Rousseau and Hobbes: Nature, Free Will, and the Passions (Oxford University Press, 2015) (original) (raw)

'Rightly Ordered According to Nature': Rousseau and the States of Nature

In this paper I want to make two claims, which as I hope to show, deepen an aspect of Rousseau’s account and suggest possibilities for further development. Rousseau is widely recognised as relying on a concept of ‘nature’ to justify his attacks on certain institutions and ethos’, and indeed the philosophers themselves are chastised for being out of touch with nature, and dragging others along with them. But Rousseau uses the word ‘nature’ equivocally, apparently in order to pick out a number of distinct concepts. As Neuhouser points out, he uses the term on the one hand to connote an original condition which he does not regard as anything to be aspired to . On the other, he points out that Rousseau speaks of bringing humanity into harmony with nature—that is, with humanity’s nature—through precisely non-natural interventions which bring about good laws and well-cultivated individuals. In effect, these non-natural interventions denaturalise humanity to bring it into line with its nature. I will argue that Rousseau relies on a concept of nature in yet a third sense, paradoxically to connote humanity in a state of disharmony with humanity’s nature, hence to pick out that state to which humanity can tend absent these ‘denaturalising’ interventions. So first I will reconstruct the state of nature in a way that yields three distinct conceptions of the idea. In this way I hope to give plausible account of the diagnostic structure of Rousseau’s philosophy, providing some justification and explanation of the standards which enable his evaluative stance. I will then unpack and briefly explore what it means to be ‘unnatural’ in the normatively pejorative sense, aiming to show that Rousseau’s thought centres around a powerful if somewhat shadowy critique of what I am going to call the self-undermining dynamics at play when happiness, freedom and good living are pursued in situations unnatural in this negative sense.

Rousseau: moral freedom and the democratic ideal

The present essay is an attempt to offer an insight on Rousseau’s ideas of moral freedom while looking at how they were expressed by the author in the Social Contract and in The Emile. Furthermore I want to defend the French thinker from Talmon’s allegation of advocating in the Social Contract an oppressive form of government. This reading of Rousseau, it will be argued, originates above all from a failure to frame his political ideas within the coherent whole to which they belong.

Rousseau's Transformed Aristotelianism

Against standard interpretations of Rousseau according to which he holds the view that humans are naturally self-sufficient, asocial beings, necessarily corrupted by societies, I argue that Rousseau holds the view that human beings are naturally social. This paper shows that "The Second Discourse" contains an argument that we can only account for basic human characteristics – such as language and reason – if we understand humans in this way, as inevitably social beings. It is true that Rousseau criticizes societies for being corrupt. But that should not be taken as a criticism of all societies. Only some societies are corrupt: those in which humans’ nature as free persons cannot develop. The asocial human being of Rousseau’s natural state is a theoretical device in a reductio argument that Rousseau aims at the Hobbesian view. A society’s corruption is not a function of its artificiality, of its departure from an asocial state of nature, but of its departure from a natural, uncorrupted society. This is a society that provides conditions in which humans’ nature as free persons can develop, such as the legitimate society of The Social Contract. This has the implication that Rousseau’s theory of freedom has an Aristotelian rather than a Kantian foundation.

The Modern Value of the State of Nature in Rousseau (FLSF, 31, 2021)

Rousseau's early work on political philosophy, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, seeks to conceptualise the transformation of the savage human of the state of nature into the rational human of the state of civilisation. The overall narrative seems to construct a pessimistic narrative of history, demonstrating the inevitable downfall of humanity from a blissful starting point to a bloodstained, conflict-ridden terminus. In this article, I aim to re-evaluate this negative value of the state of nature in Rousseau. To this end, I emphasise the shift in the role of society as regards freedom in his later political work, On the Social Contract, in which not the egoist savage human but the sociable modern human being is thought to be the ultimate goal. I suggest that, instead of considering the hypothetical period of the state of nature as a bygone era of humanity, it could be re-evaluated as providing us with a goal for the human being of the state of civilisation. The simplicity and compassion of the savage human, who is immune from the destructive sentiment of amour propre, might be seen as equipping the modern human of excessive egoism with a horizon to determine its line of development.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Fundamental Political Writings, Broadview Press, 2018 (co-edited with Matthew W. Maguire)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Fundamental Political Writings, 2018

Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Fundamental Political Writings includes the Social Contract, Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, and “Preface to Narcissus.” Each text has been newly translated, and includes a full complement of explanatory notes. The editors’ introduction offers students diverse points of entry into some of the distinctive possibilities and challenges of each of these fundamental texts, as well as an introduction to Rousseau’s life and historical situation, from his early years in Geneva to his final years in relative solitude. Each text is accompanied by images from the original editions. The volume also includes annotated appendices that help students to explore the origins and influences of Rousseau’s work, including excerpts from Hobbes, Pascal, Descartes, Mandeville, Diderot, Voltaire, Madame de Staël, Benjamin Constant, Joseph de Maistre, Kant, Hegel, and Engels.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the History of Political Ideas: Sovereignty of the People

2023

Today it is unquestionable that power legitimately belongs to the people. No one doubts popular “sovereignty,” even if the expression seems ambiguous if not vague. The other claims to legitimacy–divine authority, the rule of the best or the sovereignty of princes (such as the ancient and medieval appeals to Divine Providence, wisdom of the rulers or the nature of man) – have long since been abandoned. Indeed, this abandonment goes back at least to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment or “Illustration” was a scientific, literary and artistic movement that dominated the European world of ideas during the 18th century and that was the result of an informal association of “men of letters” known as the French philosophes (among whom names like those of Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot and Montesquieu stand out). This association is publicly manifested in the project to gather a summary of all knowledge in the Encyclopedia, published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five thick volumes, with the collaboration of more than one hundred and fifty scientists and philosophers. However, the movement spread far beyond France, also flourishing in Scotland (with Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, David Hume and Thomas Reid), and in Germany (the Aufklärung that includes names as Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing and, in its descending phase, Immanuel Kant). The “Century of Enlightenment” or “of philosophy” is a period of euphoria and confidence in reason, progress and science, which roughly runs from 1715 until it dies at the turn of the century. Despite the enormous diversity of ideas and tendencies, loosely grouped around ideas such as Liberty or Progress, the Enlightenment is more profoundly defined by a fundamental conviction that is widely cherished, even today: the progress of knowledge and science will gradually lead to the moral progress of humanity, through a process of gradual diffusion that will eventually end all prejudices under the “magisterium” of philosophers, that is, thinkers, artists and scientists in general, and not merely philosophers in the current sense. All the people, duly educated, will be able to understand science and philosophy as well as possible, and it will suffice to apply this knowledge to social and political life. Rhetoric – a persuasion technique that mediated the relationship between philosophers and opinion among the ancients and was part of the medieval curriculum – becomes unnecessary and even a little suspicious (it is still devalued today as “merely rhetorical”). To ensure that the inevitable path of progress is cleared, it is enough to uproot the deep-rooted prejudices of obscurantism (and, in some versions, religion). Consequently, although provisionally new “enlightened” policies can be entrusted to a benevolent tyrant (the Enlightened despot), in the long run it is simply inconceivable that sovereignty does not belong to the people. Monarchical and aristocratic Europe, which was already on its knees at the end of the 18th century, disappears and there are great revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. The “Century of Philosophy” is therefore that of the victory of philosophy over the throne and the altar. This new era is populated by free and equal individuals, endowed with inalienable rights, who no longer recognize any authority other than their own reason. But if today we unhesitatingly subscribe to the idea of “popular sovereignty,” we do not fail to notice that any forms of government is not natural and involve a certain coercion or a more subtle use of power and violence that we deem suspicious. Government is something artificial and does not belong to the natural state of “man.” Due to asphyxiating conventions and the bourgeois ethos, man is not naturally free in any society. As Rousseau states, many before him (especially Hobbes and Locke) looked for man in his natural state, without actually finding him. But when Rousseau strips man of everything man acquires with effort, he discovers a being that is not only solitary, but non-rational, lacking language (which is only born with the first associations) and not even fully human. It appears to be a sub-human or pre-human being that seems to possess unlimited perfectibility or malleability. There is for us an obvious opposition between nature and government (or the “civil state”), but this opposition is closely linked to another, equally evident opposition, between nature and culture (or “the arts”). Nature, as portrayed by Rousseau and as we think of it today, can no longer serve as a standard for social and political behavior. How does this rupture occur?

Rousseau and the Principles of Rational and Just Civic Association

Rousseau’s thought is premised upon the radical critique of the modern civilisation emerging in his day. Rousseau is shown to castigate the modern society emerging in his day not as an ascent from darkness to light, but as artificial and corrupt, its intellectual achievement being bought at the price of moral decadence. Rousseau identified the clear weakness of an Enlightenment which was founded upon opinion and prejudice rather than on moral and rational principles. Thus, Rousseau is shown to criticise the way that the laws protected and promoted the interests of the strong and the rich against the poor and the weak; the way that religious institutions engendered intolerance and discord; the way that the artificial or distorted beings produced by the educational system fell far short of authentic human beings; the way that bourgeois society fed the ego in separation from and opposition to others rather than nurturing the whole person in relation to others. Rousseau is shown to be in search of fundamental principles, premising his philosophy upon an examination of human nature and the place of human beings in the ‘order of things’. As ‘the portrayer of nature’ and ‘the historian of the human heart’, Rousseau is shown to affirm the existence of a universal human nature, a definite human essence which has definite political and social implications.

A Comparative Glance at Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Ideas about the Concept of Freedom

LINGUISTICA ANTVERPIENSIA, 2021

Freedom is one of the most valuable words so far inscribed in mankind’s mind. Freedom is the most important index of human veneration and humans’ sublime position. Many political thinkers believe that the enjoyment of such a value and identity as freedom is the biggest index of human veneration and identity and lack of access to freedom is the primary theme of the animal identity of humans. This is why Rousseau, the great French thinker, realizes slavery and exploitation as contradictory to the human disposition and finds desertion of freedom equal to the abandonment of humanity. Rousseau’s name has often been associated with irrational idealism of the pure and wild nature of primitive mankind. But, beyond all these, he is a complex political philosopher who proposes a certain form of government that is the prerequisite of human freedom within the framework of modern society. He emphasizes that a human being is a human being when s/he is free and it is this freedom that paves the way for his or her perfection. As three of the main theoreticians of the social contract, Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau have different perspectives regarding the concept of freedom. The present study is based on a descriptive and analytical method and it tries investigating the concept of freedom through referring to the ideas of these three philosophers and exploring their works on freedom.