A
criticism that Jean-Jacques Rousseau levies against John Locke and the liberal
tradition, is the conceptual origin of man in the state of nature, in which he
addresses the lack of pinpointing the true, natural man that has become the template
for Locke and others in legitimizing the need of civil society. Rousseau makes
the claim that that their “natural man” is nothing but a “social man” and that
they have not gone further in time to make a legitimate assessment of the true,
natural man. Rousseau boldly claims that Locke has misinterpreted social man as
natural man, but even goes to great lengths to demonstrate that he has been
able to discover the true attributes of man in nature, and develops his
argument on the perversion that is the forming of the civil society and the
implications on man. For Rousseau, natural man is broken down, to where he
de-personifies man into a beast—the opposite for Locke and the liberal
tradition, which creates a natural man with social elements, like language and
reason—that for Rousseau is only attainable through a civil society. The two
principles of the natural man prior to reason (which differentiates social man,
from natural man), are self-preservation and pity.[1] His
element of a bestial man (vis-à-vis, the questioning timeframe of which “man”
to interpret and the aspects of the natural man) and the regard of pity are
critically important, for it brings in the natural, humanistic concepts that
Locke and the liberal tradition have overlooked.
For
John Locke, man in the state of nature is guided by the concept of reason and
that because of the need of self-preservation came into conflict with biased adjudication,
a civil society came into fruition.[2] This
idea of man having reason in the state of nature is a very controversial
perspective of the natural man, seeing as Rousseau questions whether or not the
natural man had the capacity to have any reason or to form a connection to
other fellow human beings. With this in mind, he ponders how far back is needed
to go, to come face-to-face with the natural man. For Rousseau, Locke and
tradition have looked at the wrong type of man, at the wrong time in history.
His take is,
The
philosophers, who have inquired into the foundations of society, have all felt
the necessity of going back to a state of nature, but not one of them has got
there…Every one of them, in short, constantly dwelling on wants, avidity,
oppression, desires, and pride, has transferred to the state of nature ideas
which were acquired in society; so that, in speaking of the savage, they
described the social man.[3]
Rousseau is wary to
label natural man in the same fashion that Locke and others have done. He is
being guided by the notion that not only does government have to be stripped to
get to the natural man, but bring man to the simplest form capable, that of a
beast. He has no empirical evidence for this[4],
but this is an experiment to develop his argument of the natural man being a “noble
savage,” and trying to hinder the legitimacy of the civil society and its
purpose. By describing Locke’s “natural man” as “social man,” is to look at the
basic elements that Locke left man before he entered civil society. Rousseau sees
Locke’s superficial preservation of the self through adjudication and property as
the disqualifier for being the natural man. Rousseau writes,
Thus,
as every man punished the contempt shown him by others, in proportion to his
opinion of himself, revenge became terrible, and men bloody and cruel. This is
precisely the state reached by most of the savage nations known to us: and it
is for want of having made a proper distinction in our ideas, and see how very
far they already are from the state of nature, that so many writers have
hastily concluded that man is naturally cruel, and requires civil institutions
to make him more mild; whereas nothing is more gentle than man in his primitive
state, as he is placed by nature at an equal distance from the stupidity of
brutes, and the fatal ingenuity of civilized man.[5]
Rousseau, through the
above quote, simply summarizes the logic used by the “writers” (Locke) to conclude
that the natural man is something to fear. Instead of doing what they were
supposed to do, which is to look at the natural man, they have actually placed
the civilized man in the state of nature, and this leads to the
misinterpretation of what truly is the natural, simplistic man.
To understand
this criticism of not only looking at the right man and the right time is to
look at it metaphorically. To know man, is to break down man, and to see that
it has changed like a statue that has been altered by nature, through various
means.[6]
The pursuit of knowledge and experiences has severed the connection between the
primitive state and the civilized man, which calls for a simplistic
perspective, in order to get to the original creation. This is where Rousseau
comes in, and where Locke is nowhere to be found. The bare necessities of man,
or the bestial man, are the theory that will yield the true attributes of the
natural man. As mentioned before, the two principles of man are
self-preservation and pity, but Locke and the liberal tradition do not account
for the element of pity at all. Preservation is the fundamental key for Locke
in coming out of the state of nature, as is for others, but the idea of pity is
brushed aside, and Rousseau thinks this leads to the miscalculation of the
natural man being something to fear at, without really putting those two
elements side-by-side; noting that both of these creates humanity and virtue.[7] Rousseau
examines pity by stating that man “is restrained by natural compassion from
doing any injury to others…and that the very brutes themselves sometimes give
evident proofs of it.”[8] By
this argument, Rousseau is beginning to break away from the war-like state that
Locke and the tradition attributes to man. Without no laws (and a civil
society), pity is the natural feeling that moderates the activities of love in
the self and the continuation of man.[9]
From the two principles of the natural man, he then
breaks the state of nature even further, into the physical, metaphysical, and
moral aspects of man to get to the original creation. For Rousseau, the natural
man is built with faculties of strength and agility (physical aspect)[10],
with the ability of perfectibility (metaphysical aspect)[11],
and a confinement of passions to his physical wants (moral aspects)[12].
Thus for Rousseau, the natural man is simply free in his capabilities, but is
endowed with the ability to perfect himself;
Nature
lays her commands on every animal, and the brute obeys her voice. Man receives
the same impulsion, but at the same time knows himself at liberty to acquiesce
or resist: and it is particularly in his consciousness of this liberty that the
spirituality of his soul is displayed.[13]
Yet, if
the difficulties attending all these questions should still leave room for
dispute about this difference between men and brutes, there is another very
specific quality which distinguishes them, and which will admit of no dispute.
This is the faculty of self-improvement, which, by the help of circumstances,
gradually develops all the rest of our faculties, and is inherent in the
species as in the individual: whereas a brute is, at the end of a few months,
all he will ever be during his whole life.[14]
Through both quotes,
comes the understanding of whether or not man is inherently evil (or biased) as
portrayed by Locke and the tradition. He has outlined throughout his
“experiment” that the natural man is being guided by self-preservation and
pity, endowed with certain aspects, and underlying this is the realization that
the natural man has the capacity to change; the idea of perfectibility. This concept gives rise to the notion that man can
become something different from what they were at creation, meaning that through
experiences and knowledge, man has been able to change for the better good or
bad as a whole (and the individual). Locke and the liberal tradition do not
account for this, for they see man in a fixed state, and see civil society as
the only means to suppress their “natural” inclinations. Rousseau’s criticism is
then asserting that the bestial element has been able to evolve, with the two
principles clashing, and that Locke and the liberal tradition have only
legitimized the civil society for the corrupt, social man.
[2] Locke, John. The Second
Treatise of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration. New York:
Macmillan, 2002. Print, Book II; §19; §95.
[3] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 50.
[4] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 50.
[5] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 90.
[6] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, pp. 58-59.
[7] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 73.
[8] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 73.
[9] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 76
[10] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, pp. 53-59.
[11] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, pp. 59-60.
[12] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 61.
[13] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 60.
[14] Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, p. 60.
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