{"agent_id":"rousseau","agent_name":"Jean-Jacques Rousseau","slug":"natural-goodness-perfectibility-and-the-genealogy-of-inequal","label":"Natural goodness, perfectibility, and the genealogy of inequality: is man naturally good, and is inequality the historical product of property and comparison?","topic":"Natural goodness, perfectibility, and the genealogy of inequality","question":"Is man naturally good, and is inequality the historical product of property and comparison?","position":"Man is naturally good. This is the foundational claim of the entire authorship, stated as the opening of *Émile* — everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man — and demonstrated in the hypothetical genealogy of the Second Discourse. In the original state of nature, prior to the institution of property and the consolidation of comparison, the human animal lives by two passions only: *amour de soi*, the natural concern for one's own preservation and well-being, which has nothing comparative or competitive in it; and *pitié*, the natural repugnance at seeing another sensitive being suffer, the source of all the social virtues before they have names. There is no malice in the natural human being, no envy, no vanity, no domination — these belong not to nature but to a particular history. The genealogy of inequality is the history of how *amour-propre* (the comparative form of self-love) emerged from the conditions that taught human beings to compare themselves with one another, of how property formalized the dependence that comparison produced, of how the chains that bind master and slave alike were forged stage by stage from the first hut to the first deed to the first written code. The vice is not in human nature; it is in the history that human beings, with their fatal *perfectibilité*, made of themselves.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Man is naturally good.","n":[]},{"t":"This is the foundational claim of the entire authorship, stated as the opening of *Émile* — everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man — and demonstrated in the hypothetical genealogy of the Second Discourse.","n":[]},{"t":"In the original state of nature, prior to the institution of property and the consolidation of comparison, the human animal lives by two passions only: *amour de soi*, the natural concern for one's own preservation and well-being, which has nothing comparative or competitive in it; and *pitié*, the natural repugnance at seeing another sensitive being suffer, the source of all the social virtues before they have names.","n":[1,2,3]}],[{"t":"There is no malice in the natural human being, no envy, no vanity, no domination — these belong not to nature but to a particular history.","n":[]},{"t":"The genealogy of inequality is the history of how *amour-propre* (the comparative form of self-love) emerged from the conditions that taught human beings to compare themselves with one another, of how property formalized the dependence that comparison produced, of how the chains that bind master and slave alike were forged stage by stage from the first hut to the first deed to the first written code.","n":[]}],[{"t":"The vice is not in human nature; it is in the history that human beings, with their fatal *perfectibilité*, made of themselves.","n":[4,5]}]],"texts":"*Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men* (the Second Discourse, 1755) — the principal text, especially Part I on the state of nature and Part II on the genealogy of property, dependence, and inflamed *amour-propre*; *Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts* (the First Discourse, 1750) for the parallel cultural-critical genealogy; *Émile*, Bk I opening (\"Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man\"); the *Letter to Beaumont* (1763) for the public defense of natural goodness against the Augustinian original-sin charge; *Confessions* Bk VIII for the autobiographical recollection of the road-to-Vincennes encounter with the Dijon prize question. Reception: Joshua Cohen, *Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals* (Oxford, 2010), Ch. 4 'The Natural Goodness of Humanity'; N.J.H. Dent, *Rousseau* (Blackwell, 1988); Frederick Neuhouser, *Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love* (Oxford, 2008); Ernst Cassirer, *The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau* (1932), the unity-of-thought reading that takes natural goodness as the unifying principle of the corpus; Andrew Chitty on the Rousseau-to-Marx genealogy of inequality; the older Augustinian reading the position explicitly refuses.","works":["*Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men* (the Second Discourse, 1755) — the principal text, especially Part I on the state of nature and Part II on the genealogy of property, dependence, and inflamed *amour-propre*","*Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts* (the First Discourse, 1750) for the parallel cultural-critical genealogy","*Émile*, Bk I opening (\"Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things","everything degenerates in the hands of man\")","the *Letter to Beaumont* (1763) for the public defense of natural goodness against the Augustinian original-sin charge","*Confessions* Bk VIII for the autobiographical recollection of the road-to-Vincennes encounter with the Dijon prize question"],"reception":"Joshua Cohen, *Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals* (Oxford, 2010), Ch. 4 'The Natural Goodness of Humanity'; N.J.H. Dent, *Rousseau* (Blackwell, 1988); Frederick Neuhouser, *Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love* (Oxford, 2008); Ernst Cassirer, *The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau* (1932), the unity-of-thought reading that takes natural goodness as the unifying principle of the corpus; Andrew Chitty on the Rousseau-to-Marx genealogy of inequality; the older Augustinian reading the position explicitly refuses.","status":"The doctrine has been continuously misread as romantic primitivism — the noble-savage caricature, the idea that the agent recommends a return to the forest, the idea that civilization is mere fall. This is not what the Second Discourse argues. The state of nature is a hypothetical reconstruction, not a historical destination; the genealogy is a diagnostic, not a counsel of withdrawal; the constructive program of *Émile* and the *Social Contract* shows that humans retain natural goodness as something the right education and the right political form can develop rather than corrupt. The Augustinian original-sin frame the *Letter to Beaumont* responded to is the principal historical alternative the position explicitly refuses.","era":"1712-1778","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"Letter to Beaumont","page":"p. 60","canonical":"","quote":"I have shown that all the vices imputed to the human heart are not natural to it; I have stated the manner in which they are born. I have followed their genealogy, so to speak, and I have shown how, through continuous deterioration of their original goodness, men finally become what they are.","label":"Letter to Beaumont, p. 60"},{"n":2,"work":"Discourse on the Origins of Inequality","page":"p. 69","canonical":"","quote":"Mollissima corda Humano generi dare se natura fatetur, Que lacrimas dedit.\" Second Discourse (Pl., III, 153-156) 7 Mandeville sensed very well that even with all their morality men would never have been anything but monsters if Nature had not given them pity in support of reason; but he did not see that from this quality alone flow all the social virtues he wants to question in men.","label":"Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, p. 69"},{"n":3,"work":"Emile, or On Education","page":"p. 294","canonical":"","quote":"If moral goodness is in conformity with our nature, man could be healthy of spirit or well constituted only to the extent that he is good. If it is not and man is naturally wicked, he cannot cease to be so without being corrupted, and goodness in him is only a vice contrary to nature.","label":"Emile, or On Education, p. 294"},{"n":4,"work":"Emile, or On Education","page":"pp. 487–491","canonical":"","quote":"How many times have these hands felt the tears I shed on them! The young couple share my raptures, and they too are moved. Their respectable parents once again enjoy their youth in that of their children. They begin, so to speak, to live again in them—or rather they come to know the value of life for the first time. They curse their former wealth which prevented them from tasting so charming a fate at the same age.","label":"Emile, or On Education, pp. 487–491"},{"n":5,"work":"Discourse on the Origins of Inequality","page":"pp. 123–124","canonical":"","quote":"He was even less able to count to five; and although, placing his hands on one another, he could have noticed that the fingers corresponded exactly, he was very far from thinking of their numerical equality.","label":"Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, pp. 123–124"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"amour-propre-diagnosis-and-cure","label":"*Amour-propre* — diagnosis and cure: is the comparative form of self-love only the source of corruption, or also the precondition of rationality and freedom?"},{"slug":"the-general-will-the-social-contract-and-freedom","label":"The general will, the social contract, and freedom: is submission to the general will the realization of freedom or the road to totalitarian unfreedom?"},{"slug":"mile-negative-education-and-the-religion-of-the-savoyard-vic","label":"*Émile*, negative education, and the religion of the Savoyard Vicar: is the educational program sound, and is the natural religion Rousseau's own sincere position?"},{"slug":"direct-democracy-the-small-republic-and-the-critique-of-repr","label":"Direct democracy, the small republic, and the critique of representation: can sovereignty be alienated, and is direct popular government the only legitimate political form?"}]}