Rousseau

Nicholas Dent

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2008
• ISBN:
  9781134455669
• Edizione: 1
• Argomento: Philosophy
• Categoria: Philosophy History & Theory

In this superb introduction, Nicholas Dent covers the whole of Rousseau's thought. Beginning with a helpful overview of Rousseau's life and works, he introduces and assesses Rousseau's central ideas and arguments. These include the corruption of modern civilization, the state of nature, his famous theories of amour de soi and amour propre, education, and his famous work Emile. He gives particular attention to Rousseau's theories of democracy and freedom found in his most celebrated work, The Social Contract, and explains what Rousseau meant by the 'general will'.

Four
Émile

INTRODUCTION

Rousseau considered Émile to be his most penetrating and foundational work (RJJ 211; OC I, 933). Its subtitle is ‘On Education’, but although the work is cast as the narrative of the education of Émile from infancy to adulthood, and although it includes a great deal about the processes and objectives of an appropriate education (as well as many vividly depicted episodes of educative intent), Rousseau denied that it was a ‘real treatise on education’. Rather:

It is a quite philosophical work on the principle advanced by the author in other writings, that man is naturally good. To reconcile this principle with the other truth, no less certain, that men are bad, it would be necessary to show in the history of the human heart the origin of all the vices . . . In that sea of passions which submerges us, before one seeks to clear the way, one must begin by finding it.

(Letter to Philibert Cramer, 13 October 1764, tr. Hendel: 296, also cited in Masters: 3)

Although I shall note some of Rousseau’s pedagogic strategies and tactics in passing, my approach to the work is guided by what he says here: one must find the way first, and how then to clear it comes after. This being so, I think it is reasonable to see Rousseau, in Émile, as attempting to show what it would be like for an individual to have a whole and intact life and possess his own soul despite the almost overwhelming tendencies towards deformation and self-alienation that ordinarily befall us, according to the accounts that we have been examining in the previous chapter. Rousseau’s project can then, I suggest, be seen as part of his response to the ‘Agenda’ I identified at the end of Chapter 3 focusing closely on the life of an individual, as equally we can see The Social Contract as a response to that agenda at the level of the design of political principles and procedures.

Rousseau probably began work on Émile in early 1759, when he was living at Montlouis, near Montmorency, just outside central Paris. It has been suggested that it was the wish on his part to meet the requests of some of his women friends for advice on how best to bring up their children that induced him to formulate his educational ideas in book form; he dispensed much advice in letters also. But this idea does not really explain why they turned to him for advice in the first place, especially as he had brought up no children. However, and as discussed just above, his dominant concern is not really child-rearing techniques but rather the means by which a person may come to live the best life for himself, maintaining his personal integrity both as an independent being but also while living with others in society and the state. The manuscript was more or less ready for publication by July 1761; there exist parts of an earlier draft also, about one-third the length of the final version, the MS Favre. It eventually appeared in May 1762, a month after the publication of The Social Contract. I have given, in Chapter 2, a more detailed account of the circumstances of its publication, and the aftermath of that – its being banned, Rousseau fleeing Paris and so on. Rousseau cannot have imagined that publishing this book would turn him into a hunted and stateless fugitive. But for all that the work was so firmly condemned by the public authorities – or perhaps because of this – it sold well and won him many individual admirers.

I noted at the start Rousseau’s own estimate of this work, as the one which cut deepest and revealed the foundations of his thinking; this is an estimate of it that I share. The book has the form of a narrative account of the development of an imaginary, but supposedly representative, male child, Émile, from his birth until he is around twenty-five, under the guidance of his tutor and constant companion Jean-Jacques who obviously bears some likenesses to Rousseau himself. In the MS Favre, alluded to above, Rousseau divides the developmental stages into four: the age of nature, up to twelve years old, treated in Books I and II in the final version; the age of reason, practical, applied intelligence, from twelve to fifteen, treated in Book III; the age of ‘force’, energy, vitality of life, including the awakening of sexual interest in adolescence, from fifteen to twenty, the topic of Book IV; finally the age of wisdom, from twenty to twenty-five, covered in Book V (see OC IV: 60). The table Rousseau gives there continues, rather optimistically: ‘The age of happiness and well-being – all the rest of life’. But this is not discussed. What Rousseau is concerned with at each stage is a whole constellation of capabilities, dispositions, forms of self-understanding and forms of relationship with the material world, with the human world of other people especially, and with the divine that go make up the identity and characteristics of the human being at that particular time. It is central to his argument that the constitution of the self and the forms of self and other understanding undergo radical transformations during the life of an individual. In saying this, there are clear echoes of his arguments in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. I believe that no crucial significance attaches to the particular chronology Rousseau gives for the emergence of each of these different self-constituting constellations; it is rather the description of their character and implications that is key. At the same time, Rousseau throughout warns of deformations that may occur in relation to each of these configurations, and makes many proposals about how to avoid these; this is in fact the principal educational burden of the work. Some of these proposals strike me as very interesting and plausible; others as much less so. But here, too, I suggest that it is the character and implications of the distorted forms that is the principal object of concern, not whether this or that practical pedagogic tip is likely to be effective or not. To repeat Rousseau’s own metaphor: identifying the correct path must precede suggesting methods for clearing it.

He sets out the principal intent of the work in the opening pages, to determine whether it is possible for a man to be good both for himself and for others. It may seem surprising that I say this is the principal intent because, at first sight, Rousseau seems to indicate that this is quite impossible. Men are, he says, naturally interested in their own well-being: ‘natural man is entirely for himself’ (E I 39, OC IV: 249). On the other hand, the good citizen is ‘denatured’:

Good social institutions are those that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the / into the common unity, with the result that each individual believes himself no longer one but a part of the unity and no longer feels except within the whole. A citizen of Rome was neither Caius nor Lucius; he was a Roman.

(E I 40, OC IV: 249)

And he goes on, just a line or two later:

He who in the civil order wants to preserve the primacy of the sentiments of nature does not know what he wants. Always in contradiction with himself, always floating between his inclinations and his duties, he will never be either man or citizen. He will be good neither for himself nor for others. He will be one of these men of our days: a Frenchman, and Englishman, a bourgeois. He will be nothing.

(Ibid.)

Many interpreters take these passages as definitive, attracted perhaps by the simple either/or that they present: man is either natural or denatured; good for himself or for others; has an absolute existence or a relative one – and so on. However, it is very clear that Rousseau’s view is that someone raised for himself may still find an effective rôle and footing with others. The key passage is this:

what will a man raised uniquely for himself become for others? If perchance the double object we set for ourselves could be joined in a single one by removing the contradictions of man, a great obstacle to his happiness would be removed. In order to judge of this, he would have to be seen wholly formed: his inclinations would have to have been observed, his progress seen, his development followed. In a word, the natural man would have to be known. I believe that one will have made a few steps in these researches when one has read this writing.

(E I: 41, OC IV: 251)

It thus appears that Rousseau is anxious to show that these are not exclusive alternatives, but that it is possible to find a basis for and form of engagement with others in society and the state that will preserve man’s nature and goodness intact and hold out the prospect of enduring happiness and completion of life for the individual. If this is possible, then in thinking about how Rousseau construes the forms of relationship between the individual and society we are faced with four possibilities not just the usually suggested three. First, one could preserve oneself whole and entire by withdrawal or separation from society, to achieve a condition approximating to the condition of man in the state of nature as described in DI, or one might confine oneself to a small circle of family and friends bound by ties of warm affection. Or, second, one might become deformed and self-estranged because of the deleterious effects of aggression and the desire for dominance in society. Third, one might yield one’s absolute existence and become ‘neither Caius nor Lucius . . . [but] a Roman’. But then, fourth, one could find a footing for oneself with others in society that is appropriate to one’s needs and nature as an individual and which will be conducive to one’s personal happiness and self-actualisation. To show the substance of this fourth possibility is, as I take it, the primary burden of Émile, and my assessment of the work will be guided by this idea.

ÉMILE: BOOKS I–III

Books I and II of Émile consider Émile in his infancy and early childhood, up to around twelve years old, as noted earlier. In early infancy, Émile’s sense of self and self-understanding is very limited: ‘He has no sentiment, no idea; hardly does he have sensations. He does not even sense his own existence’ (E I: 74, OC IV: 298; see also E I: 42, 61; OC IV: 253, 279). Rousseau dispenses a good deal of practical advice about the best way to treat infants. He warns against swaddling, and coddling, them and urges that they should be breastfed by their mother rather than by a wet nurse, all of which comments had significant influence. But of more importance are Rousseau’s reflections on the significance of a child’s cries and the way these are responded to by those around them, most especially in instances where the child is reacting to failing to have their desires satisfied or to finding their actions impeded. He finds a great deal in these episodes, and his comments merit careful reflection. Thus he writes:

A child cries at birth; the first part of his childhood is spent crying. At one time we bustle about, we caress him in order to pacify him; at another, we threaten him, we strike him in order to make him keep quiet. Either we do what pleases him, or we exact from him what pleases us. Either we submit to his whims, or we submit him to ours. No middle ground; he must give orders or receive them. Thus his first ideas are those of domination and servitude. Before knowing how to speak, he commands; before being able to act, he obeys . . . It is thus that we fill up his young heart at the outset with the passions which later we impute to nature and that, after having taken efforts to make him wicked, we complain about finding him so.

(E I: 48, OC IV: 261)

Or again:

The first tears of children are prayers. If one is not careful, they soon become orders. Children begin by getting themselves assisted; they end up getting themselves served. Thus, from their own weakness, which is in the first place the source of the feeling of their dependence, is subsequently born the idea of empire and domination. But since this idea is excited less by their needs than by our services, at this point moral effects whose immediate cause is not in nature begin to make their appearance; and one sees already why it is important from the earliest age to disentangle the secret intention which dictates the gesture or the scream.

(E I: 66, OC IV: 287)

There is much else to the point as well (see especially E II: 87–8, OC IV: 314–5).

What Rousseau is suggesting here is that the innate reactions that a child has which enable them to lay hold on life and preserve themself are susceptible to different pathways of development and consolidation depending on how they finds their environment is affected by those reactions. I use the colourless term ‘environment’ for reasons that will become plain below; it is meant to cover human reactions, its social environment, as well as inanimate surroundings. Two points stand out. First, if the child learns that they have only to cry to be fussed over, comforted, anxiously attended to, they will soon learn, in Rousseau’s marvellous words, ‘how pleasant it is to act with the hands of others and to need only to stir one’s tongue to make the universe move’ (E I: 68, OC IV: 289; see also E II: 88, OC IV: 314). But then, second, when – as will inevitably happen – their desires, already ludicrously enlarged by the delusive idea afforded to it of its scope and power, are not satisfied, they will become enraged at this. Rousseau sees in this rage a considerable degree of complexity, albeit plainly not consciously and explicitly present in the child’s awareness. In rage and anger is the idea that one’s dissatisfaction is the upshot of the thwarting interference, or hurtful negligence, of another person taken to be malign whether or not they truly are. The enraged child finds themself in a world permeated by believed ill intent and thus begins to attack or defend themself, if only out of a desire for self-preservation in the first instance:

the child who has only to want in order to get believes himself to be the owner of the universe; he regards all men as his slaves. When one is finally forced to refuse him something, he, believing that at his command everything is possible, takes this refusal for an act of rebellion. All reasons given him at an age when he is incapable of reasoning are to his mind only pretexts. He sees ill will everywhere. The feeling of an alleged injustice souring his nature, he develops hatred towards everyone; and, without ever being grateful for helpfulness, he is indignant at every opposition.

(E II: 87, OC IV: 314)

Of course – and this is part of Rousseau’s point – such a mindset is not confined to the young; it is every bit as familiar among those who are chronologically adult but psychologically not yet so.

Rousseau’s discussion of a child’s wilfulness interestingly echoes several aspects of John Locke’s treatment of this in his Some Thoughts Concerning Education. Thus Locke writes:

We see Children (as soon almost as they are born, I am sure long before they can speak) cry, grow peevish, sullen and out of humour, for nothing but to have their Wills. They would have their Desires submitted to by others; they contend for a ready compliance from all about them; especially from those that stand near, or beneath them in Age or Degree, as soon as they come to consider others with those distinctions.

(Some Thoughts, Para. 104)

And Locke, just as Rousseau, makes many subtle observations on the meaning of a child’s cries and how to respond to these (see Some Thoughts, Para. 111 ff). Rousseau refers quite extensively in the text of Émile to Locke’s work and often favourably, though their general approach to the purposes of education is very different; for Locke, ...