In Rousseau’s world, natural man is strong, virile, and altruistic, in addition to being fully in touch with his own feelings. Civilized man turns out to be weak, effeminate, greedy, and self-interested to the point of cold cunning. Like the stereotypical New Yorker, he is incessantly asking: “So what’s in it for me?” If natural man is Tarzan mixed with Dances with Wolves, civilized man is Ebenezer Scrooge, Simon Legree, and Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko rolled into one (indeed, Charles Dickens’s moral outlook as well as Oliver Stone’s owes a great deal to Rousseau).
