According to Rousseau “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a one believes himself the master of others, and yet he is a greater slave than they.
Consequently, he aims at devising principles of social and political life that will enable people to enjoy the fruits of freedom.
In Rousseau’s opinion, the development of art and science has severed people’s ties with the nature. He therefore pleaded for abandonment of these things as it obstructed the fulfillment of men’s true nature.
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Unlike Hobbes, Rousseau held that the man is inherently good. Consequently, the role of right art should be to promote the goodness of every human being. The evil, corruption and wickedness were nothing but creations of social institutions.
Rousseau locates two instinct in men with which they are originally endowed. The first one is self-love or the instinct of self-presentation. The second is sympathy on the gregarious instinct, or instinct of mutual aid. However, they are not evenly balanced and may come into conflict.
Consequently a new instinct of conscience comes out to reconcile the two instincts. He attaches more importance to conscience than to reason because it is not nature and simply guides individuals and does not enable him to do things.
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As Way per observes “he sees safety only in a perfect union in which sentiment and reason mutually check and control each other— in which sentiment urges reasons to the right path and in which reason leads us along it towards perfection.
According to Rousseau the problem arises when men allow self-love to be trumped by pride. Pride signifies quest for things that is not natural. As Wright observes “we can give up pride we can cease from all comparison with other men and simply go about our destiny.
We can renounce a host of imaginary desires and hold fast to the true things needful, cast away a world of illusion and rediscover our own self. We can be meek and inherit our soul. In a word, we can return to nature?