Notes on Rousseau's Second Discourse

                Part 2 of Rousseau's Second Discourse recounts the transition from nascent to modern man. A large duration of time, Rousseau argues, separates the falling away of man's natural condition as a primitive animal from the transition into modern civil society. Rousseau sets out to posit from a single origin the “slow succession of events and knowledge” that leads to the present state of civil society. Because there are gaps in the historical account of man's anthropology, Rousseau's account attempts to rationally reconstruct what must have happened or what would make the most sense. Since certain historical facts are missing, a philosophical or speculative account must take its place. Events are thus laid out in “their most natural order” (Second Discourse 142). We will here attempt to lay out the order of these events as Rousseau presents them: from natural savagery into conjugal society (the family) into civil society.

                For Rousseau the state of nature does not signify a moral condition, but rather a state of innocence, a purely animal condition. The state of nature is beyond the distinction between good and evil (Second Discourse 128). Man in the state of nature is not yet really a moral subject, but merely a natural being. Rousseau's natural man is self-sufficient; he depends upon no one but himself. Because natural man lacks continuous interaction and contact with others, he could not possibly have a sophisticated morality, or set of value judgments, about others. These are only possible when there are relationships between individuals.

                However, man in this savage pre-reflective state is endowed with an “innate repugnance” towards suffering. Rousseau quotes from Juvenal's Satires, “Nature, who gave men tears, confesses she gives the human race most tender hearts” (Second Discourse 131). In other words, man is naturally endowed with pity and compassion. Pity “takes the place of laws, morals, and virtue, with the advantage that no one is tempted to disobey its gentle voice” (Second Discourse 133). Rousseau believes that it is man's inherent capability to feel concern for those who suffer that tempers man's selfishness, and allows for the preservation of the species. If one were indifferent to the cry of others in duress, savage man as a whole would surely have perished.

                Rousseau argues that “man's first sentiment was that of his existence” or being (Second Discourse 142). Savage man must have been aware in a vague sense or had a nebulous feeling that he is. His own self-preservation was the locus that oriented all of his actions or concerns (Second Discourse 142). Satisfying basic needs is a fundamental part of self-preservation. Natural man has only a few basic, easily satisfied needs. He is primarily driven by two basic sensations: those of his stomach and crotch. In this early state of nature, the earth is a kind mother who provided for all of man's immediate needs. Further, man's needs are not refined; therefore, many forms of nutrition will suffice. It is only later that he eventually figures out the usefulness and benefits of labor. Romantic love or what Rousseau calls “moral love,” in this early state of nature, does not yet exist. Sexual reproduction was “devoid of any sentiment of the heart” (Second Discourse 142). There existed only a base, physical urge. In other words, once the basic sexual urge for reproduction was quenched (“any woman is good for him”), the two sexes parted ways. Reproduction was merely a chance encounter. Likewise, the mother abandoned the child to his own devices  once a he was strong enough to survive on his own.

                Natural man, still dispersed about, begins to associate with other natural men occasionally. These occasional collaborations help to bring about a degree of provisional order.  A completely new configuration or way of being comes about, according to Rousseau, because of technical progress. Man, dispersed in various climates starts to invent primitive technologies. Near the sea, fishing lines and hooks are made use of and man consumes fish. Forest dwellers invent bows and arrows and hunt game. Those in cold regions happen upon fire through “lightning, volcano, or some happy accident” (Second Discourse 143). With mastery over fire, man comes to eat cooked meats, which were previously consumed raw (Second Discourse 143). Man's increasing contact with others now “produced in him some sort of reflection” (Second Discourse 144). Man becomes self-aware. He comes to know his own superiority over other creatures. His superiority lies within his ability to predict what other animals would do, to shape his environment to his will (within certain limits). Man may not be as strong or fast as other animals, but he is able to “trick them in a thousand ways” (Second Discourse 144).

                Man soon comes to realize that he shares a common-interest with others. In order to secure mutual well-being, individuals come together more frequently for various activities: hunting, traveling, and procuring food. To coordinate these activities a basic language starts to develop, though Rousseau explains that it could not have been “much more refined than that of crows or monkeys, which group together in approximately the same way” (Second Discourse 145). This “crude inarticulate language” was mainly composed of cries, grunts, and bodily gestures.

                The first revolution occurs as humanity enters into a patriarchal period or conjugal society. Natural man starts to build shelters and to move into caves. Families start to form and remain together. These shelters are the first “sort of property-- from which perhaps many quarrels and fights already arose” (Second Discourse 146). Under these conditions of common habitation, romantic love starts to develop. According to Rousseau, “The habit of living together gave rise to the sweetest sentiments known to men: conjugal love and paternal love” (Second Discourse 147). The two sexes, which had previously only stayed together long enough to reproduce, now found that “reciprocal affection and freedom were its only bonds” (Second Discourse 147). Furthermore, these fundamentally new social living-arrangements gave rise to a new sentiment. Whereas pre-social man's first sentiment of existence was the solipsistic feeling that “I exist, I am,” man now came to see his own life as being tied up with others in some fundamental way. Through love, a new need or sentiment arose: the need for others to confirm about oneself what one cannot confirm for oneself. “The two sexes,” Rousseau notes, “began, by their slightly softer life, to lose something of their ferocity and vigor” (Second Discourse 147). Man, under these new relations, becomes soft. Now no longer self-sufficient, man increasingly drew his self-worth from the opinion of others.

                Humans start to band together into more-stable camps and they start to build huts. Women and men – now living in close, constant proximity to one another – start to develop feelings for specific individuals. Rousseau puts it boldly and simply, “By dint of seeing one another, they can no longer do without seeing one another again” (Second Discourse 148). In contrast to pre-social man's accidental sexual encounters, social-man's need to confirm his own existence through the recognition of the other sustains these newly developed families. Monogamy signals the advent of jealousy and suspicion towards other men. There is always the possibility that another man could steal one's lover.

                Under these somewhat stable familial conditions, man is able to acquire more and more items. This increase in material items creates new needs and wants beyond his true, natural needs. Moreover, we see here the development of vanity and social rank. Man develops the inclination to be seen publicly, and comes to see his public status or reputation among his tribe as important. 

                Just as man fell from the leisurely and free way of life found in the pre-social state of nature by taking up simple labor and thought (the use of reason, which coupled with language, emerges from the stability of the first social relations), he now falls once again. Only now, man is torn away from the happiness of the patriarchal state. Through an “unhappy chance” or accident, men learn of the benefits that can be procured through the division of labor. The division of labor, Rousseau argues, allows men to pass from an economy of subsistence to an economy of productive development. Another great revolution occurs with the advent of metallurgy and agriculture. Rousseau writes, “For the poet it is gold and silver, but for the philosopher it is iron and wheat which have civilized men and ruined the human race” (Second Discourse 152). Men now producing more than they really need vie for the surplus. Men become concerned not only with using things, but possessing them. Men no longer want the objects immediately present in front of their eyes, but rather possible goods of the future.

                The situation of man therefore becomes fundamentally unstable, akin to what Hobbes had already described as a war of all against all. Rousseau puts it thus, “competition and rivalry on one hand, opposition of interest on the other; and always the hidden desire to profit at the expense of others” (Second Discourse 156). Men are, “alone against all, and unable because of mutual jealousies to unite with his equals...” (Second Discourse 158). Men, with their security in question, join together in civil society, which completes man's socialization. However, something terribly wrong has happened. The contract upon which men enter is fundamentally iniquitous. This contract does not found a just society, but rather it consecrates the worst aspects of injustice.

                The social contract that men enter into, because it is stipulated in inequality, has the onerous effect of consolidating the privileges of the rich, and thus institutionalizing inequality. This unjust process – whereby the rich usurp more and more wealth – is buried under the language of peace and right. Rousseau claims that this is the “most deliberate project that ever entered the human mind” (Second Discourse 158-9). He explains the Janus-faced reasoning given by the rich:

'Let us unite,' he says to them, 'to protect the weak from oppression, restrain the ambitious, and secure for everyone the possession of what belongs to him. Let us institute regulations of justice and peace to which all are obliged to conform, which make an exception of no one, and which compensate in some way for the caprices of fortune by equally subjecting the powerful and the weak to mutual duties. In a word, instead of turning our forces against ourselves, let us gather them into one supreme power which governs us according to wise laws, protects and defends all the members of the association, repulses common enemies, and maintains us in an eternal accord' (Second Discourse159).

The rich gain protection of their property with a right that never existed previously, and from that point on they become masters. Rousseau believes this contract is a farce, a mockery of the true social pact. Through chicanery and cunning, the rich swindle the poor. Insofar as the poor fall for this noble lie (the contract), they will remain oppressed and in chains.

                Man's true nature, for Rousseau, is not realized in the state of nature, but only in and through society. Certainly Rousseau paints an idyllic picture of natural man. One might assume that man was only truly happy in the state of nature; however, we must exercise a certain caution. It is in modern civil society that man develops the faculties that the natural man possessed only in germ-form. Natural man is, in other words, man in potential form. Reason, language, and moral sensibility are undeveloped in the state of nature. Civil society is the precondition and context for the actualization of these faculties. It is life in society, the social relations between humans, that serves as the condition for the emergence of our greatest attributes, such as reason and self-consciousness. Man's present nature, his existence in modern civil society (despite its entrenched inequality), is infinitely better than natural man. By entering into the true social-contract, man renounces the savage freedom of the state of nature, and helps to create a new moral and social order. This true social-contract, which would bring about man's happiness, Rousseau seems to imply, can only be brought about through fundamentally reworking the institutions in civil society that perpetuation “moral inequality” (Second Discourse 180).