Is
Natural Man Naturally Good? Has Society Corrupted Him?
Philosophy is a huge field that covers all life’s
aspects, from the existence of the soul to our relations with the surrounded
nature. One of the biggest field8ius of philosophy is Political Philosophy
which discussed topics as library, justice, rights, and laws. Throughout the
history of political philosophy we have seen a lot of debates, disagreeing, and
proving for such hard questions that made great philosophers think of twice.
Aristotle, Plato, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes, and Rousseau were seen as the most
influential philosophers of the political history, whom theories were the spark
of such turning points as the French revolution for example (P.24). One of the
most controversial topics of political philosophy was what is justice? By
looking to a dictionary justice would have a few meaning all of them are about
being just and fairness. However, philosophers had written books to define the
word justice, and discover the origin of it.
Another
thorny issue was discovering the truth behind the goodness or evilness of a
natural man, and if civilization society were involved in shaping his nature or
not. Philosophers had very different opinions and views about these questions,
but books like Leviathan, and the Social Contract have explained them. Those
books have highly impacted the whole idea of politics and the authority of a
government over its people.
Speaking
of the goodness and evilness of human we cannot skep Rousseau who was one of
the most influential people of the political field side by side with Thomas
Hobbes and John Locke. Jean Jacques Rousseau whom father was a watchmaker lived
a life that is full of experiences, and difficulties. He was born in Geneva in the year of 1712,
and his mother passed away after his birth. He had moved between different
cities and countries, and have not lived at the same place for a long time, the
main reason of that according to Columbia University was because that “his
suspicion of people deepened and became a persecution mania”(P.44). Rousseau
went to Paris and joined a contest which he won its prize that was giving by
the Academy of Dijon in 1749. That prize was his gate to the world of
philosophy, and what made him famous and controversial. He gained the prize
after answering the question “Has progress of the sciences and arts contributed
to the corruption or to the improvement of human conduct?” (P.43). He took the
negative side of the issue saying that people and humanity in general was good
by nature and humankind was ruined by the civilization. He was controversial
because his writings included a lot of paradoxes, for example Rousseau in his
Social Contract said describing being free “wanting to do what is good for
society”(P.24), later on he also said “that a person who does not act for the
good of the society may have to “be forced to be free”” (P.24), it seems that
his opinion are against each other and it is not so clear what does he mean by
being free.
One
of Rousseau’s most popular works was the social contract that came as a
solution to the slavery that humans suffered by the civilization, the social
contract as Rousseau defined is that “man must regain his freedom within
society”(P.24). Some of the problems that appeared as the civil or social life
was developed are inequalities between people and the arising of justice and
excellence standers that classified people into different classifications.
Before that there was what Rousseau called the natural man who lived in the
state of nature, Rousseau and some other philosophers argued with and against
the goodness of natural man and the society corruption, each one of them was taking
a different side of the issue depends on how he sees it.
Is
natural man naturally good? And has society corrupted him? These questions have
not only created one of the greatest arguments between philosophers, but also
was the spark of such political theories just like the social contract that was
written by Rousseau. Rousseau argued that “ “natural man” is “naturally good”
and the contemporary society has corrupted him” (P.24). However, one of the
great political philosophers Thomas Hobbes did not agree with him at all saying
that “Natural man is a selfish beast, fighting for his own interests against
everyone else.” (P.18). Since we are
discussing Rousseau’s theory of natural man, we should know what makes us
-human- different from the rest of animals first, and then we can get to know
why Rousseau preferred the Natural man above the social -Contemporary- man, and
how has the society corrupted the goodness of natural man.
Rousseau believed that there are some characters that put
humans in a higher class than other animals. The characters are the freedom of
will and perfectibility (P.32), which I found obvious and true because other
animals for example don’t have the right to choose the way of their lives or to
accept or reject the variables of nature, while the human can choose if he or
she wants to live here or there, or if he or she wants to study or work, etc.
We can say that human not only can adapt to different conditions of life
-perfectibility-, but also can change the surrounding environment to what he or
she wants, Rousseau said “nature lays her commands on every animal, and the
brute obeys her voice. Man receives the same impulsion, but at the same time
knows himself at liberty to acquiesce or resist” (P.13), for example, humans
have built dams to stop or change the way of rain torrent while other animals
chose to move away or not to live close to the riverbed, also, humans have
deforest forests to build places for them to live while other animals are
satisfied with trees as homes or shelters. So the human is a being that has his
or her own will to do what he or she believes is better for his own
preservation.
Now we know the different between humans and animals we
should ask a question, have human changed over time? Rousseau’s answer is yes.
Rousseau believed that there is what he called natural human and there is also
a social human, Rousseau described natural human or man as he ought to be or
men in the state of nature saying that “man is outside society. He has no
enduring relations with his fellows” (P.36), while he sees the social human as
a “slave to law or other men” (P.29). However, Rousseau still believe that
before the civil life man was kind of social and lived in societies but on a
small scale, that society was the only natural society which is family (P.25).
But the different here is the inequalities of social status that were created
by the civil live and the presidential systems which divided people into
different classes, where weak men must accept the law of powerful men that
bound fetters on them which as he said “destroyed natural liberty… and for the
advantage of a few ambitious individuals subjected all mankind to perpetual
labor, slavery, and wretchedness” (P.15). That was one example of the examples
Rousseau gave to prove that human had a better and more stable life in the
state of nature.
Rousseau
also provided us some reasons why he believe that natural man is naturally good
in different senses, he said that natural man is good because “he is without
malice and unaggressive, without the passions that move men to harm one another
and even themselves” (P.38). It is obvious that through the inequalities that
made some people less important than others or made some of them work for
others’ ambitions, passions like malice, jealousy, greed, and the sense of
injustice will maybe lead weak people to attack powerful people since the
weakest has strength enough power to kill the strongest as Hobbes said. Another reason Rousseau gave to prove that
natural man is naturally good was that “he is without vices that spring from
needs that are essentially social because they arise only as human capacities
are developed in social intercourse…” (P.39). A clear example of that is as the
social intercourse develops, people’s self-desire of distinguishing themselves
and impress others also develops. So if someone lives in a village and there were
a few people who are educated, those educated people will already be receiving
more appreciation and respect even if they have not done so much to help their
village. That situation will make the people of the village underestimate
themselves because they are not as educated even if they have done more goods
to the village, which will make them always wanting to be more educated than
them to impress the rest of the village and receive the same amount of respect
as the educated people receives. All that process changes the individual’s
reason of life from insuring his or her own preservation, to work on reaching
others’ achievements, and Rousseau commented on those distinctions saying they
“have made some men dependent on others and have severed the individual from
the simplicity of his natural wholeness; they have made individual’s life have
its reason outside himself” (P.16), that means that man will be slave for the
society because he works to satisfy others in order to gain some benefits.
Rousseau argued that the society was
the most affective factor of corrupting the natural man. As I mentioned before,
needs like self-respect and impressing others which arise as the social
intercourse develops are behind the whole process of corruption. As it was
written before that Rousseau said regarding natural man, “man is outside
society. He has no enduring relations with other fellows” (P.36), he said the
opposite thing about the social man. Rousseau described the social man saying
“Social man, always out said himself, knows how to live only in the opinion of
others; and it is, so to speak, from their judgments alone that he derives his
sense of what he is himself” (P.40). Let’s examine that detention, at the first
Rousseau said that social man always live outside himself and knows how to live
in the opinion of others, and it is true. For example, people always want to be
the best, suppose that someone lives in a country of the third world where no
many people are educated and most of the people prefer having a job than
complete studying, unlike everyone, that man continued studying until he
finished his bachelor and became one of the most educated people of his
country, he would then be called the best or at least one of the bests.
However, if we took that person to one of the first world countries his
bachelor would mean nothing, because all people there are educated. There are
some questions arise here, why was he called one of the bests there and he was not
even one of the bests here? How did the word best changed to normal? The answer
is that the standers of excellence are different between the two communities,
what is seen as excellent there maybe not here, and the bachelor that made
people of his first community judge him as the best does not helped him in his
second community. To sum that up, living on others’ opinions and by their
judgments have raised the bar of the standers of excellence, which made the
social man live to satisfy others opinions not to satisfy himself.
In
conclusion, Rousseau had argued that natural man is naturally good and he was
corrupted by society. He gave some evidence of how natural man was naturally
good, for example he said that natural man has no malice or passions that lead
him to harm others, he also said that natural man does not compare himself to
others and his goal is insure his own preservation and keeping himself in a
good health. Unlike social man who has his reason of life outside himself
because he works to satisfy other people and live in their opinions as Rousseau
described, also social man lived to reach the standers of excellence that
society forced people to believe in.
The
Conclusion of the research
After reviewing
the different documents and sources that talked and answered the question is
natural man naturally good? And has society corrupted him? We now know at least
Rousseau’s theory of the issue, he argued that naturally man is natural food,
he lived without malice or passions against others, and he lived for his own
not on people’s opinions and by their judgments. Regarding the society
corruption, Rousseau said that the different classifications that were created
as a result of the development of civil and social life had made some people
dependent on others. By understanding the issue, we now know what the problem
of our humanity is and why people put others’ opinions ahead of theirs.
I believe that
with this research a lot of ambiguous points of the history of humankind and
the revolution of humanity throughout history have been answered. Rousseau
maybe seemed weird with is ideas, but if the reader follow along his argument
he or she will find the argument logical. Follow along is important, because as
I mentioned it would seem strange ideas at the first but then everything will
turn to be clear and readers would maybe change their position to Rousseau’s.
For example, If we looked how different philosophers saw the natural man,
Rousseau said that he was naturally good but the civil life and contemporary
society corrupted him, while Hobbes for instance was saying that natural man is
selfish and the state of nature is a war of all against all. By looking at
those two theories Hobbes would seem more realistic than Rousseau who would
seem exaggerated, because I maybe prefer today’s life under the constitution
and presidential system while we were not born to be slave and obey those laws.
Rousseau’s
theories and arguments as I believe did not moved smoothly from a point to
another. He said that humans should have not changed their conditions from the
state of nature to social societies, but they did for some fatal chances that
for the common good ought never to have happened (P.37). However Rousseau did
not say why humans did not choose to go back to nature, rather than that he
said it is not even desirable for them to go back. Rousseau has some ideas and
theories that seem to be the opposite of each other, and his thoughts and
sayings are full of paradoxes some times. Furthermore, there are books out
there named Rousseau’s paradox of freedom, he defined the social contract
saying “that man must regain his freedom within society” (P.24) so far nothing
seems wrong, however; when you read more you find him saying about a person who
does not work for the common good of society that he should be forced to be
free, with that sentence a lot of writers and authors had stopped and read
twice, and even more. How come, he gave two opposite definitions for the word
freedom and not explained them.
Trying to write
and think of Rousseau’s ideas is quite a hard work, for example, one of the
five sources I used was saying that Rousseau’s goal was not to get us back to
nature, but another source was saying that his goal was to get us back to
nature. So the reaction that the reader would take is highly associated with
the explanation that the writer would give to Rousseau’s theory, because
reading Rousseau’s writings alone won’t help so much since he is ambiguous and especially
if the reader does not speak the language of the writing as a first language
which would create even more foggy questions and rises more exclamation marks.
So if further study were recommended it must be done on the paradox of his
theories, or on explaining his thoughts and rebuttal the opposite sayings.
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