ABSTRACT
Rousseau’s project to educate Emile to be a natural man-a numerical unity-promises to free him from the opinion of others. While numerical unity is certainly good for the individual, we have also seen its benefit to the family and to the political community. Wealth and beauty simply mask the fractional creatures, which populate the aristocracies of the eighteenth century. Those, like Emile, who enjoy numerical unity and preserve it by limiting their desires and by satisfying those desires through their own efforts, will find themselves independent of others and free. They are the promise of Rousseau’s egalitarian political community, founded on his natural rights theory.
