Rousseau et l'Etat de nature

Résumé du document

Dossier en anglais qui évalue le concept rousseauiste d'Etat de nature.
Le dossier présente la théorie de l'Etat de nature comme une base pour l'anthropologie et les sciences sociales, en allant pour la première fois au-delà de l'ethno-centrisme européen.

Extraits

[...] Therefore, Rousseau also paves the may for anthropology, as it will emerge in the late 19th century and in the early 20th century, and such a prominent anthropologist as Claude Lévi-Strauss will pay tribute to him in his book Tristes Tropiques: “Rousseau, the most anthropological of the philosophes, ( It was he who taught us that, after demolishing all forms of social organization, we can still discover the principles which will allow us to construct a new form.”[15]. Rousseau states that the natural man is not contemptible and that his values are not necessarily inferior to those of the Western civilization. This will give birth to modern anthropology, which considers that native cultures make sense and need to be studied as well as the cultures of other civilizations previously regarded as superior. Rousseau's theory is the most powerful and fertile of all the theories of the state of nature. [...]

[...] As Leo Strauss points out, for Rousseau, the right of nature or the laws of nature have a much more powerful support than reasoning or calculation, they must be rooted directly in passion[2]. Like Hobbes, Rousseau admits that man is by nature social, but pride presupposes society; hence natural man cannot be proud or vain, as Hobbes had said[3]. Unlike that of Hobbes, Rousseau's state of nature is therefore free from all viciousness. Moreover, Locke makes the state of nature peaceful through the right of property, whereas Rousseau insists that property is a social concept, requiring ideas that do not exist in the state of nature. [...]

[...] cit., p John Plamenatz, Man and Society, From Montesquieu to the Early Socialists (Longman, 1992), p Ibid., p Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The discourse and other political writings (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p.161 John Charvet, The social problem in the philosophy of Rousseau (Cambridge University Press, 1971), p Leo Strauss, op. cit., p Ernst Cassirer, The question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Columbia University Press, 1954), p Leo Strauss, op. cit., p Ernst Cassirer, op. cit., p Leo Strauss, op. cit., p Rousseau, The discourse, p.151 Claude Lévi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques (Jonathan Cape, 1973), p.390 Ibid., p. [...]

[...] Therefore, Rousseau provides an interesting account for his time, of what the process of human evolution might have been. What is noticeable here, is that Rousseau insists on language as a prerequisite for rationality: the ability to link objects to their names implies a capacity of making rationalized categories, and an ability to understand better one's environment. Language also means the capacity to communicate and form groups of human beings based on a common purpose. The Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality is also interesting for its social critique, and Rousseau points out the inequalities under French monarchy, which are not at all based on a social utility, but only on the fate of birth. [...]

[...] It should also be mentioned that, maybe to a greater extent than other philosophers, Rousseau's existence had a strong imprint on his works: as Rousseau states in his Confessions, he has always felt nostalgic about his younger days in Geneva, which he tends to associate with an innocent happiness. And this nostalgia for a sense of lost innocence is palpable in the Second Discourse. What is interesting in Rousseau state of nature? What is the point in creating a hypothetical situation, describing what life would be without social order? [...]