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cess. That i of the utmost importance for Marx. Now this history of man which takes. in a way. the place of the philosophic study of man shows also and particularly. thatinequality. inequality is not natural. as Aristotle had taught and as Hobbes had almost admitted. but that inequality has come into being by virtue of certain accidoriginal men. thi almost orangutn. were equal. Now but if inequality has come into being by certain accidents a practical conclusion is obvious. It can be abolished again. Inequality. in other words. is only a historical fact. not a natural fact. Differently stated. man does nothave a stable nature to speak of. there are such things which are stable. For example. that we have five senses and have a digestive system and so. but that's terribly uninteresting politically. You know? In all politically interesting respects. man doesn.t have a nature. Man is infinitely maleable or rather. as Rousseau himself puts it. he is infinitely perfectible because he does not have an essence to speak of. You see how terribly practically importan this seemingly theoretical question regarding essences. for instnce. are. Rousseau says all philosophers prior to him have painted civilized man. man as he has been hitherto. man as we know him from history. but they claimed to paint natural man. Man.s experience molded by customs. molded by traditions. molded by accidents. and therefore no inference is possible as to what man can do from - as to the possibilities of man from what man actually has. No arguments against political improvement based on experience is valid because the experiece only says that it was possible hitherto. No inference from present day man or from history as to what man can be despite the fact that all societies. or all civilized societies. have hitherto been unequal. A strictly egalitarian societyis possible. We get. then. this fundamental scheme. There was equality at the beginning when men had not yet developed the truly human faculties. and then the whole historical process. to use a Marxian expression. is inequality: always. everywhere. And - but at the end. again equality. I mention another point which is - by which Rousseau differs from Hobbes and Locke and prepares the Marxian view of the problem.

Hobbes and Locke had conceived of the state of nature as inconvenient. to use the understatment of Locke. inconvenient for man in the state of nature. which meant that the men living in the state of nature were dissatisfied with their situation. If this is so. the state of nature points to civil society as such. Man- and therefore men in the state of nature project civil society in their minds before they establish it. but that is an absurd suggestion. Rousseau implies. because these fellows didn't have any reason. How could they make up any project. to say nothing of a project of a sensible civil society? In other words. Hobbes and Locke are guilty of crypto-teleology: that - of a crypto-teleology. Rousseau accordingly teaches that men in the state of nature are satisfied with the state of nature. perfectly satisifed.or to use his simple statement. the state of nature is good. That does not mean. necessarily mean. more than men living in it cannot but be satisfied with it. But that's not the only reason. It is also objectively good because it is a state of equality. Now no - Rousseau. in other words. takes the great step in that famous liberation from teleology which is characteristic of modern times. A teleological view presupposes a number of stages leading from the germ to the completed thing and the stages are all imperfect compared with the perfect stage. Now in Rousseau we find a very important exponent of the view of the equality of the stages. as we may roughly put it. One simple and important example: childhood. Childhood - that childhood is a stage as high as adulthood- yes - which is denied by all the earlier thinkers. of course. and perhaps also denied by common sense. but it follows from the consistent rejection of teleology.