By Abraham Keita- Student, Yale University

 

What is freedom, or stated more precisely, what does it mean to be free or have free will? Is freedom a natural condition of the individual? Does individual freedom find legitimacy and full expression in political or civil society, or does this society hinder it? In an attempt to answer these questions, we turn to Rousseau’s Second Discourse (hereafter, SD). Focusing on keep passages, we show that for Rousseau, to be free is a natural condition of the natural man; that this natural freedom is somehow limited by natural man’s coming to civil society; and that perhaps the only thing left to natural man, even after entering society, is consent. (Note: Our use of “man” means the human individual, taken as encompassing all genders and sexes, although for Rousseau’s context, it seems he has in mind, man qua man).

 

Because Rousseau’s conception of freedom is largely based on his conception of the state of nature, and hence the natural man, it is expedient that our inquiry gives an account of this state and the man who inhabits it. In fact, we can only ever grasp Rousseau’s doctrine of freedom by way of the state of nature. But to know the state of nature is to know the natural man, in all his intricacies, that is, in all his wholeness, which includes amongst other things, his natural condition of freedom. Thus, our account then must be an account of the natural man.

 

The account of the natural state or natural man we find in Rousseau stands in direct contrast to what his predecessors, i.e., Hobbes and Locke, had in mind. Like them, Rousseau attempts to give an account of human nature through the lens of an experiment, or rather a hypothetical formulation, that is, the state of nature (Preface, SD, pp. 125). Like all the modern thinkers before him, Rousseau agrees that political right must be grounded on a pre-political or pre-social natural right. But Rousseau criticizes both Hobbes and Locke and their likes for their failure to distinguish or to give the fullest, even truest, account of natural man, in contradistinction to civil man. Put another way: they never succeed in reaching the primitive state of nature. Rejecting their accounts, Rousseau writes: “all of them, continually speaking of need, greed, oppression, desires, and pride transferred to the state of Nature ideas they had taken from society; They spoke of Savage Man and depicted Civil man” (Exordium, SD, pp. 132).

 

In other words, Hobbes’ account of the state of nature in his Leviathan is wrong. Hobbes is right when he asserts that man desires self-preservation in his natural state; he is wrong when  gives natural man certain warlike qualities, and hence, that the state of nature is characterized by  war, that each man is engaged in a war of all against all. War and the passions (greed, pride, insatiable need) are the defining attributes of society. That is, they only come into existence when man has left his natural state and now in civil society. Since both Hobbes and Rousseau agree that the natural state is asocial, or rather antisocial, Rousseau thus insists that it cannot be that man should seek pride or the other passions prior to all social relations, since pride entails a certain sense of recognition by others, because man in his natural state has no need of others; if others exist, he has no intent of disturbing them, since he is independent and self-sufficient and his desires are simple and easily satisfied (pp. 134).

 

Similarly, Rousseau seems to agree with Locke when the latter suggests that the origin of civil society is to protect private property, i.e., the property of the wealthy or ruling class. But he disagrees with Locke that private property or the desire for private property is a natural inclination of man. For Rousseau, property implies or creates social relations, so it cannot be that natural man, in his pre-social state, desires property. But if the natural man in his natural state cannot be the things that Hobbes and Locke say that he is, who then is this man?

 

Rousseau depicts the natural man as he is in his natural state, that is, Rousseau depicts natural man in his animal state. But just because Rousseau animalizes natural man does not imply that natural man’s human desires or needs are as simple as the animals. It is true, Rousseau suggests, that the needs of natural man are easily satisfied (ibid). But the natural man has a human reality that is distinct from his animal reality. Before we transition into what and how Rousseau distinguishes natural man from other animals, we might add that the natural man is distinct from animals because there is a sense in which he is conscious or aware of his human reality, and it is this reality that he goes beyond simple sentiments of self.

 

Now, for Rousseau, natural man is distinct from other animals based on two factors: first, by his natural state of freedom; and second, by his faculty of “perfectibility”. For Rousseau, these two are inextricably linked given natural man’s status as a free agent. As we shall see, the natural man cannot perfect himself or attain perfection if he cannot be free or make choices. But before we go on to say something about this twofold account, we want to suggest that there is another factor or thing which distinguishes natural man, and which Rousseau alludes to in passing, but which he does not pick any further. We shall call it the natural man’s natural capacity for cognition.

 

Rousseau writes: “Every animal has ideas, since it has senses; up to a point it even combines its ideas, and in this respect man differs from the Beast only as more does from less” (SD, Part I, pp. 140). Unlike the brutish and beasty way Hobbes characterizes man in the state of nature – a characterization which implicitly says that natural man is irrational – Rousseau seems to suggest that though natural man might lack the faculty of reason proper as Hobbes or Locke (or even the avowed Rousseau-disciple, Kant) understands it, it does not on that account suggest that the natural man cannot cognize, by which we mean, to think. In fact, Rousseau explicitly denies that the natural man is capable of having reason at all since, having reason implies having speech, and speech implies social life: “it is not possible why someone who had neither desires nor fears would take the trouble to reason” (pp. 142). Thus, as we noted earlier, Rousseau suggests that natural man is asocial, and hence irrational. But, when Rousseau says “every animal has ideas”, it seems he means to suggest that natural man and animals alike, all have the capacity for sensual experience, or more properly, sensations.

 

Contrary to the Scholastic tradition going all the way back to Aristotle, Rousseau insists that man is not the rational and social animal he is made out to be; natural man is not the “thinking thing”, the contemplative, Cartesian cognito he has been characterized as. Natural man is a sensitive creature. Sensations can take the form of perceptions, by which we mean natural man’s actively perceiving things or sorting out and acting on his needs; and impressions, by which natural man is passive, i.e., the effects his environment has on him. Now, in both accounts – perceptions and impressions – the natural man exercises cognition. Put another way, there is a sense in which the natural man thinks through his needs before setting about satisfying them, just as he must study or understand his environment before he sets about hunting or foraging to satisfy those needs, for example, to eat. This is what we think Rousseau means when he says man, or natural man, differs from other animals or beasts because he has the ability to combine or synthesize his ideas, that is, natural man has the capacity to pursue simple desires, which are easily satisfied, from complex needs. Here, we are reminded of the Kantian notion of synthesis – the transcendental unity of apperception – whereby the individual human consciousness unites concepts and intuitions to make judgments about the world.

 

Additionally, natural man – along the lines we have been exploring – is a creature of sensibility, that is, he is naturally compassionate or possesses natural goodness or pity (pp. 140; 152; 161). Man and the other animals experience a feeling of reluctance, and repugnance, whenever another of the same kind experiences pain or suffering. Specifically, the natural man can be said to have no morality, since whatever he does, he does so because it pleases him. But it cannot be denied that the natural man has a certain kind of goodness in him: he harms no one. To this extent, the natural man can only be said to have two passions: to preserve himself through the satisfaction of his basic needs as well as sympathy or pity for those in pain or suffering. So much for this exegesis, we turn now to Rousseau’s claim that the natural man is a free agent, and hence constantly perfecting himself, albeit accidentally.

 

Rousseau, as we mentioned earlier, identifies two distinctive characteristics of natural man. These characteristics, we suggest, take the place of reason, and help define natural man’s human reality as opposed to rationality. The first is natural man’s freedom, free will or free agency. Rousseau writes: “…Nature alone does everything in the operations of the Beast, whereas man contributes to his operations in his capacity as a free agent” (pp.140), and “It is, then, not so much the understanding that constitutes the specific difference between man and the other animals, as it is his property of being a free agent. Nature commands every animal, and the Beast obeys. Man experiences the same impression, but he recognizes himself free to acquiesce or to resist; and it is mainly in the consciousness of this freedom that the spirituality of his soul exhibits itself” (pp.141). In other words, man, or rather, natural man is not determined by his instincts or his rash, beastly inclinations. Natural man can accept, choose or reject when the need arises. He can even defy nature, which provides him with his basic necessities. He is conscious of his natural freedom, and it is in such consciousness that the spirituality of his soul lies. Or put another, by having free will, man is aware of and establishes or affirms his humanity or human reality. In short, the natural man is aware of his power, that is, he knows he can do as he pleases and become what he wills.

 

The conception of freedom Rousseau puts forth seems, on the surface, very similar to the one theorists of the state of nature, Hobbes and Locke included, put forth before him. For these theorists, in the state of nature, all men are free and equal, and it was this natural freedom and equality that made the transition to civil society possible. Rousseau agrees with his predecessors that freedom entails choosing this or that, or that free will consists in not being interfered with or influenced by others. But Rousseau adds an important ingredient, and this is the second characteristic of man.

 

Rousseau links freedom to what he terms as perfectibility, that is, natural man’s capacity for perfecting himself. What does this term really mean? Rousseau writes: “[T]here is another  very specific property that distinguishes…namely, the faculty of perfecting oneself; a faculty  which, with the aid of circumstances, successfully develops all the others, and resides in us, in  the species as well as in the individual”, and he adds, “It would be sad for us to be forced to  agree that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty, is the source of all of man’s miseries; that  it is the faculty which, by dint of time, draws him out of that original condition in which he  would spend tranquil and innocent days; that it is the faculty which, over the centuries, causing  his enlightenment and his errors , his vices and his virtues to bloom, eventually makes him his  own and Nature’s tyrant” (ibid). We must first point out that Rousseau’s account of perfectibility is two-pronged: it is faculty which the individual man possesses, and which simultaneously belongs to all among his species. Natural man, or properly man, is the only creature endowed with the ability to gradually improve his faculties, and hence, this improvement benefits and can be passed down to the whole species.

 

The perfectibility of man seems to mean a certain openness, even proneness, to change.  With circumstances, the natural man must constantly adapt and reorient himself. The advanced or superior faculties we find in a civilized man is a proof of man’s perfectibility. But these faculties, though now belonging to the entire species, were not possessed by it in the original state of nature. We might ask: how does freedom fit into perfectibility? As species, individuals not only have the free will to do X rather than Y, we can also freely choose to be X instead of Y. Thus, as species, the human herd is not fixed in its nature; our natural condition is such that there is always room for change and alteration. We have the capacity to create or recreate things.

 

It follows that based on these two characteristics of man in the state of nature, natural man is in possession of no natural qualities or abilities at all, since he experiences and forms himself through continuous change or alteration. We might suggest, in other words, that natural man has no nature or natural ends at all. If it can be said that he has ends, these ends are merely potentialities, since circumstances come and go with time. Moreover, if the question – how does civil society come into existence? – is posed, we can respond that it is a product of man’s faculty of perfectibility. But if civil or political society is man’s making, it is also man’s sanctioning of or restriction on his own natural freedom.

 

At this juncture, on final notes, we wish to say something about the connection between Rousseau’s three major works. In the First Discourse, Rousseau offers a critique of modern arts and sciences. His criticism is due to the moral decadence in modern society. Simultaneously with advances in arts and sciences, Rousseau insists that the individual has lost his or sense of moral duty. This work is Rousseau’s critique of the Enlightenment, though, paradoxically, he himself would spur on that very Enlightenment project. In the Second Discourse, Rousseau undertakes the herculean task of showing the origins of inequality. Despite all the progress modern society claims to have made, Rousseau insists that the founding of the modern civil society cements inequality for good. The crowning achievement of civil society is that everyone says “this is mine” (SD, Part II, pp. 161). Thus, civil society, Rousseau suggests, is the foundation of private property. The individual with more wealth begins to exercise more powers, even commands more respect than the poor. In the natural state, there is only physical inequality, for example, one person being stronger, fitter or bulkier than another; in the civil state, economic or political inequality comes into existence. Then, Rousseau tries to address this problem in the Social Contract. Rousseau wants to show how civil society – coming into being based on a social contract – can allow man to exercise his freedom while subjecting said freedom to the “general will” or the collective will.  Although Rousseau writes at the beginning, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains” (Book One, chp. I, pp. 41), Rousseau seems to suggest that the natural man changes from the calm, even lazy, beast that he was to a moral being, who legislates laws for civil society.

 

In conclusion, we have shown throughout that for Rousseau, the individual is born both free and equal: she is free because she follows her instincts and inclinations, and she does whatever pleases her, to the extent that it makes possible and enhances her own preservation and comfort; she has natural equality because, before civil society, she has no superior who can make a valid claim to command her. The individual – in the natural state – has no obligations or set of rules or maxims that dictate and direct her actions. It follows, therefore, that government is not natural but conventional, and the laws that govern and create order in civil or political society are man’s making. Thus, the natural state is really distinct from civil society, and the bridge that connects or leads the one to the other is consent. In civil society, consent is what gives the impression that man’s natural right or freedom has not been taken away entirely, though it has been limited. Perhaps, consent is to the civil man (formerly natural man) what freedom and perfectibility are to the natural man, properly speaking.

 

 

Works Cited

Rousseau. The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings. Edited by Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought. First Published 1997.