The Free Animal: Rousseau on Free Will and Human Nature

According to Rousseau, human spirituality emerges not only from the capacity to discern between good and evil, but also — that which he himself particularly emphasizes — from the consciousness of free will. In order to avoid contrasts with religious authorities, indeed, it would have been enough to resort to the more conventional notion of free will as the power of choosing between good and evil.

Secondly, the free will premise plays a crucial role with regard to politics.

Rousseau and Hobbes: Nature, Free Will, and the Passions

In fact, Rousseau himself underscores the active role played by man intended as a free agent in his own corruption. In the Profession, Rousseau presents a thorough critique of comprehensive materialism, advocating the idea that free will really exists. This he does, as MacLean suggests, in order to give rational plausibility to his hopes about the existence of God and free will. In chapter 4, then, MacLean takes into account some textual evidence that could possibly undermine her argument.

Jean Jacques Rousseau

In the Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau seems indeed to raise doubts on the plausibility of the metaphysical views formerly expressed in the Profession of faith. She suggests that Rousseau employs a strategy which consists in using different registers on different occasions: Ultimately, the picture of Rousseau coming out of The Rational Animal is that of a radical critic of Enlightenment, more than what it has been thought until now.

Remember me on this computer.

1. 2014.02.30.
2. Rousseau and Hobbes: Nature, Free Will, and the Passions - Oxford Scholarship.
3. Join Kobo & start eReading today.
4. Lettres à Sophie Volland (French Edition).
5. Rousseau shows us that there is a way to break the chains – from within;
6. ONeill: Son and Playwright: Volume I;
7. Before Their Time!

He calls that concept the "general will". Simply put, it is a form of association in which an individual alienates himself completely to the general will, and therefore regains his freedom in a political form.

Jean Jacques Rousseau (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

This of course has been criticised: Others, like Louis Althusser, say it is based on the premise that the people enter into a contract with nobody else but themselves — a logical impossibility. However, Rousseau believed that in the form of the general will, the alienation of man would transform itself into freedom — this makes him nothing less than the inventor of modern dialectics, uniting the opposing concepts of nature or freedom and society or contract , in their own opposition.

All of Rousseau's philosophy is an attempt to find a solution to the problem of alienation.

For Rousseau, the only thing that made humans different from animals is his free will, something constantly placed in danger whenever man enters into society. As a revolutionary thinker, Rousseau understood that the general will, or the will of the people, should be sovereign — and that is the catch. It is here where we regain our freedom inside social organisation.

• Lee MacLean, The Free Animal: Rousseau on Free Will and Human Nature - PhilPapers.
• The Free Animal: Rousseau on Free Will and Human Nature.
• The Vincent Boys (Chrysalide) (Italian Edition).
• The Free Animal: Rousseau on Free Will and Human Nature - Lee MacLean - Google Книги.

Only the general will — general interest as opposed to private interest — guarantees man his autonomy. No society can be free unless individuals understand that the general will or general interest should prevail over their own individual one.

Subscriber Login

Rousseau also wrote of the emergence of machines and the rise of technology. He was the first to say that nature has limited resources and that we are putting our own survival in danger by over-exploiting it. Man may indeed be born free, but in the 21st century, the chains may be even harder to see.