¹ Jean, Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, trans, by Goldhammer, Arthur, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1988, p. 295.Google Scholar

² Ronald, Grimsley, Rousseau's Religious Thought, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1968, p. 64.Google Scholar

³ The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, translation by Cole, G. D. H., revised by J. H. Brumfitt and John C. Hall, London, Dent, Everyman's Library, 1988, p. 118;Google ScholarŒuvres complètes (henceforth, simply O. c.), (ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond), Paris, Pléiade, 1959–69, iii, 202. In the following citations, I provide reference to a translation whenever possible. When the French reference comes first, the translation in my own.

⁴ Ernest, Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1968, p. 141.Google Scholar

⁵ For a superb exposition of evil and original sin as they appear in Kant's work, see Gordon, Michalson'sFallen Freedom, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1990,Google Scholar Chapters two and three. Michalson's treatment of Kant and original sin has greatly informed my own approach to Rousseau and the same issue.

⁶ This is not to deny that there is a conceptual and material relation between the Christian linear view of history and Western notions of progress. In fact, some Christian traditions subscribe to post-millennialism, that is, the view that the world will enjoy a thousand year reign of peace and justice before the return of Christ. Moreover, there are Christian perfectionist lines of thought that stand at odds with Augustinian pessimism. The more dominant Christian position, however, ascribes a deeply fallen condition to a world that cannot experience redemption until the end of time.

⁷ See Plato's, Phaedrus, trans. by Helmbold and Rabinowitz, Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1977, p. 38.Google Scholar

⁸ I have found Keohane's, Philosophy and the State in France (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar most useful for tracing Augustine's impact on French thought. I have also benefited greatly from Keohane's account of the sixteenth century French humanists. See especially pp. 183–237 and 83–116.

⁹ See Keohane, p. 191.

¹⁰ As early as 1738, in a poem written at Les Charmettes and titled Le Verger de Madame la Baronne de Warens, Rousseau referred to how he would spend his days in the company of – that is reading – Montaigne and Pascal, among others. See Correspondance générale de J. J. Rousseau, edited by Théophile Dufour and Pierre-Paul Plan, Paris, Armand Colin, 1924, pp. 358 and 363.Google Scholar

¹¹ Montaigne, , ‘Of Vanity,’ The Complete Essays of Montaigne, trans. by Frame, Donald M., Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1958, p. 731.Google Scholar

¹² Pascal, , Pensées, edited by Léon, Brunschvicg, Paris, Le Livre de Poche, 1972, pp. 198–99 (no. 434).Google Scholar

¹³ Michalson, pp. 15 and 48.

¹⁴ ‘Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont’, O. c., iv., 937–38, 935–36, 969–70.Google Scholar

¹⁵ ‘Lettres à Malesherbes’, O. c., i, 1136.Google Scholar‘Man being good, men become wicked’ is how Rousseau expressed a similar idea to the Archbishop (O. c., iv, 937).Google Scholar

¹⁶ O. c., i, 389; Confessions, trans. by J. M. Cohen, London, Penguin Books, 1953, p. 362.Google Scholar In Emile Rousseau, lamented, ‘It is the abuse of our faculties that renders us unhappy and wicked. Our sorrows, our cares, our sufferings come from ourselves’ (O. c., iv, 587;Google ScholarEmile, translated by Barbara Foxley, London, Dent, Everyman's Library, 1974, p. 244).Google Scholar

¹⁷ ‘Lettre à Christopher de Beaumont’, O. c., iv., 936.Google Scholar

¹⁸ Rousseau's essentialism, unlike many of his contemporaries', is rather limited. Like Montaigne or Pascal, Rousseau was suspicious of those who claimed to limn in detail the shape of the natural. Not only was such discernment beyond human ability, but also, even barring that consideration, nature simply did not fashion humans with an extensive constitution. Rousseau frequently criticized the proliferation of Natural Law theorists who shared in common only their subtlety and hubris in affixing the name, natural law, to a collection of their own favourite principles.

¹⁹ ‘Lettre à Victor Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau’, 26 07 1767, Correspondance compléte de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. R. A. Leigh, Geneva and Oxford, the Voltaire Foundation, 1979, vol. 33, p. 239.Google Scholar

²⁰ Lettre à M. d' Alembert, edited by Michel Launay, Paris, Garnier-Flammarion, 1967, p. 58;Google ScholarPolitics and the Arts, translated by Allan Bloom, Cornell, Cornell University Press, 1968, p. 11.Google Scholar

²¹ ‘Lettre à Deschamps’, 8 May 1761, Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. R. A. Leigh, Geneva and Madison, University of Wisconsin Press, 1969, vol. 8, p. 320.Google Scholar ‘We have got on to slippery ice’, Wittgenstein wrote, ‘where there is no friction and so in a certain sense the conditions are ideal, but also, just because of that, we are unable to walk. We want to walk: so we need friction. Back to the rough ground!’ (Philosophical Investigations, trans. by G. E. M. Anscombe, New York, Macmillan, 1953, no. 107).Google Scholar

²² ‘Lettre à Victor Riquetti, marquis de Mirabeau’, 26 07 1767, Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, vol. 33, pp. 239–40.Google ScholarRousseau, quoted the latin, ‘Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor’ (Ovid, Metamorphoses, VII, 20–21).Google Scholar Compare this with Saint Paul, ‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate’ (Romans 7: 15). Along similar lines, see Augustine, , On Nature and Grace, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. by Philip, Schaff, Grand Rapids, Eerdmans, 1971, vol. 5, ch. 61 [LIII], p. 142.Google Scholar

²³ The Solitaires cannot be considered fully human. In his ‘Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont’, for example, immediately after stating that the Solitaire ‘neither hates or loves anything,’ Rousseau went on to say, ‘he is limited to physical instincts alone, he is nothing, he is animal’ (iv., O. c., 936).Google Scholar

²⁴ His other hope was that society itself be reformed and thereby produce relatively virtuous citizens. But that's another story. I tell it in Chapter 7, ‘Reforming the City: The Public Path,’ in my Politics of the Heart: Rousseau, Religion, and the Relation between the Public and Private Life, in progress.

²⁵ Reinhold Niebuhr, a prominent twentieth century American theologian and public philosopher, had claimed in Moral Man and Immoral Society that ‘in every human group there is less reason to guide and check impulse, less capacity for self-transcendence, less ability to comprehend the needs of others and therefore more unrestrained egoism than the individuals, who compose the group, reveal in their personal relationships’ (New York, Scribners, 1960, pp. xi–xii).

²⁶ Jean Starobinski, p. 295.

²⁷ For their support while researching this essay, I would like to express my gratitude to the Franco–American Fulbright Agency, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Vassar Research Committee.