Rousseau Pt. II

On the contrary, nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state, when, placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of brutes and the fatal enlightenment of civil man, and limited equally by instinct and reason to protecting himself from the harm that threatens him, he is restrained by natural pity from needlessly harming anyone himself, even if he has been harmed. For according to the axiom of the wise Locke, where there is no property, there is no injury.

Rousseau here claims that the original cause for violence was the introduction of property, and that beforehand, man was tranquil and peaceful to his fellow man. However, if one looks at the state of nature of other non-human animals, it seems that violence is a natural part of most of their lives. Does Rousseau assume something that seems not to be true? Or is he referring to the middle stage in his idea of human development? If so, did the forming of communities cause one to claim property, or did the claiming of property begin the communal process?

Why lament the inevitable?

...all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species. (pg. 65)

Emerging society gave way to the most horrible state of war; since the human race, vilified and desolated, was no longer able to retrace its steps or give up the unfortunate acquisitions it had made, and since it labored only toward its shame by abusing the faculties that honor it, it brought itself to the brink of its ruin.  Horrified by the newness of the ill, both the poor man and the rich man hope to flee from wealth, hating what they once had prayed for. (pg. 68)

Savage man and civilized man differ so greatly in the depths of their hearts and in their inclinations, that what constitutes the supreme happiness of the one would reduce theo ther to despair.  (pg. 80)

...it (inequality) derives its force and growth form the development of our faculties and the progress of the human mind... (pg. 81)

Sorry for the mass of quotations, but I think that they collectively drive home what I understood to be  Rousseau's point.  Yes, the human race has endured a "fall" from a most ideal condition to one of vice and folly.  This fall was in the form of progress, however, and thus must be to some advantage.  Rousseau emphasizes the stark contrast between savage and civilized man.  The condition that he details throughout the discourse is not only unattainable, but also unsuitable for modern humans. Is it then worth lamenting?  I think that his discourse is just that; a discussion of the simultaneous fall and rise of the human race over time.  Inequality is an inevitable effect of progress "that reigns among all civilized people" (pg. 81).  Why dwell on what cannot be fixed?  (Or, does anyone think that it can be fixed??)

Rousseau Part II

"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?

Inevitability in Rousseau

[Things in this state could have remained equal, if talents had been equal, and if the use of iron and the consumption of foodstuffs had always been in precise balance. But this proportion, which was not maintained by anything, was soon broken. The strongest did the most work; the most adroit turned theirs to better advantage; the most ingenious found ways to shorten their labor.   p. 67]

[It is clear that Rousseau sees society as an assembly of artificial men (see Brennan's post), but I would like to look at the inevitiability of man becoming artificial. Rousseau states that things could have remained equal if the consumption of foodstuffs had always been equal. But it would seem that this is impossible - all men are not equal in abilities, and (as he notes), without some body enforcing equality of production and consumption on the populace, the strong will naturally obtain more. Rousseau's option of how things could have remained equal seems impossible: only outside of society, in the natural state, can we have equality. I think Rousseau has done a pretty good job showing that the origin of inequality is society; I don't think he's done a great job of presenting a solution. I know this wasn't the point of his discourse, but then again, he admits he's not 100% sure what the point of his discourse is.

My question is: Rousseau claims that society is an assembly of artificial men, and that inequality naturally follows from the creation of society. Tracing his progress of mankind, he presents each step as a sort of inevitable progression from the previous advance. He claims that inequality is artificial since in the state of nature "inequality is practically non-existent." Does he believe that mankind could have avoided inequality? Also, we can understand that the the great list of wrongs he lists in the last paragraph of the book are the result of society. Is society inevitable, (and therefore these wrongs inevitable for mankind)? Does that which seperates man from the animals fate man for unjust society?]

Rousseau Part Deux

This is precisely the stage reached by most of the savage people known to us; and it is for want of having made adequate distinctions among their ideas or of having noticed how far these peoples already were from the original state of nature that many have hastened to conclude that man is naturally cruel, and that he needs civilization in order to soften him. On the contrary, nothing is so gentle as man in his primitive state . . . he is restrained by natural pity from needlessly harming anyone himself, even if he has been harmed. (64)

Despite the advice to work hard to see behind Rousseau's words and find his true motives, I was unable to do so since his words are so loaded and loud. I believe last class we thought one of Rousseau's claims is that man cannot help thinking of different possibilities/scenarios than reality, mainly because he is a naturally speculative creature. But section II seems to advocate, not just speculate, a different scenario than the status quo. I don't believe he wants to abandon society all together; he seems to indicate that the "happiest epoch" lived in a past society constituted of humans in an intermediary stage between the savage and societal man (p 65) (perhaps stage 2 of Patt-man's three-stage hypothesis). But the passions of greed and pride that corrode us today are a conditioned product of society, not human nature. Contrary to Hobbes, he thinks that the social advancements we have made through reason have led us away from the primitive compassion of nature. Like in Montaingne's "Of Cannibals," the natural man would immediately think it absurd that we allow for "a handful of people to gorge themselves on superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities" (Rouss 81).

In response to one of Brennan's questions below, I believe Rousseau thinks our advancement was accompanied by a tragic loss - or perhaps our advancement was a lamentable loss.

Artificial Human: Good, Bad, or Just Redundant?

Here is the final stage of inequality...
Here everything is returned... to a new state of nature...
--p. 79

...no attentive reader can fail to be struck by the immense space that separates these two states [the natural and the civil]...
why, with original man gradually disappearing, society no longer offers to the eyes of the wise man anything but an assemblage of artificial men and factitious passions which are the work of all these new relations and have no true foundation in nature.
--p. 80

It is enough for me to have proved that this is not the original state of man, and that this is only the spirit of society, and the inequality that society engenders, which thus change and alter all our natural inclinations...
Moreover, it follows that moral inequality, authorized by positive right alone, is contrary to natural right...
--p. 81

How does artificiality fit in with Rousseau's sense of what it means to be human? Rousseau seems to take liberty to be an essential part of what it means to be human (cf. p. 74, "...a man is not born a man."). But from this liberty eventually but inevitably spring its abuses (cf. p. 75, middle paragraph; cf. p. 77 "For the vices..."). Especially in the last few pages as quoted above, this "new state of nature," in which the essence of mankind engenders its inequalities, is increasingly portrayed as artificial, unnatural, and without basis in 'natural man.'

So perhaps humankind and 'natural human'-kind are inherently divided by this "immense space"; perhaps humans as they are now are inherently artificial beings. What does this mean for us? Artificiality does not seem like a good thing, especially when it enables such horrors as a person agreeing to "plunge my sword... into my pregnant wife's entrails." Our capacity for thought enables these terrors, but it also enables love. Just as a savage would neither cede his or her liberty nor seek revenge, neither could he or she be capable of protecting his or her family as a modern person would.

So what are we left with? Does Rousseau want us to accept our state as it is? His development of man (pp. 60-63) demonstrates a Hume-esque interest in judgment by experience; this methodology suggests to me that Rousseau's priority could be to present the truth about humanity as it is. But then there is this sense from his tone that he takes this artificiality to be a lamentable thing; that savage man, for all his inhumanity, is somehow preferable. We gain something from the crossing of the gap, but with that gain comes inequality and other vices.

So does Rousseau think it's good to be who we are? Is this separation from nature, this artificiality, this humanity, this "ardor for making oneself the topic of the conversation" a bald fact about the human race as we are? Is it a development worthy of praise and gladness? Is it a tragic, lamentable loss?

With so few sources of illness, man in this state of nature has little need for remedies, and even less for physicians; the human race is, in this respect, in no worse a condition than any other species . . . man differs from the beasts in this respect (idea-sense relation) only in a matter of degree]

Rousseau throughout uses non-human animal observation as a method of describing the "natural man." This is an ingenious shift toward darwinian evolution and, later, behaviorist psychology. How does he justify it?

To continue Patt-man's comment on Rousseau's justification for leaving out the origin of man, it's also strange that he doesn't think to consider the observation of children in addition to non-human animals.

But, he takes as given that "natural" equals "non-societal." This is not true even of non-humans. Where does he get his image of the "solitary" person? Does it come from a new take on the natural equality of all people as equality of psyche?

Women, reason, and pity

"Amiable and virtuous women citizens, it will always be the fate of your sex to govern ours." Letter, p. 31

While I was excited to see women called "citizens" as opposed to just recognized as members of society or not recognized at all, Rousseau seems to be talking less about how women can be active participants in the state's politics and more about what their proper place is: married, in the home, and modestly attired.  Doesn't quite seem like a citizen to me.

"Although it might be appropriate for Socrates and minds of his stature to acquire virtue through reason, the human race would long ago have ceased to exist, if its preservation had depended solely on the reasonings of its members." p.55, end of the paragraph about pity

This quote stayed with me for a long time after I read it.  I wonder if Rousseau considers himself a man with a mind of Socratic stature or if he puts himself with everyone else whose virtue developed not through reason but was inspired by pity.  I'd like to talk more about his idea of pity and of reason.

"I would have wanted to be born in a country where the sovereign and the people could have but one and the same interest, so that all the movements of the machine always tended only to the common happiness. SInce this could not have taken place unless the people and the sovereign were one and the same person, it follows that I ould have wished to be born under a democrative goverement, wisely tempered." (p26)

"For liberty is like those solid and tasty foods or those full bodies wines which are appropriate for nourishing and strengthening robust constitutions that are used to them, but which overpower, ruin, and intoxicate the weak and delicate who are not suited for them. Once people are accustomed to masters, they are no longer in a position to get along without them. If they try to shake off the yoke, they put all the more distance between themselves and liberty, because, in mistaking for liberty an unbridged license which is its opposite, their revolutions nearly always deliver them over to seducers who simply make their chains heavier." (p27). 

In reading Rousseau's descriptions of both a democracy and liberty, I wondered if this sort of definition was relevant in my own life. I do believe that when Rousseau says that he wants his land to be a "state where, all the private individuals being known to one another...and where that pleasant habit of seeing and knowing one another turned love of homeland into love of the citizens rather than love of the land." It would come to my attention that maybe Rousseau is referring to the truest form of a democracy, where a small group of people run the government. In our modern day, most Americans would consider our country to be a Democracy, but how is this so when we are a population of 300 million, and in more cases have far more consideration for the land than our own people?

Next, is the issue of liberty, with which a modern comparison can be made. Rousseau makes it clear that Liberty can only be used when necessary and with those who are truly ready to accept it. I make the comparison to two events in recent history that make me question the spread of what we call "freedom" or liberty. First, the obvious comparison is the Iraq war. The United States has the mission to spread Democracy and Freedom to the middle East, but is it the case that they might have not been and still might not be ready for a state of Liberty? How do we know when a country or group of people is ready to embrace such a state? Another case would be with the British presence in India. When is a country or state ready to accept the ways of Liberty? Does is happen naturally or with force from a country with liberty?

On the Decline

"Why is man alone subject to becoming an imbecile? Is it not that...man, in losing through old age or other accidents all that his perfectibility has enabled him to acquire, thus falls even lower than the animal itself?" (p45)

This quote, along with a few other things Rousseau said (such as the difference between savage man and man with machine) made me think that Rousseau sees man as a mainly declinitive (yes, I made that word up, but it's the best suited in my mind...) creature. This was rather counter-intuitive for me, especially since we have in our culture, and I do not believe it is a newer sentiment, an attribution of wisdom to the aged. It does, however, seem to be somewhat in line with the description of the immortals in Gulliver's Travels, and that made me wonder if (as long as I'm not misreading what Rousseau is saying here) both Swift and Rousseau would coincidently be wrong together, or if they were right about this decline? Is there a point in the course of human life that man starts to fall and lose all that he has gained? Moreover, has man on the whole started (or did he start a long time ago) to decline (which is something else I think Rousseau has been saying)? It does appear to me that I am leaving out the possibility of the decline not being necessary, but then my question is simply how does man avoid the decline?

Excused?

"I admit that, since the events I have to describe could have taken place in several ways, I cannot make a determination among them except on the basis of conjecture. But over and above the fact that these conjectures become reasons when they are the most probable... and the sole means that a person can have of discovering the truth...[my consequences] will not therby be conjectural, since, on the basis of the principles I have just established, no other system is conceivable that would not furnish me with the same results, and from which I could not draw the same conclusions. This will excuse me from... [many, many surprising and seemingly questionable things that I have said and will say]" (59).

During the course of my reading, I discovered Rousseau claiming things about the state of nature ("go[ing] on at such length about the supposition of that primitive condition" (58)) that often violated my "inveterate prejudices" (58) and sense of the way things are. Such bold claims would cause him to have some very difficult explaining to do later, which he would do by very questionable means (most of which I think fall under the elipses at the end of the quote above).

For example, he says that without "any need for one another, they would hardly encounter one another twice in their lives, without knowing or talking to one another" (48). He portrays an isolated, solitary version of natural man that I don't think (with my "inverterate prejudice") accurately represents the human person. Because of this early attribute, he has later trouble about with how language arises, since no knowledge or mental ability comes about without necessity (48). He eventually sidesteps a full solution to this "thorny problem" which occupies philosophers "for whole centuries without interruption" (49) so that he can "inquire how they might have begun to be established" (49). How can he pull such a move? I believe this and other claims and subsequent arguments of his fall in the excused elipses, specifically under "the way in which the lapse of time compensates for the slight probability of events" (59), or one of the other objections that he lists.

Therefore, my question is: how is Rousseau excused? He seems to think that he is excused because he tried his best and because he said so (when he set his first principles, which "should not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasonings, better suited to shedding light on the nature of things than on pointing out their true origin" (38-39) --how can you know nature without origin?). Also, perhaps his system is fine but the "results" and "conclusions" that he is aiming for are off. Thus, my question contains many questions, but generally it is about his excuse statement at the end. Do we think he is excused, and can you help me understand how? Perhaps he didn't have time to treat all of those objections, and so he shot for a general pardon?