Abstract

This dissertation examines Rousseau's claim in Emile that man is not only naturally good but also can become naturally just. Rousseau contends that man is free by nature, unencumbered by obligation: natural man, like the child, is amoral. Yet Rousseau argues also that moral virtue is the culmination of natural human development: natural man, like the child can become moral. A single education can make Emile good both for himself and for others. Despite his contentions that natural man is amoral and asociable and that moral virtue presumes the existence of unnatural civil society, then, Rousseau nonetheless claims that virtue is in some sense natural to man. In Emile Rousseau argues that moral virtue accords with human nature and that standards of justice inhere in nature: he provides an account of natural right consistent with natural asociability. ;The education in moral virtue is shown in this dissertation to be consonant with both the asocial and amoral being that man was originally and the social being he has become. Examining and assessing the claims that this education is natural reveals that Rousseau both denies and admits natural human sociability. For he admits the existence of intrinsically social sentiments that are natural and which, properly cultivated according to nature, provide a basis for moral virtue: sociability is the natural culmination of the characteristic human trait of perfectibility. Yet he indicates that moral education requires the initial suppression of these sentiments, in order, I contend, to recreate for the child the sense of freedom guaranteed natural man by his asociability. The suppression of innately social sentiments and the corresponding denial of original human sociability, I argue, are essential to foster the conviction of freedom. This conviction proves both to be necessary to moral virtue, as the premise of binding moral commitment, and a reflection of the condition of asocial man in the original state of nature. Virtue accords with man's nature--justice has a natural basis--and recaptures freedom within civilization