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Rousseau had found the idea to which he would passionately dedicate the rest of his intellectual life: the destructive influence of civilization on human beings. Rousseau felt a sudden and overwhelming inspiration "that man is naturally good, and that it is from these institutions alone that men become wicked".
Rousseau's natural man possesses a few qualities that allow him to distinguish himself from the animals over a long period of time. The process by which natural man becomes civilized is uncertain in the Discourse, but it could have had two or three different causes. The most likely causes are environmental, such that humans came into closer ...
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (UK: / ˈ r uː s oʊ /, US: / r uː ˈ s oʊ /; [1] [2] French: [ʒɑ̃ʒak ʁuso]; 28 June 1712 – 2 July 1778) was a Genevan philosopher (), writer, and composer.. His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment throughout Europe, as well as aspects of the French Revolution and the development of modern political, economic, and educational ...
Grace, Eve (2000). "Review of Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life; (Un)Manly Citizens: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's and Germaine de Stael's Subversive Women; Instinct and Intimacy: Political Philosophy and Autobiography in Rousseau; Roussseau's Republican Romance". The American Political Science Review. 94 (4): 922– 924.
For Rousseau, man's good lay in departing from his "natural" state — but not too much; "perfectability", up to a certain point, was desirable, though beyond that point an evil. Not its infancy but its jeunesse [youth] was the best age of the human race.
Rousseau is also unusual in the extent to which he took the approach of Hobbes, asserting that primitive humans were not even naturally social. A civilized human is therefore not only imbalanced and unhappy because of the mismatch between civilized life and human nature, but unlike Hobbes, Rousseau also became well known for the suggestion that ...
Humans still don’t need to hibernate, Weiss said, nor can we afford to due to our social and occupational obligations. “But we can make adjustments to perform in a better way, to rest in a ...
Emile is a teenager at this point and it is only now that Rousseau believes he is capable of understanding complex human emotions, particularly sympathy. Rousseau argues that, while a child cannot put himself in the place of others, once he reaches adolescence and becomes able to do so, Emile can finally be brought into the world and socialized.