Book contents
Summary
This chapter takes up Rousseau's justification of nature, as it is widely understood. 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 political philosophers 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 of this chapter, I survey some of the prevailing understandings of Rousseau's theodicy. This point of departure is suspect, since justifying nature and justifying God are different undertakings. But it is warranted because these undertakings often overlap 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 responsibility 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 ultimately between nature and history or circumstances. In the second part, I prove that the Second Discourse undermines this dubious distinction, although it initially proposes it. That work's “original” man is already the outcome of a certain history.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005