Rousseau is unequivocal on the point that a poor or deformed understanding of nature leads to unsound judgment of the human condition. Thus in his preface to the Second Discourse he claims that a correct understanding of the original state of nature (which “no longer exists, which perhaps never existed, which probably never will exist”) is necessary “in order to judge our present state correctly” (SD, 93; 3:123). In Emile, Rousseau frequently holds up his pupil, the product of an education according to nature, as an example against which the misery of civil society can be judged.
It is arguable that the understanding of nature developed in Emile is even more relevant to civilized human beings, because while the savage state depicted in the Second Discourse is irretrievably lost to us, Emile is educated to live not in a savage state but in society. Rather than strictly oppose the state of nature and existence in society, Rousseau goes so far as to refer to what is “natural in the civil state” (E, 406; 4:764). This suggests the possibility of a second-order naturalness that might serve as an even more useful guide to our judgments of our present state than the account of the original natural state in the Second Discourse.
As a touchstone for guiding judgment, however, “nature” turns out to be a very slippery concept in Emile. Rousseau suggests that there is a natural order and direction to human development, and that a sound education follows the path that nature lays out for us. Insofar as Emile’s education is to follow that path, its goal “is the very same as that of nature” (38; 4:247). Rousseau then adds, “But perhaps this word nature has too vague a sense,” concluding that “an attempt must be made to settle on its meaning” (39; 4:247). One might understand his “attempt” to settle its meaning as consisting of the substance of the next two paragraphs, which culminate in the definition that nature is whatever human inclinations are before “they are more or less corrupted by our opinions.” Again, this formulation is deceptively simple. What would it mean to relate everything to our “original” dispositions, if we are born in such an undeveloped state? We are not born independent and self-sufficient. “We are born weak, we need strength; we are born totally unprovided, we need aid; we are born stupid, we need judgment” (38; 4:247). To appeal to natural man as the ideal to which we must orient all education thus begs the question of how one develops into a natural man.1 It seems odd to make such a leap in a book that devotes so much attention to the earliest stages of childhood. The human infant can hardly be the guide for us; it is thus not surprising that Rousseau follows his statement that everything must be related to these original dispositions with a description of natural man (contrasted with both the citizen and the bourgeois). This points us to the Second Discourse, where Rousseau takes as his starting point an image of natural man fully formed (and only subsequently addresses the question of reproduction and the status of children). Perhaps it is there that Rousseau shows us man’s “original” form; but even in that work, Rousseau makes it difficult to discern when his natural man is fully formed, inasmuch as perfectibility is presented as part of man’s original nature.2
In Emile, this doubleness is reflected not only in the contrast between the early and later (negative and positive) phases of Emile’s education but in the very idea of an “original” nature as presented in the earliest stages of Rousseau’s educational project. That is, even as Rousseau counsels his reader to “observe nature and follow the path it maps out for you” (47; 4:259), he suggests that it is actually rather difficult to discern an original nature to use as a formal principle on which to base an increasingly complex naturalness; it, too, is a moving target.3 To be sure, Rousseau claims that the first part of Emile’s education is a negative education, designed only to preserve what is natural while adding nothing to it. However, as early as book I, when Rousseau is most insistent upon the notion of a negative education—that is, the notion that in order to follow nature one must simply avoid opposing it—we perceive the first indications that following nature (whether we want to preserve it or to use it as a formal principle on which to base a more complex, second-order naturalness) is not quite straightforward. Book I both posits nature as a given and poses it as a question.
But what will a man raised uniquely for himself become for others? If perchance the double object we set for ourselves could be joined in a single one by removing the contradictions of man, a great obstacle to his happiness would be removed. In order to judge of this, he would have to be seen wholly formed: his inclinations would have to have been observed, his progress seen, his development followed. In a word, the natural man would have to be known. I believe that one will have made a few steps in these researches when one has read this writing. (41; 4:251)
The “double object” of Rousseau’s project refers of course to the eventual task of introducing a natural man into society in order to test his independence, but not only to that. We cannot judge whether this great reconciliation has been achieved unless natural man is first known. But, as Rousseau points out in the Second Discourse, the very attempt to know ourselves gets in the way (SD, 92; 3:122–23).4 Later in book I of Emile, Rousseau observes, “We do not know what our nature permits us to be” (E, 62; 4:281). Emile thus raises anew the question of the boundary between what is natural and what is artificial in the human condition, perhaps because the Second Discourse problematizes that very boundary even as it purports to delineate it.5 Although Rousseau presents an image of natural man that at first glance seems complete (i.e., natural man reclining under a tree, his needs satisfied), he also presents an evolutionary understanding of human nature that complicates the simplicity of that image. It is precisely by arguing for an evolutionary rather than a static conception of human nature that Rousseau disputes the Hobbesian and Lockean accounts of human nature. He not only draws the line between nature and society in a new place; he also makes it simultaneously easier and more difficult to draw the line at all. Natural man disappears by degrees, until the reader is asked to behold human beings with “all our faculties developed, memory and imagination in play, vanity aroused, reason rendered active, and the mind having almost reached the limit of the perfection of which it is susceptible.” Yet, at the same time, Rousseau refers to this development as “all the natural qualities put into action” (SD, 155; 3:174, emphasis added). Insofar as perfectibility is part of human nature, it makes it difficult to delineate precisely where nature begins and ends. Unnatural faculties exist in man in potentiality (en puissance), although they remain latent until a chance combination of external factors actualizes them.
Scholars tend to try to work around these ambiguities by referring to the “pure” state of nature, distinguished from the successive degrees of change that occur before civil society comes into being, but the result is that we are left with no single way of designating all that comes between the pure state of nature and civil society. So we might divide the process into three parts rather than two: pure state of nature, rustic society (“the happiest and most durable epoch”), and civil society. But even then, transitional periods are unaccounted for. The essay certainly accomplishes its goal of creating a gulf between nature and civil society, but the gulf that separates them also connects them, and is not just an empty space separating/connecting two discrete entities. The space is filled with gradual transitions and alterations that cause the stages “in between” to shade into each of the extremes. Structurally, the essay is divided into two discrete parts, and the first sentence of the second part purports to identify the precise beginning of civil society: the first person who claimed private property was its founder. The turning point has been pinpointed, or so it seems. But this “beginning” is not where the logic of Rousseau’s account of the transition to civil society actually begins; he goes on to retrace the steps that lead up to the development of private property, which is actually an effect of a series of other changes.
I emphasize these ambiguities in the Second Discourse (which others have discussed in more detail)6 in order to highlight the significance of Rousseau’s insistence in Emile that we watch natural man come into being. The account in the Second Discourse begins with a fully formed natural man, in the strict sense that he is not a child. The question of reproduction is addressed
