"The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society." pg 60
"It is labor alone that, in giving the cultivator a right to the produce of the soil he has tilled, consequently gives him this rigth, at least until the harvest, and thus from year to year. With this possession continuing uninterrupted, i tis easily transformed into property." pg 67
I'm interested in how Rousseau defines and describes the invention of property. He appears to take a very strict view - property is bad because it leads directly to the rules of justice (bottom of 66) and revenge. But I wonder if Rousseau would like the idea of socialism - in which there is not property but there is society - or if he would say that is unfeasible, given human nature. And what other implications might arise from this description of property? Do men not own their bodies/minds? So wouldn't the concept of property already be implanted in them?
I also have another question, which might relate more to Part I. What is the purpose of Rousseau's savage man? I think it was Aristotle who said that everything has a puprose unique to itself and distinguished between all other animals and man by man's talent for reason or philosophy. Therefore, according to Aristotle, man's highest purpose was to philosophize. What would be the purpose of man in Rousseau's state of nature?
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