1983
DOI: 10.2307/1957264
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Rousseau's Moral Realism: Replacing Natural Law with the General Will

Abstract: The Social Contract is reinterpreted by emphasizing its relation to Rousseau's other writings and doctrines. In the spirit of Hobbesian realism, Rousseau regards natural law and other forms of “private morality” as ineffectual, invalid, and in practice dangerous tools of oppression and subversion. But, still more realistic than Hobbes, Rousseau thinks it impossible to build a nonoppressive state on men's selfish interests alone and embraces the classical view that morality or virtue is politically necessary (a… Show more

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Cited by 15 publications
(7 citation statements)
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“…To the contrary, Rousseau follows and even radicalizes the reductive, asocial, and materialistic tendencies of Hobbes and Locke. He argues that man in the state of nature is distinguished from other animals only in potentiality, claims that this man is a solitary and aconceptual brute whose natural needs are limited to "nourishment, a female, and repose" (116), rejects natural teleology, and founds his own social and political teaching on (properly understood) self-love. Th us, though Rousseau seeks to develop a more ambitious and more satisfying conception of human connectedness than do his modern predecessors, he does so by utilizing the conceptual tools and resources provided by modern science (Strauss 1953;Melzer 1983;Hulliung 1994).…”
Section: Rousseau's Th Ird Way: Reimagining Self-love and Human Relmentioning
confidence: 99%
See 3 more Smart Citations
“…To the contrary, Rousseau follows and even radicalizes the reductive, asocial, and materialistic tendencies of Hobbes and Locke. He argues that man in the state of nature is distinguished from other animals only in potentiality, claims that this man is a solitary and aconceptual brute whose natural needs are limited to "nourishment, a female, and repose" (116), rejects natural teleology, and founds his own social and political teaching on (properly understood) self-love. Th us, though Rousseau seeks to develop a more ambitious and more satisfying conception of human connectedness than do his modern predecessors, he does so by utilizing the conceptual tools and resources provided by modern science (Strauss 1953;Melzer 1983;Hulliung 1994).…”
Section: Rousseau's Th Ird Way: Reimagining Self-love and Human Relmentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Th e prudent course, it is urged, is to accept our dividedness and attempt to manage its eff ects rather than eliminate its causes. Adopting this stratagem Rousseau's Th eory of Human Relations 19 will ultimately maximize net satisfaction by inuring us to the false and dangerous charms of an unreasonable erotic enthusiasm.But we can already see how misplaced this objection is, for though Rousseau's social theory is more ambitious in its aims than is the instrumentalism of Hobbes and Locke, it is motivated not by an optimistic belief in the infi nite goodness and perfectibility of man but rather by a comprehensive critique of the crypto-utopian proposition that narrow self-interest can solve the problems that it creates (Melzer 1983). Rousseau denies that the fragmentation caused by the halfway sociability of modern life admits of the partial resolution sought by his critics, because he claims that fragmentation is itself the product of an attempted partial resolution.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
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“…On the relation between preservation, virtue and freedom compareStrauss (1974),Gildin (1983), andMelzer (1983). See my forthcoming account(1990)of Rousseau's liberalism in relation to early modern natural right and natural law doctrines.…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%