Jean Jacques Rousseau Research Paper

For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the further human knowledge progresses while believing gross misconceptions about fundamental human nature, which he believes is the case, the more confused humanity will become. To understand the enormous disparity which is present now among humanity “we must seek the first origin of the differences that distinguish men” (Rousseau, 40). Rousseau observes that humanity has evolved drastically since its beginning, so the beginning is where he starts. Rousseau claims in the Discourse on Inequality that humanity has always possessed the faculties for pity and self-preservation, before reason and civilization had played any role in man’s evolution, where “pity is what, in the state of nature, takes the place of laws,

Rousseau has his reader imagine people wandering around by themselves and acting instinctively by “perceiving and feeling … which he will have in common with all animals. Willing and not willing, desiring, and fearing will be the first and nearly the only operations of his soul” (54). As aforementioned, Rousseau identifies two principles of the human soul which always precede reason and even reflection in the human mind and soul, that guide natural man’s behaviours and existed for humanity before reason and civilization did. The instinct to preserve oneself and one’s well-being is one of these principles, and the other is pity, which “inspires in us a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellowman, perish or suffer” (42). Without reason to aid decision making, natural man acts instinctively, combining his desire for self-preservation with his pity, to act accordingly to the maxim of “Do what us good for you with as little harm as possible to others”

Additionally, reason was able to develop because of human passion; the passions for another human, for food, and for enjoyment, which spurred our desire to know, and “[w]e seek to know only because we desire to find enjoyment; and it is impossible to conceive why someone who had neither desires nor fears would go to the bother of reasoning” (54). So we learn what we want and reason tells us how to have it; which along with the progression of time and humanity coming together to live in groups, allows jealousies to form, and the concept of property to aid the forming of small societal communities. Humans living together means people become aware of themselves as individuals and what they want to possess separately from others, in this way “[r]eason is what engenders egocentrism…. Reason is what turns man upon himself” (63). So reason is everywhere in society, it was crucial to society having formed, it is also crucial to how we interact in