ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Jean-Jacques Rousseau's two-fold “correction” of Thomas Hobbes: that the fear of death is unnatural, and that a complete happiness is available to people in the sentiment of existence. It examines Rousseau’s reasons for denying that man naturally fears death, and then considers whether a way exists for l’homme present to recover, on the plane of humanity rather than animality, the tranquility and happiness Rousseau attributes to l’homme naturel. Rousseau emphasizes that the faculties natural man possessed in potentiality which, once activated, destroyed his physical and psychic self-sufficiency, developed only by chance; thus he might have remained “eternally” in his primitive condition. In his autobiographical writings, Rousseau offers himself as a new model of the man of nature, “enlightened by reason,” bearing “the yoke of necessity,” and enjoying his existence "without much worry about what men think of it and without much concern for the future".
