February 10 , 2014
Dis Part 1: “Natural man” (primitive human beings)
1) Rousseau an “outside” and critique of French Absolutism/Salon society
2) A New Science of Man – humanism “anthropology” origins of man
3) Hobbes and Locke read “civilized man” back into history
4) Man is simple, solitary and innocent – selfpreservation and compassion
5) Man lives by instinct; basic needs and satisfaction – fertility of nature
6) No language, no thoughts – no sense of past and future – pure immediacy
• Live in immediacy so that you have no worries
7) Man distinguished from beasts by free will; origin of change
Dis Part 2: The Noble Savage
1) Man learns to separate himself from nature
2) Use of tools – fire, huts, military, agriculture
3) Morality and rationality develop our time (accident)
4) Sociality produces “vice and virtue” love=family and the division of labour distinction
• Protect females from others and build her up to be better than other females
• Family is held together by culture
• By culture, man is capable of free will and change
5) The noble savages and the Golden Age ‘free association’
6) Property and inequality = vanity and amour propre = selflove
7) Law and possession to legal rights – institutionalize inequality
• Legalized the rights of oppression and law over human beings
• It is an instrument of the elite to control the others
8) Political society a “life” – corruption, vice and coercion
• Civil society (social contract) constrains the vast majority of people for the rich
Dis Part 3: Political Society/the Social Contract
1) The Revolution, liberty, equality and fraternity
2) The Social Contract – remade > sociality and equality
3) Civilized life became degenerate and corrupt – contingent laws
4) Gone from democracy, aristocracy to tyranny – can be changed
5) New social contract to transform man and instill civic virtue
6) Republicanism – popular sovereignty and the general will
7) Community, selfdetermination, nationalism (active state)
February 24, 2014 The separation from nature is also the separation from others. We begin to see ourselves as
individuals, and we become obsessed with being better than everyone else. We identify ourselves
on the basis of how other people see us.
Goals of the social contact: love and citizenship. Politics will always be about obedience, and
can never return to the state of nature. The social contract has to make us happy, or at least
dignify us.
Unlike Locke, Rousseau focuses on love and affection. The social contract tries to take love and
affection from the family into political societies. Free will has to be actualized in social order –
Hobbes gives up our freedom for peace and tranquility, Rousseau argues that we want happiness.
Rousseau offered a body politic that unites people to the common good.
Rousseau has a love/hate relationship for reason although he knows reason is necessary for the
general will – it is logical, but does it feel right?
We give everything we have and own to the state, then the state promises we will get back our
property. We gain a stronger legal right that is bolstered by the fidelity of fellow citizens who
will not take our property – the state still has final sovereignty over everything we own, as well
as the right to redistribute our property if need be. We want this because of our compassion and
the equality of general will – we feel compelled
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