Quiz no. 2, make-up no. 2

June 18, 1998

On the front of this sheet of paper, answer each of the following questions. Provide a distinct answer for each question, numbering your answers as you proceed. Before turning in your quiz, fold this sheet of paper in half, lengthwise (i.e., so that the crease goes from top to botton, down the middle), and write your name on the back. Only answers written on the front will influence your grade, and nothing written on the front should reveal your identity.

1. What does Rousseau say the “Savage man” would do if someone stole his dinner? What does he say the “man in society” would do?
2. What is the gist of Rousseau’s answer to the question of whether we should just “destroy societies, annihilate thine and mine, return to live in the forests with the bears”? (Notice that Rousseau’s answer has two parts, one for those “who recognize for your species no other destination except to end this brief life in peace” and one for those “whose passions have forever destroyed their original simplicity.”)
3. Rousseau says that Hobbes should have said that the state of nature is a peaceful one. Why, according to Rousseau, did Hobbes say “precisely the opposite” of this?
4. What does Rousseau identify as the source of all the social virtues and the maxim “Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to others”?
5. What does Rousseau identify as “the first yoke [people] imposed on themselves without realizing it”?
6. What does Rousseau mean by “the final state of inequality” being “the extreme point that closes the circle and touches the point from which we started”?