Talking about humans with Rousseau

I was most intrigued with Rousseau's writings for a few reasons. Firstly, he gave forth his thoughts as a type of meditation rather than a proof; he suggested that we think about the nature of ourselves as humans and decide if his progression of thought was feasible, rather than accepting any kind of supposed truths about the human condition. Such a tactic appealed to me. It made sense that I should be able to think about myself as a human -- I should be able to dig deep within and weigh the possibility of humans evolving by Rousseau's description.

Secondly, his ideas about the "pre-everything" human are a great thought exercise, specifically when it comes to understanding the formation of language and thus the formation of different kinds of life. Last year in Medieval philosophy while talking about Pseudo-Dionysus and his listing of names, the question arose about the origin of names. I sat and thought about this very deeply and surprisingly enough I thought of a human very similar to the savage man described by Rousseau. I thought about how words are meant for communicating with other humans, so if there were no other humans around, what would a single human do with a bunch of words? A whole lot of nothing! So I thought of the naked man alone in the grassy area between two glaciers, with dense forest to his back and the widest outstretch of water and skies that one could ever imagine before him without a single word in his head. He would have no idea he was looking at a blue sky, let alone a sky, or even that he was looking! I am not even sure he would take the moment to sit in the grassy area for he would have no conception of anything to enjoy. I know it is very difficult to wrap ones thoughts around such an absence of thought itself, but I just do not see how one human, living largely alone, could have even the slightest urge for expression. The regular state of affairs of the savage man must have changed in a way that raised the amount of contact between humans, thus raising familiarity, and finally birthing some kind of new feeling or thought that drove the savage man to finally speak up.

Thirdly, thinking of the institution of value systems as the conception of inequality rang rather true with me. The characteristics of inequality are drawn by comparisons; one must find two things unequal. That is the silly thing with humans -- we are all the same thing-- but the number of ways in which we are born so subtlety dissimilar is so painfully obvious.

SM