ABSTRACT
The underlying conceptual consistency between Emile and the Discours sur l’inegalite is evident from the conception of subjectivity informing both works. Emile’s education aims at a moral consciousness which unites freedom and virtue, and thus overcomes the division between higher and lower self, and duty and inclination. The educational program proposed in Emile attempts to achieve its “double object” of uniting the private and the public in one, by reconciling them. The success or failure of Rousseau’s moral and educational theory depends on his ability to achieve the synthesis of original and social nature. A healthy man, the model for any system of education, would have to adhere consistently to either a natural or civic mode of life. The primary goal of the pre-moral education is to preserve the child’s natural independence, which consists in maintaining an equilibrium between his desires and his capacity to satisfy them.
