that he has thereby “demontré” that man is naturally good and “que la nature eût été justifiée’
by a his account. He therefore finds providence in the beginning of our existence as purely
physical beings embedded in a natural whole governed by general laws that work to the good
of the whole.
On the contrary, in Emile, Rousseau has the Savoyard Vicar present a religious
teaching which finds divine providence not only in the general order of nature but in the
restitution of moral order through means of the immortal soul of the individual. The originary
and natural providence of the Discours sur l’inégalité seems to contradict the moral and
eschatalogical providence of the ‘Profession de foi.’ The apparent contradiction in Rousseau’s
teaching on God, providence, and the human soul is part of the general question of the
direction of his philosophy as a whole.
Rousseau’s letter to Voltaire of 18 August 1756, commonly known as the Lettre à
Voltaire sur la providence, stands as a bridge between the philosophy of the Discours sur
l’inégalité and the religious teaching of the ‘Profession de foi’ in Emile, including the
treatment of fanaticism. In the Lettre à Voltaire, Rousseau responds to Voltaire’s poem on the
Lisbon earthquake, and he therefore takes up the question of the relationship between man
and the divine or natural whole. On the one hand, he reminds Voltaire of what he argued in
the Discours sur l’inégalité and maintains that only through his account of natural man in that
work can nature and God be justified and the problem of evil resolved. In other words, he
reveals that providence is justified along with the natural goodness of man in a work which
Voltaire mocked by saying that no one has ever used so much wit in wanting to make us
beasts. The Discours sur l’inégalité is a theodicy. On the other hand, in the Lettre à Voltaire
Rousseau acknowledges the insufficiency of his philosophy of the natural goodness of man for
the happiness of developed human beings and reveals the need to supplement the truth of
1
Rousseau, Discours sur l’inégalité parmi les hommes, OC, iii.152, 202.
2
See John T. Scott, ‘The Theodicy of the Second Discourse: The ‘Pure State of Nature’ and Rousseau’s
Political Thought,” American Political Science Review 86 (September 1992): 696–711.
Prepared for the 2005 American Political Science Assocation meetings.
2
Convention