Abstract

HIGUERO, Francisco Javier. Rousseau's Dissent and Deconstruction of Enlightened Rationality. Valenciana [online]. 2017, vol.10, n.19, pp.145-167. ISSN 2007-2538.  https://doi.org/10.15174/rv.v0i19.201.

The ideal state of nature, as explained in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s philosophical production, is not only defined as non-linguistic, but also has been, to certain extent, romanticized by many critics who present the ideas of this thinker as distant from the premises and proposals that the cultural movement that the Enlightenment defended. Such an primary state of nature was considered to be blissful, peaceful, harmonious, void of envy or jealously and prelinguistic or silent. Related to this circumstance, man’s natural view of the world was immediate and whole, unfractured by language and articulated words. However, when Rousseau presented in The Social Contract his theory of the General Will, he developed argumentative strategies directed to overcome the isolationist connotations of the state of nature and to deconstruct the binary dichotomy that exists between abstract rationality and unmediated experience.

Keywords : Social contract; Deconstruction; Binary dichotomy; Discourse; Enlightenment; Happiness.