PHIL 2345 Rousseau Introduction

Who was Jean-Jacques Rousseau? ( ) Born Geneva 1712 Son of a watchmaker No formal education (read books with his father) Apprenticed to an engraver, but escaped (theme of freedom) Led a wandering life until he arrived in Paris in 1741.

Paris—1740’s Worked as a diplomat, a tutor, secretary and all round in-house intellectual for the rich and famous (e.g. rich tax farmers) Music:  system of musical notation, in use to this day in China; Dissertation sur la musique moderne (1743); Chemistry:  Institutions chymiques, set up lab with Dupin de Francueil, son of his patron, the tax farmer, M. Dupin; Café life—  Diderot, d’Alembert (eds. of Encyclopédie) and other Enlightenment figures; Accepted major Enlightenment ideas:  progress through science, utility, Lockean sensationalism, and materialism.

D’Alembert (l.) & Diderot (r.)

Philosophical Ideas in the Enlightenment Nature as standard or guide for morals, law and society, But what is nature?  A machine, a nurturing mother, or  A set of impersonal physical forces apprehensible through mathematical laws? Revival of ancient atomist idea:  Particles of matter in motion (Democritus, Lucretius) Where did nature come from?  Traditional Biblical account,  Deist watchmaker God, or  by a mere physical event; beginnings of evolutionary thought— Buffon, discoveries of fossils (political implications in absolute monarchy). Biological nature as system (Linnaeus, Systema naturae).

The search for Truth Seek truth  reason tears away the veil from truth—see frontispiece to Encyclopédie;  Rousseau’s motto: ‘to submit one’s life to the truth.’ How to find truth?  Cartesian innate ideas (placed in our minds by God)—increasingly rejected,  Lockean sensationalism (knowledge through the senses)  Baconian empiricism (induction and experiment)?

Reason tears away the veil of Truth (Encyclopédie, frontispiece)

The spirit of system— systems of knowledge

Rousseau’s works TitleDateSubject Disc. Sci & Arts*1750Sci/arts correlate w/ moral decay Village Soothsayer1752Opera in simple Italian style Disc…Inequality*1755Origins of inequality Julie, or the New Heloise1761Novel extolling family values Emile*1762Pedagogical system Social Contract1762Political reform Confessions1782Autobiography

Rousseau’s view of his works ‘Everything that I was able to retain of these crowds of great truths…has been weakly scattered about in my three principal writings, namely that first discourse, the one on inequality, and the treatise on education, which three works are inseparable and together form the same whole’ (2 nd letter to Malesherbes, CW I, p. 575).

Key political ideas Politics is fundamental:  ‘…everything is rooted in politics and…no people would be other than…their government made them’ (Confs. Bk 9, p. 377). Freedom:  Each member of the political association should be as free as before he joined, but with added powers (SC, I.6). Equality:  None should be so rich that he can buy another, none so poor that he must sell himself (SC, II.11);  Cf. Hobbes, and Locke: equality only important in the SoN.

Role of Sparta in Rousseau’s thought Ancient Greek city-state Mythical founder: Lycurgus  Immortalized by Plutarch’s Lives, which Rousseau read as a child with his father Austere, war-like Egalitarian—30,000 equal parcels of land Public, communal meals—social bonding Public rearing of boys from age 7 Sexual relations oriented to optimal breeding of next generation of warriors; eugenics Sparta’s communism an inspiration for the warrior- guardian class of Plato’s Repubic

First Discourse: Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts ‘All my little passions were stifled by an enthusiasm for truth, liberty, and virtue…this fermentation worked in my heart for more than four years…’ (Confs., Bk 8, p. 328). ‘The work, however, though full of strength and fervour, is completely lacking in logic and order’ (pp ).

First Discourse: Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts Argues for military virtue and courage Argues that cultivation of S & A  ‘enervate’ bodily strength, and  distract from the devotion to the fatherland.  ‘’Our souls have become corrupted as our Sciences and our Arts have advanced toward perfection’ [par. 16]. Athens, China and Paris are decadent, enervated, immoral;  Invasion and conquest of China by the Manchurians Muslims were right to destroy books—  Footnote in Pt. II on ‘disorders’ caused by typography (printing), and the dissemination of secular books. Sparta is model of citizen virtue.

Diderot’s view The task of the Encyclopédie is to organise many authors and consultants to gather and transmit all knowledge worth knowing in order to make humanity ‘more virtuous and more happy’. Diderot, ‘Definition of an Encyclopedia’, in University of Chicago Readings in the History of Western Civilization, vol. 7, p.71). How does this contrast with Rousseau’s view of the social and moral effects of the S & A?

Rousseau’s answer (par. 61) ‘O virtue! sublime science of simple souls! Are so many efforts and so much equipment required in order to know you? Are not your principles engraved in all hearts [like the laws of Sparta], and is it not enough…to return into oneself and to listen to the voice of one’s conscience in the silence of the passions?’