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Samuel Hardeman
Moreno Rocchi
Philosophy in Persons
26 April 2018
Observation of the Purpose of Man after Man’s Dissent from the State of Nature
expression, the current human state or condition is a product of several thousands of years of
result of a perverted course of nature stemming from the first dissents away from our initial
happiness and bliss. All of the changes to the original trajectory have arose as a result of those
accidents previously alluded to, as well as, artificial adaptations to satiate growing desires and
private acquisitions. However, this view of human diversion from contentment in ignorance,
simply enfolding into the direction of brilliance from the original inciting diversion from its
evaluation of the primordial incitements that caused the differentiation from initial to final state,
primitive man to the present, must be observed and analyzed in order to delegate relevance and
value to each interpretation, provided by Rousseau and Kant, and ultimately decide the purpose
of human nature.
Discourse, first in an attempt to not project unto, “the state of nature ideas which were acquired
by society”; criteria must be established that has no scent of present prejudice (Rousseau, 5). In
this way an idea of the original man can be unbiasedly construed in an effort to decipher from
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where his path was led astray. Rousseau would consider the primordial man as brutish and
unintelligible, “the only instrument he understands” is the body (Rousseau, 7). Also, he was void
of artificial needs with solitary desires of food, sex, sleep, and exercising his principal faculties.
The primitive man had few developed faculties, most simply, the faculty of free will as well as
the faculty of self improvement. As well as the initial faculties of man two principles of value in
the state of nature were self respect and objective compassion. Nevertheless, even with the
combination of these faculties and principles that would assume to derive some type of social
faculty, the primitive man was neither social nor lingual besides impulsive vocal behavior
Now that the image and characteristics of the original man have been revealed according
from his self-imposed immaturity” which can be related to the description of the primitive
human by means of assessing when the primitive beings emerged from their state of self-
imposed ignorance (Kant, 1). To analyze how the previous statement explicates the identity of
the primitive man Kant’s delineation of the three human dispositions will be examined and
concerned to the primordial human. The three dispositions or natural faculties are listed as so:
animality, humanity, and morality. Man’s animality is tethered to animalistic needs and instincts,
such as the well know impulse of flight or fight. Although, the previous statements of the
primitive man coincide with Rousseau, Kant’s further expressions of human natural faculties
divert from Rousseau. Humanity is both technical and pragmatic. The technical principle of
humanity refers to our ability to elaborate on found materials in order to build, destroy, and set
goals beyond the present, “not just to enjoy the present moment of life but also to visualize what
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is yet to come” (Kant - Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, 225) Pragmatism deals
with the idea of human social behavior, especially the ability to lie and misconceive or conceal
true intentions in order to propel a false image. Rousseau would disagree with these faculties and
intelligent means. However, Kant’s description of natural faculties in his Conjectures on the
Beginning of Human History, delegate another ability to man outside of the temporal realm and
that relates to morality, which he sees as, “ from a moral point of view… the individual has cause
to blame himself for all the ills which he endures and for all the evil which he perpetrates; but at
the same time, he has cause to admire and praise the wisdom and purposiveness of” humanity as
a whole (Kant, 227). In this way Kant attempts to explain why humans are able to use reason to
detach themselves from the individual in observation of and service for good for the sake of the
species. These senses or natural faculties led by reason gives rise to the final conclusion Kant
Rousseau would conject that humanity as a whole has become lost far from the original
of the perfect state of contentedness, the state of nature; on the other hand, Kant would discourse
that humanity’s purpose lies in the reason that we left the forest. Although, with the passing of
time and countless amounts of deaths at the hands of men that decide their own moral codes,
Kant continues to have faith in human reason, in that, reason in and of itself is the course that
mankind should continue following in order to arise at some subsequent truth of purpose. Upon
achieving some perfect civic constitution and equality of means socially, humankind may still
have many imperfections to overcome, but when mankind has fully developed its capacities,
natural faculties, then it could be said that they have arrived at their ends. I believe, that
according to Rousseau and Kant, the true purpose is for a realization, whether it be through
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ignorance or reason, of eternal contentedness with oneself, unchanging with time, and with
society as a whole. At this point, ignorance and reason reach a point of coincidence that parallels
to both philosophers beliefs as well as desires for the pacific quiescent state of man.