Rousseau's Early Life & Influences

Rousseau
Justice & Power, session viii

Topics in This Session

i.Early Life
ii.Writing
iii.Du contrat social, 1762
iv.Criticism

Early Life

Rousseau meets Mme de Warens

I. Early Life
A. parents
1. déclassé
B. education
1. reading
2. apprenticeship
C. leaving Geneva
1. curfew, 1728
2. conversion
D. no vocation
1. relations with women
a. Mme de Warens
b. Thérèse Levasseur
2. ministry, tutoring, diplomacy, clerking
3. music

A plaque commemorating the bicentenary of Rousseau's birth. Issued by
the city of Geneva on 28 June 1912. The legend at the bottom says "Jean-
Jacques, aime ton pays" ("love your country"), and shows Rousseau's
father gesturing towards the window. The scene is drawn from a footnote
to the Letter to d'Alembert where Rousseau recalls witnessing the popular
celebrations following the exercises of the St Gervais regiment.
Wikipedia

...in his Letter to M. D’ Alembert on the Theater written when he was
forty-five, there is an eloquent passage which reads:

I remember being struck in my childhood by a rather simple
scene...the St. Gervais militia had completed their exercises and,
as was the custom, each of the companies ate together; and after
supper most of them met in the square of St. Gervais, where the
officers and soldiers all danced together around the fountain.
My father, embracing me, was thrilled in a way that I can still
feel and share. ‘Jean-Jacques’, he said to me, ‘love your country.
Look at these good Genevans, they are all friends; they are all
brothers; joy and harmony reigns among them. You are a Genevan.
One day you will see other nations, but even if you travel as far as
your father has, you will never find any people to match your own.

Maurice Cranston, trans., Introduction, Rousseau; A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1984. pp. 18-1 9

Rousseau’s parents
Isaac Rousseau Suzanne Bernard Rousseau
1672-1747 1673-1712

3rd generation Genevan from a wealthier family with
watchmaker connections to the Genevan
academic elite
married “above his station”
her father was a Calvinist
himself, well educated, saw to preacher, her uncle left her a
his son’s education beautiful home and
impressive library
1722-exiled after a quarrel,
left his son to the care of his she died 9 days after giving
brother-in-law Gabriel birth to Jean-Jacques
Bernard, went to Turkey

The house where
Rousseau was born at
number 40, place du
Bourg-de-Four,
Geneva.

I.B.1-reading
Rousseau had no recollection of learning to read, but he remembered how when he was 5
or 6 his father encouraged his love of reading:

Every night, after supper, we read some part of a small collection of romances [i.e., adventure
stories], which had been my mother's. My father's design was only to improve me in reading, and
he thought these entertaining works were calculated to give me a fondness for it; but we soon
found ourselves so interested in the adventures they contained, that we alternately read whole
nights together and could not bear to give over until at the conclusion of a volume. Sometimes, in
the morning, on hearing the swallows at our window, my father, quite ashamed of this weakness,
would cry, "Come, come, let us go to bed; I am more a child than thou art."
Confessions, Book 1

Not long afterward, Rousseau abandoned his taste for escapist stories in favor of the
antiquity of Plutarch's Lives of the Noble Greeks and Romans, which he would read to his
father while he made watches.

Wikipedia, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

[After his father’s exile] Jean-Jacques was left with his maternal uncle, who
packed him, along with his own son, Abraham Bernard, away to board for two
years [1722-24] with a Calvinist minister in a hamlet outside Geneva. Here the
boys picked up the elements of mathematics and drawing. Rousseau, who was
always deeply moved by religious services, for a time even dreamed of becoming
a Protestant minister.
Ibid.

I.B.2-apprenticeship & C.1.curfew

Virtually all our information about Rousseau's youth has come from his
posthumously published Confessions, in which the chronology is somewhat
confused, though recent scholars have combed the archives for confirming
evidence to fill in the blanks. At age 13, Rousseau was apprenticed first to a
notary and then to an engraver who beat him. At 15, he ran away from Geneva
(on 14 March 1728) after returning to the city and finding the city gates locked
due to the curfew.
Ibid.

I.C.Leaving Geneva 2.conversion
In adjoining Savoy he took shelter with a Roman Catholic priest, who
introduced him to Françoise-Louise de Warens, age 29. She was a noblewoman
of Protestant background who was separated from her husband. As
professional lay proselytizer, she was paid by the King of Piedmont to help bring
Protestants to Catholicism. They sent the boy to Turin, the capital of Savoy
(which included Piedmont, in what is now Italy), to complete his conversion. This
resulted in his having to give up his Genevan citizenship, although he would later
revert to Calvinism in order to regain it.
In converting to Catholicism, both De Warens and Rousseau were likely
reacting to Calvinism's insistence on the total depravity of man. Leo Damrosch
writes, "an eighteenth-century Genevan liturgy still required believers to declare
‘that we are miserable sinners, born in corruption, inclined to evil, incapable by
ourselves of doing good'." De Warens, a deist by inclination, was attracted to
Catholicism's doctrine of forgiveness of sins.

Ibid.

Les Charmettes
the house where Jean-Jacques Rousseau lived with Mme de Warens
It is now a museum dedicated to Rousseau

1.D.- no vocation 1.relations with women

a.Mme de Warens
1699-born a Swiss Protestant, at age 26, she emigrated
to Annecy, Savoy

1726-that year, she converted to Roman Catholicism &
annulled her marriage. She then received a fee for
converting Genevan Protestants

1728-Palm Sunday-age 28, met Rousseau (15) and
became his benefactress and, later, his mistress. He
called her maman.

1733-She(33) took him (20) as a lover. She was also
intimate with her servant. “This ménage à trois left him
sexually confused”-Wiki
Françoise-Louise de Warens
“She gave [him] the education he lacked and fulﬁlled 1699-1762

his hungry spirit, his need for love. Rousseau never
forgot her.” --French Wiki

1.D.1.b. - Thérèse Le Vasseur
“At ﬁrst I sought to give myself amusement, but I saw I had gone further and
had given myself a companion.”-- Confessions
1745-later, Rousseau (33) began an affair with
Marie-Thérèse (24)

she was a seamstress, sole support of her family

in the Confessions he would refer to her as his “wife,
mistress, servant, daughter”-German Wiki

his friends, fellow philosophes, were at a loss to
explain their partnership. She seemed “beneath his
station,” certainly, she was less than beautiful

they never married, had four children, all of whom
were given to a foundling hospital, i.e., orphaned

although he would take up with other women, he
Thérèse Le Vasseur would return to this other great love at life’s end
1721-1801

I.D-no vocation.2-ministry, tutoring
1722-24--he considered becoming a Calvinist minister

1725-28--two different failed apprenticeships

1729--sent to Turin to become grounded in his new Catholic faith, he left the
minor seminary. He had no vocation for ministry in the Church of Rome either

1730-returning to Mme de Warens, he took music and other lessons. He began
copying music to earn money and tutoring a few of the local youth

1737-he came into a small inheritance from his mother and used a portion of it to
repay his benefactress

1739-he moved to Lyons and became a tutor there

1742-not satisﬁed with this lifestyle, he went to Paris to present to the Académie
des Sciences a new system of musical notation which he believed would make his
fortune. Without success.

1.D.2.diplomacy
1743-44-as secretary to the Comte de Montaigue,
he travelled to Venice

the ambassador regarded him as a sort of servant,
but Rousseau acted as if he were much more like a
member of the diplomatic staff

needless to say, this was a disaster waiting to
happen

there were arguments over pay, which was delayed
because the ambassador himself received his
stipend from Paris as much as a year late

after eleven months of bickering Rousseau was Palazzo in Venice that served as
dismissed. Clearly he had no vocation for the French Embassy during
Rousseau's period as Secretary
diplomacy
to the Ambassador

1.D.2.diplomacy [a different take]
In 1743 Rousseau was thirty-one years old and working as private secretary
to the Comte de Montaigu, French Ambassador to the Venetian Republic.
This place gave Rousseau his first intimate acquaintance with politics and
government. The ambassador was a retired general with no qualifications or
aptitude for diplomacy. Rousseau, who was quick and capable, and could
speak Italian, performed the duties of Embassy Secretary. Unfortunately,
he had no official status; he was not a diplomatist; he was the ambassador’s
personal employee; he was, as the ambassador tactlessly reminded him from
time to time, a domestic servant. Rousseau felt cheated and humiliated. To
do the work of a diplomatist and be treated as a lackey was unbearable.*
Within a year he was gone, dismissed, and not even given his promised
wages.
*Indeed Voltaire put about the false story that Rousseau had been the ambassador’s valet, not his
secretary. For evidence of Rousseau’s duties at the Embassy, see R.A. Leigh, ed., Correspondance
complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva, 1965, as quoted in Maurice Cranston, trans., Rousseau; The
Social Contract, 1968. p. 9

1.D.3-music

scene from his opera
Le Devin du Village

1.D.3-music

Rousseau continued his interest in music. He wrote both the words and music of
his opera Le Devin du Village (The Village Soothsayer), which was performed
for King Louis XV in 1752. The king was so pleased by the work that he offered
Rousseau a lifelong pension. To the exasperation of his friends, Rousseau
turned down the great honor, bringing him notoriety as "the man who had
refused a king's pension." The opera remained popular and was performed at
the wedding of the Dauphin and Marie Antoinette.
He also turned down several other advantageous offers, sometimes with a
brusqueness bordering on truculence that gave offense and caused him
problems.
Ibid.

II. Writing
A. Dijon competition, 1749
1. road to Vincennes jail
2. Discours sur les sciences et les arts, 1750
3. notoriety
B. dropping out
C. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1755
1. natural
2. moral (political & social)
3. “the last term of inequality”
D. Discourse on Political Economy, 1755
1. political equality and respect for Volonte General
2. universal public education
3. egalitarian fiscal policy
E. Montmorency, 1756-62
1. romance and Nouvelle Heloise, 1761
2. Emile :Ou de l’education, 1762
a. “follow nature”
b. progressive dogmas

II.A. Dijon Competition, 1749-1.road to Vincennes jail

Every reader of the Confessions must remember the story Rousseau tells
of his walk to Vincennes to visit Diderot when he was imprisoned there,
and his discovering on the way an advertisement for a prize essay at
Dijon on the subject of how the revival of the arts and sciences had
improved men’s morals, and his realization in a blinding ﬂash, that such
progress had in fact corrupted morals. Hardly able to breathe, let alone
walk, he tells us, he sat down under a tree and wept.

Cranston, Inequality, p. 24

II.A.2
he “wrote Discourse in response to an
advertisement that appeared in a 1749 issue of
Mercure de France, which offered a prize for an
essay responding to the question: "Has the
restoration of the sciences and the arts
contributed to reﬁning moral character?"

“nature made man happy and good, but…
society depraves him and makes him
miserable ...vice and error, foreign to his
constitution, enter it from outside and
insensibly change him."

Rousseau "authored a scathing attack on
scientiﬁc progress...an attack whose principles
he never disavowed."--JJS Black in Wiki

Rousseau anticipated that his response would
cause "a universal outcry against me", but held
that "a few sensible men" would appreciate his
position

II. A. 3. notoriety
Rousseau's argument was controversial, and drew a great number of
responses. One from critic Jules Lemaître calling the instant deification of
Rousseau as 'one of the strongest proofs of human stupidity.' Rousseau
himself answered five of his critics in the two years or so after he won the
prize. Among these five answers were replies to Stanisław Leszczyński,
King of Poland, M. l'Abbe Raynal, and the "Last Reply" to M. Charles
Bordes. These responses provide clarification for Rousseau's argument
in the Discourse, and begin to develop a theme he further advances in the
Discourse on Inequality – that misuse of the arts and sciences is one case
of a larger theme, that man, by nature good, is corrupted by civilization.
Inequality, luxury, and the political life are identified as especially harmful.
Wikipedia, “Discourse on the Arts and Sciences”

II. B. dropping out (underlying causes)

What [had] made the Comte de Montaigue’s attitude [in Venice
in 1743]the more unbearable to Rousseau was not only the
injustice, but also the underlying reality: Jean-Jacques was a
servant, and he had never been anything much better. He had
the soul and the mind, as the whole world was soon to
recognize, of an exceptional and superior being, but his rank
and condition were humble.
__________
Cranston, Social Contract. p. 9
He also had a urinary disease which afﬂicted him increasingly during
this time and required him to wear a catheter.* This could not help
but increase his discomfort in social settings--jbp
*op. cit., p. 23

II. B. dropping out (rejection of the social conventions)
Rousseau entered midlife at this time and despite the widespread
recognition which his prize gave him, he began to shun society. This is
when he refuses to dress up, go to Versailles, and receive the annuity
which Louis xv offered as a reward for his opera. He enjoyed the fame
among the upper classes and the appreciation of many of them. But he
resented the fact that his birth and condition kept him as an outsider.
“...he was painfully ill at ease in the salons, in social gatherings that were
governed by intricate rules of behavior….he began to live what he spoke
of as a ‘life of solitude’.”*
Still, his friend, Diderot commissioned him to write 344 articles for
his Encyclopédie at this time. But ﬁrst, he would pour out his frustration
over social inequality.--jbp

_______________________
* Cranston, Inequality. p. 18

II. B. dropping out (the Encyclopedists)
The Encyclopaedists were immensely inﬂuenced by Bacon [Sir Francis
Bacon, 1561-1626]--they spoke a lot about Locke, but Bacon was really
their hero; and although Montesquieu continued to uphold Locke’s kind
of politics, the other Encyclopaedists were drawn ever closer to Bacon
with his radical scheme to wipe away religion and traditional philosophy
and replace it with the role of science and technology aimed at improving
the life of man on earth. Science was to be the salvation of mankind.
Bacon’s personal project was to make James I a king who would use his
absolute powers to govern scientiﬁcally as Bacon advised him to govern;
and this was the package which Voltaire, Holbach and La Rivière tried to
sell such monarchs as Frederick II of Prussia and Catherine the Great of
Russia. [ la despotisme éclairé (Enlightened Despotism)]*

_______________________
*Ibid. p. 18

II. C

*

* The matter ought to be considered as it is according to its
nature, not as it is in its present depravity.
ARISTOT.. Politic. I, 2

II. C

Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among Men (Discours
sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes), also
commonly known as the "Second Discourse". The text was written in
1754 in response to another prize competition of the Academy of
Dijon answering the prompt: What is the origin of inequality among
men, and is it authorized by natural law? Though he was not
recognized by the prize committee for this piece (as he had been for
the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences) he nevertheless published
the text in 1755.

Wikipedia

II.C.1-3
1. there were two sorts of inequality.
The ﬁrst, “natural," such as height,
strength &c. This type of inequality
was relatively unimportant

2.the second type, “moral,” that is,
political and social, is endemic to
society and causes differences in
power and wealth. Society is a trick
perpetrated by the powerful on the
weak in order to maintain their power
and wealth

II. C.
“The ﬁrst man who, having fenced in a piece of land,
said "This is mine," and found people naïve enough to
believe him, that man was the true founder of civil
society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders,
from how many horrors and misfortunes might not any
one have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or
ﬁlling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of
listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once
forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and
the earth itself to nobody.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, p. 109

II. C. a cynicism about “mankind in general” as profound as Machiavelli’s
“Finally, a devouring ambition, the burning passion to enlarge
one’s fortune, not so much from real need as to put oneself
ahead of others, inspires in all men a dark propensity to injure
one another, a secret jealousy which is all the more dangerous
in that it often assumes the mask of benevolence in order to
do its deeds in greater safety; in a word, there is competition
and rivalry on the one hand, conﬂicts of interest on the other,
and always the hidden desire to gain an advantage at the
expense of other people. All these evils are the main effects of
property and the inseparable consequences of nascent
inequality.”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, p. 119

II.C.1-3
1. there were two sorts of inequality. The
ﬁrst, natural," such as height, strength
&c. was relatively unimportant
2.the second, “moral,” that is, political
and social, is endemic to society and
causes differences in power and
wealth. Society is a trick perpetrated
by the powerful on the weak in order
to maintain their power and wealth
3.he concludes that “the last term [in a
series of historical developments] of
inequality is despotism”

II. C. 3
“...despotism….This is the last stage of inequality, and the
extreme term which closes the circle and meets the point from
which we started. It is here that all individuals become equal
again because they are nothing, here where subjects have no
longer any law but the will of the master….Here everything is
restored to the sole law of the strongest….The insurrection
which ends with the strangling or dethronement of a sultan is
just as lawful an act as those by which he disposed the day
before of the lives and property of his subjects. Force alone
maintained him; force alone overthrows him…..”

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, pp. 134-35

II. D. Discourse on Political Economy, 1755

Rousseau begins this article for Diderot’s Encyclopedia
with a description of the state as a mechanical man,
just as Hobbes did in his introduction to Leviathan.

jbp

II. D. a.-political equality and respect for the Volonte Géneral

1. As might be expected from his critical writing on
inequality, this article emphasized the need for political
equality. In addition to advocating universal manhood
suffrage, he makes ﬁrst mention of his concept of the
General Will.

jbp

II. D. 1

“The body politic, therefore, is also a moral being
possessed of a will; and this general will, which tends
always to the preservation and welfare of the whole
and of every part, and is the source of the laws,
constitutes for all the members of the State, in their
relations to one another and to it, the rule of what is
just or unjust...”
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Political Economy


inequality, this article for the Encyclopédie emphasized
the need for political equality. In addition to
advocating universal manhood suffrage, he makes ﬁrst
mention of his concept of the General Will.
2. He is also an early advocate of free universal public
education.
jbp

II. D. 2
T form citizens is not the work of a day; and in order to have men it is
o
necessary to educate them when they are children….It is too late to change
our natural inclinations, when they have taken their course, and egoism is
conﬁrmed by habit: it is too late to lead us out of ourselves when once the
human Ego, concentrated in our hearts, has acquired that contemptible
activity which absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life and being of little
minds….Government ought the less indiscriminately to abandon to the
intelligence and prejudices of fathers the education of their children, as that
education is of still greater importance to the State than to the
fathers….Public education, therefore, under regulations prescribed by the
government...is one of the fundamental rules of popular or legitimate
government.

inequality, this article for the Encyclopédie emphasized
the need for political equality. In addition to
advocating universal manhood suffrage, he makes ﬁrst
mention of his concept of the General Will.
2. He is also an early advocate of free universal public
education.
3. Finally, he argues that the tax structure needed to
advance a more equal distribution of wealth instead of
the present regressive system.
jbp

II. D. 3
III. It is not enough to have citizens and to protect them, it is also necessary to
consider their subsistence. Provision for the public wants is an obvious
inference from the general will, and the third essential duty of government.
This duty is not...to ﬁll the granaries of individuals and thereby to grant them a
dispensation from labour, but to keep plenty so within their reach that labour
is always necessary and never useless for its acquisition. It extends also to
everything regarding...the expenses of public administration.
It should be remembered that the foundation of the social compact is
property; and its ﬁrst condition, that every one should be maintained in the
peaceful possession of what belongs to him. It is true that, by the same treaty,
every one binds himself...to be assessed toward the public wants:... it is plain
that such assessment...must be voluntary; it must depend, not indeed on a
particular will, as if it were necessary to have the consent of each
individual,...but on a general will, decided by vote of a majority, and on the
basis of a proportional rating which leaves nothing arbitrary in the imposition
of the tax.

a cosy retreat--L’Hermitage
in the vale of Montmorency, now a Parisian suburb

15 km

a cosy retreat--L’Hermitage
in the vale of Montmorency, now a Parisian suburb

his hostess
Mme d’Épinay

II.E.Montmorency, 1756-62

1761-romance and Nouvelle Heloise


Sophie d’Houdetot (27)
& J-JR (45)
she was his inspiration
and anything more??


The original title of The New Heloise,
a European best-selling “bodice ripper”


1762-Émile; Ou de l’Éducation
“follow nature”

progressive dogmas

blowup
He resented being at Mme d'Épinay's beck and call and
detested the insincere conversation and shallow
atheism of the Encyclopédistes whom he met at her table.
Wounded feelings gave rise to a bitter three-way
quarrel between Rousseau and Madame d'Épinay; her
lover, the philologist Grimm; and their mutual friend,
Diderot, who took their side against Rousseau. Diderot
later described Rousseau as being, "false, vain as
Satan, ungrateful, cruel, hypocritical, and wicked ... He
sucked ideas from me, used them himself, and then
affected to despise me".

II. Writing
A. Dijon competition, 1749
B. dropping out
C. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1755
D. Discourse on Political Economy, 1755
E. Montmorency, 1756-62
F. later life
1. proscriptions, exiles, and paranoia
a. Switzerland
b. England
c. France
1. Confessions, 1770
2. peace at last, 1776-78

II.F.-later life; 1762-1778
Rousseau spoke of "the cry of unparalleled fury" that went up across Europe. "I was an inﬁdel, an atheist,
a lunatic, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf ..."

Rousseau spoke of "the cry of unparalleled fury" that went up across Europe. "I was an inﬁdel, an atheist,
a lunatic, a madman, a wild beast, a wolf ..."

after the bombshell of The Social Contract
proscriptions, exiles & paranoia
Geneva, Bern, Paris, England, return to France under an assumed name

1765-David Hume
“You don’t know your man. I will tell you plainly, you are nursing a viper in your
bosom-Baron d’Holbach

“This lover of mankind who orphans his own children-Voltaire

1770-Confessions, forbidden to publish, he gave private readings--
Mme d’Épinay enjoined publication until 1782

1776-78-peace at last
Ermenonville-a place of pilgrimage for his disciples

after the bombshell of The Social
Contract
proscriptions, exiles & paranoia

1765-David Hume

“You don’t know your man. I will tell
you plainly, you are nursing a viper
in your bosom-Baron d’Holbach

“This lover of mankind who
orphans his own children-Voltaire

1770-Confessions, forbidden to
publish, he gave private
readings--Mme d’Épinay enjoined
publication until 1782

1776-78-peace at last painting by Hubert Robert, 1780
Ermenonville-a place of he also landscaped the park
& designed the cenotaph
pilgrimage for his disciples

The Parc de Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the garden of René Louis de Girardin,
“Rousseau’s last pupil,” his host at Ermenonville

Joseph II Gustav III Paul I Franklin Jefferson

The tomb and the garden became a destination of pilgrimage
for admirers of Rousseau, including Joseph II of Austria,
King Gustav III of Sweden, the future Czar Paul I of Russia,
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Danton, Robespierre,
Chateaubriand, Queen Marie Antoinette and Napoleon
Bonaparte.

Danton Robespierre Chateaubriand Antoinette Bonaparte

for Rousseau, immortal glory; 1794

Sixteen years after his death, his remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris in 1794, where
they are located directly across from those of his friend-turned-enemy, Voltaire. His tomb,
in the shape of a rustic temple, on which, in bas relief an arm reaches out, bearing the torch
of liberty, evokes Rousseau's deep love of nature and of classical antiquity.

The Social Contract is, as Rousseau explains in his preface, a fragment
of something much more ambitious -- a comprehensive work on
Institutions politiques which he began to write in 1743 [during his
disastrous time in Venice, “his ﬁrst intimate acquaintance with politics
and government”], but never ﬁnished.

Maurice Cranston, trans.,Rousseau; The Social Contract, 1968. p. 9

Bk I Chapter I Subject of the First Book
First Paragraph

“Man is born free; and everywhere he is
in chains

“One thinks himself the master of
others, and still remains a greater slave
than they
“How did this change come about?

“I do not know

“What can make it legitimate?

“That question I think I can answer.”

III. Du contrat social, 1762; bks., IV, pp. 52 (Great Books ed.)
A. Bk. I. “any sure and legitimate rule of administration”?
1. “men as they are and laws as they might be”
2. force and right
3. the “first convention”
a. one or two contracts? CAUTION (III, 16)
4. key problem
5. who is the sovereign?
a. fundamental law?
b. “forced to be free”
B. Bk. II. “important deduction [s]”
1. representative democracy?
2. three types of will
a. particular will
b. general will (Volonté Général)
c will of all
3. role of association

III.A.1-3
After this brilliant opening paragraph, Rousseau develops
his solution to the problem of tyranny promising to describe
“men as they are and laws as they might be.” In Chapter III
he rejects the notion of “the right of the strongest” by
contrasting the terms “force” and “right.”
In Bk. I, Chap. 5, THAT WE MUST ALWAYS GO BACK TO A FIRST

CONVENTION, Rousseau seems to be following Locke in having
a two-stage compact; ﬁrst forming “a people,” then
establishing a political compact. But in Bk. III, Chap. 16,THAT THE

INSTITUTION OF GOVERNMENT IS NOT A CONTRACT, he
asserts,”There is only one contract in the state: that of the
association itself.
jbp

III.A.4-key problem
BOOK I
CHAPTER VI
THE SOCIAL COMPACT

The problem is to ﬁnd a form of association which will defend and
protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each
associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey
himself alone, and remain as free as before. This is the fundamental
problem of which the Social Contract provides the solution…
These clauses, properly understood, may be reduced to one--the
total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the
whole community; for in the ﬁrst place, as each gives himself absolutely,
the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one has any
interest in making them burdensome to others...

III.A.5.
Finally, each man, in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody; and as
there is no associate over which he does not acquire the same right as
he yields others over himself, he gains an equivalent for everything he
loses, and an increase of force for the preservation of what he has.

If then we discard from the social contract what is not of its essence, we
shall ﬁnd that it reduces itself to the following terms:

Each of us puts his person and a! his power in common under the
supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity,
we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.

At once, in place of the individual personality of each contracting party,
this act of association creates a moral and collective body….

III.A.5. b-”...forced to be free….”

In order then that the social contract may not be a empty formula,
it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to
the rest, that whosoever refuses to obey the general will shall be
compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less
than that he will be forced to be free [emphasis added]
….obedience to a law which we prescribe to ourselves is liberty.

III.B.1-representative democracy?
BOOK II
CHAPTER I
THAT SOVEREIGNTY IS UNALIENABLE

The ﬁrst and most important deduction from the principles we have so far
laid down is that the general will alone can direct the State according to
the object for which it was instituted, i.e., the common good: for if the
clashing of particular interests make the establishment of societies
necessary, the agreement of these very interests made it possible….
I hold then that Sovereignty, being nothing less than the exercise of the
general will, can never be alienated, and that the Sovereign, who is no less
that a collective being, cannot be represented except by himself : the
power indeed may be transmitted, but not the will.

apparently not

III.B.2-three types of will
BOOK II
CHAPTER III
WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE

It follows from what has gone before that the general will is always right
and tends to the public advantage; but it does not follow that the
deliberations of the people are always equally correct. Our will is always
for our own good; but we do not always see what that is; the people is
never corrupted, but it is often deceived, and on such occasions only
does it seem to will what is bad.
There is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the
general will; the latter considers only the common interest, while the
former takes private interest into account, and is no more than the sum of
the particular wills; but take away from these same wills the plusses and
minuses that cancel one another, and the general will remains as the sum
of the differences.

Now what can this mean?

III.B.2.a. the particular will=the will of each individual

III.B.2.b. the general will=”the sum of the differences” when one takes
away “the plusses and minuses” of the particular wills “that cancel one
another”--whatever that could mean in real life!!! And we are assured that
the general will “is always right and tends to the public advantage”

III.B.2.c. the will of all=something that “takes private interest into
account” and, if it is the product of what he has called “the deliberations
of the people,” it is fallible, unlike the general will

Since these concepts are crucial to his argument, we are entitled to
be worried about what seems to be mystification or fuzzy thinking
here!

III.B.3-the role of associations
BOOK II
CHAPTER III
WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE (cont. from the same spot)

If when the people, being furnished with adequate information,
held its deliberations, had no communication one with another,
the grand total of the small differences would always give the
general will, and the decision would always be good. But when
factions arise, and partial associations are formed at the expense
of the great association, the will of each of these associations
becomes general in relation to its members, while it remains
particular in relation to the State : it may then be said that there
are no longer as many votes as there are men, but only as many as
there are associations. The differences become less numerous
and give a less general result. Lastly, when one of these (cont.)

III.B.3-the role of associations
BOOK II
CHAPTER III
WHETHER THE GENERAL WILL IS FALLIBLE (cont. from the same spot)
and give a less general result. Lastly, when one of these (cont.)
associations is so great as to prevail over all the rest, the result is no
longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference; in this case
there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is
purely particular.
It is there fore essential, if the general will is to be able to express
itself, that there should be no partial society within the State, and
that each citizen should think only his own thoughts: which was
indeed the sublime and unique system established by the great
Lycurgus [of Sparta]. But if there are partial societies, it is best to
have as many as possible and to prevent them from being unequal as
was done by Solon….These precautions are the only ones that can
guarantee that the general will shall always be enlightened, and that
the people shall in no way deceive itself….

III. Du contrat social, 1762; bks., IV, pp. 52 (Great Books ed.)
A. Bk. I. “any sure and legitimate rule of administration”?
B. Bk. II “important deduction [s]”
C. Bk III “different forms”
1. force and will in the body politic
a. what is government?
2. historical and geographic factors
a. Projet de constitution pour la Corse, 1765
b. Considerations sur le gouvernement de la Pologne, 1770 (?)
3. tendency to degenerate
a. civic virtue and deputies
D. Bk IV the ultimate foundation of authority
1. voting
2. historical discussion on Rome
3. civil religion

III.C.1-force and will in the body politic
BOOK III
CHAPTER I
GOVERNMENT IN GENERAL

I warn the reader that this chapter requires careful reading, and
that I am unable to make myself clear to those who refuse to be
attentive.
Every free action is produced by the concurrence of two causes: one
moral, i.e. the will which determines the act; the other physical, i.e. the
power which executes it. I walk towards an object, it is necessary ﬁrst that
I should will to go there, and, in the second place, that my feet should
carry me. If a paralytic wills to run and an active man wills not to, they will
both stay where they are. The body politic has the same motive powers;
here too force and will are distinguished, will under the name of
legislative power, and force under that of executive power. Without their
concurrence, nothing is, or should be, done. (continued)

III.C.1-force and will in the body politic
BOOK III
CHAPTER I

concurrence, nothing is, or should be, done. (continued)
We have seen that the legislative power belongs to the people, and can
belong to it alone. It may on the other hand, readily be seen, from the
principles laid down above, that the executive power cannot belong to
the generality as the legislature or Sovereign, whose acts must always be
laws.
The public force therefore needs an agent of its own to bind it together
and set it to work under the direction of the general will, to serve as a
means of communication between the State and the Sovereign, and to do
for the collective person more or less what the union of soul and body
does for men. Here we have what is, in the State, the basis of
government, often wrongly confused with the Sovereign, whose minister
it is. (continued)

III.C.1-force and will in the body politic a. what is government?
BOOK III
CHAPTER I

it is. (continued)
What then is government? An intermediate body set up between the
subjects and the Sovereign, to secure their mutual correspondence,
charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of liberty,
both civil and political.
The members of this body are called magistrates or kings, that is to say
governors, and the whole body bears the name of prince. Thus those that
hold that the act, by which a people puts itself under a prince, is not a
contract, are certainly right. It is simply and solely a commission, an
employment, in which the rulers, mere ofﬁcials of the Sovereign, exercise
in their own name the power of which it makes them depositaries. This
power it can limit, modify, or recover at pleasure; for the alienation of
such a right is incompatible with the nature of the social body, and
contrary to the end of association. (continued)

BOOK III
CHAPTER I

contrary to the end of association. (continued)
I call then government, or supreme administration, the legitimate
exercise of the executive power, and prince or magistrate the man or
body entrusted with that administration.
In government reside the intermediate forces whose relations make
up that of the whole to the whole or of the Sovereign to the State. This
last relation may be represented as that between the extreme terms of a
continuous proportion, which has government as its mean proportional.

Diagram of this mathematical analogy
Sovereign Government
(all the people)
=
Government State
or (all the people)

Sovereign State
: Government :: Government :
(all the people) (all the people)

Whatever this might mean!!!

continuous proportion, which has government as its mean proportional.
The government gets from the Sovereign the orders it gives the people,
and, for the State to be properly balanced, there must, when everything
is reckoned in, be equality between the product or power of the
government taken in itself, and the product or power of the citizens, who
are on the one hand sovereign and on the other subject.
Furthermore, none of these three terms can be altered without the
equality being instantly destroyed. If the Sovereign desires to govern, or
the magistrate to give laws, or if the subjects refuse to obey, disorder
takes the place of regularity, force and will no longer act together, and
the State is dissolved and falls into despotism or anarchy. Lastly, as
there is also only one mean proportional between each relation, there is
also only one good government possible for a State. But, as countless
events may change the relations of a people, not only may different
governments be good for different people, but also for the same people
at different times….

III.C.2-historical & geographic factors
a. Projet de constitution pour la Corse, 1765
b. Considerations sur le gouvernement de la Pologne, 1770 (?)
In 1762, as a political philosopher, Rousseau wrote the sentence above,
that “different governments may be good for different people.” In the
next decade, as a political scientist, he would try his hand at this very
task. Clearly inﬂuenced by Montesquieu’s geographic approach,
Rousseau responded to requests from these two countries, Corsica and
Poland. Both were tottering on the brink of conquest and the extinction
of self-government; Corsica by France, Poland by Prussia, Russia, and
Austria. These attempts to apply the ideas of the Social Contract to real
life situations shed an interesting light on Rousseau’s thinking, often at
odds with his more idealistic musings in 1762.

III.C.3-tendency to degenerate
A constant theme in his thought, beginning with the ﬁrst discourse in
1749, was how civilization tended to corrupt man’s natural goodness.--jbp

BOOK III
CHAPTER X
THE ABUSE OF GOVERNMENT
AND ITS TENDENCY TO DEGENERATE

As the particular will acts constantly in opposition to the general will,
the government continually exerts itself against the Sovereignty. The
greater this exertion becomes, the more the constitution changes; and as
there is in this case no other corporate will to create an equibrilum by
resisting the will of the prince, sooner or later the prince must inevitably
suppress the Sovereign and break the social treaty. This is the
unavoidable and inherent defect which, from the very birth of the body
politic, tends to destroy it, as age and death end by destroying the
human body….

When citizens replace civic virtue with greed for a comfortable life, they
hire deputies to govern for them--jbp

BOOK III
CHAPTER XV
DEPUTIES OR REPRESENTATIVES

As soon as public service ceases to be the chief business of the
citizens and they would rather serve with their money than with their
persons, the State is not far from its fall. When it is necessary to march
out to war, they pay troops and stay at home: when it is necessary to
meet in council, they name deputies and stay at home. By reason of
idleness and money, they end by having soldiers to enslave their country
and representatives to sell it. (continued)

BOOK III
CHAPTER XV
DEPUTIES OR REPRESENTATIVES

and representatives to sell it. (continued)
It is through the hustle of commerce and the arts, through the greedy
self-interest of profit, and through softness and love of amenities that
personal services are replaced by money payments. Men surrender a
part of their profits in order to have time to increase them at leisure.
Make gifts of money, and you will not be long without chains….
….In a well-ordered city every man flies to the assemblies: under a bad
government no one cares to stir a step to get to them, because no one is
interested in what happens there, because it is foreseen that the general
will will not prevail, and lastly because domestic cares are all-absorbing….
As soon as any man says of the affairs of the State What does it matter to
me? the State may be given up for lost….

III.D.-the ultimate foundation of authority
1. voting
2. historical discussion on Rome
3. civil religion
In Chapter I of this ﬁnal book Rousseau’s idealization of Swiss public
assemblies is clearly observable. “When we see among the happiest
people in the world bands of peasants regulating the affairs of state
under an oak tree, and always acting wisely, can we help feeling a certain
contempt for the reﬁnements of other nations, which employ so much
skill and mystery to make themselves at once illustrious and wretched?”
In Chapters 2 & 3 he attempts to relate voting to the discovery of the
general will. In Chapters 4-7 he reviews the political history of Rome and
its pursuit of the general will.
In Chapter 8, “The Civil Religion,” he reviews the history of religious
strife and offers a vision of a unifying patriotic faith which would bind
men to their civic duty towards the State.

III.D.3-civil religion
BOOK IV
CHAPTER VIII
THE CIVIL RELIGION

...But I err in speaking of a Christian republic; for each of these terms
contradicts the other. Christianity preaches only servitude and
submission. In spirit it is too favorable to tyranny for tyranny not to take
advantage of it. True Christians are made to be slaves; they know it and
they hardly care; this short life has too little value in their lives….
There is thus a profession of faith which is purely civil and of which it is
the sovereign’s function to determine the articles, not strictly as religious
dogmas, but as sentiments of sociability, without which it is impossible to
be either a good citizen or a loyal subject....
The dogmas of the civil religion must be simple and few in number,
expressed precisely and without explanations or commentaries. (cont.)

III.D.3-civil religion
BOOK IV
CHAPTER VIII
THE CIVIL RELIGION

expressed precisely and without explanations or commentaries. (cont.)
The existence of an omnipotent, intelligent, benevolent divinity that
foresees and provides; the life to come; the happiness of the just; the
punishment of sinners; the sanctity of the social contract and the law ---
these are the positive dogmas. As for the negative dogmas, I would limit
them to a single one: no intolerance. Intolerance is something which
belongs to the religions we have rejected.

VOLTAIRE BENJAMIN CONSTANT JOHN CRAWFURD CHARLES MAURRAS
1694-1778 1767-1830 1783-1868 1868-1952

Criticism

SIR KARL POPPER HANNAH ARENDT ROBERT PALMER MAURICE CRANSTON
1902-1994 1906-1975 1909-2002 1920-1993

IV. Criticism
A. Historical Critics
1. 18th century
2. 19th century
3. 20th century
B. Criticism from Justice & Power, 1977
1. Robespierre and post hoc ergo propter hoc
2. argumentum ad hominem
3. Sparta and civic virtue
4. totalitarian democracy?

Although Rousseau was wildly popular during his lifetime and
especially after his death and during the Revolution, criticism
dogged him beginning with those who had begun as his friends.

The first to criticize Rousseau were his fellow Philosophes, above all, Voltaire. According to Jacques
Barzun:
Voltaire, who had felt annoyed by the first essay [On the Arts and Sciences], was
outraged by the second, [Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men], declaring
that Rousseau wanted us to “walk on all fours” like animals and behave like savages,
believing them creatures of perfection. From these interpretations, plausible but
inexact, spring the clichés Noble Savage and Back to Nature.
Wikipedia

After receiving the Second Discourse he wrote, “I have received, Monsieur,
your new book against the human race, and I thank you.” After the famous
passage about the first man to enclose property, he wrote “Behold the
philosophy of a beggar who would have the rich robbed by the poor.” Of his
forty-one marginal notes, forty are critical.--quotes in Cranston, Inequality
jbp

Following the French Revolution, other commentators
ﬁngered a potential danger of Rousseau’s project of
realizing an “antique” conception of virtue amongst the
citizenry in a modern world (e.g. through education,
physical exercise, a citizen militia, public holidays, and
the like). Taken too far, as under the Jacobins, such
social engineering could result in tyranny.

As early as 1819, in his famous speech “On Ancient and Modern Liberty,” the
political philosopher Benjamin Constant, a proponent of constitutional
monarchy and representative democracy, criticized Rousseau, or rather his
more radical followers (speciﬁcally the Abbé de Mably), for allegedly believing
that "everything should give way to collective will, and that all restrictions on
individual rights would be amply compensated by participation in social power.”

Wikipedia

Common also were attacks by defenders of social hierarchy on Rousseau's "romantic"
belief in equality. In 1860, shortly after the Sepoy Rebellion in India, two British white
supremacists, John Crawfurd and James Hunt, mounted a defense of British imperialism
based on “scientiﬁc racism". Crawfurd, in alliance with Hunt, took over the presidency of
the British Anthropological Society, which had been founded with the mission to defend
indigenous peoples against slavery and colonial exploitation. Invoking "science" and
"realism", the two men derided their "philanthropic" predecessors for believing in human
equality and for not recognizing that mankind was divided into superior and inferior
races. Crawfurd, who opposed Darwinian evolution, "denied any unity to mankind,
insisting on immutable, hereditary, and timeless differences in racial character, principal
amongst which was the 'very great' difference in 'intellectual capacity.'" For Crawfurd, the
races had been created separately and were different species. Since Crawfurd was
Scottish, he thought the Scottish "race" superior and all others inferior; whilst Hunt, on
the other hand, believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon "race". Crawfurd and Hunt
routinely accused those who disagreed with them of believing in "Rousseau’s Noble
Savage". (The pair ultimately quarreled because Hunt believed in slavery and Crawfurd
did not). "As Ter Ellingson demonstrates, Crawfurd was responsible for re-introducing the
Pre-Rousseauian concept of 'the Noble Savage' to modern anthropology, attributing it
wrongly and quite deliberately to Rousseau.”
Wikipedia

Common also were attacks by defenders of social hierarchy on Rousseau's "romantic" belief in equality. In
1860, shortly after the Sepoy Rebellion in India, two British white supremacists, John Crawfurd and James
Hunt, mounted a defense of British imperialism based on “scientiﬁc racism". Crawfurd, in alliance with Hunt,
took over the presidency of the British Anthropological Society, which had been founded with the mission to
defend indigenous peoples against slavery and colonial exploitation. Invoking "science" and "realism", the two
men derided their "philanthropic" predecessors for believing in human equality and for not recognizing that
mankind was divided into superior and inferior races. Crawfurd, who opposed Darwinian evolution, "denied
any unity to mankind, insisting on immutable, hereditary, and timeless differences in racial character, principal
amongst which was the 'very great' difference in 'intellectual capacity.'" For Crawfurd, the races had been
created separately and were different species. Since Crawfurd was Scottish, he thought the Scottish "race"
superior and all others inferior; whilst Hunt, on the other hand, believed in the supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon
"race". Crawfurd and Hunt routinely accused those who disagreed with them of believing in "Rousseau’s
Noble Savage". (The pair ultimately quarreled because Hunt believed in slavery and Crawfurd did not). "As
Ter Ellingson demonstrates, Crawfurd was responsible for re-introducing the Pre-Rousseauian concept of 'the
Noble Savage' to modern anthropology, attributing it wrongly and quite deliberately to Rousseau.”

Karl Popper was the modern critic whom we met last fall as
a critic of Plato. He also lists Rousseau as an Enemy of the
Open Society. Popper sees the General Will as a
foreshadowing of twentieth century totalitarianism. He
equates Robespierre’s version of Rousseau with Lenin’s
version of Marx and Hitler’s version of his own twisted
ideas in Mein Kampf.

During the Cold War, Karl Popper criticized Rousseau for his
association with nationalism and its attendant abuses. This came to
be known among scholars as the "totalitarian thesis". An example is
J. L. Talmon's, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (1952). Political
scientist J. S. Maloy states that “the twentieth century added
Nazism and Stalinism to Jacobinism on the list of horrors for which
Rousseau could be blamed. ... Rousseau was considered to have
advocated just the sort of invasive tampering with human nature
which the totalitarian regimes of mid-century had tried to
instantiate." But Maloy adds that "The totalitarian thesis in
Rousseau studies has, by now, been discredited as an attribution of
real historical inﬂuence.”

Wikipedia

In 1919 Irving Babbitt, founder of a movement called the
"New Humanism", wrote a critique of what he called
"sentimental humanitarianism", for which he blamed
Rousseau. Babbitt's depiction of Rousseau was countered
in a celebrated and much reprinted essay by A. O. Lovejoy
in 1923. In France, fascist theorist and anti-Semite Charles
Maurras, founder of Action Française, “had no
compunctions in laying the blame for both Romantisme et
Révolution ﬁrmly on Rousseau in 1922."
Wikipedia

In 1919 Irving Babbitt, founder of a movement called the "New Humanism", wrote
a critique of what he called "sentimental humanitarianism", for which he blamed
Rousseau. Babbitt's depiction of Rousseau was countered in a celebrated and
much reprinted essay by A. O. Lovejoy in 1923. In France, fascist theorist and
anti-Semite Charles Maurras, founder of Action Française, “had no
compunctions in laying the blame for both Romantisme et Révolution ﬁrmly on
Rousseau in 1922." Wikipedia

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.

Wikipedia

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.

And what, in summary, was likely in his book to appeal to men in a mood
of rebellion…? First of all, the theory of the political community, of the
people, or nation, was revolutionary in implication: it posited a
community based on the will of the living, and the active sense of
membership…, rather than on history, or kinship, or race, or past
conquest…. It denied sovereign powers to kings, to oligarchs, and to all
governments. It said that any form of government could be changed. It
held all public oﬃcers to be removable. It held that law could draw its
force and its legality only from the community itself…. Not only
monarchs, but also the constituted bodies…, would be justiﬁed in
believing that the Social Contract sapped their foundations.

R. R. Palmer, The Age of the Democratic Revolution. vol. 1, pp. 126-127

In less than a hundred pages, Rousseau outlined a theory of evolution of
the human race which preﬁgured the discoveries of Darwin; he
revolutionized the study of anthropology and linguistics, and he made a
seminal contribution to political and social thought….it altered people’s
ways of thinking about themselves and their world; it even changed their
ways of feeling. Of all his writings, Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality...has
perhaps been the most inﬂuential. The books of his later years...are more
‘substantial’, but it is as the author of the second Discourse that
Rousseau has both been held responsible for the French Revolution and
acclaimed as the founder of modern social science.

Maurice Cranston, Rousseau; A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, 1984. p. 29

IV. Criticism
A. Historical Critics
B. Criticism from Justice & Power, 1977
1. Robespierre and post hoc ergo propter hoc
2. argumentum ad hominem
3. Sparta and civic virtue
4. totalitarian democracy?

So what do we conclude? Herald of the Democratic
Revolution in France? Dangerous romantic nationalist?
A great deal of one’s reaction to Rousseau is bound up in
one’s reaction to the French Revolution. Both have their
admirable and not so admirable aspects.
Much of our reaction is inﬂuenced by the wars of the
Revolution and its successor Napoleon.
A conservative voice warned of the bloodbath to come as
early as 1790. But that’s another story…
First, we’ll look back next week at our democratic
revolution.

Rousseau's Early Life & Influences

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