Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Timothy O'Hagan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351925488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) was hailed by Claude Lévi-Strauss as "the founder of the sciences of man". This collection of fourteen classic papers devoted to his work addresses the points of intersection between the moral and the political, the personal and the social. The volume is divided into five parts: The Critique of Progress and the Speculative Anthropology, The Naturalizing of Natural Law, The General Will and Totalitarianism, Anticipations of Game Theory and Strategies of Redemption. The articles are accompanied by an extensive, detailed introduction by the editor along with a selective bibliography.

Part I
The Critique of Progress and the Speculative Anthropology Rousseau’s First Two Discourses

[1]
ROUSSEAU ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES^*

VICTOR GOUREVITCH

ROUSSEAU consistently argued that the arts and sciences tend to corrupt morals (moeurs, Sitten) and that they are at odds with the requirements for a free and just political society.

The issue is not what the arts and sciences may be in themselves but what role they play in the public life, or what the relations are between what we now call “culture” and political society. Rousseau considers this problem from the perspective of a plain man who knows nothing and yet esteems himself none the less for it, a member of a political community who, as such, shares its concerns and aspirations (First Disc. III,5,30; à d’Alembert 126).^† That is the “natural” perspective of man in society (Emile IV,468f,509), just as the perspective of man in society is “natural” once political societies are established. Men are, after all, not free to choose whether to live in political society and to submit to the inexorable logic of social relations (Inégalité (n IX), III,207f). That is why, even if man is not by nature a political animal—indeed especially if he is not —the political problem assumes precedence and defines the horizon within which all other problems must be viewed. Thus Rousseau clearly also considers the problem of culture from the enlarged perspective of a man who sees beyond his own society and who has given thought to the foundations of any political order (First Disc. III,3; Préf. seconde lettre III,106). Political society is based on men’s inability to satisfy their needs each by himself alone (C.S. (1,6) III, 360). Since in this condition each seeks out others primarily to profit from them and at their expense, what brings and holds men together is what divides them (Geneva ms. III,282-289; Inég. III,187–194). All the political solutions that Rousseau criticizes and rejects are attempts to police—and hence to perpetuate and even to aggravate—this state of affairs instead of altering it. The central political problem as he sees it is, therefore, to specify the conditions that will establish or restore the balance between everyone’s needs and the resources he can command in a manner such that none can —let alone must—satisfy his needs at the expense of another. In the state of civil society where all depend on all, this can be achieved only if man’s activities and pursuits are constantly gauged in terms of whether they contribute to the good of all without injuring anyone. The most distinctive feature of the social contract, as Rousseau conceives of it, is the moral and psychological change every individual undergoes as he comes to conceive of himself as a member of his political community; it is first and foremost a change in men’s relation to themselves. Hence its defining characteristic is that it fosters habits and dispositions that enable men to live together without being divided between the dictates of private and of public interest or of the individual and the general will. Rousseau’s rejection of the Hobbesian and Lockean social contract goes hand in hand with his rejection of the bourgeois in the name of the citizen and of citizen virtue. For all intents and purposes citizen virtue is one and the same as public spirit or patriotism. It consists not so much in the private pursuit of the private good of one’s fellows as in the public pursuit of the public good. Hence virtue, which might appear to tighten the bonds of dependence on others because it places one in the position of striving to do what others need or wish, really loosens such bonds to a considerable extent, because it places one in the position of doing what is good for all. It is less concerned with persons and propriety than with the quality of public life. It requires and develops vigor and greatness of soul. Virtue so conceived does not erase the distinction between the private and the public; instead it reduces as far as possible the areas of conflict between them, that is to say, between what interest dictates and justice requires. In a well-ordered civil society, in a society of citizens, virtue is the perfection of morals. Rousseau’s thought on this point is perhaps best expressed by speaking of morals as the middle term between the laws and virtue. Morals is not primarily a matter of individual actions; most people act well or decently most of the time. But even though we may, in any given case, have acted with good will, even though we may have attempted to avoid injuring anyone and succeeded in benefiting or at least dealing justly with those most immediately affected by what we happen to do, the more far-reaching effects of our actions may prove harmful not merely to some one person or other but to entire groups of people, as when, for example, the things we do are, viewed in a narrow compass, perfectly fair, decent, and correct, and yet establish or perpetuate practices or institutions that are unjust (Obs. III,50; Frgs. politiques III,555; Geneva ms. III,329f). These difficulties are not adequately overcome by the laws. The laws cannot possibly be sufficiently detailed to deal with all possible circumstances, and, indeed, to put the issue in terms of law would be to structure man’s conduct altogether too much in terms of external criteria. The laws only channel men’s actions and, for the most part, state only the minimum conditions of men’s living together. Nor are these difficulties adequately overcome by generalizing the maxims of our actions, that is to say, by invoking the general will, because the problem to which Rousseau is addressing himself here is one of establishing routines, habits, and social perceptions rather than reasoned judgments about the relations between any given action and the well-being of the community or even mankind as a whole. Wills and dispositions, morals, are fashioned by authoritative traditions, practices, and beliefs, in short by public opinion. It is through opinion that societies typically guide and instruct us about what they praise, honor, reward—and thus foster —or blame, censure, condemn—and thus discourage—not only as regards specific kinds of actions, but as regards ways of life and types of character. Morals are the laws that are “inscribed neither on marble nor on brass, but in the hearts of the citizens … a dimension ignored by our political thinkers but on which depends the success of all others” (C.S. (II,12) III,394; cf. Poland III,955). That is why politics cannot but be concerned with morals and why political justice can never be solely procedural or a virtue of institutions alone. That is also why morals in the sense in which Rousseau is concerned with them are far less a matter of cultivated reason than of sound opinion and good taste.

II

In a society where culture enjoys considerable esteem, where developments in the arts are followed with interest by large numbers of persons in positions of prestige and authority, where sophistication and taste are prized and manners polished to the point of artful naturalness, men feel required either to possess these accomplishments or to pretend that they do. The slavish adherence to the dictates of “the art of pleasing reduced to principles” brings about a “vile and deceiving uniformity” of manners and tastes. No one dares show himself for what he is, and, in the process, individuality, spontaneity, sincerity, true friendships—and enmities—are sacrified. All the contrasts Rousseau draws in this connection: between the gracious and the boorish, city and farm, civilized nations and barbarians, Athens and Sparta, are, of course, not intended to establish that to be uncouth or laconic is to have good morals or to be virtuous, but to show rather that, contrary to the dominant belief of enlightened opinion, the absence of culture is perfectly compatible with even the most common criteria of moral and political excellence, freedom, and empire; and that, again contrary to the dominant belief of enlightened opinion, a high premium on culture is not compatible with the preservation of freedom and empire, let alone with justice. He considers this relationship to be as binding as any law of nature. Manners, taste, sophistication contribute nothing to the fulfillment of a society’s needs or aspirations; on the contrary, they obstruct it. The greater the rewards for useless occupations, the smaller are those for occupations that are useful, and, since men are drawn to what promises rewards, society as a whole is the loser (Emile (III) IV,456f, Inég. (n IX), III,206). It is not merely that someone who might have made a decent craftsman becomes, instead, an indifferent poetaster, nor that the literary and artistic life in all of its forms unfits men for hardships, sacrifice, and valor. These are but symptoms of a deeper and more pervasive injury done to opinion and to morals inasmuch as the care and concern for the agreeable—which is ultimately private—crowds out the care and concern for the useful or the public good (Dernière Réponse III,74).

The aim of the arts is to please and of artists to be applauded (...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Series Preface
• Introduction
• PART I THE CRITIQUE OF PROGRESS AND THE SPECULATIVE ANTHROPOLOGY: ROUSSEAU’S FIRST TWO DISCOURSES
• 1 Victor Gourevitch (1972), ‘Rousseau on the Arts and Sciences’, Journal of Philosophy, 69, pp. 737-54, 754a-c.
• 2 Claude Lévi-Strauss (1977), ‘Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Founder of the Sciences of the Man’, in Claude Lévi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology, 2, London: Allen Lane, pp. 33–43.
• PART II THE NATURALIZING OF NATURAL LAW
• 3 Leo Strauss (1950), ‘The Crisis of Modern Natural Right’, in Leo Strauss (ed.), Natural Right and History, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 252-94.
• 4 Arthur M. Melzer (1983), ‘Rousseau’s Moral Realism: Replacing Natural Law with the General Will’, American Political Science Review, 77, pp. 633-51, 651a-c.
• PART III THE GENERAL WILL AND TOTALITARIANISM
• 5 Lester G. Crocker (1960), ‘The Relation of Rousseau’s Second Discours and the Contrat Social’, Romanic Review, 51, pp. 33–14, 44a.
• 6 Joshua Cohen (1986), ‘Reflections on Rousseau: Autonomy and Democracy’, Philosophy and Public Affairs, 15, pp. 275-97, 297a-b.
• 7 W.T. Jones (1987), ‘Rousseau’s General Will and the Problem of Consent’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 25, pp. 105-30, 130a.
• 8 Robert Wokler (1987), ‘Rousseau’s Two Concepts of Liberty’, in G. Feaver and F. Rosen (eds), Lives, Liberties and the Public Good: Essays in Political Theory for Maurice Cranston, London: Macmillan, pp. 61-100, 100a-b.
• 9 John Hope Mason (1989), ‘Individuals in Society: Rousseau’s Republican Vision’, History of Political Thought, 10, pp. 89-112, 112a-d.
• 10 Frederick Neuhouser (1993), ‘Freedom, Dependence, and the General Will’, The Philosophical Review, 102, pp. 363-95, 395a.
• PART IV ANTICIPATIONS OF GAME THEORY
• 11 W.G. Runciman and Amartya K. Sen (1965), ‘Games, Justice and the General Will’, Mind, 74, pp. 554-62.
• 12 Brian Skyrms (2001), ‘The Stag Hunt’, Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Society, 75, pp. 31—41.
• PART V STRATEGIES OF REDEMPTION
• 13 Jean Starobinski (1993), ‘The Antidote in the Poison: The Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’, in Blessings in Disguise, or the Morality of Evil, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 118-68, 223-28, 228a-b.
• 14 David Gauthier (1997), ‘Making Jean-Jacques’, in Timothy O’Hagan (ed.), Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Sources of the Self, Aldershot: Avebury, pp. 1-15, 15a-b.
• Index