In “Discourse on the origin of Inequality”, in order to seek the origin of inequality among men, Jean-Jacques Rousseau said one must first look at the nature state of man, and then that would lead us to see how the process of socialization had caused human to step out of their nature state and to their inequality. Rousseau’s depiction of nature human beings is not based on historical facts, but rather, on his self-observation and his own reasonings. Therefore it is important to carefully examine whether his reasonings on primitive state of human stands. I will argue that the nature state depicted by Rousseau does not appeal persuasive. I will first show that his statement can be argued for he does not keep a consistent hold on savage man’s thinking and state of reflection, and secondly, his two principles of the human soul—self-preservation and compassion—are confused to be two separate principles while the latter comes from the first. Therefore leading to the conclusion that nature human beings are thinking human beings and they are caring only for their own preservation. I am also going to present the possible objections some may hold towards my arguments.
Before I say what is wrong with Rousseau's depiction, I will first explain his exposition on characteristics of human beings in the nature state, which is the state of savage men, before when they became socialized. Rousseau has mentioned many characteristics of savage men, while I am going to focus on two of them to discuss in the following paragraphs.
In this section, I will talk about Rousseau’s view on how men are unique from other animals around them in their nature state already. He talks about when we were living together with other animals, we are differed by perfectibility:
Men, dispersed among the animals, observe and imitate their industry, and thereby raise themselves to the level of animal instinct, with the advantage that, whereas each species has only its own instincts, man, who may perhaps have none that belongs to him, appropriates all of them to himself, feeds himself equally well on most of the various foods which the other animals divide among themselves, and consequently finds his substance more easily than any of the rest can.(Rousseau, pg.19)
What Rousseau is saying, is that human beings being in the nature, observe and imitate other species and acquire their skills to themselves. Man maybe doesn’t have any instincts himself but he gains other animals’s and that is what make them unique from the rest of the animals. This ability later in the text is referred as “perfectibility”.
Another characteristic shared by human beings before they were socialized is that they had the operations of self-preservation and compassion for other humans. Rousseau states:
Leaving aside therefore all the scientific books which teach us only to see men as they have made themselves, and meditating the first and most simple operations of the human soul, I believe I perceive in it two principles that are prior to reason, of which one makes us ardently interested in our well-being and our self-preservation, and the other inspires in us a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient being, especially our fellow man, perish or suffer.
(Rousseau, pg.14)
Rousseau believes that the two elements that man had before the introducing of sociability and reason is their interest in their self-preservation, which means that they care about their safety and survival. The other one is the the pity that they feel towards their fellows when they suffer, are in a bad situation, or when they die. These two principles come from the nature of human beings. Men were sentient beings before they were rational beings.
We have just seen how Rousseau depicts the nature state of human beings from two perspectives. I will now present two arguments to show the flaws that make his “nature state” unpersuasive. In the following section, I am going to show my first argument which is opposing the first characteristic of nature human being depicted by Rousseau that I discussed previously.
My argument is showing that throughout the text Rousseau makes contradictions to his own textual supports which causes confusion on his stand on whether the savage man had the ability of reflecting and thinking. Rousseau indicates that “If nature has destined us to be healthy, I almost dare to affirm that the state of reflection is a state contrary to nature and that the man who meditates is a depraved animal” (Rousseau, pg.22). This statement is basically saying that the state of reflection and mediation is unnatural, and is contrary to the nature state of human beings. So to say, the nature human beings do not think or reflect much. Similarly, Rousseau mentions “Alone, idle, and always in danger, savage man must like to sleep and be a light sleeper like animals which do little thinking and, as it were, sleep entire time they are not thinking” (Rousseau, pg.24), showing that no different from others animals, since they are always alone and in danger, they are always focusing on their safety and therefore have no time for thinking.
However, what Rousseau has said in here seems very contrary to his statement about perfectibility that savage men posses as discussed previously. To recall perfectibility, it is that human beings observe and imitate other animals. It would seem very illogical that he says here that savage men do not think, because if they do not think, they would not observe animals’ behaviors and think about them and then imitate their instincts. The imitating is a process of learning and it would require state of reflection and the process of thinking. This would then lead to the conclusion that when they had the perfectibility they were no longer savage men. Therefore, it it shown that he is contradicting himself, because perfectibility includes the process of thinking and evaluating which according to Rousseau is not natural. Further support for the claim that Rousseau is contradicting himself comes from the example he gave out:
…it is clear that the first man who made clothing or a dwelling for himself was giving himself things that were hardly necessary, since he had done without them until then and since it is not clear why, as a grown man, he could not endure the kind of life he had endured ever since he was a child. (Rousseau, pg.24)
Rousseau here is saying that the process of making the clothes and building shelters is natural because when a man is doing this, he was creating something hardly necessary which he later found out to be useful and got used to it. He was not thinking when creating it. This statement is not persuasive, considering if if these were considered “hardly necessary”, without him thinking of the purpose of what he was about to create when making a piece of clothes, why would he start to make it at all? There lacks a valid reasoning for why would he create something that he never possessed before in his life if it is not because he felt cold and felt the need to solve the problem. A human being will not just start to make something without thinking or this depiction of nature state is not reasonable. In both circumstances, perfectibility and making clothes, requires thinking process, which is thought unnatural to Rousseau, which makes his depiction of nature state by him contradicting each other and inconsistent.
In the next section, I will be talking about the how the two principles in nature human souls is indeed one thing and cannot be separated. This is how Rousseau speaks about pity. “Pity is what will prevent every robust savage from robbing a weak child or an infirm old man of his hard-earned subsistence, if he himself expects to be able to find his own someplace else” (Rousseau, pg.38). What is being said is that the motivation behind this virtue is pity. If one can find his food somewhere else, he will not take away from a weak person’s food. What is interesting here is that Rousseau specifically mention the weak group of people. It can be deduced is that if he was weaker like the child and old man, he would expect the same behavior from others because he would be in a disadvantage position. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Rousseau, pg.38), even Rousseau himself explains that this pity comes from self-concerning first and then put onto others because of self-preservation. To further support my argument, Confucius has said “己所不欲, 勿施于人”, meaning that one should not impose on others what he himself does not desire. It appeals that the pity is coming from ourselves’s unwillingness to have the same tragedy happening to us. Consequently, natural pity comes from self-preservation. In other words, nature man concerns only his self-preservation and they do not have natural pity. Rousseau’s depiction of nature human’s soul is not persuasive.
Having argued that Rousseau’s depiction of state of reflection is contrary to nature is wrong, I now wish to consider rival views. Some might object that what one does not necessary need something deep as a state of reflection because for a savage man to realize that he need apiece of clothes or a shelter because of coldness can be achieved by instinct. Instinct means “a natural tendency for people and animals to behave in a particular way using the knowledge and abilities that they were born with rather than thought or training” (Oxford dictionary). When savage man feels cold and he happens to have the ability to make himself warmer by creating a house or clothes, he does it without thinking but rather by instinct. Unlike intellectual thinking, this kind of thinking can barely count as thinking, no mention to the stets of reflection. However, this still doesn’t justify Rousseau’s statements because if it is the instinct of the man to cause him to realize that he needs clothes, he is still creating out of necessary rather than something “hardly necessary” (Rousseau, pg.24). Furthermore, these instincts, according to Rousseau, are acquired by their perfectibility from other animals. It would be very difficult for one to gain instincts from other animals using their perfectibility imitating animals without a process of a deeper level of thinking.
In conclusion, though it is possible to show that some the acts by nature human beings can be explained that is due to their instincts, there is still no other way to explain how savage men gained perfectibility except from the process of learning. And it can also be shown that primitive state human beings were concerned of their self-preservation. Even though Rousseau’s statements on nature human beings is bold and daring and provided the enlightenment at his era and even later, it cannot be denied that his reasonings and assumptions contain flaws that make his depiction of nature human beings not persuasive. Human have always shared self-preservation being self-interest driven and a thinking animal, it only waited for the time and society to stimulate these elements already in humans. I would rather not believe that there was a phase of complete nature state in human beings.