Castaways 13

Before being complicated by more complex philosophers, Alexander Selkirk’s biographer, Irish politician and Spectator founder, Richard Steele, had summarized its essential lesson. This plain Man’s Story is a memorable Example that he is happiest who confines his Wants to natural Necessities.
This was a direct contradiction of the prevailing belief of the time that, without a strong central political authority to regulate the ‘state of nature,’ people would have a right, or license, to everything in the world, leading to a bellum omnium contra omnes, a ‘war of all against all.’
The theory was the brainchild of a social contract theorist, Thomas Hobbes who, also born prematurely when his mother heard of the coming invasion of the Spanish Armada, had later remarked that she ‘had given birth to twins: myself and fear.’ During his formative writing years, the English Civil War of the time, grew his fear into a forest.
Hobbes had maintained, in the doctrine he outlined in his Leviathan or The Matter, Forme and Power of a Common Wealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil, that the nature of man of the man in nature is inherently evil, and must cede rights to government as the price of peace.

‘In such condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit
 thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no
 navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no
 commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such
 things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no
 account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all,
 continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary,
 poor, nasty, brutish, and short.’
          Chapter XII: Of the Natural Condition of Mankind As Concerning Their
          Felicity, and Misery, Leviathan

Hobbes left his last words, ‘a great leap in the dark,’ as a metaphoric legacy.
The man that helped undo his influence, had an entirely different view of natural man.
In July of 1750, the Academy of Dijon established a prize competition for anyone who could answer the question, ‘What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by natural law?’ A Genevan romantic philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, submitted his Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les homes, ‘Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men,’ in which he attempts to discredit Hobbes, for taking an overly cynical view of the species.
Rousseau’s natural man possesses two essential benevolent innate characteristics- ‘amour de soi meme’ love of self, and compassion for the suffering of others. These, he maintains, are the actual properties that have preserved us through time, not a constant fear of death, which we cannot really appreciate, because it moves out of the state of nature. Like other animals, man is concerned with ‘food, a female, and sleep.’ Rousseau’s man is a ‘savage,’ self-sufficient loner, fast, strong, and capable of looking after himself. He only killed for his own self-preservation. The only qualities that distinguish him from the other natural creatures are his libre-arbitre free will, and his perfectibility to develop more sophisticated survival tactics. Rousseau maintains that it is our interaction with those of our own species which transmutes his natural self-love into a state of amour proper, a corrupted love of self deriving from a dependency on the perceptions and favors of others. This results in competition, self-comparison with others, hatred, the urge to acquire power, and a decamping from our state of nature. The true evil, of which man is capable, comes from the institution of property.

‘The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said “This is mine,”
 and found people naïve enough to believe him, that man was the true
 founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders,
 from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any one have saved
 mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to
 his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you
 once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth
 itself to nobody.’


Rousseau goes on to define the origin of society as the establishment, by convention, of a moral inequality characterized by enforced differences in power and wealth. He cynically asserts that civil society is anything but, a trick perpetrated by the powerful on the weak, a result of our having strayed from the true nature in man.
Unfortunately for Rousseau, the judges weren’t buying it. The Académie des Sciences, Arts et Belles-Lettres de Dijon still exists, and still offers the prize.
Our original Juan Fernández castaway seems to have inspired Defoe’s own fascinating adventure story, a template for an entire genre of literature, and an ongoing essential philosophical debate about the man of nature, and the nature of man. And still this is not his only accomplishment.
Selkirk’s decision is an embodiment of all the myth and legend and an allegory of life itself. We are all castaways, beautiful innocent natural savages marooned on our own islands of self-love, compassion, self-sufficiency, free will, and perfectibility. We are all awaiting rescue. Robinson Crusoe is not just the first story of the Southern Sea. He is the epic narrative of human experience, the heroic poem of our individual and collective existence. Everything we carry in our hearts followed his first footprint in the sand.



“But all I could make use of, was, All that was valuable. I had enough to
 eat, and to supply my Wants, and, what was all the rest to me? If I kill'd
 more Flesh than I could eat, the Dog must eat it, or the Vermin. If I
 sow'd more Corn than I could eat, it must be spoil'd. The Trees that I cut
 down, were lying to rot on the Ground. I could make no more use of
 them than for Fewel; and that I had no Occasion for, but to dress my
 Food.”
                                                                Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe