Method Of Natural Images

Science and sense are two major intellectual flags of European in 18 century. While other Enlightenment ideologists held the enthusiastic expectancy that the society would advance in the bright and progressive direction by the force of science and sense, Rousseau revealed the other side of a coin pessimistically. He considered that science and sense were the bouquets decorated on the chains which enslaved people, and brought us civilization as well as inequality and degeneration. All human developments run in the opposite direction against the natural position, and people got more knowledge to lose more nature. Therefore,the nature position was an ideal state.Rousseau pointed out that all the pioneers of natural law before him failed in finding the true natural law and natural position, and criticized those methods generated from reasoning, because natural law was the law abided by people in the natural state, and the person who stayed in the natural state could not be successful in reasoning. We should get to know the people in the natural state before understanding the natural law. Law became law not for the reason that it needed the bounded people to obey it voluntarily, but it called for the expression of the nature. That was the way in which law was in accordance with what the nature called for. Rousseau, who emphasized the importance of human emotions, considered that the rules of natural law derived from the natural human emotion rather than reason.Since the rules of natural law derived from the natural human emotion rather than reason, we should make effort to trance back the natural state of persons and get to know the natural persons so as to find out natural law. Contrary to the people's endless desire in the social state, the needs of the natural persons was limited to their natural instinct. They were completely self-sufficient physically and psychologically without the social needs, so they were totally equal in moral and politics. Therefore, the nature was good, so was the nature of the natural person. The inherent sympathy of mankind can ease human's self-love upon themselves, which contributed to the entire human race self-preservation. However, the flourishing vanity and wisdom was the product of society and education, and its natural state is non-existent.The emergence and development of political society and law was the dying out process of the nature state. Rousseau suggested that private property and the concept of private ownership was like a threshold from the good nature into evil society. The emergence of private ownership had caused the society to split into two antagonistic classes--the rich and the poor. In order to protect their own private property, the rich suppressed the resistance of the poor by violence, and looked for the legitimacy of their own interests. Rousseau held that the origin of society and law was or should be from that way. And he absolutely implied the need to return to the natural law through tracing back to the natural state and exploring the origin of positive law, in the sharp comparisons between the natural state and social state, the goodness of natural state and the evil of social state, the goodness of the natural law and the evil of the law.In Rousseau's perspective, the autocratic system since civil society was unnatural. He considered the autocracy as a new natural state, which was different from that of the human origin. The former was the pure natural state, while the latter was the outcome of the extreme corruption. Rousseau suggested that such natural state was illegal, and directed the spearhead of the struggle towards autocracy. Then he put forward the theory of popular sovereignty and the idea of social contract. He suggested that the establishment of the relationship between the ruler and the ruled was not the result of the nature but the contract, which set the intensity and limit for the ruling powers upon the people. Once the relationship between the ruler and the ruled become a master-slave relationship beyond the intensity and limit, the disobedience of the ruled was legal.The concept of natural state of modern political philosophy denied the natural sovereignty from the outset. Though other Enlightenment ideologists repudiated the natural sovereignty only for fighting against the defenders of unrestricted autocratic monarchy, Rousseau's point of view was more radical. He directed his spearhead towards not only unrestricted autocratic monarchy but also the rationalist tradition of the entire philosophy of politics. Because Rousseau put too much emphasis on moral and emotion to dispraise sense, his political and lawful thinking was full of revolutionary fervor but not conducive to establishing the rule of law. His highly praise of natural emotion and dispraises of sense made him fail in paying attention to the role of law in the human political and social life. The more perfect ideal was, the more difficult for it become a social reality. The more we wished to put the perfect ideal into reality, the more realistic power and violence we needed. Anyone who wanted to turn the earth into heaven, he would make the earth into hell eventually. This was proved by the historical practice of Rousseau's thought.