Abstract

Without society there is no nature. Paradoxically, this is what Rousseau’s texts teach us. The paradox lies in the fact that the Discourse on Inequality seems to say the exact opposite. In the second Discourse, the history of the human species appears to unfold within the framework of an immutable, ahistorical natural order. In this article, I will highlight two points. First, I will show that nature understood as a whole does not really exist for the human being in the state of nature. It only exists for the educated, cultured, and therefore socialized human being. Second, I will analyze a passage from Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages, which brings to the fore the “negentropic” function of human labor. Without human labor, the natural order disintegrates. This, I will argue, makes nature a political problem for both Rousseau and for us.