JeanJacques Rousseau

1
Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Life and Works
• 1754-1778

2
Major Works 1754-1778

• Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1754)
• Emile (1762)
• On the Social Contract (1762)
• The Confessions (posthumous)

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Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (1754)

• Written in response to another prize competition
  posted by the Academy of Dijon
• Rousseaus description of writing it
• ... wandering deep into the forest, I sought and
  I found the vision of those primitive times, the
  history of which I proudly traced. I demolished
  the petty lies of mankind I dared to strip mans
  nature naked .... The outcome of these researches
  was the Essay upon Inequality (Confs., Bk 8).

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Significance of DOI

• All that is challenging in The Social Contract
  had previously appeared in the Essay on
  Inequality (Confs. Bk 9).
• The great anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss has
  called Rousseau the founder of anthropology
• The conclusion anticipates Marx ... a handful
  of people ... abound in superfluities while the
  starving multitude lacks in necessities (CUP
  ed., 188).

5
Scientific Context of DOI

• Mid-eighteenth century evolutionary theory and
  related issues were being explored by La Mettrie,
  Linnaeus and Buffon (see ppt 22/01/03).
• They speculated on the relation of humans to
  other primates
• Buffon extended the age of the earth by 70,000
  years
• Rousseau calls Buffon one of those authorities
  that are respectable to Philosophers (CUP ed.,
  189).

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Philosophical Context

• Theories of the state of nature articulated by
  Hobbes and Locke served to support their
  respective political visions
• Hobbes theorized a state he called Leviathan
  with absolute power over its citizens as a
  preventive measure against civil war
• Lockes state was to serve the preservation of
  life, liberty and property.

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Rousseau vs Locke and Hobbes

• Using the writings of Buffon, La Mettrie and
  others, Rousseau rejected the visions of both
• He rejected Hobbess view that the state of
  nature was a state of war that forced people to
  accept an authoritarian state
• He rejected Lockes belief that property,
  unevenly distributed (Second Treatise, 50)
  should be the foundation of the state, since a
  relative equality is necessary to democracy.

8
DOI Rousseaus Political Philosophy

• Rousseau instead proposed
• That humans are naturally peaceable, not fierce
• That they originally led isolated lives in the
  forest
• They came together only out of necessity
• Language emerges with great difficulty society,
  dependent on language, therefore emerges with
  difficulty (a great contrast with Hobbes and
  Locke)
• The institution of property is the first act of
  civilization, destroys the state of nature, and
  lays the basis of the unjust relations of civil
  society.

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Questions on the DOI

• 1. What kind of being is the savage?
• 2. What forces bring men into early society?
  What role does language play?
• 3. What role does property play in the
  development of society?
• 4. What is the difference between natural and
  social inequality? 
• 5. Why is vanity (amour-propre) so important?
• 6. What is wrong with civil society?

10
Geneva and ancient republics

• He praises these cities in the dedication of the
  DOI, thus revealing his political ideals
• A state of great antiquity
• Small in size
• Citizens follow what the magistrates propose
• Non-aggressive, but acts in own defense.

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Rousseaus Ideal CitiesParis versus Geneva

• Corrupt
• Unnatural
• Weak
• Citizens dominated by opinions of others
• Complex and large officials, taxes, rules
• Display of wealth
• Lack of genuine relations among people

• Virtuous people have time for the unfortunate,
  the Fatherland and their friends (DSA, p. 16)
• No theatre
• Defense of homeland
• Simplicity
• Small
• Non-aggressive

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Emile, a treatise on education (1762)

• Platonic tradition philosophy of education as
  preparation of citizens for civic life
• Lockean Sensationalism the child learns first
  about objective relations, natural laws and the
  skills of the craftsman (also Bacon and Diderot)
• Later the child studies theoretical matters such
  as the social contract
• Rousseau is responding to teaching young children
  dead languages such as Greek and Latin, and
  abstract ideas that they cannot apply.

13
On the Social Contract (1762)

• Exposition of the principle that men should
  determine their own fate in conformity with the
  common good, which Rousseau terms the general
  will
• A controversial work that was condemned in Paris
  and publicly burned as seditious because it
  implicitly rejected the principle of the Kings
  rule by divine right
• Controversial today for what some commentators
  believe is the authoritarianism of the principle
  of the general will.

14
The Confessions

• Rousseaus first autobiographical work, in which
  he revealed his relations with many famous people
  such as Diderot
• The opening lines set the stage I have resolved
  on an enterprise which has no precedent and which
  , once complete, will have no imitator. My
  purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in
  every way true to nature, and the man I shall
  portray will be myself.
• Whether nature did well or ill in breaking the
  mould in which she formed me, is a question which
  can only be resolved after the reading of my
  book.
• He read it aloud to private gatherings, and it
  was published after his death (posthumously)
• It is a major source for his view of his works
  and how they were received, although many
  scholars have raised questions about various
  details.

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Rousseaus Life, 1762-1778

• Rousseau fled France in 1762 due the condemnation
  of Emile and the Social Contract
• He took refuge in Switzerland, where he started
  learning botany, as a nourishment for the soul
• He cultivated a European-wide network of
  scientific correspondence and worked on
  dictionaries of music and botany that sought to
  improve those sciences through clarification of
  terminology
• In 1767 he returned to France, where he died on 2
  July1778.

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Rousseau Botanizing