Question 1
- Rousseau repeatedly claims that a single idea is at the centre of his world view, namely, that human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society. Unfortunately, despite the alleged centrality of this claim, it is difficult to give it a clear and plausible interpretation. One obvious problem is present from the start: since society, the alleged agent of corruption, is composed entirely of naturally good human beings, how can evil ever get a foothold? Discuss extensively
INTRODUCTION
In the turmoil of the many centuries of human existence, we have almost everywhere searched for guidance in our quest for morality. A general overview of the many systematized moral practices devised by our predecessors in the history of European thought seems to suggest that while there are many and important guiding principles to be derived from some, or perhaps all, of these ways of creating a coherent society, no one moral system can claim exclusivity, and none has per se attracted unquestioned allegiance. The variety of cultural norms that we humans have devised to guide our behavior have proved to be useful for the particular times and the particular kinds of society that conceived them, as Alasdair MacIntyre has observed (Alasdair MacIntyre, 1985). Our traditions, enshrined in our moral and legal codes and ways of motivating, or rewarding the ‘right’ behaviour towards our fellow beings and others, also suggest that these traditions could be better explained, or rather complemented, by looking back at our common, biological origins. Pursuing this line of thought as a worthy proposal for modern moral philosophy,
Moral psychology
It is also difficult to see what “natural goodness” might be. In various places Rousseau clearly states that morality is not a natural feature of human life, so in whatever sense it is that human beings are good by nature, it is not the moral sense that the casual reader would ordinarily assume. In order, therefore, to address this puzzling central claim, it is best to look first at the details of Rousseau’s moral psychology, especially as developed in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality and in Emile. Rousseau attributes to all creatures an instinctual drive towards self-preservation. Human beings therefore have such a drive, which he terms amour de soi (self love). Amour de soi directs us first to attend to our most basic biological needs for things like food, shelter and warmth. Since, for Rousseau, humans, like other creatures, are part of the design of a benevolent creator, they are individually well-equipped with the means to satisfy their natural needs. Alongside this basic drive for self-preservation, Rousseau posits another passion which he terms pitié (compassion). In the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality Rousseau imagines a multi-stage evolution of humanity from the most primitive condition to something like a modern complex society. Rousseau denies that this is a reconstruction of history as it actually was, and Frederick Neuhouser (2014) has argued that the evolutionary story is merely a philosophical device designed to separate the natural and the artificial elements of our psychology. At each step of this imagined evolution human beings change their material and psychological relations to one another and, correspondingly, their conception of themselves, or what Rousseau calls the “sentiment of their existence.” According to this narrative, humans live basically solitary lives in the original state of the human race, since they do not need one another to provide for their material needs. The human race barely subsists in this condition, chance meetings between proto-humans are the occasions for copulation and reproduction, child-care is minimal and brief in duration. If humans are naturally good at this stage of human evolution, their goodness is merely a negative and amounts to the absence of evil. In this story, human beings are distinguished from the other creatures with which they share the primeval world only by two characteristics: freedom, and perfectibility. Freedom, in this context, is simply the ability not to be governed solely by appetite; perfectibility is the capacity to learn and thereby to find new and better means to satisfy needs. Together, these characteristics give humans the potential to achieve self-consciousness, rationality, and morality. Nevertheless, it will turn out that such characteristics are more likely to condemn them to a social world of deception, dissimulation, dependence, oppression, and domination. Rousseau’s term for this new type of self-interested drive, concerned with comparative success or failure as a social being, is amour propre (love of self, often rendered as pride or vanity in English translations). Amour propre makes a central interest of each human being the need to be recognized by others as having value and to be treated with respect.
QUESTION 2
Thomas Hobbes advocates for Royal Absolutism and construes in his state of nature that if self-preservation is the end, then man is guaranteed the means to the right to that end. Discuss this view extensively and compare the natural rights as guaranteed in John Locke’s state of nature
