Rousseau, natural goodness, and solitariness?

Question

With a group of friends, we are discussing the text from Rousseau (Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men) and in it, Rousseau explains that the human is good by nature, because he's alone. As soon as he joins others, he starts to get bad.

But I have a vague memory of an opposite philosophic idea that says something along the line of "someone can not be considered because it's the exact opposite of being alone": by being alone, you can not be considered, and as such, if you are alone, you can not be judged on your actions (good, from Rousseau) because no one else is there to confirm that what you did is good.

(Moreover, good or bad is a concept that may vary between people).

Is this something serious and real from a known philosopher or is my mind playing some tricks?

Thank you :)

Answer 1

Rousseau does sometimes talk as if he takes human beings in the state of nature as solitary. ‘Alone, idle and always near danger’, so Rousseau describes ‘Savage Man’ (Ineq. I:13; Rousseau, The Discourses and other early political writings, tr, V. Gourevitch, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011: 139). It is clear, however, that he does not think of human beings as absolutely without mutual contact. For one thing, sexual relations occur without which there could be no state of nature over time. More, Rousseau recognises that even in the earlier phases of the state of nature there are sporadic and temporary encounters between human beings (Ineq.II:7; Rousseau: 162). Such encounters gradually lead to a rudimentary social organisation in which ‘some crude idea of mutual engagement’ is acquired and co-operation produces recognisable benefits (Ineq.II:9; Rousseau: 163).

The point is important because with the dubious exception of duties to ourselves, we think of morality and the moral life as inter-personal. If I have a moral obligation, it is to another; if I have moral rights, I have them in relation to other people. If human beings were strictly solitary in the state of nature, morality in this sense could not exist.

But whatever his occasional language Rousseau never assumes that life in the state of nature is strictly solitary in any of its phases. However, when he refers to humankind’s ‘natural goodness’ in the state of nature it is not our notion of morality, with its ideas of obligations and rights, that he has in mind. ‘Natural goodness’ for Rousseau is a matter of two things: (1) a disposition to self-preservation in conditions of self-sufficiency in which such preservation can be and is secured without any disposition to do harm to others and (2) an innate feeling of pity which works in the same direction. Pity is ‘a natural repugnance to seeing any sentient Being, and especially any being like ourselves, perish or suffer’ (Ineq. Preface: 9; Rousseau: 127).

Self-preservation and pity are lexically ordered; the first takes precedence over the second (Ineq. Preface: 10; Rousseau: 127). Rousseau accepts that while natural goodness excludes a fixed disposition to do harm to others, it does not rule out harming others under the necessity of self-preservation. The result is that there is nothing idyllic about the state of nature; it is often a scene of violence and the rule of the stronger (Ineq. II:56; Rousseau: 185-6).

From the above, we can deduce that the state of nature is not a condition in which each is strictly ‘alone’. Nor is it the case that for someone in the state of nature, ‘As soon as he joins others, he starts to get bad’. It is not ‘as soon as’ we join others in a rudimentary form of social organisation that our natural goodness perishes and we are perverted from our original natures. Rather, it is when agriculture and industry arise, along with the division of labour and private property, that systematic divisions arise between the rich and the poor, the talented and the less able. Accompanying these divisions is a whole series of other discriminations based on invidious comparisons. Ineq. II. 2- 5; Rousseau: 161). The vice of pride (amour-propre) emerges and brings other vices (e.g., greed, jealousy, deception) in its wake (Ineq. II: 27-29; Rousseau: 170-172). This, and not the mere joining with others, is how we ‘get bad’.

Answer 2

Derrida discussed this in Of Grammatology, page 187, quoting Rousseau (without context here)

An individual isolated on the face of the earth, at the mercy of mankind, is bound to be a ferocious animal. [Essay, pp. 31-32]

There is an excerpt here: The Economy of Pity

Rousseau writes in the Discourse on Inequality, the First Part

Above all, let us not conclude, with Hobbes, that because man has no idea of goodness, he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue. ... Hobbes did not reflect that the same cause, which prevents a savage from making use of his reason, as our jurists hold, prevents him also from abusing his faculties, as Hobbes himself allows: so that it may be justly said that savages are not bad merely because they do not know what it is to be good: for it is neither the development of the understanding nor the restraint of law that hinders them from doing ill; but the peacefulness of their passions, and their ignorance of vice: tanto plus in illis proficit vitiorum ignoratio, quam in his cognitio virtutis.*

* Justin (c. 2nd century), Hist. ii. 2. So much more does the ignorance of vice profit the one sort than the knowledge of virtue the other.