JeanJacques Rousseau

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• The Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of
  Inequality Among Men

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Historical/Biographical Background
• The Discourse on Inequality
• The Natural Condition of the Human Species
• The Chain of Being
• Rousseaus Natural Man

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I. Historical/Biographical Background

• Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
• Born in Geneva
• Runs away at 16 and lives on his own
• Hooked up with various women for support
• Was a tutor, civil servant, composer, music
  teacher, botanist, linguist, novelist, memoirist,
  and philosopher

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I. Historical/Biographical Background

• In 1762 publishes On Social Contract and
  Emile
• Both are condemned, books burned, leaves Paris
  for Saint Pierre, then on to England with David
  Hume (1766)
• Returns to France (1767)
• Publishes a series of autobiographical works,
  including Confessions (1782)

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• Written/Published in 1755
• Prompted by an essay question
• What is the origin of inequality among men and
  is it authorized by natural law?
• Opens with a passage from Aristotle
• not in corrupt things, but in those which are
  well ordered in accordance with nature, should
  one consider that which is natural
• (Aristotle, Politics, I, v)

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• Structure of the Work
• Dedication to Geneva
• Preface
• Note on the Notes
• Title Page
• Exordium (Introduction)
• Part I
• Part II

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• The conclusion he wants to reach is that
  inequality is not natural
• That is, inequality is a product of human
  activity and as such can be changed by human
  actions

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• I conceive of two sorts of inequality in the
  human species one, which I call natural or
  physical, because it is established by nature and
  consists in the difference of ages, health,
  bodily strengths, and qualities of mind or soul
  the other, which may be called moral or political
  inequality, because it depends upon a sort of
  convention and is established, or at least
  authorized, by the consent of men

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• One cannot ask what the source of natural
  inequality is, because the answer would be found
  enunciated in the simple definition of the word.
  Still less can one inquire if there would not be
  some essential link between the two inequalities
  for that would be asking, in other terms, whether
  those who command are necessarily worth more than
  those who obey, and whether strength of body or
  mind, wisdom or virtue, are always found in the
  same individuals in proportion to power or
  wealth

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• a question perhaps good for slaves to discuss
  in the hearing of their masters, but not suitable
  for reasonable and free men who seek the truth.
  
• -- Exordium

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• The most useful and least advanced of all human
  knowledge seems to me to be that of man and I
  dare say that the inscription of the temple of
  Delphi alone contained a precept more important
  and more difficult than all the thick volumes of
  the moralists.
• -- Preface (opening line)

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• The philosophers who have examined the
  foundations of society have all felt the
  necessity of going back to the state of nature,
  but none of them has reached itAll of them,
  finally, speaking continually of need, avarice,
  oppression, desires, and pride, have carried over
  to the state of nature ideas they had acquired in
  society they spoke about savage man and they
  described civil man.
• -- Exordium

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• Rousseaus plan
• How will man manage to see himself as nature
  formed him, through all the changes that the
  sequence of time and things must have produced in
  his original constitution, and to separate what
  he gets from his own stock from what
  circumstances and his progress have added to or
  changed in his primitive state?
• -- Preface

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II. The Discourse on Inequality

• Rousseau needs to bring in natural history to
  refute Hobbes, Locke and others
• But, theres a catch

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III. 18th Century Natural History
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God
T H E G R E A T C H A I N O F B E I N G
Angels
Extraterrestials
Human Beings
Mammals
Reptiles
Fish
Plants
Pond Scum
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God
T H E G R E A T C H A I N O F B E I N G
Angels
Extraterrestials
Possible breaks in chain
Human Beings
Mammals
Reptiles
Fish
Plants
Pond Scum
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T H E G R E A T C H A I N O F B E I N G
Human Beings
Europeans
Asians
Americas
South Pacific
Africa
Orangs outang
Mammals
Elephants
Beavers
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T H E G R E A T C H A I N O F B E I N G
Europeans
Caucasus Region
Northern Europe
Western Europe
Southern Europe
Asians
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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Bridge potential gap in chain by emphasizing
  physical/behavioral similarities between
  populations presumed to be closest to the break
• Emphasize the human attributes of the newly
  discovered great apes and the simian attributes
  of the newly discovered peoples of Africa,
  Australia

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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Physical similarities between orangs outang and
  human beings
• 1699 Edward Tyson (1651-1708) describes a primate
  called a pygmie that had a human face and
  ears which differ nothing from the human form

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• 1744 William Smith (English explorer) described a
  primate called a boggoe or mandrill that bore
  a near resemblance of a human creature, though
  nothing at all like an Ape.
• In the Second Discourse, Rousseau refers to a
  natural history text describing a pongo with a
  human face and which resembles man exactly.

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Tysons Pygmie (1699)
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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• On the other hand, human beings were sometimes
  described in terms of their animal similarities
• 1708 François Leguat compared an ape to a
  Hottentot and claimed that its Face had no other
  Hair upon it than the Eyebrows, and in general it
  much resembled one of those Grotesque Faces which
  the Female Hottentots have at the Cape

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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• 1718 Daniel Beeckman wrote that his orang was
  handsomer I am sure than some Hottentots that I
  have seen.
• Beeckmans orang

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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Physical similarity included reports that orangs
  walked like human beings

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Chimpaneze
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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Behavioral similarities of apes and humans
• 1625 Samuel Purchas (1577-1626) reports that
  pongos may have a kind of religious understanding
• 1774 Lord Monboddo reports that orangs outang
  have a sense of justice
• Numerous reports that some primates could speak
• Labbé Prévost wrote that guinous are suspected
  of feigning muteness in order to escape being
  used as slaves

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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Other behavioral similarities
• Prévost and Tyson report on the elegant table
  manners of primates introduced to European dining
• Tyson said his pygmie naturally adopted a
  conservative view towards alcohol and nudity
• Reports from 1641 through 1788 report that orangs
  have high degree of sexual modesty

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Female Orang outang (1641 edition)
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Female Orang outang (1744 edition)
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Female Orangs
Gaze averted
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Female Orangs
Gaze averted
Hands covering genitals
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Female Orangs
Softer jaw line
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Female Orangs
Softer jaw line
More human like mammaries
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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Tyson reported that when given a choice of
  associating with either human beings or monkeys,
  his pygmie preferred human beings

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II. Primates, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• 1748 Benoît de Maillet writes
• If we could not say that these living creatures
  were men, at least they resembled them so much
  that it would have been unfair to consider them
  only as animals.

Benoît de Maillet (1656-1738)
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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Flip side of finding the missing link by raising
  animals was denigrating human populations,
  especially Africans and specifically Hottentots
• Naturalists and explorers routinely drew
  parallels between these people and the newly
  discovered great apes

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Physical similarities
• 1696 Sir John Ovington describes Hottentots as
  the very reverse of Human kind, so that if
  theres any medium between a Rational Animal and
  a Beast, the Hotantot lays the fairest claim to
  that Species.
• 1718 Beeckman claimed that Hottentots are not
  really unlike Monkeys or Baboons in their
  Gestures and Postures, especially when they sit
  Sunning themselves.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Beeckman goes on to add that Hottentot men have
  broad flat noses, blubber lips, great heads,
  disagreeable features, short trifled Hair and
  that nothing can be more ugly.
• Hottentot women were as ugly in their kind as
  the Men, having long flabby breasts odiously
  dangling down to the waist, which they can toss
  over their shoulders for the children to suck.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• This confirms an earlier report (1632) from
  English explorer Sir Thomas Herbert describing
  similar attributes in these women.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• 1774 Oliver Goldsmith would later extend this
  attribute to all African women, noting that once
  they being childbearing their breasts hang down
  to the navel and it is customary with them, to
  suckle the child at their backs, by throwing the
  breast over the shoulder.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Behavioral similaritiesAs their persons are
  thus naturally deformed, at least to our
  imaginations, their minds are equally incapable
  of strong exertions. -- Oliver Goldsmith (1774)

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Behavioral Similarities
• 1753 Count Buffon writes that the Africans of
  Guiney appear to be perfectly stupid, not being
  able to count beyond the number three, that they
  never think spontaneously that they have no
  memory, the past and the future being equally
  unknown to them.
• Beeckman writes that Hottentots are filthy
  animals who hardly deserve the name of Rational
  Creatures.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• On speech
• Beeckman compared Hottentot speech to the cackle
  of hens or turkeys
• Herbert described it as apishly sounded (with
  whom tis thought they mix unnaturally) and
  very hard to be counterfeited since it was
  voiced like the Irish.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• African sexual practices
• Contrast with orang descriptions
• Herbert claimed that Hottentot women expressed
  gratitude by displaying their genitalia and noted
  that these people live communally coupling
  without distinction, the name of wife or brother
  unknown among these incestuous Troglodites.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Prévost mentions that marriage was unknown among
  the Africans in Bomma
• 1745 John Green describes the Africans of
  Teneriffe as a rude uncivilized people living
  in a society where everyone took as many women
  as he pleased.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Orangs might be offspring of human/simian
  copulation
• 1688 Olfert Dapper claimed that the orangs of the
  Congo were so numerous and so nearly human in
  appearance that it has entered the minds of some
  travelers that they may be the offspring of a
  woman and a monkey

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Leguat noted that
• Nature who does not oppose the copulation of
  horses with asses, may well admit that of an ape
  with a female animal that resembles him,
  especially where the latter is not restrained by
  any principle. An ape and a negro slave born and
  brought up out of the knowledge of God, have not
  less similitude between them than an Ass and a
  Mare.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Slavery and African/Primate relations
• Slavery is a uniquely human institution
• Africans subjugate inferior African tribes
• Orangs subjugate some Africans

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• Monboddo writes
• The great Orang Outang carries off boys and
  girls to make slaves of them, which not only
  shows him, in my apprehension to be a man, but
  proves that he lives in society, and must have
  made some progress in the arts of civil life for
  we hear of no nations altogether barbarous who
  use slaves.

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• We should now be better able to appreciate the
  structure of the argument in Rousseaus Second
  Discourse
• Contemporary descriptions of both primates and
  so-called primitive human populations were
  meant to demonstrate continuity of the chain of
  being in Gods creation

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II. Primitives, Missing Links, and the Chain of
Being

• In other words, inequality was both natural and
  just
• ORDER is heavns first law and this confessed
• Some are and must be greater than the rest
• -- Alexander PopeEssay on Man (1732)
• Rousseau needs natural history, but also needs to
  show that it doesnt sanction inequality