The Godless Fall: Rousseau and the Moral Arc of Original Sin

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is famous for rejecting the Christian doctrine of original sin, especially in his Discourse on Inequality, a cornerstone of modern political philosophy. Yet some have argued that in this text Rousseau instead aimed to provide a viable replacement for the doctrine of original sin. This paper picks up that thread and argues that the text borrows even more closely from the doctrine of original sin than previous scholarship has noticed. Through a close reading of the Discourse on Inequality, compared to relevant passages from Augustine of Hippo's City of God and contextualized within Rousseau's oeuvre through the Letter to Beaumont, this paper argues that Rousseau has adopted the moral-psychological arc of original sin into his own thought—albeit without God. Rousseau's conjectural history of mankind, like Augustine's early interpretation of Genesis, bases human moral psychology upon a configuration of love, freedom, sociality, and rationality, changing over the course of the conjectural history. Rousseau's proposed moral arc of amour de soi-même, amour propre, and general will reflects the Christian arc of the Garden of Eden, fallen humanity, and grace. The paper argues that variations between the two moral psychologies and arcs can be explained with reference to God's absence. The paper concludes by suggesting a reconsideration of how Rousseau views humankind's relationship to God, in particular the relationship between God and human rationality and sociality.