A ÁRVORE DA FILOSOFIA DE JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Abstract

This article aims to demonstrate, throught the analogy with a tree, how we intepret the Rousseau´s work. Our interpretation is within the kind that sees the Rousseau´s thought as a system. We showed that Rousseau begins from a trunk exposed in his early writings, beginning throught the idea of the man´s original goodness, passes throught the vice´s genealogy and reaches the social contract that establishes the State. At this point, there is a subdivision in two main branches, those of the legitimate and illegitimate State, which are two circumstances in which the man can find himself. The illegitimate State divides itself in several branches which are strategies of how to be virtuous in a State that vitiates men. The legitimate State, in its turn, divides itself in two branches, which are the just State itself and the principles by which an illegitimate State can get close, by adaptations, the just.