This article seeks to show, with the help of an analytical-reconstructive work, that at the basis of Rousseau's "secular argument" about the origin of human evil, developed in book IV of the Emile, lies a theory of the rational determination of the will that oscillates between the concepts of conscience and reason. By the expression "secular argument" is understood here the fact that Rousseau no longer sees the origin of evil in a strange force, or in the singular individual, but in society itself. The present text attempts to clarify also that, despite this vacillation, such theory becomes decisive in the outline of a project of natural education offered by that author to his imaginary pupil in the Emile. Since his character is constituted in the intertwining of social relations, no alternative is left to Emile but to try to educate himself in the social exchange, notwithstanding the permanent risk of being corrupted by society. Because the outline of the theory of the rational determination of human will is closely associated with the drafts of social and anthropological theories also put forward by Rousseau in the Emile, he must also enlist arguments for the confrontation, through a work of education of the selfish tendency of the amour-propre, with the realization of otherness that comes from the human sociability, aiming at recovering the feeling of amour de soi-même in the social exchange.
Reason; Conscience; Will; Natural Education