Rousseau 's State Of Nature

Rousseau believed that to uplift ourselves out of the state of nature, man must partake in the course of being the sovereign that provided the protection. The contrast between Rousseau’s concepts and those of the liberals of his time, originated with different understandings and interpretations of the state of nature. Classical liberal thinkers like Thomas Hobbes defined the state of nature as an unsafe place, where the threat of harm to one’s property was always an existent. He

In the philosophical fiction, “A Discourse on Inequality,” John Rousseau, in the state of nature, distinguishes man from animals with the concepts of man possessing freewill and man’s sense of unrealized perfectibility. Furthermore, he emphasizes throughout the first discourse that man, in the state of nature, does not obtain knowledge that surpasses that of animals. Man’s free will is a prerequisite for a further gain in knowledge to be acquired; also, the sense of perfectibility man is naturally derived with allows man to change with time. I argue that free will is a necessary and crucial factor for man to leave the state of nature. Because of free will, man retains the capability to acquire and develop knowledge. Moreover, knowledge

Rousseau sees the first step of exiting the state of nature and getting closer to origin of tyranny is when man decides to leave the lifestyle of being alone and always wandering to settling down and making a house and trying to provide for his basic needs and the ones that are not as necessary as: nourishment, rest, shelter and self-preservation. This is the stage where you see the element playing a part in man’s life and in the way civil society came to be. Man is no longer just worried about himself he has to provide not only for himself but for his entire family which he is searching for. Natural man or savage man lives within himself whereas Rousseau argues that civil man lives in the judgement of others. This is one of the big reasons has to how inequality fomed. All the inequalities Rousseau does take about or basically economic things that happen in nature. This type of economic ineuality is among the many other inequalities but is one of many that inequality originated from. If man had stayed restricted to working by themselves they would have remained free, healthy, good and happy as

As I’ve stated before, Jean Jacque-Rousseau and Hobbes have contrasting views when it comes to the state of nature. Rousseau held an optimistic view of the state of nature. He viewed humans who lived in early times as “Noble Savages” and that man was “naturally good.” Rousseau viewed individuals who lived in a state of nature were happier, healthier, self-sufficient and had the freedom to do as they desired. To live in a state of nature was to live a simple life focused on family, self-love, and self-preservation. Rousseau believed we were better off in a state of nature, where as civilization corrupts us.

In the state of nature property does not exist. Only once man has developed tools and has a basic formation of living together as a community, does the concept of property arise with men building huts. As soon as this idea of property comes about, so do arguments and conflict. Rousseau draws on the idea that the act of agriculture and cultivating of land brings with it civilized men but at the same time ruining humanity. Eventually all land is occupied by humans and the only way one is able to obtain land is to steal it. Those who have land already, the rich, namely those who have attempted to obtain more land and those who do not have any land, the poor, in desperation of survival also try to obtain by stealing from the rich. This state of war is a situation occurring in an established civil society.

Rousseau’s state of nature differs greatly from Locke’s. The human in Rousseau’s state of nature exists purely as an instinctual and solitary creature, not as a Lockean rational individual. Accordingly, Rousseau’s human has very few needs, and besides sex, is able to satisfy them all independently. This human does not contemplate appropriating property, and certainly does not deliberate rationally as to the best method for securing it. For Rousseau, this simplicity characterizes the human as perfectly free, and because it does not socialize with others, it does not have any notion of inequality; thus, all humans are perfectly equal in the state of nature. Nonetheless, Rousseau accounts for humanity’s contemporary condition in civil society speculating that a series of coincidences and discoveries, such as the development of the family and the advent of agriculture, gradually propelled the human away from a solitary, instinctual life towards a social and rationally contemplative

With reference to emerging from the state of nature and entering into society, Rousseau highlights that free-will brings with it reason. As reason develops, man becomes more industrious and begins to adapt to

He refutes Hobbes’ idea that man is naturally seeking to attack and fight by saying that man in the state of nature is actually man in his most timid form. He states that savage man’s needs are so basic (food, shelter, water, a woman) and easily found that he can have “neither foresight or curiosity”. By this man he means that man lacks the expansive nature that Hobbes’ believed they possessed (natural eternal quest for power). He continues on man’s basic nature adding “With passions so minimally active and such a salutary restraint, being more wild than evil, and more attentive to protecting themselves from the harm they could receive than tempted to do harm to others, men were not subject to very dangerous conflicts.” This is rather opposite of the state of nature in which Hobbes calls man in a constant war with man. He argues, that without society, in fact, that man would be much more pure and that the ills of society have dirtied man. He believed that human nature is very comparable to that of an animal in that it is at its based even natured, but that the separating factor between the two is free will. He argues that since society calls for more cooperation between men, it also causes more competition, creating many of society ills. Rather than saying man fled from the state of nature like Hobbes, Rousseau rather said that man needed society for division of labor as well as the division

In contrast, Rousseau had a generally positive view on human nature though a rather negative view on modern society. He proposed that humans had once been solitary beings and had learned to be political. He believed that human nature was not fixed and was subject to changed. Likewise, he believed that man was good when in a state of nature, but was corrupted by society as shown in his quotation, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Also differentiating himself from other humanists, Rousseau taught that the sciences and the arts were not beneficial to man. Rousseau believed the general will must always be right and to obey the general will is to be free.

Rousseau’s and Hobbes’ views are different from each other in the sense of nature of man. Hobbes portrays natural state of man as ‘nasty, brutal and miserable in which people are independent to behave as they want and might occur risks to others’ survival. For him, man is also scared of being killed by others because everybody is a rivan and an enemy to each other. In Leviathan, Hobbes asserts that “the passions that incline men to

The state of nature can be characterized as the state before civil society, before government where all men agreed to enter into a social contract. Locke and Rousseau both believed that men were not savages as some might believe. The state of nature was in some cases even better than what we have become today. In fact, both Locke and Rousseau believed that in the state of nature all men had natural rights and followed natural God given or inherent laws that signified the freedom of men from tyranny.

     Man has no reason or conscience when in contact with others. Possessions begin to be claimed, but the inequality of skill lead to inequality of fortunes. The idea of claiming possessions excites men’s passions, which provoke conflict and leads to war. Rousseau believes men are not perfect in their original state, but have the ability to live in a more perfect society with guidance of

According to Rousseau man was born “naturally good”. However, when man began to acquire private property it created a society where the naturally good of individuals became corrupted. Modern institutions like private property are the driving force behind an immoral

Jean-Jacques Rousseau in The Origin of Inequality talks briefly about a savage man in the state of nature and what makes him virtuous. Rousseau said, “Qualities that can harm an individual’s preservation ‘vices’ in him and those than can contribute to its ‘virtues.’ In that case it would be necessary to call the one who least resists the simple impulses of nature the most virtuous,”(35). When reading this, one can clearly see Rousseau depicts the virtuous person being the savage man who gives into his impulses. He believes that man should only fulfill his natural impulses of sex, sleep, and food in

Rousseau’s view on the state of nature is interpreted as a forest, and refers to the “savage man”. He begins by explaining how he relates man to an animal he states “when I strip that being… I see an animal less strong than some, less agile the others, but all in all, the most advantageously organized of all” (Discourse of Inequality, 47). Rousseau believes that if you would leave man in the wild he would