Article contents
“Law and Customs Thrust Us Bank into Infancy””: Rousseau's Historical Anthropology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2009
Extract
The view of Rousseau as a romantic for whom history is a fatal acquisition negating what is most essential and valuable in human nature has been powerfully renewed in many recent interpretations. It remains possible, however, to reinterpret Rousseau's view of history as both the key to the whole of his work and his most important contribution to the tradition of radical political thought. The identification of history with fatality is insufficient and misleading in as much as it misunderstands both the substance and the import of his philosophical anthropology. Rousseau's critique of liberalism and the Enlightenment rests not simply upon an intuitive transcendence of civilized artifice, but upon the first major attempt to construct a historical anthropology which, by undoing the identification of man with bourgeois man, poses the problem of human historicity as a social process entailing increasing alienation and repression.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1990
References
1. Cassirer, Ernest, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Bloomington: Indian University Press, 1955).Google Scholar For an important qualification of Cassirer's interpretation see Derathé, Robert, Le Rationalism dejean-jeacques Rousseau (Paris: Press Universitaires de France, 1948) esp.pp. 115–23, 176–78.Google Scholar For criticism of the neo-Kantian interpretation of Rousseau's view of history, see Kelly, George Armstrong, “Rousseau, Kant and History,” Journal of the History of Ideas 28: 347–48, 359–60Google Scholar and Keohane, N., “ The Masterpiece of Policy in Our Century': Rousseau on the Morality of the Enlightenment,” Political Theory 6: 463.Google Scholar
2. Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 252–93.Google Scholar
3. Starobinski, Jean, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La transparence et l'obstacle (Presses Universitaires de France, 1957), esp. pp. 222–23, no. l.Google Scholar
4. Cassirer, , Question, esp. pp. 46, 66, 72–75.Google Scholar
5. The most salient examples are Cobban, Alfred, Rousseau and the Modern State (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1964);Google Scholar and Levine, Andrew, The Politics of Autonomy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976).Google ScholarCameron, David, The Social Thought of Rousseau and Burke (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1973)Google Scholar also identifies Rousseau, if not as a precursor to Kant, then at least as one who prepares the ground for the distinctive contribution to political philosophy of German Idealism in general. See also Volpe, Galvano Della, Rousseau and Marx, trans, by Fraser, John (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1978).Google Scholar
6. Gay, Peter, “Introduction,” in Cassirer, , Question, pp. 4, 21.Google Scholar
7. See, for example, Shklar, Judith, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969);Google ScholarManuel, Frank E., “A Dream of Eupsychia,” Daedalus, (Summer 1978): 1–12;Google Scholar and Melzer, A. M., “Rousseau and the Problem of Bourgeois Society, ” American Political Science Review 74 (1980): 1019–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar With the important qualification that he views the attempt as being only partially misguided, Berman, Marshall, The Politics of Authenticity (New York: Athenaeum, 1970)Google Scholar, can be included in this group.
8. See Colletti, Lucio, From Rousseau to Lenin (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972), esp. pp. 153–54.Google ScholarGossman, Lionel, “Time and History in Rousseau,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century 30: 311–49,Google Scholar has taken a crucial step in this direction by arguing that for Rousseau “history is the mode of being of all things” (p. 312); yet he does not pursue this thought into Rousseau's own history of human nature.
9. See, for example, Ehrard, Jean, L'Idée de la nature en France dans la première moitié du dix-huitième siöcle, 2 vols. (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1963), II: 536–38;Google ScholarKelly, , “History,” pp. 357–60;Google ScholarStarobinski, , Transparence, pp. 12–13, 24–28;Google Scholarde Jouvenel, Bertrand, “Rousseau the Pessimistic Evolutionary,” Yale French Studies 28 (1961–1962): 83–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar
10. Cassirer, , Question, p. 65.Google Scholar A number of interpreters raise the problem of his historicity of human nature in Rousseau only to treat his view of history as a basis for his moralism, rather than seeing the historicity of human nature as throwing moralism itself into question. See, for example, Cameron, , Social Thought, pp. 58, 67–68, 82, 92;Google ScholarEllenberg, Stephen, Rousseau's Political Philosophy: An Interpretation from Within (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1976), pp. 51–82;Google ScholarLemos, Ramon M., Rousseau's Political Philosophy: An Exposition and Interpretation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1977), pp. 6, 183.Google Scholar An exception to the above is Gossman, , “Time and History,” pp. 316–18.Google Scholar
11. Rousseau, , “The Social Contract,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. Cole, G. D. H. (London: Dent, 1968),Google Scholar Preface.
12. Rousseau, , Social Contract, p. 11Google Scholar
13. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile, trans. Foxley, Barbara (New York: Dutton, 1976), p. 252Google Scholar
14. Cassirer, , Question, pp. 92–94, 104, 107;Google Scholar also Burgelin, Pierre, La Philosophie de l'existence de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1952), pp. 71–72, 79, 119Google Scholar
15. Starobinski, , Transparence, p. 16.Google Scholar
16. Heller, Agnes, Renaissance Man (New York: Schocken Books, 1978), p. 21.Google Scholar
17. Rousseau, , “A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, trans. Cole, G. D. H. (London: Dent, 1968), p. 158.Google Scholar
18. Ibid., p. 161.
19. Ibid., p. 157.
20. Ibid., p. 228.
21. Ibid., pp. 160–61.
22. Greene, John C., The Death of Adam: Evolution and its Impact on Western Thought (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1959), p. 207;Google ScholarLovejoy, Arthur O., “The Supposed Primitivism of Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality? in his Essays in the History of Ideas (New York: Capricorn Books, 1960), pp. 17, 25.Google Scholar
23. Strauss, , Natural Right, p. 267;Google ScholarCassirer, , Question, pp. 101–103, 126.Google Scholar
24. Lèvi-Strauss, Claude, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau, fondateur des science de l'homme,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Neûchatel: Editions de la baconniöre, 1962), p. 239.Google Scholar
25. Rousseau, , Dicours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inègalitè, Oeuvres complètes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Gagnebin, B. and Raymond, M. (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–1969), III: 213.Google Scholar
26. Ibid., pp. 212–13.
27. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” p. 157.Google Scholar
28. Greene, , Adam, pp. 207, 210–211;Google ScholarHampson, Norman, The Enlightenment (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p.226.Google Scholar This question has recently received some attention from two interpreters who explicitly follow Strauss very closely. Plattner, Marc F., Rousseau's State of Nature (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1979)Google Scholar, states that his theory of evolution is a “transformism” in the manner of Buffon and Diderot, and an essential part of the “mechanistic metaphysics” which in reality lies behind the appearance of dualism in the second Discourse (esp. pp. 37, 44, 46, 50). Plattner, in the rush to argue that Rousseau “spurns the entire classical tradition of moral and political philosophy” (p. 64) by abandoning teleological explanation once and for all, thus ignores the substantial gulf between the deist Buffon and the materialist Diderot and loses an opportunity to come to much closer grips with the fuller outlines of Rousseau's evolutionary theory. On the other hand, Victor Goldschmidt, , Anthropologie et Politique (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Urin, 1974)Google Scholar, asserts Rousseau was not a transformist (pp. 242–43) but remained a dualist of a certain sort (pp. 281–83) and thus, even though he attempted wrongly to base a defense or moral virtue on the naturalistic and scientific outlook, was still a defender of natural law (p. 151).
29. For detailed treatments see Greene, Adam; Hampson, Enlightenment; Stephen-Toulmin, and Goodfield, June, The Discovery of Time (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1967);Google ScholarBowler, P. J., “Evolutionism in the Enlightenment,” History of Science 12: 159–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Evolution: The History of An Idea (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984);Google ScholarRobertWokler, , “Perfectible Apes in Decadent Cultures: Rousseau's Anthropology Revisited,” Daedalus, (Summer 1978), 107–134;Google ScholarGlass, B., Temkin, O. and Strauss, W. L., Forerunners of Darwin: 1745–1859 (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1968).Google Scholar
30. Glass, et al. , Forerunners, pp. 77, 97.Google Scholar
31. Hampson, , Enlightenment, p. 226.Google Scholar
32. Rousseau, , Emile, p. 238.Google Scholar
33. Bowler, , “Evolutionism in the Enlightenment,” pp. 164–65.Google Scholar
34. Rousseau, , “Letter to Voltaire on Optimism,” The Indispensable Rousseau, ed. by Mason, J. H. (London: Quartet Books, 1979), p. 116.Google Scholar
35. Rousseau, , “Letters de J.–J. Rousseau a M. Philopolis,” Oeuvres completes, III: 234–35.Google Scholar
36. Glass, et al. , Forerunners, pp. 104–105.Google Scholar
37. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” p. 170.Google Scholar
38. Ibid., p. 163.
39. Spuhler, J. N. et al. , The Evolution of Man's Capacity for Culture (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965), pp. 21, 28–29.Google Scholar
40. Starobinski, Jean, “Rousseau et Buffon,” Jean-Jacques Rousseau et son oeuvre, Comite National pour la Commemoration de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris: Klencksieck, 1964), pp. 138–41.Google Scholar
41. Ibid., p. 140.
42. Rousseau, , Emile, pp. 238–39.Google Scholar
43. Ibid., p. 236.
44. Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Boston: Beacon Press, 1955), pp. 54–64.Google Scholar
45. Rousseau, , “Lettres morales,” Oeuvres complètes, IV: 1096.Google Scholar
46. Rousseau, , Emile, pp. 218–19.Google Scholar
47. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” pp. 169–70Google Scholar
48. Ibid., p. 172
49. Schmidt, Alfred, The Concept of Nature in Marx (London: New Left Books, 1971), p. 34.Google Scholar
50. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” pp. 169–70.Google Scholar On “Open” and “Closed” instincts see Midgley, Mary, Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature (Ithaca: Cornell University, 1978), p. 51ff.Google Scholar
51. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” p. 172; see also p. 182.Google Scholar
52. Ibid., p. 170, emphasis added.
53. Ibid., p. 193; see also p. 164.
54. Ibid., p. 182.
55. Ibid., p. 176.
56. Ibid., p. 193.
57. Ibid., p. 186.
58. Rousseau, “Inégalité,” n.XII, 217.
59. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” p. 186.Google Scholar
60. Ibid., p. 171.
61. On the Enlightenment project of a science of human nature in the abstract see, e.g., Becker, Carl L., The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Philosophers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969), pp. 51, 87–88;Google ScholarEhrard, , L'Idée de la Nature, II: 785–86;Google ScholarLukacs, Georg, History and Class Consciousness (Cambridge: M.I.T. Press, 1968), pp. 135–36;Google ScholarMartin, Kingsley, French Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1963), pp. 117–23;Google ScholarSeidman, Steven, Liberalism and the Origins of European Social Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 21–34.Google Scholar
62. Rousseau, , Emile. Première Version (Manuscrit Favre), Oeuvres completes, IV: 62.Google Scholar
63. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” p. 188,Google Scholar emphasis added.
64. Rousseau, , Essay on the Origin of Languages, On the Origin of Language, trans. Moran, J. H. and Gode, A. (New York: Frederick Ungar, 1966), p. 38.Google Scholar
65. Rousseau, , “Preface to Narcissus,” Miscellaneous Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, reprint of 1767 ed. (New York: Lennox Hill, 1972), p. 140,Google Scholar note, translation amended slightly.
66. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” p. 205.Google Scholar
67. Ibid., p. 221.
68. Ibid., pp. 228–29.
69. Ibid., p. 215.
70. Ibid., p. 229.
71. Rousseau, , La Nouvelle Heloise, Oeuvres complétes, II: 362;Google Scholar cf. Starobinski, , Transference, pp. 18–28.Google Scholar
72. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” pp. 216–17.Google Scholar
73. Ibid., pp. 222–23.
74. Althusser, Louis, Politics and History (London: New Left Books, 1972), pp. 118–24.Google Scholar Althusser attributes to Rousseau an awareness of alienation simply on the basis of a single passage in the Social Contract although this point could have been strengthened by paying some attention to the outlines of the second Discourse.
75. Rousseau, , Social Contract, pp. 11–12.Google Scholar
76. Kant, Immanuel, Conjectural Beginning of Human History On History, ed.Beck, L. W. (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), pp. 60–63.Google Scholar
77. Rousseau, , Social Contract, p. 17.Google Scholar
78. Rousseau, , Emile, p. 173.Google Scholar
79. Ibid., p. 7.
80. Rousseau, , “Inégalité,” p. 217.Google Scholar
81. Horowitz, Gad, Repression: Basic and Surplus Repression in Psychoanalytic Theory: Freud, Reich, Marcuse (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 20–21.Google Scholar
82. Rousseau, , Emile, pp. 6, 44, 49, 84–85, 129, 279, 393.Google Scholar
83. Ibid., p. 282.
84. Ibid., p. 5.
85. Rousseau, , Emile. Premiöre Version, p. 57.Google Scholar
86. Rousseau, , Emile, p. 5.Google Scholar
87. Rousseau, , “Letter to Christopher de Beaumont,”Miscellaneous Works ojJean-Jacques Rousseau, III: 296.Google Scholar
88. Ibid., p. 261.
89. Bloom, Allan, “The Education of Democratic Man: Emile,” Daedalus, (Summer 1978), pp. 135–153.Google Scholar
90. Rousseau, , Emile, p. 7; Emile. Premiöre Version, p. 59.Google Scholar
91. Marshall, T. E., “Rousseau and Enlightenment,” Political Theory 6: 429; “Education” pp. 126–127.Google Scholar
92. Rousseau, , Nouvelle Heloise, p. 571.Google Scholar
93. Rousseau, , Emile, pp. 15–16, 28, 174–75.Google Scholar
94. Ibid., p. 174.
95. Rousseau, , Emile. Premiöre Version, p. 84.Google Scholar
96. Ibid., p. 231.
97. Ibid., p. 92.
98. Rousseau, , Emile, p. 33.Google Scholar
99. Rousseau, , Emile. Premiöre Version, p. 94.Google Scholar
100. Rousseau, , Emile, pp. 35, 53, 85ff.Google Scholar
101. Ibid, p. 125.
102. Ibid., p. 49.
103. Rousseau, , Emile. Premiöre Version, p. 88.Google Scholar
104. Ibid., p. 182.
105. Ibid., p. 56.
106. Ibid., p. 57.
107. Rousseau, , “Lettre à Sophie,” Correspondence générate de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Dufour, T. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1924–1934), III: 101.Google Scholar
108. McManners, J., “The Social Contract and Rousseau's Revolt Against Society,” Hobbes and Rousseau, ed. by Cranston, M. and Peters, J. S., (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1972), 312.Google Scholar
109. Rousseau, , “Inequality” 204.Google Scholar
110. This interpretation of the Social Contract is developed at length in Horowitz, Asher, Rousseau, Nature and History, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987),Google Scholar chap. 7.
111. Gossman, , “Time and History,” 344;Google Scholar cf. Emile, 43, 46, 57.Google Scholar
112. Rousseau, , “Inequality,” 171.Google Scholar
113. Marcuse, Herbert, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 17.Google Scholar
- 7
- Cited by