Chapter 5 Thesis

Thesis I am dealing with men, and the questions I have studied suggest that I should speak to them, and I think that those who are afraid of spreading the truth do not ask such questions.So, without presumptuousness, I defend humanity before the sages who inspired me.I will be satisfied if I live up to the subject and the judges. I think there are two kinds of inequalities in human beings: One, which I call natural or biological, because it is based on nature, arising from differences in age, health, physical strength, and the quality of the intellect or heart the other may be called moral or political, because it arises from an agreement, is established by the assent of men, or at least whose existence is recognized by all.The second kind of inequality consists of the privileges enjoyed by some at the expense of others, such as being richer, more honorable, more powerful than others, or even making others obey them.

We need not ask what is the source of natural inequality, for the answer to this question is contained in the very meaning of these words.We don't even need to ask whether there is any substantive connection between these two kinds of inequality.For, in other words, it is tantamount to asking whether all those who give orders are necessarily better than those who obey them, whether, among the same people, their physical or mental abilities, talents or virtues are always commensurate with their power or wealth.Such questions may be good to ask slaves and let their masters hear them discuss, but they are not suitable for rational, free, truth-seeking people to study.

So what exactly is this paper about?It is to point out at what moment in the evolution of things, right replaced violence, and nature obeyed the law; The determination to sacrifice actual happiness for an imaginary tranquility. Philosophers who have studied the foundations of society have agreed that it is necessary to go back to the state of nature, but no one has ever gone back to this state.Those who do not hesitate to suppose that man in a state of nature has ideas of justice and injustice do not show why he has such ideas, or even explain the importance of them. What good is he.Others speak of natural right, the right of every individual to preserve what is his own, but fail to clarify what they mean by belonging.And there are those who first endow the strong with power over the weak, and think that government arises from this, but they do not realize how long it must be before the meanings of such terms as power and government can exist in the human mind. time.In short, all these people, when they are constantly talking about human needs, greed, oppression, desires and pride, are really transferring ideas from society to the state of nature; It depicts civilized people.Even in the minds of most scholars of modern times, the existence of a state of nature has never been in doubt, but a reading of the Bible shows that the first man, having received wisdom and instruction directly from God, was not himself in a state of nature; And if we believe the writings of Moses, as every Christian philosopher does, it must be admitted that men, even before the Flood, were never in a state of pure nature, unless by some extraordinary accident they fell back into it again. .Paradoxes denying this claim are hard to defend and are completely unverifiable.

So we first set aside all facts, because these facts have nothing to do with the problem I am studying.What we can undertake on this subject should not be considered historical truth, but only hypothetical and conditional reasoning.These reasonings are not so much adapted to explaining the true origin of things as to explaining their nature, just as our physicists every day reason about the formation of the universe.Religion would have us believe that as soon as God Himself created man, he immediately removed them from their natural state and that they were not equal because God would have them be that way.But religion does not forbid us to speculate only on the basis of the nature of man and the beings around him, what man would become if left to develop naturally.This is what is asked of me; that is what I myself wish to investigate in this paper.As my subject concerns the whole of humanity, I try to use a language appropriate to all nations; or, rather, leaving aside time and place, I think only of those who are listening to me, and assume that I am in the Academy of ancient Athens. Here, reciting the homework left by the teacher, the judges are people like Plato and Xenocrates, and the audience is the whole human being.

what!People, no matter where you are from, no matter what your opinion is, please listen!This is your history, and I am sure I have read it; but not in books written by your liars, but in Nature, which never lies.Everything that comes out of nature is true; only what I add to myself by accident may be false.The age of which I am speaking is far away, and you have changed your original state, and how much it has changed!What I am going to describe to you is, so to speak, your kind of life.This description is based on your endowed qualities, which may have been corrupted, though not completely, by your education and habits.I think there is a time where the individual would like to stay: you will go after the time where you would like the whole of humanity to be there.You are dissatisfied with your status quo, which for various reasons portends even greater dissatisfaction in your unfortunate descendants, so you may wish to be able to go backwards.This sentiment is nothing less than the praise of your ancestors; the criticism of your contemporaries; and the shock of those who are unfortunate enough to be born after you.