In this chapter, I revisit the old controversy over individualism and collectivism in Rousseau's thought. Here is one way of describing that controversy. The Second Discourse is a hymn to nature and to a natural man more brutish, more solitary, and more limited in the scope of his passions than even the warlike natural man of Thomas Hobbes's state of nature. But the Social Contract is a hymn to the state and to a virtuous, dignified, and altogether socialized citizen. What support, if any, can be found in Rousseau's minimalist account of nature for his eloquent defense of the citizen? What support is there in indolent, isolated, natural man for virtuous members of a republican political community?

This formulation of the problem, however, assumes that Rousseau's account of nature is a “minimalist” one. My purpose in the last chapter was to prove that assumption incorrect. It is only on that assumption that a paean to nature and a paean to society must be an altogether baffling contradiction. Once it is abandoned, the tension in Rousseau's thought does not dissolve. But there is no question that the controversy over individualism and collectivism has been greatly exacerbated by the widely shared belief that when Rousseau praises nature, strictly speaking, he praises what must exclude society altogether.

My own interpretation of the unity of Rousseau's thought emphasizes not the extreme states Rousseau praises, such as the original man of the First Part of the Second Discourse and the citizen of the Social Contract, but above all the middling states, such as the savage of the Second Part of the Second Discourse and the “natural man living in the state of society” (E, IV, 483; 205) of Emile.