pacity for reasoning, individually and collectively. The particular individual is to be subsumed in the universal order of the general will, but this will have been a creation of the association of individuals in their natural state. Equally important is the fact that this association will not be organized subject to the rule of organized religion or extant organized states. Rousseau is about the business of explaining how fundamental human associations are formed--and how they are not formed by established organizations.
Rousseau's view of how individuals in nature have the capacity to create optimal social structures can be compared to the Kantian view of the capacities of human reason. Kant, an exact contemporary of Rousseau, articulates such capacities in his Critique of Pure Reason. In that work, Kant explores intuition as a valid category and determinant of human knowledge and coherent or moral experience.
In other words, pure reason encounters practical experience and then seeks closure regarding the significance of what the experience reveals:
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