Rousseau and Modern Natural Law/Right Theory: His Critique of the Idea of Natural Law as the Foundation of Politics

概要

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Rousseau was a radical critic of modern natural law/right theory in rejecting the idea that natural law provides the foundation of politics. In his view, the concept of human nature which underlies that theory was the one embodied by the corrupted social man. He identified a genuine human nature in hypothetical primitive men, who are guided by self-love and pity. Rousseau was also a natural law/right theorist in claiming that, although the human nature embodied by the primitive man is morally underdeveloped and needs to be transformed by political means, some essential elements of natural man's life must also be preserved by politics. Rousseau thus combined the idea of a human nature which can be transformed by politics-an idea absent in modern natural law/right theory-and the idea of a human nature in which nature is unchanging and operates as a norm for politics--an idea that makes Rousseau a natural law/right theorist. It is misleading to emphasize one-sidedly either Rousseau's break with the modern tradition or a continuity between Rousseau and that tradition. Rousseau was a unique natural law/right theorist.
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