"Our greatest evils flow from ourselves"
About this Quote
Rousseau's claim that "Our greatest evils flow from ourselves" crystallizes his broader critique of civilization. He draws a sharp line between the hardships given by nature and the moral ills created by human choices, passions, and institutions. Hunger, disease, and death are unavoidable; envy, pride, domination, and injustice arise when people start comparing themselves, seeking status, and subordinating compassion to vanity. Early society awakens a new kind of self-love, amour-propre, that depends on the opinions of others. It corrodes the natural self-love aimed at preservation (amour de soi), breeding rivalry, shame, and a need to be seen as superior. From this spring inequality, servitude, and war.
The thought echoes the opening of Emile: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man". Arts, sciences, and luxury may polish manners, but they often mask dependence and moral decay. Progress in technique without progress in virtue multiplies power while loosening restraint, enlarging the scope of harm. So the gravest evils are not accidents imposed from outside but consequences of the ways we organize desire, education, property, and authority.
Yet the judgment is not fatalistic. If the source is within us, so is the remedy. Rousseau calls for an education that protects the childs natural curiosity, resilience, and pity from premature social pressures, forming a person able to desire without being enslaved to opinion. He also imagines a political order where citizens bind themselves to the general will, rediscovering freedom through laws they give themselves. The same human capacities that corrupt can be redirected toward civic virtue and humane relations.
Read today, the line points toward responsibility. Environmental destruction, exploitative economies, and manipulative technologies are not inevitable forces of nature; they are byproducts of choices. Acknowledging that our worst harms are self-made is the starting point for remaking the conditions that produce them.
The thought echoes the opening of Emile: "Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man". Arts, sciences, and luxury may polish manners, but they often mask dependence and moral decay. Progress in technique without progress in virtue multiplies power while loosening restraint, enlarging the scope of harm. So the gravest evils are not accidents imposed from outside but consequences of the ways we organize desire, education, property, and authority.
Yet the judgment is not fatalistic. If the source is within us, so is the remedy. Rousseau calls for an education that protects the childs natural curiosity, resilience, and pity from premature social pressures, forming a person able to desire without being enslaved to opinion. He also imagines a political order where citizens bind themselves to the general will, rediscovering freedom through laws they give themselves. The same human capacities that corrupt can be redirected toward civic virtue and humane relations.
Read today, the line points toward responsibility. Environmental destruction, exploitative economies, and manipulative technologies are not inevitable forces of nature; they are byproducts of choices. Acknowledging that our worst harms are self-made is the starting point for remaking the conditions that produce them.
Quote Details
| Topic | Ethics & Morality |
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