Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–1778)

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who lived most of his life in France but sometimes identified himself as “a citizen of Geneva,” was a philosopher who wrote novels, letters, autobiographical reflections, and essays that advanced positions that were at once provocative and paradoxical. He is remembered most for his political thought, which is both a critique of existing monarchies and a reaction against the Enlightenment and the then revolutionary individualism of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. His writing first gave impetus to the French Revolution, later lent weight to the Romantic movement, and continues to be studied for its attempt to confront, define, and solve the problem that political societies are inescapably made up of naturally asocial creatures. His several solutions to this problem join in offering a powerful moral critique of the “bourgeois,” the sort of person Rousseau sees as being fostered by large, democratic nation-states founded on the rights of the individual to pursue property.

Rousseau accepts Hobbes's view that human beings are not “political animals” but are asocial by nature. The challenge of politics is hence to design institutions that are legitimate and function well with creatures whose primary natural concerns are themselves, not the common good or unselfish virtue. But Rousseau's view of human asociality is much more radical than Hobbes's. Rousseau denies that one can discover human nature simply by observing what happens when enforced law is removed, as Hobbes implied, for the people who live in civil society have been deeply shaped by this experience. Their conduct, with or without enforced law, is a reflection on socialized man, not on natural man. To discover natural man, one must go back much further in the history of the species, and this leads to a much different set of standards by which to guide and assess political life. Indeed, for Rousseau, natural man is scarcely human at all. He lacks language, reason, imagination, and the inflated desires that these nurture.

Because Rousseau's natural man is without pride, religious opinions, or exaggerated desires, he is also free from many of the motives that drive human beings into conflict. True, he is an uncivilized brute, but he is a peaceful brute, a “noble savage,” capable of enjoying “the sweet sentiment of existence.” Whereas Hobbes used the horrors of the state of nature to underscore the blessings brought by stable government, Rousseau uses natural man's freedom, selfsufficiency, equality, wholeness, goodness, and tranquility to argue that life in civil society has made human beings weaker, less happy, more artificial, and deeply corrupt. For Rousseau, the political problem is not mainly one of keeping the peace and increasing material prosperity; more important, he argues, are political principles that look to human happiness, wholeness, and virtue.

It is a modern political idea to affirm and stress a natural right of individuals to pursue property. Even before this idea takes hold, Rousseau expresses powerful reservations against it. He does so partly on the ground that the inequality between rich and poor is hardly natural or based on natural rights (Locke's argument that labor constitutes a title to ownership to the contrary notwithstanding), but he also stresses the moral changes that accompany this inequality: Avarice and ambition come to be dominant passions, and unhappiness is added to injustice. Rousseau is thus a critic of the sort of human being who is devoted to the pursuit of self-interest, and he sees this sort of person as justified and encouraged by modern liberal institutions. Adam Smith would later show that, under capitalism, it is not from “the benevolence of the butcher, brewer, or baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” Rousseau would grant this but would be quick to add that if it is not in their interest to feed us, modern principles and institutions will incline others to let us starve. More fundamentally, what if true happiness requires that one be benevolent or good, not merely well fed? Modern liberalism may succeed in producing “the wealth of nations,” but only, if Rousseau is correct, by impoverishing the individuals who seek their daily bread within these wealthy nations.

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