Rousseau and the Roots of Modernity

2023

Today it is unquestionable that power legitimately belongs to the people. No one doubts popular “sovereignty,” even if the expression seems ambiguous if not vague. The other claims to legitimacy–divine authority, the rule of the best or the sovereignty of princes (such as the ancient and medieval appeals to Divine Providence, wisdom of the rulers or the nature of man) – have long since been abandoned. Indeed, this abandonment goes back at least to the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment or “Illustration” was a scientific, literary and artistic movement that dominated the European world of ideas during the 18th century and that was the result of an informal association of “men of letters” known as the French philosophes (among whom names like those of Voltaire, d’Alembert, Diderot and Montesquieu stand out). This association is publicly manifested in the project to gather a summary of all knowledge in the Encyclopedia, published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five thick volumes, with the collaboration of more than one hundred and fifty scientists and philosophers. However, the movement spread far beyond France, also flourishing in Scotland (with Francis Hutcheson, Adam Smith, David Hume and Thomas Reid), and in Germany (the Aufklärung that includes names as Christian Wolff, Moses Mendelssohn, G. E. Lessing and, in its descending phase, Immanuel Kant). The “Century of Enlightenment” or “of philosophy” is a period of euphoria and confidence in reason, progress and science, which roughly runs from 1715 until it dies at the turn of the century. Despite the enormous diversity of ideas and tendencies, loosely grouped around ideas such as Liberty or Progress, the Enlightenment is more profoundly defined by a fundamental conviction that is widely cherished, even today: the progress of knowledge and science will gradually lead to the moral progress of humanity, through a process of gradual diffusion that will eventually end all prejudices under the “magisterium” of philosophers, that is, thinkers, artists and scientists in general, and not merely philosophers in the current sense. All the people, duly educated, will be able to understand science and philosophy as well as possible, and it will suffice to apply this knowledge to social and political life. Rhetoric – a persuasion technique that mediated the relationship between philosophers and opinion among the ancients and was part of the medieval curriculum – becomes unnecessary and even a little suspicious (it is still devalued today as “merely rhetorical”). To ensure that the inevitable path of progress is cleared, it is enough to uproot the deep-rooted prejudices of obscurantism (and, in some versions, religion). Consequently, although provisionally new “enlightened” policies can be entrusted to a benevolent tyrant (the Enlightened despot), in the long run it is simply inconceivable that sovereignty does not belong to the people. Monarchical and aristocratic Europe, which was already on its knees at the end of the 18th century, disappears and there are great revolutions on both sides of the Atlantic. The “Century of Philosophy” is therefore that of the victory of philosophy over the throne and the altar. This new era is populated by free and equal individuals, endowed with inalienable rights, who no longer recognize any authority other than their own reason. But if today we unhesitatingly subscribe to the idea of “popular sovereignty,” we do not fail to notice that any forms of government is not natural and involve a certain coercion or a more subtle use of power and violence that we deem suspicious. Government is something artificial and does not belong to the natural state of “man.” Due to asphyxiating conventions and the bourgeois ethos, man is not naturally free in any society. As Rousseau states, many before him (especially Hobbes and Locke) looked for man in his natural state, without actually finding him. But when Rousseau strips man of everything man acquires with effort, he discovers a being that is not only solitary, but non-rational, lacking language (which is only born with the first associations) and not even fully human. It appears to be a sub-human or pre-human being that seems to possess unlimited perfectibility or malleability. There is for us an obvious opposition between nature and government (or the “civil state”), but this opposition is closely linked to another, equally evident opposition, between nature and culture (or “the arts”). Nature, as portrayed by Rousseau and as we think of it today, can no longer serve as a standard for social and political behavior. How does this rupture occur?

Robert Wokler was one of the world's leading experts on Rousseau and the Enlightenment, but some of his best work was published in the form of widely scattered and difficult-to-find essays. This book collects for the first time a representative selection of his most important essays on Rousseau and the legacy of Enlightenment political thought. These essays concern many of the great themes of the age, including liberty, equality and the origins of revolution. But they also address a number of less prominent debates, including those over cosmopolitanism, the nature and social role of music and the origins of the human sciences in the Enlightenment controversy over the relationship between humans and the great apes. These essays also explore Rousseau's relationships to Rameau, Pufendorf, Voltaire and Marx; reflect on the work of important earlier scholars of the Enlightenment, including Ernst Cassirer and Isaiah Berlin; and examine the influence of the Enlightenment on the twentieth century. One of the central themes of the book is a defense of the Enlightenment against the common charge that it bears responsibility for the Terror of the French Revolution, the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth-century and the Holocaust. Foreword: Bryan Garsten Introduction: Christopher Brooke 1. Perfectible Apes in Decadent Cultures: Rousseau's Anthropology Revisited 2. Rites of Passage and the Grand Tour: Discovering, Imagining and Inventing European Civilization in the Age of Enlightenment 3. Rousseau on Rameau and Revolution 4. Vagabond Reverie 5. The Enlightenment Hostilities of Voltaire and Rousseau 6. Rousseau's Pufendorf: Natural Law and the Foundations of Commercial Society 7. Rousseau's Reading of the Book of Genesis and the Theology of Commercial Society 8. The Manuscript Authority of Political Thoughts 9. Preparing the Definitive Edition of the Correspondance de Rousseau 10. Rousseau's Two Concepts of Liberty 11. The Enlightenment and the French Revolutionary Birth Pangs of Modernity 12. Rousseau and Marx 13. Ernst Cassirer's Enlightenment: An Exchange with Bruce Mazlish 14. Isaiah Berlin's Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment 15. Projecting the Enlightenment Bibliography of the Published Work of Robert Wokler

History of European Ideas, 1994

Rousseau's Contrat Social' is a book about "the principles of political right". Its object "is to consider if, in any political society, there can be any legitimate and sure principle of government, taking men as they are and laws as they might be" (CS, I, Introduction). In determining principles of political right and legitimacy, Rousseau develops a republican model of the state in which the power of government is circumscribed and the general will, instituted as law, is paramount. These two elements: government and law, are the cornerstones of Rousseau's republicanism which has for its ends the liberty and equality of each individual united, in the body politic, under the collective force of all. This theory is modern since the principles of political right and legitimacy grounded in the language of natural law, are transformed under Rousseau's pen. Rousseau redefines central notions such as government, state and sovereignty developing a modern political language and juridical terminology which, according to Robert DerathC, "are still used today having preserved the meaning Rousseau gave them".* Government is one of the most interesting terms Rousseau clarified and upon which he left his impression. The third and longest book of the Contrat Social treats almost exclusively the question ofgovernment.' It opens with the assertion that he will "try to fix the precise meaning of this word [government] which has not hitherto been very well explained" (CS, III, Preface). Government is executive power, conceptualised as separate from sovereignty and legislative power. Only in republics and democracies is government "nothing but executive power, and it is absolutely distinct from sovereignty"4 (my emphasis). This distinction indicates that Rousseau is working within the modern republican paradigm' originating in the thought of Cicero and Machiavelli as mixed government and culminating in Montesquieu's De I'Esprit de Lois as the separation and balance of powers. According to Rousseau, political society is an artificial construct uniting individual interests in order to guarantee man's security and freedom since "men cannot create new forces, but merely combine and control those which already exist'* (CS, I, 6). The union of all particular wills directed to the preservation and good of all, described by Rousseau as the social bond is the undergirding principle of his political theory. It is given expression in three places: the social contract, the union which creates civil society; the general will, the force which directs society; and law, the general will enforced and institutionalised as legislation. These three elements influence the way in which institutions of the state and government are constructed.

The Political Philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2003

When evening has come, I return to my house and go into my study. At the door I take off my clothes of the day, covered with mud and mire, and I put on my regal and courtly garments; and decently re-clothed, I enter the ancient courts of ancient men, where, received by them lovingly, I feed on the food that alone is mine and that I was born for. There I am not ashamed to speak with them and to ask them the reason for their actions; and they in their humanity reply to me. And for the space of four hours I feel no boredom, I forget every pain, I do not fear poverty, death does not frighten me. I deliver myself entirely to them. (Machiavelli 1994: 3) Two hundred years later, one of his most famous disciples, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, sought to emulate the Florentine master, by taking up his pen. Like his philosopher colleague, the Swiss thinker also believed that political philosophy should be a continuing dialogue with the classics. In the introduction to the Discourse sur l'inégalité (The Origin of Inequality), Rousseau, almost echoing Machiavelli, set out to transcend history and speak directly to all of mankind. As my subject of interest is mankind in general, I shall endeavour to make use of a style adapted to all nations, or rather forgetting time and place, to attend only to men to whom I am speaking. I shall suppose myself in the Lyceum of Athens, repeating the lessons of my masters, with Plato and Socrates for my judges, and the whole of the human race for audience. (III: 135) This little book is an attempt to reopen a dialogue with the classics. It attempts not only to see the masters in context-as has become popular among modern thinkers-but rather to seek inspiration from the great minds to deal with contemporary political problems. Rousseau-and indeed any other classic-is politically relevant only if he reveals timeless insights. If a classic cannot inspire he is nothing, and is better confined to the dustbin of failed political doctrines. This book is based on the premise-to be supported in the text-that Rousseau speaks through the ages. It seeks to show that Rousseau, while he may not have the answers to contemporary problems, at the very least provides new angles and perspectives on the debate. By failing to take these contributions seriously we rob ourselves of an important source of inspiration when we deal with the political problems of our times. Of course, Rousseau is not the only thinker to inspire. Marx, Plato, Smith, Aristotle, Madison, Hobbes, Hegel and Locke have made other-in many ways equally interesting and valuable-contributions to that never-ending debate which is political philosophy. This book, however, presents a perspective from the point of view of Rousseau. It is to be hoped that others will take up the challenge, and translate the doctrines of the other xvi For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? (St Matthew, 16.26) Did Ludwig Wittgenstein write the most successful love story of his century? Did Thomas Hobbes compose an opera-and did it inspire the work of Mozart? Did Byron write poems about Hume or Leibniz? Did Schiller compose sonnets about Descartes and Locke? These questions seem too ridiculous to warrant an answer. Ask the same questions about Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) and the opposite is true. The composer of Le devin du village (the favourite opera of Louis XV), the author of La Nouvelle Héloïse (the best-selling novel in the eighteenth century), Rousseau was more than the famed educationalist and the 'author of the French revolution'. He inspired Mozart, Derrida, Tolstoi, Kant, Marie Antoinette, Emile Durkheim, Byron, Goethe and Simone Weil, as well as politicians like Maximilien Robespierre, Thomas Jefferson, Simon de Bolivar and John F. Kennedy. It is not surprising that this literary genius continues to fascinate. 2 'A classic' , noted T.S. Eliot, 'is someone who establishes a culture' (Eliot 1975: 402). Few others than Plato, Virgil and Christ (and the latter, arguably, had unfair parental support!) can lay claim to this status. As one scholar has put it, 'In our time Rousseau is usually cited as a classic of early modern political philosophy. He is more than that: he is the central figure in the history of modern philosophy and perhaps the pivotal figure in modern culture as a whole' (Velkley 2002: 31). Rousseau belongs to the noble few. Reviled and ridiculed, liked or loathed, the Swiss vagabond, who never attended university, let alone owned land or held privileges is, perhaps, alongside Karl Marx, the only modern thinker who qualifies as a 'classic' .

Jean-Jacques Rousseau had set out to determine ‘whether there can be a legitimate political authority, since people’s interactions he saw at his time seemed to put them in a state far worse than the good one they were at in the state of nature, even though living in isolation’. Consequently, he had formulated The Social Contract ‘as the best way to establish a political community, in the face of the problems of commercial society’, with the immortal opening line, Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chains, that is literally true for over two centuries now. However, the socio-religious circles of individual freedom came to vary from society to society, in times to times; and the objective of this piece is to take a cursory look at the same. In this context, it should be noted that traditionally, societies world over, for the most part, tended to restrain women in chains that are far too shorter than Rousseau’s Chains that bound men, and that ensues female freedoms are encapsulated within the realms of male constraints. Nevertheless, for the purpose of this exercise, we may examine the changes in female ‘freedom’ circles in the Christian, Islamic and the Hindu societies.

Rousseau’s thought is premised upon the radical critique of the modern civilisation emerging in his day. Rousseau is shown to castigate the modern society emerging in his day not as an ascent from darkness to light, but as artificial and corrupt, its intellectual achievement being bought at the price of moral decadence. Rousseau identified the clear weakness of an Enlightenment which was founded upon opinion and prejudice rather than on moral and rational principles. Thus, Rousseau is shown to criticise the way that the laws protected and promoted the interests of the strong and the rich against the poor and the weak; the way that religious institutions engendered intolerance and discord; the way that the artificial or distorted beings produced by the educational system fell far short of authentic human beings; the way that bourgeois society fed the ego in separation from and opposition to others rather than nurturing the whole person in relation to others. Rousseau is shown to be in search of fundamental principles, premising his philosophy upon an examination of human nature and the place of human beings in the ‘order of things’. As ‘the portrayer of nature’ and ‘the historian of the human heart’, Rousseau is shown to affirm the existence of a universal human nature, a definite human essence which has definite political and social implications.

Against standard interpretations of Rousseau according to which he holds the view that humans are naturally self-sufficient, asocial beings, necessarily corrupted by societies, I argue that Rousseau holds the view that human beings are naturally social. This paper shows that "The Second Discourse" contains an argument that we can only account for basic human characteristics – such as language and reason – if we understand humans in this way, as inevitably social beings. It is true that Rousseau criticizes societies for being corrupt. But that should not be taken as a criticism of all societies. Only some societies are corrupt: those in which humans’ nature as free persons cannot develop. The asocial human being of Rousseau’s natural state is a theoretical device in a reductio argument that Rousseau aims at the Hobbesian view. A society’s corruption is not a function of its artificiality, of its departure from an asocial state of nature, but of its departure from a natural, uncorrupted society. This is a society that provides conditions in which humans’ nature as free persons can develop, such as the legitimate society of The Social Contract. This has the implication that Rousseau’s theory of freedom has an Aristotelian rather than a Kantian foundation.

Filosofija. Sociologija, 2019

In this study, we will try to show that human nature can be handled with a political determination in Rousseau. Human nature has always been a controversial subject of political philosophy in the historical process. So much so that in these discussions we can see that human nature, especially with Rousseau, is now treated as something that is shaped and changed separately for each of various processes of history. Therefore we will first focus on how human nature is defined in Rousseau in the state of nature to show that human nature has been subjected to political influence in the historical process. Then we will examine how the human nature takes shape with the civilization leading to the end of the state of nature. Finally, through social contracting, we will focus on how human nature is transformed into a political thing by gaining a new dimension.

The argument of the first Discours is governed by the antithesis between the ‘original’ nature of man on the one hand and the corruption of modern civilisation on the other; this antithesis is developed in terms of a contrast between the freedom implied by true being and the enslavement and estrangement which is the human condition in the modern world. Rousseau is concerned not so much with historical details as with the moral theme which allows him to separate the original elements of man’s being from the artificial elements added by the process of civilisation. By ‘original’ Rousseau means ‘what belongs incontestably to man’. Rousseau is therefore concerned to distinguish the essential and authentic as given by true original being from the accidental and artificial elements added by civilisation.

2017

It was widely believed after WW2 that totalitarianism could be traced back to Rousseau’s rationalistic utopia. This idea conveyed, in particular, by Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom, is still popular in some political circles. This article intends, however, to demonstrate that rather than originating from Kantian readings of the Social Contract, the totalitarian interpretations of Rousseau’s work essentially arose from his literary and autobiographical writings. It is Romanticism, and its alleged political and moral deviances, that is indeed targeted through Rousseau. Ironically, this prompted some intellectuals—including Cassirer—to revisit and to reappraise his political thought.