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The Antithesis of Nature and Art, and Rousseau's Rejection of the Theory of Natural Rights

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Henry V. S. Ogden
Henry V. S. Ogden
Affiliation:
University of Michigan
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Extract

In spite of all that has been written about Rousseau's political theory, he is still generally regarded as a proponent of the theory of natural rights. His political writings are thought to contain an exposition of that theory, and they are believed to have been highly influential in spreading it. Thus Professor Crane Brinton, writing in the Encyclopædia of the Social Sciences, says that although Rousseau added little to the actual dogmas of the theory of natural rights, “he did much to give it proselyting strength” and he “gave the doctrine of natural rights, hitherto endowed with the solid and effective but imaginatively limited prestige of nature as reality, as uniformity, and as the “golden mean,” the additional prestige of nature as mystic strength, as magna mater.” But it has already been shown that Rousseau's political doctrine was neither wellknown nor influential in France until the doctrine of natural rights lost its vogue and the authoritarian doctrines of Robespierre and the extremists of 1793 superseded it.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , August 1938 , pp. 643 - 654
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1938

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References

1 S. v. “Natural rights.”

2 See Williams, David, “The Influence of Rousseau on Political Opinion, 1760–95,” English Historical Review, Vol. 17, pp. 414–430 (1933)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 For a discussion of Rousseau's rejection of nature as the norm in the Second Discourse and the anti-primitivistic strains in that essay, see Lovejoy, A. O., “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality,” Modern Philology, Vol. 21, pp. 165–186 (1923)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For Puffendorf's conception of the state of nature, see his Of the Law of Nature and Nations, trans, by Kennett, Basil (4th ed., London, 1729), Bk. II, ch. 2Google Scholar.

5 Oeuvres (ed. Hachette, , Paris, 1909–1913), Vol. 1, pp. 78, 79, 82, 83Google Scholar.

6 Ibid., p. 85.

7 Ibid., p. 108.

8 Ibid., pp. 133–137 and passim.

9 Ibid., p. 65. This and the two following references I owe to Vaughan's, C. E.Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge, 1915), Vol. 1, p. 13Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., Vol. 5, pp. 108–109.

11 Ibid., Vol. 9, p. 287.

12 Lovejoy, p. 168; and Lanson, G., “L'Unité de la Pensée de Rousseau,” Annales de la société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vol. 8, p. 13 (1912)Google Scholar.

13 Oeuvres, Vol. 1, p. 109Google Scholar.

14 Ibid., p. 90.

15 Ibid., Note XV, pp. 149–150.

16 Ibid., p. 110

17 An excellent example of this development of the theory of natural rights is to be found in Ferguson's, AdamPrinciples of Moral and Political Science (London, 1792)Google Scholar.

18 For the dating of the first draft of the Contrat social, see Vaughan, loc. cit., Vol. 1, p. 284, and p. 445, note 1; and Lovejoy, loc. cit., p. 184, note 1.

19 Vaughan, Vol. 1, pp. 448–449.

20 Ibid., p. 450.

21 Ibid., p. 454.

22 Oeuvres, Vol. 3, pp. 278–280Google Scholar.

23 Loc. cit., Vol. 1, p. 230 et al.

24 Oeuvres, Vol. 2, p. 278Google Scholar; cf. pp. 280 and 283.

25 Ibid., pp. 306–307.

26 Ibid., p. 313.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid., pp. 317–318.

29 Ibid., p. 306.

30 Ibid., pp. 307, 314–315, and 322–323.

31 Ibid., p. 318.

32 Ibid., p. 320.

33 Ibid., p. 321.

34 Ibid., pp. 329–330.

35 Vaughan, Vol. 1, p. 483.

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