Abstract

Rousseau proposed several theoretical solutions to the ills of the human condition. Although they were vastly different from one another, each of these solutions had one thing in common. Each aimed at replicating or recovering man's natural goodness. As wicked and mean as civilized man may be, by nature, according to Rousseau, he is good. Any solution to the ills of civilization, any kind of good life, must therefore take its bearings from nature. But how? What does nature mean for Rousseau? This dissertation presents an interpretation of Rousseau's understanding of nature and its place in his diagnostic and prescriptive thought. ;Although nature is the central theme of the dissertation, the question driving it is the question of the good life. Thus the dissertation begins, in Chapter One, by asking what it is that makes a life good for Rousseau. I argue there that the goodness of the good life consists for Rousseau not in happiness or virtue per se but rather in the quantitative maximization of the feeling of existence. ;The development of all but the most primitive capacities is, by Rousseau's own strict definition, unnatural. Civilization is unnatural in the purest sense. Yet Emile depicts the development of what Rousseau nevertheless chooses to call a "natural man living in the state of society," and in his autobiographical writings Rousseau depicts himself as yet another kind of "natural man." Chapter Two is devoted to addressing this paradox. I attempt there to ascertain the criteria of post-state-of-nature naturalness and to illuminate its relation to original, or pure, naturalness. ;Chapters Three and Four, which make up the majority of the dissertation, are an analysis of "the natural man in the state of society," the theoretical solution exemplified by the eponymous hero of Emile. Chapter Three addresses the process by which civilized naturalness develops out of and upon original naturalness, a process which I call sublimation. Central to my interpretation of this process is a new interpretation of the meaning and role of conscience in Rousseau's thought. ;The subject of Chapter Four is self-love. The key to achieving naturalness in civilization is the proper education of self-love--preventing natural, benign love of self from mutating into fractious pride or vanity. My intention here is to interpret Rousseau's subtle understanding of amour de soi and amour-propre and their respective places in the psychic economy of the civilized natural man. ;Chapter Five is an effort at critique. I consider both the promise and the dangers inherent in Rousseau's naturalism