ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the process through which the new attributes are acquired, and considers some of their implications for the subsequent development of the species’ moral psychology. It examines Rousseau’s account of the species’ transition from nature to society. There are two dimensions of human experience which Rousseau regards as crucial to the initial socialization: family life and sexuality. In Rousseau’s view sexual desire is a natural biological fact about all species, and as such perfectly compatible with the isolated, non-social existence of natural man. For Rousseau, sexuality and family life have important implications for the other dimensions of human experience, but they cannot be analyzed independently of them, nor accorded a primary causal role in human development. For Rousseau, the crucial change initiated by the new self-consciousness occurs in the character of our self-love: the independent and benign amour de soi-meme becomes a relative and factitious amour-propre.
