Ricardo wrote:
As I was beginning to realize during an exchange with Jim Devine last Dec,
while for Rousseau we have rights (become moral beings) as members of
society, for it is only in society that we can relate to others and thus
speak about rights, this does not mean that R had no concept of "nature".
In some of his writings you find expressions like this: "Let us lay it
down as an incontrovertible rule that the first impulses of nature are
always right; there is no original sin in the human heart."
As I read his treatise on the origins of inequality, there's also no
original morality in the human heart. There's his posited instinct to
sympathize with others, but that can easily be immoral by almost any
standard (as when someone euthanizes another because of the other's extreme
pain, without that other's consent).
And society is blamed for taking us away from this natural impulse.
As I read R (and yes, his stuff is in a box somewhere), society _perverts_
the human potential for morality (which is based in the sympathy instinct).
Society creates morality, in his view, but that "morality" might not stand
up according to more objective standards.
Those societies which he does admire also tend to be those with a
'natural' quality: "When we see, among the happiest people in the world,
groups of peasants directing affairs of state under an oak, and always
acting wisely, can we help but despise the refinements of those nations
which render themselves illustrious and miserable by so much art and mysery"
This is R's emphasis on the morality of a small democratic (rural)
community vs. the Big Bad City of Civilization. It's not the same as his
"state of nature," in which people do not collectively direct the affairs
of state, under an oak or elsewhere.
BTW, especially in his early writings, it seems that R liked to tweak the
city folks with their pretensions of the superiority of the city,
civilization, and enlightenment. He was one example of the Romantic
reaction to the Enlightenment.
Yes, I get the impression that R still held on to some notion about what
is "natural", something within us which is "good", authentic, and which
must be rediscovered in order to us to be true to ourselves, follow our
conscience.
As suggested above, that's not the basis for his vision of morality.
Rather, it is the Social Contract, in which the community chooses its own
society (and that society shapes people to harmoniously choose it). As some
have pointed out, this is relativistic, since one can imagine a lot of
different societies like this, with different conceptions of morality.
Unlike folks like Aristotle or Marx, R had no conception of the existence
of a moral potential within individuals that could be realized in a
non-alienating society.
But as he knew we could not go back to a solitary natural state - if such
a state ever existed, he at least longed for, celebrated, small-town life.
Of course, the "solitary natural state," like other "states of nature" was
a myth. Further, his state of nature was in many ways nastier, more
brutish, and shorter than that of Hobbes. Look at the first part of his
essay on the origins of inequality. R objected very strenuously to the
introduction (by Hobbes Locke) of elements of society into the state of
nature, so people end up as mere beasts.
I would even say that the novelty of R is really the claim that somehow
we can act according to our true sentiments, against
what is socially expected from us.
I don't think so. I think the literature's emphasis on R's conception of
human malleability is accurate.
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
