Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

Rousseau begins his description of humankind’s state of nature with the assumption that the physical human form was essentially the same as it is today. The primary difference is that contemporary humans have developed a host of tools for achieving mastery over nature: they build shelter and wear clothing to reduce the impact of weather, create industries to enjoy new goods, and invent medicines to reduce the risks of illness and death. Rousseau’s hypothetical human beings have none of these skills, nor the imagination to develop them. With only their physical assets and an instinct for survival, they accommodate themselves to their environment and seek only to fulfill basic needs.

Overall, the human body is well suited for a life led according to nature. As omnivores, human beings can nourish themselves more easily than many other animals, and the human body adapts well to the challenges of its surroundings. Rousseau believes that “the savage man,” as he calls this hypothetical person, has strength and skills far beyond those of contemporary humans, who have grown reliant on tools, machines, and animals to do much of their work. The modern person is more productive, but the “savage person” has the advantage of being self-sufficient. (Rousseau uses the terms “savage” and “civilized” in their etymological senses to refer to people who live in forests and towns, respectively. This use does not imply that the civilized condition is better. On the contrary, “savages” are happier and morally better in his theory.)

Rousseau then directly challenges the state of nature that Hobbes presents in his book Leviathan (1651), which depicts a struggle for supremacy where human beings relentlessly prey upon one another. Rousseau counters that a natural human being would only find unfamiliar things threatening, and due to their intimate familiarity with their environment, there would be few causes for worry. Should an unforeseen threat arrive, they would be more likely to run away than to act aggressively. Human beings in the state of nature would in many respects be safer and better off than they are in society. No wild animals regularly prey upon humans, and self-sufficient people would have no reason to harm one another. Humans can carry their young more easily than many other animals can, and as capacities diminish in old age, so do appetites, and so the old will gradually die without excessive discomfort. Rousseau then claims that even without access to medicine, human beings in nature would generally be healthier than their civilized counterparts. He attributes most illnesses to modern conditions that allow people to be idle, gluttonous, or anxious as they struggle to balance all the responsibilities of modern life. Medicine only became necessary after the formation of societies gave people so much more cause to be sick. In this regard, the condition of the savage may be “preferable to ours” (111).

In sum, if human beings lived as animals do, nature would have taken good care of them. It was only by trying to surpass other animals that human beings made themselves dependent on machines and other human beings. The first person who fashioned clothing or built a shelter was doing something unnecessary since their ancestors managed to survive without them. With an exclusive concern for self-preservation, a human being’s instincts would have been razor-sharp, as reports of Indigenous people in the Americas in Rousseau’s time conveyed that they could see farther than spyglasses and smell as well as hounds.