Who Lost Nature?

Rousseau and Rousseauism

Author(s): Jonathan Marks
Source: Polity , Summer, 2002, Vol. 34, No. 4 (Summer, 2002), pp. 479-502
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Northeastern Political
Science Association

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Polity * Volume XXXIV, Number 3 * Summer 2002

Who Lost Nature?

Rousseau and Rousseaulsm

Jonathan Marks
Carthage College

Some of the most profound political consequences for which Jean-Jacques

Rousseau's thought is credited or blamed rest on his justification of nature, or
physiodicy. That physiodicy, in turn, rests on a distinction between nature and his-
tory, which allows Rousseau to declare nature innocent of both the miseries
human beings suffer in society and the difficulties that drive human beings into
society in the first place. In this essay, I argue that Rousseau knowingly under-
mines the distinction between nature and history that he proposes early in the
Second Discourse, and that he ultimately conceives nature not as a prehistoric
beginning but as an end or perfection. Rousseau's thought, properly understood,
moderates the extravagant hopes for social reform his successors entertained.

Jonathan Marks (marksjol @pilot.msu.edu) is a Visiting Assistant Professor

of Political Theory and Constitutional Democracy at James Madison College,
Michigan State University. He joins the faculty of Carthage College this fall.

In this essay, I take up Rousseau's justification of nature, as it is widely under-

stood. That justification entails an account of nature so implausible and even
strange that it is hard to believe anyone, let alone one of the most influential politi-
cal thinkers of all time, would seriously advance it. I argue that Rousseau did not
seriously advance it. Yet some of the most profound political consequences for
which his thought is credited or blamed rest on this very account, according to
which human nature and human origins are one and the same.
In the first part, I survey some of the prevailing understandings of Rousseau's
theodicy. This point of departure is suspect, since justifying nature and justifying
God are separate undertakings. But it is warranted because they overlap often in
Rousseau's thought and almost always in commentaries on it. The great innovation
of Rousseau's theodicy, as it has come to be understood, is to make society the only
villain in the story of man's corruption. Nature and God are thereby freed of respon-
sibility for our ills. I follow other commentators in supposing that this innovation has
important political consequences: But it depends on a radical distinction between
nature and society and even between nature and history or circumstances. In the
second part, I prove that the Second Discourse undermines this distinction,
although it initially proposes it. That work's "original" man is already the outcome
of a certain history. The provisional distinction between nature and history cannot
be maintained because natural man is already historical. In the third part, I look to

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480 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSFAUISM

Emile to show that Rousseau conceives nature as not a beginning but an end or p
fection; there is a teleological element in his conception of nature.' Since the pol
ical consequences of Rousseau's physiodicy, as it is usually understood, spring fr
the depreciation of nature that occurs when nature is equated with the original, m
argument that Rousseau did not intend such an equation and depreciation impl
that he did not intend such consequences either. In a fourth part, I conside
Rousseau's rhetorical strategy and why he might insist on an equation of the ori
nal and the natural in the first place. In the conclusion, I argue that Rousseau c
be turned against the excesses of Rousseauism.

Rousseau's Theodicy and Its Consequences:

Prevailing Understandings

The Distinction Between Nature and Society

Commentators who agree on little else agree that Rousseau anticipated and
perhaps even invented our understanding of the salient source of evil. Rousseau
was the first to blame evil not on our conflicted nature or on God but on human
inventions, above all society. He advanced the "great principle that nature made
man happy and good, but that society depraves him and makes him miserable"
(Dialogues, 1, 934; 213).2 Rousseau exculpates God and nature by showing that
our most significant ills come from society and its offshoots, the sciences and

1. Here, I differ from Laurence Cooper, who argues, contrary to most of the interpreters I treat here,
that nature is a substantive moral, political and psychological guide for Rousseau. He insists, however, that
Rousseau's nature "refers not to ends but to origins" and that "only those parts of man extant during [the]
earliest period can be considered natural in the strict or pure sense." Laurence Cooper, Rousseau, Nature,
and the Problem of the Good Life (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), 39; see
also Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1984), 11.
2. Dialogues, 1, 934; 213. Rousseau references are first to the Pldiade edition, then to an English trans-
lation. I have followed the translations closely, making only minor changes. References to the Gourevitch
translaton, including "Preface to Narcissus" and "Last Reply," are to paragraph, not page, numbers. Editions
and abbreviations for in-text citations are as follows. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Political Writings, trans. and
ed. Frederick Watkins (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953) (Corsica for Constitutional Project for
Corsica); Emile, or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979) (E); The First and
Second Discourses Together with the Replies to Critics and Essay on the Origin of Languages, trans. and
ed. Victor Gourevitch (New York: Harper & Row, 1990) (FD for First Discourse, SD for Second Discourse,
PN for Preface to Narcissus); Julie, or the New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town
at the Foot of the Alps, trans. Philip Stewart and Jean Vach6, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 6, ed.
Christopher Kelly and Roger D. Masters (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1997) (Julie); Oeu-
vres Completes, ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, Bibliotheque de la Pliade,
1959-95); Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theatre, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, NY: Cor-
nell University Press, 1960) (Letter to D'Alembert); Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques, trans. Judith Bush,
Roger D. Masters, and Christopher Kelly, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 1, ed. Roger D. Masters and
Christopher Kelly (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990) (Dialogues).

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 Jonathan Marks 481

arts, material, psychological and political dependence, and a crowd of related

causes.3
This theodicy seems to offer a radical hope. When we blame original sin or a
flawed nature for evil, it seems ineradicable. When we blame it, instead, on our
own artifice or on society, there is hope that by a new application of human cre-
ativity or by a transformation of society, evil can be wholly eradicated. Rousseau's
theodicy, Arthur Melzer has said, is "a revolutionary simplification of the human
problem" into "a merely social or historical issue where before it had been a natu-
ral or divine one"; it raises "energetic but dangerous new hopes that through polit-
ical action, one might transform the human condition."4
At first, nature itself seems to support this hope. For Hobbes and Locke, it had
been a negative standard; describing the state of nature clarified the problems, such
as bellicosity, scarcity and inflamed passions, that civil society solved. But Rousseau,
by showing that these problems are not natural but social, rehabilitates nature as a
positive standard, a condition of unity, harmony and peace that, if it can be recov-
ered, promises an end to alienation, anxiety and oppression. This recovery may be
"romantic"-the solitary life--or political-the citizen's life, which paradoxically
recaptures the unity of the natural state by "denaturing" man.5 Alongside the hope
that we can remake society to rid ourselves of evil is the hope that nature, in its
goodness, will help us. Rousseau's epigraph to Emile, from Seneca's "On Anger,"
captures both hopes. "We are sick with evils that can be cured; and nature, having
brought us forth sound, itself helps us if we wish to be improved" (E; IV, 239; 31).
But nature's innocence may require its emptiness. Rousseau's physiodicy
depends on the distinction between nature, on the one hand, and artifice and soci-
ety on the other. Hobbes's error had been to read into human nature characteristics
that human beings acquire only in society, including not only pride and love of
power but also reason and language. But to teach that human beings naturally lack
reason and language is, as Leo Strauss argues, to teach that "there is no natural con-
stitution of man to speak of." The distinction between nature and society empties
nature of substance, so that it becomes "absurd to go back to the state of nature in
order to find the norm for man." Strauss suggests that Rousseau, who wishes to be

3. Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), 157; Jean
Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1988), 20-21; Arthur Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of
Rousseau's Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 17.
4. Melzer, Natural Goodness, 82. See also Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2d
ed., trans. and ed. Peter Gay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 76.
5. See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 271; John
Scott, "The Theodicy of the Second Discourse: the 'Pure State of Nature' and Rousseau's Political Thought,"
American Political Science Review 86 (September 1992). Lovejoy is a noteworthy dissenter from the view
that Rousseau intended the state of nature as a standard, formal or otherwise, for civilized human beings.
Arthur Lovejoy, "The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality," in Essays in the History
of Ideas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1948).

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482 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

a champion of nature, finally slays it for the sake of "independence or freedom." If

nature remains a standard at all in Rousseau, it is indistinguishable from a call f
radical independence or a call to abandon all standards.6
It is possible to greet the death of nature with some cheer, since it clears th
ground for postmodern authenticity and neo-Kantian liberation. First, for the post-
modern, to slay nature is not so much to leave human beings with nothing as to fre
us to to pursue or at least to imagine multiple possibilities; it is to help us, as Tracy
Strong says, to accept "[our] own and others' multiplicity" and to "resist the tem
tation to define."7 And the neo-Kantian can join the postmodern in welcomin
nature's demise in Rousseau's thought. While "renouncing the guidance of nature
seems dangerous at first, it opens Rousseau to the radical possibility that man ca
devise "for himself a new form of existence that is his own."s For the neo-Kantian,
Rousseau abandons nature in favor not of radical independence or multiplicity bu
moral freedom, the subjection of the will to ethical self-legislation. That is, he aban
dons nature for the freedom championed by Kant, not Nietzsche.
Rousseau justifies nature and God only by making them irrelevant to human
beings. If we doubt the capacity of postmodernism or Kantianism to make freedo
itself our guide, then despair must be regarded as one of Rousseau's legacies.
Rousseau removes all content from nature, thereby making it incapable of guidin
civilized human beings, then he opens us up not only to radical hope for what w
can accomplish with our unique freedom but also to radical despair because w
know neither how to use our freedom nor how to dissuade others from using their
cruelly or destructively. We are left to mourn the loss of the consoling myth o
nature and prevented from contemplating and acting on frightening extremes only
by our arbitrary choice, our timidity, or the sense that extreme actions are no mor
meaningful or satisfying than inaction. Melzer, Strauss and Strong all see in
Rousseau Nietzsche's precursor.9

The Distinction Between Nature and History

Rousseau's physiodicy is not only worrisome because of its consequences bu

also strange because of its premise which seems, at first, to be the distinctio
between nature and society but reveals itself as the distinction between nature an

6. Strauss, NaturalRight, 271, 274, 278, 294. Irving Babbitt makes this aspect of Rousseau's thought and
legacy the basis of his polemic against Rousseauism. Irving Babbitt, Rousseau and Romanticism (Cleve
land: Meridian Books, 1968).
7. Tracy Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Pub
lications, 1994), 143.
8. Cassirer, Question, 105. For another more or less Kantian interpretation of Rousseau's thought tha
explicitly discusses the emptying out of nature Strauss describes, see Andrzej Rapaczynski, Nature and Pobl
itics: Liberalism in the Philosophies of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Pres
1987), especially 230.
9. Melzer, Natural Goodness, 288; Strauss, Natural Right, 252-53; Strong, Jean-Jacques, 92, 143,149.

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 Jonathan Marks 483

circumstances or history. It is strange and frustrating that Rousseau, of all thinkers

appears to exculpate nature for human ills by blaming society; for he, more tha
any of his predecessors, draws attention to "the fortuitous combination of severa
foreign causes" that brings human beings out of a primitive condition of goodnes
and into society. He emphasizes the "various chance occurrences that ... from s
remote a beginning finally bring man and the world to the point where we now
find them" (SD, III, 162; I, 51). It is one of Rousseau's striking departures from
Hobbes and Locke to put between man's natural state and society, both civil and
precivil, a long series of accidents and multitudes of centuries--a history. It is he
too, who strongly suggests that society could not have been wholly the product o
human will by making natural man too stupid and brutish to engineer his ow
departure from the original state of nature. It is in his thought, above all, that blam-
ing society begs the question of physiodicy by inviting the question of who or what
is responsible for the long history that precedes society and renders it necessary. If
nature is to be freed of responsibility for society, it must also be freed of responsi-
bility for history.'0
But the distinction between nature and history, where history is understood to
include the entirety of man's presocial development, seems still more radical and
debatable than the debatable distinction between nature and society. In order to
decide whether Rousseau's thought implies the different but related consequence
that Melzer, Strauss, Cassirer and Strong think it does, one must decide whether or
not Rousseau makes the distinction in question between nature and history.

Nature and History in the Second Discourse

No one of Rousseau's works inclines us to think man's original state is his natu-
ral state more than the Second Discourse. If the distinction between nature and his-
tory is a crucial premise of Rousseau's praise of nature, it is the crucial precondition
of the very discovery of nature in the Second Discourse. The origin of inequalit
among men cannot be pinpointed without knowing natural man, and knowing
natural man means knowing his beginnings. The study of human nature is th
"study of original man" (SD, III, 126; Preface, 11).

How will man succeed in knowing himself as nature formed him, through all
the changes which the succession of time and things must have wrought in hi
original constitution, and in disentangling what he owes to his own stock from
what circumstances and progress have added to or changed in his primitive
state? (SD, III, 122; Preface, 1, emphasis added)

10. Strong, Jean-Jacques, 40; Cassirer, Enlightenment, 156-57, Melzer, Natural Goodness, 82 all acknowl-
edge this point but do not consider how strange it is.

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484 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

Nature and circumstances, or nature and history, could not be much more shar
distinguished than this; man's career in history is different from, and even obscu
and warps, his nature.
True, Rousseau emphasizes in the very next sentence changes that have
occurred "in the bosom of society" (SD, III, 122; Preface, 1). Perhaps not all hist
ical occurrences but only those that take place in society degrade and conce
human nature. If so, we have misinterpreted Rousseau in suggesting that he me
by "original man" more than the solitary primitive who is free of the passions, ne
and capacities that his miserable descendants will owe to society. First, howeve
Rousseau seems to include the "acquisition of a mass of knowledge and of error
and the "changes that have occurred in the constitution of bodies" (SD, Ill, 1
Preface, 1.) among the alterations that have taken place in society, though signi
cant developments in both areas occur prior to the advent of society (See e.g. S
III, 134, 165-66; I, 1, II, 5-8). Second, and more importantly, Rousseau reckons su
physical, not social, circumstances, as climate, air and food among the causes of
variations within the human species that distinguish almost all existing human spe
imens from men in the "primitive state of nature."
Physical and not social causes first alter human beings and draw them out of th
original state. Accordingly, Rousseau opposes the characteristics of groups that
due to the "influence of the Climate" to the "natural constitution and complexi
((SD, III, 208; note x, 1; emphasis added) of a population. Third and most imp
tant is what I am about to argue; according to Rousseau man departs from the orig
inal state because he meets with and must overcome physical and animal rat
than social obstacles to his survival and well-being in that state.
The division of the body of the Second Discourse into two parts reflec
Rousseau's apparent distinction between nature and circumstances. Consider th
statement near the beginning of the Second Part:

Such was the condition of nascent man ... but difficulties soon presented them
selves . . . the height of trees which prevented him from reaching their frui
competition from the animals (SD, III, 165; II, 3).

The First Part, then, describes a natural man free not only of those characterist
that will much later be generated in him by society but also of those characteristi
that will very soon be generated in him by his immediate surroundings. The Secon
Part narrates human history, the journey from the natural state to civilization, th
first step of which coincides with the first impact of the environment on man's or
inal constitution. Natural man is the man who has not yet taken that first step. Th
natural and the original, then, seem to be strictly equated, which is also to say tha
nature and history are strictly separated.

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 Jonathan Marks 485

Objections to the Distinction Between Nature and History: First Indications

The Second Discourse itself reveals that, whatever its role in Rousseau's phys-
iodicy, the distinction between nature and circumstances or history has certain trou
bling consequences. One is already implicit in an assertion of the natural equality
men early in that work.

Men, ... by common consent, are naturally as equal among themselves as were
the animals of every species before various Physical causes introduced in som
species the varieties which we observe among them. (SD, III, 123; Preface, 3
emphasis added)

What comes first, for both human beings and animals, is equality, or sameness. Onl
the continual influence of external causes, climate, terrain, the availability or scarcit
of resources, produces differences among men, as among animals. But if we do n
attribute to nature the differences among men produced by external causes actin
on man's original constitution, we cannot attribute to it the differences among beast
produced by these same causes. Differentiation within a species, the formation of
variety, cannot be called natural, whether it is the separation of human beings in
races or the separation of Galapagos turtles into the distinct varieties that inhabit di
ferent islands. Strictly physical differences, differences in size and coloration, whic
result from, among other things, the expansion of a species into new locales an
environments, cannot be called natural. In short, what even Rousseau calls natura
history (SD, III, 149, 214; I, 29, note x, 1) should not, strictly speaking, be called nat
ural. While this conclusion does not simply reduce Rousseau's argument to absurd
ity, it is deeply counterintuitive and narrows nature's scope dramatically.
These doubts about variation among animals apply equally to human beings, fo
the distinction between nature and circumstances suggests that the natural man
depicted in the First Part is not natural at all. This so-called original man is the pro
uct of the interaction between a still more primitive being and its environmen
Rousseau grants that natural man may have developed from a more brutish anim
predecessor, even as he rules such a creature out of his own study.

However important it may be, in order to judge soundly regarding man's natu
ral state, to consider him from his origin...I shall not pause to search in th
animal system for what he may have been at the beginning if he was eventuall
to become what he is. (SD, III; 134; I, 1)

Although he refutes, in note iii, certain arguments that man is naturally

quadrupedal," so denying, tentatively, one course of development for man

11. As Plattner observes, note iii does not take into account the very possibility Rousseau has just
suggested, that the human body may, at one time, have been quite different from what it is today. Ma

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486 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

Rousseau writes of "the changes that must have occurred in man's ... conforma-
tion ... as he put his limbs to new uses and fed on new foods" (SD, Ill, 134; I,
emphasis added).'2 Even if one course of development did not occur, another sure
did. Original man is not original; his body, at least, has already been altered by i
encounter with the external world. If so, and if the natural and historical are strictl
distinguished, the man with which Rousseau begins cannot really be said to be na
ural man.

One may think this objection easily dispatched. Rousseau puts aside the ques-
tion of original man's predecessors because they differ from him only physically
That is, he puts them aside because knowing them is unimportant for human hap
piness. It suffices to say for now that such reasoning presupposes that the questio
of human happiness can be addressed without addressing the changes the human
body has undergone and may yet undergo over time. That presupposition, whatever
its basis, precedes and sets limits to the study of original man. If so, however, th
original, or the natural conceived as such, is of doubtful importance . Either, the
nature is the original but its study has little or no bearing on human happiness, or
is not and must be reconceived, so that its study does bear on human happiness
However that may be, there is certainly a tension between Rousseau's distinctio
between nature and history and his depiction of a natural, "original" man who is
product of history.
The strangeness and implausibility of Rousseau's position can hardly be over-
stated. That position combines evolutionismi3 and primitivism. Evolutionism, by itself
does not necessarily force a rupture between nature and history. Buffon, for exampl
allows quite as much variation within species as Rousseau does without denying th
nature causes it. "These changes are made slowly and imperceptibly. Nature's gre
workman is Time."'4 But in Rousseau, evolutionism is added to primitivism, wher
primitivism is not a mere preference, on moral grounds, for what comes earlier, bu
the insistence that what comes earliest is the only thing natural. Rousseau treats prim
itivism not only as an ethical principle but almost as an ontology, and it is this od

Plattner, Rousseau's State of Nature: An Interpretation of the Discourse on Inequality (De Kalb: Norther
Illinois University Press, 1979), 37. Rousseau's arguments are based on the incompatibility of man
anatomy, as it is today, with the anatomy of quadrupeds.
12. Plattner makes this same point (State of Nature, 37).
13. There is not enough evidence to conclude that Rousseau thinks that new species come into bein
in the course of history, but he certainly recognizes a very wide range of variation within species, set
motion by external pressures. So much so that Rousseau is famous for the suggestion that orangutans may
be humans, relatively unaffected by such pressures. Masters asserts that Rousseau "could be seen as a pr
cursor of the historical or evolutionary approach." Roger Masters, "Rousseau and the Rediscovery of
Human Nature," in The Legacy of Rousseau, ed. Clifford Orwin and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University
Chicago Press, 1997), 110-11.
14. Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon, Histoire Naturelle, Supplement, Vol. 5, 1778, 27, quote
in Arthur Lovejoy, "Buffon and the Problem of Species," in Forerunners of Darwin, ed. Bentley Glass, Osw
Temkin, and William L. Strauss, Jr. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959), emphasis added.

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 Jonathan Marks 487

understanding that leads him to deny natural status to all historical developments
Evolutionism, by implying that most biological phenomena are also historical phe-
nomena, exacerbates but does not by itself create the difficulties brought on in the first
instance by Rousseau's distinction between nature and history.

Objections to the Distinction Between Nature and History: Rousseau's Indications

Perhaps Rousseau was blinded to these difficulties by a desire to justify nature

and God. We can forgo making much of the fact that Rousseau exposes them by
making an unusual and apparently unnecessary analogy between human and
animal variation. We would also have to set aside Rousseau's clear indication at th
beginning of the First Part that original man emerges from the animal kingdom and
is consequently himself a product of history. Even so, it hardly seems likely tha
Rousseau himself thought that nature and history could be strictly separated. For he
posts clearer signs than those we have already observed that the man of the Firs
Part, who is presented as natural man, has advanced a number of steps beyon
man's original condition.
First, natural man's remarkable strength and agility issue from the impact of the
environment on and over multiple generations of human beings.

Accustomed from childhood to the inclemencies of the weather and the rigor of
the seasons, hardened to fatigue. .. .men develop a robust and almost unalter-
able temperament; the Children, since they come into the world with their
Fathers' excellent constitution and strengthen it by the same activities that pro-
duced it, acquire all the vigor of which the human species is capable. (SD, III,
135; I, 4; emphasis added)

The natural man Rousseau praises does not have man's original physical constitu-
tion. His constitution has been not only developed but also perfected by external
pressures. One of the characteristics Rousseau praises in natural man, then, is
product of history, rather than of nature.
Second, natural man survives not by means of his own instincts but by means of
those he has acquired from other animals.

Men, dispersed among them, observe, imitate their industry and so raise them-
selves to the level of the Beasts' instinct, with this advantage, that each species has
but its own instinct while man, perhaps having none that belongs to him, appro-
priates them all, feeding equally on most of the various foods. (SD, Ill, 135; I, 3)

Man appears to acquire his means of subsistence not from nature's beneficence bu
from contact with and adaptation to his surroundings. While Rousseau purports t
be describing man's original state, he has incorporated into his description the firs
movements of human history.

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488 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

We find a further indication that man's acquisition of instincts is bound up with

history in Rousseau's description of natural man's "Metaphysical and Moral side"
(SD, Ill, 141; I, 14) later in the First Part. There, Rousseau attributes man's capacit
to feed on different foods, which he has already treated as part of man's physic
nature, to freedom.

It is thus that a Pigeon would die of hunger near a bowl full of the best meat
and a cat on heaps of fruits or grain, though each might very well have fed on
the food it disdains, if it had occurred to it to try some; It is thus that dissolute
men abandon themselves to excesses. (SD, III, 141; I, 15)

Shortly thereafter, however, freedom is set aside, and Rousseau attributes man's capa
ity to deviate from nature and make up for his want of instinct to perfectibility, that fac
ulty which, "with the aid of circumstances, successively develops all the others." (SD
III, 142-43; I, 17-18). Perfectibility enables human beings, over time, to be altered or t
alter themselves in response to circumstances; it is their ability to adapt or overcom
their physical environment; it is the faculty that distinguishes an animal species, whic
is "after a thousand years what is was in the first year of those thousand," from th
human species, which has a history. As such, it may be that "which, by dint of tim
draws him out of that original condition in which he would pass tranquil and innocen
days" (SD, III, 149; I, 17). Rousseau hesitates to admit perfectibility's guilt at this point
concluding only that it would be sad to be forced to admit it. But he indicates clearl
enough that the same faculty that allows human beings to survive in the original sta
by acquiring instincts also renders them historical beings.'5
Third, at the beginning of the Second Part, Rousseau treats man's need for exercis
and his skill at comparing as results of a new development, of difficulties not present in
man's original state: "but difficulties soon presented themselves" (SD, III, 165; II, 3). Ye
the physical strength acquired through exercise and skill at comparing are attributes
the natural man described in the First Part (SD, III, 135, 136; I, 4, 6). We recall that th
organization of the Second Discourse appears to mirror the distinction between natur
and history. Original man is man unaltered by time or by things. Yet in the Second Part
it transpires that a number of "original" man's advantages arise only when circum
stances compel human beings to adapt.16 They arise only when the equilibrium

15. Jacques Derrida's treatment of the Essay on the Origin on Languages parallels in many ways m
treatment of the Second Discourse. For example. Derrida argues that articulation, which on Rousseau'
account corrupts speech, is also, for Rousseau, the precondition of speech. "Rousseau wants us to thin
this movement [of the corruption of speech] as an accident. He describes it, however, in its originary neces
sity. This unhappy accident is also a 'natural progress."' Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, Reprint edition
trans. Gayatri Spivak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 242. Derrida, however, claims that
Rousseau really wishes to equate the original and the natural but just can't. In what follows, I hope to show
that the equation is never more than provisional.
16. Masters makes essentially the same observation and concludes that perfectibility, a kind of free will
if not "in the fullest moral sense," operates in the state of nature. Roger Masters, The Political Philosophy

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 Jonathan Marks 489

between man's requirements and nature's bounty that supposedly characterizes man'
first condition (SD, III, 134-35, 144; I, 2, I1, 20) is broken. We conclude that the dividin
line between the two parts of the main body of the Discourse, and consequently tha
between nature and history, is not so sharp for Rousseau as it once seemed.
The great innovation of Rousseau's physiodicy as it has come to be understood
is to make society the sole source of evil. Rousseau could not have intended th
innovation or its consequences, since his considered thought does not allow
sharp distinction between nature and history, let alone society. Consequently, h
considered thought supports neither the extravagant hopes nor the despair set
motion by the removal from nature of every trace of historical and social influence
But we are not out of luck or danger, since the collapse of the distinction betwee
nature and history may lead, as much as the distinction itself did, to the depreci
tion of nature and to the conclusion that we must abandon it for the sake of free-
dom. For if nature is incapable of distinguishing among historical outcomes, or if a
history is equally and indifferently natural, then nature is no guide for human
beings. I now turn to Emile, which rejects the distinction between nature and hi
tory more clearly than the Second Discourse does.
Through Emile, we will consider whether or not rejecting the distinction
between nature and history means for Rousseau either that nature dissolves int
history or that it should be abandoned for the sake of freedom. Yet in Emil
Rousseau describes a history according to nature, a history which, far from bein
indistinguishable from other historical outcomes, has so far taken place only in
Rousseau's imagination.

It matters very little to me if I have written a romance. A fair romance it is indeed,

that of human nature. If it is to be found only in this writing, is it my fault? Th
ought to be the history of my species. (E, IV, 377; 416; emphasis added)

Emile

In Emile, the method of the Second Discourse is abandoned. Whereas the

Second Discourse abstracts from progress and development in order to know nat-
ural man, Emile assumes that natural man cannot be known without knowing his
progress and development.

He would have to be seen wholly formed: his inclinations would have to be

observed, his progress seen, his development followed. In a word, the natural
man would have to be known. (E, IV, 251;41)

Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 150-51. He insists, contrary to the argument I am
about to make, that Rousseau's conception of nature is "consistent with the most thoroughgoing or non-
teleological physics" (414).

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490 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

The natural man cannot be known before his education is complete. He is not the
original but the cultivated man. Moreover, the education of nature is never or almost
never successfully managed. That is why the natural man is a "rare man," so rare
that perhaps he exists only in Rousseau's fertile imagination.'7 That Emile is the
man of nature and, at the same time, unique in his development and accomplish-
ments implies that human nature consists in an end or perfection, or that
Rousseau's understanding of nature is teleological.
Roger Masters has another understanding of the difference between the Second
Discourse and Emile. Rousseau writes Emile in light of the irretrievable loss of the
state of nature.'" "Evolution necessarily forces men to live in society" (26). Various
accidents have made human beings social and developed in them faculties original
man lacked. But:

It is perfectly comprehensible that, as a result of accidental causation, new forms

or modes of being come into existence, which were not actually present at the
outset and yet are natural. (426)

In Emile, Rousseau deems natural those characteristics that, though new, are
"based on the primitive dispositions of nature." "The same natural principles which
governed the pure state of nature still operate in socialized human nature" (26).
Emile's conscience, for example, is a modification of pity, which is there from the
beginning. The question Emile answers is: what is the natural unfolding of our
primitive dispositions in our present stage of evolution? Obviously, we need not
abstract from society to get our answer; rather, to describe the natural man living in
society, one must abstract from "the artificial variations [in the development of our
primitive dispositions] due solely to the peculiar human institutions found in vari-
ous societies" (27). More simply put, Emile describes our natural development in
society, free from the distortion of particular social prejudices. The natural man will
be the product of a certain development or progress--in this sense, he will be an
end, not an origin. But this understanding of natural man "could be consistent with
... non-teleological physics" (414), since it does not prescribe an end. It merely
describes the unimpeded development of our native endowment under hypotheti-
cal circumstances. Rousseau's understanding of nature is teleological only if it dis-
tinguishes between what I will call given and true nature, between, on the one
hand, the undistorted development of the dispositions with which a human being
comes into the world in whatever stage of evolution he happens to be and, on the
other hand, the perfection of a certain set of dispositions with which a human being

17. For the proof that natural man is rare simply, not just rare in society, see the section of this essay
entitled Beyond the Necessities of the Age, 494.
18. Masters, Political Philosophy, 11. The parenthetical page references in the remainder of this para-
graph are to the same source.

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 Jonathan Marks 491

may or may not come into the world and by means of which he becomes a perfect
being of his kind.
Emile certainly contains some evidence for Masters's interpretation. Nonethe-
less, I believe I can prove that Rousseau thinks there is a discrepancy between our
given and true natures. That proof will consist in showing that Emile's governor
selectively cultivates and perfects, and sometimes directly opposes, Emile's given
nature with a view to his well-being, not only or even primarily as a human being
made to live in society but also and above all as a human being simply. It will con-
sist in showing that for the true man of nature to emerge, aspects of Emile's native
endowment must be overcome. If so, the "nature" in "man of nature" refers to a
teleological end, not, as Masters thinks, to the unimpeded development of our prim-
itive dispositions in man's present stage of evolution.

The Selection of a Pupil

Before moving on to the governor's selective cultivation and perfection of

Emile's given nature, we should observe that Emile is selected from a pool of pos-
sible candidates for the natural education. First, one wants a student from the
temperate zone because men "are all they can be only in temperate climates."
Moreover, "the organization of the brain is less perfect in the two extremes. Nei-
ther the Negroes nor the Laplanders have the sense of the Europeans" (E, IV, 266
52; emphasis added). This preference for the temperate zone reminds us, in its
spirit if not in its details, of Aristotle (Politics, 1327b), and here, as there, it implies
that not all, even a minority, of natures are capable of realizing the true nature of
a human being. In any event, Rousseau is clearly concerned here not merely with
the negative project of staving off the distorting influence of society; but rather
with making men all they can be, a goal not easily met in the North or South and
not met at all in man's original state. Second, one wants a healthy pupil instead of
an unhealthy one "involved uniquely in preserving himself, [and] whose body
hinders the education of his soul" (E, IV, 269; 53). Nature produces natures that
are unsuitable candidates for natural education. The governor accepts and rejects
what nature gives according to a rule different from that by which empirical
nature generally and our given natures specifically are governed when left to
themselves.

It may be objected that the governor merely imitates the laws of empirical nature
by weeding out the unhealthy. The Second Discourse indicates that nature, prior to
the birth of societies, dealt with children as the law of Sparta did, favoring the
stronger constitutions and leaving the weak to die (SD, III, 135; II, 4). However,
Rousseau's approval of nature's harshness in this regard is merely another example
of his judging empirical nature according to an external standard of goodness, per-
fection, or of true nature, since to approve of nature's extermination of weak
natures is at least to call into question her production of them.

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492 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

Education Proper: The Senses

The governor's education of Emile's senses perfect them in a way that the
unimpeded development could not under any but the most contrived circu
stances. For example, Emile learns to touch like a blind man.

The blind have a surer and keener touch than we do; because not being guid
by sight, they are forced to draw solely from [touch] the judgements which
[sight] furnishes us. Why then, are we not given practice at walking as the blin
do in darkness, to know the bodies we may happen to come upon ... to do, in
a word, in night without light all they do by day without eyes? (E, IV, 381; 133

To form natural man, the governor makes Emile into what his given nature fails t
make him, a nocturnal and diurnal animal. Indeed, it is worth noting that the ed
cation of the senses begins where their unimpeded development leaves off. "Th
first faculties that are formed and perfected in us are the senses. They are theref
the first faculties that must be cultivated" (E, IV, 381; 132; emphasis added). T
metaphor of cultivation, which we encounter often in Emile, is significant. A cult
vator does not let a plant grow wild but assists, improves, refines or directs growt
with an end, an adult plant of a certain kind, always in view.

Fear and Religion

In the midst of the education of his senses, Emile learns not to fear the dar
Before that, he learns not to fear what he does not know. Naturally, man "fea
everything he does not know" (E, IV, 282; 63)19. The governor conquers Emile's fea
of the unknown by showing him a variety of unfamiliar things, "ugly, disgusti
bizarre animals" and masks ranging from the hideous to the pleasant. The educ
tion depends not only on showing a certain range of objects but also on showin
them in a measured gradation. Emile sees new animals "little by little, from afa
then, "by dint of seeing them handled by others, he finally handles them himself
The education of the masks succeeds if the governor has "arranged [his] gradati
well" (E, IV, 283; 62). Emile's given nature, of course, which tends toward fear of t
unknown, cannot be made to produce the fearlessness characteristic of our man
nature without the aid of carefully contrived and controlled circumstances
Rousseau has not so much followed Emile's nature, if his nature consists in h
primitive dispositions, as remedy its deficiencies.
The fear of darkness, like that of the unfamiliar, is natural. Night "naturally fright
ens men and sometimes even animals" (E, IV, 384; 134). Further, Rousseau

19. Cf. SD, III, 136; 1, 6.

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 Jonathan Marks 493

description of the "natural cause" of this fear reveals a surprising understanding

what counts as natural.

What is the cause? The same one which makes deaf men distrustful and the
people superstitious; ignorance ... of what is happening around us. Accus-
tomed to perceive objects from afar and to foresee their impressions ... how-
when I no longer see anything that surrounds me-would I not suppose there
to be a thousand beings...in motion which can harm me? (E, IV, 382-4; 134;
emphasis added)

The unimpeded development of our given nature brings the imagination into play
along with our other faculties. This development is the source of our belief in phan-
toms (E, IV, 384; 134). Rousseau leaves little doubt about the natural provenance of
that belief when he explains that "instinct" sets the imagination in motion; our
desire to preserve ourselves causes us to imagine unseen causes of danger, and our
imagination, once it is activated, knows no boundaries. Thus, the unfolding of our
given nature leaves the imagination dangerously unrestrained.
Moreover, the imagination, when combined with ignorance or relative igno-
rance, causes not only the fear of darkness but also the religion of the first men.

The sentiment of our action on other bodies must first have made us believe that
when they acted on us it was in a manner similar to the way we acted on them.
Thus man began by animating all the beings whose actions he felt. Feeling himself
less strong than some of these beings ... he construed them to be gods.... [He
was] frightened of everything and saw nothing dead in nature. (E, IV, 552; 256)

The unimpeded development of human nature fails to protect human beings from
superstition. The first men, who may be regarded as the products of such a devel-
opment, have a natural tendency to judge what they don't know. Their given
natures dispose them to prejudice and superstition. To be sure, certain circum-
stances set the imagination in motion. But darkness and danger are hardly the kinds
of experience we can call, in the language of the Second Discourse, accidental. That
nature which ruins us when we are placed in unexceptional natural circumstances
must be corrected; the product of that correction is Emile, the true man of nature.
For in contrast to primitives and, in fact, almost all human beings, Emile and the
governor do not judge what they do not know: "constantly struck by effects whose
causes we do not know, we are in no hurry to make any judgements" (E, IV, 437;
173). Emile's primary advantage over the savage is that, like Socrates, he does not
think he knows what he does not know (E. IV, 535; 243-44). This important differ-
ence between Emile and the savage has many implications. But for our purposes, it
suffices to note that Emile is protected by his education from a natural fear of great
consequence and from the prejudices that result from it. Masters, we have
observed, also thinks that Emile's education is directed against prejudice. But he

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494 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

does not attend to Rousseau's clear indications that our natural dispositions inclin
us toward prejudice. The inclination to judge what we do not know is one of the
obstacles our given natures put in the way of the emergence of Emiles, true men of
nature. Emile's restraint with respect to the truth and his ability to act in the dark
without fear follow at least as much from the conquest of Emile's given nature a
from removing impediments to the unfolding of that nature.

Beyond the Necessities of the Age

One could argue that Emile must be nocturnal and diurnal because the irregu
larities of modem social life demand it. Rousseau, after all, explains that Emile must
not be allowed to get in the habit of sleeping through the night, although that hab
is "marked out by nature" because

Civil life is not simple enough, natural enough, exempt enough from revolutions
and accidents for man properly to get accustomed to this uniformity to the poin
of making it necessary for him. (E, IV, 375-76; 129)

But natural circumstances do not allow human beings the luxury of sleeping
through the night either. Rousseau reveals in the Second Discourse that "alway
near danger, savage man must ... be a light sleeper" (SD, III, 140; I, 13). Whatever
its disadvantages, civil society is much more a friend to heavy sleepers than natu
is. Far from undermining the habit of sleeping through the night, civil society mak
possible a secure life in which that habit may be safely indulged. That society an
progress make it possible for human beings not to be diurnal and nocturnal animals
is also indicated in Rousseau's discussion of Emile's need to get his bearings in th
dark. "We have lights I will be told. What? Always machines? Who promises you
that they will always follow you everywhere in case of need?" (E, IV, 381; 133)
now appears that human beings ought to avoid habits not because of society's spe
cial demands but because society can not be counted on always to save us fro
trying natural circumstances.
But in fact, Rousseau admits elsewhere that the flexibility imparted to Emile i
more than an adaptation to necessity, social or natural. Very soon after he blame
the restless spirit of the age for the need to train Emile to live in a variety of circum
stances, he suggests another, positive, advantage of such training.

To live is not to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, our sense
our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves that give us the sentiment of existenc
(E, IV, 253; 42)

The governor's education makes possible a human flourishing that our given natu
does not provide for and frequently obstructs. In this respect, the governor's educati
remedies not only the ills of society but also the deficiencies of Emile's given nature.

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 Jonathan Marks 495

The Limits of Nature

I think I have proved that Emile is the man of nature not because his primitive
dispositions are allowed to unfold without social distortion but because, by mean
of the cultivation and perfection of some tendencies and the suppression or correc
tion of others, he flourishes. His given nature allows but does not spontaneously
tend toward or even always support his flourishing. There is a discrepancy betwee
Emile's given nature and his true nature; we should understand the "nature" in
"man of nature" teleologically, to refer to an end or perfection. But I have not ye
proved that the end in question is something other than freedom. Perhaps Rousseau
uses "nature" to mean freedom. Emile's education removes limits, of climate, o
time of day, of prejudices. Removing limits in this way makes the postmodern or
Kantian self possible. Rousseau has emptied out nature after all.
But first, consider the importance Rousseau ascribes to natural "genius" or dis-
position. The governor must "spy out nature" (E, IV, 324; 94) to discover his pupil'
particular tastes, talents and penchants. In causing the child's genius to reveal itself,
the governor prescribes to himself, in part, the direction and end of the education.

We put him iri a position to develop his taste and his talent, to make the first
steps toward the object to which his genius leads him, and to indicate the route
which must be opened to him in order to assist nature. (E, IV, 465; 192)

The pupil's natural genius (as well as the character of his sex and of human being
in general) will determine the trade that suits him (E, IV, 478; 201). Plainly, natur
genius is part of Emile's given nature but, like other aspects of his flourishing,
requires a favorable conjunction of circumstances to emerge. In any event, natura
genius imposes a limit on rather than removing an impediment to freedom. Thus
Rousseau tells of a lackey who is determined to become a painter. Though his zea
and perseverance take the place of talent up to a point, this painter will never b
more than mediocre because he is naturally unfit for the work (E, 474-75; 198-99
cf. Julie, II, 537; 440).20 Rousseau's understanding of nature is not only teleologica
but also distinguishes nature from freedom.
Similarly, when Rousseau's discussion of compatibility in love and marriage indi-
cates that there are men and women who are simply not naturally fit for each other
(E, IV, 764-5; 406-7), whatever prejudices and social institutions may do to bring off

20. Talk of natural genius implies that there is more than one end or perfection for human beings. But
we should not conclude that there is no substantive end or perfection for Rousseau, any more than w
should conclude that Aristotle is not a teleological thinker because he thinks that some are suited to be
slaves and others are fit to be free. For the inegalitarian implications of Rousseau's idea of natural geniu
see Julie, 11, 5656-6; 463-65. One might add that even if Rousseau thought there were a plurality of natural
human ends, we would still have to reject the view that he emptied nature to make room for freedom.

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496 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

a match. To predict whether or not a marriage will be happy, it is not enough

measure the strength of a couple's willful commitment. One must "consult natu
to discover whether or not the union is "in the order of nature." Each mind "receiv
its peculiar and determinate form.. .from the well-ordered or ill-ordered conjun
tion of nature and education" (E, IV, 764; 406). Like natural genius, character d
not expand but limits our range of possible good choices.

Rousseau's Rhetorical Attack on Progress

Up until now, I have set aside the question of Rousseau's rhetorical strategy.
have not yet asked why Rousseau sometimes equates the original and the natur
even though he thinks that equation is invalid. Whatever reasons Rousseau m
have had for advancing it in the Preface of the Second Discourse, I think that I ha
demonstrated in light of subsequent developments in the Second Discourse and
Emile, that he simply cannot mean it. While my arguments have taken Rousseau
be a careful writer, they do not rest on any particular conception of Rousse
rhetorical strategy. I have done my best to found my reading on a close reading
the textual evidence.

Nonetheless, if we believe that Rousseau is a careful writer, we cannot in good

conscience state that Rousseau sometimes says what he does not mean and leave
it at that. That is especially so in the case of Rousseau's equation of the original and
the natural, for it is merely a particular, if extreme, instance of a broader claim that
Rousseau explicity says unites his thought, "that nature made man happy and good,
but ... society depraves him and makes him miserable" (Dialogues, 1, 935; 213). In
order to believe my argument, one must also suppose that Rousseau gave much
greater prominence to an argument he thought invalid, that nature is innocent and
history and society responsible for human ills, than he gave to an argument he
thought valid, that nature, unless one understands it as an end or perfection, is in
many ways unkind to human beings and in need of correction. But why would
Rousseau do that?
A full answer to that question is beyond the scope of this essay.2 I will concentrate
on just one important reason: Rousseau sought to establish a strong prejudice against
progress. His depiction of a happy original man who is sealed off from the destructive
forces of history inclines us to regret that human beings developed even a single step
beyond that stage. Rousseau's procedure in the Second Discourse, of conspicuously
denouncing progress of all kinds while less conspicuously conceding man's need for

21. While Melzer's argument about Rousseau and nature differs greatly from my own, his explanation
of Rousseau's practical intention is a useful starting point for developing a fuller answer. For example, I
agree with Melzer that Rousseau wishes to encourage "romantic retreat" from society and "communing
with 'nature'" (Melzer, Natural Goodness, 280). To encourage such a retreat, Rousseau would want to exag-
gerate nature's innocence.

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 Jonathan Marks 497

development is prefigured in the First Discourse, in which Rousseau conspciuously

denounces the arts and sciences but less conspicuously concedes their worth..
The First Discourse is the first of Rousseau's writings to argue in favor of a prej-
udice against progress22 In it, Rousseau denies that the restoration of the sciences
and the arts has contributed to the purification of morals and thereby seems to deny
that progress in the arts and sciences has contributed to it either. He admits, to b
sure, that men like Bacon, Descartes, and Newton are "Preceptors of Mankind" wh
can "contribute to the happiness of the Peoples to whom they have taught wisdom
(FD, III, 29-30; 59). But this admission is one of few retreats from an otherwis
relentless attack on the arts and sciences. In fact, Rousseau seems to take it back
almost immediately when he declares virtue a "sublime science of simple souls
(FD, III, 29-30; 60), implying that human beings have no need for preceptors in th
most important matters. What is essential in such matters has long been known
and is potentially undermined by novel teachings. Progress and corruption are in
that case synonymous, and it is not without reason that some of Rousseau's critic
took him to be attacking the pursuit of the arts and sciences altogether.23
In his replies to critics of the First Discourse, Rousseau does not abandon by any
means his polemic against the arts and sciences. But he is more explicit both in
admitting that it is good that some pursue them and in specifying the true object of
his assault.

Greece owed its morals and laws to Philosophers and Legislators. I quite agree.
I have said a hundred times over that it is good that there be philosophers. pro-
vided that the people do not pretend to be Philosophers. (Last Reply, III, 78; 30)

The true villains of the First Discourse are not the arts, the sciences, or philosophy,
nor does progress in them have to harm societies. Rather, it is the widespread tast
for and pursuit of them that Rousseau attacks. In the Preface to Narcissus,
Rousseau recapitulates the argument of the First Discourse, holding "a taste fo
study and letters" responsible, in part, for the deterioration of morals in modern
societies (PN, II, 965; 17). This taste, born of and tending to nourish luxury, idleness,
and vanity, softens and corrupts; it undermines, for the sake of novel theories, the

22. For more detailed discussions of the rhetoric of the First Discourse, see Leo Strauss, "On the Inten-
tion of Rousseau," Social Research 14 (December 1947): 455-87, Plattner, State of Nature, 5-10, Masters
Political Philosophy, 7-14, Clifford Orwin, "Rousseau's Socratism," Journal of Politics 60 (February 1998
174-87, and Terence Marshall, "Rousseau and the Enlightenment," in Trent Rousseau Papers, ed. J
MacAdam, M. Neumann, and G. LaFrance (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1980). The distinction
between Rousseau's polemics and his thought is, of course, acknowledged by many authors, including
Asher Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature, and History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), 46, 51, 87, 142
and Penny A. Weiss, Gendered Community: Rousseau, Sex, and Politics (New York: New York University
Press, 1993), 48.
23. See Robert Wokler, Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), 22-24.

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498 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

law, tradition, and virtue that hold societies together while it makes human beings
all the more dependent on each other. The prejudice in favor of progress in the arts
and sciences, and more broadly in knowing and the application of knowledge,
which so pervades modern life, is at the root of many modern ills. The contrary prej-
udice is, to be sure, hardly free from difficulties. Rousseau is compelled to defend
himself against the charge that he prescribes burning down libraries (PN, II, 963-4;
12). Nonetheless, it is not hard to see why, when a crowd of "elementary authors"
and "compilers of works" have helped make science and philosophy fashionable
and when the propagandists of the Enlightenment are working vigorously to rein-
force the prejudice in favor of progress, that Rousseau thinks a prejudice against
progress needful (FD, III, 29; 59). It is no wonder that his wholesale attack on the
arts and sciences, in which he does not believe, is much more prominent than his
more nuanced treatment of their benefits and burdens, in which he does believe.
One may object that Rousseau's acknowledgement that Greece owed its morals
and laws to philosophers and legislators does not prove that his argument against
progress is meant to instill a prejudice, rather than a truth. After all, Rousseau claims
that the duties of citizens are discovered early. Once they have been discovered,
progress in philosophy and legislation really is synonymous with corruption, for "in
order to achieve distinction men [have] to strike out in different directions" (PN, II, 965;
20). Where the idea of duty is common and well known, men of intellect will seek to
prove their originality by teaching vice. Even Emile learns that "all the ideas which are
salutary and useful were the first to be known" and that "the only way transcendent
minds can now distinguish themselves is by means of ideas that are pernicious" (E, IV,
670; 339). While progress may have been salutary once, long ago, Rousseau really
thinks, and does not merely profess to think, that it is pernicious in his time.
Set aside the obvious answer that Rousseau's attack on progress, as the Second
Discourse reveals, covers not only recent progress but all progress since the begin-
ning of the human story. There are other reasons to think that when Emile's gover-
nor teaches him that only the first truths were salutary and useful, he teaches him a
prejudice, just as Rousseau, according to my argument, teaches his readers a prej-
udice in the two Discourses. For he reveals in his discussion of the political teach-
ing that Emile is to receive that the science of "political right has yet to be born, and
it is to be presumed that it never will be born. Grotius, the master of all our learned
men in this matter, is only a child" (E, IV, 836; 458). The science of political right is
advanced by Rousseau. Indeed, Rousseau offers a new political teaching. Inasmuch
as the science of political right clarifies the character of social ties and sets forth the
conditions of the social pact which, in turn, defines the duties of citizens, it cannot
be true that all the ideas that are useful to human beings were the first to be known.
One might add that since Rousseau claims to advance the study of natural law,
which has been left in a state of confusion by ancients and moderns alike, there can
and must be progress not only in our knowledge of the duties of citizens but also in
our knowledge of "the duties of man" (SD, III, 124-5; Preface, 6).

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 Jonathan Marks 499

Rousseau connects Emile's prejudice against new ideas to the young man'
"good sense." One part of Emile's good sense is that "the sphere of his knowledg
does not extend beyond what is profitable" (E, IV, 670; 339). Because most new
ideas, at least in the civilized society into which Emile will be introduced, are clever
rather than useful and offered to the public only to win its admiration, a prejudic
against new ideas can be expected to guide Emile to sensible judgements. Emile
good sense may require the support of such a prejudice against the onslaught of civ-
ilization. It is Emile's good sense, his attachment to the useful and the profitable
that leads him to ask always "What is that good for?" when he is confronted wit
new ideas (E, IV, 446; 179). That skeptical question may itself be thought to reflec
Emile's arguably unnatural and prejudiced refusal to indulge his wonder.
It should be noted that Rousseau gives Emile's curiosity considerable latitud
within the confines of prejudice and good sense. When it is directed toward the
thought experiment of living on Robinson Crusoe's island, for example, Emile
pursuit of knowldge is praiseworthy "He will want to know everything. He will wan
to know the reason for everything. ... He will admit nothing by supposition" (E, IV,
460; 188). When it comes to certain questions, which point in the direction of "th
great relations he will have to know one day in order to judge of the good order o
society," Emile's curiosity yields nothing to the philosopher's (E, IV, 462-3; 190). The
pursuit of learning and of progress in the arts and sciences by ordinary human
beings is safe and good for societies when it is restrained by the criterion of utility
and, as Rousseau argues in many other places, when it does not lead to an undue
dependence of tools or on others.24 While Emile resists dependence on others an
disdains the useless as a result of his very careful and improbable education, it ma
well be that other human beings can be led to ask "What is it good for?" only by
prejudice against progress that is still stronger than the one Emile is taught, the kind
of prejudice that the equation of the original and the natural is meant to instill.
Emile, as I have argued, is more open, though not altogether open, about th
deficiencies of primordial human nature and the need to correct it. This is not th
place to compare the rhetoric of Emile and the Second Discourse. But I want t
point, at least, to a division commentators often make between Rousseau's earl
and "critical" works, like the Second Discourse, which concern themselves abov
all with revealing problems, and his later, "constructive" works, like Emile, whic
propose solutions to those problems.25 This division is very imperfect. But if ther
is, as I think, anything to it, then the differences between the Second Discourse
and Emile are not very surprising. The Second Discourse is a critical work tha

24. One could add to the example of Emile that of the men in provincial towns and the farmers o
Neufchatel whom Rousseau describes in the Letter to D'Alembert; they, too, are models for the safe, sensi-
ble, and sometimes brilliant pursuit of knowledge (Letter to D'Alembert, V, 55-57; 59-62)
25. Allan Bloom, "Introduction" to Emile, or On Education (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 29; Immanuel
Kant, On History, ed. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1963), 61; Wokler, Rousseau, 31-32.

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500 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

urges its readers to confront the possibility that fundamental developments li

reason and language, heretofore thought to be unequivocally good, are bad. B
insisting on the equation of the original and the natural, it successfully throw
every human development into question and urges its readers to ask "What is i
good for?" The constructive work of Emile, although it cannot dispense altogeth
with the prejudice against progress, depends on the possibility that while
unguided human development was bad, guided development is necessary an
even good. It can more readily admit the deficiencies of primitive human bein
and the need to correct them.

Conclusion

If, as I think I have proved, Rousseau did not slay nature for the sake of freedo
then his legacy is, in many ways, founded on a misinterpretation of his thoug
Rousseau's interpreters, whether they cheer or fret about his emptying ou
nature, mischaracterize him. Rousseau's thought, in fact, moderates the extravaga
hopes for social reform that he is thought to have encouraged. First, Rousseau
a pessimist, not merely temperamentally but reflectively; he thought that, what
our true nature, not just society but our given natures pose tremendous obstacles
realizing it. Second, the idea of a true nature itself imposes limits on freedom
rules out our suitability for certain ways of life. There is no question, however, t
we need to know much more than I have said about what Rousseau thinks the con-
tours of our true nature are and what way or ways of life are compatible with it.
Only a careful study and description of Emile and his way of life, coupled with a sim-
ilar study and description of extraordinary types and their way or ways of life (for
which Rousseau's autobiographical works are an obvious source) can hope to
meet this need. Let me try to say something very general, however, about Rousseau
vision of human nature and happiness.
Both Starobinski and Strong have drawn attention to Rousseau's early self-por-
trait in Le Persifleur.26 The theme of this portrait is Rousseau's variability. For exam-
ple, "sometimes I am harsh, fierce, a misanthrope, while other times I wax ecstatic
over the charms of society and the delights of love."27 It is hard to know exactly what
to make of so early and playful a comment, but this idea of Rousseau as an oscil-
lating self reappears in the late autobiographical works, in which Jean-Jacques is
said to swing frequently from one extreme to another, from solitude to sociality and
from activity to passivity, among other opposites. Strong understands Rousseau to
be lodging a protest against fixity, regularity or definition.28 Starobinski, though he

26. Strong, Jean-Jacques, 143-44; Starobinski, Transparency, 53-54.

27. Starobinski, Transparency, 50.
28. Strong, Jean-Jacques, 144.

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 Jonathan Marks 501

thinks Rousseau longs for a stable identity, agrees with Strong that he has failed to
provide one for himself.

This oscillatory motion precludes the possibility that the soul will ever come to
rest, that it will ever return to its natural state. Is there, then, such a thing as the
natural state? At best it is an imaginary position between two extremes. .... Sup-
pose we use the word nature ... to refer to the very motion that makes stable
identity impossible.29

The middle point of the "true self" is abandoned in favor of the motion that better
characterizes our existence.
But it is at least equally, and I think more, plausible to say that that Rousseau
thinks oscillation desirable because our happiness is made up of certain dishar-
monious goods, solitary and social ones, for example. His problem is to find a
place in a life for those goods without setting himself in contradiction, like the
bourgeois, who by seeking both sorts of goods attains neither. The incorporation
of apparent contradictions into a single way of life is by no means limited to
Rousseau's self-portrait. There are the savages in the savage nation, who "enjoy
the sweets of independent commerce with one another," (SD, III, 171; II, 19) who
gather to sing, dance and contest for public esteem without losing a taste for the
pleasures associated with "spending... life alone" (SD, III, 220, note xvi, 1). Their
situation, is "best for man" (SD, III, 171; II, 18). There are the rustic Swiss, who
have ties of "benevolence and friendship with one another," though, since they
are separated from each other by snow for half the year, each is "sufficient unto
himself and his family" (Corsica, III, 914-15; 295-96). There are the Neufchatel
mountaineers, a subset of the rustic Swiss. In their society, "each is everything for
himself, no one is anything for another"; the inhabitants enjoy, nonetheless, "both
the tranquility of retreat and the sweetness of society," a formulation which calls
to mind the "independent commerce" of the savages (Letter to D'Alembert, V, 55-
56; 60-61). This rustic or pastoral note is sounded even in Rousseau's most indi-
vidualistic and collectivistic works. There is Emile itself, the main undertaking of
which, arguably, is to unite in a single figure the partial goods enjoyed by the nat-
ural man, at one extreme, and the citizen at the other (E, IV, 251; 41). However
dismissive Starobinski may be of the "imaginary position between two extremes,"
Rousseau again and again seeks such a position. He thinks that the perfection of
our nature demands the reconciliation of disharmonious goods; in this way, his
teleological understanding of nature does not rule out a kind of pluralism. But he
cannot follow Starobinski or Strong from the view that our nature may require us
to oscillate between opposing elements of our happiness to the view that we have

29. Starobinski, Transparency, 57.

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502 ROUSSEAU AND ROUSSEAUISM

no nature, or that there is no true self to hold together or mediate among ou

competing ends.
Rousseau's vision of nature, then, is not without something of the multiplicit
Strong sees in Rousseau, even if this multiplicity proves less liberating than limitin
This vision suggests a kind of politics for which Rousseau is rarely given credit, the
highest task of which is to provide for that arrangement which permits human
beings to realize the disharmonious elements of their nature without tearing the
or the polity apart. This politics, while it is certainly radical in relation to the socia
order Rousseau knew and to our own, neither promises to solve human misery no
carries the threats that often accompany such promises. That observation does n
discredit "Rousseauan" strains in contemporary thought. It does, however, invite
careful comparison between Rousseauism and its misunderstood father.

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