In this seminar Christopher Kelly (Professor in the Political Science Faculty at Boston College) addresses Rousseau's complex account of the state of nature in his Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (1755). He discusses the relationship between the different states of nature in Rousseau's Second Discourse and his notions of perfectibility and natural goodness, arguing that the notions are very closely related. The talk is followed by Q&A which touches on questions of the coherence of Rousseau's state of nature idea in the Second Discourse, the importance of much state of nature material being located in the Discourse's paratextual material, Rousseau's Aristotelianism and the extent to which Rousseau had read the writers to whom he alludes in his discussion of the state of nature, including Buffon.

A video version of the seminar is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rnbGiWXCT0k&ab_channel=SocialContractResearchNetwork

The seminar took place over Zoom on 26 October 2022, and was hosted by Christopher Watkin (Monash University), as part of the Australian Research Council funded Future Fellowship project "Rewriting the Social Contract: Technology, Ecology, Extremism". This seminar is an initiative of the Social Contract Research Network. To find out more about the SCRN, and to subscribe to email updates, please visit https://www.monash.edu/arts/languages-literatures-cultures-linguistics/social-contract-research-network

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