Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

1 results

  • 13 - Rousseau’s Unease with Locke’s Uneasiness

  • from Part V - Unease, Happiness, and Death
  • Edited by Eve Grace, Colorado College, Christopher Kelly, Boston College, Massachusetts
  • Book:
    The Challenge of Rousseau
    Published online:
    05 January 2013
    Print publication:
    17 December 2012, pp 295-311

  • 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.