7 - Built on Sand

Summary

In the Second Discourse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau seems in the end to deny that natural law can be founded upon reason. Rousseau's state of nature saliently goes even further than Thomas Hobbes's in the direction of radical individualism, depicting human beings as solitary primates who, wandering through the wilds alone except for the occasional chance encounter, are not driven into society even in order to survive. According to Rousseau, all the rules of natural right are consequences that flow from two principles one feel without any reasoning: self-love and compassion. Self-love itself would therefore mandate obedience to rules not merely as restrictions imposed by society and that one follows because to do so is a precondition of the own welfare; rather, subordination of the particular interest to the general interest would become our fullest welfare. Sociability is consequently a law of reason; it is predicated upon natural enlightenment.