In order to separate a human from an animal, the human must have rationality above and beyond said animal. (Cases of retardation and other such mental handicaps set aside.) My first point of confusion is what it is that originally separates the Savage as a human from an animal. This becomes less of a problem when we move onto the Savage's golden age, but it seems fuzzy in the Savage's original state. (See beginning of Part II §2, where Rousseau seems to use animal and man nigh interchangeably. Contrast with §6, when man learns to conserve and reproduce fire. This seems to begin his political appropriation.)
This leads into my second and biggest point of confusion and concern. Human beings have declined when they live outside themselves (in or through society) (§57). Going hand in hand with the development and sustainment of society is the development of human's mental faculties. This development is seen in the formation of language (however that happened), complex communities, and private property. Human beings go wrong, then, when they overdevelop their rational faculty. But this seems to suggest that when a human being becomes most a human being (by developing that which makes him so), he has become a bad human being (by [over] developing that which makes him so?).
Maybe I'm missing something. When reflecting on civil man's physical weakness, I am reminded of what Mr. Davis drew on the board Monday. Savage man's mental and physical capacities were equal. Contemporary man's mental capacity far outweighs his physical fitness, and this is a problem for Rousseau. But the advancement of mental capacity seems like the unavoidable end point of humanity as such. I understand how overdeveloping ones potential to gain weight is bad, as is overdeveloping one's potential to be muscular - they must be done in proper proportion to everything else. What I do not understand is why mental capacity's proper proportionality is capped, when - as the necessary human quality - it naturally develops into a great and powerful thing.
Help?
I almost wrote this post as a letter to Rousseau, but I thought it might be a little weird..
ReplyDeleteDear Ms. Somma,
ReplyDeleteI am sympathetic (naturally) with your situation; I too find myself confused. But I have great hopes that this letter will help to alleviate some of your confusion, or at the very least leave you no worse off than before.
Due to whatever cause (growing up Christian, reading Plato and Aristotle, etc.), I am used to thinking that man is naturally different than other animals. This inclination is furthered every time I look around me and see the products of man's intellect: skyscrapers, government, art, commerce. To me, it is inconceivable that I could be on the same level as a dog, or even a chimpanzee. Where are their philosophies, their symphonies, their complex political structures? There is nothing in the world to suggest to me that humans are on the same level as other animals.
But when I read Rousseau, I quickly realize that I must do away with what I see around me, and what I have learned. I must imagine pre-history - far back before modern engineering, Christianity, or even the Greeks. Rousseau is trying to imagine what pre-historic man may have been like, before society even began.
In a lot of ways, this is a difficult task. The only things that can be pointed to are fossils, which can only tell us that man did exist before he could speak or write, and not much else. And since this pre-historic man had no language, we cannot study what he thought of himself, if he did such a thing at all. Historical facts would certainly be more convincing than arguments about pre-history, but as Rousseau admits, when there is an absence of intermediate, connecting facts between two real facts, it is "...up to Philosophy to ascertain similar facts that might connect them..." (Part 1, Paragraph 53).
So given that we can only rely on Philosophy as our guide here, and that we must reject what we see around us as evidence for the natural distinction between man and animal, I am forced to admit that Savage man, as described by Rousseau, is no different than an animal. It is clear that he has not the intellectual capabilities of man in society, as far as abstract reasoning is concerned. He does have some aspect of practical judgment, but it is severely underdeveloped, compared even with Savage man in a loose society.
That said, I do not believe Rousseau’s description of Savage man ruins something like The Nicomachean Ethics. While Rousseau might suggest that the development of something like it suggests how far Society has corrupted man from his original nature, it does not change the fact that it is the best guide to life within a Society. Because we can never truly escape Society, or force ourselves to un-develop our rational faculty, we must embrace our imbalance of body and mind and live as a rational being should.
Hopefully all this has helped to clear away some of your confusion. Do not hesitate to ask for more clarity on my behalf, and please respond if you feel I have not addressed your confusion.
Sincerely,
Mr. Price
I think the key difference between man and animal for Rousseau is free will, that is, the ability to deliberate between passions. The animal is bound to his passions but man can choose to either accommodate them or deny them as well as choose between multiple passions. The savage man deliberates on his passions only immediately while the civilized man can 'foresee' passions.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure there is a cap on our intellectual capacities now that our desires have been freed. We recognize that the intellect is a great and powerful thing once we have already freed those desires. It is great and powerful precisely because it makes us capable of overcoming those desires.
ReplyDeleteI am confused as well, though, because the actualization of a human capacity resulted in the decadence of the human being and the requirement for him to further actualize that potential in an attempt to overcome that decadence.
To make sense of such a thing, one must disagree with Aristotle that rationality is our function, and claim that it is rather an accidental quality that, when actualized, results in the decay of the human.
Or one could say that it shouldn't be confusing. It is simple, actually. The function of a human is to be rational with respect to self-preservation. This limits the virtuous use of his intellect to self-preservation. The human possesses the potential to develop his intellect so much that he can use it for reasons other than self-preservation, but at this point he has surpassed the virtuous mean of the human being. In doing so he has caused himself to fall into decadence.