What Is Natural Has to Be Investigated Not in Beings That Are Depraved, but in Those That Are Good According to Nature
Essay title: What Is Natural Has to Be Investigated Not in Beings That Are Depraved, but in Those That Are Good According to Nature
“What is Natural Has to be Investigated Not in Beings That Are Depraved, But in Those That Are Good According to Nature”
he obstacle of figuring out the nature and instinctual behavior of humans has been toppled by many philosophical writers. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Niccolo Machiavelli, in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality and The Prince, subsequently, talks about this subject. In the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau talks about the natural human state and is transition to its current civilized state. In The Prince, Machiavelli talks about the nature of humans already in a civilized state. Rousseaus and Machiavellis ideas on the best state of humans contrast because Rousseau believes that the best state of a human is in its natural uncivilized state, yet Machiavelli discusses how it is best fit for humans to be in a society. Another writer, William Golding, in his novel Lord of the Flies, actually indirectly discusses both Machiavell and Rousseaus beliefs by reflecting their ideas onto a fictional story of children stranded on an island. In doing this Golding refutes Machiavellis view the best state of human nature and thoroughly supports Rousseaus view of the best state of nature for humans. This paper will discuss, in comparison, both Rousseau and Machiavellis opposing beliefs and then show Goldings agreement with Rousseau and refute of Machiavellis beliefs.
Rousseau believed that humans the savage man was in the best state of nature but to the following reasons: overabundance of resources, self-sufficiency, self-preservation, and pity. Overabundance was a reason why humans could survive without having to fight for necessities, this corresponds with humans natural instinct to self-preserve. Humans will do what is necessary in order to best fit their well being, yet, due to the natural instinct of pity, we as humans would not harm another in order to promote oneself. We have pity because we as humans would not want to see another person suffer or hurt and if would sympathize with others because we would not want to be in that same situation. Being that humans have these inherit qualities, it is not necessary for man to be civilized, because with those qualities man is best fit and can prosper. Rousseau even states in his the discourse that the savage mans state is best fit for man and would make man at most truly
happy. He states this when he says,
“Savage man and civilized man differ so much in their inmost heart and inclinations that what constitutes the supreme happiness of the one would reduce the other to despair. The first breathes nothing but repose and freedom, he wants only to live and remain idle, and even the Stoics ataraxia does not approximate his profound indifference to everything else. By contrast, the Citizen, forever active, sweats and scurries, constantly in search of ever more strenuous occupations: he works to the death, even rushes toward it in order to be in a position to live, or renounces life in order to acquire immortality. He courts the great whom he hates, and the rich whom he despises; he spares nothing to attain the honor of serving them; he vaingloriously boasts of his baseness and of their protection and, proud of his slavery, he speaks contemptuously of those who have not the honor of sharing it.”
In that, Rousseau believes that man is best when savage because is inclinations, his instinctual driver for living, is to live free and be just simply stable in order to self-preserve, but the civilized man does anything so that s/he can survive. S/he over exerts him/her self in order to be the best. In order to do that, s/he lives by basing his/her live on the extent of others because s/he measures his/her adequacy by the level that those around him/her has reached. In this man has become a slave of working and striving instead of simply living to stabilize themselves. Man will not be able to attain happiness because he can never honor his/her self as worthy of happiness because of the need to compare him/her self to others. Machiavelli does agree with Rousseau in the sense that he believes that human to want to keep themselves stable, yet he believes that a civilized mans state of nature in order to achieve this is best fit.
Machiavelli that mans inclinations to achieving stability as civilized is best fit. This blatantly opposes Rousseaus beliefs. This is because first and foremost, Rousseau believes that the civilized mans state of nature is not best and will never lead man to happiness, but also because Machiavelli believes that man needs to be ruled because man is not able to lead himself. A ruler is needed to guide because he believes that humans are stupid,