of the philosophical movement we call
57 See Pierre Manent , An Intel lec tual His tory o f L ibera li sm , t r ans la ted by
Rebecca Bal inski , (Pr inceton, New Jersey: Pr inceton Universi ty Press, 1994) , in
par t icular his d iscuss ion of Machiavel l i , Hobbes , Locke, and Montesquieu.
65
‘historicism’.58 For according to Rousseau’s state of nature teachings man
is an accidental being shaped on the anvil of circumstance. Indeed, in the
original human condition man was revealed to have no nature to call his
own except the wherewithal to appropriate one. Even then there was no
natural inevitabili ty for him to have done so. Thus the return to nature
which Rousseau initiates in the Second Discourse threatens any
meaningful appeal to nature as a standard for human social li fe.
This is the context in which Rousseau’s attempt to reconstitute the
man of nature in society must be understood. Consequently this is the
paradox, and the difficulty, that every naturalist interpretation of Emile
must confront. For in the face of the radical historicisation of the human
condition, Emile’s t itle as the man of nature is fraught with ambiguity.
Certainly Rousseau could not have been blind to the seeming
contradiction before him, having set in train the very forces that now
threaten to undermine the incarnation of the man of nature in society. The
purpose of this chapter, therefore, is to extricate Emile from this apparent
entanglement with history. Towards this end, we shall examine the claims
of two leading naturalist interpretations in the next section. 59 The
58 See Strauss, Natura l R ight and History , pp .252 – 294, on th is d imension of
Rousseau’s thought , and the chal lenge tha t i t poses to modern natural r ight teachings .
59 The in terpretat ions in ques t ion d i f fer over the manner in which nature
remains a standard for human social l i fe . The fir st ho lds that the s tandard of
na tura lness in Rousseau’s thought is merely formal, whi le the second maintains that i t
66
rat ionale for considering these interpretat ions first is to pave the way for
my own which I will offer as an alternative in their place. Given that the
interpretations in question are so influential in Rousseau scholarship, it is
necessary to subject them to closer scrutiny in order to demonstrate the
reasonableness of the need for an alternate naturalist account. Perhaps in
response to the historical sense which permeates Rousseau’s state of
nature teachings, these interpretations go beyond these teachings and
anchor Emile’s naturalness in association with some conception of human
flourishing. Notwithstanding the differences in the manner which they
achieve this, they abide by the more fundamental view that Rousseau’s
state of nature teachings are an insufficient theoretical justification for
Emile’s naturalness. (According to these interpretations, Rousseau
provides the necessary justification in Emile i tself). The upshot is that
these interpretations make a dist inction between the naturalness of the
original man of nature and the naturalness of the man of nature in society,
or between primitive naturalness on the one hand, and civilised
is a l so substant ive in charac ter . (T he substant ive account is propounded by Laurence
Cooper , which was discussed extensively in the in troduc tory chapter) . See Cooper ,
Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , pp .4 – 11, for his rend it ion o f
ho w his inte rpretat ion depar ts from the other na tural i st a l terna t ive. Deta i l s o f the
formal account wi l l be p rovided in due course.
67
naturalness on the other. 60 I will show why these interpretations are
problematic even on the terms of their arguments, although I will
ultimately argue that the distinction between the two kinds of naturalness
is superfluous.
This leads us to the following section, where I will contend that the
standard of naturalness in Rousseau’s thought is lodged exclusively and
exhaustively in his state of nature teachings. We have already seen how
these teachings are so crucial in unveiling the original human condition as
Rousseau understands it , which establishes in turn the true foundations of
modern poli tical conventionalism. It is from this articulation of the very
unnaturalness of political li fe that the standard of naturalness in
Rousseau’s thought is derived. For Rousseau, nature remains a standard
for human social l ife in the form of the man-citizen dichotomy. Thus the
life in accordance with nature is radically anti-political – he who is man
is natural; he who is citizen is denatured. This dichotomy alone amounts
to a philosophical justification of the naturalness of the original man of
nature and the man of nature in society despite the immense gulf that
separates them. On the basis of the dichotomy both Emile and his
primitive predecessor are equally natural . Neither is more or less natural
than the other. In other words, this approach eschews attempts which
60 I borrow the term ‘civi l ised na turalness’ from Laurence Cooper , which I wi l l
use interchangeably wi th the term ‘Emilean natura lness’. See Cooper , Rousseau,
Nature, and the Prob lem of the Good Life , pp .67 – 114, for a t reatment o f the concep t
as he understands i t .
68
emphasise instead Emile’s uniqueness or distinctiveness as a theoretical
justification of his title as the man of nature. But this departure from
standard naturalist interpretat ions is significant in that it also takes into
account the historicist contention that Rousseau’s state of nature
teachings are decisive in determining whether and how nature remains a
standard for human social li fe. It is my hope that this reinterpretation of
the grounds of Emile’s naturalness on the sole basis of the state of nature
teachings will furnish a more considered reply to the historicist
interpretation of Rousseau’s thought, thereby moving the nature-history
debate past the current stalemate.
*****
Interpreters who abide by the concept of civilised or Emilean
naturalness typically define it in terms of formal or substantive
considerations, with these formulations taking primitive naturalness as
their point of departure. Thus to the question how nature remains a
standard for human social life, two competing answers may be offered.
According to these interpreters, the proposit ion that the difference
between the original man of nature and the man of nature in society is
philosophically decisive is supported by Rousseau’s bipartite conception
of nature. The first is articulated in the Second Discourse , and the second
in Emile , these being the philosophical underpinnings of the two men of
nature personified in the respective texts. To restate the matter,
69
Rousseau’s conception of nature may be rendered sequentially in the
following terms: nature primary and secondary; nature original and
civil ised; and nature in the strict and in the loose sense. But regardless of
the semantics, nature in the primary, original, or in the strict sense is
reduced, finally, to nature in the ‘low’ sense; and nature in the secondary,
civil ised, or in the loose sense is embellished as nature in the ‘high’
sense. 61 More to the point , nature in the ‘low’ sense, articulated in the
Second Discourse and embodied in the natural man living in the state of
nature, is presumably inadequate as a theoretical expression of the natural
man living in the state of society. Since the original man of nature is by
definit ion he whose human faculties are least developed, the
commensurability between Emile and his primitive predecessor is called
into question. If the forest is the enduring emblem of the natural man
living in the state of nature – he is the man of nature because
undomesticated or wild – then the corresponding emblem of the natural
man living in the state of society is the garden – he is the man of nature
because cult ivated or refined. 62 A conception of nature more expansive
61 See, for ins tance, Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Prob lem of the Good
Li fe , p .74 (na ture “pr imary” and “secondary”) ; p .11 (“or igina l” and “c ivi l i sed”
na tura lness) ; p .58, 81 (nature in the “s tr ic t” and in the “loose” sense) ; p .69 (nature
“high” and “low”) .
62 See T imothy O’Hagan, “Introduc tion,” in T imothy O’Hagan (ed.) , Jean-
Jacques Rousseau , (Aldersho t: Ashgate Publ ishing Limi ted , 2007) , p .xi i i .
70
than the one expounded in the Second Discourse is therefore required to
accommodate the goals of the comprehensive education of which Emile is
the recipient . This is not to say that the elements of Rousseau’s bipartite
conception of nature are incongruous. The opposite rather is true, for they
complement one another. Indeed, both are indispensable in making sense
of Emilean naturalness. Although the ‘high’ is set apart from the ‘low’,
the lat ter is nevertheless the foundation of the former. But to ask what
makes the original man of nature natural is to ask, only in part, what
makes the man of nature in society natural. Important as the first question
may be, it is in the end a preliminary to the second. These are the
signature traits of naturalist interpretations that venture beyond
Rousseau’s state of nature teachings in search of a theoretical
justification for the man of nature in society. The essential point is that
Emilean naturalness is distinctive, and this distinctiveness gives rise to
the need for an independent account of it . With this in mind, we shall
begin our examination of the formal account of Emilean naturalness.
What is natural in the civil state is natural so long as it does not
contradict what is natural in the savage state. What is not to be
contradicted in this instance is the wholeness that is coeval with the
original human condition. This is how nature remains a standard for
human social l ife, i f only formally. Emile is the embodiment of what is
natural in the civil state because he is whole despite being in society.
This is almost a contradiction in terms since according to Rousseau the
denizens of society are to a man divided within themselves (E , 40 – 41).
71
The meaning of Emilean naturalness may be extracted from this
juxtaposition of fortunes between social man and the man of nature in
society, which is that “a harmonious or noncontradictory development of
the faculties is possible, and that this outcome is ‘natural’ precisely in its
noncontradictoriness (for to be noncontradictory, it must not contradict
nature).” 63 Thus the l ife in accordance with nature is not incompatible
with the perfection of our humanity. In other words, the goodness or
innocence of nature does not nullify the signal attributes that make up the
crown of our humanity, such as our capacity to reason, our moral impulse,
or our ability to be moved by beauty, characteristics which are not natural
to man, and which are developed only in society. This is also to say that
beyond its quiescence in this matter, nature has no decisive part to play in
the equipment of the man of nature in society. The goodness or innocence
63 Cli f ford Or win, “Rousseau on the Sources o f Ethics,” p .73 . Or win’s
in terpretat ion i s indeb ted to that o f Leo St rauss . Once aga in, see Strauss , Natural
Right and His tory , pp .252 – 294. S trauss’s view on the cont inued relevance o f the l i fe
in accordance wi th nature may be reduced to th is very l ine on p .282: “Hence
Rousseau’s answer to the quest ion o f the good l i fe takes on th is form: the good l i fe
consis t s in the closes t approximation to the sta te o f na ture which i s possib le on the
leve l o f humani ty.” Other scholars who fo l lo w sui t include Allan Bloo m,
“Introduc tion,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or on Educa tion , t r anslated by
Allan Bloo m, (New York: Basic Books , 1979) , pp.3 – 28, and Melzer , The Natural
Goodness of Man , par t icular ly pp.89 – 91. I have turned to Orwin’s in te rpreta t ion
ins tead because i t addresses the theoret ical foundations o f Emilean na turalness most
exp lici t ly.
72
of nature amounts to the impotence of nature in the realm of human social
life. 64 Even the stress on ethical naturalism as a component of Emile’s
moral education – which together with the other elements of ethical non-
naturalism are so crucial to ensure his integration into society – is best
understood as an artefact of Rousseau’s rhetorical sleight of hand.65 In the
final analysis the life in accordance with nature is “a free rat ional project
for which nature provides lit tle direct guidance.”66
No one who leads a dissipated life, whose faculties and desires are
at odds with one another, can be called natural. This much is certain.
Such is social man who as a result of this division of soul is good neither
for himself nor for others (E , 40). But this is not enough to support the
contention that the natural is reducible to the noncontradictory, or that
the noncontradictory is synonymous with the natural. For the harmonious
development of the faculties is not the sole preserve of the natural man
living in the state of society. The denatured citizen, like Emile, is well-
ordered in this regard (E , 39 – 41). In other words, there are
noncontradictory ways of life the outcome of which are not natural.
Noncontradictoriness, while a necessary component of the good life, is in
the end not a reliable conceptual indicator of naturalness, Emilean or
64 Orwin, “Rousseau on the Sources o f E thics ,” pp .73 – 74.
65 Orwin, “Rousseau on the Sources o f E thics ,” pp .66 – 72.
66 Orwin, “Rousseau on the Sources o f E thics ,” p .73.
73
otherwise. Without further amplification the formal account of Emilean
naturalness is therefore too imprecise to be useful. In its present
formulation the concept of Emilean naturalness is thereby under-
determined. Interpreters of this persuasion may respond by distinguishing
between different specimens of noncontradictoriness – those that are
natural on the one hand, and those that are not natural on the other. But
this is to beg the question as to what is nature or that which is natural that
must not be contradicted in the case of Emile, and conversely, that must
be contradicted in the case of the citizen. Neither can the argument be
sustained by restating the matter posit ively in terms of wholeness, a
cognate of noncontradictoriness. For to maintain that Emile and the
citizen are whole in their own ways – one is wholly himself while the
other is wholly a part of the city as Rousseau himself indicates (E , 39 –
40) – is to concede the point that in the decisive respect the man of nature
in society is natural for the same reason that the original man of nature is
natural since the latter, too, is wholly himself.
Like its formal counterpart the substantive account of Emilean
naturalness accepts that in fundamental respects what is natural in the
civil state takes after what is natural in the savage state. All men of
nature in society (including the Rousseau of the autobiographical writings)
74
are natural to the extent that they abide by this formal similari ty. 67 And
yet what is natural in the civil state is not merely a formal replication of
what is natural in the savage state. For when satisfied in the state of
society the formal criterion of naturalness entails “enormous substantive
implications”: where Emile is concerned the “formal criterion
determines … what should and should not be natural in the civil state.”68
Thus nature remains a standard for human social li fe in a tangible way,
whose guidance is available to those who would seek i t . In other words,
the substantive account goes beyond the formal account by holding that
the harmonious development of Emile’s faculties is not simply
noncontradictory in character, but is in and by i tself natural. In this
regard Emile is set apart by the possession of attributes and dispositions
which, though natural, are foreclosed to his primitive predecessor. This is
accounted for by conscience, the generative principle of Emilean
naturalness that develops only with reason. Conscience is capable of
stimulating the growth of natural attributes and dispositions which were
67 The formal simi lar i ty in this ins tance i s the pre -eminence o f amour de soi in
the men o f na ture . See Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe ,
pp .54 – 59.
68 Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , p .185.
75
hitherto latent (such as compassion), and making others which are
acquired only in society natural (such as the love of virtue).69
Morality is a necessary component of the good life in the state of
society. This is true for Emile as well as the citizen. That a moral
education is essential to both the domestic and the public education is
more revealing of Rousseau’s view of social life than of the content of
Emile’s naturalness. Morality makes living with one’s fellows, whether
these last are themselves whole or divided, possible. In the absence of
political virtues on the one hand and social virtues on the other, it would
be impossible for the citizen and Emile to flourish in their specific
ways.70 But to invest any further theoretical significance in morality, that
is to say, to st ipulate that Emilean morality is constitutive of Emilean
69 See Cooper , Rousseau , Nature, and the Prob lem of the Good Life , pp .80 –
114.
70 For an account o f Rousseauian moral i ty or vir tue tha t deemphasises the
dis t inct ion be tween pol i t ical and social v ir tue, see Joseph R. Reiser t , Jean-Jacques
Rousseau: A Friend of V ir tue , ( I thaca, New York: Cornel l Univers i ty Press, 2003) .
On p .10, Re iser t s ta tes tha t “[ t]hroughout his oeuvre , Rousseau advances one
consis tent , cr i t ical theme: he complains tha t his contemporar ies lack vir tue … Vir tue
is a l so the central lesson o f Rousseau’s construct ive works ; i t i s the l ink that
connects the ‘ individua l is t ic ’ teachings o f Emile and Jul ie wi th the ‘col lect ivist ic ’
doctr ines o f On the Social Contrac t and the Discourse on Po li t ical Economy .” See
also James Delaney, Rousseau and the E thics of Virtue , (New York: Continuum
Interna t ional Publ i shing Group, 2006) .
76
naturalness, is to inevitably state the claim, however unintentional, that
nature is purposive. While the substantive account concedes that there
may be some variation from one man of nature in society to the next, in
the end “there are certain basic characteristics common to every civilised
natural man. There is a certain substance that defines civilised
naturalness.” 71 Thus Emilean naturalness by the lights of the substantive
account is crypto-teleological. For to hold that nature as a substantive
standard can only be realised (or more fully realised) outside of the state
of nature is to run the risk of importing a teleological conception of
nature into Rousseau’s thought. This is at odds with the staunch anti-
teleological conception of nature that Rousseau adheres to in his thought,
which the account itself recognises. 72 For this reason the substantive
account of Emilean naturalness is untenable on its own terms.
In sum, if it is characteristic of the formal account to under-
determine the essence of Emilean naturalness, then correspondingly it is
characteristic of the substantive account to over-determine i t . These are
the theoretical pitfal ls inherent in any endeavour to define the standard of
naturalness in Rousseau’s thought in terms of degree or type, or what is
the same, to make a distinction between the naturalness of the man of
nature in society and the naturalness of the original man of nature. On
this note, it is perhaps fitting to consider what is i t about Rousseau’s
71 Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , p .184.
72 Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , pp . ix – xi i .
77
thought that makes the concept of civil ised or Emilean naturalness so
compell ing. In my view, the plausibility of the formal and substantive
accounts is due to the doctrine of perfectibility, which gives its
proponents license to emphasise the ‘high’ element of what they
understand as Rousseau’s bipartite conception of nature at the expense of
the ‘low’. But given the undetermined potentialit ies of the human person,
the very indeterminacy of which is the essence of the faculty of self-
perfection (E , 62), any sett led upon notion of the substance of Emilean
naturalness may well be arbitrary. Thus we may say that the concept of
Emilean naturalness is quasi-philosophical: at most, the concession can be
made that what is natural in the civil state as outlined in the two accounts
above remains within the realm of philosophical possibility. Now the
doctrine of perfectibility is certainly crucial in determining the standard
of naturalness in Rousseau’s thought. But whereas perfectibil ity compels
these interpreters to ultimately abandon the original human condition in
their analysis of the grounds of Emile’s naturalness, I am instead driven
towards it . Shorn of recognisable human qualities, it may be tempting to
conclude that the natural man living in the state of nature is incapable of
supplying a standard for human social l ife that is exhaustive in character.
I will attempt to show that this view is mistaken by highlighting a
theoretical affinity that yokes Emile to his primitive predecessor. In a
word, Emile’s naturalness can be established without reference to the
concept of Emilean naturalness. As we shall see next, Emile’s naturalness
is not sui generis .
78
*****
It is the man-citizen dichotomy in Rousseau’s thought that
determines whether a way of life in the state of society is natural. This is
how nature remains a standard for human social li fe, and the sole and
incontrovertible reason why Emile is the man of nature. In a word, Emile
is natural because he is man. The determination of Emile’s naturalness on
these terms also settles the longstanding debate concerning his credentials
as a citizen in the making. 73 Thus by way of the man-citizen dichotomy
two perennial problems in Rousseau scholarship may be resolved clearly
and unambiguously: firstly, that nature remains an indubitable standard
for human social life, and secondly, that as the natural man l iving in the
state of society, Emile is not a potential citizen. These issues are
fundamentally intertwined. Indeed, they are different articulations of the
problem of nature whose origins may be traced back to a peculiar
connection between what is often referred to as Rousseau’s critical and
constructive writings. It is submitted here that the nature of this
connection – the pith and substance of which is the man-citizen
dichotomy – has not received the attention it deserves in Rousseau
scholarship. This may have something to do with the artificial
demarcation of Rousseau’s thought along the tropes of ‘critical’ and
73 This i s the crux o f the neo-Kantian in terpreta t ion o f Emile . See Cass ire r ,
The Quest ion of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , pp .121 – 127.
79
‘constructive’ writings that I have purposely utilised above, the effect of
which is to obscure the revolutionary implications of his state of nature
teachings, what presumptively are critical rather than constructive in
character. But in this instance, the crit ical is the constructive, as it were.
By making this connection explicit, I hope to offer an al ternative to
existing naturalist interpretations, thereby reinvigorating the nature-
history debate in Rousseau scholarship.
Rousseau’s pitiless characterisation of the bourgeois is a useful
heuristic device to grasp the incompatibility between the ways of life of
man and citizen. The bourgeois is a mishmash of man and cit izen because
he is the quintessential role-player. “Always in contradiction with himself,
always floating between his inclinations and his duties, he will never be
either man or ci tizen” (E , 40). However that may be, the bourgeois is not
the fount of the man-citizen dichotomy. This is a burden that he is unable
to bear. After al l, the bourgeois is merely flotsam among the tides of
history. In other words, the man-citizen dichotomy is not an insight which
Rousseau scraped together at the behest or benevolence of History. Had
that been the case, Rousseau’s self-estimation of his contribution to the
history of ideas would have been misplaced. In itself the concept of the
man-citizen dichotomy in Rousseau scholarship is not new.74 But scholars
have always derived the dichotomy with the bourgeois in mind, whether
implicitly or explici tly. In so doing they tear it apart from its native
74 See footno te 9 .
80
moorings, and as a result, misconstrue the provenance of the standard of
naturalness in Rousseau’s thought. An example will be useful to establish
the point in question.
In his interpretation of Rousseau, Arthur Melzer is guided by the
view that the “theory of the contradiction of society … is the true
centrepiece of his thought.” 75 Accordingly this theory provides the
backdrop against which the nature and character of Rousseau’s
constructive projects must be understood: the way of l ife of man on the
one hand, and the ci tizen on the other, are explicable only in the context
of their being solutions to the problem of personal dependence. The
following passage is instructive to grasp the thrust of my criticism
concerning the tendency to derive the man-citizen dichotomy (or the
“individualistic” and the “political” solutions in Melzer’s terms) from the
bourgeois condition:
But if man’s natural life and constitution no longer
serve as a standard, what is to guide this human
engineering? If human beings are such malleable
creatures who can be brought to desire almost
anything, on what basis would one choose one way of
life as preferable to another? … If the contradiction
of society, selfish selflessness, is what divides man
75 Melzer , The Natural Goodness o f Man , p .57. Indeed, the or igina l i ty o f
Melzer ’s reading o f Rousseau revolves around his e labora t ion o f th is theory, which he
says has never been accorded the recognit ion or t rea tment i t deserves.
81
against himself and others, then he can be restored to
unity and justice by inducing him to embrace totally
either side of the contradiction: complete selfishness
or complete sociability. To eliminate divisive
personal dependence men must be ei ther wholly
separated or wholly united … Thus, having reduced
the human problem to the contradiction of personal
dependence, Rousseau’s constructive thought
necessari ly bifurcates into two conflicting ideals:
extreme individualism and extreme collectivism – the
only two paths, though opposite ones, to the single
goal of unity.76
This is not to say that I disagree with the argument that the ways of life
of man and citizen are correctives to the bourgeois condition. Whatever
else that they might stand for, there is no doubt that man and cit izen are
at least whole or psychically one, in contrast to the internal li fe of the
bourgeois which is rent by the contradictions of society. But however
desirable or preferable these distinct and mutually incompatible ways of
life are compared to the bourgeois condition, it does not follow that the
man-citizen dichotomy in Rousseau’s thought originates from his theory
of society. In short , the provenance of the dichotomy is altogether a
76 Melzer , The Naturalness Goodness of Man , p .90 . For a more detai led
trea tment , see pp.89 – 113.
82
separate question, and is independent from the conflagrations of society
that it purports to resolve.
In my view the foundations of the man-citizen dichotomy are much
more ancient and worthy of veneration: the state of nature is the
antechamber where the mutually exclusive ways of the good l ife possible
in the state of society are forged, of which only one is natural . For all
intents and purposes, Rousseau’s state of nature teachings are his first
and final words on this matter. No other consideration beyond these
teachings is therefore necessary to secure Emile’s title as the natural man
living in the state of society. More precisely, the very naturalness of the
way of life of man – and conversely, the very artificiali ty of the way of
life of the citizen – is established by Rousseau’s study of the original
human condition. (This is the capital importance of corroborating the
historicity of the pure state of nature in Rousseau’s thought). In other
words, that which makes the original man of nature natural is that which
makes the man of nature in society natural. The man-citizen dichotomy is
the source of the philosophical kinship between the natural man living in
the state of nature and the natural man l iving in the state of society. By
this measure Emile and his primitive predecessor are equally natural
despite the “great difference” (E , 205) between them, which difference is
incidental to the standard at hand. Naturalness is not a question of degree
or kind: one is either natural or not.
For the sake of analytical convenience we may call this the
‘similarity’ thesis, as opposed to the ‘difference’ thesis the variants of
83
which attempt to define Emile’s naturalness in contradistinction with the
naturalness of the original man of nature as described above. My
departure from standard naturalist interpretations is therefore rooted in
the justification of Emile’s naturalness on the sole basis of Rousseau’s
state of nature teachings. To state my interpretation in terms of the
existing interpretations, the alternative I offer here is substantive rather
than formal in character. The dichotomy outlines two mutually exclusive
ways of life the contents of which are concrete and definitive. But as I
understand it , the substantive criterion of naturalness as determined by
the man-citizen dichotomy is resilient enough to admit enormous formal
differences among the men of nature under consideration here, given the
indeterminacy of the faculty of self-perfection. (For that matter, this also
applies to the citizen: a citizen of Rome would be formally different from
a citizen of Sparta, each bearing the stamp of a particular ci ty). Thus the
attributes and dispositions that Emile happens to possess, which are
absent in his primitive predecessor, are merely an expression of this
formal difference. But great as this difference is , it does not constitute a
new or separate class of naturalness. Consequently, this is why I maintain
that the concept of civilised or Emilean naturalness is superfluous.
Questions may be asked, too, of historicist interpreters on the
grounds of my departure from the leading naturalist interpreters. For
while I share the methodological premise of historicist interpreters that
Rousseau’s state of nature teachings are authoritative with respect to
whether and how nature remains a standard for human social life, I reach
84
a diametrically opposed conclusion. In my view the man-citizen
dichotomy proves categorically that Rousseau’s turn to history is not
simply inimical to the continued relevance of the life in accordance with
nature. Indeed, the historical insight which Rousseau brings to bear on his
study of the original human condition has the effect of clarifying just how
nature remains a standard for human social life. It is worth emphasising
that this standard of naturalness is not purposive in character. Indeed, that
the standard is trans-historical rather than anti-foundational in character
despite Rousseau’s rejection of a teleological conception of nature speaks
to the intellectual daring and audaciousness of the position which he
staked out at the crossroads of the history of ideas.
All of this is to say that the true import of the man-citizen
dichotomy goes beyond the strict confines of an interpretive quarrel
within Rousseau scholarship. For the issues at stake here strike at the
very heart of the modern poli tical project . At the same time that Rousseau
ral lied against the cause of classical poli tical naturalism with an
unrivalled lucidity, he also exposed the limits of modern political
conventionalism. To put the matter differently, we understate the
radicalness of Rousseau’s historical endeavour by overlooking how it
makes provisions for the realisat ion of the good life as he understands it ,
both within and without the city. Thus the significance of Rousseau’s turn
to history in the Second Discourse is not limited to the ostensible purpose
of uncovering the foundations of human social inequality: it is also
necessary for providing the theoretical justification required by the
85
alternate ways of life inherent in the man-citizen dichotomy. True, only in
response to the bourgeois does the man-citizen dichotomy emerge as a
practical alternative. But it is by way of Rousseau’s emphasis on the
historical dimension of the state of nature, his departure from the overly
juridical treatment to which the state of nature is subjected in Hobbes and
Locke’s thought that makes possible the conceptual alternatives for which
man and citizen stand. For if the state of nature is understood simply as
the effective absence of civil society, men must either embrace their lot
as political subjects or suffer the consequences of the impotence of
political authority. To restate the matter, there is no distinction between
the political and non-political way of life in the thought of Hobbes and
Locke. There we witness the strange fulfilment of the classical
understanding of man as the political animal on non-classical terms. Man
was born free, but must thereafter live in chains, whether forged by means
legit imate or illegitimate. All the same the point remains that the destiny
of men is limited to the horizon of the political. It was therefore left to
Rousseau to take the injunctions of modern political conventionalism to
their logical conclusion. This is revealed in full in the man-citizen
dichotomy, which captures the eternal tension between man and the ci ty.
In this light Rousseau’s correction of Hobbes and Locke is more than the
simple rejection of Enlightenment politics. The full extent of Rousseau’s
cri tique of Hobbes and Locke must also take into account how the social
contract theorists before him foreclosed the non-polit ical alternatives of
the good life which he made available in his thought. This is the l ife in
86
accordance with nature, or the way of life of man, the philosophical
justification of which is found in the original man of nature, and from
whom the man of nature in society takes his bearings.77
There is, finally, a question that suggests i tself given the
prominence of the man-citizen dichotomy in the foregoing analysis, and
this pertains to which among the two ways of life outlined in the
dichotomy is more desirable or praiseworthy. Since it is beyond the scope
of the present study to treat this problem in any substantial fashion, a
preliminary response must suffice. Now, the question of the desirability
of the way of l ife of man over the way of life of the citizen may be posed
77 Rousseau’s qual i fied s tance towards modern po li t ical convent iona l i sm
paral le ls Ar is to t le ’s qua l i f ied defense o f c lassical pol i t ical natura l i sm. For however
staunch a proponent o f the view that men a re by na ture po li t ical animals, Aris to t le
was keenly aware that the highes t human good lay beyond the c i ty. Much l ike the
man-ci t izen d ichotomy in Rousseau’s thought , Aris tot le d ist inguishes be tween the
contempla t ive l i fe and the ac t ive l i fe ( these are the equiva lents o f the non-po li t ical
and the po li t ica l way o f l i fe respec t ively) , wi th the former being super io r in charac ter
to the la t ter . See Ar isto t le , Nicomachean Ethics , 1177a11 – 1179a33. Despi te the
paral le l , one cruc ial d i f ference i s that for Rousseau, the way o f l i fe o f man or the
non-po li t ical way o f l i fe is a l so open to the non-phi losopher . After a l l , Emi le i s o f a
common mind (E , 52) . This i s a fea ture o f Rousseau’s ega l i tar ianism, which i s a l so an
impulse o f modern thought more genera l ly, in cont rast to the dis t inct ion o f rank or
human types character i s t ical ly maintained by c lassical thought . All in a l l , the man-
ci t izen dicho tomy may be taken as a re f lec t ion o f Rousseau’s tor tured in tel lec tua l
complexion – Rousseau was cer ta inly a man o f h is t ime, but he also drank deep a t the
wel l o f the ancients.
87
at two levels. At one level we may pit the original man of nature against
the citizen, as Rousseau does on separate occasions in the Second
Discourse and the Social Contract . Here the crux of the matter revolves
around Rousseau’s conception of freedom, or the relative merits of
natural freedom on the one hand and civil freedom on the other, the latter
of which by definit ion encompasses moral freedom.78 Taken together and
at face value the opposing verdicts appear to cancel each other out . This
is not surprising considering that the praise accorded to each of the two
alternatives is lodged in those writings of which man and ci tizen are the
leitmotifs. There is some reason to think, therefore, that these
comparisons between man and citizen are saddled with rhetorical
elements.
This is nicely illustrated by the incongruous if not potentially
contradictory descriptions of the citizen in the two accounts. In the first
instance the characterisation of the citizen militates against everything
that we might expect of Rousseauian citizenship given Rousseau’s fierce
admiration for Rome and Sparta, and his use of their greatness as a
yardstick to measure the spirit and temper of the model citizen. There it is
said of the cit izen that he “pays court to the great whom he hates, and to
the rich whom he scorns. He spares nothing in order to obtain the honour
of serving them; he proudly boasts of his baseness and their protection;
78 See Danie l E. Cullen, Freedom in Rousseau’s Poli t ica l Ph ilosophy , (DeKalb :
Northern I l l ino is Universi ty Press, 1993) , for an extens ive trea tment o f the concep t o f
freedom in Rousseau’s thought .
88
and proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain of those who do not have
the honour of sharing it” (SD , 179). This unflattering portrait of the
citizen, consumed by his servility, follows immediately after the homage
that Rousseau pays to the original man of nature, who “breathes only
repose and freedom” (SD , 179). One suspects that the stark contrast was
engineered to achieve a rhetorical effect entirely in the latter’s favour.79
(For that matter, it is hard to imagine that this is Rousseau’s true
estimation of the citizen considering that elsewhere in the Second
Discourse he speaks so highly of him). At any rate this portrayal of the
(ideal) citizen is certainly at odds with the second instance where he is
described in very different and rather effusive terms:
This passage from the state of nature to the civil state
produces a remarkable change in man, by substituting
justice for instinct in his behaviour and giving his
actions the morali ty they previously lacked …
Although in this state he deprives himself of several
advantages given him by nature, he gains such great
ones, his faculties are exercised and developed, his
79 See Pla t tner , Rousseau’s S ta te o f Nature , pp .11 – 12, who does no t regard
th is as a d iscrepancy, and takes i t instead as a descr ip t ion o f the “genuine ci t izen.”
Whi le there i s no argument that the Rousseauian ci t izen remains in bondage, as the
f i rs t chapter o f Book I in the Social Contrac t so clear ly indicates – Rousseau’s
poli t ical teachings mere ly make the cha ins o f c i t izenship legi t imate – th is i s not to
say tha t the c i t izen i s a slave.
89
ideas broadened, his feelings ennobled, and his whole
soul elevated to such a point that if the abuses of this
new condition did not often degrade him beneath the
condition he left, he ought ceaselessly to bless the
happy moment that tore him away from it forever, and
that changed him from a stupid, limited animal into
an intelligent being and a man. (SC , 55 – 56)
As was the case before, the praise of one accompanies the denigration of
the other, only that here the roles are reversed with the citizen coming off
better in comparison with the original man of nature.
Perhaps the best way to grasp the problem at hand is to pose i t in
light of the extraordinary man of nature, that is to say, the Rousseau of
the autobiographical writ ings. 80 In other words, at another level the
question of the desirabili ty of the way of life of man over the way of life
of the ci tizen may be restated in terms of the tension between philosophy
and polit ics in Rousseau’s thought. Once again, here I can only provide
some tentative reflections, for nowhere in Rousseau’s oeuvre does he
offer a formal defence of reason. Indeed, to take Rousseau’s
understanding of the original human condition seriously is to accept the
80 For a t reatment o f the Rousseau o f the autob iographical wri t ings, see
Chr is topher Kelly, Rousseau’s Exemplary Li fe: The Confess ions as Po li t ica l
Philosophy , ( I thaca, New York: Corne l l Univers i ty Press, 1987) , and Ann Har t le , The
Modern Se l f in Rousseau’s Confess ions: A Reply to S t . August ine , (Notre Dame:
Univers i ty o f Notre Dame Press, 1983) .
90
teaching that reason or philosophy as such is not natural or autonomous.81
However, so far as Rousseau was concerned the trustworthiness of reason
or philosophy lies in its ability to determine the original human condit ion.
This is crucial to the happiness of mankind, the claims of which Rousseau
outlines in his maiden philosophical foray, and which he revisits in others.
The authoritativeness of reason or philosophy l ies, then, in the abili ty of
the philosopher “to study man and know his nature, his duties, and his
end” (FD , 35), the concerns of which are integral to the nature-history
debate. Now if Rousseau’s claim is true, then philosophy is the most
comprehensive science, and being the most comprehensive science,
philosophy is thereby more comprehensive than politics or political
science. On these grounds one is led to conclude, with the caveats in mind,
that the way of life of man (as represented by the philosopher) is more
desirable or praiseworthy than the way of life of the citizen. 82 That the
Legislator, the supremely wise and god-like creature who is so central to
the founding of the Rousseauian city, is more than a political figure – he
81 See Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason , pp .52 – 60, who discusses th is
problem in the context o f Rousseau’s influence on Kantian philosophy.
82 In this connec tion I agree wi th Melzer tha t among the men o f na ture the
Rousseau o f the autob iographical wri t ings represents the peak. See Melzer , The
Natura l Goodness o f Man , pp .91 – 94. For an opposing po int o f view, see Todorov,
Frail Happiness , pp .31 – 66, where he argues that the way o f l i fe o f Emi le i s most
des irable .
91
is rather philosophic in nature – tilts the balance further in favour of man
(SC , 67 – 70).
*****
Our purpose in this chapter was to derive a standard of naturalness
exclusively from Rousseau’s state of nature teachings. This is expressed
in terms of the man-citizen dichotomy in Rousseau’s thought, a radical
restatement of modern political conventionalism that outlines two
incompatible ways of l ife, only one of which is natural . My complete
rel iance on these teachings to justify Emile’s t itle as the man of nature in
society marks a significant departure from existing naturalist
interpretations. Unlike these interpretat ions which make a distinction
between the naturalness of the original man of nature and the naturalness
of the man of nature in society as a result of which Emilean or civilised
naturalness is differentiated from primitive or savage naturalness, the
dichotomy allows me to apply a uniform standard of naturalness to these
two men of nature despite the gulf between them. Because the present
interpretation also abides by the historicist contention that Rousseau’s
state of nature teachings are fundamental and even exhaustive in
determining whether and how nature remains a standard for human social
life, a more forceful objection to the historicist interpretation is thereby
offered here. With the above in mind, we are now ready to explore the
basis of the “great difference” (E , 205) between the original man of
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nature and the man of nature in society. This will require us to turn our
attention to Emile , a text which Rousseau wholly dedicated to affirm the
continued relevance of the life in accordance with nature. In the next
chapter, I will argue that the difference between Emile and his primitive
predecessor is crucial to the satisfaction of the standard of naturalness in
the context of the state of society, an environment that is hostile to the
life in accordance with nature. In other words, it is this difference that
allows Emile to cleave to the standard of naturalness already established
in the Second Discourse , rather than to depart from it as existing
naturalist interpretat ions maintain.
*****
93
4. The Problem of Society: Reconstituting the Man of Nature in
Society (I)
The reconstitution of the man of nature in society makes the good
life possible amidst men who are good neither for themselves nor for
others. Indeed, the reconstitution of the man of nature can only take place
within society in the meaning that Rousseau gives it . This is not to say
that nature and society are thus reconciled; it is rather nature and
civil isation that are reconciled in Emile. Society remains the locus of evil
with enough lures to cause man to fall out of step with the life in
accordance with nature (E , 41). Hence the admission of the man of nature
into the ranks of society does not dilute the repugnance that only it is
capable of eliciting from Rousseau. The abiding tension between nature
and society in evidence here discloses a point of significant import: it is
not the problem of history but the problem of society – how men become
bad for themselves and bad for others – that finally stands in the way of
the realisat ion of the life in accordance with nature. Earl ier it was argued
that nature is robust enough to yield a standard for human social life
despite Rousseau’s radical historicisat ion of the human condit ion. But the
context of that discovery was the (pure) state of nature, a historical
condition forever lost to us, no return or imitation of which is possible.
Thus it remains an open question how the standard is applied in the state
of society, or rather, what the satisfaction of the standard demands of the
person to whom it is applied. Surely the man of nature in society
94
“requires a way of l ife [that is] special to him” (E , 51) given the milieu
which he inhabits.
The purpose of this chapter and the next is to account for the “great
difference” (E , 205) between Emile and his primitive predecessor with
this proviso in mind. The present chapter establishes the parameters of
this discussion by first reviewing what standard naturalist interpretations
make of the problem of society, highlighting in particular the implications
they draw out for the life in accordance with nature. This will provide the
point of departure for my own analysis. In my view these interpretations
understate the problem that society poses to the life in accordance with
nature. Consequently they overlook a crucial component of the natural
education, which is the necessity for the tutor to reorder Emile’s
conception of self-love understood as the pursuit of well-being. How this
is achieved will be considered in the next chapter; our task in this chapter
is to determine why such an undertaking is necessary if Emile is to abide
by the life in accordance with nature, and subsequently, how it sets him
apart from his primitive predecessor even as the two men of nature in
question here are natural according to the single standard of naturalness
already derived from Rousseau’s state of nature teachings. To this end we
will also turn our attention to the bourgeois, whose grounds of being
holds the key to unravelling the paradox at hand. Lastly, to set the stage
for the next chapter where we will look more closely into the way of life
of the man of nature in society, we will conclude this chapter by outlining
95
the way of life of the original man of nature to provide a basis of
comparison.
*****
Following the formal and substantive accounts of Emilean
naturalness, the problem of society in Rousseau’s thought may be
formulated in one of two ways. The formal account highlights Rousseau’s
dissection of the cruel imperative that society imposes on men. This is the
contradiction of society, a social arrangement designed to extract from
men’s undiluted self-interest some common advantage by obliging each to
serve the rest with a view to being served in turn. What transpires instead
is that everyone soon learns to scheme and plot against his fellows the
better to have his way. Emile is spared these intrigues because the tutor
prevents him from being inducted into the relations of dependence that
gives rise to them. 83 The substantive account emphasises instead
Rousseau’s crit ique of the currency by which men measure themselves
against others to determine their value in and to society. This is the
problem of amour-propre , a peculiar manifestation of self-love that
83 See Melzer , The Natura l Goodness o f Man , pp .69 – 85. Ear l ier , I r e l ied on
Cl i f ford Orwin’s exposi t ion o f Emilean naturalness to i l lustrate how nature remains a
formal s tandard for human socia l l i fe . Here I turn to Melzer ins tead s ince he, among
interpreters who belong to th is school o f thought , provides the ful les t account o f the
problem of socie ty in Rousseau’s thought .
96
quickens under the glare of opinion. Thus amour-propre is capable of
turning the simple act of feeding oneself into a spectacle that has more to
do with sating the mind than the body (E , 190). With the capacity to
conflate the superfluous with the necessary, amour-propre has the
distinctive power to flatter men even as it fetters them. Emile is spared
living under its illusions because the tutor prevents his needs from
becoming inflamed by subjecting them to the dictates of necessity and
utility; to entrench this regime further Emile is also taught to pity his
social betters rather than to envy them.84
Although each is offered as an al ternative to the other, there is no
intention here to assess the comparative merits of the two formulations of
the problem of society in Rousseau’s thought as outl ined above.85 Rather,
the purpose of this brief presentation is to draw attention to a
fundamental agreement between them. For however the problem of society
is conceptualised from one account to the next, the principle underlying
the remedy that each takes Rousseau to propose in the form of the natural
education remains the same, which may be summed up as follows: since
man is naturally good and society is irremediably bad, it is not man but
society that has to be thwarted. In other words, Emile’s native
84 See Cooper , Rousseau , Nature, and the Prob lem of the Good Life , pp .115 –
181.
85 Compare Melzer , The Natura l Goodness o f Man , p .70, n .2 wi th Cooper ,
Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , p .136, n .35 , and p .180, n .97 .
97
inclinations pose no problems to the tutor so long as they are unspoilt by
society. The corollary of this principle is that no harm can possibly ensue
when these inclinations are left alone to flourish, such as they are. It will
be helpful to examine the remedies in turn to establish the point in
question.
According to the formal account, “the idea of indirect rule” 86 is
crucial to the success of the natural education, since the latter must
proceed without any orders given or taken. For although Emile is
sheltered from society at large, the contest of wills implicit in any
exercise of authority is just as capable of poisoning the relationship
between tutor and tutee in the same way that relat ions of dependence
enslave both master and servant (E , 89). Men have the power to acquiesce
in or refuse Emile’s bidding, and to expose him to their wills is to tempt
him to bend them to his. Inanimate things on the other hand, can neither
commend nor withhold themselves from Emile. This is the distinction
between the dependence on men and the dependence on things, on which
the opposition between nature and society turns (E , 85). The tutor’s
imposit ion of indirect rule mimics the dependence on things, keeps Emile
free from the dependence on men and consequently, prevents him from
86 Melzer , The Natural Goodness o f Man , p .245. See a lso Or win, “Rousseau on
the Sources o f Ethics,” pp.72 – 73 on the impor tance o f ‘ind irect ru le ’ to the na tura l
educat ion, in par t icula r , ho w i t contr ibutes towards the real isat ion o f nature as a
( formal) s tandard for human social l i fe as understood by these in terpre ters.
98
understanding human relations through the prism of power and
dependence, which is what society inst ils in men.
Where the substantive account is concerned, the antidote to the
problem of society l ies in “the good governance of amour-propre .”87 Here
the tutor’s intervention is vital since the development of amour-propre is
inevitable. This is also to say that amour-propre can be a force for good
when properly nurtured. Indeed, the life in accordance with nature would
be less rich, if not altogether impossible, in its absence. Without the
prompting of amour-propre , Emile would lack the capacity for
compassion and romantic love, the twin pillars of his moral education. In
other words, we owe the development of our humanity to amour-propre .
For better or for worse, men are creatures of esteem. The prevailing
question for the tutor is to determine the arena in which Emile develops
and wins his esteem. This is to ensure that his amour-propre is benign
rather than malignant (E , 235). To this end, the premature birth of amour-
propre must never be incited, and once born, it is up to the tutor to train
its sights on what is praiseworthy.88
The spirit , i f not the letter, of these stratagems is that it is
sufficient for the tutor to “form an enclosure around [Emile’s] soul” (E ,
87 Cooper , Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem o f the Good Li fe , p .119.
88 Since Cooper understands na tura lness to be “de termined fir st and foremost
by the qua li ty o f one’s sel f -love” (p .14) , he pays par t icular a t tent ion to how amour-
propre can e i ther suppor t or frustrate the l i fe in accordance wi th na ture .
99
38) in order to stave off the corruption of society. To restate the matter,
nothing in Emile’s soul requires alteration. But this view of things is only
half-correct . While it is vitally important to keep society at bay in the
manner so described – a tall order in itself – to limit the scope of the
tutor’s undertaking in these terms radically understates the problem that
society poses to the l ife in accordance with nature. Necessary as they may
be, these stratagems are insufficient to ensure the success of the
education of nature. What they overlook altogether is a second component
of the natural education, equally necessary as the first , without which
everything falls apart. True, society must be worked on. But what is also
true is that Emile himself must be worked on if the man of nature is to be
reconstituted in society. Only when these two components of the natural
education are suitably in place will the tutor successfully deflect the
advances of society. It wil l be sufficient for our purpose to limit our
attention to the second component of the natural education. This will
allow us to focus on the basis of the “great difference” (E , 205) between
Emile and his primitive predecessor. In short , Emile’s conception of self-
love understood as the pursuit of well-being must be altered if he is to
abide by the life in accordance with nature.89
89 This injunc tion i s s tr iking given the central pr inciple o f Rousseau’s thought
– the na tura l goodness o f man – a pr inc iple that he never wavered fro m desp ite the
evi l which soc ial man is capab le o f wreaking. “Men are wicked; sad and continual
exper ience spares the need for proof. However , man i s na tura l ly good ; I bel ieve I
have demonstrated i t” (SD , 193) . Despi te the goodness o f nature , and therewi th the
100
The clue lies in Rousseau’s intriguing characterisation of the
bourgeois:
He who in the civil order wants to preserve the
primacy of the sentiments of nature does not know
what he wants. Always in contradiction with himself,
always floating between his inclinations and his
duties, he will never be either man or ci t izen. He will
be good neither for himself nor for others. He will be
one of these men of our days: a Frenchman, an
Englishman, a bourgeois. He will be nothing. (E , 40)
This is a rare and extraordinary insight into the psychology of a character
frequently vilified by Rousseau. There is no lack of accounts in
Rousseau’s corpus trumpeting the contemptibili ty of the bourgeois – his
cupidity, his pusillanimity, his utter lack of dependability (FD , 51, SD ,
194 – 195; E , 54 – 55, 335; E , 40, 41). But there is nothing quite like this,
a formal statement which discloses the grounds of his being. Ordinarily
the bourgeois is deployed as the motif of unnaturalness or art ificiality.
However the indication here is that it is precisely the preservation of the
primacy of the sentiments of nature, while in the civil order, that makes
the bourgeois who he is. This is a rather counterintuitive proposition with
abso lut ion o f na ture fo r the i l l s o f society, Emile’s natural const i tut ion must be
al tered i f the man o f na ture i s to be reconst i tu ted wi thin soc ie ty. We may thus say
that nature i s the inspira t ion behind, as well as the object o f the educat ion to which i t
gives i ts name.
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considerable implications for the man of nature in society. For if the
bourgeois is the antithesis of the man of nature in society, then preserving
the primacy of the sentiments of nature does not comport with the life in
accordance with nature. We shall see why this is so in what remains of
this section.
Nature remains a standard for human social l ife to the extent that it
is possible to raise a man “uniquely for himself” (E , 41) in the civil order,
the genus to which society and the Rousseauian city belong. Following
the determinations of the man-citizen dichotomy, such an education has
no place in the Rousseauian city. In other words, society is the only
alternative left to the man of nature in which to flourish despite
Rousseau’s denunciation of it . Society as Rousseau understood the term is
nothing more than a clearinghouse of individual self-interest. The
problem arises when society cannot be acknowledged such as it is. With
individual self-interest Rousseau had no quarrel . “The love of oneself is
always good and always in conformity with order. Since each man is
specially entrusted with his own preservation, the first and most
important of his cares is and ought to be to watch over it constantly” (E ,
213). It is the contortions which self-interest assumes in society that is
the problem:
Henceforth we must beware of letting ourselves be
seen as we are: for two men whose interests agree, a
hundred thousand can be opposed to them, and there
is in this case no other means to succeed than to
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deceive or ruin all these people. This is the deadly
source of violence, treachery, perfidy, and all the
horrors necessarily demanded by a state of things in
which each – pretending to work for the fortune and
reputation of the others – seeks only to raise his own
above them and at their expense. (PN , 26 – 27)
This is how the moral currency of society leads to the psychic doubling of
social man, “always appearing to relate everything to others and never
relating anything except to themselves alone” (E , 41), as a result of which
he will become bad for himself and bad for others. More pertinently,
under these circumstances where men are compelled to use their fellows
in the pursuit of their well-being, it is impossible for them to abide by the
life in accordance with nature.
“Natural man is entirely for himself. He is numerical unity, the
absolute whole which is relative only to itself and its kind” (E , 39). It is
crucial to note that no distinction is made here between the original man
of nature and the man of nature in society. Whether in the state of nature
or in the state of society, the man of nature remains “entirely for
himself.” To clarify what this entai ls, i t will be useful to consult the
accompanying description of the citizen which Rousseau provides as a
point of comparison:
Civil man is only a fractional unity dependent on the
denominator; his value is determined by his relat ion
to the whole, which is the social body. Good social
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institutions are those that best know how to denature
man, to take his absolute existence from him in order
to give him a relative one and transport the I into the
common unity, with the result that each individual
believes himself no longer one but a part of the unity
and no longer feels except within the whole. (E , 39 –
40)
Whereas natural man enjoys an absolute existence, civil man embraces a
relative one. In other words, the well-being of the ci tizen is constructed
in relation to those around him, whether these others happen to be his
fel low citizens or otherwise. With his fellow citizens, this relationship is
complementary – the citizen qua cit izen “no longer feels except within
the whole” (E , 40). With others who are not his fellow citizens, the
relationship is antagonistic:
Every particular society, when it is narrow and
unified, is estranged from the all-encompassing
society. Every patriot is harsh to foreigners. They are
only men. They are nothing in his eyes. This is a
drawback, inevitable but not compelling. The
essential thing is to be good to the people with whom
one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious,
avaricious, iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity,
and concord reigned within his walls. (E , 39)
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Taken together, the well-being of the ci tizen is dependent upon others,
both within and without the ci ty.
Natural man, on the other hand, enjoys an absolute existence in that
his well-being is construed independently of his fellows. There are, so to
speak, no ties of friendship or enmity between him and his fellows at
large to which his well-being is subject: he does not need or expect them
to contribute towards it , nor is it defined in opposition to theirs. It is in
this sense that natural man is ‘entirely for himself’. Wholes unto
themselves, they remain entirely for themselves.90 With this description of
the life in accordance with nature in place, we can now appreciate why
Emile’s conception of self-love understood as the pursuit of well-being
must be altered if he is to become the man of nature in society. The
bourgeois is proof that the untrammelled pursuit of well-being in the
context of society is at odds with the life in accordance with nature. His
is a cautionary tale of the pathology of untutored self-love, pulled hither
90 To remain ent i rely for onese l f does no t preclude one from forming deep
at tachments wi th others, such as Emile ’s case wi th the tu tor fi rs t , and then wi th
Sophie. (The bourgeo is himsel f i s not incapab le of love for one’s own, and Rousseau
does no t cr i t ic ise him fo r i t . Indeed, bourgeo is domestic i ty provided Rousseau wi th
the plat for m for the moral projec t that Emile rep resents. See Or win, “Rousseau on the
Sources o f Ethics,” p .66) . The po int , ra ther , is tha t Emile must eschew the use o f h is
fe l lo ws in the pursui t o f h is well -being, which the bourgeois fa i l s to do . But as we
sha l l see in the next chapter , in their o wn ways Emile ’s a t tachment to the tuto r on the
one hand, and to Sophie on the o ther , i s in tens ion wi th the demand that he remain
ent irely fo r himse l f.
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and thither by the trappings of society. Such a man cannot remain entirely
for himself because he is never uninterested in his fel lows, and no man
who uses his fellows to further his own well-being can remain entirely for
himself because in order to secure others for himself, he must also live
for them.91 Thus the st ipulation that Emile cannot preserve the primacy of
the sentiments of nature is necessary to facilitate the reconsti tution of the
man of nature in society, or what is the same, to prevent him from going
the way of the bourgeois. In and of itself this is a useful tool to tell the
man of nature in society apart from the bourgeois, both of whom call
society home and are therefore non- or anti-citizens by definition.92 More
91 Neither i s the bourgeo is a Rousseauian ci t izen because he does no t l ive
ent irely fo r o thers , as i t were. Rather the bourgeois i s a mish-mash o f man and
ci t izen, ne i ther ent ire ly for h imse l f nor ent irely for o thers. T his is why Rousseau
maintains tha t the bourgeois i s in contrad ict ion wi th himse l f. T he educa tion o f
soc iety, from which the bourgeo is i s hewn, “ i s f i t only fo r making double men” (E ,
41) .
92 On the terms o f the man-c i t izen dichotomy the l i fe in accordance wi th
na ture i s s tr ic t ly ant i - o r non-po li t ical in charac ter . This has been de termined by
Rousseau’s study o f the or igina l human cond it ion, where men were shown to be as far
removed as possib le f rom having the need or the capaci ty to form po li t ical
communi t ies. And ye t by Rousseau’s reckoning membership in a pol i t ical communi ty
– which Emile and the bourgeo is can equa lly cla im – does no t make one a c i t izen in
the sense tha t he gives the ter m. Indeed, Rousseau i s o f the op inion tha t c i t izenship
belongs to a bygone age . “Pub lic ins truct ion no longer exist s and can no longer exist ,
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crucially for our purpose, i t is this very stipulation that sets Emile apart
from his primitive predecessor in the decisive sense. This is also to say
that how the man of nature in society differs from the original man of
nature is, fundamentally, one and the same thing as how the man of nature
in society differs from the man of society.
The nature of this connection is outlined in the following quotation:
There is a great difference between the natural man
living in the state of nature and the natural man living
in the state of society. Emile is not a savage to be
relegated to the desert. He is a savage made to inhabit
cities. He has to know how to find his necessities in
them, to take advantage of their inhabitants, and to
live, i f not like them, at least with them. (E , 205)
Clearly the ‘great difference’ between Emile and his primitive
predecessor must be understood against the backdrop of society. In other
words, the decisive difference between the man of nature in society and
the original man of nature cannot be determined simply by juxtaposing
one man of nature to the next, stripped of all context. Rather, it only
emerges by way of the bourgeois, who supplies the vital link to help us
make sense of the difference between the man of nature in society and the
original man of nature especially in terms of Rousseau’s re-articulation or
because where there is no longer father land , there can no longer be c i t izens. These
two words, fa therland and ci t i zen , should be e ffaced from modern languages” (E , 40) .
107
elaboration of the l ife in accordance with nature as being entirely for
oneself. This point deserves emphasis, i f only to underline my thesis that
the great difference between Emile and his primitive predecessor is
actually the upshot of Emile having to satisfy the (single) standard of
naturalness in an environment that is in every way unlike the one from
which it is derived. We are already acquainted with how the way of life of
the bourgeois is incompatible with the l ife in accordance with nature. As
the putative natural man living in the state of society, Emile must
therefore make a virtue of necessity by living with his fellows. To remain
entirely for himself in spite of his fellows, he must not live like them.
Thus the stipulation that Emile cannot preserve the primacy of the
sentiments of nature – that which makes the life in accordance with nature
possible in the state of society – is the crux of the great difference
between him and his primitive predecessor. For just as the essential
difference between Emile and the bourgeois is , in the final analysis, due
to the demands of the life in accordance with nature in the context of
society, so it is with respect to the essential difference between Emile and
his primitive predecessor. To restate the matter, whereas the
untrammelled pursuit of well-being is at odds with the requirement to
remain entirely for oneself in the state of society and must therefore be
reined in, the integri ty of the life in accordance with nature so understood
is unaffected by i t in the state of nature. To press home the argument, we
will examine next the ways of life of the original man of nature and the
108
man of nature in society respectively to highlight the decisive difference
between them.
*****
To be sure, it is not immediately obvious that men in the original
human condition pursue their well-being as vigorously as implied above.
Indeed, Rousseau leaves us with the opposite impression in his discussion
of the two principles of soul that shape the way of life of the original man
of nature. These are the interest in his well-being and his self-
preservation, and natural pi ty, which moves him to be repulsed at the
sight of suffering or death of any sensitive being, especially his kind. In
the event of a conflict between self-preservation and natural pity, the
former trumps the latter. No quarter will be given if his li fe is at stake
(SD , 95 – 96). Stil l , Rousseau makes the claim that natural pi ty, by
“moderating in each individual the activity of love of oneself, contributes
to the mutual preservation of the entire species” (SD , 133). Natural pity,
so it seems, has the effect of blunting any excessiveness that may arise
from the instinct to preserve oneself where this exuberance does nothing
to insure one’s survival but threatens instead the survival of others. Thus
natural pity “will dissuade every robust savage from robbing a weak child
or an infirm old man of his hard-won subsistence if he himself hopes to
be able to find his own elsewhere” (SD , 133). This leads Rousseau to
speak of natural pity in the most effusive of manners: “in the state of
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nature, it takes the place of laws, morals, and virtue with the advantage
that no one is tempted to disobey its gentle voice” (SD , 133). In short,
natural pity puts into question the view that in the state of nature men are
given over to the untrammelled pursuit of their well-being.
Yet there are good reasons to be sceptical of this ode to natural pity.
Hope, that which inspires violence in the Hobbesian state of nature, 93 is
reformed into an agent of peace in the Rousseauian state of nature. It is
hope that inspires the robust savage to find his subsistence elsewhere,
leaving his pitiful fellows to enjoy theirs. But this anti-Hobbesian portrait
of the original human condition is still too Hobbesian by half. If on the
terms of his argument Hobbes is guilty of overstating the
rambunctiousness of man in the (pure) state of nature as Rousseau claims
(SD , 128 – 130), then similarly on the terms of his own argument
Rousseau is guilty of understating it . As we shall see, Rousseau’s man
does not require the passions of Hobbes’s man to behave likewise, in deed
if not in intent . Hope has no place in the economy of soul of the original
man of nature. Nothing is as limited as the mind of primitive man, who
has not the slightest premonit ion of time. Primitive man is someone for
whom the past and the future are wholly ensconced in the present:
His imagination suggests nothing to him; his heart
asks nothing of him. His modest needs are so easily
found at hand, and he is so far from the degree of
93 See Hobbes, Levia than , Chap ter XIII .3 – 4 .
110
knowledge necessary for desiring to acquire greater
knowledge, that he can have neither foresight nor
curiosity … His soul, agitated by nothing, is given
over to the sole sentiment of its present existence
without any idea of the future, however near it may
be, and his projects, as limited as his views, barely
extend to the end of the day. (SD , 117)
There can be no hope without foresight. Because the original man of
nature lacks foresight, he would not have been able to make the mental
calculations implicit in the narrative – that to act against the promptings
of natural pi ty would have needlessly condemned the weak child or the
infirm old man to their deaths. In other words, he could not have foreseen
the effects of his li fe-preserving or death-preventing act, the recognition
of which is critical to this purported display of natural pity.
None of this is to say that pity is absent in the (pure) state of
nature. 94 Rather, what is in question here is the ambit of natural pity.
According to Rousseau, pity in its natural or simplest form can be called
upon without the ramparts of reason or sociability (SD , 95 – 96). Neither
94 But th is i s exac t ly the thes is o f Masters and Pla t tner . Both argue, in the ir
own ways, tha t the operat ion o f na tural p i ty i s cont ingent upon man’s sociab i l i ty. And
since pr imi t ive man i s asoc ial , they contend that na tura l p i ty is absent in the
pr imi t ive s ta te o f nature . See Masters, The Pol i t ical Phi losophy of Rousseau , pp .136
– 146, and Plat tner , Rousseau’s S ta te o f Nature , pp .82 – 87.
111
of these last is necessary for primitive man to respond to the “cry of
nature,” pity’s clarion call in the pure state of nature:
Man’s first language, the most universal , most
energetic, and only language he needed before it was
necessary to persuade assembled men, is the cry of
nature. As this cry was elicited only by a kind of
instinct in pressing emergencies, to beg for help in
great dangers, or for relief in violent ills, it was not
of much use in the ordinary course of life, where
more moderate sentiments prevail. (SD , 122)
This exposit ion of the ambit of natural pity in the pure state of nature is
also in keeping with Rousseau’s insistence that death is beyond the
comprehension of the original man of nature (SD , 110 – 111, 116). The
cry of nature can be heeded or understood in the absence of the
knowledge of death. It only requires primitive man to recognise situations
of extreme pain and danger on the basis of inst inct alone, much like
animals themselves are capable of doing. So understood, natural pity is
simply a sensitivity to suffering in others, or as Rousseau puts it , “the
innate repugnance to see his fellow-man suffer” (SD , 130).
To return to the matter at hand, there is enough evidence to suggest
that pi ty could not have acted as a restraint on men as described above:
the example of natural pity that highlighted so touchingly the benevolence
of primitive man may be taken as an embellishment on Rousseau’s part.
Indeed, men in the original human condition pursue their well-being
112
rather unreservedly, even at the expense of their fellows, as a closer
scrutiny of the single note which accompanies Rousseau’s treatment of
natural pity wil l reveal. The ostensible purpose of Note O is to
distinguish the two manifestations of self-love rendered by the terms
‘love of oneself’ and ‘vanity’ or amour de soi and amour-propre
respectively. The point which Rousseau wishes to make is that vanity
must be absent in the pure state of nature since primitive man is incapable
of comparing himself with his fellows in a manner which the sentiment of
vanity necessitates. 95 What is also relevant to the matter at hand are the
implications that Rousseau derives from primitive man’s immunity to
vanity:
This being well understood, I say that in our
primitive state, in the true state of nature, vanity does
not exist; for each particular man regarding himself
as the sole spectator to observe him, as the sole being
in the universe to take an interest in him, and as the
sole judge of his merit, i t is not possible that a
sentiment having its source in comparisons he is not
capable of making could spring up in his soul. For the
same reason this man could have neither hate nor
95 Hobbes himsel f supp lies Rousseau wi th the argument. Hobbes observes in
Chap ter XVII .7 o f h is Levia than that animals are incapable o f vani ty. But as we have
seen above, pr imi t ive man, in Rousseau’s conception, i s an animal in a l l respects bar
one .
113
desire for revenge, passions that can arise only from
the opinion that some offense has been received; and
as i t is scorn or intention to hurt and not the harm
that constitutes the offense, men who know neither
how to evaluate themselves nor compare themselves
can do each other a great deal of mutual violence
when they derive some advantage from it, without
ever offending one another. In a word, every man,
seeing his fellow-men hardly otherwise than he would
see animals of another species, can carry off the prey
of the weaker or rel inquish his own to the stronger,
without considering these plunderings as anything but
natural events, without the slightest emotion of
insolence or spite, and with no other passion than the
sadness or joy of a good or bad outcome. (SD , 222)
There is no suggestion in Note O that this competition over food arises
out of a condition of scarcity. In other words, it is not out of the ordinary
that one man should rob another of his food. Thus we are led to conclude
that plunder is a usual occurrence in the pure state of nature, even in the
absence of an imperative to preserve oneself. Whether primitive man is by
nature a carnivore or a frugivore – Rousseau comes down on the side of
the latter to bolster the rhetorical presentation of the ease of life in pure
state of nature and thus of the gentleness of its inhabitants (Notes E, H, L)
– he is first and foremost a plunderer.
114
Such are the comings and goings in the pure state of nature. And
yet , in spite of these skirmishes, men in the original human condition
remain entirely for themselves. In other words, the untrammelled pursuit
of well-being in the state of nature is not incompatible with the life in
accordance with nature so understood. “Savage man, when he has eaten, is
at peace with all nature, and the friend of all his fellow-men” (SD , 195).
His hunger sated, primitive man has no cause to prevail upon his fellows,
just as they have none to prevail upon him, there being no bounty to
plunder. Even on those occasions when he did prevail upon others, and
they upon him, these were but chance encounters, with no further
ramifications on how men pursue their well-being. For in the same way
that his dullness of mind prevented him from coming to the aid of his
fel lows as the initial example of natural pity above warrants, so by the
same measure primitive man could not have, as a result of these
encounters, come to take an interest in his fellows or form an attachment
with them that would be prejudicial to remaining entirely for himself.
Rousseau puts the matter thus:
A man might well seize the fruits another has
gathered, the game he has killed, the cave that served
as his shelter; but how will he ever succeed in making
himself obeyed? And what can be the chains of
dependence among men who possess nothing? If
someone chases me from one tree, I am at liberty to
115
go to another; i f someone torments me in one place,
who will prevent me from going elsewhere? (SD , 139)
In principle if not always in practice, primitive man is self-sufficient ,
there being little by way of material obstacles for him not to be
considering his rudimentary needs. Carrying within himself all that was
required for his self-preservation, he was, in a manner of speaking, not
beholden to his fellows nor a burden upon them. This is how the original
man of nature remained entirely for himself, having neither the incentive
nor the cause to deviate from this way of life (SD , 138 – 140).
In this connection, there is one aspect of Rousseau’s (ambiguous)
presentation of the way of life in the original human condition that might
on the surface, challenge the preceding analysis. This revolves around the
possibility, which Rousseau himself raises, that men in the original
human condition are gregarious. If so, how could primitive men (and
women) remain entirely for themselves had they lived in herds? It is
therefore necessary to address this concern before we proceed onwards.
Earlier I noted Rousseau’s dismissive att itude towards the travel
literature of his time. Actually, he makes one exception in favour of the
testimonies of the European travellers, since “eyes alone are needed to
observe these things” (SD , 189). Seizing upon reports that pongos l ive in
herds Rousseau puts out the suggestion that they just might be “true
savage men … still found in the primitive state of nature” (SD , 204). In
so doing Rousseau tempers the view pursued in the body of text
116
concerning the radical self-sufficiency of men in the original human
condition which we have discussed above.
To speak more accurately, it is not primitive men but primitive
women who define the full range of human self-sufficiency, since it falls
upon them to carry, bear, and care for their offspring.96 So long as enough
primitive women and their children survive without assistance the trying
periods during maternity and infancy, the family unit is superfluous to
ensure the continued perpetuation of the species. On this issue hinges the
naturalness of the human family in the pure state of nature the importance
of which is attested by the numerous notes we find on this and other
related subjects. They include Rousseau’s thoughts on human bipedalism
(Note C), the natural fertility of the earth (Note D), the dietary habits of
carnivores and frugivores (Notes E and H), and matters relating to the
sexual conduct between primitive men and women (Note L). Thus in Note
J Rousseau uses the Histoire to serve as a counterpoint to his presentation
of the soli tary way of life of primitive man outlined in the body of the
text.
But even if primitive men and women did live in herds, it does not
necessari ly follow that they could not have remained entirely for
themselves in the manner so described. For whether primitive woman
continues to be radically self-sufficient despite the burdens of
childbearing, and is therefore capable of leading an independent and
96 See Schwartz , The Sexual Pol i t ics o f Jean-Jacques Rousseau , pp .16 – 24.
117
solitary existence as the body of the text suggests, or instead requires a
gregarious mode of l ife which possibility Rousseau’s manipulation of the
Histoire allows so that these burdens do not lead to the extinction of the
species, the point remains that reason is unnatural to man, the
development of which Rousseau maintains time and circumstances
conspire against. 97 And in the absence of reason, the dynamics of the
relationship between primitive men and women would remain the same as
described above. In other words, the conditions of life that result in a
kind of dependence between one man and another that would put the
strictures of remaining entirely for oneself in jeopardy are absent in the
pure state of nature, regardless of whether men lived in herds or not.
Indeed, only in the advanced state of nature, as i t were, are the conditions
of life altered to such an extent that it is no longer possible for men to
remain entirely for themselves (SD , 150 – 152). Be that as i t may, it is
easy to see why Rousseau is quite happy to trumpet the view that in the
original human condition men live their l ives out isolated from each other.
Certainly this presentation appears less at odds with the strictures of
remaining entirely for oneself than the other.
*****
97 Here , I fo l lo w the ana lysis in Masters, The Pol i t ical Phi losophy of
Rousseau , pp .132 – 136.
118
The purpose of this chapter is to account for the “great difference”
(E , 205) between Emile and his primitive predecessor. In my view the
decisive difference between one man of nature and the next is propelled
by a fundamental similarity, which is the single standard of naturalness in
Rousseau’s thought. In other words, the decisive difference between
Emile and his primitive predecessor can be put down to his having to
satisfy the standard of naturalness in an environment that is in every way
different from the one which it is derived. This is the problem that society
poses to the life in accordance with nature. Consequently, the remedy is
far more radical , and far more intrusive in character than what existing
naturalist interpretations intimate. If Emile is to remain entirely for
himself in spite of his fellows, he cannot preserve the primacy of the
sentiments of nature. The bourgeois plays a crit ical role in bringing this
to light, the grounds of his being giving us an indication of the lengths to
which Emile must go to abide by the life in accordance with nature in the
context of society. Thus while the man of society is not the fount of the
standard of naturalness in Rousseau’s thought, he nevertheless has a hand
in shaping who the man of nature in society is. As it turns out , this is
crucial in helping us dist inguish between the man of nature in society and
the original man of nature: how Emile differs from his primitive
predecessor is inseparable from how he differs from the bourgeois. With
this in mind, we shall turn our attention to the next chapter where we will
see how the tutor alters Emile’s conception of self-love understood as the
119
pursuit of well-being to prevent society from derailing the l ife in
accordance with nature.
*****
120
5. The Problem of Society: Reconstituting the Man of Nature in
Society (II)
This chapter examines further the problem that society poses to the
life in accordance with nature. More specifically, it complements the
previous chapter by showing how the tutor contrives to reorder Emile’s
conception of self-love understood as the pursuit of well-being. Earlier it
was established that this soul-doctoring, so to speak, is the source of the
“great difference” (E , 205) between Emile and his primitive predecessor.
What is equally significant is that this undertaking makes the life in
accordance with nature possible in the context of society: as the putative
natural man living in the state of society, Emile cannot preserve the
primacy of the sentiments of nature. In other words, Emile’s natural
constitut ion must be altered if he is to remain entirely for himself in the
face of the enticements before him. For one thing, at every turn society
presents Emile with the opportunity to avail himself of the use of his
fel lows. For another, unlike the original man of nature who had the good
fortune to live among others like himself – one was therefore as
uninterested in others as others in him – Emile’s fellows will not leave
him be, and have the capacity to induce him to take an unhealthy interest
in them. Two episodes drawn from the natural education will be examined
to illustrate these considerations in turn. There, we are also given an
insight into the deliberations and the calculated response of the tutor.
Passions and dispositions which, although natural or good in and by
121
themselves, must be curtailed on the one hand and manipulated on the
other in order to keep Emile from using his fellows. In the main, the first
episode takes place during Emile’s early childhood, and the second, at the
threshold of his introduction into society. From a dramatic point of view
they mark the beginning and the end of the action of the natural education.
Taken together they highlight the urgency and the constancy with which
the tutor attends to the matter at hand, all with a view to ensure that
Emile remains entirely for himself.
*****
The first consideration for the disciplining of self-love is lodged
within Rousseau’s disquisi tion on tears (E , 64 – 69). More specifically, i t
comes to light by way of his treatment of the abuse of tears. Bereft of
speech, tears are the only means by which an infant communicates his
needs to his caregivers (E , 65). Until the child has a surfeit of strength
over needs, he is largely dependent on those around him from whom he
expects help and relief. One should render assistance to the child and
satisfy those needs for which he lacks strength, leaving him to meet
others which he can satisfy on his own so that his strength may develop
(E , 68). Thus the goal during childhood is one of gradual emancipation
characterised by the movement from the need for physical relief to the
rel ief from physical need (E , 78). But the parenting sins of omission and
commission ensure that the first of these goes unmet while the second is
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postponed indefinitely. It is always to the detriment of children when they
are thwarted by deficient care on the one hand and sated by excessive
attention on the other (E , 44 – 48). Children who are otherwise guileless
learn to abuse their tears as a result of the second of these transgressions.
“The first tears of children are prayers. If one is not careful , they
soon become orders. Children begin by getting themselves assisted; they
end by getting themselves served” (E , 66). The over-eager response to
appease a crying infant fosters in him the idea of domination. The
intention of the caregiver backfires and the infant learns to indulge in the
chicanery of tears. Having understood that help is always at hand, the
infant , through the deception of tears, schemes instead to be feared and
obeyed. It dawns upon the infant that his energies are better spent
manipulating those around him who are strong enough to move mountains
on his behalf. The easy supply of tears serves to increase his demands
which quickly assume unreasonable proportions (E , 69, 87 – 88). This is
how children, who know no better, learn to abuse their tears after
receiving encouragement from their unwitting caregivers. That caregivers
are unaware of their complicity in this matter – they attribute the cause of
their troubles to nature or the child’s temperament – at tests to the
swiftness and subtleness by which society operates (E , 69). In some sense
they are correct , since infants are constitutionally prone to cry even in the
absence of want or provocation, as we shall soon see. Hence the margins
that separate a child who is eventually, though inadvertently, corrupted
by his caregiver from another who is not are very fine indeed. Emile
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himself would be irretrievably lost to society but for the discriminating
aural perceptions of the tutor.
This is illustrated in the anecdote where Rousseau advises
caregivers to carry a child towards an object which the child desires
rather than to bring it to him (E , 66). But should the child be audacious
enough to cry either as a command for the object to approach him or as an
order for the caregiver to bring the object to him, Rousseau counsels the
caregiver to ignore the child’s screams. The aim of these calibrated
responses is to have the child draw “a conclusion appropriate to his age”
(E , 66), that he is neither the master of men nor things. To accede to the
child’s demands in this instance is to teach him to abuse his tears. While
there is no indication whether the child in the passage in question is
Emile, neither is there any evidence that the child is already corrupt.
Indeed, the preventive measures discussed there leave us to conclude that
it outlines the proper handling of a child and so would not by definition
preclude the tutor’s relationship with Emile. Hence it appears that the
advice which Rousseau dispenses – that “it is important from the earliest
age to disentangle the secret intention which dictates the gesture or the
scream” (E , 66) – is for the consumption of the tutor no less than for
more ordinary caregivers. The difference between them is that the tutor
responds accordingly, thereby saving Emile from ruin.
This is also to say that a dist inction should be made between the
crying bouts to which Emile is predisposed, and the abuse of tears from
which he is diverted. What is crucial to emphasise in this connection is
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the superabundance of life, a disposition natural to man, the force of
which waxes and wanes over time. Rousseau’s description of this
phenomenon at its peak, which follows his observations on the abuse of
tears, is worth quoting at length:
A child wants to upset everything he sees; he smashes,
breaks everything he can reach. He grabs a bird as he
would grab a stone, and he strangles it without
knowing what he does .. . [H]e senses within himself,
so to speak, enough life to animate everything
surrounding him. That he do or undo is a matter of no
importance; it suffices that he change the condition of
things, and every change is an action. If he seems to
have more of an inclination to destroy, it is not from
wickedness but because the action which gives shape
is always slow and the action which destroys, being
more rapid, fits his vivacity better. (E , 67)
Seen in this light, it is clear that the crying bouts mentioned in the
anecdote above are impelled by the superabundance of l ife, audible tokens
of the child’s desire to “change the condition of things” (E , 67) which
Rousseau deems necessary to counteract and ultimately silence.98
98 See Laurence D. Cooper , Eros in P lato , Rousseau, and Nie tzsche: The
Poli t ics o f In f in i ty , (Univers i ty Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Univers i ty
Press, 2008) , pp .131 – 149, fo r an account o f the rela t ionship be tween the
superabundance o f l i fe and one’s being.
125
Why this should be so is due to the dynamics that surround the
superabundance of l ife in society. The physical exertions that children
make on account of the superabundance of life are, in and by themselves,
harmless. Indeed, they are signs of health and vitality, the first fruits of
the human pursuit of well-being. It is instructive to note that in
Rousseau’s philosophical account of the workings of the superabundance
of l ife quoted in the previous paragraph, no reference to any kind of
human interaction is made. In other words, in its unadulterated form the
superabundance of l ife is shorn of social significance. Consequently the
pursuit of well-being that it fosters in these circumstances does not
detract from the life in accordance with nature, since it is in keeping with
the strictures of remaining entirely for oneself. Complications arise,
however, when the pursuit is waylaid by society. There, the engagement
with human wills gives the pursuit a moral impetus it hitherto lacked, and
it no longer remains exclusively physical in character. This admixture is
injurious to the life in accordance with nature because it modifies the
child’s conception of his well-being, which is now inseparable from
availing himself of the use of his fel lows. He is no longer entirely for
himself from this point on.99 This is why Rousseau insists upon the strict
99 Consider ano ther example o f this dynamic : “Nature has, for strengthening
the body and making i t gro w, means that ought never be opposed. A chi ld must no t be
constrained to s tay when he wants to go nor to go when he wants to s tay. When
children’s wi l ls are not spoi led by our faul t , chi ldren want nothing uselessly. T hey
have to j ump, run, and shout when they wish. Al l the ir movements are needs o f their
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separation between what is moral and what is physical during this stage of
the natural education on the basis of which the crying bouts of a child
should be ignored rather than tended to (E , 89, 187, 214). Of course, the
infant Emile is in no position to appreciate this distinction, much less its
broader implications for the way of l ife prescribed for him. But the point
remains that the untrammelled pursuit of well-being is inimical to the life
in accordance with nature, which pursuit the tutor must deflect on behalf
of his charge.
Because the same dynamics described above apply to other
exertions that Emile may undertake when older, vigilance is required
beyond the age of infancy. During childhood proper, curiosity replaces
the superabundance of l ife as the motor of well-being:
To the activity of the body which seeks development
succeeds the activity of the mind which seeks
instruction. At first children are only restless; then
they are curious; and that curiosity, well directed, is
the motive of the age we have now reached. Let us
always distinguish between the inclinations which
come from nature and those which come from opinion.
const i tut ion seeking to s trengthen i t sel f . But one should distrus t what they des ire but
are unab le to do for themselves and others have to do for them. Then true need,
na tura l need, must be careful ly dist inguished from the need which s tems from nascent
whim or from the need which comes only from the superabundance o f l i fe o f which I
have spoken” (E , 86) .
127
There is an ardour to know which is founded only on
the desire to be esteemed as learned; there is another
ardour which is born of a curiosity natural to man
concerning all that might have a connection, close or
distant, with his interests. The innate desire for well-
being and the impossibility of fully satisfying this
desire make him constantly seek for new means of
contributing to it . This is the first principle of
curiosity, a principle natural to the human heart , but
one which develops only in proportion to our passions
and our enlightenment. (E , 167)
Now, the distinction that Rousseau makes between the inclinations
which come from nature – of which curiosity is a part – and the
inclinations that come from opinion should not blind us to the caveat that
curiosity must be well directed to be useful. This qualification is crucial
to note for elsewhere we learn of the potential machinations of an
unrestrained curiosity:
If he questions you himself, answer enough to feed
his curiosity, but not so much as to sate i t . Above all ,
when you see that instead of questioning for the sake
of instruction he is beating around the bush and
overwhelming you with silly questions, stop
immediately, with the certainty that now he cares no
longer about the thing but about subjecting you to his
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interrogation. You must pay less attention to the
words he pronounces than to the motive which causes
him to speak. This warning, less necessary before
now, becomes of the greatest importance when the
child begins to reason. (E , 172)
Once again, the inclinations of nature do not provide unqualified support
to the life in accordance with nature. Indeed, when mediated by human
contact i ts contribution is ambiguous to say the least . In this case,
curiosity has the potential to morph into the desire to dominate, as a
result of which the child no longer remains entirely for himself.
Whereas earlier the harsh law of necessity provided the remedy,
now the notion of uti lity or present interest is called upon:
“What is that good for?” This is now the sacred word,
the decisive word between him and me in all the
actions of our l ife. This is the question of mine which
infallibly follows al l his questions and which serves
as a brake to those multitudes of stupid and tedious
interrogations with which children ceaselessly and
fruitlessly fatigue all those around them, more to
exercise some kind of dominion over them than to get
some profit . He who is taught as his most important
lesson to want to know nothing but what is useful
interrogates like Socrates. He does not put a question
without giving himself the reason for i t , which he
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knows will be demanded of him before he is answered.
(E , 179)
As with the previous example, there is nothing in the references to
suggest that the child in question has already been corrupted by society.
In other words, it is not implausible that this narrative faithfully
transcribes the travails of the education of nature. Unti l Emile becomes
Socratic-like in his interrogation, there is every danger that his curiosity
will run amok in society. In the meantime, therefore, the interrogator
must in turn be interrogated to counter the excesses of curiosi ty whenever
it arises.
*****
Emile’s ‘second birth’ – Rousseau’s turn of phrase to denote the
awakening of sexual desire (E , 211) – provides the setting for the second
consideration for the disciplining of self-love. Whereas the previous
consideration highlighted the dangers of the untrammelled pursuit of
well-being for the life in accordance with nature, the present
consideration illustrates how even the legit imate pursuit of well-being
might imperil i t . This comes to light by way of Emile’s reaction to the
fabricated news of Sophie’s death, thus precipitating the principal crisis
of the natural education. All men are born twice, “once to exist and once
to live; once for our species and once for our sex” (E , 211). Emile’s
‘second birth’ is especial ly momentous because it also begets the prospect
130
of him dying twice. How this transpires will be elaborated upon in due
course – in particular, how it bears upon the strictures of remaining
entirely for oneself – but some preliminary comments are in order.100
As Rousseau understands it , the ‘second’ death is a psychological
phenomenon, an expiration of the soul that precedes the expiration of the
body. Men who are consumed by the things that they hold dear condemn
themselves to die twice. In their desperation to make the ephemeral
permanent, they lose the pleasure of enjoying what is already in their
possession. In other words, to be afflicted by the ‘second’ death is to die
to life (E , 444). Because the terrors of the ‘second’ death are an artefact
of the imagination, it is not given to al l men to die twice. Indeed, the
‘second’ death cannot ensnare the original man of nature who is bereft of
imagination (SD , 135). For the same reason it is also impossible for the
original man of nature to develop any fear of his physical death, since he
has no conception of his mortality (SD , 110 – 111). Emile wil l accept his
physical death with equanimity, doing nothing to defer or delay the
inevitable (E , 443). How he staves off the ‘second’ death – with no small
amount of coaxing on the tutor’s part – is the subject of the present
enquiry.
Up until now Emile has remained entirely for himself, capable of
maintaining a general indifference towards his fellows insofar as his well-
100 For a more comprehensive t rea tment o f love or the prob lem of eros in Emile
or in Rousseau’s thought general ly, see Allan Bloom, Love and Friendsh ip , (New
York: Simon & Schuster , 1993) , pp.39 – 156.
131
being is concerned (E , 219). According to Rousseau, such is Emile’s
indifference towards them that he is able to suffer their invasion without
being moved to anger, let alone retaliate. “He would pity even the enemy
who would do him harm, for he would see his misery in his wickedness.
He would say to himself, ‘ In giving himself the need to hurt me, this man
has made his fate dependent on mine’” (E , 244). At this point in time
Emile is so entirely for himself that he lives beyond the reach of his
fel lows. His well-being is construed independently of them: he does not
need them to contribute towards it , nor is it defined in opposition to
theirs. Even in the circumstances described above the pursuit of his well-
being does not require him to strike back at those who assault him. To
cultivate this kind of indifference towards others is impressive. However
that may be, there remain things which have the power to unbalance
Emile, and which may compel him to treat his fellows differently. Emile
may have learnt how to die, but he has yet to learn how to surrender the
things that give his l ife meaning. His passion for Sophie is one such thing,
which leads to his brush with the ‘second’ death.
Emile is beside himself when he receives the false report of
Sophie’s death, which the tutor delivers in the form of a question (E , 442).
The question demands an answer from Emile – he is asked what he will do
upon receiving the news – but in his present state he is incapable of
providing one immediately. The tutor considers this behaviour to be
unbefi tting of the man of nature in society (E , 443 – 444), and he pushes
Emile for an answer. In response Emile intimates that he would go so far
132
as to break off all ties with the tutor, to which the tutor reacts with calm
(E , 442). His demeanour suggests that he had anticipated a response of
this nature, which only confirms his fears: Emile stands at the brink of
the ‘second’ death, ready to cast everything aside for the woman he loves
(E , 444). The tutor proceeds to draw out the implications for the life in
accordance with nature:
You who already wish never again to see the man who
will inform you of your mistress’s death, how would
you see the man who would want to take her from you
while she is still l iving – the one who would dare to
say to you, ‘She is dead to you. Virtue separates you
from her’? If you have to live with her no matter what,
it makes no difference whether Sophie is married or
not, whether you are free or not , whether she loves
you or hates you, whether she is given you or refused
you; you want her, and you have to possess her
whatever the price. Inform me, then, at what crime a
man stops when he has only the wishes of his heart
for laws and knows how to resist nothing that he
desires? (E , 444)
If left unchecked the sheer force of Emile’s passion for Sophie will draw
his fellows into the constellation of his well-being. Then there will
always be someone to please and others to harm at the behest of this
passion. Emile will imbibe the ethos that gives society its power over men:
133
he will labour under the yoke of dependence, and everyone will be
someone’s plaything; at every turn favours wil l be sought, and favours
will have to be dispensed. In a word, Emile wil l no longer remain entirely
for himself.
This is not to say that the cultivation of human passions is
incompatible with the life in accordance with nature:
Our passions are the principal instruments of our
preservation. It is, therefore, an enterprise as vain as
it is ridiculous to want to destroy them – it is to
control nature, it is to reform the work of God. If God
were to tel l men to annihilate the passions which He
gives him, God would will and not will; He would
contradict Himself. Never did He give this senseless
order. Nothing of the kind is written in the human
heart … I would find someone who wanted to prevent
the birth of the passions almost as mad as someone
who wanted to annihilate them; and those who
believed that this was my project up to now would
surely have understood me very badly. (SD , 212)
Thus there is no intention on Rousseau’s part to excise the passions from
men’s hearts . Nor is it the case that Emile’s passion for Sophie, which
according to the tutor “is as pure as the souls which feel it” (E , 445), is
illicit . But “[i]t is an error to distinguish permitted passions from
forbidden ones in order to yield to the former and deny oneself the latter”
134
(E , 445). Emile must be disabused of this notion if he is to grasp the
tutor’s intention for subjecting him to this duress:
All passions are good when one remains their master;
all are bad when one lets oneself be subjected to
them … It is not within our control to have or not to
have passions. But it is within our control to reign
over them. All the sentiments we dominate are
legit imate; al l those which dominate us are criminal .
(E , 445)
In other words, Emile’s passion for Sophie can be reconciled with the life
in accordance with nature on the condition that he must rule over it .
Sophie is not immune from the designs that fortune and men may have in
store for her (E , 444 – 445). Thus Emile must learn to rule over his
passion for her come what may. Only in this way will he continue to
eschew the use of his fellows, thereby preserving the integrity of the life
in accordance with nature.
To be sure, the substantive demands of what is required here go
beyond the modus operandi of the tutor. Earlier, the tutor either
suppressed or redirected Emile’s native inclinations as he saw fit in order
to keep the pursuit of his well-being in line with the life in accordance
with nature. But on this occasion the tutor is powerless to act on Emile’s
behalf. For the first time in the course of the natural education, the reins
are handed over to Emile (E , 445), who must make a conscious decision
to stick to the road of nature, or what is the same, to the road of
135
happiness (E , 443). Thus the alteration of the pursuit of his well-being,
necessary here as before, requires in this instance the very
reconceptualisation of what this well-being entails. It is up to Emile,
therefore, to master his passion for Sophie so as to prevent any fal lout for
the life in accordance with nature. This marks the transition from
goodness to virtue, to rely on Rousseau’s lexicon, for Emile:
My child, there is no happiness without courage nor
virtue without struggle. The word virtue comes from
strength . Strength is the foundation of all virtue.
Virtue belongs only to a being that is weak by nature
and strong by will . It is in this that the merit of the
just man consists; and although we call God good, we
do not call Him virtuous, because it requires no effort
for Him to do good … I have made you good rather
than virtuous. But he who is only good remains so
only as long as he takes pleasure in being so.
Goodness is broken and perishes under the impact of
the human passions. The man who is only good is
good only for himself. (E , 444)
Although virtue is but one component of Emile’s moral education,101 i t is
arguably the most significant. Despite the fact that morality has no
foundation in nature and is therefore entirely conventional in character,
101 See Cl i f ford Orwin, “Rousseau on the Sources of Ethics,” pp.63 – 84.
136
virtue may be considered as the capstone of the natural education since in
the final analysis, it is virtue that guarantees Emile’s adherence to the life
in accordance with nature. We shall see how this is so in what remains of
this section.
Much can be said about Rousseau’s conception of virtue, which is
particularly rich, but this is beyond the parameters of the present
discussion. A brief digression will help establish the point in question.
Virtue is central not only to the moral psychology of the man of nature in
society but also of the cit izen. And yet the content and purpose of
Emilean virtue on the one hand and polit ical virtue on the other are very
dissimilar. The portrai ts of the citizen that Rousseau sketches in the
opening pages of Emile give us some indication of the self-forgetting
nature of poli tical virtue (E , 40), a quality that Emilean virtue does not
share. This self-forgetting is necessary to displace the personal or the
private in favour of the city, to which the cit izen owes complete
allegiance. As the anti-citizen, Emile owes no such allegiance to the
political community in which he lives, a conviction reinforced by the
political education he receives during his separation from Sophie (E , 471
– 475). With these broad differences in mind, it thus suffices for us to
focus on the specific function that Rousseau assigns to virtue in the
natural education. In this connection, it is useful to return to the
distinction between goodness and virtue.
137
Goodness is rendered obsolete and virtue becomes necessary “when
the passions are awakened” (E , 443).102 In other words, up to this point in
the natural education Emile has been good rather than virtuous. This
should not be taken as a denunciation of goodness, that is to say, as a
statement on the uselessness of the natural education prior to this time.
Goodness is fitting for one phase of the l ife in accordance with nature as
virtue is for another. Emile is good for himself because his desires do not
exceed his capacity to satisfy them. Consequently he is good for others, if
only incidentally, because he does not use or exploit them.103 Had a moral
diet been forced on Emile then, he would have lost this psychological
independence from his fellows. After all, moral relations imply a bond of
obligation between one man and another. Nor are these t ies always
salutary, especially when they are formed prematurely. It is Rousseau’s
view that to impose rules of right conduct on children only teaches them
to exercise dominion over others (E , 86). Thus goodness serves an
admirable purpose during this phase of the natural education by keeping
Emile entirely for himself.
But the reign of goodness crumbles in the face of the passions (E ,
444), in this case, by the all-consuming nature of Emile’s passion for
Sophie. Goodness is broken because the equilibrium between Emile’s
102 The or igina l man o f na ture i s therefore incapab le o f vice or v ir tue; he i s
s imply good (SD , 128 – 130) .
103 See Melzer , The Natura l Goodness o f Man , pp .15 – 17.
138
desires and facult ies is shattered (E , 80), the restoration of which
goodness cannot oversee. For goodness itself perishes given the change in
Emile’s circumstances: goodness is the disposition of a solitary being, but
Emile’s existence as a solitary being is at an end. His newfound status as
a lover is the gateway to his relationship with society at large. In ways
that were not possible before, Emile’s fel lows are in a position to exert an
influence on him, now as a lover, and later, as a husband and a father (E ,
448). More and more Emile will have to live his li fe under the gaze of
society. We are already acquainted with the potential pitfalls that this
presents to the life in accordance with nature. Obviously Emile is in no
position to control what his fellows might or might not do. What remains
in his control, however, is that which governs his reaction. This is his
passion for Sophie. Thus only virtue – in the sense that Rousseau gives it
here – can restore the equilibrium between desires and faculties. The
virtuous man is described variously as one “who knows how to conquer
his affections” (E , 444), and who knows how “to desire one thing and will
another” (E , 448). It should be emphasised that Emile is not asked to deny
his passion for Sophie. Emilean virtue demands self-mastery from its
bearer, in contrast to the self-forgetting virtue that cit izens must brandish.
But by not allowing his passion for Sophie to run amok, Emile continues
to keep to the strictures of remaining entirely for himself.104
104 See Orwin, “Rousseau on the Sources o f E thics,” pp.73 – 78, for an
al terna te reading o f th is episode in which the tu tor ’s manipula t ion o f Emile ’s amour-
139
*****
The purpose of this chapter is to show how the tutor alters Emile’s
conception of self-love understood as the pursuit of well-being. Such are
the tolls of the education of nature, the better to satisfy the standard of
naturalness in the context of society. Two considerations were forwarded
propre i s emphasised. On this read ing, Emile ’s unders tanding o f the s i tua t ion i s
merely one perspec t ive of the episode , and not the co mple te one . But the point
remains that Emile must a l ter his concept ion o f se l f -love understood as the pursui t o f
wel l -be ing, and his understanding o f the s i tua t ion, though inco mple te , addresses more
direc t ly the i ssue a t s take here – ho w he i s to rela te to h is fe l lo ws as he remains
ent irely fo r himse l f.
At any rate , the conclusion o f this episode marks an impor tant mi les tone in the
educat ion o f na ture . For only at this point can the ques t ion which Rousseau posed at
the outse t where he int roduces the natural educat ion, “But what wi l l a man ra ised
uniquely for himse l f become for o thers?” (E , 41) , be answered decisive ly. A quick
comparison wi th the o r igina l man o f nature wil l b r ing the matter in to sharp rel ie f.
The or iginal man o f na ture i s a lways adduced as an example o f what i t means to be
good for himse l f and good for o thers . But i t i s more accurate to say, ra ther , that the
or igina l man o f na ture is good for o thers because good for himse l f. He i s good for
himsel f because he has al l tha t he needs to preserve himse l f. As a resul t , he i s good
for o thers because having no need for his fe l lo ws, he does no harm to them. Emile , on
the other hand, i s good for h imsel f and good for o thers. He i s good for h imse l f in tha t
he does not need his fe l lows to contr ibute towards his well -being; he i s a l so good for
o thers in tha t he i s capable o f restraining himsel f from s tr ik ing back at his fe l lows
even when they are bad for h im.
140
in support of this thesis, with reference to episodes drawn from different
periods of the natural education that illustrate how society is capable of
contorting Emile’s pursuit of well-being to the detriment of the life in
accordance with nature. It is worth reiterat ing that to remain entirely for
oneself does not preclude Emile from forming deep attachments with
others. The stipulation to remain entirely for himself simply means that
Emile must refrain from using or exploit ing his fellows for the benefit of
his well-being. At the same time, the very attachments which Emile forms
with the tutor on the one hand, and with Sophie on the other, expose him
to this danger. The intervention of the tutor is therefore required to help
Emile abide by the strictures of the life in accordance with nature. Taken
together, the tutor’s response is an expression of Rousseau’s attempt to
replace the bourgeois morality of enlightened self-interest with the new
morality of enlightened self-love. It is this enlightened self-love that
allows Emile to live with his fellows, if not like them. By remaining
entirely for himself in spite of society, Emile thus preserves a vital link
with his primitive predecessor, evidence of the continued relevance of
nature as a standard for human social li fe.
*****
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6. Conclusion
The principal problem under consideration in this dissertation has
been the problem of nature in Rousseau’s thought, that is, whether and
how nature remains a standard for human social li fe. Indeed, so
understood the problem of nature may be regarded as the principal
problem in Rousseau’s thought, for in craft ing a coherent and considered
response other major or significant problems must necessarily come under
its purview. These are the problems of history – whether and how
Rousseau obtains knowledge of the original human condition – and of
society – how men become bad for themselves and bad for others. Such is
the magnitude and the central ity of the problem of nature in Rousseau’s
thought. It is my hope that this dissertat ion has done enough within the
defined parameters to move the nature-history debate in Rousseau
scholarship past its present impasse. The issue is not so much that
naturalist and historicist interpreters disagree with one another – this is
not to say that the concerns of the debate are trivial – but that this
disagreement is mired in irreconcilable methodological differences.
Existing naturalist interpretat ions, because they subscribe to the concept
of Emilean naturalness, hold that Rousseau’s state of nature teachings in
the Second Discourse are not a comprehensive articulation of the
supposed (bipartite) standard of naturalness in his thought. (The complete
theoretical justification of Emilean or civilised naturalness, as opposed to
primitive or savage naturalness, must await its development in Emile) .
142
From the point of view of historicist interpreters this is a serious
methodological misstep since they contend that Rousseau’s state of nature
teachings are his first and final words on the matter. (To be sure,
historicist interpreters are adamant that the radical historicisation of the
human condition which undergirds these teachings renders any appeal to
nature as a standard for human social li fe futi le, if not meaningless, to
begin with).
This dissertation injects a new impetus into the debate by
proceeding upon the terms set forth by historicist interpreters. By virtue
of this approach I offer a sympathetic refutation of their interpretation.
For all intents and purposes I consider the state of nature teachings to be
exhaustive with respect to the question whether and how nature remains a
standard for human social li fe. But in contrast to historicist interpreters I
maintain that it is still possible to extract a standard of naturalness
exclusively from the state of nature teachings in spite of or precisely
because of the radical historicisation of the human condition. The
standard in question that singularly upholds the life in accordance with
nature both in the state of nature and the state of society, despite the
immense gulf in t ime and circumstance between them, is contained in the
man-citizen dichotomy in Rousseau’s thought, the foundations of which
are established through his study of the original human condition.
According to the determinations of the dichotomy, the way of life of man
is natural, and the way of life of the citizen is denatured. My primary
thesis has been that Emile and his primitive predecessor are equally
143
natural on this account. In short , the l ife in accordance with nature is
resolutely anti-political in character.
By the same measure I offer a significant revision of standard
naturalist interpretat ions. Unlike interpreters of this persuasion, I do not
make a distinction between primitive or savage naturalness on the one
hand, and civilised or Emilean naturalness on the other. (On this note, I
have also argued that these interpretations are problematic even on their
own terms). The natural man living in the state of nature is not more or
less natural than the natural man living in the state of society, or vice
versa. Naturalness does not lend itself to gradations – one is either
natural or not natural . The “great difference” (E , 205) between the
original man of nature and the man of nature in society which standard
naturalist interpretat ions regard as the source or foundation of Emilean
naturalness is in my view nothing more than an expedient that makes the
life in accordance with nature possible outside of the state of nature. Thus
the secondary thesis of this dissertation, contrary to these interpretations,
is that the difference between Emile and his primitive predecessor does
not amount to a different class or category of naturalness. Rather, this
difference simply ensures the realisation of the (single) standard of
naturalness in an environment that is in every way inimical to it , which is
the state of society. This is the theoretical contribution of Emile to the
problem of nature in Rousseau’s thought, which elaborates or
rearticulates the way of life of man (as opposed to the way of life of the
citizen or the bourgeois for that matter) as being entirely for oneself.
144
In sum, my disagreement with prevailing naturalist and historicist
interpretations may be formulated in terms of the man-citizen dichotomy
in Rousseau’s thought. Obviously the concept of the dichotomy is not new
to Rousseau scholarship. What is noteworthy in my interpretation is the
elevated status that I grant it . Ordinarily scholars understand the
dichotomy as a crit ique of the bourgeois, who being neither man nor
citizen, is bad for himself and bad for others. But the import of the man-
citizen dichotomy is far greater than hitherto acknowledged by scholars
on both sides of the interpretive divide. For the dichotomy is not simply a
shorthand for Rousseau’s conception of the good life. Instead it contains
the very standard of naturalness in Rousseau’s thought. If the principal
problem in Rousseau’s thought is the problem of nature, then the man-
citizen dichotomy lies at the very core of its resolution. The substantive
chapters in this dissertation, nominally dedicated to the distinct themes or
problems of history, nature, and society in Rousseau’s thought, may be
understood alternatively as successive treatments of the man-cit izen
dichotomy, describing in turn its location, its derivation, and i ts
application in Rousseau’s thought. In other words, the merit of my
interpretation goes beyond the simple reconciliation of the
methodological differences in the literature as I perceive it . Rather, my
analysis of the li terature through the prism of this methodological
problem allows me to uncover in turn what I take to be the true
provenance of the man-citizen dichotomy, which makes this new
interpretation of the problem of nature in Rousseau’s thought possible.
145
Stated in its broadest terms, Rousseau’s derivation of the dichotomy is
the foremost expression of modern political conventionalism. His
discovery or recovery of the original human condition – made possible by
his acute historical sense – provides incontrovertible proof that man is
not by nature a social or political animal or what is the same, that the l ife
in accordance with nature is thoroughly incompatible with the demands of
citizenship. Only Rousseau among the modern social contract theorists
understood the true worth and dignity of these two ways of l ife precisely
because they are and should be dist inguished one from the other, which
distinction the Enlightenment did not grasp. Rousseau’s cri tique of his
predecessors, notably Hobbes and Locke, is therefore more wide-ranging
than the mere rejection of their political projects. The exact boundaries of
modern social contract theory prior to Rousseau was ill-defined because
its proponents overlooked the fact that politics or the ci ty does not
exhaust the possibili ties of the good life. Thus it was left to Rousseau to
give modern political conventionalism a fair and proper hearing in his
thought. In short, through the dichotomy Rousseau resurrects the
(classical) idea that the good man is not the good citizen.
In the final analysis the question of the human good in Rousseau’s
thought is inseparable from a study of the original human condition.
Everything that is consequential in his thought finds its source there, and
his state of nature teachings are the lodestar of the good life. More to the
point , the argument of this dissertation is that the theoretical foundations
of the l ife in accordance with nature are located exclusively and
146
exhaustively in these teachings. On the basis of this argument the present
interpretation redefines the parameters of the nature-history debate in
Rousseau’s thought, and consequently, challenges the prevail ing
naturalist and historicist interpretations in fundamental ways. To state the
matter differently, the resil ience and immutability of nature as a standard
for human social li fe is intimately connected with Rousseau’s teaching
that man is a historical being – this is one of the more abstruse paradoxes
of his thought. For Rousseau, nature is revealed in our origins, not in
human ends. And while men have changed beyond recognition from what
they were like in the original human condition, the very dialectic between
reason and passion that Rousseau thought must have propelled the
development of the species also provides, in the same instance, a sure
glimpse into our past. This is the twin function of Rousseau’s doctrine of
perfectibility. Nature is not thereby eviscerated by history. On the
contrary, it is revived in and through history. In a word, the
(mis)conception that Rousseau’s thought (to say nothing of the
Rousseauian state of nature) is simply a contested ground between the
forces of nature on the one hand and history on the other must be
dispelled if the contours of the problem of nature are to fully emerge.
*****
147
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