Rousseau's father
In the opening epistle, where Rousseau dedicates his work to the city of his birth, Geneva, he singles out his father as an example of a model citizen. His father, he says, was honest and upright. He lived by the work of his hands, while also reading the great works of Greek and Roman historians. He worked to teach the young Jean-Jacques. He was not a distinguished man, but rather an honorable citizen among others. In this portrait of his father, Rousseau indicates what he sees as political virtues: honest work, education, unaffected manners, a civic spirit, and devotion to others.
Natural man
One of Rousseau's main goals in this text is to arrive at a picture of what man would be like in the "state of nature," shaped only by physical necessity rather than society or culture. This figure plays an important role for Rousseau, as he is the yardstick against which civilized man is measured.
Man in nature was easily able to satisfy his wants, because they were few: hunger, thirst, sleep. In this sense, he was happy: he did not have desires that could not be met. He was also free, because he was not subject to any of the laws, mores, or physical restrictions (like needing to work for other people on a farm or in a foundry) that come along with society. Finally, he was, if not necessarily virtuous, at least without any vices, because the concepts of "good" and "bad" arose only with society. Living mostly on his own, not needing to compete with other people, he had no incentive to do them evil.
Civilized man
Civilized man is the opposite of "natural man"—partly because Rousseau's figure of natural man is defined simply as the negative of man as Rousseau sees him in society. As Rousseau would write in his later book, The Social Contract, "man is born free, but is everywhere in chains": these chains are what we call society. Rousseau sees civilized man as hemmed in by laws, social mores, and the division of labor. These civilized forms have distorted man in his natural, individual essence. They have given him desires that he cannot satisfy, and introduced vices that were previously unknown. Civilized man is an artificial, distorted being; and he is fundamentally unhappy.
