1) In his Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, Rousseau is very critical of the impact of the arts and
sciences on modern society. Describe his critique and discuss its implications for knowledge.
In Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, he is highly critical of the arts and
sciences during the enlightenment era, especially regarding modern society and its false knowledge.
Rousseau claims that skills provide us with a false sense of what beauty is. For Rousseau, human
beings are naturally good. The falsity of the arts & sciences has corrupted the natural goodness of
humans. The arts & sciences are born of vice and not of virtue. Rousseau states that “the sciences
and arts owe their birth to our vices; we would be less in doubt as to their benefits if they owed their
birth to our virtues” (56). Rousseau explains that the arts & sciences flourish in times of luxury.
Luxury allows for false goods and comfort. Vanity is shown through our want for comfort and
luxury. Human beings are so worried about what others think; they worry about the opinion of
others. He says, “in short, the appearance of all the virtues without the possession of a single one”
(49). We try to present ourselves in a way that is unnatural to human beings. There is no way to be
virtuous if one cannot let go of one’s vanity and desire to appeal to others; “there will always be
people enslaved by the opinions of their times, their country, their society” (46).
He claims that in modern society, there is a deep void that causes us to have flat souls. Due
to this, society has skewed our souls and has removed us from our natural happiness. Society
mistakes opinion for truth and false things are seen as truthful. In society, virtue is neglected, and
people see it as something everyone can have. Although human beings are naturally good, simple,
and innocent, society has corrupted their souls. This calls for a need to present a facade and live a
false life. Everyone in society strives for perfection and equality, which results in the loss of
individuality. Rousseau describes it as “people who form the herd known as society, finding
themselves in these same circumstances, will all behave in the same ways, unless more powerful
motives prevent them from doing so” (50). Everyone focuses on their facade and vanity, and that
nature and being human is wholly disregarded. Once the arts & sciences have corrupted our souls,
truth becomes relative, and we mistake vanity and opinion for knowledge.
Rousseau claims that “the more we accumulate new knowledge, the more we deprive
ourselves of the means of acquiring the most important of all”(81). He thinks that the more we try
to accumulate worldly knowledge, the fewer opportunities one has to acquire the virtues that benefit
our souls. Modern society is depriving the mind and the soul. Rousseau states that he would much
rather humans be ignorant than be fixated on worldly things. In part two of the First Discourse,
Rousseau provides us with a prayer, ‘‘Almighty God, you who hold all souls in your hands, deliver us
from the enlightenment and deadly arts of our forefathers, give us back ignorance, innocence, and
poverty, the only treasures that can make us happy and that are precious in your sight’’ (65). Human
beings are by nature good, and they don’t feel an interest in arts and sciences. The only way we can
find happiness is in truth, nature, and goodness. These things are natural to us; it’s in our nature to
find happiness in these places. Once we obtain worldly knowledge, we are stripped away from our
natural selves. We enter into a place of danger and darkness when we acquire knowledge. Rousseau
explains it as “nature want[ing] to protect us from knowledge, just as a mother snatches a dangerous
weapon from the hands of her child” (55). Our nature is to be in simplicity and happiness; there’s no
need to obtain intellect or knowledge through the arts & sciences.
Rousseau is very critical of knowledge during the enlightenment era. He believes that this
knowledge has corrupted the souls and has helped people understand their twisted passions as
reason. These mixed passions cause man to be miserable. He says, “as for men like me, whose
passions have irretrievably destroyed their original simplicity, who can no longer live upon grass and
acorns, or without laws and magistrates; … who discover, in the intention to give immediately to
human actions a morality which otherwise they must have been so long in acquiring … all such will
endeavor to deserve the eternal reward promised their obedience, by practicing those virtues to the
practice of which they oblige themselves in learning to know them” (144). Man in his nature is
innocent and good while civilized man is vicious and evil. Natural man cannot be vicious or bad
because he has no concept of good or bad. He says, “there was no kind of moral relations between
men in this state, nor any known duties, they could not be either good or bad and had neither vices
nor virtues unless we take these words in a physical sense”(105). Man has no notion of good or bad
because there’s no necessity to understand these things. Man can’t understand good or bad, vice or
virtue, if he isn’t seeing it from a physical sense, which man cannot do in a state of nature.
In addition, the natural man has no imagination or curiosity because he’s only concerned
with what is directly in front of him. Rousseau describes this as “the imagination, which causes so
many ravages among us, never speaks to the heart of savages, who peaceably wait for the impulses of
nature” (109). In every soul of a natural man, we can see two things; self-preservation and
compassion. We can see that “though they did have an ‘‘instinct’’ for pity for the suffering of others
along with a ‘‘survival instinct’’ of their own, they were for the most part untouched by morality” (5).
Man won’t harm anyone unless it’s due to self-preservation because man is naturally compassionate.
Nature does not lie; nature is the standard we can always rely on; it remains fixed. On the other
hand, civil society and morals can change. Even sex in a state of nature is bestial because man has no
notion of attachments or sentimentality. Love is a social construct because it requires all these things
that sex in nature does not. Rousseau explains that “people were free and equal … they lived mostly
solitary lives, feeling little need for others. Though they had sexual relations with one another, they
formed no lasting bonds. There existed among them neither cooperation nor conflict” (5).