John Locke, Rene Descartes and Jean Jacques Rousseau have some similar and different conceptions of state of nature and education.

John Locke believed that humans begin as a blank slate and gradually acquire knowledge through experience. Everyone is equally endowed with nature because God made them so. For Locke, everyone obeys the laws given by God in order to create a safe society. In a similar way, Descartes admires God, he thinks God is perfect. According to Rousseau, “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil” (1).

The idea of nature penetrates throughout Emile, it is the ultimate goal of education. He says “The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the education of nature” (Rousseau, 1). Children should use this growth as tools for education. Rousseau believes that the state of nature has unlimited freedom. It is unspoiled; everyone starts out perfect. Anyone can find happiness in his natural state. Children, unlike adults, are naturally good and uncorrupted by the influences of society and traditional schooling. The job of educators is to stay out of the way of spoil them and let their nature blossom. Compare to Locke, Rousseau take a more hands-off approach of education. He proposed that “freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires” (Rousseau, 5). Rousseau thinks that children have complete freedom of what and when to learn. Educators should only give children information when it’s meaningful to them, that way they’ll learn much effectively when they want it themselves. In contrast, Descartes believes in deductive reasoning, that knowledge is built from a simple foundation. He says “with the examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however, from this any other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of truth” (12).

Rousseau sees the artificial “habit” as bad. He is very pleased with Emile for that “His body is healthy, his limbs are supple, his mind is accurate and unprejudiced, his heart is free and untroubled by passion” (Rousseau, 23). Similarly, Descartes says “a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgement draws respecting the matters of his experience” (8).