Rousseau is right, there is no love in the state of nature. Love is about developing relationships but in the condition of human beings before society, the most pure form of society had no relationships, no feelings, thus no love.
What is love? The moral aspect of love is merely “an artificial sentiment born of social custom” (Rousseau 39). Love is artificial because it requires imagination. A savage man does not have imagination thus a savage man will not know love. A savage man can only be described as instinct alone, in other words, spontaneous. He will eat when he’s hungry; he will drink when he’s thirsty, he will sleep when he’s tired; and when he’s in danger, he runs away. He runs away not because he’s afraid he might die, but simply because he doesn’t want to get hurt. Savage man does not have the ability to imagine death or anything else. Some might argue that if love does not exist, how would sex between a man and a woman be
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We left the state of nature by fire, by nature itself. Fire gave us the ability to advance in the real world, fire gave us the ability to compare, to rank, to differ, and lastly a sense of pride when we are better than another one of our kind and of another species. We start to judge one another, to comment on one another and to look at one another and have feelings and emotions for one another. This is where love was also developed We started to have restrictive sexual desires, focused love and lover. When more than one man wants to have be with a woman, there’s competition. When one man gets together with that same woman, another man gets jealous. Rousseau reveals “Jealousy awakens with love; discord triumphs, and the sweetest passion receives sacrifices of human blood” (Rousseau 49). It’s clear that love brings jealousy, discord, triumph, and finally