Core LinkCompare & Contrast: Rousseau & Nietzsche

Linked from Essay II, Section 22: "...he reinterprets these animal instincts themselves as a form of guilt before God (as hostility, rebellion, insurrection against the "Lord," the "father," the primal ancestor and origin of the world); he stretches himself upon the contradiction 'God' and 'Devil'...."

 

quotes...the savage lives within himself; social man lives always outside himself; he knows how to live only in the opinion of others, it is, so to speak, from their judgment alone that he derives the sense of his own existence."

From Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on Inequality, p. 136

Readers' Question

  • How would Rousseau read the passage by Nietzsche? Would Rousseau's "savage man" be capable of interpreting his "animal instincts" in the way that Nietzsche claims, as "a form of guilt before God"? Would Rousseau's civilized man be capable? Why or why not?
  • In a broader sense, how do Rousseau's depiction of natural and civilized man differ from Nietzsche's depiction of humans in these stages of civilization?

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