"Rousseau insists that the key to strength and happiness is to limit one's needs and desires, so that they can easily be met. But this is an implausible ideal, because it threatens to lead to laziness, or even to the impoverishing of a person's life, rather than encouraging people to develop themselves fully, and make great achievements."
             This objection which states that Rousseau insists upon the limiting of one's needs so that they can be easily met, misunderstands his views on strength and happiness. According to Rousseau, intrinsic to man are certain natural needs, and along with these needs come the exact faculties to fulfill them. It follows that strength is the ability to fulfill these needs, and happiness comes when one has done so. Rousseau never insists that the key to strength and happiness is limiting one's needs- they are dictated by nature. Rather, he argues that one should order these needs in accordance with his own nature. In other words, Rousseau concerns himself not with limits, as suggests above, but with balance. This harmony, or balance, permits the full realization of one's own potential and the whole self. It is only in this state of harmony, that one accomplishes anything at all.
             Rousseau's strategy for achieving the good life is founded on the basic assumption that man is endowed with a character that is natural and good. In his natural state, man inherently maintains innate desires and the ability to fulfill those desires: "[Nature] gives him with immediacy only the desires necessary to his preservation and the faculties sufficient to fulfill them" (p.80). These desires are a direct reflection of those needs intrinsic to one's character. So, strength does not come from a man's initiative or his effort to change in order to fulfill his wants and desires. Man simply has to figure out what his preexisting wants and needs are; he has...