Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau by Mendham Matthew D.;

Author:Mendham, Matthew D.;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Published: 2021-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

This has long been a celebrated passage, and many scholars have placed it near the center of Rousseau’s normative thought, understood as radically individualistic and modern.2 Our second, contrasting, passage is found in the less well-known Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues (written 1772–1776). In this curious book, Rousseau’s contemporaries are said to universally slander him as a monster of amour-propre, pride, wrath, plagiarism, and vicious morals in his personal life and writings. To answer such charges, our author uses a fictional character, “Rousseau,” who is “Rousseau as he would be if he had read but not written his books and had only recently arrived in France,” in conversation with a “Frenchman,” to investigate “Jean-Jacques,” a character representing the actual Rousseau.3 (Patrick Riley calls this “schizophrenia turned into a literary genre”).4 In one passage, we find “Rousseau” commenting on “Jean-Jacques,” who is said to have lost all “the sweet things of human society”:5 “I know that the commotion of the world frightens loving and tender hearts; that they withdraw and constrict themselves in the crowd…. But I also know that absolute solitude is a state that is sad and contrary to nature: affectionate feelings nourish the soul, communication of ideas enlivens the mind. Our sweetest existence is relative and collective, and our true moi is not entirely within us. Finally, such is man’s constitution in this life that one is never able to enjoy oneself without the cooperation of another” (RJJ II, 118/813).6 Scholars find here late confirmation of a Rousseau who is fundamentally in favor of society—and, therefore, it would not be difficult to argue, also an advocate of virtue, duty, community, and justice.7

Is any adjudication possible? Must we revert to the older view of Rousseau as simply incoherent, driven mainly by erratic emotions? To begin, a closer look at these paradigmatic passages reveals them not to support their respective positions nearly as strongly as they seem to, taken in isolation. It has been observed that the Reveries passage is surrounded by other claims pointing to sociable occasions. Discussing the island of Saint-Pierre, Rousseau observes that this sort of reverie “admittedly was done better and more pleasurably on a fertile and solitary island … where the society of the small number of inhabitants was sociable and sweet [liante et doux], without being so interesting as to occupy me continuously” (Rev. V, 70/1048).8 He also points to the “fictions” of human companions in his mind. For Michael O’Dea, it is not clear that Reveries V “should be read as describing a semi-mystical state, far beyond the type of reverie in which Rousseau lives out his fantasies surrounded by a host of ideal creatures.”9

Meanwhile, the statement in the Dialogues seems to be largely a setup, which is immediately countered by the secure happiness that Jean-Jacques finds in his “imagination” and “happy fictions” (see RJJ II, 118–19/813–14). Immediately after the quoted passage, “Rousseau” links the argument about “absolute solitude” with many caricatures, which are plainly refuted in the discussions that follow: “Solitary J.J. therefore ought to be somber, taciturn, and always discontent with life.

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