From Rousseau’s Naturalness To The Goodness Of Public Volition

Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived in an era of change when religions were beingreformed and emerging political systems were being rebuilt, for which the mosterudite elites were contributing their talent. Rousseau followed their footprints, but healso went his separate way in pursuit of his own answer. He spent all his lifetimewriting about the truths he perceived, and contemplating freedom and well-being ofhuman beings as well as social equality and justice. Hidden behind such DijonAcademy questions as “What is the origin of the inequality among men,and is itauthorized by natural law?” is the question where the foundation and legality ofmodern political rights could be found. In his work On Science and Art, his epiphanymade Enlightenment repulsive to him and so broke from the era; in his another workOn the Origins of Inequality, he was in an even bigger mess, for his tracing-backingof political rights progressed to the exploration of human nature. In his pursuit of“natural state”, he was not looking for a return to naturalness, but was trying to locatethe essential issue in the transition and contrast between natural state and social state,as well as looking for possibilities and attempts of future politics. In 《The SocialContract》and 《Emile》, he always tried to work hard on what he believe in, helpingrecall his conscience, remodeling good politics as common volition.He hoped hecould find a reasonable foundation on which people could all find freedom andhappiness. But it was well known that the road ahead would be a tough one.As a key part of his thoughts, natural state is pure goodness, unreachable and yetperfect, which was used by him to mirror the ugliness of reality. He even questionedthe origin of inequality, and also tried to rebuild a foundation of justice for thein-equal society, so that the natural freedom could be free again and yet subject to thepublic volition of universal goodness.This dissertation is about facing up to theconflicts and insights in his thoughts, making sense of truths understood by him, andlooking squarely at his predicaments. This dissertation is divided into four parts. Part I,in《Discourse on the Sciences and Arts》， the author wants to define the naturalgoodness perceived by him, from which he totally broke himself away from the secular world; part II, in 《Discourse on the origins and the foundations of inequalityamong men》, Rousseau developed the natural goodness into the almost perfect“natural state”; part III, the author deliberates on the origin of inequality which issocial status quo corresponding to “natural state”. Part IV, the author wants toana-lyse how he tried to use obligational order imposed by covenants to replace thein-equal order imposed by power of force; and summaries the significance of hisattempts and difficulties he underwent. All in all,“natural state” is his key to theorigin of inequality, but also the key to the solution to inequality. However, we have tothink about ideals and reality as well as the internal conflicts in his theory.