ABSTRACT
The crisis of modernity occurred in the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau attacked modernity in the name of two classical ideas: the city and virtue, on the one hand, and nature, on the other. In Rousseau's doctrine of the state of nature, the modern natural right teaching reaches its critical stage. By thinking through that teaching, Rousseau was brought face to face with the necessity of abandoning it completely. It is true, no doubt, that Rousseau's doctrine of the legislator is meant to clarify the fundamental problem of civil society rather than to suggest a practical solution, except in so far as that doctrine adumbrates Rousseau's own function. The feeling of existence as Rousseau experienced and described it has a rich articulation which must have been lacking in the feeling of existence as it was experienced by man in the state of nature.
