Using specific examples, Rousseau shows how societies in which the arts and sciences flourished more often than not saw the decline of morality and virtue. He notes that it was after philosophy and the arts flourished that ancient Egypt fell. Similarly, ancient Greece was once founded on notions of heroic virtue, but after the arts and sciences progressed, it became a society based on luxury and leisure.
The one exception to this, according to Rousseau, was Sparta, which he praises for pushing the artists and scientists from its walls. Sparta is in stark contrast to Athens, which was the heart of good taste, elegance, and philosophy. Interestingly, Rousseau here discusses Socrates, as one of the few wise Athenians who recognized the corruption that the arts and sciences were bringing about. In his address to the court, Socrates says that the artists and philosophers of his day claim to have knowledge of piety, goodness, and virtue, yet they do not really understand anything.
The second part of the First Discourse is an examination of the arts and sciences themselves, and the dangers they bring. First, Rousseau claims that the arts and sciences are born from our vices: The attack on sciences continues as Rousseau articulates how they fail to contribute anything positive to morality. They take time from the activities that are truly important, such as love of country, friends, and the unfortunate.
Philosophical and scientific knowledge of subjects such as the relationship of the mind to the body, the orbit of the planets, and physical laws that govern particles fail to genuinely provide any guidance for making people more virtuous citizens. Rather, Rousseau argues that they create a false sense of need for luxury, so that science becomes simply a means for making our lives easier and more pleasurable, but not morally better.
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The arts are the subject of similar attacks in the second part of the First Discourse. Artists, Rousseau says, wish first and foremost to be applauded. Their work comes from a sense of wanting to be praised as superior to others. Society begins to emphasize specialized talents rather than virtues such as courage, generosity, and temperance. This leads to yet another danger: And yet, after all of these attacks, the First Discourse ends with the praise of some very wise thinkers, among them, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton.
These men were carried by their vast genius and were able to avoid corruption. However, Rousseau says, they are exceptions; and the great majority of people ought to focus their energies on improving their characters, rather than advancing the ideals of the Enlightenment in the arts and sciences. The Second Discourse , like the first, was a response to a question put forth by the academy of Dijon: It exceeded the desired length, it was four times the length of the first, and made very bold philosophical claims; unlike the First Discourse , it did not win the prize.
However, as Rousseau was now a well-known and respected author, he was able to have it published independently. This is primarily because Rousseau, like Hobbes, attacks the classical notion of human beings as naturally social. In the Confessions , Rousseau writes that he himself sees the Second Discourse as far superior to the first.
The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality is divided into four main parts: Like them, Rousseau understands society to be an invention, and he attempts to explain the nature of human beings by stripping them of all of the accidental qualities brought about by socialization. Thus, understanding human nature amounts to understanding what humans are like in a pure state of nature.
This is in stark contrast to the classical view, most notably that of Aristotle, which claims that the state of civil society is the natural human state. Like Hobbes and Locke, however, it is doubtful that Rousseau meant his readers to understand the pure state of nature that he describes in the Second Discourse as a literal historical account. In its opening, he says that it must be denied that men were ever in the pure state of nature, citing revelation as a source which tells us that God directly endowed the first man with understanding a capacity that he will later say is completely undeveloped in natural man.
However, it seems in other parts of the Second Discourse that Rousseau is positing an actual historical account. Some of the stages in the progression from nature to civil society, Rousseau will argue, are empirically observable in so-called primitive tribes. Hobbes describes each human in the state of nature as being in a constant state of war against all others; hence life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. Instead, they have taken civilized human beings and simply removed laws, government, and technology.
For humans to be in a constant state of war with one another, they would need to have complex thought processes involving notions of property, calculations about the future, immediate recognition of all other humans as potential threats, and possibly even minimal language skills. These faculties, according to Rousseau, are not natural, but rather, they develop historically. In contrast to Hobbes, Rousseau describes natural man as isolated, timid, peaceful, mute, and without the foresight to worry about what the future will bring.
Purely natural human beings are fundamentally different from the egoistic Hobbesian view in another sense as well. Rousseau acknowledges that self-preservation is one principle of motivation for human actions, but unlike Hobbes, it is not the only principle. If it were, Rousseau claims that humans would be nothing more than monsters. Therefore, Rousseau concludes that self-preservation, or more generally self-interest, is only one of two principles of the human soul. However, Rousseau says that unlike all other creatures, humans are free agents. They have reason, although in the state of nature it is not yet developed.
But it is this faculty that makes the long transition from the state of nature to the state of civilized society possible. He claims that if one examines any other species over the course of a thousand years, they will not have advanced significantly. Humans can develop when circumstances arise that trigger the use of reason. Furthermore, he is not advocating a return to the state of nature, though some commentators, even his contemporaries such as Voltaire, have attributed such a view to him.
Human beings in the state of nature are amoral creatures, neither virtuous nor vicious. After humans leave the state of nature, they can enjoy a higher form of goodness, moral goodness, which Rousseau articulates most explicitly in the Social Contract. Although they are not stated explicitly, Rousseau sees this development as occurring in a series of stages.
From the pure state of nature, humans begin to organize into temporary groups for the purposes of specific tasks like hunting an animal. Very basic language in the form of grunts and gestures comes to be used in these groups. However, the groups last only as long as the task takes to be completed, and then they dissolve as quickly as they came together. The next stage involves more permanent social relationships including the traditional family, from which arises conjugal and paternal love. Basic conceptions of property and feelings of pride and competition develop in this stage as well.
However, at this stage they are not developed to the point that they cause the pain and inequality that they do in present day society. If humans could have remained in this state, they would have been happy for the most part, primarily because the various tasks that they engaged in could all be done by each individual. The next stage in the historical development occurs when the arts of agriculture and metallurgy are discovered.
Because these tasks required a division of labor, some people were better suited to certain types of physical labor, others to making tools, and still others to governing and organizing workers. Soon, there become distinct social classes and strict notions of property, creating conflict and ultimately a state of war not unlike the one that Hobbes describes. Those who have the most to lose call on the others to come together under a social contract for the protection of all. But Rousseau claims that the contract is specious, and that it was no more than a way for those in power to keep their power by convincing those with less that it was in their interest to accept the situation.
Ultimately, the work is based on the idea that by nature, humans are essentially peaceful, content, and equal. It is the socialization process that has produced inequality, competition, and the egoistic mentality. In terms of its content the work seems to be, in many ways, a precursor to the Social Contract , which would appear in And whereas the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality look back on history and condemn what Rousseau sees as the lack of morality and justice in his own present day society, this work is much more constructive.
That is, the Discourse on Political Economy explains what he takes to be a legitimate political regime. There is debate among scholars about how exactly one ought to interpret this concept, but essentially, one can understand the general will in terms of an analogy. A political society is like a human body.
A body is a unified entity though it has various parts that have particular functions. And just as the body has a will that looks after the well-being of the whole, a political state also has a will which looks to its general well-being. The major conflict in political philosophy occurs when the general will is at odds with one or more of the individual wills of its citizens. With the conflict between the general and individual wills in mind, Rousseau articulates three maxims which supply the basis for a politically virtuous state: Citizens follow these maxims when there is a sense of equality among them, and when they develop a genuine respect for law.
This again is in contrast to Hobbes, who says that laws are only followed when people fear punishment. That is, the state must make the penalty for breaking the law so severe that people do not see breaking the law to be of any advantage to them. Rousseau claims, instead, that when laws are in accordance with the general will, good citizens will respect and love both the state and their fellow citizens. Therefore, citizens will see the intrinsic value in the law, even in cases in which it may conflict with their individual wills.
The Social Contract is, like the Discourse on Political Economy , a work that is more philosophically constructive than either of the first two Discourses. Furthermore, the language used in the first and second Discourses is crafted in such a way as to make them appealing to the public, whereas the tone of the Social Contract is not nearly as eloquent and romantic.
Another more obvious difference is that the Social Contract was not nearly as well-received; it was immediately banned by Paris authorities. And although the first two Discourses were, at the time of their publication, very popular, they are not philosophically systematic. The Social Contract , by contrast, is quite systematic and outlines how a government could exist in such a way that it protects the equality and character of its citizens.
For the earlier works discuss the problems in civil society as well as the historical progression that has led to them. The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts claims that society has become such that no emphasis is put on the importance of virtue and morality. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality traces the history of human beings from the pure state of nature through the institution of a specious social contract that results in present day civil society.
The Social Contract does not deny any of these criticisms. But unlike the first two Discourses , the Social Contract looks forward, and explores the potential for moving from the specious social contract to a legitimate one. The concept of the general will, first introduced in the Discourse on Political Economy , is further developed in the Social Contract although it remains ambiguous and difficult to interpret. The most pressing difficulty that arises is in the tension that seems to exist between liberalism and communitarianism.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
On one hand, Rousseau argues that following the general will allows for individual diversity and freedom. But at the same time, the general will also encourages the well-being of the whole, and therefore can conflict with the particular interests of individuals. Despite these difficulties, however, there are some aspects of the general will that Rousseau clearly articulates. First, the general will is directly tied to Sovereignty: Simply having power, for Rousseau, is not sufficient for that power to be morally legitimate.
True Sovereignty is directed always at the public good, and the general will, therefore, speaks always infallibly to the benefit of the people. Second, the object of the general will is always abstract, or for lack of a better term, general. It can set up rules, social classes, or even a monarchial government, but it can never specify the particular individuals who are subject to the rules, members of the classes, or the rulers in the government. This is in keeping with the idea that the general will speaks to the good of the society as a whole.
It is not to be confused with the collection of individual wills which would put their own needs, or the needs of particular factions, above those of the general public. This leads to a related point. Rousseau argues that there is an important distinction to be made between the general will and the collection of individual wills: The latter looks only to the common interest; the former considers private interest and is only a sum of private wills.
But take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the remaining sum of the differences is the general will. This point can be understood in an almost Rawlsian sense, namely that if the citizens were ignorant of the groups to which they would belong, they would inevitably make decisions that would be to the advantage of the society as a whole, and thus be in accordance with the general will. But if the state is to protect individual freedom, how can this be reconciled with the notion of the general will, which looks always to the welfare of the whole and not to the will of the individual?
This criticism, although not unfounded, is also not devastating. To answer it, one must return to the concepts of Sovereignty and the general will. True Sovereignty, again, is not simply the will of those in power, but rather the general will. Sovereignty does have the proper authority override the particular will of an individual or even the collective will of a particular group of individuals. However, as the general will is infallible, it can only do so when intervening will be to the benefit of the society. Proper intervention on the part of the Sovereign is therefore best understood as that which secures the freedom and equality of citizens rather than that which limits them.
Ultimately, the delicate balance between the supreme authority of the state and the rights of individual citizens is based on a social compact that protects society against factions and gross differences in wealth and privilege among its members. It was originally published just several months after the Social Contract. Like the Social Contract , the Emile was immediately banned by Paris authorities, which prompted Rousseau to flee France.
The major point of controversy in the Emile was not in his philosophy of education per se, however. Rather, it was the claims in one part of the book, the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar in which Rousseau argues against traditional views of religion that led to the banning of the book. The Emile is unique in one sense because it is written as part novel and part philosophical treatise. Rousseau would use this same form in some of his later works as well.
The book is written in first person, with the narrator as the tutor, and describes his education of a pupil, Emile, from birth to adulthood. The basic philosophy of education that Rousseau advocates in the Emile , much like his thought in the first two Discourses , is rooted in the notion that human beings are good by nature. Rousseau is very clear that a return the state of nature once human beings have become civilized is not possible.
Therefore, we should not seek to be noble savages in the literal sense, with no language, no social ties, and an underdeveloped faculty of reason. Rather, Rousseau says, someone who has been properly educated will be engaged in society, but relate to his or her fellow citizens in a natural way. At first glance, this may seem paradoxical: If human beings are not social by nature, how can one properly speak of more or less natural ways of socializing with others?
The best answer to this question requires an explanation of what Rousseau calls the two forms of self-love: Amour de soi is a natural form of self-love in that it does not depend on others. Rousseau claims that by our nature, each of us has this natural feeling of love toward ourselves. We naturally look after our own preservation and interests. By contrast, amour-propre is an unnatural self-love that is essentially relational. That is, it comes about in the ways in which human beings view themselves in comparison to other human beings. Without amour-propre , human beings would scarcely be able to move beyond the pure state of nature Rousseau describes in the Discourse on Inequality.
Thus, amour-propre can contribute positively to human freedom and even virtue. Nevertheless, amour-propre is also extremely dangerous because it is so easily corruptible. Rousseau often describes the dangers of what commentators sometimes refer to as 'inflamed' amour-propre. In its corrupted form, amour-propre is the source of vice and misery, and results in human beings basing their own self worth on their feeling of superiority over others.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712—1778)
While not developed in the pure state of nature, amour-propre is still a fundamental part of human nature. Therefore goal of Emile's natural education is in large part to keep him from falling into the corrupted form of this type of self-love. This will allow the pupil to be virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he lives.
The character of Emile begins learning important moral lessons from his infancy, thorough childhood, and into early adulthood. The tutor must even manipulate the environment in order to teach sometimes difficult moral lessons about humility, chastity, and honesty. They depend on women only because they desire them. By contrast, women both need and desire men. Sophie is educated in such a way that she will fill what Rousseau takes to be her natural role as a wife.
Rousseau believed that the savage stage was not the first stage of human development, but the third stage. Rousseau held that this third savage stage of human societal development was an optimum, between the extreme of the state of brute animals and animal-like "ape-men" on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilized life on the other. This has led some critics to attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage , [96] [g] which Arthur Lovejoy conclusively showed misrepresents Rousseau's thought. It could be seen as an outgrowth from man's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise emotions of compassion or empathy.
These are sentiments shared with animals, and whose existence even Hobbes acknowledged. Contrary to what many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally; in fact, terms such as "justice" or "wickedness" are inapplicable to prepolitical society as Rousseau understands it. Morality proper, self-restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state.
Humans "in a state of Nature" may act with all of the ferocity of an animal. They are good only in a negative sense, insofar as they are self-sufficient and thus not subject to the vices of political society. In fact, Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape , such as the orangutan as described by Buffon ; and the "natural" goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad.
Rousseau, a deteriorationist, proposed that, except perhaps for brief moments of balance, at or near its inception, when a relative equality among men prevailed, human civilization has always been artificial, creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires. Rousseau's ideas of human development were highly interconnected with forms of mediation, or the processes that individual humans use to interact with themselves and others while using an alternate perspective or thought process.
According to Rousseau, these were developed through the innate perfectibility of humanity. These include a sense of self, morality, pity, and imagination. Rousseau's writings are purposely ambiguous concerning the formation of these processes to the point that mediation is always intrinsically part of humanity's development. An example of this is the notion that as an individual, one needs an alternative perspective to come to the realization that they are a 'self'.
In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi , a positive self-love, into amour-propre , or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation , combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.
It had been invoked by Vauvenargues , among others.
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In the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man.
He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual liberty ; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy , fear , and suspicion.
In contrast to the optimistic view of other Enlightenment figures, for Rousseau, progress has been inimical to the well-being of humanity, that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in civil society can man be ennobled—through the use of reason:.
The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations.
Although in this state he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man.
Society corrupts men only insofar as the Social Contract has not de facto succeeded, as we see in contemporary society as described in the Discourse on Inequality In this essay, which elaborates on the ideas introduced in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences , Rousseau traces man's social evolution from a primitive state of nature to modern society.
The earliest solitary humans possessed a basic drive for self-preservation and a natural disposition to compassion or pity. They differed from animals, however, in their capacity for free will and their potential perfectibility. As they began to live in groups and form clans they also began to experience family love, which Rousseau saw as the source of the greatest happiness known to humanity. As long as differences in wealth and status among families were minimal, the first coming together in groups was accompanied by a fleeting golden age of human flourishing.
The development of agriculture, metallurgy, private property, and the division of labour and resulting dependency on one another, however, led to economic inequality and conflict. As population pressures forced them to associate more and more closely, they underwent a psychological transformation: Rousseau posits that the original, deeply flawed Social Contract i.
Rousseau's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality , Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, and hierarchy.
In the last chapter of the Social Contract , Rousseau would ask 'What is to be done? To his readers, however, the inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed. Like other Enlightenment philosophers, Rousseau was critical of the Atlantic slave trade. The Social Contract outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism.
Published in , it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition. The treatise begins with the dramatic opening lines, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.
Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. As society developed, the division of labor and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while also becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right , individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free.
This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law. Although Rousseau argues that sovereignty or the power to make the laws should be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between the sovereign and the government. The government is composed of magistrates, charged with implementing and enforcing the general will.
The "sovereign" is the rule of law, ideally decided on by direct democracy in an assembly. He approved the kind of republican government of the city-state, for which Geneva provided a model—or would have done if renewed on Rousseau's principles. France could not meet Rousseau's criterion of an ideal state because it was too big. Much subsequent controversy about Rousseau's work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free:. The notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau's theory of political legitimacy.
Some commentators see it as no more than the dictatorship of the proletariat or the tyranny of the urban poor such as may perhaps be seen in the French Revolution. Such was not Rousseau's meaning. This is clear from the Discourse on Political Economy , where Rousseau emphasizes that the general will exists to protect individuals against the mass, not to require them to be sacrificed to it.
He is, of course, sharply aware that men have selfish and sectional interests which will lead them to try to oppress others. It is for this reason that loyalty to the good of all alike must be a supreme although not exclusive commitment by everyone, not only if a truly general will is to be heeded but also if it is to be formulated successfully in the first place". The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason!
This is beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated. Rousseau's philosophy of education concerns itself not with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil's character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. Today we would call this the disciplinary method of "natural consequences". Rousseau felt that children learn right and wrong through experiencing the consequences of their acts rather than through physical punishment.
Rousseau became an early advocate of developmentally appropriate education; his description of the stages of child development mirrors his conception of the evolution of culture. He divides childhood into stages:. Rousseau recommends that the young adult learn a manual skill such as carpentry, which requires creativity and thought, will keep him out of trouble, and will supply a fallback means of making a living in the event of a change of fortune the most illustrious aristocratic youth to have been educated this way may have been Louis XVI , whose parents had him learn the skill of locksmithing [].
The sixteen-year-old is also ready to have a companion of the opposite sex. Although his ideas foreshadowed modern ones in many ways, in one way they do not: Rousseau was a believer in the moral superiority of the patriarchal family on the antique Roman model. This is not an accidental feature of Rousseau's educational and political philosophy; it is essential to his account of the distinction between private, personal relations and the public world of political relations.
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The private sphere as Rousseau imagines it depends on the subordination of women, in order for both it and the public political sphere upon which it depends to function as Rousseau imagines it could and should. Rousseau anticipated the modern idea of the bourgeois nuclear family , with the mother at home taking responsibility for the household and for childcare and early education.
Feminists, beginning in the late 18th century with Mary Wollstonecraft in [] have criticized Rousseau for his confinement of women to the domestic sphere —unless women were domesticated and constrained by modesty and shame, he feared [] "men would be tyrannized by women… For, given the ease with which women arouse men's senses— men would finally be their victims…" [] His contemporaries saw it differently because Rousseau thought that mothers should breastfeed their children.
Rousseau's ideas have influenced progressive "child-centered" education. Good or bad, the theories of educators such as Rousseau's near contemporaries Pestalozzi , Mme. Having converted to Roman Catholicism early in life and returned to the austere Calvinism of his native Geneva as part of his period of moral reform, Rousseau maintained a profession of that religious philosophy and of John Calvin as a modern lawgiver throughout the remainder of his life.
His views on religion presented in his works of philosophy, however, may strike some as discordant with the doctrines of both Catholicism and Calvinism. Although he praised the Bible, he was disgusted by the Christianity of his day. He also repudiated the doctrine of original sin , which plays a large part in Calvinism.
In his "Letter to Beaumont", Rousseau wrote, "there is no original perversity in the human heart. In the 18th century, many deists viewed God merely as an abstract and impersonal creator of the universe, likened to a giant machine. Rousseau's deism differed from the usual kind in its emotionality. He saw the presence of God in the creation as good, and separate from the harmful influence of society.
Rousseau's attribution of a spiritual value to the beauty of nature anticipates the attitudes of 19th-century Romanticism towards nature and religion. Rousseau was upset that his deism was so forcefully condemned, while those of the more atheistic philosophers were ignored.
He defended himself against critics of his religious views in his "Letter to Mgr de Beaumont , the Archbishop of Paris", "in which he insists that freedom of discussion in religious matters is essentially more religious than the attempt to impose belief by force. The phrase was used by Diderot and also by Montesquieu and by his teacher, the Oratorian friar Nicolas Malebranche.
It served to designate the common interest embodied in legal tradition, as distinct from and transcending people's private and particular interests at any particular time. It displayed a rather democratic ideology, as it declared that the citizens of a given nation should carry out whatever actions they deem necessary in their own sovereign assembly. The concept was also an important aspect of the more radical 17th-century republican tradition of Spinoza , from whom Rousseau differed in important respects, but not in his insistence on the importance of equality:.
Without the supreme criterion of equality, the general will would indeed be meaningless. Robespierre and Saint-Just , during the Reign of Terror , regarded themselves to be principled egalitarian republicans, obliged to do away with superfluities and corruption; in this they were inspired most prominently by Rousseau. According to Robespierre, the deficiencies in individuals were rectified by upholding the 'common good' which he conceptualized as the collective will of the people; this idea was derived from Rousseau's General Will.
The revolutionaries were also inspired by Rousseau to introduce Deism as the new official civil religion of France:. Ceremonial and symbolic occurrences of the more radical phases of the Revolution invoked Rousseau and his core ideas. According to some scholars, Rousseau exercised minimal influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States , despite similarities between their ideas. They shared beliefs regarding the self-evidence that "all men are created equal," and the conviction that citizens of a republic be educated at public expense. A parallel can be drawn between the United States Constitution 's concept of the " general welfare " and Rousseau's concept of the " general will ".
Further commonalities exist between Jeffersonian democracy and Rousseau's praise of Switzerland and Corsica's economies of isolated and independent homesteads, and his endorsement of a well-regulated militia, such as those of the Swiss cantons. However, Will and Ariel Durant have opined that Rousseau had a definite political influence on America. The first sign of [Rousseau's] political influence was in the wave of public sympathy that supported active French aid to the American Revolution. Jefferson derived the Declaration of Independence from Rousseau as well as from Locke and Montesquieu.
As ambassador to France —89 he absorbed much from both Voltaire and Rousseau The success of the American Revolution raised the prestige of Rousseau's philosophy. One of Rousseau's most important American followers was textbook writer Noah Webster — , who was influenced by Rousseau's ideas on pedagogy in Emile Webster structured his Speller in accord with Rousseau's ideas about the stages of a child's intellectual development.
Rousseau's writings perhaps had an indirect influence on American literature through the writings of Wordsworth and Kant , whose works were important to the New England transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson , as well as on Unitarians such as theologian William Ellery Channing.
The Last of the Mohicans and other American novels reflect republican and egalitarian ideals present alike in Thomas Paine and in English Romantic primitivism. The first to criticize Rousseau were his fellow Philosophes , above all, Voltaire. According to Jacques Barzun, Voltaire was annoyed by the first discourse , and outraged by the second. Voltaire's reading of the second discourse was that Rousseau would like the reader to "walk on all fours" befitting a savage.
Samuel Johnson told Boswell, "I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been". Jean-Baptiste Blanchard was his leading Catholic opponent. Blanchard rejects Rousseau's negative education, in which one must wait until a child has grown to develop reason. The child would find more benefit from learning in his earliest years. He also disagreed with his ideas about female education, declaring that women are a dependent lot.
So removing them from their motherly path is unnatural, as it would lead to the unhappiness of both men and women. Barzun states that, contrary to myth, Rousseau was no primitivist; for him:.
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The model man is the independent farmer, free of superiors and self-governing. This was cause enough for the philosophes' hatred of their former friend. Rousseau's unforgivable crime was his rejection of the graces and luxuries of civilized existence. Voltaire had sung "The superfluous, that most necessary thing. It was the country versus the city—an exasperating idea for them, as was the amazing fact that every new work of Rousseau's was a huge success, whether the subject was politics, theater, education, religion, or a novel about love.
Frederic Bastiat severely criticized Rousseau in several of his works, most notably in "The Law", in which, after analyzing Rousseau's own passages, he stated that:. And what part do persons play in all this? They are merely the machine that is set in motion. In fact, are they not merely considered to be the raw material of which the machine is made? Thus the same relationship exists between the legislator and the prince as exists between the agricultural expert and the farmer; and the relationship between the prince and his subjects is the same as that between the farmer and his land.
How high above mankind, then, has this writer on public affairs been placed? Bastiat believed that Rousseau wished to ignore forms of social order created by the people—viewing them as a thoughtless mass to be shaped by philosophers. Bastiat, who is considered by thinkers associated with the Austrian School of Economics to be one of the precursors of the "spontaneous order", [] presented his own vision of what he considered to be the "Natural Order" in a simple economic chain in which multiple parties might interact without necessarily even knowing each other, cooperating and fulfilling each other's needs in accordance with basic economic laws such as supply and demand.
In such a chain, in order to produce clothing, multiple parties have to act independently— e. Those persons engage in economic exchange by nature, and don't need to be ordered to, nor do their efforts need to be centrally coordinated. Such chains are present in every branch of human activity, in which individuals produce or exchange goods and services, and together, naturally create a complex social order that does not require external inspiration, central coordination of efforts, or bureaucratic control to benefit society as a whole.
This, according to Bastiat, is a proof that humanity itself is capable of creating a complex socioeconomic order that might be superior to an arbitrary vision of a philosopher. Bastiat also believed that Rousseau contradicted himself when presenting his views concerning human nature; if nature is "sufficiently invincible to regain its empire", why then would it need philosophers to direct it back to a natural state? Conversely, he believed that humanity would choose what it would have without philosophers to guide it, in accordance with the laws of economy and human nature itself.
The Marquis de Sade 's Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue partially parodied and used as inspiration Rousseau's sociological and political concepts in the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract. Concepts such as the state of nature, civilization being the catalyst for corruption and evil, and humans "signing" a contract to mutually give up freedoms for the protection of rights, particularly referenced. The necessity mutually to render one another happy cannot legitimately exist save between two persons equally furnished with the capacity to do one another hurt and, consequently, between two persons of commensurate strength: Edmund Burke formed an unfavorable impression of Rousseau when the latter visited England with Hume and later drew a connection between Rousseau's egoistic philosophy and his personal vanity, saying Rousseau "entertained no principle With this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness".
In , Irving Babbitt , founder of a movement called the " New Humanism ", wrote a critique of what he called "sentimental humanitarianism", for which he blamed Rousseau. During the Cold War, Rousseau was criticized for his association with nationalism and its attendant abuses, for example in Talmon, Jacob Leib , The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy.
Maloy states that "the twentieth century added Nazism and Stalinism to Jacobinism on the list of horrors for which Rousseau could be blamed. Melzer also believes that in admitting that people's talents are unequal, Rousseau therefore tacitly condones the tyranny of the few over the many. Engel, on the other hand, Rousseau's nationalism anticipated modern theories of "imagined communities" that transcend social and religious divisions within states.
On similar grounds, one of Rousseau's strongest critics during the second half of the 20th century was political philosopher Hannah Arendt. Using Rousseau's thought as an example, Arendt identified the notion of sovereignty with that of the general will. According to her, it was this desire to establish a single, unified will based on the stifling of opinion in favor of public passion that contributed to the excesses of the French Revolution.
The German writers Goethe , Schiller , and Herder have stated that Rousseau's writings inspired them. Herder regarded Rousseau to be his "guide", and Schiller compared Rousseau to Socrates. Goethe, in , stated: Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences , emphasizing individualism and repudiating "civilization", was appreciated by, among others, Thomas Paine , William Godwin , Shelley, Tolstoy, and Edward Carpenter. However, in their own way, both critics and admirers have served to underscore the significance of the man, while those who have evaluated him with fairness have agreed that he was the finest thinker of his time on the question of civilization.
Rousseau was a successful composer of music, who wrote seven operas as well as music in other forms, and made contributions to music as a theorist. As a composer, his music was a blend of the late Baroque style and the emergent Classical fashion, and he belongs to the same generation of transitional composers as Christoph Willibald Gluck and C.
One of his more well-known works is the one-act opera Le devin du village , containing the duet " Non, Colette n'est point trompeuse " which was later rearranged as a standalone song by Beethoven. And indeed, a British visitor commented, 'Even the lower class of people [of Geneva] are exceedingly well informed, and there is perhaps no city in Europe where learning is more universally diffused'; another at mid-century noticed that Genevan workmen were fond of reading the works of Locke and Montesquieu.
My present fame is owing to a very trifling composition, but which has made incredible noise. I was one evening at Mme Geoffrin's joking on Rousseau's affectations and contradictions, and said some things that diverted them. When I came home I put them in a letter, and showed it next day to Helvetius and the Duc de Nivernois; who were so pleased with it that, after telling me some faults in the language, As you know, I willingly laugh at mountebanks, political or literary, let their talents be ever so great; I was not averse.
The copies have spread like wildfire, et me voice a la mode [and behold, I am in fashion] Here is the letter:. You have renounced Geneva, your fatherland; you have had yourself chased from Switzerland, a country so much praised in your writings; France has issued a warrant against you. Come, then, to me; I admire your talents; I am amused by your dreams, which be it said in passing occupy you too much and too long. You must at last be wise and happy. You have had yourself talked of enough for peculiarities hardly fitting to a truly great man.
Show your enemies that you can sometimes have common sense; this will annoy them without doing you harm. My states offer you a peaceful retreat; I wish you well, and would like to help you if you can find it good. But if you continue to reject my aid, be assured that I shall tell no one. If you persist in racking your brains to find new misfortunes, choose such as you may desire; I am king, and can procure any to suit your wishes; and—what surely will never happen to you among your enemies—I shall cease to persecute you when you cease to find your glory in being persecuted.
Rousseau's letter is atrocious; it is to the last degree extravagant and inexcusable But do not believe him capable of any falsehood or artifice; nor imagine that he is either an impostor or a scoundrel. His anger has no just cause, but it is sincere; of that I feel no doubt. Here is what I imagine to be the cause of it. I have heard it said, and he has perhaps been told, that one of the best phrases in Mr Walpole's letter was by you, and that you had said in jest, speaking in the name of the King of Prussia, "If you wish for persecutions, I am a king, and can procure them for you of any sort you like," and that Mr Walpole If this be true, and Rousseau knows of it, do you wonder that, sensitive, hot-headed, melancholy, and proud, From that haven of neighborly peace their spirits rose to renew their war for the soul of the Revolution, of France, and of Western man.
For more than two centuries since Rousseau's writings were first published, controversy over the man and his ideas has continued virtually unabated. In their diverse ways his admirers and his opponents both have affirmed his importance in world history: Indeed, they have somehow attributed to him the origin of many of the alleged evils of modern times, ranging from the restiveness of "hippie" youth to the rigors of totalitarian societies.
However, those who have tried to judge Rousseau fairly have generally agreed that among the philosophical writers of his century he was the one who stated the problem of civilization with more clarity and force than any of his contemporaries His works as a moralist and political philosopher influenced and fascinated minds as different as those of Hume, Kant, Goethe, Byron, Schiller, and, in recent times, the American behaviorist philosopher John Dewey.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. This is the latest accepted revision , reviewed on 17 September This article is about the philosopher. For the director, see Jean-Jacques Rousseau director. For other uses, see Rousseau disambiguation. Rousseau by Maurice Quentin de La Tour , Civil society Political particularism Positive rights Social capital Value pluralism.
Sandel Charles Taylor Michael Walzer. Christian democracy Radical centrism Republicanism Social democracy. Emile, or On Education. Switzerland portal French and Francophone literature portal Biography portal. Conway, dated 12 January [33]. Retrieved 23 February Readers Respond to Rousseau: The New York Times. Although Rousseau did most of the work of the embassy, he was treated like a valet. George Sand has written an essai, "Les Charmettes" Printed in the same volume as "Laura" from the same year in which she explains why Rousseau may have accused himself falsely.
She quotes her grandmother, in whose family Rousseau had been a tutor, and who stated that Rousseau could not get children. American Philosophical Society , 84 1: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity. University of Chicago Press. A faux marriage took place instead in Bourgoin in Rousseau himself writes in his Confessions: He neither conformed to the official formalities of a legal marriage. There were two "witnesses" present: Letters on the Elements of Botany: Addressed to a Lady.
Review of Neurology and Psychiatry, Volume 6. In the years I taught the history of political theory at Columbia to a sizable class of undergraduates, I would offer students a hundred dollars if they could find "Noble Savage" anywhere in Rousseau. Mediation and Freedom in Rousseau's Political Thought".
Retrieved 5 March Archived from the original on Retrieved 14 July A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. The Less Noble Sex: Memoirs of Marmontel, written by himself: Whittaker via Google Books. Oxford Review of Education. A companion to the philosophy of education. By means of this holy, sublime, and real religion all men, being children of one God, recognise one another as brothers, and the society that unites them is not dissolved even at death. Book IV, Chapter 8: Rousseau on Philosophy, Morality, and Religion. Archived from the original on 4 July The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Winter ed.
Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. A Biography , p. The Life of Samuel Johnson. Bastiat, Economic Harmonies, p. Leigh , Manchester University press, and mere concern for the facts has not inhibited others from doing likewise. Rousseau's Tutorial Republicanism", Polity , 37 2: Essays in Honor of Harvey C. Find more about Jean-Jacques Rousseau at Wikipedia's sister projects. Amour de soi Amour-propre General will.
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