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But suppose further that we could not do so in most conditions likely to arise out of our long history? Then the pessimism of the Second Discourse is hardly mitigated.

Masters, in the introduction to his new edition of the Second Discourse, says the following: “Almost alone in his century, Rousseau seems to have viewed human nature as an animal species whose nature defines a good and healthy mode of life, but whose evolution has made a naturally good life inaccessible (at least for most of those living in civilized societies).”

I concur in this judgment, and nothing I have said conflicts with it. Also, it fits with the relation between the Second Discourse and the Social Contract I have suggested: namely, that the latter explains how to arrange the institutions of a social world so that the vices and miseries accounted for in the former, and which we now see in most all ages and in our culture and civilization, will not arise.

Rousseau’s answer is: we must arrange our political and social institutions according to the terms of cooperation expressed by the social contract (SC, 1.6): it is these terms that, when effectively realized, ensure that those institutions secure our moral freedom, political and social equality, and independence. They also make possible our civic freedom and prevent the hostilities and vices that would otherwise plague us.

Rousseau Lecture I (1981): Appendix A

Rousseau: The Doctrine of the Natural

Goodness of Human Nature

§1. Contra Original Sin

Let’s start by contrasting Rousseau’s view with the orthodox doctrine of original sin, which includes these parts: (a) The original natural perfection of the first pair, Adam and Eve. (b) Their sin was their own fault, an act of free will, by a nature without defect. (c) It was motivated by pride and self-will. (d) The punishment and corruption of their sin is manifest in concupiscence and propagated in the sexual act. (e) All of us now are co-

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responsible and participate in their sin; so that now (f ) our nature is scarred and subject to death and misery, (g) escape from which lies only in divine grace.

Keeping these points in mind, note that Rousseau rejects them one by one: (a) The natural state (State of Nature) is not one of natural perfection but a primitive state in which our potentialities for perfection and our reason and moral sensibilities are undeveloped. They are realized only in society via many changes over time. (b) Human misery and present vices and false values are not rooted in free choices but come about as the consequence of unfortunate historical accidents and social trends. (c) Rousseau denies the first pair could have acted from pride and self-will, for these motives are found only in society. (d) Vice and false values are propagated by social institutions as each generation responds to them. (e) The way out lies in our own hands.

Rousseau’s account of historical and social development is secular and naturalistic, like the account of others in the Enlightenment: Diderot, Condorcet, d’Alembert, and so on. (Compare his account with Hume’s.)

§2. Rousseau contra Hobbes: Further Meaning of Natural Goodness—as Premise of Social Theory

Although Rousseau is rejecting original sin (as did Hume and many others, with some heat), so is he also rejecting elements of Hobbes’s view. In particular, he thought (whether correctly or not) that Hobbes held pride and vanity, and the will to dominate, to be basic and original impulses or psychological principles of human nature, which accounts in part for why the State of Nature is a State of War. Rousseau denies this, and attributes these propensities to society. In the primitive state of nature, people are moved only by their natural needs, guided by self-love (amour de soi), and restrained by natural compassion.

Rousseau also rejected Hobbes’s view that the ostensible forms of compassion and other like feelings could be reduced to self-love. He holds that compassion and self-love are distinct; indeed self-love guided by reason and moderated by compassion provides, under suitable social conditions and modes of education, the psychological basis of humane and moral conduct.

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§3. The Possibilities of a Well-Regulated Society

Now let’s ask what these disputes about an original human nature and its propensities are all about. Everyone agrees, let’s say, that given people as they are, many are moved by pride and vanity and the will to dominate, at least on some occasions; and sufficiently many to be a major political factor. What difference does it make whether these propensities are original or derived? And do we know what we mean by this distinction; and could we tell in actual behavior which is which?

The matter at stake might be put this way: Suppose we assume (as Rousseau and the Enlightenment did) that human beings and their ends are the basic units of deliberation and action, as well as of responsibility (suitably understood), so that our deeds collectively are one of the main causes

Figure 5. Outline of the Social Contract. Adapted from Hilail Gildin’s discussion in Rousseau’s Social Contract (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983), pp. 12–17.

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of historical and social change. Then to have a social theory is to have, among other things, a theory of these units of deliberation and action; and any such theory must attribute to them certain original principles which specify how they act given various social conditions.

Thus, what is really at stake in these disputes about an original human nature are the prospects of fundamental social change and the wisdom of adopting this or that means to it, given our present historical and social situation. Unless we are to act in the dark, we must be able to explain how a well-regulated free and humane society will operate, what it might look like; and why it will be stable and feasible, given a certain system of education when the suitable background obtains. Also, can we reach such a society from where we are without the use of means that cause psychological characteristics to come to dominate in us which themselves make such a society impossible?

In Emile Rousseau discusses the psychological theory which he thinks makes a well-regulated society both possible and stable. It requires that all coercive authority, public or otherwise, is to be based on principles persons can give to themselves as free moral persons, and which exclude personal dependence.

Rousseau: Appendix B

Comments on Figure 5:

1.Leaving aside 1.1 and 4.9 (first and last chapters of the Social Contract), each book falls into equal parts with the same number of chapters.

2.It is not until 3.10–3.18 (in 2nd part of Part II) that it becomes clear that the Sovereign must be an assembly of the people and that it must meet at fixed and periodic intervals (cf. 3.13.1).

List of Rousseau’s Works

1750 Discours sur les sciences et les arts (“First Discourse”) (written 1749)

1752 Le Devin de Village (opera)

1755 Discours sur l’origine de l’inégalité (“Second Discourse”) “Economie Politique” (article in Diderot’s Encyclopédie)

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1756 “Lettre sur la Providence” (reply to Voltaire’s “Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne”)

1758 Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles

1761 La Nouvelle Héloïse

1762 Writing of four biographical letters to Malesherbes

Emile Contrat Social

“Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont” (reply to the Archbishop of Paris on Emile)

1764 Lettres écrites de la montagne (reply to J. R. Tronchin’s Lettres écrites de la campagne)

1765 Projet de constitution pour la Corse

1766 Confessions (1st part—completed on return to France) published

1781

1772 Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne 1772–76 Dialogues: Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques

1776–78 Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire

Bibliog raphy

Cassirer, Ernst, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Peter Gay (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954).

Cohen, Joshua, “Reflections on Rousseau: Autonomy and Democracy,”

Philosophy and Public Affairs, Summer 1986.

Cranston, Maurice, Introduction to his translation of the Social Contract (Penguin, 1968), pp. 9–25 (critical), pp. 25–43 (biographical); The Early Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712–1754 (New York: Penguin, 1983).

Dent, N. J. H., Rousseau (Oxford: Blackwell, 1988); and A Rousseau Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

Gay, Peter, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 2 vols. (Knopf, 1969); on Rousseau, pp. 529–552 (re La Nouvelle Héloïse, pp. 240f ).

Gildin, Hilail, Rousseau’s Social Contract (Chicago, 1983).

Green, F. C., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Study of His Life and Writings (Cambridge, 1955).

Grimsley, Ronald, The Philosophy of Rousseau (Oxford, 1973).

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Lovejoy, Arthur O., Essays in the History of Ideas ( Johns Hopkins, 1948). Contains “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality.”

Masters, Roger, Rousseau (Princeton, 1968).

Miller, James, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (Yale, 1984). Neuhouser, Frederick, “Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will,”

Philosophical Review, July 1993.

Shklar, J. N., Men and Citizens (Cambridge UP, 1969).

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