In his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, sometimes referred to as the Second Discourse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau dynamically examines the roots of social ills writ large. His thesis hinges on showing that class inequality is not naturally born, but a construct of civil society. To evidence this, Rousseau traces man’s history back to its socio-anthropological genesis – to the state of nature.
General Conception of the State of Nature
Rousseau regards the state of nature not as a historical epoch, but as a logical abstraction. Indeed, he explicitly asks his readers to set aside the facts – not simply because, with regard to this matter, they are wholly imprecise, but also because they are drawn from the false books of man as opposed to Rousseau’s more pure source, nature.
Presumably, among these books is the Bible for, in similarly clear terms, Rousseau asserts that his task is to form a theory of what would have happened had man been left to his own devices, without divine intervention.
Responding to Earlier Enlightenment Thinkers
Two giants in political philosophy, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, previously outlined the state of nature in terms that Rousseau thought lacked a serious consideration of primary causes. In contrast to Locke, Rousseau doesn’t envision man in his original condition endowed with a sense of reason or morality. These anachronisms in the Lockean state of nature are at the heart of Rousseau’s criticism.
Rather than peel away the artificial to get at the essential, Rousseau believes that previous thinkers merely imagined man as he currently is, with all the psychological trappings of modern life, but absent civil government.
Rousseau’s Noble Savage
The reality, according to Rousseau, is that man in his initial state thought “good” his rudimentary physical wants and “evil” that which caused him pain. Any knowledge beyond that necessary to satisfy these base desires, and the rationality to obtain such knowledge, was of no consequence.
Thus, Rousseau believes that all prior attempts to frame man’s original condition merely transferred to the state of nature ideas which were acquired in society; so that, in speaking of the savage, they described the social man. This juxtaposition of “savage” and “social” man highlights another of Rousseau’s points of contention: man is by nature a solitary creature.
Natural Rights and Independence
Sociability, divinely ordained or otherwise, is not imbued in the savage under Rousseau’s construct. That men in the state of nature have “no moral relations or determinate obligations one with another” is certainly among the main reasons why Rousseau believes they spend their lives in “peace and innocence.” So one’s self-preservation, which Rousseau readily acknowledges is comprised in natural right, doesn’t necessarily conflict with another’s in the same existential way that Hobbes and Locke conceived.
Moreover, humanity’s innate compassion, an emotion not unique to man, but perhaps of greater use to him than any other species, could only be heightened in the savage living in a time prior to the “state of reason.” This leads Rousseau to dismiss the notion of man’s natural tendency toward vice and caution against confounding “wild” with “wicked.” Consequently, there is no push to exit this state of nature, so envisioned, since there is no inevitability of a Hobbesian “state of war.” Instead, Rousseau tracks the dissolution of this first condition, and the introduction of social inequality, to the onset of private property.
Source:
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Ed. Patrick Riley. Trans. G. D. H. Cole. New York: Barnes & Noble, 2008.
Youssef Chouhoud - I’m a young(ish) Muslim-American from Brooklyn, New York by way of Alexandria, Egypt. Part consultant, part freelance writer, my ...
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