Rousseau’s Natural Man Favors his Sustenance Essay

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

The matters pertaining the animal rights and their suffering for the sake of harvesting their flesh have been an issue with a variety of perspectives. Puppies, Pigs and People, a piece by Alastair Norcross, bring to question the treatment towards livestock and what is immoral about the process. The argument proclaims that since we (humans) do not require meat as part of our diet then the exploit of raising animals for consumption (humanly or not) is immoral. On a counter side of the argument, a philosopher, Carl Cohen, states in his work that animals possess no moral rights thus we have the option to eat them despite if it is immoral or not. In the case of who I believe offers the most optimum solution, I believe Cohen is the most accurate in his summation of animal’s roles in our world. I will argue that people have no obligation to abstain from eating animals, but morally speaking animals should be kept in humane living conditions in order for it to meet our obligations towards these creatures.

Most importantly for Rousseau, however, is not necessarily how history lets him see how men might have been or how history lets him strike a balance between grasping the intricacy of human history and succeeding fluidly from one thought to another; it is how framing his work in such a way lets him give the greatest demonstrative proof of the point he makes. The first part of the work consists in a history of mankind until the institution of the social contract, and it reads easily and freely, just as man in Rousseau’s conception was in those days. The second part of the Second Discourse, which deals with the critique of the social contract itself, however, reads much more heavily, as if Rousseau were attempting to give the reader a taste of the gravity the social contract itself imposes upon man. The opening lines of the second half already launch his scathing attack on civil society by associating this notion with a man who takes advantage of his fellow men:

Rousseau, in his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality of Men, discusses the beginning and development of inequality of individuals. Rousseau seeks to discern whether the unequal treatment of men is dictated by natural laws or if it is a man made creation. When Rousseau analyzes humans in the state of nature, he claims we are all animalistic by nature. Humans in the state of nature are motivated by self-preservation much like animals and also pity. The difference between man and animals according to Rousseau is man’s perfectibility. Because man has very minimal needs in the state of nature, no concept of morality and limited interaction with other individuals, he is generally happy. Because in the state of nature man embodies the quality of perfectibility, he is able to adapt with his environment. As nature drives men to leave certain areas it forces them to learn new skills as they come in to contact with one another more often. As man connects with more and more individuals around him he becomes aware that he has more needs. As men begin to live in societies with more people they start comparing themselves to those around them and self-preservation and pity are no longer their main goals. Now, they have to do more work in order to be happy such as raise to greater heights then their fellow humans. Moral inequality is created as division of labor and property rights are invented. Owning property allows the rich to take advantage of the poor, leading to unstable relations

and Arts,” 16); onto a false sense of liberty in “commerce and agriculture” (Thoreau, “Civil

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

“Man, often deviates from such laws to his own detriment. A pigeon will die of hunger next to dish filled with choice meats and a cat next to a heap of fruit or grain. Thus, desolate men give themselves over to excesses that bring fevers and death, because the mind perverts the senses and the will continues to speak when nature is silent (Rousseau, 33)”

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.

     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

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

For human, to master agriculture and trade about 10,000 years ago widely expanded their food options that enable modern human to become a vegetarian (Corliss). A vegetarian does not eat meat not only because it tastes bad, but also it means something to him or her. The more one has faith in vegetarianism, the more one restricts one’s food choice in reality. Henry David Thoreau, who is known as one of the first environmental writers of the 20th century in the U.S. and had lived in woods alone, writes in his essay Walden that hunting and eating animals had bothered him because it seemed as it degraded himself to a beast. For him, eating animals is “not agreeable to [his] imagination” (Thoreau 169) as Thoreau strongly believed that “to leave off eating animals” is “a part of the destiny of the human race” (Thoreau 170). While his belief and the reality he faced had conflicted each other, he tried his best to find a way to live without relying much on meat. Even in a wild, what drove Thoreau was anthropocentric thinking that human can control nature. This dilemma in food choice that bothered Thoreau is what Michael Pollan calls the omnivore’s dilemma. He puts it in his same-titled book in this way: “When you can eat just about anything nature has to offer,

By setting aside all the facts, Rousseau creates a state of nature that proves man to be naturally free and good. Once Rousseau sets aside the facts he creates a story that shows man should be “discontented with your present state, for reasons that herald even greater discontent for your unhappy Posterity, you might perhaps wish to be able to go backwards” (133). This is true because man is free. Rousseau starts by “stripping this being, so constituted, of all the supernatural gifts he may have received, and of all the artificial faculties he could only have acquired by prolonged progress” (134). Man in his beginning is unsophisticated and irrational nothing more than “an animal “(134). But, in nature man has no authorities. In nature “men, dispersed among them [other animals], observe, imitate their industry, and so raise themselves to the level of the Beasts’ instinct, with this advantage that each species has but its own instinct, while man perhaps having none that belong to him, appropriates them all, feeds indifferently on most of the various foods” (134-135). Men learn from other animals and imitate their moves but are forced to

The purpose which Rousseau ostensibly gives his social contract is to free man from the illegitimate chains to which existing governments have shackled him. If this is his aim, then it follows that he should be most concerned with the preservation of freedom in political society, initially so that savage man might be lured out of nature and into society in the first place, and afterwards so that Rousseau’s framework for this society will prevent the present tyranny from reasserting itself. Indeed, in his definition of purpose for man’s initial union into society, he claims that, despite his membership in an association to which he must necessarily have some sort of obligation if the

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

On the other hand, Rousseau is of the idea that human beings are good in nature but they are latter to be vitiated by the political societies which are not part of the man’s natural state. Men need to live in collaboration and help each other to face life challenges. However, with the establishment of political and social institutions, men begin to experience inequalities as a result of greed. Rousseau claims that, in man’s natural state, they only strive for the basic needs and once those needs are satisfied they are contented in that state (Hobbes & Malcolm, 2012). Additionally, Rousseau points out that after the inception of social and political institutions, humans began to be self-centered