루소의 자연종교와 그 생태학적 함의

Abstract

Born a Calvinist, Jean-Jacques Rousseau(1712-1778) converted to Catholicism as a young man, and later adopted deist views rejecting revealed religion in favor of “natural religion” based on the evidence of God’s existence that reason discerns in the wondrous order and harmony of the system of nature. Rousseau’s fullest account of his views on religion is found in Emile, in a section titled the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” In it Rousseau explains that when we ponder the marvelous order, harmony, and motion of the physical universe we can conclude that there exists a rational being who wills this universe into existence and sets things in motion. All his life Rousseau connected the love of nature with religious emotion, in a way that would one day become widely familiar but was still unusual in his day. In fact, he did more than any other person to inspire that response in the Romantic writers who came after him. Rousseau remains a measurable figure in eighteenth-century Western philosophy and letters challenging many aspects of modernity by his reflection on the civilization, his criticism of the progress, his appeal to nature’s goodness as it comes from the hands of the divine. Rousseau deserves particular consideration as an example of an early modern "pre-environmentalist" because, in addition to his contribution to the nature worship which formed a powerful current in the Romantic Movement, he is recognized as an important defender of nature for its value to humanity. Rousseau would agree to the first "platform" of "deep ecology": The well-being and flourishing of human and nonhuman life on Earth have value in themselves. Nonetheless, Rousseau, by insisting that human being is superior to any other lives, differs from some radical ecologists who claim the equality between human being and any other lives.