On Jean-Jacques Rousseau
By: Kevin Shau
Tags: Enlightenment, History, Rousseau, Politics, Philosophy

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1766) by Allan Ramsay

“Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made” -Immanuel Kant (1724–1804)

Few thinkers managed to preserve an authentic sense of self-identity to the same degree as the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). Rousseau was a man of many contradictions, deep introspection (often leaving too little to the imagination), and genius. He would have been a terrible person to know, as his contemporary David Hume found out (I will return to this later). He wrote a book about the ideal way to raise children despite the fact that he sent his own five children to foundling hospitals. He addressed the problem of inequality with a greater deal of realism than bitter, old Marx would nearly a century later. He was a philosopher, writer, composer, advocate of simple living, political exile, republican, religious pragmatist, and one of the most genuine human beings to ever walk the Earth. He was also a little bonkers. Rousseau’s ideas were used and abused by French Revolutionaries in their calamitous idealism in the decade between 1789–1799. The Jacobins, a gang of murderous thugs, read his work and had his body interred in the Panthéon in Paris.

On a personal note, I find Rousseau both wonderful and troubling. He was a thinker who challenged the superficiality of the French Enlightenment. He was increasingly dissatisfied with the sanctimonious condescension of men like Voltaire. He was proud to have been a citizen of Geneva. He was not a Frenchman and seemed to have a fondness for being an outsider. He thought about the world around him in a deep way, engaging with the conflicting elements of human nature. His work has a depth not reached by the likes of Voltaire. Reading the works of Voltaire, I an increasingly convinced that the English historian Edward Gibbon (1737–1794) was right when he wrote “in his way, Voltaire was a bigot, an intolerant bigot.”[1] Voltaire was a critic of organized religion. He also had the habit of criticizing religious people as backward. He himself was a Deist, not an atheist. Voltaire was also quite the diva. When the testament of Jean Meslier, a closet atheist priest was discovered, Voltaire heavily edited it to make Meslier appear to be a mild Deist rather than the radical atheist and proto-communist that he was.[2] [3] I find in Rousseau a man for whom I deep respect and deep disagreements. I have found it an exciting challenge to find a thinker with ideas I could strongly oppose yet also appreciate. In this article I will argue that Rousseau was right or usefully wrong in many different areas. Indeed, I will argue that he easily ranks among the top 25 most important Western philosophers.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau argued that society has a corrupting influence on humanity. This is present in his earliest philosophical work, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750). Rousseau wrote this as a response to an essay prompt from the Academy of Dijon “Has the restoration of the sciences and arts contributed to the purification of morals?” His response was a resounding ‘no.’ His response won the prize on offer and his answer ran counter to what Rousseau’s friend Denis Diderot thought would be the common response. Diderot was in prison at the time but Rousseau was able to visit him. In this first work, Rousseau was able to begin developing his novel approach to scientific and technological progress, a perspective which has offered valuable insight into the inquisitive, contrarian mind. “I foresee that I shall not readily be forgiven for having taken up the position I have adopted. Setting myself up against all that is nowadays most admired, I can expect no less than a universal outcry against me: nor is the approbation of a few sensible men enough to make me count on that of the public. But I have taken my stand, and I shall be at no pains to please either intellectuals or men of the world.”[4]

Rousseau shows an appreciation for the nascent, the simple, before the development of baroque ornamentation. Perhaps he was, at least in part, romanticizing the simplicity of his native Calvinist Geneva. “Before art had moulded our behaviour, and taught our passions to speak an artificial language, our morals were rude but natural; and the different ways in which we behaved proclaimed at the first glance the difference of our dispositions. Human nature was not at bottom better then than now; but men found their security in the ease with which they could see through one another, and this advantage, of which we no longer feel the value, prevented their having many vices.”[5]

Rousseau also expressed a skepticism toward the abstract musings of philosophers. “The Romans were satisfied with the practice of virtue; they were undone when they began to study it.”[6] This is not to say he was wholly against philosophy (obviously, as he was a prominent philosopher). But he was aware of the shortcomings of his own outlook and abstract reasoning in general. The Age of Enlightenment allowed for many great innovations but human nature remains essentially the same. Human nature is not rational, though rationality is a tool people can use to make improvements in their lives. Rousseau was the ‘based’ skeptic of Enlightenment triumphalism. In this respect, one can imagine Rousseau as the eighteenth-century’s equivalent of anti-social justice warrior and anti-postmodernist. He tended toward the traditional (though NOT uncritically) and expressed a deep understanding that rationality is a tool and should not become an idol. He understood the excesses of abstractions for the sake of abstractions. Voltaire, by contrast, wanted to be the celebrity philosopher. He had a talent for writing but also a huge ego, equaled only by his inability to develop a sense of creative exploration.[7] Voltaire was an ideologue first. His histories were little more than vehicles to advance his own political agenda. Rather than consult historical texts the way historians would (such as quoting people and making extensive use of primary sources), Voltaire’s use of the past of political purposes left little room for genuine historical inquiry or engagement with great men and women of the past.

Voltaire by

Nicolas de Largillière

Voltaire expressed his disagreement with Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality (1754 the ‘second discourse’), suggesting it promoted regression. “No one has ever employed so much intellect to persuade men to be beasts. In reading your work one is seized with a desire to walk on four paws. However, as it is more than sixty years since I lost that habit, I feel, unfortunately, that it is impossible for me to resume it.”[8] My sympathetic reading of Rousseau would have me defending, in part, his critique as engaging with human nature at a more primal level upon which a sound philosophic framework can be built. Admittedly, I am not altogether satisfied with this response but do not think a better defense of Rousseau in this particular situation is currently out there. There is much one should reject in Rousseau’s second discourse, in my opinion, because it undermines the basic human need for hierarchy as well as ignores or marginalizes the overwhelming good that has come from civilized society in general (and the West in particular).

Rousseau’s legacy suffered because several of his twentieth-century admirers used elements of his philosophy (often combined with Marxism) to do horrendous things. A key example here is that of Pol Pot. One can and should blame the French universities for their part in the ideological terrors of the twentieth century. From the Jacobins to Foucault and Derrida, French intellectuals have manufactured deadly ideologies while the philosophers themselves became increasingly pampered celebrities rather like the most superficial Hollywood actors. The American philosopher Noam Chomsky (b.1928) has called out French intellectual circles for their superficiality and dedication to pseudo-intellectual obscurantism. ““French intellectual life has, in my opinion, been turned into something cheap and meretricious by the ‘star’ system. It is like Hollywood. Thus we go from one absurdity to another — Stalinism, existentialism. Lacan, Derrida — some of them obscene (Stalinism), some simply infantile and ridiculous (Lacan, Derrida). What is striking, however, is the pomposity and self-importance, at each stage.”[9]

Rousseau, like the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes, began his inquiry with a hypothetical state of nature. Rousseau’s state of nature was the polar opposite, however. Whereas Hobbes argued that life in the state of nature was terrible, to say the least. “In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”[10] Rousseau took a more optimistic view. Here I would not defend Rousseau as I think Thomas Hobbes got it right. Rousseau’s insight is valuable as a critique, though. Hobbes got the picture largely right but not necessarily completely right. Whereas Hobbes presented the philosophical foundation for a stable society in which individual rights can come to be recognized and respected, Rousseau focused on the extremes of inequality present in society. “The first man, who, after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, “This is mine,” and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders, how many misfortunes and horrors, would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Be sure not to listen to this imposter; you are lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody!”[11] Rousseau went too far. His ideals blinded him from basic realities which would undermine many of the more extreme attempts to eliminate inequalities by those influenced by Rousseau.

Rousseau was a genius but a mad genius. He fell out with the philosophes in Paris and accepted an invitation by David Hume to come to Britain. Rousseau eventually fell out with Hume and suspected that Hume was part of a conspiracy against him. This erupted into a quarrel of letters between the two, eventually involving many intellectuals on the continent as well. Rousseau returned to France and finished his Confessions, an autobiographical work. Rousseau spent the last years of his life at his chateau in Ermenonville. In response to a visitor who said ‘men are wicked, Rousseau responded “men are wicked, yes, but man is good.” As someone who has been deeply influenced by the works of Jordan Peterson, I cannot help but read into this remark an understanding of individualism and skepticism toward collectivism. While many of Rousseau’s conclusions were questionable to say the least, he identified and tried to solve notable problems in society. His works offer valuable insights into the human condition. Of all of the thinkers I have ever read, Rousseau is the one whose conclusions I often strongly disagree with but whose works are among the most engaging.

Extra: An interesting coincidence of history — In his On the Social Contract (1762), Jean-Jacques Rousseau mentions Corsica as that island had recently freed itself from the Republic of Genoa. “There is still one country in Europe open to the Lawgiver. It is the island of Corsica. The valor and firmness with which this brave people has shown itself able to regain and defend its freedom richly deserve the aid of some wise man who will teach them how to preserve it. I have a premonition that some day this little island will astonish Europe.”[12] History proved Rousseau right in ways he would have never imagined. Seven years after On the Social Contract was published a boy was born on this island (which had been conquered by France in 1768): Napoleon Bonaparte.

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[1] http://authorscalendar.info/egibbon.htm

[2] It was Jean Meslier who proclaimed that he “wished that all the great men in the world and all the nobility could be hanged, and strangled with the guts of the priests.” He kept this hidden during his life and it was discovered only after his death in 1729.

[3] Historian Philipp Blom covers this in great detail in his book A Wicked Company.

[4] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on the Arts and Sciences.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ibid.

[7] I should mention that one can detect a sense of this in his masterwork Candide but not so much beyond that work.

[8] Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization Volume 10: Rousseau and Revolution.p.31

[9] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/695462-french-intellectual-life-has-in-my-opinion-been-turned-into

[10] Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan.

[11] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on Inequality.

[12] Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. On the Social Contract.