Rousseau’s First Discourse

y Science and arts among the common population are bad, because they promote decadence. They lead to moral deterioration.
y “Our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our sciences and arts toward perfection.”
y Rousseau cites Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Constantinople, and China as examples of moral deterioration due to the
spread of knowledge.
y Cites the Persians, Scythians, Germans, early Romans, and the Swiss as virtuous and unenlightened.
y Sparta and Athens are the dichotomy – Sparta is virtuous and moral and Athens is enlightened and corrupt.
y Modern (for Rousseau) scientific discoveries don’t teach the citizens to be virtuous and the enlightenment philosophers
ESPECIALLY don’t promote virtue and morals.
y The arts and sciences are destroying military virtues needed for self-defense and cites many examples where poor warlike
people conquered rich, enlightened nations.
y Academies that teach arts and sciences are good, because they are teaching philosophers who are not the common man.
These philosophers should become advisors to rulers. Only when political power and scientific knowledge work in harmony
can the arts and sciences be worthwhile.
y Commoners should devote themselves to learning the laws of the state and being virtuous.
y While the academies and anti-philosophy principles seem contradictory, Rousseau acknowledges this contradiction and
disregards it.

ROUSSEAU – SECOND DISCOURSE: “DEDICATION TO GENEVA,” PREFACE, EXORDIUM

Dedication to Geneva
- R writes to the lords of Geneva. This letter basically glorifies and idealizes Geneva. The language is very flattering.
- Nature established equality among men, men established inequality. (R. asserts later that Nature does establish some inquality.)
- It’s good to approximate natural law as much as possible.
- If R. had to choose his place of birth, this would be his wishlist:
- A republic small enough that it can be governed easily.
- Everyone can do his task. ONE MAN, ONE ART
- All the individuals know each other, so most people are virtuous.
- He wishes that a sovereign and people could have the same will, but since this isn’t possible he likes democracies “wisely tempered.”
- People live and die as free men.
- No one can declare themselves above the law, no one outside can impose laws.
- Does not want to live in a newly-established republic because the republic could quickly implode if the law were ill-suited to the citizens. (or
if the citizens were ill-suited to the regime)
- Doesn’t like when republics are obsessed with conquest.
- Right of legislation is common to all citizens. The citizens know best what will
enable them to live harmoniously. (The people will have to grant consent to the laws.)
- Not everyone can propose new laws, only magistrates. The magistrates must have enough authority.
- Once people are accustomed to Masters, they can’t live without them
- When they shake off the Master, they mistake complete lawlessness for
freedom.
- R. seems to suggest that it is possible to gain freedom eventually, but it’s hard.
- Why Geneva is great:
- excellent constitution
- tranquil
- no wars or conquerors on the horizon
- wise laws administered by Magistrates
- not too rich, or too poor
- The preservation of Geneva depends on:
- obedience to laws
- respect to ministers
- preservation of constitution
- R. dislikes luxury. He wants only plain men to be found in Geneva, men who are not preoccupied with grand architecture and other
unnecessary things. This foreshadows R.’s later statements. Natural man is superior to the luxury-obsessed men of today.

Preface
- To understand the source of inequality, one must know men in the state of nature before all the changes of time.
- Every progress brings humans away from their origins.
- R. knows that this task is hypothetical because the state of nature no longer exists.
- The philosopher can perform experiments to learn more about the state of nature.
- Philosophers do not agree on the meaning of the word law.
- Natural law speaks with the voice of nature. We must submit to it consciously.
- Since we do not know man’s nature, we do not know if our laws are in accordance with natural law.
- The two principles prior to reason, simplest level of the soul:
- desire for self-preservation
- dislike of suffering or pity
- Reason can smother nature because it is partly determined by social values.
- It is not natural for a man to harm another human, unless his life is at stake.
- Animals and natural law (I defer to Sparknotes):
As they are not rational, he says, animals cannot have any part in a natural law, but as sentient beings they take part in natural right, that is, they
feel and are the subjects of pity. This gives animals at least the right not to be mistreated by man.
- In modern society, whether someone is weak or strong, rich or poor, depends on chance.
- Without the serious study of natural man, we’ll never understand the influence of the divine and what humans have done.

Exordium
- There are two sorts of inequality:
- Natural or physical = difference established by chance, like health or strength
- Moral or political = depends on social convention, men consent to it, different
privileges and prejudices
- The point of the Discourse is to mark when nature was subjected to law.
- Philosophers have examined the foundation of society before, but they have not felt that going back to the state of nature is necessary.
- They put unnatural things, like private property, in the state of nature.

Rousseau, Second Discourse, First Part.

• He says that to understand the state of nature, he must return to the beginnings of society. But the study of evolution has not advanced
far enough to get a fully accurate depiction of what life was like in the beginning.
• Men at first live in the forests with the other animals. They have a tough disposition because they have to live together with the
animals. Nature ensures that the strong survive and flourish.
• Without industry and tools, men must have been strong to take care of the necessary actions that tools help us to do today. (Ex:
Humans would use their hands to break branches, whereas today, we would use an axe.)
• He says that men didn’t have to fear wild animals because their superior skills and intellect made up for their disadvantage in strength.
• Man also has the instinct of fight or flight, and he will put this instinct to good use when the situation calls for its use.
• He says that most of our ills that we face today are of our own constructs. “We could have avoided almost all of them by preserving
the simple, uniform, and solitary way of life prescribed to us by nature.”
• There were fewer sources of illness in the state of nature, so man had little need for medicine or remedies.
• Man’s only care was his self-preservation. He spent all of his time working to get food or to protect himself from being the prey of
another animal.
• Man differs from animals because he is a free agent. Animals do not have the faculties of reason and cannot deviate from detrimental
behavior.
• He writes that our perfectibility moves us away from the animals and primal instincts. “[Perfectibility] is the faculty which, in the long
run makes him the tyrant of himself and nature.”
• Men continue to build their faculties of thought. Ex: Foresight is important. Agriculture, for example, is seemingly counterintuitive.
You must put seed in the ground that you could eat to get more food.
• Language: Language was born out of the intercourse between family.
• In the beginning, humans interacted without any need to communicate directly.
• As men’s ideas began to multiply and get more complex, humans needed to make a more complex manner to converse and to get ideas
across.
• Man’s original communications had much broader meanings for each word.
• Ideas and understanding come to the mind through words…. This is what separates us from the animals.
• He says that there would be less misery in the state of nature because misery means the suffering of the body and the soul. There is no
misery, because their hearts are at peace and their bodies are healthy.
• Contrary to Hobbes’s understanding, the state of nature was the place best suited for peace and tranquility.
• He says that “pity is a natural sentiment which, moderating each individual the activity of love oneself, contributes to the mutual
preservation of the entire species.”
• He says that as the human’s passions get more violent, the more important it is for laws to contain those passions.
• Some people in today’s society dominate by violence. But savage men would not show these qualities because they are so simple, that
they could not explain the concepts of servitude or domination.
• Men are enslaved from “the mutual dependence of men and the reciprocal needs that unite them.” It is impossible to enslave a man
without first putting him in the position of being unable to act without the presence of another. There would not be this position in the
state of nature.

I. The Second Discourse: Part 2

A. The transition from the state of nature to pre-civil society: p. 141-156 - In the second part of the second discourse, Rousseau begins in
detail his account of the transition of man from the state of nature to civil society, a transition of both metaphysical and moral
importance, as it is crucial in the differences between man and brute.
1. “The first person, who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple
enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society.”
2. The condition of nascent man was simple: his first care was for self-preservation. It was the “life of an animal limited at first to
pure sensations.”
a. He had few needs apart from food, sleep and sex.
 b. Man scarcely dreamt of exploiting or profiting from nature, but as difficulties arose man adapted and evolved. Man became
agile, ran, fought and overcame the obstacles of nature. As man learnt to hunt animals, he began to consider himself
preeminent among the species – this signaled the beginning of pride in himself as an individual.
c. As the human race spread, difficulties multiplied among them. Different climates produced different lifestyles.
3. From experience man learnt that the promotion of well-being is the sole motive for human actions, and from this knowledge
sprang the first cooperation between men.
4. Men invented tools and built huts. This was “the epoch of a first revolution,” which produced the establishment of families and
introduced the concept of property.
a. This led to conjugal and paternal love, as each family was like a small society.
b. This was also the beginning of differences between “the way of life of the two sexes.”
c. With the establishment of their “slightly softer life,” men and women lost some of their “ferocity and vigor” and began to
enjoy “very great leisure” which they used “to procure many kinds of commodities unknown to their fathers; and that was the
first yoke they placed on themselves.” These commodities became the first source of evil, as “people were unhappy to lose
them without being happy to possess them.”
5. Various natural catastrophes made language necessary.
6. With the coming of the family, a division of labor between the sexes also came into existence, as the institution of the family also
led to the natural formation of larger societies. Eventually a distinct nation arose “united in character and manners, not by
regulations or laws, but by uniformity of life and food, and the common influence of climate.”
7. Those societies which excelled in some respect “came to be so most consideration… this was the first step towards inequality, and
at the same time towards vice.”
8. From the preceding it is clear that Rousseau distinguishes between three stages of transition:
a. the state of nature prior to the formation of temporary associations for the purpose of solving transitory problems
b. the state of nature subsequent to the formation of such temporary associations
c. the existence of permanent pre-civil societies such as families, tribes, and even nations
(1.) In the third stage man is no longer the natural and innocent creature he was in the state of nature. Indeed it is the state of
nature, which Rousseau refers to as “the happiest and most stable of epochs,” in which there is an “expansion of the
human faculties, keeping a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulance of our egoism.”
Although subsequent advances seem to be “so many steps towards the perfection of the individual,” in reality they have
been so many steps “towards the decrepitude of the species.”
9. Effects: inequality, introduction of property, labor became necessary, slavery and misery.
a. Man had formally been free and independent; “due to a multitude of new needs” man became “deceitful and sly… imperious
and harsh” and always held the hidden desire to profit at the expense of others. “All these evil are the first effect of property
and the inseparable consequence of nascent inequality.”
B. The transition from pre-civil to civil society: p. 158-168
1. Rousseau begins his account of the transition from pre-civil to civil society with the observation that at some point men,
particularly the rich, came to reflect on their wretched condition and “upon the calamities overwhelming them.”
2. In a seeming theoretical account of history, Rousseau states that it was the “rich man”, “alone against all,” who “conceived the
most deliberate project that ever entered the human mind.”
a. The conceived notion, in order to create civil society and laws, was to “use in his favor the very forces of those who attacked
him, to make his defenders out of his adversaries, inspire them with other maxims, and give them other institutions which
were as favorable to him.”
b. Rousseau continues his account in a descriptive literary sketch, in which the “rich man,” reminds his neighbors of the misery
and wretchedness of their condition, in which every man was armed against the rest, and in which neither rich nor poor were
safe.
3. This was the “origin of society and laws,” which harmed the weak and “gave new forces to the rich, destroyed natural freedom for
all time, established forever the law of property and inequality… subjected the whole human race to work, servitude and misery.”
4. Once one political entity was created, the formation of others became necessary to protect those outside the first entity from the
combined power of its members. Accordingly, political societies soon multiplied and “covered the entire surface of the earth; and
it was no longer possible to find a single corner in the universe where one could free oneself from the yoke.”
5. Civil law and civil right replaced the law of nature in governing the relationships of individuals within a political community.
6. The state of nature degenerated into a state of war, in which more violence, bloodshed, suffering and death occurred in a single
day than had occurred “in the state of nature during whole centuries over the entire face of the earth.” These were the first effects
that “followed the division of mankind into different communities.”
7. At the end of Part 2, Rousseau presents a direct attack against Hobbes. Rousseau asserts that it would be absurd to suppose that
that a monarchic or aristocratic sovereign was established prior to the establishment of a political society or the enactment of laws.
8. Rousseau continues to attack Hobbes by arguing that it would be illogical “to believe that at first peoples threw themselves into
the arms of an absolute master without conditions and for all time, and that the first means of providing for the common security
imagined by proud and unconquered men was to rush into slavery.”
9. He contends that men institute political chiefs in order to defend themselves from oppression and to protect their lives, liberty,
and property, and that the institution of an absolute monarch would be contradictory with the preservation of their liberty,
allotting them only exposure to the oppression of the monarch, an oppression greater than any from which they could suffer in the
state of nature.
C. Different forms of government:
1. Different forms of government derive from the original differences between individuals:
a. If one man was preeminent, then a monarch was formed
 b. If several men were present, then an aristocracy was formed
c. The state that stayed close to the state of nature formed democracies.
D. Progression of inequality:
1. Establishment of law and property – authorizes state of rich and poor
2. Institution of monarchy – state of powerful and weak
3. Conversion of legitimate to arbitrary power – relationship of master and slave
4. Despotism – devours and tramples laws and people

II. Summary of Part 2 of the Second Discourse:

A. Transition from the state of nature to pre-civil society:
1. Savage man consumed with self-preservation – food, sleep, sex – most happy and stable
2. Man evolves in response to the obstacles of nature
3. Desire for well-being leads to temporary associations for the purpose of solving transitory problems
4. Invention of tools and huts → family and property → inequality → leisure and commodities → slavery and misery
5. Formation of distinct nations
B. Transition from pre-civil society to civil society:
1. Rich man proposes the idea of society and laws
2. Once one political entity was formed, others became necessary – soon covered the Earth
3. Civil law and civil right replace the law of nature
4. Creation of a state of war → violence, bloodshed, suffering and death
5. Men turn to political chiefs to protect their lives, liberty and property → institution of absolute monarchy
6. Creation of different forms of government → monarchy, arbitrary power, despotism

C. A few notes from me:

1. Rousseau asserts that man was happiest and most stable in the state of nature, as the advancement of society has lead to the
“decrepitude of the species.”
2. While Rousseau presents a theoretical version of history, he seems to be more concerned with the effect of civil society on man
and not with the precise way in which it was first formed.
3. Society has hurt the weak, strengthened the strong, destroyed natural freedom, instituted the law of property and inequality, and
lead to general work, servitude and misery.
4. Near the end of Part 2, Rousseau directly attacks Hobbes (see above).