Rousseau

Céline Spector

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781509516520
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Political Philosophy

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most controversial philosophers of the eighteenth century, and his groundbreaking work still provokes heated debate in contemporary political theory.

In this book, Céline Spector, one of the world's foremost experts on Rousseau's thought, provides an accessible introduction to his moral, social and political theory. She explores the themes and central concepts of his thought, ranging from the state of nature, the social contract and the general will to natural and political freedom, religion and education. She combines a skilful exposition of Rousseau as a 'man of paradoxes' with a discussion of his often-overlooked ideas on knowledge, political economy and international relations.

The book traces both the overall unity and the significant changes in Rousseau's philosophy, accounting for its complexity and for the importance of its legacy. It will be essential reading for scholars, students and general readers interested in the Enlightenment and more broadly in the history of modern political thought and philosophy.

1
A Modern Critique of Modernity

Rousseau became a famous political theorist while criticizing the Enlightenment mainstream. The Enlightenment philosophes had fought a battle against despotism and fanaticism and attempted to destroy destructive prejudices. But Rousseau considered that their struggle against tradition and superstition led to new pathologies. His radical discontent was with the three pillars of Enlightenment civilization: science, progress and commerce.¹ To the essay competition sponsored in 1750 by the Academy of Dijon (‘Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?’), the Citizen of Geneva answered provocatively. His entry into the Republic of Letters was a succès de scandale.

The first Discourse is constructed in two parts: the first aims to establish an effect, the real depravity associated with the rise of the arts and sciences, in all times and in all places. The second seeks its causes. Rousseau intends to demonstrate a law of history: ‘Our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our Sciences and Arts to perfection.’²

The Pathologies of Commercial Society

The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (the first Discourse) opens with a picture of Europe since the Renaissance: the progress and dissemination of science undoubtedly had certain beneficial effects. But Rousseau considers that the price to pay is too high. The satisfaction of our minds and the well-being of our bodies accompanied moral corruption and political servitude. Politeness and the arts tend to conceal our depravity and thus to promote it:

While Government and Laws provide for the safety and well-being of assembled men, the Sciences, Letters, and Arts, which less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which men are burdened, stifle in them the sentiment of that original liberty for which they seemed to have been born, make them love their slavery, and turn them into what is called civilised peoples.³

Here, the political dimension of the Discourse instantly appears: the danger lies in a soft despotism that science, philosophy, commerce and the arts only reinforce. Rousseau argues that the Enlightenment's fetishes are incompatible not only with true wisdom and moral behaviour but with freedom itself. His ‘intention’ is not merely to praise ignorance in the interest of morality but also to attack the Enlightenment as a pillar of despotism.⁴

The political case against the arts is twofold. First, Rousseau argues through an evidence-based discourse relying on history that the rise of the fine arts is not associated with virtue, freedom or humanity but rather with luxury and patronage, thereby reinforcing political oppression. Second, he claims that, contrary to the common view, the sciences and the arts cannot support morality. While politeness refines our vices, artists’ interest in praise (especially in the salons) makes them adapt to the bad morals of their public.⁵ To be sure, Rousseau's powerful condemnation is primarily due to the social and political context in Europe: science and techniques are not dismissed in themselves but because of their social abuses.⁶ Thereby, the Citizen of Geneva builds a war machine against the frivolity of the Enlightenment and French civilization. Drawing on ancient history, he argues that everywhere that science and the arts have prospered, societies have become weak and corrupt and citizens have forgotten their public duties. The ‘rusticity’ attributed to ancient peoples from republican Rome or Sparta, virtuous and free without philosophers, is used as a weapon against the vicious refinement of the Moderns.

In this respect, Rousseau's demonstration rests on a strong claim: his definition of virtue is related to military discipline, close to the Roman definition of virtù. It is a martial virtue associated with courage, which may resist conquest and corruption and thus preserve freedom. Hence Sparta is preferred to Athens, Cato to Socrates, military discipline to philosophy. In a famous passage, Rousseau even reconstructs the speech of Fabricius, a Roman consul of the third century BC, famous for his resistance to bribery and his austerity, whose life was praised by Plutarch. Thanks to a rhetorical device called a prosopopoeia, in which the writer communicates to the audience by speaking as another person (here the Roman consul), Rousseau pushes the argument to its limit: ‘Romans, hasten to tear down these Amphitheatres, break these marble statues, burn these paintings, chase out these slaves who subjugate you and whose fatal arts corrupt you. Let other hands win fame by vain talents. The only talent worthy of Rome is that of conquering the world and making virtue reign in it.’⁷ The case against science and the arts is carried out in the name of a martial account of civic virtue, modelled on Sparta or republican Rome.

But can Rousseau endorse this argument in his own name? Most of the critics of the Discourse will underline that Rousseau's nostalgic discourse fantasizes a mythic golden age. In his reply to the Polish king in exile, Stanislaw, who sponsored an academy and claimed the title of ‘beneficent’ and ‘philosopher’ king, Rousseau himself qualifies Fabricius's iconoclasm: ‘What! Must everything that is abused therefore be suppressed? Yes, without any doubt, I will reply without hesitation. All those that are useless. All those the abuse of which does more harm than their use does good.’⁸ Rousseau is committed to a radical view, but not to the point of engendering Fabricius's hatred since he immediately adds: ‘Let's stop a moment on that last consequence and take care not to conclude that tod...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1: A Modern Critique of Modernity
• 2: Popular Sovereignty and the General Will
• 3: Political Legitimacy and Applied Politics
• 4: Morality and Education
• 5: Metaphysics and Religion
• 6: Economic Philosophy
• 7: War and Peace
• 8: After Rousseau
• Conclusion
• Bibliography and Further Reading
• Index
• End User License Agreement