Rousseau and the Problem of Political Speech

Scott McVoy Dodds

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Department of Political Science University of Toronto

Scott McVoy Dodds

Doctor of Philosophy

Graduate Department of Political Science

University of Toronto

2020

Abstract

Rousseau and the Problem of Political Speech articulates Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s understanding of the possibilities and limits of political speech through a focus on three lesser-known works that

Rousseau planned to publish in a single volume: On Theatrical Imitation, the Essay on the Origin of Languages, and The Levite of Ephraim. The thesis begins by using the first two works to demonstrate why for Rousseau political speech and scientific speech tend to undermine one another, creating permanent limits to the degree of complex rationality available in political speech. An examination of Origin then shows the fundamental passions and symbols that can create social and political links. I argue that this analysis of passions and symbols in Origin is key to reading The Levite of Ephraim, where Rousseau shows how the fundamental passions, especially anger and compassion, are woven into a mix of stories, institutions and practices that maintain a common identity. Yet the final chapter shows that the increasing complexity of political life and language intensify the difficulties of creating such an identity, making Rousseau pessimistic about political success in the modern era. However, his analysis helps us to see the problems of our time more clearly even if his own rhetoric and strategies prove overly dangerous.

Acknowledgements

Rousseau and the Problem of Political Speech owes its merits above all to the feedback of my supervisor, Clifford Orwin, and my committee members, Ryan Balot and Ronald Beiner. Cliff’s expertise on Rousseau and watchfulness for my many errors made the project as good as it could be. Ronnie’s wariness of Rousseau the man, and Ryan’s wariness of Rousseau the thinker, always kept me on my toes. I am also grateful to Emily Nacol and Christopher Kelly, my examiners, for their insightful comments and challenges.

I would also like to acknowledge support from the School of Graduate Studies Travel Fund at the University of Toronto for allowing me to visit the Rousseau archives in Geneva and

Neuchatel. Various stages of the project were presented and refined at the Centre for Ethics and the Political Theory workshop, and the feedback from the University of Toronto community as a whole has always been extremely valuable. The advice of Rebecca Kingston and Simone

Chambers were especially helpful at early stages of the project.

The project began with conversations with my friends and colleagues at the University of

Toronto, and it is to them that many of the insights in the dissertation truly belong. Jonas Schwab-

Pflug, Christopher David La Roche, Taylor Putnam, Zak Black and Timothy Berk provided invaluable feedback both general and specific on the project as it developed. I would also like to thank Emma Planinc, Lindsay Rathnam, Lincoln Rathnam, Kieran Banerjee and Stephanie

Murphy for helping me to formulate the project in its infancy.

Finally, my family deserves the most thanks of all. It would be impossible to name and thank properly the enormous McVoy clan or even the small but stalwart Dodds tribe, but my immediate family has shaped me most of all. Without the financial support of my grandmother

Evelynn, I would never have made it this far. My parents Ken and Kathy always supported me, no

iii matter how far in mind and matter I went from them. While I studied the mind, my brother Eric studied matter, and his commitment to science has been an inspiration to my own. The smile of my daughter Molly provided the emotional fuel for the final edits of this dissertation, and the love and support of my wife Laura assured that it would be done at all.

With so much help, it would be surprising if there were not a few good things in this dissertation, yet it is amazing that so many difficulties remain – they are of my own making.

To Laura

Rousseau and the Problem of Political Speech

Table of Contents

Introduction – 1 I: The problems of contemporary political discourse – 1 II: Rousseau’s novel assessment of speech and reason – 7 III: The triptych and plan of study – 16

Chapter 2: The limits of philosophical speech in Rousseau’s On Theatrical Imitation – 24 I: How to read On Theatrical Imitation – 25 II: The private role of the philosopher – 28 III: The limits of reason in the public sphere – 33 IV: The humble philosopher – 37 V: The dangers of sophistry and poetry intensified by enlightenment – 40 VI: A positive role for public speech? – 45 VII: Conclusion - 49

Chapter 3: Southern comfort and cold showers: speech and identity in Rousseau’s Origin of Languages – 52 I: A psychology and language of self-love – 54 II: Rousseau’s critique of instrumental speech – 62 III: A language of poetry – 68 IV: Love as a basis of language – 77 V: The role of anger in the formation of language and reason – 82 VI: Giving shape to identity: passion, reason and symbol – 84 VII: Conclusion – 88

Chapter 4: “The voice of sacred anger” and the reply of reason: Rousseau’s The Levite of Ephraim and the linguistic foundation of political life – 90 I: How to read The Levite of Ephraim – 93 II. Judges 19-21 - 98 III. Rousseau’s approach to Judges: A poetic account of the transition from the state of nature – 98 IV. Expansive language as a basis for political community – 100 V. The impotency of reason and the causes of anger – 107 VI. Unlocking the power of signs – 113 VII. Directing political unity 1: How good heaven is at avenging crimes – 117

VIII. Directing political unity 2: Compassion, justice, heroism – 123 IX. Shocking the lambs while not making wolves – extreme rhetoric for indolent subjects – 133 X. The limits of political speech – 136

Chapter 5: The progress and decay of political speech – 139 I. The decay of civilized language: the separation of speech and writing, accuracy and precision – 140 II. Legislation and tradition in political life – 144 III. The course of decay in the West – 151 IV. From description to prescription? – 162 V. Emile as solution? - 166 VI. Conclusion – 180

Conclusion – 182 I. History’s destruction of the synthesis – 186 II. Speaking in a vacuum: Resignation or Revolution? – 194

Bibliography – 198

vii

Citations to Works of Rousseau

Levite of Ephraim Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Theatrical Imitation Music. Translated by John T. Scott. Hanover, New Dictionary of Music Hampshire: University Press of England, 1998.

First Discourse The Discourses and other early political writings. Translated Second Discourse by Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge University Essay on the Origin of Press, 1997. Languages The Social Contract and other later political writings. Social Contract Translated by Victor Gourevitch. Cambridge: Cambridge Political Economy University Press, 2002.

Emile or On Education. Translated by Allan Bloom. New Emile York: Basic Books, 1979.

Politics and the Arts: Letter to d’Alembert on the Theatre. D’Alembert Translated by Allan Bloom. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1968.

Poland The Plan for Perpetual Peace, On the Government of Poland, Corsica and other writings on history and politics. Translated by Perpetual Peace Christopher Kelly and Judith Bush. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of England, 2005.

Dialogues Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues. Translated by Judith Bush, Christopher Kelly and Roger D. Masters. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of England, 1990.

Confessions The Confessions and correspondence, including the Letters to Malesherbes. Translated by Christopher Kelly. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of England, 1995.

Reveries The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Translated by Charles E. Butterworth. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1992.

Letters Written from the Letters to Beaumont, Letters Written from the Mountain, and Mountain related writings. Translated by Christopher Kelly and Judith Letter to Beaumont Bush. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of England, 2001.

viii

Julie Julie, or the New Heloise. Translated by Philip Stewart and Jean Vache. Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of England, 1997.

Ouevre Complete (OC) All English translations will be accompanied by reference to the Oeuvre complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Vol. 1-5. Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959-1995. If only the OC is cited, the translation is my own.

Introduction

This dissertation is driven by three contentions. The first concerns the contemporary status of political speech: while public discourse has always been an arena fraught with tensions, today it is one that is rightly regarded as in advanced decay. This study hopes to shed light on some of the causes and possible remedies of that decay. It will do so by providing evidence for a second contention: that the thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a particularly fruitful place to turn for understanding the problems of political speech, and particularly modern political speech. The final contention is that the place where Rousseau articulates this problem most comprehensively is in three minor works that he planned to publish together – On Theatrical Imitation, the Essay on the

Origin of Languages, and The Levite of Ephraim (hereafter Theatrical Imitation, Origin, The

Levite).1 Part of the contribution of this project is to show the importance of these relatively understudied pieces in their connection with one another.

I. The problems of contemporary political discourse

That modern public discourse has reached a state of advanced decline is a widely held opinion. However, this view reveals itself somewhat differently depending on whether one looks at this decay as it is articulated in popular discourse or academic discourse.

Two related problems emerge when one listens to the popular discourse on the state of its own decline. First, there is a concern that decent and rational debate has been overrun by speech acts that are overly passionate, based in and expressing outrage rather than carefully considered

1 Their full French titles: De L’Imitation Thèâtrale: un essai tire des dialogues de Platon, Essai sur l’origine des langues: dans lequel mélodie et imitation sont traitées, Le Levite D’Ephraim.

1 argument.2 Second, much of this outrage is directed by one party at another, with each group accusing the other of ignoring the facts, or of peddling “fake news.” This partisanship is especially apparent in the opposing speeches of conservatives and progressives in the United States.3

The views of members of the Obama administration are revealing of the frustration felt by those engaged in mass political communication. The Obama administration wrestled continually with what it perceived as the relative impotence of both its rhetorical appeals and its factual claims.

Dan Pfeiffer, President Obama’s former Senior Advisor for Strategy and Communications, writes that “one of Barack Obama’s greatest frustrations during his time in the White House was his inability to use rhetoric and reason to better tell the story of his presidency.”4 The diagnosis of the administration was that an increase of tribalism kept both their story and the facts they tried to spread from reaching a wider audience.5 Obama still thinks that this is one of the key issues facing democracy, as he revealed in a recent speech: “Most of us prefer to surround ourselves with opinions that validate what we already believe … But democracy demands that we’re able to get inside the reality of people who are different than us so we can understand their point of view.”

An exchange of opinions and an attention to different views would be necessary for a public that was well-informed, on Obama’s account. But this exchange of points of view is not occurring,

2 There has been a popular debate about the need and use of such outrage. See for instance Noah Berlatsky, “Go Ahead, Get Outraged,” The Atlantic, Dec. 24, 2014, http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/12/outraged- over-outrage/383994/; Julia Turner, “The Year of Outrage,” Slate, Dec 17, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/life/culturebox/2014/12/the_year_of_outrage_2014_everything_you_were_angry_abo ut_on_social_media.html; Gerald F. Sebid, “Civil Discourse in Decline: Where Does It End?” The Wall Street Journal, May 30, 2017, https://www.wsj.com/articles/civil-discourse-in-decline-where-does-it-end-1496071276; Charles Duhigg, “The Real Roots of American Rage,” The Atlantic, January/February 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/01/charles-duhigg-american-anger/576424/. 3 For instance, on the side of President Donald Trump, Howard Kurtz, Media Madness: Donald Trump, the press, and the war over the truth (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, 2018). Against: Dan Pfeiffer, Yes We (still) Can: Politics in the Age of Obama, Twitter, and Trump (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2018). 4 Pfeiffer, Yes We (Still) Can, 111. 5 Pfeiffer, Yes We (Still) Can, 135-136. See also: Ben Rhodes, The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House (New York: Random House, 2018), 10.

2 stemming in part from and encouraging an erosion of “[belief] in an objective reality.”6 Even if

Obama exaggerates the extent to which most citizens are relativistic, his diagnosis is a symptomatic of real frustrations in communicating political ideas.

These difficulties of communication transcend obvious political divisions. Even within ideological camps, there have been suggestions that while following “the same doctrine, abstractly stated,” different people in fact no longer share “common terms by which the whole community could move ahead.”7 The language used by contemporary political communities lacks common referents, or those referents are ignored. Public language is moving many groups into action, but not common action based on agreed-upon standards.8 Even beyond partisan divisions, modern citizens seem to be speaking about different worlds.

This situation has led some to call for a new focus on creating common ideals and stories.

Mark Lilla suggests that “we must relearn how to speak to citizens as citizens and to frame our appeals – including ones to benefit particular groups – in terms of principles that everyone can affirm.”9 This would involve preparing a new “dispensation … grounded in feeling and perceptions that give principles and arguments psychological force.”10 The moment calls for a renewed investigation into the motivating potential of political speech. There is a public debate, then, about how to reconstruct public discourse, and the extent to which passionate appeals or

6 Barack Obama, “Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture,” (speech, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 17, 2018), Time, http://time.com/5341180/barack-obama-south-africa-speech-transcript/. Another former Obama official, Cass Sunstein, has made these problems central to his research in the past decade: Cass Sunstein and Reid Hastie, Wiser: Getting Beyond Groupthink to Make Groups Smarter (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard Business Review Press, 2015); Cass Sunstein, On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can be Done (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2009); Cass Sunstein, Going to Extremes: How Like Minds Unite and Divide (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). 7 Nathan Heller, “Trump, the University of Chicago, and the Collapse of Public Language,” The New Yorker, Sept. 1, 2016, https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/trump-the-university-of-chicago-and-the-collapse- of-public-language. 8 See for instance, Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich. Truth Decay: An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life. RAND Corporation, 2018. 9 Mark Lilla, The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics (New York: Harper Collins, 2017), 14. 10 Lilla, Once and Future Liberal, 22. 3 considered argument should structure such discourse, as well as what sorts of passions we should appeal to and what kinds of arguments we should make.

The literature in political theory echoes the public concerns about the status of political speech.11 There has recently been a “rhetorical revival,” a renewed concern with mixing speech that appeals to passion and emotion with speech making appeals to arguments.12 Unlike the practical political concerns expressed above, the debate in political theory initially arose in response to a concern that political theory had become too rationalistic in the influential approaches of such thinkers as John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas, who emphasize reason in both their descriptions of and prescriptions for political speech. In promoting the construction of a healthier public discourse through a focus on rational deliberation, these two thinkers deny poetry and rhetoric a positive role in free political life. As Ronald Beiner puts it, the basic idea for Habermas is that “no one would enter into a political debate (an exchange of presumed-to-be-valid reasons) unless they were already committed to the outcome reposing on the rational vindication of one set of reasons over its competitors, rather than non-rational considerations of whatever kinds.”13

Similarly, Rawls argues for public reason as “an ideal of citizenship: our willingness to settle the fundamental political matters in ways that others as free and equal can acknowledge as reasonable and rational” to the exclusion of “mere rhetoric or artifices of persuasion.”14 The formal rational

11 To some extent these concerns are not new: thirty-six years ago, John Zvesper went so far as to claim that “everyone knows that the art of political rhetoric has declined drastically in the modern world” (“The Problem of Liberal Rhetoric,” Review of Politics 44 (1982), 546. 12 For a summary of this literature: Bryan Garsten, “The Rhetorical Revival in Political Theory,” Annual Reviews 14 (2011): 159-180. Recent entries along similar lines: Daniel Kapust and Michelle Schwarze, “The Rhetoric of Sincerity: Cicero and Smith on Propriety and Political Context,” American Political Science Review 110 (2016): 100-111; Nina Valiquette Moreau, “Musical Mimesis and Political Ethos in Plato’s Republic,” Political Theory 45 (2017): 192-215; Richard Avramenko, “The Grammar of Indifference: Tocqueville and the Language of Democracy,” Political Theory 45 (2017): 495-523. 13 Ronald Beiner, Political Philosophy: What It is and Why It Matters (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 136. 14 John Rawls, Justice as Fairness: A Restatement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001), 92.

4 structure of discourse is meant to derive from our understanding of what we really want out of political speech - to be respected as rational political actors - and to drive its reform.

These approaches have come under attack for several reasons, not the least of which is that they have little to say about the political speech we actually encounter, especially in contemporary political circumstances. As Sharon Krause notes, rationalist accounts “suffer from a motivational deficit. The ideal of reason as a faculty that abstracts from sentiment, which undergirds impartiality on this view, disconnects the deliberating subject from the motivational sources of human agency, which are found in the affective attachments and desires from which subjects are asked to abstract.”15 The main concern of most people engaged in public speech does not obviously appear to be that they be respected as rational deliberators. By focusing on rational deliberation and its structure, and trying to jettison passion and rhetoric, Rawls and Habermas cannot adequately explain why we would choose to make the moves that they advocate.16 Supporting this debate within political theory is social science research that shows complex deliberation often decreases motivation for political action, unless it increases it by reinforcing previous views.17 There is also increasing consensus that citizens often offer arguments to justify such pre-existing opinions or inclinations.18 We have good reasons to think that the public reason of a Rawls or Habermas has limited empirical appeal or descriptive purchase.

15 Sharon Krause, Civil Passions: Moral Sentiment and Democratic Deliberation (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008), 2. Martha Nussbaum is another prominent example: “Ceding the terrain of emotion-shaping to illiberal forces gives them a huge advantage in the people’s hearts and risks making people think of liberal values as tepid and boring” (Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2013), 2). 16 Allan Bloom makes this case against Rawls in Giants and Dwarves: Essays 1960-1990 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), 322-324. 17 “Group polarization promotes engagement; conversations with multiple others can produce inaction and paralysis” (Sunstein, Going to Extremes, 151). Morgan Marietta notes that “deliberation discourages participation, because it increases ambivalence and forces citizens to reveal political positions that can exact social costs” (“From My Cold, Dead Hands: Democratic Consequences of Sacred Rhetoric,” The Journal of Politics 70 (2008), 769). 18 See e.g. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2011).

Given these problems with rationalistic approaches, some have argued that the goal should be to find an understanding of the relationship between reason and the passions in political speech that properly addresses our motivations while not being deceptive or oppressive. Bryan Garsten argues that “the real philosophical issue lying beneath the debate between the rhetoricians and the

Habermasians is how we understand the relationship between speech, reasoning, and freedom.”19

If we must be fully rational to be free, it is hard to see how we can reincorporate passion and feeling. Thus Garsten suggests that “reconciling rhetoric with the wish to respect people’s capacity for free judgment requires an account in which the perceptions, images, and feelings that rhetoric works with are not separate from the activities of judging and reasoning, but partly constitutive of them.”20 To reconcile the passions and reason via rhetoric (insofar as this is possible) we need an understanding that situates reason within a broader matrix of feelings and understandings.

As in nonacademic political discourse, some have suggested that scholars might consider narrative and other forms of poetic speech. We might turn to what Charles Taylor has called ‘the social imaginary’: “the way ordinary people ‘imagine’ their social surroundings … often not expressed in theoretical terms … carried in images, stories, legends, etc. … the social imaginary is that common understanding which makes possible common practices, and a widely shared sense of legitimacy.”21 A sufficient understanding of political speech requires that we turn to this deeper level, and not merely to the rational arguments we think we hold but the stories and images to which they relate and in which they are embedded.

With so much talk about talk, however, another problem lies beneath the surface (although perhaps revealed in Obama’s frustrations about the power of speech tout court). The difficulties

19 Garsten, “Rhetorical Revival,” 167. 20 Garsten, “Rhetorical Revival,” 169. 21 Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2007), 171-172.

6 encountered in both theory and practice suggest the need to understand the limits of both reason and rhetoric. Speech occupies part of the phenomenon of political life, but by no means the whole.

Human motivations and interests often remain steady no matter what is said, and there is no indication from contemporary political life that the need for coercive force can be ignored except at our peril. The literature needs to do more to understand the bounds within which any kind of political speech can be effective, and when it cannot be.

II. Rousseau’s novel assessment of speech and reason

I turn to Rousseau because his work explains the fraught relationship of reason, rhetoric and coercive force in political life in a way that speaks both to perennial and contemporary concerns. Given that this might be said of a number of political thinkers past and present, the choice of Rousseau’s thought requires justification. I hope to show that Rousseau has an uncommonly insightful and nuanced understanding of political speech. But as one commentator notes, “Rousseau’s differing conceptions of reason and reasoning are hard to tie down.”22 This might well be said of his understanding of speech and passion as well. I argue that this multiplicity of conceptions is not due to inconsistency on Rousseau’s part, but to the ambiguous place of speech and reason in his understanding and his use of reason to signify multiple phenomena.23

In arguing the above, I side with those who contend that Rousseau has a consistent and unified understanding of what constitute the problems of human life that stands behind and motivates his seemingly disparate endeavors, as Rousseau himself asserts.24 While it is common

22 Timothy O’Hagan, Rousseau (London: Routledge, 1999), 47. 23 Which is not to say that the ambiguity of reason in his account does not create difficulties for it, as I discuss in chapter three and the conclusion. 24 For instance, Preface of a Second Letter to Bordes, 109-110, OC III, 101; Letter to Beaumont, 22, OC IV, 928; Discourses, 211; OC I, 933. 7 to claim that this is a minority position, many prominent commentators hold it.25 Rousseau consistently asserted that the unity of his thought lay in his contention that human beings are naturally good, and as Jason Neidleman has argued, “to get anywhere with Rousseau, one must accept, if only provisionally, the principle of original goodness.”26 As I understand it, this doctrine amounts to the position that human beings are naturally psychically unified and able to provide for themselves, usually without harm to others; only our historical sociality alienates us from this unity and self-sufficiency and makes us enemies of one another. The positive goal of Rousseau’s writings is to help us to return to some sort of unity and to free us from harmful (especially personal) dependence.27 In the context of my dissertation, this mainly means using language to reorient our assumptions and the stories we tell toward promoting some sort of psychic unity provided by a free political community.28

There are of course good reasons for doubting Rousseau’s consistency, but not decisive ones. Much of where one stands on this issue depends on one’s method of reading, so this is a good place to say something about how I read Rousseau. For theoretical reasons, some have long contended that it is not “possible to put forward a composite social theory of Rousseau so that all his writings could ultimately be woven together as fragments of one monumental treatise.”29

25 For instance, Jason Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics of Truth: A Sublime Science of Simple Souls (New York: Routledge, 2017); John Warner, Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2015); Arthur Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990); Nicholas Dent, Rousseau: An Introduction to his Psychological, Social and Political Theory (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988). The first such attempt seems have been that of E.H. Wright, The Meaning of Rousseau (London: Oxford University Press, 1929). 26 Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 17. 27 See Melzer, Natural Goodness, 90. My interpretation of what natural goodness means follows Melzer rather than Neidleman, for whom natural goodness means, along with what I take it to mean, that we naturally find a voice of good guidance within ourselves (Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 16). 28 Another claim for the unity of Rousseau’s writings focuses on amour-propre. Most prominently: Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. I view Rousseau’s understanding of amour-propre as the most important corollary of his doctrine of natural goodness. 29 Robert Wokler, Rousseau on Society, Politics, Music and Language (New York: Garland Publishing, 1987), 363. Wokler appears to follow Quentin Skinner’s fear of a “mythology of coherence” (Visions of Politics, vol. 1

Instead, on this account each writing must be taken as a separate and unique set of rhetorical gestures, because an author cannot plausibly be thought to have held to a consistent project, and each work must be taken in its unique context.30 For instance, the Second Discourse and Social

Contract should not be seen as elaborating different aspects of a shared system, but as discrete works.

While there is no doubt that one must take into account the individual purpose and design of each of Rousseau’s writings, this does not preclude the possible existence of foundational principles that govern the diverse presentations. Commentators who deny the unity of Rousseau’s thought have a tendency to underestimate the rhetorical complexity of his works, in spite of their attention to context. This leads them to see contradictions where there are only differences in presentation. What Rousseau says in the Emile is true of his work as a whole: “it is impossible in a long work always to give the same meanings to the same words. There is no language rich enough to furnish as many terms, turns, and phrases as our ideas can have modifications.”31 Apparent contradictions are often due to a need to stretch language into the difficult task of conveying different experiences and viewpoints. Moreover, as Denise Schaeffer has recently argued,

Rousseau’s method, at least in the Emile and his more theoretical works, is often to say one thing and to show something else, or at least to show a complication with his explicit statements through his examples. Schaeffer argues that Rousseau uses such techniques in order to encourage his readers to use their own judgment, and because “the moment of collision or transformation would

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 67). Skinner uses Rousseau as his chief example. In his later writings Wokler moderated his position to allow for more coherence. See Robert Wokler, Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, and their Legacies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012), 114; 131. 30 Commentators also once argued that Origin predated Rousseau’s mature writings. Most commentators no longer make this case, however. Derrida made the first extended argument for Rousseau’s consistency on language that I am aware of (Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1976), 192-194). Its basic outlines – that the Essay was begun (as Rousseau himself suggested) in 1754 and finished in the early 1760s – now seem accepted by most commentators. 31 Emile, 108fn; OC IV, 343.

9 be lost in a more direct account, which would fail to do justice to the phenomenon in question.”32

Rousseau maintains that both his subject matter and his readers require that he often communicate indirectly. He is not going to tell us everything: “Unfortunate people! If you have to be told, how will you understand it?”33 While the assessment of the consistency of a specific work with the rest must lie in individual interpretation, reading Rousseau’s work sympathetically, in the way that he thought it should be read (as unified by shared fundamental principles), is called for, given the evidence.

Both among commentators who see Rousseau’s thought as consistent and those who do not, the ambiguity and complexity of Rousseau’s position on reason and speech has understandably created divergent interpretations of his thought. Broadly speaking, one side takes his critique of philosophical reason to be complete and his key teaching to be the rejection of the reliance on substantive argument, both in public and in private. The other side notices the flaws in this understanding and argues that Rousseau advocates a novel form of rationalism that subordinates feeling to reason. Neither approach fully appreciates Rousseau’s position.34 This dissertation attempts to thread the needle between overly rationalistic and overly sentimental or mystical interpretations of Rousseau - both of which capture something essential while obscuring other parts of his thought.

I offer an outline of Rousseau’s position here that I elaborate in the chapters that follow.

What most obviously sets Rousseau apart in his assessment of political speech is his ambiguous assessment of the origins and purposes of that speech. This ambiguity and complexity comport well with our contemporary experience of the difficulties with speech and reason. Because

32 Denise Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, Freedom and Judgment (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State Press, 2014), 14. 33 Emile, 111; OC IV, 346. 34 I cite the relevant literatures in the plan of study below.

Rousseau sees human beings as naturally good (that is, again, naturally able to provide for themselves), he argues that reason and speech arise only late in the development of the human species due to natural accidents and have a tenuous link to the world beyond our minds. In arguing this he gives expression to what the modern individualistic understanding of human beings means for our linguistic capacity, how language would form and develop if we take human beings as naturally individuals without necessary communal ties.35 Radicalizing the early modern critique of reason,36 Rousseau begins from the premise that reason is fundamentally artificial. He argues that reason and passion are not separable, but instead form together: “Regardless of what the

Moralists say about it; the human understanding owes much to the Passions which … also owe much to it … The passions, in turn, owe their origin to our needs, and their progress to our knowledge.”37 Reason is a historical artifact that develops along with our passions, and never leaves its origin in that formation behind. When Rousseau speaks of reason as a technical term, he usually means either the process of coming to possess basic abstract ideas about the world (such as tree or human being as a category) or the addition or comparison of these simple ideas, but in either case the power of reason to accomplish its task with clarity is in doubt, because of its late

35 This sets him apart from an obvious rival, Johann Gottfried von Herder. Although Herder’s analysis is influenced by and often parallels “our patriotic friend of humanity Rousseau,” Herder unlike Rousseau argues that human beings possess language as a natural characteristic and are by nature social: “The human being is in his destiny a creature of the herd, of society. Hence the progressive formation of a language becomes natural, essential, necessary for him” (Johann Gottfried von Herder, Philosophical Writings, trans. Michael N. Forster (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2002), 12; 139). While the early Herder emphasizes that the people and the philosopher must speak different languages, the full scope of what I am calling the problem of political speech never emerges for Herder as it does for Rousseau, due to their different premises. 36 In questioning the mind’s connection to the external world, Rousseau extends a long trajectory in modern thought. See e.g. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994), 6; John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Penguin, 1997), 444-445; Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge, trans. Hans Aarsleff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 47. 37 Second Discourse, 142; OC III, 143.

11 origins in self-love.38 The status of reason for Rousseau is a problem that leads him to reevaluate the place of speech and reason in human life.

The problem of political speech can be summarized preliminarily as follows: political speech and refined or scientific speech have an essential incompatibility and tendency to undermine one another that increases as history progresses. The political significance of

Rousseau’s critique of reason is most visible in his criticism of the role of enlightenment in political life.39 The Enlightenment of his own time, Rousseau argued, undermined morality and spread error

– the exact opposite of its explicit intentions. “Virtue has been fleeing in proportion as their light rose on the horizon” and “many errors” result more often than truth.40 In Rousseau’s thought it becomes possible to understand a situation where we “have perfected human reason while deteriorating the species.”41

Rousseau’s attack on enlightenment can create the mistaken impression that he is entirely critical of scientific argument. But as the last quote indicated, there is value in “perfecting human reason.” What Rousseau primarily objects to is the public valorization of certain forms of rationalistic discourse. When he does this, he often has in mind by reason something like calculation about our personal material interests, a sort of reasoning that he thinks is promoted by the philosophers of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment.42 Rousseau often contrasts

38 Rousseau highlights both types of reason in Emile: “sensual or childish reason consists in forming simple ideas by the conjunction of several sensations, and what I call intellectual or human reason consists in forming complex ideas by the conjunction of several simple ideas” (158; OC IV, 416). 39 For a history of this development: Avi Lifschitz, Language and Enlightenment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 40 First Discourse, 9, 16; OC III, 10, 18. 41 Second Discourse, 159; OC III, 162. 42 Rousseau’s character Rousseau argues in the Dialogues that in some instances one can “put the word interest in place of the word reason … For what is practical reason if not sacrificing a present and temporary good to the means for procuring greater or more solid ones someday, and what is interest if not the augmentation and continuous extension of these same means?” (Discourses, 122; OC I, 818). Reason then often means the calculation of interest in the long-run. 12 such reasoning with passion, by which he means sentiment based on an assessment, often only hazy, of our interpersonal situation. Both “reason” and “passion” in the above senses require reflection and contain some element of “reason” in the sense of combining ideas and perceptions.

Paradoxically, Rousseau’s doubts about the naturalness of reason and speech lead him to posit a greater scope to its powers over society than past thinkers. “While the Government and the

Laws see to the safety and the well-being of men assembled, the Sciences, Letters, and Arts, less despotic and perhaps more powerful, spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which they are laden, throttle in them the sentiment of that original freedom for which they seem born, and make them love their slavery.”43 What we call culture - “the sciences, letters, and arts” - takes on a new significance for Rousseau, as perhaps more powerful than even government and laws, because they are the deepest artificial foundation of the artificial human world. Because the spoken human world is recent and artificial, it is both more malleable and more fragile than previous thinkers had conceived. The consequences of failure to arrange our culture properly will be proportionally higher than had been thought.

Evidence confirming the importance of culture for political community can be seen in the

Social Contract.44 Even in this seemingly rationalist work, Rousseau indicates the need to support argument with less rationalistic speech. While his principles of political right are precise rational formulas that Rousseau argues stand behind all political orders,45 the Social Contract also indicates that Rousseau thinks it necessary that they be supported by shared opinions, morals and customs.

43 First Discourse, 6; OC III, 7, my emphasis. 44 As with Rousseau, one could argue that the early German aesthetics is trying to reconcile our freedom with nature – but their apolitical orientation is striking. See e.g. J.M. Bernstein, Introduction to Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), viii-xi. This is also true in a less straightforward manner of David Hume and Adam Smith, whom others take as models (see e.g. Krause, Civil Passions, 25-27). 45 Social Contract, 50; OC III, 360.

Underneath the explicit principles and laws are “the most important laws of all … morals, customs, and above all opinion,” which must be overseen by the legislator indirectly.46

The figure of the legislator that directs culture from behind the scenes has been one cause of longstanding concerns about the worth and impact of Rousseau’s writings. Rousseau’s work has long been dogged by criticisms that he is too illiberal and anti-rationalist. Michael Sandel has argued that what Rousseau wants is a citizenry that does not meaningfully participate and disagrees on nothing because its members have been totally brainwashed; they are patriotic zombies,

“speechless citizens.”47 More recently, Bryan Garsten has alleged that Rousseau follows Hobbes and presages Kant in wanting only minimal discussion of political matters and the establishment of a sovereign orthodoxy in the souls of his citizens.48 Martha Nussbaum argues that while

Rousseau understands the basic problem of motivation better than most liberals, he is too “illiberal and dictatorial.”49 In a more popular forum, an article in The New Yorker finds Rousseau’s rhetoric to be an inspiration for the rise of the alt right.50 On these accounts, we should be cautious about turning to Rousseau for an understanding of political speech.

Two responses need to be given to these charges at this stage. First, as Nussbaum admits,

Rousseau might still be useful in helping us to understand the problems that we face even if aspects of his thought are illiberal. Rousseau’s differences of opinion with liberalism are part of what make him worth reading. Ruth Grant argues that liberal theorists, unlike Rousseau, do not “take sufficient account of the distinctive character of political relations, of political passions, and of

46 Social Contract, 81; OC III, 394. 47 Michael Sandel, Democracy’s Discontent (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1996), 320. 48 “In aspiring to legitimate our chains rather than free us from them, Jean-Jacques Rousseau accepted and deepened Hobbes’s attack on the politics of persuasion. He pointed the way toward a new sort of rhetoric against rhetoric, a prophetic language of conscience and community that would go even further in closing off the realm of controversy than Hobbes’s efforts had” (Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion: A defense of rhetoric and judgment (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009), 55). 49 Nussbaum, Political Emotions, 16. 50 Panja Mishra, “How Rousseau Predicted Trump,” The New Yorker, August 1, 2016.

14 moral discourse.”51 Perhaps especially when it comes to passion and political speech, Rousseau’s doubts can help committed liberals to see past their blind spots.

A full assessment of the charges of dangerous illiberalism against Rousseau must await the conclusion of this study. My preliminary position is that the above charges are overblown or misguided but that commentators are correct in thinking that Rousseau is not a liberal and his rhetoric was in many cases extreme and irresponsible, and flowed from an understanding with real and dangerous flaws. One goal of this study is to offer a reassessment of precisely the ways in which Rousseau’s thought is problematic, in relation to political speech. There are good reasons to think that the charges of indoctrination, while not empty, are exaggerated. Rousseau does not encourage brainwashing. On the issue of democratic dialogue and public opinion formation, it is certainly true that he emphasizes consensus and poetic communication. But both his own actions and his descriptions of healthy political life belie the notion that Rousseau is encouraging the enforcement of a settled and silent consensus. He repeatedly claims to reason with his fellow

Genevans and calls on them to reason amongst themselves.52 His descriptions of actual republics applaud active participation over placid acquiescence; in praise of old Geneva, for instance, he asserts that “everyone spoke in them [the assemblies] then; the public order and decency that are seen to reign today were not established. Sometimes they shouted; but the people were free, the

Magistrates respected, and the Council was frequently assembled.”53 Moreover, as Christopher

Kelly writes, “while the sentiments of sociability make up an unquestionable public consensus,

51 Ruth Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), 177. 52 “With proper distrust for myself, I will tell you not so much my opinion as my reasons. You will weigh them, you will compare them, and you will choose. Do more. Always distrust, not my intentions, - God knows they are pure – but my judgment” (Letters Written from the Mountain, 134; OC III, 687). Cf. D’Alembert, 6. For an analysis of the Letters along these lines: Dorina Verli, “Reforming Democracy: Constitutional Crisis and Rousseau’s Advice to Geneva,” Review of Politics 80 (2018): 415-438. 53 Letters Written from the Mountain, 251fn; OC III, 831. Cf. Social Contract, 106fn1; OC III, 421: “A little agitation energizes souls, and what causes the species truly to prosper is not so much peace as freedom.”

15 with regard to both specific laws and policies, on the one hand, and fundamental political principles

(as opposed to religious dogmas), on the other, Rousseau consistently argues for a wide latitude for freedom of speech and press.”54 Joshua Cohen notes that when Rousseau discusses the prudential benefits of limiting speech, “his concern is not with communication as such but with factionalization.”55 Thus while Rousseau might be more comfortable encouraging persuasion by affect and underlying agreement than many of our contemporaries, his thought is not necessarily totalitarian and is in many respects not incongruous with liberal democracy. However, as I discuss more fully in the dissertation as a whole and in the conclusion, Rousseau’s vision of human happiness as flowing from psychic unity, paired with an apocalyptic rhetoric, do provide the potential impetus for dangerous political speech. At the outset, however, we have good reasons for thinking that Rousseau is both conversant with, and usefully foreign to, our contemporary understandings of political discourse.

III. The Triptych and plan of study

Now I outline my argument for turning to the planned triptych of Theatrical Imitation,

Origin and The Levite as the best works to address the problem of political speech.56 Rousseau himself never explained explicitly why these writings might be better “accepted under the aegis” of a unified publication.57 But an examination of their contents reveals that the works support one another. All articulate the need for political actors to take into account the nature, and especially

54 Christopher Kelly, Rousseau as Author: consecrating one’s life to the truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 40. See also, Joshua Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 70-76. 55 Cohen, Rousseau, 76. 56 Rousseau planned to publish these works together in this order. We have the draft prefaces for each work which clearly signal their order. Why Rousseau did not carry through with this plan is unclear, although it occurred to him in a period (1763-1764) when his security was precarious (see Scott, Introduction to Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music, xxxv-xxxvi). 57 Origin 289; OC V, 374.

16 the limits, of language in shaping political community.58 This is not the only way to read the above works, each of which was originally conceived separately, but I argue that they inform each other and that read together they form a coherent argument about political speech. They, taken together, are Rousseau’s lengthiest and most detailed account of the place of different forms of speech in political life.59

The three works in the triptych reveal the problem of political speech in Rousseau in all of its facets. Each work articulates different parts of the problem that speech’s disparate modes pose for political life. I follow the structure of Rousseau’s triptych in tackling each of these parts of the problem in turn. The first three chapters articulate the different parts of the problem as they always manifest themselves in social life, while the final chapter considers the difficulties particular to highly developed societies. As the works of the triptych have usually been treated separately (due primarily to the fact that the plan to publish them never came to fruition), I consider this literature as I outline the plan of the dissertation.

The second chapter elaborates Rousseau’s critique of popular enlightenment begun with the First Discourse by focusing on the first work of Rousseau’s intended triptych, his Theatrical

Imitation. It shows the natural incompatibility of scientific and popular speech, and the way that

58 The final chapter of the Essay is titled “The Relation of Languages to Governments” (298; OC V, 428) and suggests that it was this relationship that inspired the work. Virtue is the last word of Theatrical Imitation (350; OC V, 1211) and The Levite also ends with a paean to the virtues (365; OC II, 1223). Virtue to Rousseau is “nothing but [the] conformity of the particular will to the general will” (Political Economy, 13; OC III, 252). This indicates that Rousseau’s works directed toward praising virtue are primarily political in nature. All three works of the triptych then are not merely philosophical but also political. 59 A few scholars have taken note of this recently. Michael Kochin suggests that the three works taken together form “a triptych … a crucial place to look for Rousseau’s understanding of how we read, write, and speak, and how we ought to read, write, and speak” (“Living with the Bible: Jean-Jacques Rousseau reads Judges 19-21,” Hebraic Political Studies 2 (2007), 303). Victor Gourevitch argues that they belong together as works on “civic education or rhetoric” (“The Political Argument of Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages.” In Pursuits of Reason: Essays in Honor of Stanley Cavell, eds. Ted Cohen, Paul Guyer, and Hilary Putnam (Lubbock, Texas: Texas Tech University Press, 1993, 22). Jeff Black suggests that Origin is the place to look for a response to the problems of the First Discourse (“The dupes of words: the problems and promise of language in Rousseau’s Discours sur les sciences et les arts,” in Musique et langage chez Rousseau, ed. Claude Dauphine (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004), 130).

17 the limitations of philosophic speech should condition the activity of public philosophers, intellectuals, and artists.

Rousseau was of course not the first philosopher to offer an extended critique of the possibilities of philosophic speech. Indeed, the originality of Rousseau’s analysis has been questioned, as he suggests that Theatrical Imitation is a rewriting of certain dialogues of Plato. It is unsurprisingly used by those who consider Rousseau to be some sort of Platonist, which might suggest that reading Plato is the more productive route in understanding political speech.60 David

Lay Williams argues that Rousseau, along with Plato “was adamant in his faith in God, free will, the immortality of the soul, and … the existence of ideas independent of human manipulation.”61

Theatrical Imitation, a work in which Rousseau takes on the guise of Plato, seems to provide evidence for such a position. On this account, Rousseau bottles Plato for the modern world.62

It is my goal to show how Theatrical Imitation, especially when read alongside Rousseau’s description of the development of the human soul in Origin, substantially breaks with Plato, at least as he is often read.63 Rousseau’s doubts about reason and his political focus shape his presentation of the role of the philosopher into one different from that of the Platonic Socrates.

Unlike Socrates, Rousseau does not try to recruit others to philosophy. Rather, for Rousseau, the

60 Most prominently: David Lay Williams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007); Leonard Sorenson, “Rousseau’s Socratism: The Political Bearing of ‘On Theatrical Imitation,’” Interpretation 20 (1992): 135-155. Derrida suggests that Rousseau’s “model of presence” is a repetition of Plato’s (Of Grammatology, 17). The first major argument for Rousseau’s Platonism that I am aware of is Charles Hendel, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Moralist (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934). 61 Williams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment, xxvi. 62 Leonard Sorenson offers a more nuanced version of this argument that in some ways agrees with my own. But Sorenson still argues, with Lay Williams, that Rousseau embraces the Platonic doctrine of the ideas and a classical understanding of the philosophic life (“Political Bearing,” 136; 145). For another account of the similarities and differences between Plato and Rousseau focused instead on Emile: Laurence D. Cooper, “Human Nature and the Love of Wisdom: Rousseau’s Hidden (and Modified) Platonism,” Journal of Politics 64: 1 (2002): 108-25. 63 For the opposing view see e.g. C.N. Dugan and Tracy Strong, (“Music, Politics, Theater, and Representation in Rousseau” in The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 336; Pamela Jensen, (“The Quarrel Between Philosophy and Poetry Reconsidered: Rousseau’s ‘On Theatrical Imitation’” in Rousseau and Criticism, eds. Lorraine Clark and Guy Lafrance (Ottawa: North American Association for the Study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1995, 185).

18 primary public role of the philosopher who understands the limits of scientific speech is to guard the public from the ambitious artists and philosophers who would corrupt them, and to encourage virtue. While these goals might seem Socratic, such a philosopher should adopt a decidedly unSocratic stance in order to send such a message.

Theatrical Imitation also contains suggestions that speech does in fact have great transformative potential, in spite of the essay’s seemingly defensive orientation. The third and fourth chapters articulate the basic elements that make up human speech as such – its purposes, powers, and limits - through an examination that pairs Origin with The Levite. Chapter three turns to Origin, where Rousseau articulates the essential divisions in speech. He argues that two different types of language develop depending on what circumstances human beings encounter: as expression and communication of our sentiments and experiences of the world to others and as a tool to understand and manipulate the world to overcome resistance.

Chapter three contains my most significant challenge to the view that Rousseau is simply an anti-rationalist. There is a longstanding perception in the literature that Rousseau favors expressive speech to the complete exclusion of its opposite. There is some basis for this: for

Rousseau, human beings are bound together by speech which is essentially relational and passionate. He thus appreciates the importance of this element of language that is increasingly recognized among contemporary analysts of speech.64 But on a traditional reading, Rousseau entirely regrets the development of complex language, and seeks to return us to passionate and sincere communication in so far as this is possible.65 I argue that scholars concentrate too heavily

64 Contemporary social scientific research supports “Rousseau’s understanding of expressive vocalizations as having inherent, physiological impacts that influence people’s viewpoints is attuned to the human body and positions raw feeling as an important, legitimate element of democratic deliberation” (David Gruber, ““Suasive speech: A stronger affective defense of rhetoric and the politics of cognitive poetics,” Language and Communication 49 (2016), 37). 65 For a recent account of this view: Stuart MacNiven, “Politics, language, and music in the unity of Rousseau’s System” in Musique et langage, 166-174. See also: Jean Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1988); Kelly, Rousseau as Author, 69; Mira Morgenstern,

19 on Rousseau’s nostalgia for immediate and sincere communication, at the expense of his reflections on how to address the problems of language in a civilized context (either ancient or modern). Complex calculation and nostalgic sentiment both play a role in healthy political life.

In advancing this view I build on the work of scholars who argue that Rousseau presents a more complicated teaching on the structure of human speech.66 As Michael Davis puts it, “this necessary togetherness of communication and articulation is the thread that ties the Essay on the

Origin of Languages together.”67 I add to this scholarship an analysis of the working of the principal passions in Origin, and the way that speech needs to address these specific passions.68

Rousseau argues that public speech requires anchoring in powerful symbols and stories in order to be effective at moving and unifying people. It is these relational uses of symbols that form the basis for any human community.

In chapter four I turn to The Levite of Ephraim, the third work in the triptych, which offers an account of how the basic elements of speech found in Origin take shape in political life. The usefulness of considering the three works together is especially clear in the case of The Levite. The current literature on The Levite makes little reference to the issues of language and rhetoric that dominate discussions of Theatrical Imitation and Origin, or of the connection between The Levite and these works. Until now, few have gone beyond noting that The Levite seems to be a narrative

Rousseau and the Politics of Ambiguity: Self, Culture, and Society (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State Press, 1996), 10; John Scott, “Rousseau and the Melodious Language of Freedom,” Review of Politics 59 (1997), 822; Tracy Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary (Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publishing, 1994), 38; Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 109. 66 Michael Davis, “The Essence of Babel: Rousseau on the Origin of Languages” in The Companionship of Books: Essays in Honor of Laurence Berns, eds. Alan Udoff, Sharon Portnoff, and Martin D. Yaffe (New York: Lexington Books, 2012), 232; Gourevitch, “Political Argument,” 21-23. 67 Davis, “Essence of Babel,” 234. Gourevitch similarly argues that “For the most part Rousseau takes his bearings not by the beginnings but by the contrast between ‘now’ and some peak which, very roughly speaking, falls somewhere halfway between ‘the beginnings’ and ‘now’” (“Political Argument,” 28). Rousseau is not looking to recreate our primordial beginnings, but to find healthy foundations for social life. 68 Laurence Cooper provides a compelling analysis of these passions in Rousseau (Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche: The Politics of Infinity (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008). But this analysis does not have much to say on the rhetorical and poetic construction and expression of these passions.

20 elaboration of the fall from the ‘golden age’ into political society found in the Second Discourse and Origin.69

A treatment of The Levite that views it in light of the problems and analyses in Theatrical

Imitation and Origin reveals facets of the work that have been misjudged or undervalued by previous commentators. This is especially so given that many commentators have seen The Levite primarily as an expression of moral outrage caused by the persecution of Rousseau – an understandable suggestion given that the work was written as Rousseau was fleeing Paris and he suggests that its content vindicates him.70 But I argue that The Levite is philosophical and contains a demonstration of the necessary roles and limitations of the two types of language found in Origin.

Both of the key elements of speech found in Origin are expressed in poetic form in The Levite, and both on their own turn out to be insufficient to ground human community. It is only a combination of the two elements of speech in more complex social forms that proves even somewhat successful in both uniting and guiding community. However, the cost of political symbols in this work is high, and requires the evocation of dangerous passions.71 The Levite contains neither perfect heroes to venerate, nor perfect villains for vilification.72 In this I differ from a productive literature that

69 Aubrey Rosenberg, “Rousseau’s Levite d’Ephraim and the Golden Age,” Australian Journal of French Studies 15 (1978): 163-172. See also Mira Morgenstern, “Strangeness, Violence, and the Establishment of Nationhood in Rousseau,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 41 (2008): 359-381. 70 See for instance Thomas Kavanagh, “Rousseau’s Le Levite d’Ephraim: Dream, Text, and Synthesis,” Eighteenth- Century Studies 16 (1982-1983): 141-161. 71 Much of the literature argues for a moralistic Rousseau who indicates either pure approval or disapproval of the Levite or the Israelites, but I see Rousseau’s assessment as ambivalent. Missing from such moralistic examinations is the way in which Rousseau demonstrates an awareness of the tradeoffs and sacrifices that need to be made in order to found and maintain a free political order. Kavanagh is on the extreme end of suggesting that Rousseau approves: “The Levite’s story is a story of faith, of faith in the community, of an unshakeable faith in the collectivity of all as an ultimate instance of judgment capable of righting all the wrongs suffered by an innocent victim who, finally, has only to speak and to die” (“Rousseau’s Le Levite d’Ephraim,” 156). See also Dugan and Strong, “Representation in Rousseau,” 306; Kochin, “Living with the Bible,” 322. On the extreme disapproving end, Rosenberg asserts that “The ending is ironic” and that Rousseau totally disapproves of the actions of the Israelites (“Rousseau’s Levite and the Golden Age,” 172). See also Morgenstern, “Nationhood in Rousseau,” 371-372. 72 Even the titular character is called a “barbarous man” (Levite, 359; OC II, 1214).

21 sees the Hebrew republic depicted in The Levite as the highest model for praise.73 The Levite also shows the positive uses of complex rationality. The focus on the uses of different forms of communication - including rational deliberation - in The Levite has also been little examined, perhaps obscured by the idea that Rousseau was writing only from the heart and without conscious design.

Chapter five shows that the historical development of language increases the difficulty of achieving the sort of relative success attained by the Israelites of The Levite. Given the artificiality and potential flexibility of speech for Rousseau, one might think that the origins and historical development of speech do not necessarily place permanent limits on political speech. Chapter five explains why the development of language and the increasing complexity of political life tend to bring with them a decay of political speech rather than progress.

The chapter also argues that Rousseau’s most serious attempt to propose a modern solution that can address the decay of speech is to be found in the education of Emile. But Emile is not made a citizen, and Rousseau never suggests that political speech and individual speech can be perfected at the same time. This interpretation stands in opposition to those commentators who argue that he means to encourage the development of a fully rational citizenry. While this is an old argument, it is exemplified in the current literature by the work of Frederick Neuhouser.74 He argues that Rousseau wants to create “modern citizens” who “are to differ from their ancient counterparts in that they conceive of and value themselves as individuals and, most important,

73 “As Rousseau understands them, the Jews surpass moderns, Christians, and Spartans and Romans because they exemplify a piety that attaches them to compassion and justice without radically detaching them from politics and justice in this world” (Jonathan Marks, “Rousseau’s Use of Jewish Examples,” Review of Politics 72 (2010), 478). Or “The author turns to the Bible to uncover and then praise the conditions of society that made the unified reception of and response to the Levite’s message possible” (Kochin, “Rousseau Reads Judges,” 322). 74 For an older rationalist and Kantian reading of Rousseau, see Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. Peter Gay (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). Cassirer goes so far as to assert that “Rousseau – in opposition to the predominant opinion of the century – eliminated feeling from the foundation of ethics” (99).

22 submit to the general will only on the basis of their own rational insight into the goodness of the laws that obligate them.”75 On this account, Rousseau wants fully rational citizens to supersede an older citizenship based primarily on deeply felt patriotism.

This dissertation will argue against the notion that the tension between rational development and political belonging can be so completely overcome. Rousseau’s thought remains relevant because he reveals the profound tensions in human life, not because he provides an attractive but ultimately chimerical synthesis. A lesson confirmed by the triptych as a whole is that a free and orderly political life often requires the public sacrifice of private feeling; one cannot have both in equal measure.76 Whatever the extent of Rousseau’s desire to protect innocence and sincerity, he recognizes that political life often requires their subordination to the (often harsh) needs of the community. The dangers of such subordination are considered along with other difficulties in the conclusion.

75 Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 22. Neuhouser thinks that Emile accomplishes this education, while a variant argument is that both Emile and the Social Contract are necessary: Bjorn Gomes, “Emile the citizen? A reassessment of the relationship between private education and citizenship in Rousseau’s political thought,” European Journal of Political Theory 17 (2018): 194-213. A less stringent version of this argument suggests that Rousseau pursues a middle ground between the extremes with which he is usually identified. See: Schaeffer, Rousseau on Judgment, 4. She suggests that her approach is similar to that of Jonathan Marks, Perfection and Disharmony in the Thought of Jean- Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005) and Mark Cladis, Public Vision, Private Lives: Rousseau, Religion, and Twenty-First-Century Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003). Marks argues that “the human good, in Rousseau’s view, comprises disparate and disharmonious elements and the coexistence of these elements, not the unity gained when one element or its apparent opposite is unreservedly embraced, is the end uniting Rousseau’s various models of human happiness and projects of reform” (Perfection and Disharmony, 55). 76 The Levite ends with the sacrifice of love for duty and speaks of “unjust pity” (363-365; OC II, 1221-1223). Much more could be said, but it seems clear that Rousseau does not think we can have it all.

Chapter 2: The limits of philosophic speech in Rousseau’s On Theatrical Imitation

“Now, if the many become aware that what we are saying about this man is true, will they then be harsh with the philosophers and distrust us when we say that a city could never be happy otherwise than by having its outlines drawn by the painters who use the divine pattern?”

“I have been convicted because I was at a loss, not however for speeches, but for daring shamelessness and willingness to say the sorts of things to you that you would have been most pleased to hear: me wailing and lamenting, and doing and saying many other things unworthy of me” – Plato’s Socrates1

The introduction demonstrated that both in academic discourse and theoretical practice, there are renewed concerns about the obstacles to combining persuasiveness and rationality in public speech. This concern is expressed in the public sphere especially by those artists and intellectuals who believe that they have a crucial role to play in public enlightenment. The place to begin in confronting our concerns is to better understand the peculiar difficulties of speaking as a public intellectual or artist.

In this chapter I clarify Rousseau’s position on the limits of the public intellectual’s speech through a reading of Rousseau’s Theatrical Imitation. This strategy might appear surprising, as it is not obvious that an essay apparently on Plato and the theater is the right place to begin an investigation into the role of the popular intellectual. However, for Rousseau the essence of popular speech is the imitation of experiences that evoke social passions, an essentially “theatrical” activity.2 Theatrical Imitation treats popular speech from the perspective of its relationship to philosophic speech.3

1 Plato, Republic, trans. Allan Bloom (Basic Books, 1991), 500e; Apology, trans. Thomas G. West and Grace Starry West in Four Texts on Socrates, revised edition (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1998), 38d-e. 2 “Dramatic or theatrical Music work together toward Imitation just like Poetry and Painting: it is this common principle to which all the Fine Arts are related” (Dictionary of Music, 412; OC V, 861). Rousseau takes up painting first in Theatrical Imitation and only in the last third of the work explicitly discusses the theater, but “everything I say here of painting is applicable to theatrical imitation” (338; 1197). 3 As Christopher Kelly puts it, Theatrical Imitation is “Rousseau’s most general account of the difference between the different sorts of authority appropriate for philosophers and others” (Rousseau as Author, 66).

In the first part of the chapter I will articulate Rousseau’s argument that the role of philosophy or science is necessarily a limited one - that of slowly disentangling the human mind from the errors to which it is usually prone, and of helping others to follow this path. This role is essentially a private or limited one and cannot be made popular due to the role of vanity (amour- propre) in public speech. Rousseau argues that this divide between philosophic and public speech cannot be bridged. The philosopher wishing to influence the public faces a choice: corrupt the people by pretending to offer them an understanding they cannot possess or protect the people from such corrupters and encourage their sub-philosophic virtue (virtue as commitment to consistent and lawful behavior). In the second part of the paper I show how the philosopher wishing to embrace the second option should comport himself. He can appeal to his audience by appearing to be more like it than he is, while appealing to their pride. If such philosophers can thereby gain the sympathy of their audience, the true philosopher can protect the virtuous from deluded public intellectuals. This stance also sets up the philosopher for the more positive interventions they can make.

I. How to read On Theatrical Imitation

The form of Theatrical Imitation requires addressing before it can be interpreted, because it first appears to be almost entirely derivative of Plato. Rousseau claims that “I hardly had any other part in it than having assembled and connected them [Plato’s dialogues] into the form of a continuous discourse [un discours suivi] instead of that of the Dialogue which they had in the original.”4 He emphasizes affinity with Plato and portrays his own contribution as minimal.

Rousseau’s use of Plato certainly indicates kinship with the Greek philosopher, and their

4 Theatrical Imitation, 337; 1195. For the rest of this chapter citations from Theatrical Imitation will be provided in text.

25 assessment of the divide between the philosopher and the public overlaps significantly. Rousseau also considers Plato the philosopher who is best at conveying passion along with his arguments, and his choice of a Platonic background here is likely in part for that reason.5

However, I argue that Theatrical Imitation is actually a carefully considered creation of

Rousseau’s own that accomplishes his own purposes.6 Despite the typical underselling of his role,7

Theatrical Imitation is an essay constructed in part from Platonic contents that Rousseau has not only dramatically altered, but transformed into a new, peculiar arrangement that forces readers to attempt to confront his changes.8 Rousseau makes many such changes to Plato, and the text is not an assemblage of large parts of many different works, but mainly a reworking, in essay form, of the first half of book ten of Plato’s Republic. Rousseau never tells us this, and inserts small pieces of the Apology, Gorgias, and Laws,9 alongside many additions evidently of his own devising.10

This indicates that the work contains his own teachings not found in Plato. The most egregious

5 “The genuine philosophy of Lovers is Plato … A man who is prey to emotion cannot do without this philosopher; a cold reader cannot abide him (Julie, 183 fn; OC II, 223). 6 This should not be surprising, given that in his Dialogues Rousseau’s character calls it one of six “estimable writings” that demonstrate the historical Rousseau made good use of his time (Dialogues, 101, OC I, 791). 7 Rousseau frequently criticizes his works or pretends to have played a reduced role in their construction, as I discuss at length below. 8 The most definitive way to determine the relationship between Rousseau and the works he uses would be to construct a comparison between the two thinkers based on Rousseau’s deviations from Plato. However, this would require a lengthy exegesis of both Plato and Rousseau, as well as dealing with the difficult question of Rousseau’s reception of Plato. Sorenson attempts to begin such a dialogue. The core of his interpretation is that what Rousseau changes, he disagrees with, while what he leaves unchanged from Plato, he affirms (“Rousseau’s Socratism,” 138). One problem with such a method is that, as Rousseau himself says, “Nothing is less rare than words that change their meaning over time and that make us attribute to the ancient Authors who used them ideas they did not have” (Letter to Beaumont, 44; OC IV, 957). True changes are difficult to discern. Lay Williams in Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment offers a robust general account of the relation between the two thinkers, but one that tends to assimilate Rousseau to Plato. 9 C.N. Dugan and Tracy Strong, “Representation in Rousseau,” 336. See also: John Scott, “Editor’s Notes to On Theatrical Imitation” in Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music, 581-582. One section bears remarkable similarities to Cicero’s De Oratore, as well. 10 Scholars disagree on the extent of the changes. Lay Williams uses Theatrical Imitation as evidence for Rousseau’s Platonism, although he also suggests that it “repeats the themes Rousseau put in his own voice in the Letter to d’Alembert and the First Discourse” (Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment, 155-156). Dugan and Strong assert that Rousseau makes only “a handful of emendations and additions,” but this characterization seems not to be borne out by their own analysis (“Representation in Rousseau,” 336). Along with Sorenson (“Rousseau’s Socratism,” 136), Pamela Jensen argues that Theatrical Imitation contains extensive changes to the Platonic original (“The Quarrel,” 183).

26 changes and additions likely indicate parts of the argument that Rousseau wants to emphasize or alert his reader to.11

While his analysis draws much from Plato, Rousseau has goals and concerns that his classical predecessor does not. One clear goal is to recruit the reader’s virtue as a support for “order and freedom, either in the interior Republic of the soul or in that of human society,” and to show others how to do this as well (349-350; 1211). While sometimes superficially similar to Plato’s account, Rousseau’s account of virtue is conceived of instrumentally as whatever qualities of character support that order and freedom, not as tied to philosophy or the Platonic cardinal virtues.

Rousseau’s virtue as decoupled from the philosophic life relates to a particular modern concern: the modern Enlightenment makes ever greater claims for the power of philosophy or science (there being no clear distinction in eighteenth century thought) in a way that is particularly noxious to political speech and public life by blinding both intellectuals and their audiences to their own limitations. Perhaps partly in response, Rousseau also emphasizes the tenuous nature of knowledge.

The change in form from dialogue to essay is no small one and accomplishes identifiable aims.12 The essay form strips the arguments of Plato’s dialogues of their original dramatic context and changes their meaning. The reader is intended to notice how odd this is, because Rousseau draws attention to the form he is changing. He opens the essay by discussing with an unnamed

“we” certain laws that they have passed in their “imaginary Republic” (337; 1196). One member of this “we” is named in the last two paragraphs – Glaucus, a seeming reference to the Glaucon of

11 Rousseau could have expected a wide familiarity with Plato among his immediate audience. See Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Vol. 1 (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977), 31-126. 12 Rousseau might have kept the dialogue form, putting his words in the mouth of Socrates explicitly, as in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences. For a discussion of this section of that work, see: Clifford Orwin, “Rousseau’s Socratism,” The Journal of Politics 60 (1998): 174-187.

Plato’s Republic (350; 1210).13 Staging a monologue rather than a dialogue allows Rousseau to speak more directly and rousingly to a reader whom he hopes to persuade of certain definite positions.14 No matter how nondogmatic Rousseau might want to appear, the essay does not include the hedging and necessary ambivalence of the Platonic original.15 As I explain at more length below, the seemingly odd form of Theatrical Imitation supports Rousseau’s goal of encouraging virtue.

II. The private role of the philosopher

As in certain sections of the Republic, Rousseau’s essay articulates the distinction between philosophic speech and poetic speech. In Rousseau’s argument this distinction is nearly absolute: scientific speech is for extraordinary individuals only, and public speech must have a poetic character. In order to speak to the public, the philosopher must make extensive concessions and leave behind the precision of philosophy. The distinction is set out most clearly in a paragraph near the center of the work that has no obvious direct parallel in Plato, suggesting that it is central to

Rousseau’s own concerns.16

The philosopher who reasons submits his reasoning to our judgment; the Poet, and the imitator puts

himself forward as judge. By offering us his images, he affirms that they conform to the truth: he is

13 Although the use of Glaucus here is possibly also meant to recall the statue discussed in the Republic and the Second Discourse. For an intriguing discussion, see Nelson Lund, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 122. 14 There is one other work of Rousseau’s that is also a reworking of someone else’s writing: his Abstract on Monsieur de Saint-Pierre’s Plan for Perpetual Peace, written around the same time as Theatrical Imitation. Of the Abstract Rousseau noted that “I could give such a form to my work that very important truths would pass in it under the Abbé de St. Pierre’s cloak even more happily than under my own” (Confessions, 342; OC I, 407). There too Rousseau uses his new version of an old text to employ rousing rhetoric where it was absent in the original. 15 This is especially so given that book ten is “highly rhetorical in tone and emphasis, even … satirical” (Stephen Halliwell, The Aesthetics of Mimesis: Ancient Texts and Modern Problems (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 57). 16 John Scott suggests Gorgias 501c-502b and Laws 817b-d as sources (Notes to Writings on Music, 582). However, these lines do not directly parallel either work, although the general sense of a contest between poetry and philosophy does suggest some inspiration from the Laws.

therefore obliged to know it, if his art has any reality, by depicting everything, he presents himself

as knowing everything. The Poet is the Painter who makes the image; the Philosopher is the

Architect who draws up the plan. The one does not even dare approach the object in order to paint

it; the other measures before drawing (344; 1204).

Rousseau looks at what each figure, philosopher and poet, claims to know. In so-doing he likens them revealingly to a painter and an architect. The painter here is conceived of as merely knowing how to make a perspectival image that appears as a (false) claim to know what he paints. Poets claim to understand all that they create in their poetry by presenting it to its audience as true,

Rousseau argues, and thus present themselves as knowing everything.17 The philosopher is likened to an architect who draws a detailed plan before construction, and so knows the parts of the building intimately. The philosopher does not make claims to know everything, but only what he builds, and submits his argument step by step for examination. The philosopher thus makes significantly more limited claims to knowledge.

But elsewhere in Theatrical Imitation, Rousseau suggests that the philosopher is an

“Architect who builds a Palace,” a planner and builder of a grand and beautiful building (338;

1196). The philosopher as architect is a common metaphor with specific resonance for a reader of

Rousseau.18 His novel Julie, written at the same time as Theatrical Imitation, contains two

17 This contrast is first made more obliquely earlier in the essay: “Limited by his art to that sole object, this Artist [the architect] knows how to make only his Palace or other similar Palaces; but there are much more universal ones who can make everything that can be executed in the world by any Workman whatsoever, everything that Nature produces, everything that can be made visible in the heavens, on the earth, in the underworld, the Gods themselves” (338; 1196). 18 Plato, Republic, 596b. Plato’s Socrates uses a couch, suggesting a similar problem less loudly. But both Plato and Rousseau draw an analogy between moral legislation and architecture when discussing the most important laws. See Social Contract, 81; OC III, 394. For discussions of this analogy, see Maurizio Viroli, Rousseau and the Well-Ordered Society, trans. Derek Hanson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 190, and Brent Cusher, “Rousseau and Plato on the Legislator and the Limits of Law” (Phd Diss., University of Toronto, 2010), 164-165. One should note that architecture is an important but not uncommon metaphor and is used both in the Bible (see e.g. Job 38:5-7) of God’s shaping of the world and by other philosophers of the philosopher’s task (see e.g. René Descartes, The Passions of the Soul, trans. Stephen Voss (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1989), 12; Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, trans. James May and Jakob Wisse (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 94).

29 discussions of architects of palaces, but one especially bears mentioning here.19 The character St.

Preux criticizes palaces for being full of “discord and turmoil” in comparison to a “modest and simple house” and remarks that “I defy any man in his right mind to observe for one solid hour the palace of a prince and the ostentation it exudes without falling into melancholy and deploring the fate of mankind.”20 The symbol of a palace would seem to indicate social turmoil and frivolous expenditure at the expense of noble simplicity. Manmade beauty and grandeur in St. Preux’s observations is inextricably bound up with reinforcing inequality and oppression. Yet Rousseau remarks in a footnote in his own voice that “there is magnificence in the symmetry of a great

Palace; there is none in a jumble of houses piled pell-mell on top of each other … genuine magnificence is merely order made perceptible on a large scale.”21 There can be then something admirable in a well-constructed and beautiful building like a palace. The problem of the palace is how to make reinforce order on a large scale without reinforcing the sorts of dynamics diagnosed by St. Preux.

Theatrical Imitation seems to indicate that the philosopher as architect is the sort of person who can solve the problem. But the way Rousseau speaks of the architect in Theatrical Imitation adds another element to the problem of making good order attractive – a doubt about where and whether such order can be found.

I see there three quite distinct Palaces. First, the model or the original idea which exists in the

understanding of the Architect, in nature, or at least in its Author along with all the possible ideas

of which he is the source; in the second place, the Architect’s Palace, which is the image of this

model; and finally, the Painter’s Palace, which is the image of that of the Architect. “Thus, God, the

Architect, and the painter are the authors of these three Palaces. The first Palace is the original idea,

19 The other relays a story from Plutarch which contrasts a man of eloquence speaking of a palace with one who can make one (Julie, 332-33; OC II, 405). 20 Julie, 447-448; OC II, 546-547. 21 Julie, 447fn; OC II, 546.

existing by itself; the second is its image; the third is the image of the image, or what we properly

call imitation (338; 1196, my emphasis).

Though followed by a sentence that assigns ideas to God, the first sentence introducing them leaves unclear just where the complex ideas articulated by the philosopher derive from – perhaps only the mind of the architect himself - and whether they have any relationship to a perceived natural order.22 Rousseau indicates that we should be skeptical of the possibility of eternal ideas, or at least human access to them. That reason’s connection with nature or God is tenuous for Rousseau has consequences. In Theatrical Imitation the consequence of the mind’s limitations is that the philosopher should distrust the evidence of his senses and should recur to modern science and practical experience in order to understand the world insofar as it can be understood. Rousseau’s description of the philosopher’s reasoning activity emphasizes that our minds always begin in error.23 These sentences are Rousseau’s additions.24 “It is this weakness of human understanding, always in a hurry to judge without knowing, which gives rise to all those magical tricks by which

Optics and Mechanics mislead our senses. We reach a conclusion, based on appearance alone, from what we do know to what we do not know, and our false inductions are the source of a thousand illusions” (344-345; 1205). Rousseau suggests that both our minds and the complexity of modern devices leads us into error. Optics and mechanics can be used to create devices that produce complicated or illusory appearances that trick the mind into thinking a man-made image

22 Socrates says that the idea exists “in nature” produced by “a god” (Plato, Republic, 597b). Whether this is Plato’s final position (Socrates does first ask Glaucon to affirm that a god must be their author, implying other possibilities), the presentation is strikingly different. As Laurence Cooper notes, “unlike Plato, who presents the eide as having more being than the objects of the visible world, Rousseau indicates that that which is most beautiful ‘is not’: for the eide he substitutes ideals” (Eros in Plato, 192). 23 In Emile Rousseau makes it clear that not only must we begin with this distortion but viewing many distortions can be helpful: “the very illusions of perspective are necessary for us to come to a knowledge of extension and to compare its parts.” Practical workers are best at overcoming these illusions: “engineers, surveyors, architects, masons, and painters generally have a much surer glance than we do and appraise the measurements of extension with more exactness” (Emile, 140, OC IV, 393). 24 See Plato, Republic, 602c-d.

31 exists in nature. Two difficulties are suggested: first, the mind has a natural tendency to make hurried judgments that reinforce our vain desire to think we know what we do not.25 Second, the dangers posed by the weaknesses of our minds are increased by the inventions of science.26

Rousseau shows that the world rendered by the popular artist is deceptive because it encourages the natural defects of the mind: the limited perspective it presents distorts its subject in ways that can only be countered by long and arduous rational investigation – an activity few have the time or interest to engage in.27 Only the philosopher can supply the tools to see beyond these deceptions. It is the methods of comparison and the tools of modern science that allow the philosopher to see past the illusions of the mind and the world. “The suspension of the mind, the art of measuring, of weighing, of counting, are the aids which man has for verifying the relations of the senses so that he does not judge what is large or small, round or square, rarefied or dense, far or near, by what they seem to be, but by what number, measure, and weight give to him as such” (345; 1205). In other words, the deceptions caused by the shortcomings of the mind and by poetry or devious philosophy should in turn be countered by science. Contrary to those who argue that Rousseau has no use for modern science, the scientific philosopher in these passages is a potential savior against deception.28 Insofar as it is possible to know the world, the philosopher or

25 Modern psychology has gone quite far in showing the many ways this is true. Much of this research is effectively summarized in Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow. I turn to Rousseau more for his understanding of how art reinforces our tendency to be deceived and discourages us from correcting that tendency. 26 Again, Emile develops these concerns: “Among so many admirable methods for abridging the study of the sciences we greatly need someone to provide us with a method for learning them with effort” (176; OC IV, 440). 27 For another account of the necessity for deception in Rousseau that focuses on personal dependence, see: Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity, especially pages 125-141. 28 Rousseau praises certain uses of rationalistic science, contrary to the assertion of some commentators. See e.g. Graeme Garrard: “it is through virtue, faith, and the strength of one’s innate, prerational conscience that true enlightenment is to be found, which the acquisition of knowledge and the cultivation of the intellect only impede and distort” (Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment: A Republican Critique of the Philosophes (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2003, 101). Neidleman similarly asserts that “for Rousseau, the question of what truth is, while of great interest, did not constitute a philosophical problem. He believed that the truths necessary to human happiness were largely known to us via an innate sentiment” (Rousseau’s Ethics, 6). To say that “Rousseau shocks, persuades, and moves within language but does not attempt to convince” is to see only the loudest part of his argument for the

32 scientist discovers it in a careful investigation, and should, it seems, write so as to show others how they did so.

In spite of the difficulties in attaining knowledge, then, the philosopher has serious advantages over the poet. He has a much better understanding of simple ideas, as he works carefully to detach his understanding from the errors inherent in our sense perception and encouraged by poetry. He is also then able to combine those ideas to make complex and advanced plans, or “architecture.”29 It would seem that these abilities should give them a central role in directing human society.

III. The limits of reason in the public sphere

Unfortunately, the philosopher cannot sell his carefully discovered wares directly.

According to Rousseau this careful sort of reasoning is unattractive and cannot appeal to a mass audience.30 Theatrical Imitation offers the first outline of Rousseau’s delimitation of the possibilities of public speech. Rousseau’s argument in Theatrical Imitation is that popular art and science tend by their nature to be both deceptive and reinforcing of human weakness and self- indulgence. Due to the vanity of both artist and spectator, the spectator will tend to take his or her first impression as the truth of the matter and forego further reasoning.

whole (Rousseau’s Ethics, 80). Rather, behind the bombast, Rousseau “[utilizes] the conceptual tools and resources provided by modern science” (Warner, Problem of Human Relations, 20). 29 However much Rousseau praises expressive speech, his appreciation of philosophic carefulness and description should never be forgotten. Like Charles Taylor, Rousseau recognizes that “The superiority of the descriptive lies in its enabling clearly defined assertions; and along with this, and not possible without it, is the ability to operate on the metalevel, to make assertions about our first-order claims, and the language in which they are couched” (The Language Animal: The Full Shape of the Human Linguistic Capacity, 2016), 251). 30 As Lund remarks, the description of the philosopher that Rousseau offers “leaves the usefulness of philosophy in considerable obscurity, and it leaves us to wonder how we are to be instructed by Theatrical Imitation, whose author seems to have deliberately adopted a more dogmatic rhetoric than Socrates employs in the passages paraphrased by Rousseau” (Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 121).

The Art of representing objects is very different from that of making them understood. The first

pleases without instruction; the second instructs without pleasure. The Artist who draws up a plan

and takes exact dimensions does nothing very pleasant for the sight … But the one who draws a

perspective flatters the people and the ignorant because he makes nothing understood by them and

offers them only the appearance of what they already knew. Add to this that measurement, giving

us successively one dimension and then the other, instructs us slowly about the truth of things,

whereas the appearance offers us the whole at one time, and, under the presumption of a great

capacity of mind, flatters the senses by seducing amour-propre (339; 1198-1199, my emphasis).

Rousseau asserts that a long chain of reasoning cannot be pleasing.31 More importantly, the spectator is disinclined to avail himself of the rational corrective to the limited perspective given by the popular artist, due to the amour-propre of both the spectator and the artist. For my purposes, it is important to note that amour-propre, often translated as vanity or pride, is self-love that demands that others acknowledge our superiority, “which inclines every individual to set greater store by himself than by anyone else.”32 To satisfy our amour-propre, we need to think that we are, and are regarded as, superior to others. In the above analysis, the people like to see their views confirmed in a pleasing picture offered by an artist that they can feel proud to like, and the artist likes to emphasize his own greatness. Both enjoy feeling superior from seeming to know; acknowledging a need to ask for further information would be tantamount to admitting to inferiority in understanding. The artist here is also cast as having to appeal to what the audience thinks it knows, suggesting that popular art will tend to reinforce the opinions of whatever audience it appeals to. Both sides are thus discouraged from undertaking what Rousseau presents as the arduous and unattractive task of attempting to more fully comprehend the world as it is.33

31 Another statement: “Reason alone is not active. It sometimes restrains, it arouses rarely, and it has never done anything great. Always to reason is the mania of small minds” (Emile, 321, OC IV, 643). 32 Second Discourse, 218; OC III, 221. 33 Axel Honneth notes that this is at the heart of Rousseau’s concerns about amour propre: “amour propre permits individuals to deceive themselves, because they must not only be able to present themselves externally to their fellow,

The sort of initial miscomprehension that Rousseau is most concerned with is that of the social world. Rousseau’s analysis of the limits of reason applies to any presentation of opinion, but he reveals that it applies even more strongly to portrayals of human beings and their nature.

Human beings will tend to be portrayed in a way that undermines the possibility of a healthy order in their souls. To discuss the way that the passions mislead our soul and draw it away from order,

Rousseau turns to discuss the stage explicitly. Here he provides an explanation of the difficulty of representing rational and virtuous subjects in imitative art.

The stage represents men acting voluntarily or by force, assessing their actions as good or bad

according to the good or ill they think come to them from them, and variously affected, due to them,

by pain or sensual pleasure. Now … it is impossible for the man, thus presented, ever to be in accord

with himself; and as the appearance and the reality of sensible objects give him contrary opinions,

likewise he assesses the objects of his actions differently, accordingly as they are far or near,

conformable or opposed to his passions; and his judgments, mobile like them, constantly put his

desires, his reason, his will, and all the powers of his soul into contradiction (345; 1206).

The stage shows men without a compass, guided by the ever-changing perception of what pleasure or pain will result from their actions. If the spectator should identify with such people, he will likewise be pulled in different directions by different pleasures and pains, rather than by his reason.

Apart from the necessary deceptions caused by perspective and vanity, popular art then also pulls us away from any steady standard, by empowering our various passions. A philosopher that wanted to present a different picture of human nature could not be similarly popular.34

but also to their internal judge, as persons with the best possible attributes.” (“The depths of recognition,” in Engaging with Rousseau: Reactions and Interpretations from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Avi Lifschitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 194-195. He notes that the theater is especially good at reinforcing this self-deception. Neidleman similarly suggests that “These ostensible purveyors of truth are actually manufacturers of lies, sometimes consciously, sometimes unconsciously, but mostly they are too consumed with amour propre to bother worrying about it” (Rousseau’s Ethics, 85). 34 Cf. Plato, Republic 603c.

The stage’s inability to portray a steady and virtuous person is an essential feature of theatrical imitation.35 A mixture of another manifestation of amour-propre and a lack of identification explains why the virtuous cannot receive a proper hearing on stage. To begin with identification: most people cannot find representations of virtue attractive because such representations do not appeal to their experience; the theater cannot make them identify with what they do not know.36 The substance of art is limited by the sort of identity it must appeal to. We can only identify with those who are like us in the sense that they share our passions and experiences,

Rousseau suggests, and most people do not experience the constancy of virtue. Instead, the stage can only appeal to their experience of variety and inconstancy: “The man who is firm, prudent, and always like himself is not so easy to imitate,” and is not pleasant “to the Vulgar; they would be interested with difficulty in an image which is not their own, and in which they recognized neither their morals, nor their passions: never does the human heart identify with objects that it feels are absolutely foreign to it” (346; 1207). Rousseau claims, where Socrates does not,37 that there is an absolute divide between the two classes of people. Those able to restrain themselves consistently are rare and unlike those unable to show restraint, who cannot identify with and do not wish to see those who can show this restraint. Most people want to see images of those like themselves celebrated, so the poet “charms the spectators by characters who are always in contradiction, who want and do not want, who make the Theaters ring with cries and moans, who force us to pity them, even when they do their duty, and to think virtue is a sad thing since it makes

35 Rousseau does not define reason or virtue in Theatrical Imitation. It is clear however that virtue is obeying some sort of consistent standard of behavior. 36 This explanation expands upon one in D’Alembert: “The stage is, in general, a painting of the human passions, the original of which is in every heart. But if the painter neglected to flatter these passions, the spectators would soon be repelled … It is only reason that is good for nothing on the stage” (D’Alembert, 18; OC V, 17). This applies to other arts as well: “You are an architect or a painter. So be it. But you have to make your talent known. … Leave your ruler and your brush, I tell you. Take a cab and run from door to door. It is thus that celebrity is acquired” (Emile, 196). The artist must be admired, and this requires something other than accurate presentation. 37 Consider Plato, Republic, 604e.

36 its friends so miserable” (346-347; 1207). The theater portrays those like its audience or even worse than its audience; the audience enjoys feeling pity for and superiority to those on stage. This feeling of sympathetic identification is pleasant and weakens the audience’s sense that such indulgence should be resisted. In this way, the theater reinforces the desire to give in to passion, and makes virtue seem painful, which reinforces everyday prejudice and experience.38 By affirming our inner tendency to expand our sense of self-worth, the theater reinforces and promotes the passions we might otherwise feel ashamed to embrace.39

To summarize, Rousseau’s critique of the popular expression of philosophy or virtue has three main steps. Art must present a one-sided perspective to our highly imperfect and receptive minds, which can greatly distort the phenomenon in question. The desire of the artist to be praised, and the spectator to feel as if they too partake of the wisdom portrayed in the work of art, tend to prevent a correction of this view. The view cannot usually be a salutary image, for such examples cannot find a broad audience. What can appeal to such an audience corrupts it further.

IV. The humble philosopher

Yet the philosopher is not helpless on Rousseau’s presentation. Rousseau shows his philosophic reader how to transcend the limited appeal of philosophy by adopting a stance that will make the philosopher more trustworthy by showing weakness to his audience. However, it is important to note that Rousseau’s strategy does not broaden the appeal of philosophy as such but

38 Arthur Melzer argues that on Rousseau’s account this sort of identificatory reflex will be stronger in the egalitarian modern state (“Rousseau, Nationalism, and the Politics of Sympathetic Identification,” in Educating the Prince: Essays in Honor of Harvey Mansfield, eds. Mark Blitz and William Kristol (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 124). 39 As Warner notes, “theatergoers are led to a consideration of their own troubles rather than those of others” (Problem of Human Relations, 197).

37 rather enables the philosopher to speak appealingly and without doing harm, using the lessons he has learned.40 The first step is to show that the philosopher is trustworthy.

You will object to me that the Philosopher himself does not know all the arts about which he speaks

either, and that he often extends his ideas as far as the poet extends his images. I admit it; but the

Philosopher does not present himself as knowing the truth: he seeks it, he examines, he discusses,

he extends our views, he even instructs us by allowing himself to be misled; he proposes his doubts

as doubts, his conjectures as conjectures, and he affirms only what he knows (344, 1204).

The superiority of this version of the philosopher consists in his modest and open behavior, which leads him to present his arguments in a careful and limited way, even showing his errors. Such activity should allow his audience to follow him without falling into the errors of the poet. The philosopher thus does not impose on the reader the way the poet does. An implication seems to be that true philosophers, or perhaps honest people generally, should not present themselves as great minds propounding great truths (and perhaps thus not as philosophers), because then the people should suspect them of being more concerned with their status than with the truth.41 If the philosopher propounds his brilliance, one should assume that he wants to form a self-empowering sect and steer clear. Rousseau himself indeed adopts this humble stance - as I will argue in chapter five, above all in his masterpiece Emile.42

The Rousseau of Theatrical Imitation also evinces humbleness in order to recruit his audience. That said, he does not walk his reader step-by-step through every argument as he

40 Rousseau’s position is thus more complicated than offering the two most obvious “correctives” to poetry in the work, which are, as Lund writes, “Banish poetry” and “philosophy” (Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 121). 41 Including in the passage I cite here. See also for example Beaumont, 31; OC IV, 341 and Dialogues, 137; OC I, 838. Perhaps this is because philosophy in his time conveyed the very grandiosity Rousseau has told us to be wary of: “How sweet it would be … if genuine Philosophy were inseparable from the title of Philosopher!” (First Discourse, 7; OC III, 7). 42 It should also be said that Rousseau is not the first modern philosopher to suggest that the philosopher should at least appear humble. Descartes’ ambitions innovations claim to be laid out carefully so that “everyone may judge it for himself,” in part because “I have never presumed that my mind was in any respect more perfect than that of ordinary men” (Discourse on Method, trans. Donald Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1998), 2). Cf. Hobbes, Leviathan, 4.

38 suggests that a philosopher would, but rather delivers a highly rhetorical monologue. The philosopher’s theatrical or public presentation is not philosophic. Rousseau thereby demonstrates that the methods a philosopher uses to appeal to a broad audience and philosophy as such are largely discrete activities. Rousseau takes the side of humble reasoner against grandiose popularizers.43 From the beginning, following a strategy that he frequently employs,44 he downplays his efforts in Theatrical Imitation in order to appear modest. Along with claiming, as noted above, that the work is an “extract of various places where Plato treats of theatrical

Imitation,” Rousseau claims that Theatrical Imitation is mere “bagatelle”45 written alongside the

Letter to D’Alembert.46 Rousseau clearly tries to minimize his efforts.

One might suggest that Rousseau is merely aping Plato in his description of philosophy, as he seems to claim. Rousseau’s description here could be, at least in part, a vision of what the

Platonic philosopher was.47 But if his method of reasoning bears some resemblance to the Platonic

Socrates, Rousseau is much more willing to be self-effacing than that character. As we have seen,

43 It is important to see that Rousseau is not attacking philosophy tout court, but only a certain self-presentation of philosophy. It goes too far to say that “Rousseau was more concerned with the quality of an author than with the quality of his or her argument, confident that the quality of the person largely determines the quality of the argument (Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 9). It would be more accurate to say that the perception of the audience is that there is such a link between author and work. 44 In the late 1750s in particular he experimented with adopting the guise of other authors. He presents “important truths … under the Abbé de St. Pierre’s cloak” in a supposed summary of the former’s Project for Perpetual Peace (Confessions, 342; OC I, 407). In Julie Rousseau is coy about whether he is the author or only the Editor of the letters (Julie, 3; OC II, 2). In his most famous works he also humbles himself, even when fully owning a work. Rousseau calls Emile a “collection of reflections and observations, disordered and almost incoherent” (33; OC IV, 240). The Social Contract is “the least unworthy” part of an abandoned work Rousseau lacked the strength to complete (40; OC III, 349). 45 This word signifies a short piece, perhaps of less seriousness. It does not necessarily have the later meaning to Rousseau. In Emile he suggests that “It is in bagatelles that nature comes to light,” and that short stories about characters are the “the true art of painting” (241; OC IV, 534). 46 Although he also tells us that it would not fit in the Letter, suggesting Theatrical Imitation has its own agenda (337; 1195). 47 Lund remarks: “Not a bad description of Socrates as he is present in Plato, but neither the objection nor the response occurs in any of the passages from Plato paraphrased in Theatrical Imitation” (Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 121). In any case, this use of Socrates is more assertive than Rousseau’s first use of Socrates, in the First Discourse: “I, while I know nothing, am at least not in any doubt about it” (First Discourse, 12; OC III, 13). Rousseau now offers a philosopher who knows the contours of his own knowledge (of which he certainly has some), and who offers his readers a way to trace those contours for themselves.

Rousseau diagnoses a natural resistance to virtuous models and a natural tendency to identify with the weak and emotional. Mindful of his own argument, Rousseau does not want to appear too hard a man himself. Although he spends most of the essay criticizing the corrupting power of poets, he softens his critique at the very end of the work. “If we dare grant something to the taste which attracts us, we will at least fear yielding ourselves to our first loves. … In sometimes lending our ears to Poetry, we will prevent our hearts from being imposed upon by it and we will not allow it to trouble order and freedom, either in the interior Republic of the soul or in that of human society”

(349-350; 1211). Rousseau adds a qualification that suggests some indulgence in poetry is permitted, provided that the spectator remains on guard.48 He shows an openness to the powers of the passions and sympathizes with the difficulty in adhering consistently to a rational standard or law.

V. The dangers of sophistry and poetry intensified by enlightenment

After recruiting the reader in this manner, the major goal of Theatrical Imitation is to warn most readers away from poetry and popularized philosophy. This is a key public role of the true philosopher, according to Rousseau. He opens the piece by warning the people against all popular art: “I will admit to you that I regard all the dramatic Authors as the corrupters of the People, or of whoever, allowing himself to be amused by their images, is not capable of considering them under their true aspect nor of giving to these fables the corrective they need” (337; 1195). This seems merely to imitate Plato.

48 A parallel passage in Emile: “In the theater, you saw heroes, overcome by extreme pains, make the stage reverberate with their senseless cries, grieving like women, crying like children, and thus meriting public applause. Do you remember how scandalized you were by these lamentations, cries, and complains on the part of men from whom one ought to except only acts of constancy and firmness? ‘What?’ you said very indignantly. ‘Are these the examples we are given to follow, the models we are offered for imitation! Are they afraid that man is not small enough, unhappy enough, and weak enough without someone extolling his weakness under the false image of virtue?’ My young friend, by more indulgent with the stage henceforward. Now you have come one of its heroes” (443; 816).

But Rousseau has the contemporary enlightenment stance in mind, as he makes clear. The enlightenment intensifies the dangers posed by public intellectuals.

Let us learn … to mistrust those universal people, skilled in all the arts, versed in all the sciences,

who know everything, who reason about everything, and seem to unite in themselves alone the

talents of every mortal. If someone tells us that he knows one of these wondrous men, let us assure

him without hesitating that he is the dupe of the magic tricks of a charlatan and that all the knowledge

of this great Philosopher is founded only on the ignorance of his admirers, who do not know how to

distinguish error from truth, nor imitation from the thing imitated (340; 1199).49

As Neidleman astutely notes, Rousseau extends Plato’s critique of poetry so that it applies to philosophy as well.50

Rousseau seems to have in mind leading enlightenment figures such as Voltaire, an apparently wise man who can carry along public opinion with him, but only by addressing his audience in a deceptive and harmful manner.51 Such men present the philosopher as the new saviors of society. For instance, the hero of Voltaire’s dialogue on “Fraud” argues that the people will accept “an idea that is honest, convincing, useful to everybody, an idea that is in harmony with human reason” and his opponent, a priest, ends the dialogue by claiming that he really longs to be a philosopher performing this role.52 If the philosophers of the enlightenment of Rousseau’s

49 Compare with Plato, Republic, 598d. 50 Rousseau’s Ethics, 196. It would be worth comparing this criticism of Enlightenment philosopher to Socrates’ attack on the sophists in the Protagoras, 313d-314c. 51 That Rousseau intends this criticism to apply to intellectuals is confirmed by a passage in one of his debates against the author of the Letters Written from the Valley. Of his opponent, Rousseau warns: “In order to divert you from the particular object, he flatters your amour-propre by extending your view to great questions … He dazzles the people this way in order to blind them, and changes questions that require only good sense into theses of philosophy, so that one cannot contradict him, and so that – not understanding him – one does not dare disavow him … for so many elements enter into these propositions, one can envisage them from so many angles, that there is always one side susceptible to the appearance one wants to give them” (Letters Written From the Mountain, 284; OC III, 871). Those with partial views can take advantage of the distance of complex ideas from the truth to mislead in matters of politics, not merely aesthetics. 52 Voltaire, Philosophical Dictionary, trans. Theodore Besterman (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 214-215. This truth is not a truth exactly, but Voltaire’s deistic morality. The enlightenment certainly maintained some ambiguity, but the overall intent to have simple truths take broad hold is easy to see, even when such truths still have a simple cloak.

41 time had not quite arrived at the opinion that reason alone would suffice to persuade its audience, many did have increasing faith in the public role of the philosopher and an increasing sense that the truth must be proclaimed loudly and widely.53

Rousseau’s message to his reader is that Voltaire and his kind are deceiving you. These seemingly great philosophers cannot accomplish what they assume, and so can only claim the role of public indoctrinator.54 Should philosophy wish to present itself to a broader audience, as it often did in Rousseau’s time and continues to do in ours, it would run into the difficulties he has diagnosed. The public artist or philosopher creates a pleasing artistic work, and the people see what they want to see, or the would-be enlightener is ignored. Rousseau thus accuses the philosophers too of corrupting their audience, and of presenting an image of themselves that distorts what the philosopher is capable of and how he should behave.55 Rousseau’s critique of modern philosophers is that they, like poets, present images as ideas, or at least also cause others to take images as ideas by their attempts at enlightenment.56

The distortion that Rousseau is most concerned with is that of the image of the philosopher himself. In a passage of the Republic where Plato’s Socrates uses only examples drawn from crafts

53 For a concise history: Arthur Melzer, Philosophy Between the Lines: The Lost History of Esoteric Writing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 277-284. Historian Tim Blanning goes so far as to argue that “most educated people in most countries believed that Kant was right, and that they were indeed living in an age of enlightenment” (The Pursuit of Glory: The five revolutions that made modern Europe: 1648-1815 (New York: Penguin Books, 2008), 295). 54 Paul Rahe argues that “Rousseau was the first to recognize that, within modern society, what we now call political ideology performs a function comparable to that served in earlier times by religious doctrine and that – as ideologues – scientists, men of letters, and artists now occupy a status once reserved for none but high priests” (Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville and the Modern Project (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 97). 55 Rousseau also has problems with the content of the public philosophies of his time, as will become clear in subsequent chapters. 56 This critique would seem to apply to enlightenment as such, not just “The Enlightenment” of Rousseau’s time. For treatments of Rousseau’s relationship to the Enlightenment that do not however consider Theatrical Imitation, see: Garrard, Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment and Mark Hulliung, The Autocritique of Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophers (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1994). See also Robert Derathé, Jean- Jacques Rousseau et la Science Politique de son Temps (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1979). 42 that the painter does not know,57 Rousseau turns primarily to the depiction of various types of intellectuals: “When he offers us a Philosopher in meditation, an Astronomer observing the stars, a Geometer drawing figures, a Lathe Worker in his workshop, does he thereby turn, calculate, meditate, or observe the stars? Not at all; he merely paints.”58 The popular philosopher gives an outsized image of his abilities without needing to know the science or art in question. As I explain in chapter five, this separation between presentation and content increases as history progresses.59

Theatrical Imitation shows some of the means a true philosopher can use to sideline such pretenders. Rousseau’s strategy is to imply malice where Plato’s Socrates does not (at least in the equivalent sections of the Republic). As we have seen, Rousseau in Theatrical Imitation has argued for the difficulty of knowing the truth of things. One might ask why the painter’s initial deception, however spellbinding and difficult to avoid, is in fact such an undesirable thing. One need only think of a travel brochure or paintings of antiquity to see that painting can fire the imagination in ways that might be difficult to fully correct toward a more accurate account. It could be added that poetry is more powerful than painting.60 But while artistic works present us with a pleasing but one-sided view, do they claim to do more? Why shouldn’t the artist proceed with the expectation

57 Plato, Republic, 598b. 58 The one example of a Workman (ouvrier), the Lathe Worker, is another addition of Rousseau’s and might provide some clue as to his intentions. The Lathe tool shapes objects symmetrically. Perhaps the suggestion is that that the painter lacks true symmetry, and the depiction of the universal painter cannot show the true colors of the intellectual and still be appealing. 59 Theatrical Imitation also introduces, albeit briefly, the problem that life becomes more entangled in complicated and artificial social conventions that are so detached from any basis in experience as to be impossible to evaluate. To his above-quoted suggestion that arbitrariness seeps into imitation, Rousseau appends a long note articulating his criticism of modern harmony. Rousseau argues in the note that “Experience teaches us that beautiful harmony does not at all flatter an unprepared ear … our harmony is a barbarous and gothic invention which has become an art of imitation only by the stretch of time” (339fn; 1198). Modern composers invent elaborate rules that corrupt art by making it appear scientific in a way that is in fact arbitrary. This criticism is fleshed out in his polemics against Jean- Phillipe Rameau, the Dictionary of Music, and Origin of Languages. 60 Lund has recently made the same point, although he also argues that “painting does nothing to enhance or aggravate the mistakes about the physical world to which our senses make us prone,” whereas I do not see why painting could not have this effect (Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 121).

43 that it is the responsibility of the audience to realize that to fully understand an issue we would need to spend some time considering it?

Rousseau casts the artist as intentionally, not accidently, practicing deception. According to Rousseau, the popular artist “does not even seek to render the truth of the object exactly … choosing this point of view at his will, he renders, in accordance with what suits him, the same object to the eyes of the spectators as pleasant or deformed” such that “something arbitrary enters even into the imitation” (338-339; 1198). Given the distance of perspective from true knowledge, we can only assume that the popular artist is misleading us. Rousseau emphasizes that “he takes advantage of us doubly by his imitations, either by offering us a vague and deceptive appearance, the error of which neither he nor we would know how to distinguish, or by employing false measurements in order to produce this appearance” (340; 1199). While Rousseau makes it clear that the artist must choose a limited perspective,61 he, unlike Plato’s Socrates, emphasizes that the artist “takes advantage of us” (340; 1199).62 The popular artist is a scoundrel bent on deception, claiming to know what he does not or fashioning an entirely novel vision.

Rousseau also slanders the character of artists as useless talkers in a long series of rhetorical questions that demonstrates different rhetoric tropes that can be deployed against would-be enlighteners. The first is his addition to Plato and taps into an old criticism of thinkers as ineffective, living in dreams because unable to possess what they want, in this case a mistress or a house.63 The next set of questions concerns the social impact of the artist. “If, then, the tragic

61 Elsewhere Rousseau makes it clear that not only must we begin with this distortion but viewing many distortions can be helpful: “the very illusions of perspective are necessary for us to come to a knowledge of extension and to compare its parts” (Emile, 140, OC IV, 393). 62 This emphasis on the deception of the artist is a strategy first employed in the First Discourse. See Orwin, “Rousseau’s Socrates,” 176-178; Jeff Black, Rousseau’s Critique of Science: A Commentary on the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2009), 109-111. I discuss it further below. 63 A possible source for these non-Platonic insults is Deuteronomy 28:30, when God threatens the Israelites with punishments should they stray from His law: “A woman you will betroth and another man will bed her. A house you will build and you will not dwell in it.”

Author really knew the things he claims to paint, if he had the qualities he describes, if he himself did everything he makes his characters do, would he not exercise their talents? Would he not practice their virtues? Would he not raise monuments to his glory rather than theirs?” Those who depict the virtues of others must themselves be incapable or have something to hide. Rousseau ends with a rhetorical flourish: “And who would not laugh at seeing an imbecilic group go to admire all the springs of politics and of the human heart put into play by a twenty-year-old- scatterbrain to whom the least sensible person in the assembly would not want to confide the least of his affairs?” (341; 1200-1201).64 The serious point: why take advice from an inexperienced artist on serious issues? As Rousseau has made clear, the issue is larger than poets or modern theater.65 Beware modern man, of pronouncements of virtue by the “vicious.” Whatever the fairness of the accusations, the basic intent to warn and distance the reader from popular artists is clear.66

VI. A positive role for public speech?

Rousseau’s goals are not limited to warning his audience away from enlighteners.

Theatrical Imitation has positive goals, as intimated by Rousseau’s likening of the philosopher to the architect of a palace. The first is to reorient the reader toward virtue as self-constraint. In the

64 Compare with Rousseau’s criticism of his character St. Preux in Julie, as “a twenty-year-old sage who knows prodigious numbers of things!” (Julie, 61fn, OC II, 75). At that point, what St. Preux knows is mostly the art of seduction based in part on seeming to know so many things. 65 In the Dialogues the character Rousseau says of his initial attraction to the philosophes: “Paying too much attention to their words and not enough to their actions, I listened to them talk rather than to watch them act. In this era of philosophy and fine words, this led me to take them all for wise men and to judge their virtues by their pronouncements” (Dialogues, 95; OC I, 783). 66 That the accusations are not entirely fair is clear from Rousseau’s own activity. If we think of the pleasure Rousseau claims to have had in writing his novel Julie, which he was writing while writing Theatrical Imitation, we might wonder if Rousseau himself would always prefer the reality of having a mistress or a house. See his description of his enjoyment of the female characters in the Confessions, CW 5, 361-362; OC I, 429-430. Cf. Jensen, “Quarrel,” 190. Rousseau is also in the habit of promoting virtuous characters, although he does not claim to be virtuous himself (Reveries, 77; OC I, 1052-1053). Still, he might be said to avoid the criticism here by in some sense making of himself a model compatible with his literary projects.

45 same section where he attacks the character of the artist, Rousseau appears to attack the audience of popular art for giving into these charlatans. However, his goal is to arouse the pride of his audience to resist the artist and the impulses they appeal to. Rousseau recruits the very amour- propre that so often prevents reason from being consulted in order to separate the reader from the weak spectators who would fail to listen to reason and the law.67 In this task, the monologue form of Theatrical Imitation allows Rousseau to be all the more polemical and stirring. Rousseau pursues this strategy by first drawing a stark divide between strength and weakness of soul.68 This reminds us that the first definition Rousseau ever offers us of virtue in his works: it “is the strength and vigor of the soul.”69 He emphasizes the weakness encouraged by the stage where Plato does not: “it is from this sensitive and weak part that the touching and varied imitations seen on the stage are drawn” (346; 1207).70 We now have two sides, one of virtuous strength and one of weakness. The goal is to recruit the weakness that is attractive on the stage to the benefit of strength. The heroes on the stage must suffer and show passions common to the audience before they can be effective models.71

Paradoxically, Rousseau persuades his readers to choose virtue by appealing to their very compassion for emotional struggle, in order to turn that fellow-feeling toward an appetite for the

67 This sort of appeal is a central strategy in Rousseau’s corpus. While it might have made sense thirty years ago to argue that “the prevailing view among readers of Rousseau continues to be that amour-propre is a wholly negative phenomenon, always and only a source of havoc in human society,” most recent literature I am aware of shows some understanding that it can have positive roles (Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy, 15). For useful discussions: Gerald Mara, “Rousseau’s Two Models of Political Obligation,” Western Political Quarterly, 33 (1980), 539-540; Clifford Orwin, “Rousseau on the Sources of Ethics,” in Instilling Ethics, Norma Thompson, Editor (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2000), 68-69; 74-79; Cusher, “Legislator,” 42-43; 150-151. 68 This too is a major theme and strategy pursued in Emile. 69 First Discourse, 7; OC III, 8. 70 Socrates calls the part “irritable” (Plato, Republic, 604d). 71 As we will see in chapter four, this interplay between strength and weakness is a broader strategy that Rousseau also employs in his articulation of republican politics.

46 struggle toward virtue.72 The reader can applaud what resistance they can make to their debilitating passions and still consider themselves on the side of virtue. Rousseau tries to show his readers that their pity should not lead them to weakness. He uses the following example: “Let a wise and courageous man lose his son, his friend, his mistress, finally, the object most dear to his heart: he will not be seen to abandon himself to an excessive and unreasonable grief; and if human weakness does not permit him to overcome his affliction completely, he will temper it by constancy.” To the

Platonic original, Rousseau adds all of the examples after son; in doing so he piles on the losses and makes them sound more grievous and emotionally draining.73 But if convinced by Rousseau,

“when a domestic and real affliction reaches ourselves, we glory in bearing it moderately” (348;

1209, my emphasis). In the great battle over our human losses, the theater tugs at our passions in ways we should consider beneath us: “What troubles him and agitates him is grief and passion; what stops him and contains him is reason and law; and in these opposed movements his will always declares itself for the latter” (346; 1206). Theatrical imitation appeals to grief and passion and makes them outstrip reason and law as motivations, unless we can see ourselves glorying in our struggle to overcome our own weakness. As Rousseau emphasizes the difficulties of resisting the emotions amplified by the poets, so he also summons resistance: “What strong souls will dare believe themselves equal to the care the Poet takes to corrupt them or to discourage them?” (347;

1208). This question could be seen as a provocation as much as rhetorical. Rousseau challenges the reader: it may be a difficult struggle, but are you going to let yourself be degraded by the poets?

If only passion can counter passion, as Rousseau has suggested,74 the philosopher or legislator

72 He argues in Julie that a novel should “induce us to love [virtue] by depicting it as first less austere, and then from the lap of vice know the art of leading men imperceptibly toward it” (227; OC II, 277). 73 See Plato, Republic, 603d-e or the similar 387e. 74 Explicitly in Emile: “One has a hold on the passions only be means of the passions. It is by their empire that their tyranny must be combated; and it is always from nature itself that the proper instruments to regulate nature must be drawn” (327; OC IV, 653).

47 looking to reach a large audience must himself appeal to passion, in this case both compassion and pride, to reorient the reader toward virtue.

Rousseau also tries to make the rewards of strength of soul clear. His argument for why

“reason desires that adversity be endured patiently” is not found in Plato. On Rousseau’s account our passions need hard medicine if they are not to overwhelm us and to prevent us from trying to better our situation. A prudent man “will try to turn to profit his very reverses, as a prudent gambler seeks to take advantage of a bad mark that chance brings him; and, without lamenting like a child who falls and cries over the rock that has struck him, he knows how to bear, if necessary, a hot iron that is salutary for his wound and to make it bleed in order to heal it” (346; 1206-1207). Where

Socrates suggests only that a decent man will hold up moderately under misfortunes,75 Rousseau argues that a prudent man should seek to turn his reverses to his benefit.76 His ‘hot iron’ imagery points toward using passion to douse passion; in this case, pride to douse sorrow. While his strategy anticipates Kant in its appeal to virtue over weakness, Rousseau makes self-overcoming pay dividends, rather than attempting to separate morality from self-interest.77

Along with an attempt to encourage individual virtue, there is another section of Theatrical

Imitation where Rousseau suggests a second positive role for public speech, that of shaping a unique political culture. In the longest paragraph of the work Rousseau offers potential models for the effective poet, while following Socrates in claiming that Homer is not one. Rousseau demands:

“if you are really what you strive to appear to be … let us see in you the model which you paint for us in your works; show us the Captain, the Legislator, and the Wise Men whose portrait you

75 Plato, Republic, 604b-c. 76 In this, Rousseau follows Machiavelli rather than Plato, by suggesting that misfortunes might solicit a passionate response – and can therefore be opportunities in disguise (See e.g. The Prince, trans. Harvey Mansfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 23-25). 77 Contrast with: “Now an action done from duty must altogether excludes the influence of inclination and therewith every object of the will” (Immanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. James W. Ellington (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 13).

48 so boldly offer us” (341; 1200). There, in an apparent attack on Homer, he notes that “Greece and the entire world celebrate the blessings of great men who possess these sublime arts whose precepts cost you so little. Lycurgus gave laws to Sparta, Charondas to Sicily and to Italy, Minos to the

Cretans, Solon to us” (341; 1201). Like Plato’s Socrates, Rousseau gives examples of legislators and those acknowledged as wise during their lifetime.78 As usual, Rousseau adds to Plato; here the additions are “Minos to the Cretans” and “Zoroaster … for the Magi” (341-342; 1201).79

Rousseau’s examples point to the founding of many specific peoples and groups, in Greece and beyond it.

Rousseau’s additions suggest that the legislator too should adopt a humble stance. “What!

A Protagoras of Abdera, a Prodicus of Ceos, without departing from a simple and private life have gathered their contemporaries around themselves” (342; 1201).80 Rousseau is willing to praise the ancient sophists as models. Homer remained unknown “in those coarse centuries, where the weight of ignorance began to make itself felt,” perhaps, because he was too refined (342; 1202).81 While

Rousseau does not provide specific guidance on what a legislator or advisor of legislators should attempt to convey in speech, the stance they should adopt to do so is clear. He has spent most of the essay emphasizing the difficulty of moral legislation, but the suggestion here is that extraordinarily wise legislation is or at least was once possible.82

78 Rousseau’s examples point to the founders of both political communities and religious or philosophic sects. I focus in this dissertation on the former possibility. The full list includes fourteen proper names in all, including for instance Lycurgus, Minos and Solon as founders of peoples, and Zoroaster, Pythagoras and Prodicus as founders of sects. 79 Pamela Jensen has some interesting suggestions about these additions. Especially important to her is the addition of Zoroaster, whom she takes as a stand in for spiritual founders like Jesus (“Quarrel,” 192). This may very well be, but it is a thin basis upon which to establish her interpretation that Theatrical Imitation has as its main theme the problems of Christian poetry. The example of Zoroaster is ambiguous evidence, given that Rousseau refers elsewhere to Zoroaster in particular as a philosophic, rather than a religious founder (“Last Reply,” 71; OC III, 81). 80 These examples and the description of them seem most likely drawn from Cicero, On the Ideal Orator, 262. Crassus remarks of “Prodicus of Ceo, or Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, or Protagoras of Abdera” that “it is easy to deduce how much of the truly splendid arts these orators wanted to possess, since they didn’t spurn even the vulgar ones.” 81 Although, as Jensen suggests, Rousseau himself felt unduly maligned in his lifetime (“The Quarrel,” 192). 82 Rousseau does claim elsewhere that philosophic legislation once occurred. See Political Economy, 13; OC III, 251- 252 and “Last Reply,” 69; OC III, 78. See also Political Economy, 24, OC III, 263-264.

VII. Conclusion

This chapter articulated the problems facing the popular speaker and Rousseau’s argument for how to address them. Rousseau demonstrated that the human mind naturally lends itself to being deceived, and that imitative art must initially offer a deceptive picture. The vanity of both artist and spectator militate against developing a full view on human subjects (or any subjects).

Artists love finding an audience that loves to hear them, and audiences love to hear their views reflected by a supposedly superior mind. Popular art tends toward the echo-chamber. This echo- chamber tendency suggests that in political life we should expect partisan and self-indulgent rhetoric to be the norm. Rousseau’s analysis here does seem to coincide with our contemporary experience of factional political communication.83

Part of Rousseau’s message is that popular intellectuals and artists should not serve as the heroes of their society – at least not in the guise of intellectual or artist.84 They would corrupt both their own message and those that they pretended to enlighten by doing so. Thus, much of

Theatrical Imitation is spent convincing readers that would-be enlighteners are more untrustworthy than perhaps they are.

But Rousseau still thought the philosopher could play an important role in politics, and thus showed how to recruit readers to a more limited cause. Surprisingly, part of the solution seems to lie in Rousseau’s argument that the appeal to a variety of everyday passions is the most effective subject of theatrical imitation. While this appeal typically reinforces our self-indulgence in ways that make us unable to abide by a consistent standard provided by reason or law, appeal to our

83 Social Contract, 60; OC III, 371-372. On the link between linguistic arbitrariness and faction: Patrick J. Dobel, “The Role of Language in Rousseau’s Political Thought,” Polity 18 (1986), 651. 84 It would be a worthy topic to consider how Rousseau’s self-image in his autobiographical works escapes the critique outlined here. Such considerations are beyond the scope of this project, however.

50 compassion and solicitude toward such struggle is in fact a useful way to recruit our concern. Once recruited, Rousseau tries to convince us that we should heroically struggle with our weakness.

Rousseau shows the general picture of what a philosopher can hope to accomplish.

Philosophy is for the few, but the philosopher can support the virtue of the many, by fighting false philosophy and encouraging the overcoming of weakness by an appeal to pride. Some of

Rousseau’s examples, however, point to a more involved role for the philosopher. The role of a broader cultural architect is introduced, but the specifics of how that role might be carried out are only addressed in the other works of the triptych. I thus turn in the next chapter to Rousseau’s analysis of how human speech helps form communities.

Chapter 3: Southern comfort and cold showers: speech and identity in Rousseau’s Origin of Languages

“The passions of man … are … the beginning of speech … And men desiring to shew others the knowledge, opinions, conceptions, and passions which are within themselves”

“And of all the passions of the mind, these two, indignation and pity, are most easily raised and increased by eloquence, for the aggravation of the calamity, and the extenuation of fault, augmenteth pity. And the extenuation of the worth of the person, together with his success … are able to turn these two passions into fury.” – Hobbes1

Chapter one showed the limits of what Rousseau thought that the public intellectual could accomplish. The dynamics articulated there would seem to preclude complex rationalism from serving as the basis of political speech that successfully undergirds a political community. The goal of the philosopher in chapter one was to protect his audience from those who would try to corrupt them, and to encourage them to practice virtue. But this would seem to require some understanding or attraction to virtue in the first place.2 The question is how philosophers and legislators play the role of encouraging such a disposition, a disposition that Rousseau often seems to deny is possible for them to encourage in Theatrical Imitation. The answer will turn to be that communal speech can only succeed by expanding and directing our natural factionalism, rather than attempting to transcend it.

In order to uncover this role that speech plays as a bases for political (and human) community, this chapter articulates what Rousseau sees as the basic functions of speech – with an eye to how different modes of communication can appeal to the passions in order to encourage attachment to the shared public standards necessary for virtue. I focus on the second work of

Rousseau’s triptych, the Essay on the Origin of Languages, in which something is said about

1 Thomas Hobbes, The Elements of Law (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 39; 53-54. 2 As I disagree, for reasons articulated in this chapter, “that virtue requires that the individual listen to what his heart tells him directly” (Garrard, Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment, 5). Rather, our hearts point in all sorts of direction, but must be directed in order to desire virtue.

melody and musical imitation.3 While Origin is a multifaceted work,4 its guiding concern is to address the role of imitative art in social life.5 Rousseau concludes the work with “the passage that suggested [Origin] to me”, a suggestion of the philosophe Duclos: “To note and to show by means of examples the extent to which a people’s characters, morals, and interests influence its Language would provide matter for a rather philosophical inquiry.”6 That is, the motivating concern that inspired Origin is how different linguistic practices, broadly understood to mean differences in everyday language, rhetoric and artistic expression, are shaped by their social environment.7

Adding to this concern, Rousseau shows how speech might be reformed to improve politics; although following Duclos, our power to reform speech without also reforming the political environment it is spoken in proves limited.

I begin with an account of how Rousseau’s theory of language is entailed by his psychology of self-love: all language developed to serve our self-love, and it still primarily does so, even as self-love and language become more complicated. At the center of Origin is a description of the two main functions of speech that develop, which Rousseau associates with southern and northern languages. These two functions are first, as expression and communication of our sentiments and

3 Published only posthumously and once as neglected as Theatrical Imitation and the Levite, Origin is now frequently treated as an important part of Rousseau’s corpus, exemplified by Jacques Derrida’s focus on it in his Of Grammatology. See e.g. Gourevitch, “Political Argument,” 21-22; Lund, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 68-80. 4 “The second piece [Origin] was also at first merely a fragment of the discourse on inequality which I omitted from it as too long and out of place. I took it up again on the occasion of the Errors by M. Rameau on music” (289; 373). The Origin of Languages originated with the Second Discourse but was completed while Rousseau was working on his polemics against Rameau. It is also advertised in Emile (340; 670), and many passages in the Emile are similar to those in Origin. For treatments of Origin in the context of Rousseau’s musical writings: Sophie Bourgault, “The Turning of State and Soul: Rousseau and Nietzsche on Music and Politics” (Phd Dissertation, University of Toronto, 2007); Julia Simon, Rousseau Among the Moderns: Music, Aesthetics, Politics (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2013). 5 Perhaps why Rousseau considered publishing Origin “under the aegis of the other two writings … which I might perhaps not have risked alone” (289; 373). 6 Origin, 299; 429. For the rest of this chapter citations from Origin will be provided in text. 7 In Emile Rousseau notes that “only reason is common; in each language the mind has its particular form. This is a difference which might very well be a part of the cause or of the effect of national characters … in all the nations of the world language follows the vicissitudes of morals and is preserved or degenerates as they do” (109; 346).

experiences of the world to others (southern), and second, as a tool to understand and manipulate the world to overcome resistance (northern). I argue that while this second function, the apprehension of the world in precise (and mathematical) speech, is an essential function of language, Rousseau downplays this function because when speech is reduced to it, this reduction undermines political community.8 Rather, he rhetorically emphasizes communication that expresses our appreciation of others, which expands our sense of self to include them, because he takes this side of speech to be necessary for healthy political community. In his analysis Rousseau further develops his argument from Theatrical Imitation that the sense of self expands best when it can identify with suffering and similarity – although Rousseau suggests greater possibilities for using such identification to political advantage in Origin than in Theatrical Imitation. But I argue that Rousseau’s rhetoric should not blind us, as it has many commentators, to the necessary mediation and rationality that he thinks attends all human life and human speech. I conclude the chapter by arguing that when we examine what Rousseau regards as particularly powerful speech, we find a mix of the two functions of speech, where both affective expansion and rational delimitation work to motivate political action.

I. A psychology and language of self-love

Origin takes us, as the name implies, back to the beginning of language and reason both temporally and psychologically. This is thus the place to articulate Rousseau’s understanding of reason in all of its fragility, but also in its remaining constitutive importance for human life as such. While this story has been told before, it is important to pay close attention to it so as not to fall into the twin mistakes made by so many commentators: either to see a Rousseau who endows

8 Thus, to the extent that it can be popularized, it will tend to undermine political community.

human beings with a soul and a conscience that can guide them without reason, or one who thinks that public reason can play the primary role in giving human beings a freer and more refined moral life. Human beings cannot dispense with reason if they want to be happy, but nor can they afford to ignore its many dangers and limits.

Rousseau’s understanding of human community and the role that language can play in it derives from his psychology of self-love.9 From the simple premises of human self-love and historical development Rousseau derives a complex theory of language.10 As noted in the introduction, this psychology of self-love is an elaboration of the distinctively modern premise that the individual should be understood qua individual prior to, and separate from, social formation.11

Rousseau adds a twist to his predecessors: this individualistic premise properly understood means that our developed self and the language used to articulate that self are fragile historical artifacts.

Language is more changeable, both for good and for evil, than had been realized. On Rousseau’s account, if modern premises - that human beings are essentially individualistic and should be

9 I articulate this psychology with liberal borrowing from the Second Discourse and Emile, assuming therefore the consistency of these accounts with Origin. For a recent account arguing for contradiction: Catherine J. Cole, “From silence to society: the conflicting musical visions of Rousseau’s Discours sur l’origine de l’inegalite and Essai sur l’origine des langues” in Musique et langage chez Rousseau, ed. Claude Dauphine (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2004): 112-121. On the side of consistency: John Scott, “Rousseau and the Melodious Language of Freedom,” Review of Politics 59 (1997), 809-810. Commentators also once argued that Origin predated Rousseau’s mature writings. Most commentators no longer make this case, however. Derrida made the first extended argument for Rousseau’s consistent position on language that I am aware of (Of Grammatology, 192-194). Its basic outlines – that Origin was begun (as Rousseau himself suggested) in 1754 and finished in the early 1760s – now are accepted by most commentators of whom I am aware. 10 I am indebted to several recent studies of Rousseau’s psychology on this score. Especially those of Laurence Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999); Eros in Plato, Rousseau, and Nietzsche: The Politics of the Infinite (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2008); Arthur Melzer, Natural Goodness of Man, 42-45; Pierre Manent, Metamorphoses of the City, trans. Marc LePain (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2013), 78-92. 11 While there is controversy as to where this view originates, Rousseau understands Hobbes as his most important predecessor on this score (Second Discourse, 151; OC III, 153). Locke and Condillac are also notable influences on Rousseau’s psychology and theory of language. On this lineage see: Judith Shklar, Men and Citizens: A study of Rousseau’s social theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), esp. 33-39; Wokler, Rousseau on Society, 65-76. Where Rousseau departs from his predecessors is in suggesting that reason and all our social passions must be understood to have developed historically, rather than being intrinsic to our nature. Rousseau makes his break with Condillac explicit: Second Discourse, 145; OC III, 146.

understood first and foremost as individuals - are right, then “man is naturally good.”12 This means not that we are angels but that “there is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered. The sole passion natural to man is amour de soi or amour-propre taken in an extended sense. This amour-propre in itself or relative to us is good and useful … it becomes good or bad only by the application made of it and the relations given to it.”13 Moralistic language aside for the moment, the essential point is that human beings do not by nature begin as well formed types or in fixed molds, and that their subsequent development into different human types must be understood as a “modification”14 of our self-love or primitive concern with “our preservation and our well-being.”15 The moralistic language has a point, which is to get most readers to interpret our natural goodness as directing us to goodness in our own lives (I argue for this below). But it is important to note here that if we read Rousseau closely, he does not say that the human heart has any virtue or moral direction originally – our original goodness is merely our original self-sufficiency or goodness for ourselves.16 And I will argue that virtue and moral direction remain artificial to us, requiring rational invention and direction – there is no natural standard to which we are directed. Human psychology and language are the result of our self-love’s accidental encounters with our environment, and (we will see) especially the self-love of other human beings, and our psychological direction is naturally as confused and mixed as the history of these encounters.

This historical evolution of self-love is made possible by and imprinted on human language and the way that it functions. However, in part one of the Second Discourse, Rousseau shows that

12 Second Discourse, 197; OC III, 202. 13 Emile, 92; OC IV, 320. 14 “The source of our passions, the origin and the principle of all the others, and the only one born with man and which never leaves him so long as he lives is self-love – a primitive, innate passion, which is anterior to every other, and of which all others are in a sense only modifications” (Emile, 212-213; OC IV, 495). 15 Emile, 97; OC IV 327. 16 Even pity is a modification of self-love, as I show below.

on these premises of modern psychology, the development of language is a problem. Originally,

Rousseau argues, we must have been animals driven by instinctual self-love alone, which amounted to a simple desire to care for our self-preservation. This self-love motivated only desires for food, shelter, sex.17 These basics were all we needed, and Rousseau finds it hard to explain why we would develop languages we did not need. He also finds it hard to imagine how we would go about inventing language. A full third of part one of the Second Discourse is spent on the difficulties of how an animal could teach itself to make conventional signs without such signs.18

The development of human communication occurred late, with difficulty, and the bonds that it creates, we will see, are fragile.

Somehow human beings developed from nonverbal animals. Rousseau offers the following explanation of how this would have come about:

Regardless of what the Moralists say about it; the human understanding owes much to the Passions

which, as is commonly admitted, also owe much to it: It is by their activity that our reason perfects

itself; We seek to know only because we desire to enjoy, and it is not possible to conceive why

someone who had neither desires nor fears would take the trouble to reason. The passions, in turn,

owe their origin to our needs, and their progress to our knowledge; for one can only desire or fear

things in terms of the ideas one can have of them.19

However human beings developed reason and language, this development had to come about due to the needs stemming from self-love. Rousseau argues that need must have forced us together; the expansion of our needs is the necessary condition and origin of our passions.20 Specifically, in

17 Second Discourse, 134; OC III, 135. 18 Rousseau asks: “which is the more necessary, an already united Society for the institution of Languages, or already invented Languages for the establishment of Society?” (Second Discourse, 149; OC III, 151). 19 Second Discourse, 142; OC III, 143. 20 Thus it is wrong to assert that “Rousseau explicitly insists that language, in all its forms, is a secondary and ultimately disfiguring instrument created by man to express passions that existed before language” (Thomas Kavanagh, Writing and Truth: Authority and Desire in Rousseau (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 76).

both the Second Discourse and Origin, Rousseau posits that increased strain on our ability to survive originally must have forced us together, perhaps through natural disasters.21 Yet while increasing needs were a necessary catalyst, Rousseau emphasizes that the passions once born lead to the formation of ideas, the basic units of reason. These ideas then allow the creation of new desires and fears, which were the true drivers of the human understanding. For Rousseau, our passions and the language through which they are expressed is constitutive of our understanding.22

He suggests that our desire to enjoy especially leads to new modes of expression which allow us to acquire new enjoyments, which in turn allow us to imagine new objects to desire, then new modes of expression, and so on. It is important to note that nowhere does Rousseau in his own voice argue that speech and thought can transcend their origin in the needs and passions.23

The specific desires that lead to the development of language are mostly social desires.

Complicated conventional languages and primitive communal practices are awakened by our awareness of one another and the desire to communicate. As Rousseau puts it, “as soon as one man was recognized by another as a sentient thinking Being, similar to himself, the desire or the need to communicate his sentiments and thoughts made him seek the means to do so” (248; 375). We feel this “desire or need”24 to communicate due to the unsettling similarity of the other. It is our

21 “Human associations are in large measure the work of accidents of nature; local floods, overflowing seas, volcanic eruptions, major earthquakes … The frequent ancient traditions about natural disasters show what instruments providence used to force humans to come together” (274; 402). Cf. Second Discourse, 165; OC III, 168-169. 22 It is thus interesting that Charles Taylor, in his recent study of linguistic theory which focuses on constitutive theories of language, completely ignores Rousseau. He rather turns to Herder: “The constitutive theory finds its most energetic early expression in Herder, precisely in a criticism of Condillac” (Language Animal, 6). The passage of Herder that Taylor cites, though, is a nearly an exact copy of the criticism of Condillac in the Second Discourse. John Warner also notes from a different angle that for Rousseau “Human relations, then, are not instrumental but identity-constitutive; they give rise to the very desires they seek to satisfy, and do not help us get what we want so much as give shape and substance to desire itself” (Problem of Human Relations, 43). 23 As Leo Strauss writes, “Accepting the view that brutes are machines, he suggests that there is only a difference of degree between men and the brutes in regard to understanding or that the laws of mechanics explain the formation of ideas” (Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 265). 24 Whether it was desire or need is due partly to circumstance, as we will see.

self-consciousness which leads us to desire to communicate and thereby become human.25 Concern with others is an essential feature of language. Rousseau expands on an intuitive argument – why would we say anything to another if their concern was not our concern, and why would they listen if we could not make them care?

Language is meant to bridge the gulf between human beings, to make them helpful or pleasing to us.26 It is important to highlight that Rousseau conceives of the distance between human beings as a gulf – one that is fragile and tenuous. Our concern for others, in Rousseau’s view, is not strictly natural and thus always tends to be oriented by our self-concern. We can thus see why amour-propre is born along with language – the evaluation of ourselves in the eyes of others makes us want to shape that view so as to gain approval, for its intrinsic pleasure or its use.

According to Rousseau, two sets of social passions (and, as we will see, two sorts of language), are born together. The first set of passions expresses our appreciation for others and expanding sense of self; the second responds to resistance to our needs and desires.27 The first individuals all seem to undergo a similar birth of sentiments and passions: “The more they see one another, the less they can do without seeing one another more. A tender and sweet sentiment steals into the soul, and at the least obstacle, becomes an impetuous frenzy; jealousy awakens together with love; Discord triumphs, and the gentlest of all passions receives sacrifices of human blood.”28

At the first coming together of peoples we find the sweet expansion of human sentiments in the love and attraction between young couples. But along with this new sentiment those of jealousy

25 Laurence Cooper rightly argues that “The significance of self-consciousness in Rousseau’s thought has not been appreciated as much as it deserves to be. Every major step in human development, and every distinctively human trait, is connected to the development of self-consciousness” (Rousseau, 157). This may remind readers of Hegel’s “Lordship and Bondage” (G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 111-118). Contra Hegel, while for Rousseau our language, reason and social institutions tend to follow a certain logic from their origin, he never asserts the strict necessity or rationality of this history. 26 Others have seen this point. See e.g. Davis, “Essence of Babel,” 234; Lund, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 80. 27 See Gourevitch, “Political Argument,” 24. 28 Second Discourse, 165; OC III, 169, my emphasis.

and anger immediately arrive at resistance to rejection. As I will show below, when our self-love expands and meets with approval, it leads to an intensification of our feeling of our own existence, and to a language of love, friendship, and communal festivity. But the birth of the passions is fraught with danger, in that attraction expressed may fail to persuade, leading to frustration. This frustration might lead to self-development but can also lead to a desire to destroy.29

In Origin Rousseau makes this birth of the passions together – and the birth of speech from these passions – explicit.

Not hunger nor thirst, but love, hatred, pity, anger wrung their first voices from them. Fruit does not

shrink from our grasp, one can eat it without speaking, one stalks the prey one means to devour in

silence, but in order to move a young heart, to repulse an unjust aggressor, nature dictates accents,

cries, plaints; here then are the oldest invented words, and here is why languages were songlike and

passionate before they were plain and methodical. None of this is true without qualification (250;

380-381, my emphasis).

Here Rousseau lists passions of moral identification (love, pity) and repulsion (hatred, anger) as the first causes of speech. Again, it is the need to influence our relative standing, it is our nascent amour-propre, which drives speech. The need to move a young heart to love us in turn, or the desire to repulse an aggressor who is not only obnoxious but disrespectful, unjust, leads to speech.

Rousseau also alerts us to be wary of taking what he says too simply. Physical need will turn out to play a major part in the origin of conventional speech after all (and so we must ask why Rousseau goes to such lengths to discount it).

The Second Discourse contains an illustration that indicates the primitive communal functions language can serve. On the one hand the pleasure of company leads to unifying artistic

29 As Schaeffer notes, “the desire to be loved leads one to seek to make oneself lovable – more lovable than others, who become rivals … thus is amour-propre born” (Rousseau on Education, 89). A rival can be surpassed, but also destroyed.

practices: “As ideas and sentiments succeed one another, as the mind and the heart grow active,

Mankind continues to grow tame, contacts expand and bonds tighten. It becomes customary to gather in front of the Huts or around a large Tree: song and dance, true children of love and leisure, become the amusement or rather the occupation of idle men and women gathered together.” As

Christopher Kelly notes, “social life begins with the institution of the communication of feelings through artistic, musical, or theatrical imitation. Genuine social life is coextensive with artistic life.”30 Language in its extended sense – including symbolic ritual, song, dance, and festivity become gentle unifying customs that bind early human beings together.31

Language expressing frustration, and instrumental reason, develop simultaneously with such beautiful speech, however. Along with the feeling of extended being and the increase of joy, we retain our sense of self and wish for appreciation of that specific self.

Everyone began to look at everyone else and to wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem

acquired a price [prix]. The one who sang or danced best, the handsomest, the strongest, the most

skillful, or the most eloquent came to be the most highly regarded, and this was the first step at once

toward inequality and vice: from these first preferences arose vanity and contempt on the one hand,

shame and envy on the other; and the fermentation caused by these new leavens eventually produced

compounds fatal to happiness and innocence.32

As we come to appreciate one another, the opinion of others increasingly determines our status in the community. This leads to negative experiences and expressions when we cannot find a way to win approval. At least as importantly, this desire for approval leads to linguistic and rational inventiveness when initially foiled. Much of how we compete to be the best is lingual – as in song,

30 Kelly, Rousseau as Author, 72. 31 Rousseau agrees with Charles Taylor that “language as speech can only exist in symbiosis with various forms of embodied action – gesture, enactment – as well as other symbolic forms, music, dance, poetry, and other modes of artistic expression” (Language Animal, 99). 32 Second Discourse, 166; OC III, 169-170. Emile: “With love and friendship are born dissensions, enmity, and hate” (215; 497).

dance, and eventually oration and writing. Even early language expresses appreciation but also our nascent competition with one another for the scarce appreciation that might temporarily satisfy amour-propre. In sum, language primarily expands to express our appreciation of others and to attempt to receive that appreciation ourselves. It is thus best at expressing feelings of relation and at creating feelings of relation – at participating in movements that both include and exclude specific others.

II. Rousseau’s critique of instrumental speech

As we can see already, the view that Rousseau articulates is complicated, with reason and speech forming to express two sets of passions together in complex interaction. My articulation of his position might be surprising if one has read the major commentaries on Rousseau’s thoughts on language. There is a pervasive overemphasis on what these commentators take to be Rousseau’s obsession with returning to an original beautiful and transparent communication of our passions and experiences. This widespread misconception derives from a real tendency of Rousseau’s thought, and requires explanation.

This literature argues that Rousseau believes language can somehow form to express passions of love and appreciation without any negative addition. Rousseau wants to return to a mode of communication that connects us to a lost, sincere relationship with our own being and its relation to others.33 Jean Starobinski offers the classic statement of this position; he argues that

Rousseau sees language as an evil which gets in the way of Rousseau’s desire for transparency.

For Starobinski’s Rousseau, “language has a beginning, prior to which there is an era of perfect immediacy,” and for Rousseau the goal of language is to express our emotions as immediately as

33 For a recent account of this view: Stuart MacNiven, “Politics, language, and music in the unity of Rousseau’s System” in Musique et langage, 166-174.

possible. All development of language has negative consequences: “Lies, fictions, and illusions fill the very atmosphere in which civilized society evolves. Glittering like gold, language itself becomes a currency of exchange that renders man a stranger unto himself.”34 Starobinski then argues that “Rousseau does try to make his language conform as closely as possible to the primitive ideal: his writing, supple and musical, seems to heed the rhythm of the ‘first language.’”35 On this account, Rousseau regrets the development of complex language, and seeks to return us to passionate and sincere communication in so far as this is possible. A version of this position is held by many, both those who ascribe Rousseau’s position to “unscientific nostalgia”36 and those who think it is carefully thought out.37

While this literature derives support from Rousseau’s real emphasis on freely expressed emotion, it obscures important features of his analysis. As we have already seen, Rousseau does not think that any language emerged only to express sincere love and appreciation – these passions are always born with those which respond to resistance created by human competition. Language does not begin in pure immediate joy; Rousseau’s goal cannot be to return us to such a language, because such a language is impossible.38

A related trend in Rousseau literature is to assign the conscience a key role in Rousseau’s epistemology. Jason Neidleman offers the clearest statement of this view: “[Rousseau] believed that the truths essential to human happiness could be known, that they were known, in fact, by

34 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstacle, 311. 35 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstacle, 147; 148. 36 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstacle, 146. Derrida’s similar position rests on the difference between what “Rousseau’s entire text describes,” and that which Rousseau is forced to show “in spite of that description” (Of Grammatology, 199; see also 216, 229). Derrida wants to defend a position that all language partakes of the character of writing in cutting the world into artificial signs– but there is no original sign to refer to do. He thinks that Rousseau attacks writing in order to preserve the possibility of a speech that refers to an original presence before speech. 37 See Morgenstern, Rousseau and the Politics of Ambiguity, 10; Strong, Politics of the Ordinary, 38. Also consider Kelly, Rousseau as Author, 69; Scott, “Melodious Language of Freedom,” 822. 38 For an extended argument: Jennifer Einspahr, “The Beginning that Never Was: Mediation and Freedom in Rousseau’s Political Thought,” The Review of Politics 72 (2010), 43-61.

human beings in their natural state, and that they are obscure now only because they have been obscured by civilization, leaving most of us unhappy and morally corrupted.”39 Conscience “does not need to be cultivated in society. It is an extension of amour de soi that manifests upon entry into society.”40 This view is that we have access, as soon as reason is formed, to a basic understanding of a natural and divine order that provides us sufficient moral guidance. As another such commentator puts it, “Conscience tells us what is good. Insofar as we act in accordance with its voice, we are virtuous.”41 Our natural situation is one where we have sufficient guidance from our internal conscience.

As we have seen, this is not the picture that Rousseau actually paints when he describes our natural situation in Origin or the Second Discourse. Indeed, it is noteworthy that nowhere in these passages (or indeed, anywhere in the triptych as a whole) does the notion of conscience occur.42 Rousseau never suggests that we have unmediated access to the outside world; in fact quite the opposite.43 Our understanding is slowly built up to help us overcome the painful challenges of our natural environment. Perhaps more importantly, our initial understanding is not one that leads us unproblematically to happiness, absent rational guidance. Our heart is not naturally guided by conscience, but by untutored self-love, which can lead to our preservation and primitive happiness – or it can lead to hatred and dejection, the violent murder of our rivals. The

39 Rousseau’s Ethics, 4. See also 50. 40 Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 155. 41 Lay Williams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment, 75. See also Garrard, Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment, 7. Cooper provides a more nuanced account of conscience that argues for the need to educate it, but he too claims that conscience is “innate” (Rousseau, 81). 42 The conscience is mentioned in the epistle dedicatory to the Second Discourse (119; OC III, 116), but nowhere else in that work. It is thus mentioned when he is giving a rhetorical address to his Christian audience, but not when describing philosophically the workings of the human mind. 43 Not only is our consciousness formed willy-nilly as we encounter external challenges, but “In elaborating this distinction, Rousseau insists that we can never obtain genuinely certain knowledge of the world in which we live because our only access to this world is through our senses” (Lund, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 187). See also Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature and History, 64.

beauty of Rousseau’s writing should not blind the reader to the potentially dangerous directions that self-love can turn, from the beginning.

To explain Rousseau’s rhetorical emphasis on the communication of feeling and especially feelings of love and sympathy, it is necessary to see that he wants to challenge what he takes to be an essential Enlightenment position.44 That position was that human society could be drastically improved if human beings could be induced to reason about their concrete interests, as opposed to fantastical visions of the good or just. As Hobbes put it, “in the very shadows of doubt a thread of reason (so to speak) begins, by whose guidance we shall escape to the clearest light; that is where the starting point for teaching is; that is where we must find our illumination as we direct our course to clear away doubts.”45 The doubts to be cleared away were above all those “imaginary republics,” the doctrines of “the kingdom of darkness,” or the “infamy” that kept human beings enslaved to spurious notions about a higher common good.46 The moral visions of classical and

Christian thought were to be revealed as dilatory delusions.

The clear light that should be relied upon instead is solid calculation based on our strongest passions: pride, fear, and material self-interest. The individual and individuating passions would no longer be seen as obstacles to healthy human society to be overcome, “but on the contrary

[human societies] must have had their Origin from his Wants, his Imperfections, and the variety of his Appetites,”47 and must continue to be based on such wants, imperfections, and appetites.

44 This contrast can be seen by comparing Origin with Condillac’s Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge. Though Condillac’s Essay provides much of Rousseau’s source material, it also has a pervasive emphasis on making language more simplistic and mathematic. 45 Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, trans. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 5. 46 Machiavelli, The Prince, 61; Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, part iv; Voltaire’s écrase l’infâme became his well-known motto directed against superstition and fanaticism. See Gay, The Enlightenment, Vol 1, 391. 47 Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees; or, Private Vices, Public Benefits (New York: Penguin Books, 1989), 349. Rousseau seems to have drawn heavily from Mandeville in certain respects, but Rousseau directly confronts Mandeville’s account by emphasizing another origin of human community, even if he quietly acknowledges the importance of the Mandevillian side of the story.

While appealing to the human passions, especially fear, avarice and pride, these authors tied such passions to a rhetoric of reason.48 After enlightenment had spread, the world would be one where human beings could reason more reliably based on satisfying their fundamental passions – at least when it came to satisfying these few basic drives.

Rousseau’s rhetoric must be seen in light of his opposition to the role of instrumental reason in these thinkers. As we will see below, he thinks that public morality must be supported by some sort of “imaginary republic,” in the sense of an idealized version of the political community.49

Given the strength of our self-interested nature, we need to expand our sense of selves and really feel that we are part of a larger communal whole in order to act in the interest of this whole or its public standards when conflicts with our particular interest arises. This is always a difficult endeavor, as Rousseau makes clear in the Social Contract: “According to the natural order … the more concentrated … different wills are, the more active they grow. Thus the general will is always weakest … and the particular will the first place of all.”50 Will and identification always tend to contract to the individual level.51 As we have seen, our sociality is fragile and late-born – in part due to this, our sense of self tends to contract.

48 Again, Hobbes is an excellent exemplar. “Thus I obtained two absolutely certain postulates of human nature, one, the postulate of human greed by which each man insists upon his own private use of common property; the other, the postulate of natural reason, by which each man strives to avoid violent death as the supreme evil in nature” (On the Citizen, 6). The Leviathan humbles the proud but also flatters the pride of “that rational and most excellent work of nature, man” (Leviathan, 3). Mandeville argues that “We are possess’d of no other Quality so beneficial to Society, and so necessary to render it wealthy and flourishing as this” (Fable, 148). 49 Perhaps this is why he borrows Machiavelli’s phrase at the opening of Theatrical Imitation (337; OC V, 1197). He in fact signals his opposition to Machiavelli in seeming support of Plato – but Rousseau’s imaginary republics are quite different, as we will see in chapters four and five. 50 Social Contract, 87; OC III, 401. As Horowitz notes, “Cultural transformation is therefore limited in the species and in the individual by the dependence of the mind on bodily desire. In the human being, the social being, there is an eternal tension between biology and culture, between bodily desire and its modes of expression and satisfaction” (Rousseau, Nature, and History, 85). 51 Thus, we must say that for Rousseau, our individual nature always threatens to pull us away from our communion with others. For the opposite position: Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 42.

The enlightenment appeal to fear, self-interest and individual pride encourages our natural tendency to disaggregate our interests from those of the community, according to Rousseau. These appeals focus our attention on individual success and thereby undermine community. Rousseau consistently argues that “what private interests have in common is so slight that it will never outweigh what sets them in opposition.” Highly developed reason will ferret out occasions for taking advantage of others; reason as such, but especially the Enlightenment comportment toward reason, tends to dissolve the bonds that hold us together. Indeed, “reasoning and the philosophic spirit in general – causes attachment to life, makes souls effeminate and degraded, concentrates all the passions in the baseness of private interest, in the abjectness of the human I, and thus quietly saps the true foundations of every society.”52 Precise reasoning tends to sap the foundations of society by concentrating our view where it naturally wants to go – to our immediate self-interest.

The enlightenment does not see that self-interest, no matter how well understood, cannot suffice to bind people together, and better understanding of said interest undermines the beautified illusions that can (as we will see).53 While Rousseau’s predecessors had also asserted the importance of passion in directing reason, they had cultivated a rhetoric of rationality,54 and failed, on Rousseau’s account, to properly appreciate the extent to which poetic and sub-rational speech was necessary in the formation and maintenance of political community and threatened by a focus on reason.

52 Emile, 312fn; OC IV, 632, my emphasis. 53 Rousseau’s character St. Preux asserts this categorically: “It is a great mistake in domestic as in civil economy to attempt to combat one vice with another or create between them a sort of equilibrium, as if what saps the foundations of order could ever serve to establish it!” In a good economy interest is still “wisely channeled” but has little influence, instead “everything is done out of attachment.” (Julie, 379; 386; OC II, 462; 470). 54 On this rhetoric in Hobbes see: Christopher Scott McClure, Hobbes and the Artifice of Eternity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), 156; 193; Ioannis Evrigenis, Images of Anarchy: The Rhetoric and Science in Hobbes’s State of Nature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 9; 12-18.

III. A language of poetry

Rousseau’s argument against argument explains the rhetorical thrust of Origin. Rousseau indicates repeatedly that he has such a polemical intention to his emphasis on immediate and beautiful speech. However, we will also continue to find a complicated picture in which the development and calculation of complex ideas plays a role. I now examine Rousseau’s treatment of primitive language in order to get a more detailed sense of how language functions.

When describing the first language, Rousseau makes it clear that he is arguing against the typical picture of these early languages. “The genius of the oriental languages, the oldest ones known to us, completely contradicts the didactic development of their composition is imagined to have followed. There is nothing methodological or reasoned about these languages; they are lively and figurative. The speech of the first men is made out to us to have been languages of Geometers,55 whereas we see that they were languages of Poets” (252; 380). Language conveying broad experiences or feelings preceded precise speech intended for calculation and reasoning.

Rousseau uses an example which shows that originally language was tied to our sense of our relations to others, and primarily communicated fear. To illustrate that “figurative language arose first, proper [or literal] meaning was found last” Rousseau provides the famous example of the development of the word giant.

A savage meeting others will at first have been frightened. His fright will have made him see these

men as larger and stronger than himself; he will have called them Giants. After much experience he

will have recognized that since these supposed Giants are neither bigger nor stronger than he, their

stature did not fit the idea he had initially attached to the word Giant. He will therefore invent another

55 Tracy Strong suggests that Rousseau’s attacks on geometric speech are attacks on Hobbes, well known for his love of geometry (Strong, Politics of the Ordinary, 97). Praise of geometry as a model for language was a common trope, however (see e.g. Etienne Bonnot de Condillac, Essay on the Origin of Knowledge, trans. Hans Aarsleff (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 3).

name common both to them and to himself, for example the name man, and he will restrict the name

Giant to the false object that had struck him during his illusion. This is how the figurative word

arises before the proper word does, when passion holds our eyes spellbound and the first idea which

it present to us is not that of the truth. What I have said regarding words and names applies equally

to turns of phrase. Since the illusory image present by passion showed itself first, the language

answering to it was invented first, subsequently it became metaphorical when the enlightened mind

recognized its original error and came to use expressions of that first language only when moved by

the same passions as produced it (254; 381-382, my emphasis).

Language first forms as poetic expression based on the passion experienced when the word or phrase formed. It is instructive that this word is caused by fright [effrayé] before a group of men.

The word giant is an expression to communicate the experience of a disturbing new social situation. Fear and a feeling of our own vulnerability is a primary spur to primitive speech.56

Rousseau shows us this role of fear but never makes that role explicit. As has been argued, this downplaying of the role played by fear is due to the way it too concentrates our concern narrowly on ourselves in ways that make us unhappy.57 After “much experience” the fear fades, and a more accurate understanding of the similarity between human beings is established. The essence of the origin of speech, and of its change from poetry to more precise articulation, is a change in how we understand our relationship with other human beings. Yet the experience of a terrifying and threatening other, with its attendant passion of fear, remains minted in the word giant. It still communicates and retains something of a primal distrust of outsiders. This feeling of separation

56 In Emile Rousseau suggests that the whole world must initially have seemed like the other human being: “The sentiment of our action on other bodies must at first have made us believe that when they acted on us they did so in a manner similar to the way we acted on them. Thus man began by animating all the beings whose action he felt. Not only did he feel himself less strong than most of these beings, but for want of knowing the limits of their power, he assumed it to be unlimited, and he construed them to be gods as soon as he construed them to be bodies. During the first ages men were frightened of everything and saw nothing dead in nature” (256; OC IV, 553). The passions initially expressed fear and wonder at a personified world; this is the initial root of religion. 57 See Christopher Scott McClure, “Stopping to Smell the Roses: Rousseau and Mortality in the Modern World,” Perspectives on Political Science 37 (2008): 99-108.

remains in contemporary language and retains something of its power even after its object has been assigned a new name. The origin of our thinking in error constrains our thinking permanently, as thinking is the comparison of these mistaken ideas.58

In order to clarify how language and human community grow, Rousseau explains how our sense of self expands so that we care for and no longer fear (some) others. In brief, there are three factors that expand this sense of self, both originating in our original weakness. One is simply shared particular experience; initially at least this is shared experience in providing for needs in different threatening environments (and against competing tribes). The second root is pity and fellow-feeling for the weak and suffering who we see as like us. The final root is human sexuality, which effectively expands our identity once it pares with imaginative assessment. Combining these three roots is the most effective way to create group identity.

A digression on the structure of Origin is necessary at this point in order to understand the way that Rousseau makes his argument. Rousseau describes this process of expanding consciousness and language in chapter nine, “The Formation of Southern Languages.” The central four chapters (8-11) are taken up with the variation in languages across peoples, and with a difference ascribed to northern and southern languages. The division between northern and southern languages has long been taken as central to this work. This focus is correct, but not only in the sense usually assigned to it. Many see Origin as assessing language in terms of national character, where the goal is to show that we must understand the original passionate speech

58 Bloom notes rightly that “Rousseau … seems to hold that our consciousness is thoroughly constituted by the impurities, chief among them sexual desire, and that knowing the knower is the hardest of all intellectual enterprises” (Love and Friendship, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993), 42). Our ideas, and hence the reason that results from comparing them, never entirely lose the impression of their first origin. Horowitz similarly notes that “The constructs of human reason cannot be accepted as autonomous. Their roots lie in the hearts of men. … the heart is itself informed by culture” (Rousseau, 136). Rousseau never suggests that we have unmediated access to a true world beyond us – “no world of forms is apprehended, no noumenal realm is postulated, no immaterial substance is conjured” (Warner, Problem of Human Relations, 23). See also Wokler, Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, 16-20.

patterns of different nations in order to best address different peoples. As John Scott explains,

“Rousseau’s analysis of human communication through speech and music is based on his theory of mankind’s uniquely malleable passions. Linguistic and musical differences – and cultural differences more generally – are due to differences in the specific development of the passions of different peoples.”59 Political actors must take this local development of the passions into account in order to “persuade without convincing” while using a locally-tailored “melodious language of freedom.”60 This analysis brings out Rousseau’s attention to the need to address locality in crafting persuasive and unifying speech.

While the appeal to pre-political national differences is an important element of successful political speech for Rousseau,61 focusing on it can obscure another, equally important feature of his account: the distinction between the languages of the north and south in Origin also illustrates the two essential functions of all languages.62 Rousseau hints at this purpose by again complaining that what he is fighting is a general European premise. Europeans “never fail to show us the first men living in a barren and harsh land, dying of cold and hunger, anxious to secure shelter and clothing; everywhere they see only the snow and ice of Europe, without taking into account that the human species like all the others was born in the warm countries and that in two-thirds of the globe winter is hardly known” (266; 394). Europeans evidently assume languages to be rooted in needs and to be “colder” than they naturally are because this is their experience of them. Such an

59 Scott, “Melodious Language of Freedom,” 805. 60 Scott, “Melodious Language of Freedom,” 826; see also Kelly, Rousseau as Author, 126; Anne Cohler, Rousseau and Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 1970), 33; Julia Simon, “Listening in Rousseau’s Auditory World: Sound, Noise, and Music” in Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity, ed. Mark Hulliung (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2016): 127. 61 Although its importance and availability are in decline: “Eventually all men become alike” (279; 407). Cf. Emile, 453; 828. 62 In this I follow Davis, “Essence of Babel,” 232-4. See also Gourevitch, “Political Argument,” 21-23; Richard Spavin, Les Climats du pouvoir: Rhétorique et politique chez Bodin, Montesquieu et Rousseau, Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2018), 24.

understanding also happens to resemble the Enlightenment view. Healthy language requires

“warmer” origins.

However, an oddity of chapter nine is that the explicit discussion of “warm lands” does not occur until the thirtieth paragraph, and southern languages are explicitly discussed only in the final two paragraphs of a thirty-six-paragraph chapter.63 The majority of the chapter seems to address all peoples, and reveals a much more complicated story than the simple contrast with which

Rousseau resoundingly ends. This peculiarity has never been adequately explained. Again, I argue that in order to counter the rationalist prejudice of his contemporaries, Rousseau emphasizes the southern side of language rhetorically, while still allowing the reader to see the whole picture.

Rousseau’s history in chapter nine begins by emphasizing the lack of conventionality of people in the first times. “In the first times men scattered over the face of the earth had no society other than that of the family, no laws other than those of nature, no language other than gesture and a few inarticulate sounds” (266; 394). In this condition human beings have basic needs and family life, but neither lead to language.64

Yet Rousseau dwells on this condition extensively in a way that indicates what would need to happen for language to develop. Language develops through interfamilial encounters, which will at first be frightening and lead to hostility. At this hypothetical beginning point “they believed themselves to be one another’s enemies. It was to their weakness and ignorance that they owed this opinion. Knowing nothing they feared everything, they attacked in order to defend

63 These passages have much impressed commentators and seems to be largely at the origin of readings like that of Starobinksi. It has led to such more specific assertions as “We … find, in these southern nations, nations at their best” (Cohler, Rousseau and Nationalism, 124). Davis is the only commentator I know of who explicitly disagrees (“Essence of Babel,” 243). 64 As for simple needs: “Fruit does not shrink from our grasp, one can eat it without speaking, one stalks the prey one means to devour in silence” (253; 380).” The role of needs in less favorable conditions will be discussed below (they both set the conditions for all language and influence its formation). Family life also does not lead to conventional language due to its simplicity (278; 406).

themselves” (267; 395). Human beings are said to have an initial fear of the unknown that can be cured only with knowledge. As we saw with Rousseau’s giant example, this primal fear is the origin of some of our first hazy ideas.

But it is only through the extension of pity that the social passions and thus conventional language develop. Rousseau consistently affirms that the socializing passions stem from pity.65 In

Origin Rousseau develops the link of pity with language and knowledge: “The social affections develop in us only with our knowledge. Pity, although natural to man’s heart, would remain eternally inactive without imagination to set it in motion. How do we let ourselves be moved by pity? By transporting ourselves outside ourselves; by identifying with the suffering being. We suffer only to the extent that we judge it to suffer; we suffer not in ourselves but in it” (267-268;

395, my emphasis).66 Imaginatively taking the position of another is key to the initiation of our pity and hence with our concern with our fellows. It requires activation by seeing ourselves as connected in our being to the suffering other. As Rousseau puts it in Emile: “when the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer.”67 Somehow the first language must result in part from this affective expansion.

As Rousseau continues, he indicates that this identification worked in tandem with rational separation and specification as families were forced together. This is because “reflection is born of the comparison of ideas, and it is their variety that leads us to compare them,” and “what is

65 “From this single attribute flow all the social virtues” (Second Discourse, 153; OC III, 155). Cf. Emile, 222. For an analysis of pity in Rousseau: Clifford Orwin, “Rousseau and the Discovery of Political Compassion,” in The Legacy of Rousseau, eds. Clifford Orwin and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997): 296-320. 66 Cf. Emile, 223; OC IV, 508 and Second Discourse, 153; OC III, 155-156. It has been claimed that Origin’s account of pity contradicts the Second Discourse (which, given that the passages in Origin and Emile are nearly identical, would put the Discourse in contradiction with Emile as well), but a close analysis reveals congruity. See: Roger Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1968), 132-139. 67 Emile, 235fn.; OC IV, 526.

foreign to us leads us to examine what touches us” (268; 396). We would not reason without the presence of the foreign; socially, this means that language develops as we sort ourselves into groups.

As we have seen in outline before, these social concerns then are a major spur to what

Rousseau calls reason. Reasoning is essentially about the comparison and refining ideas, hence,

“of all the faculties of man, reason, which is, so to speak, only a composite of all the others, is the one that develops with the most difficulty and latest.”68 That is, reason develops as we gain more ideas and compare them; reason as it is applied to our social world develops as we gain a better idea of different social groups and compare them. Here we see that reason is essentially tied up with social passions, especially fear and pity. This helps to explain the particular power of these two passions have in extending and contracting social bonds (a point I elaborate further below).

Rousseau suggests that the dynamic applicable to the first men would have applied to the founders of the first nations. As the first men “had the idea of a Father, a son, a brother but not of a man,” this explains “the apparent contradictions one sees in the fathers of nations: Such naturalness and such inhumanity, such ferocious ways [moeurs] and such tender hearts, so much love for their family and aversion toward their species. All their sentiments concentrated among their near ones were therefore the more energetic. Everything they knew they held dear. Enemies of the rest of the world which they neither saw nor knew, they hated only what they could not know.” Our first sense of self expands to the family and makes us feel immensely sensitive to its well-being; but this arises in contradistinction to the outsiders whom we hate. Rousseau calls these times “the golden age; not because men were united, but because they were separated … Men may have attacked one another upon meeting, but they rarely met” (268-269; 396-397). Families

68 Emile, 89; OC IV, 316. “Intellectual or human reason consists in forming complex ideas by the conjunction of several ideas” (Emile, 159; OC IV, 414).

enjoyed their intense sentiments in peace because their mutual animus rarely mattered. That

Rousseau applies this dynamic to fathers of nations indicates that it continues as our sense of selves and our language expand together – early nations feel much of the intensity of attachment to the immediate family, and accompanying odium toward other nations.

At this point in Origin, rather than offer an explicit discussion of how this expansion of identity occurs in southern climates, Rousseau gives a prehistory of the development of human consciousness and language that applies to all peoples. He shows that the initial expansion of our sense of self was due to shared concerns and experiences. But human community and language develop in different ways in part due to dissimilar needs. “So regardless of whether one inquires into the origin of the arts or studies the earliest morals everything is seen to be related in its principle to the means by which men provide for their subsistence, and as for those among these means that unite men, they are a function of the climate and of the nature of the soil. Hence the diversity of languages and their opposite characteristics must also be explained by the same causes” (272; 400). Languages arise when human beings bring their scattered huts together; the physical reasons for these unions provide the bases for the differences in their languages. Our connections to others initially relate to shared provision of subsistence; our differences to the different modes of providing for that subsistence. It appears from this statement that needs and the means used to satisfy them are at least as much a basis of language as interpersonal comparison.

Language then could never have had a birth out of pure passionate appreciation for another.

Rather than turn to southern languages to provide an example of how language formation reflects variations in the environment, we are actually told that languages would not have formed first in happy and warm lands, but in the north. “Mild climates, lush and fertile lands were the first to be populated and the last where nations were formed, because there men could more easily do

without one another, and the needs that cause society to be born made themselves felt later there”

(272; 400). Warm climates were so fertile that there was no need for languages. Rather, “when one inquires in what regions the fathers of mankind were born … you will not name the happy climes of Asia Minor or of Sicily, or of Africa, or even of Egypt, you will name the sands of Chaldea, the rocks of Phoenicia. You will find that it is so at all times” (273; 401). Barren places produce more people; barren places in the north produce the communities that populate the south.

Rousseau seems now to be one of the Europeans he had criticized for showing language emerging from a need to come in from the cold. “Forced to make provision for winter, people have to help one another and are thus compelled to establish some kind of convention amongst themselves. When expeditions become impossible and they can no longer get about because of the extreme cold, boredom unites them as much as need: the Lapps, buried in their ice, the Eskimos, the most savage of all peoples, come together in their caverns in winter and in summer no longer know one another” (274; 402-403, my emphasis). Northerners develop passions first because needs force them to it first. But softer, “southern” sentiments also arrive in the hearts of northern people gathered around fires for support. “Around a common hearth people gather, feast, dance; the sweet bonds of familiarity imperceptibly draw man to his kind, and on this rustic hearth burns the sacred fire that introduces the first sentiment of humanity into men’s hearts” (275; 403). It is the cold that leads to the need for fire, around which pleasant pastimes develop; these events introduce community. Perhaps to the surprise of the reader, far from the northern situation being an unhappy one, these northerners seem to retain complete freedom while developing delightful communal sentiments. The northern tribespeople then return to their freedom after the need to unite ends – much as those golden-agers in the Second Discourse.69

69 Early humans “united with [others] in a herd, or at most in some kind of free association that obligated no one and lasted only as long as the transient need that had formed it” (Second Discourse, 163; OC III, 167).

If we did not know the chapter title, we might expect Rousseau to continue talking about the development of northern language and community. Yet finally he turns to southern people.

Even in their case need leads to language: “In warm lands, unevenly scattered springs and rivers are further meeting places all the more necessary inasmuch as men can do without water even less than they can do without fire. Barbarians who live off their herds are especially in need of common watering places, and we learn from the history of the most remote ages that this is indeed where their treaties as well as their quarrels began” (275; 403, my emphasis). It is the need for scarce water that leads to conventional language in southern lands. Around this water occur quarrels and wars, and language developed to bring them temporarily to a stop. We can thus see that fear and anger form the basis of much of the languages that form in the south too.

In sum, human language forms slowly with shared needs and experiences – and this is so everywhere. Two points are crucial for our understanding of politics and political speech. The first is that these shared experiences make us feel a sense of identity and togetherness with those that undergo them with us.70 The second is that need plays a crucial part in the formation of all language; precluding the possibility of human thought based entirely on freely given passion.

IV. Love as a basis of language

Rousseau famously ends chapter nine by positing love as the root of languages in the south.71 Freely-given love does form the most pleasant root of community, as Rousseau

70 Consider the parallel development in Emile: “In directing his nascent sensibility to this species, do not believe that it will at the outset embrace all men, and that the word mankind will signify anything to him. No, this sensibility will in the first place be limited to his fellows, and for him his fellows will not be unknowns; rather, they will be those with whom he has relations, those whom habit has made dear or necessary to him, those whom he observes to have ways of thinking and feelings clearly in common with him, those whom he sees exposed to the pains he has suffered and sensitive to pleasures he has tasted, those, in a word, whose nature has a more manifest identity with his own and thus make him more disposed to love himself” (233; emphasis mine). 71 On this side of language, see Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), 29-30; Warner, Problem of Human Relations, 53.

communicates with the utmost of his poetic powers. Around watering holes an entirely pleasing version of human community supposedly developed – we are to forget the treaties and quarrels of two paragraphs prior. It is worth quoting this passage in full.

Here the first ties between families were established; here meetings between the sexes took place.

Young girls came to fetch water for the household, young men came to water their herds. Here eyes

accustomed from childhood to see forever the same objects began to see sweeter ones. The heart

was moved by these new objects, an unfamiliar attraction rendered it less savage, it felt the pleasure

of not being alone. Imperceptibly water came to be more needed, the cattle were thirsty more often;

one arrived in haste and left with reluctance. In this happy age when nothing recorded the hours,

nothing required them to be counted; time had no other measure than enjoyment and boredom.

Beneath old oaks, conquerors of years, spirited young people gradually forgot their ferociousness,

little by little they tamed one another; in striving to make themselves understood they learned to

make themselves intelligible. Here the first festivals took place; feet skipped with joy, an eager

gesture no longer proved adequate, the voice accompanied it with passionate accents, pleasure and

desire merged into one and made themselves felt together. Here, finally, was the true cradle of

peoples, and from the pure crystal of the fountains sprang the first fires of love (277-278; 405-406,

my emphasis).

After need brought families together around peaceful watering holes, the sexual instinct was transformed by emerging language and concern with pleasing others into a more specific appreciation for particular others – and thus into love. Each desired to be admired by all the others and language developed as they strove to make themselves admirable. This led to the first communicative practices that bound together human community – from love poetry to festivals.

Even if one had failed to read the prior sections of the essay, it is not hard to see that

Rousseau rhetorically exaggerates in this passage. We find amour-propre active, but the pride each of us feels appears entirely based upon experiences of mutual enjoyment. Potential lovers encounter only so much resistance as causes them to develop beautiful and unifying language, not

enough to cause frustrated or tactical language, or to lead to violence. This Edenic possibility runs counter to every other description Rousseau gives, including in Origin, as we have seen. Here is this dynamic in Emile: “One wants to obtain the preference that one grants. Love must be reciprocal. To be loved, one has to make oneself lovable. To be preferred, one has to make oneself more lovable than another, more lovable than every other, at least in the eyes of the beloved object.

This is the source of the first glances at one’s fellows; this is the source of the first comparisons with them; this is the source of emulation, rivalries, and jealousy.”72 In chapter one of Origin,

Rousseau notes that in order for love to encourage the invention of conventional language, there would need to be competition over partners; originally gesture is sufficient for its expression.73

Certainly we find in love a motivation for the development of language; but again, this motivation inevitably leads to human competition and the language that accompanies it.74

Rousseau’s final summary supports my interpretation that he overemphasizes the role of southern languages because this role is a necessary but fragile part of human community. “In a word, in mild climates, in fertile regions it took all the liveliness of the agreeable passions to start men speaking. The first languages, daughters of pleasure and not of need, long remained under the aegis of their father; their seductive accent faded only with the sentiments that had given birth when new needs that had been introduced among men forced everyone to think only of himself and to withdraw his heart within himself.” (278; 407, my emphasis). A sound and pleasant basis of human community existed in southern linguistic practices, but this basis is under constant threat by forces that threaten to return us to our primitive selfishness.

72 Emile, 214; OC IV, 496. 73 “Love, it is said, was the inventor of drawing. It might also have invented speech, although less felicitously; Dissatisfied with speech, love disdains it, it has livelier ways of expressing itself. How many things the girl who took such pleasure in tracing her Lover’s shadow was telling him! What sounds could she have used to convey what she conveyed with this movement of the twig? (248; 376). 74 Although in Emile Rousseau argues that jealousy in a single individual might be rendered mostly silent (429-430; OC IV, 797).

The attractiveness of this picture is hard to exaggerate, if the goal is to express a sort of paradisiacal tribal unity. Southern languages seem to have been born as our sense of self expanded and met with acceptance, love and respect. The serious point is that in order for us to have real social unity, we need this root of fellow-feeling and connection. These passages seem to hold out the possibility that language could be refined to a core of openness and sweet reciprocity. One could add to this foundation the pre-political unifiers given by the specific environment in which a language developed, and we would seem to have a potent language of unification.

I have argued that one goal of Rousseau’s rhetorical emphasis is countering the dominant

Enlightenment discourse of his time. Beyond countering the Enlightenment, Rousseau’s argument has other immediate moral goals75: such rhetoric celebrating love and family was intended to support the rebirth of the family and pastoral living in the bourgeois setting of Rousseau’s contemporaries. These goals often took rhetorical precedent, leaving the full argument for careful readers Rousseau suspected would be less common (as we saw in Theatrical Imitation). One commentator aptly notes that “between the identification of heat and the alienation of the cold,

Rousseau encourages his reader to choose his camp.”76 While this is not true on a philosophical level, it is true on a political one, as Rousseau attempts to shore up human unity against the cold winds of modern Europe. In Emile Rousseau notes that “one of the examples good men ought to give others is that of the patriarchal and rustic life, man’s first life, which is the most peaceful, the most natural, and the sweetest life for anyone who does not have a corrupt heart.”77 In particular, the nuclear family should be emphasized.78 Rousseau makes the extension of our sense of self

75 Rousseau argues that histories, such as his own historical story, should have such goals: “Sensible men ought to regard history as a tissue of fables whose moral is very appropriate to the human heart” (Emile, 156fn; OC IV, 409). 76 Spavin, Les climats du pouvoir, 228, my translation. 77 Emile, 474; OC IV, 859. 78 For a succinct analysis of this element of Rousseau’s thought, see Masters, Political Philosophy of Rousseau, 25; 39; Allan Bloom, Introduction to Emile, 24; Love and Friendship, esp. 120-125. There is also a large feminist literature, effectively summarized by Elizabeth Wingrove, “Republican Romance,” Representation 63 (1998), 34.

through love most explicit in Emile: “as though there were no need for a natural base on which to form conventional ties; as though the love of one’s nearest were not the principle of the love one owes the state; as though it were not by means of the small fatherland which is the family that the heart attaches itself to the large one, as though it were not the good son, the good husband, and the good father who make the good citizen!”79 Rousseau exaggerates the blissfulness of the tribal life as a way of promoting nuclear families and simpler rural communities, as well as the sort of unifying viewpoint they might encourage. The relative absence and necessity of such communal practices justify their rhetorical exaggeration.

In conclusion, we can consider anew why the two roots of language – in mutual needs caused by the environment, and in mutual desire - occupy one chapter, supposedly on southern language. Structurally, the whole chapter shows how language expresses the expansion of our identity. We identify with what is similar to us and what attracts us – in a way that is nonthreatening. But we can go further - at this point we can note that both love and mutual need point to identification due to weakness. This more complicated role of the languages of the south receives decisive articulation in Emile:

It is man’s weakness which makes him sociable; it is our common miseries which turn our hearts to

humanity; we would owe humanity nothing if we were not men. Every attachment is a sign of

insufficiency. If each of us had no need of others, he would hardly think of uniting himself with

them. Thus from our very infirmity is born our frail happiness. It follows from this that we are

attached to our fellows less by the sentiment of their pleasures than by the sentiment of their pains,

for we see far better in the latter the identity of our natures with theirs and the guarantees of their

79 Emile, 363; OC IV, 700. Cf. 214; 496: “As soon as man has need of a companion, he is no longer an isolated being. His heart is no longer alone. All his relations with his species, all the affections of his soul are born with this one.”

attachment to us. If our common needs unite us by interest, our common miseries unite us by

affection.80

It is our needs, both physical and emotional, which bind us to one another. It is our weakness that we feel mostly keenly in ourselves and in others – hence what an artist can appeal to most in encouraging us to identity with others. What Rousseau suggested was a problem in Theatrical

Imitation turns out to be an even more essential feature of human speech than it appears there. As

I argue at greater length in chapter four, this points to the need for victims or suffering in order to cement communal identity.

V. The role of anger in the formation of language and reason

Rousseau’s reader could be forgiven for forgetting that when he wrote of the passions as the original motivators of languages, he mentioned anger alongside love. These negative passions receive treatment in chapter ten of Origin, supposedly on “The Formation of the Languages of the

North” (which of course, he has already treated). Rousseau now argues explicitly what he had argued before implicitly: some unlucky languages were not born of pleasing sentiments. “In southern climates where nature is prodigal needs are born of the passions, in cold countries, where it is miserly, the passions are born of the needs, and languages, sad daughters of necessity, reflect their harsh origins” (279; 407). The languages of the north are now cast as the polar opposite of the south.

In a complementary rhetorical move to that of the end of chapter nine, Rousseau now makes out the life of northern peoples to be as terrible as possible. He asks: “what a difference between

80 Emile, 221; OC IV, 505. Tzvetan Todorov takes this passage to be so decisive that his book bears this ending phrase as its title: Frail Happiness: An Essay on Rousseau, trans. John T. Scott and R.D. Zaretsky (University Park, Pennsylvania: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001).

touching inflections that issue from movements of the soul and the cries wrested by physical needs? In those dreadful climates where everything is dead nine months out of the year, where the sun warms the air for a few weeks only in order to let the inhabitants know the benefit of which they are deprived and to prolong their misery.” How terrible, these northern lands. Rousseau draws the contrast sharply: in these sad countries, “mutual need united men far more effectively than sentiment would have done, society was formed solely through industry, the ever-present danger of perishing did not permit a language restricted to gesture, and their first word was not love me

[aimez-moi] but help me [aidez-moi]” (279; 407-408). Some sad languages were born out of need with little room for the beautifying expressions found in the south.

Rousseau now articulates the link between needs and certain types of passions. In fact, our competition with others, and not just the environment, plays a central role in the development of language. While, “men of the North are not without passions … theirs are passions of another kind.” Northerners have harsher passions, because “men subject to so many needs are easily irritated; everything people do around them worries them: since they have a hard time subsisting, the poorer they are, the more they cling to the little they have; to get close to them is to threaten their life … their most natural voices are those of anger and threats” (280; 408). Sad northerners must look constantly to defending themselves. Their languages arose to respond to resistance, and to express need, fear and anger.81 Here we see the negative side of relational language; especially in times of scarcity, we communicate to express separation and superiority. In spite of the rhetorical demonizing, it is clear that this harsh and hierarchical side of language can no more be banished than the competition over desired goods that gives rise to it.

81 Rousseau twins anger with reason, which is initially puzzling. However, the passion of anger arises when we meet with human obstacles to our survival or status. Instrumental reason develops in a large part to overcome such obstacles.

VI. Giving shape to identity: passion, reason and symbol

I have already shown that these passions must have been present in southern languages as well. All languages contain both elements of language; the question appears to be what mixture of the two types of speech they contain. As Rousseau casts it, they are all one-sided. The difficulty is that “modern languages, intermingled and recast hundreds of times, still retain something of these differences. French, English, German are the private languages of men who help one another, who argue with one another in cold blood, or of excited men who get angry; but the ministers of the

Gods proclaiming the sacred mysteries, the Wise giving laws to the peoples, leaders swaying the masses must speak Arabic or Persian” (280-281; 409).82 Rousseau is again explicit that all languages contain a mixture of elements. But those in the south seem to have the advantage, because they have the sort of language that can motivate communal unity.

We have reason to think the answer is not simply to side with southern languages, however.83 Rousseau argues in the Social Contract that it is the north, not the south, that inclines to political freedom. While it is true that “freedom, not being a fruit of every Clime, is not within the reach of every people … even if the entire south were covered with Republics and the entire north with despotic States it would be no less true that in terms of the effect of climate despotism suits warm countries, barbarism cold countries, and good polity intermediate regions.”84 Even if it were the case that southern language tends to encourage political freedom and northern language despotism, it would still need to be possible for a more northern language to motivate political

82 One could say that the dichotomy between north and south is also that between reason and revelation. As with so many things, this is not true without qualification, as I argue in the next chapter. 83 It is thus wrong to think that “a predominance of southern languages would result in the proliferation of politically authentic states” (Morgenstern, Politics of Ambiguity, 26). 84 Social Contract, 100; 102; OC V, 414; 416. It is of course important that the Social Contract is written primarily in a cold, geometric and “northern” manner. See Masters, Political Philosophy, 348; Michel Launay, “L’art de l’écrivain dans le ‘Contrat Social’, 125-150 in Jean-Jacques Rousseau et Son Temps: Politique et Littérature au XVIIIe siècle, ed. Michel Launay (Paris: Libraire A.-G. Nizet, 1969), 129-134. I take this up again in my conclusion.

actors, if intermediary regions best suit freedom. Neither the power of southern languages nor the coldness of northern ones completely dooms a people speaking more in one mode to despotism, although as with much else, the “intermediate regions” of language that combine both northern and southern elements turn out to be the best for encouraging political freedom.

Unifying and motivating political speech must perform the “southern” activity of expanding and reinforcing communal identity, while combining it with “northern” direction and definition. We now need to know how an artist or legislator creates such speech. By way of concluding this chapter, I turn to Rousseau’s descriptions of the most powerful articulations of communal speech to begin to make Rousseau’s arguments less abstract. Rousseau’s model speech combines powerful images that evoke emotional experiences, with musical speech that develops these experiences in ways that do not leave the passions behind.85 Rousseau makes it clear that he is articulating something of a model of effective political speech in chapter one of Origin.

Unsurprisingly given the examples in Theatrical Imitation, we are told that “the Jews’ Prophets and the Greeks’ Lawgivers who frequently presented visible objects to the people spoke to them better with these objects than they would have done with long discourses” (250; 377). The language of the legislator, which plays a key role in forming citizens, should be that of signs and stories. A fair amount of cognitive content is involved here, so it would be wrong to call such communication ‘irrational,’ although highly complex rational argumentation does seem precluded, at least in those speeches meant to create wide public motivation. There is no “immediate access to prerational sources of communal feelings.”86 It is more accurate to say that “authoritative meanings internalized by citizens and supported by opinion lay the foundations for the legitimate

85 Indeed, painting is said to have its proper power and role as well; see chapter sixteen of Origin. 86 Garsten, Saving Persuasion, 57.

exercise of political rule.”87 That is, authoritative symbols and stories combine passion and understanding, and lay the bases for further political discussion, even if such discussion would be out of place in the poems themselves.

We can draw out what this speech looks like in more detail. Rousseau argues that the use of effective signs greatly increases the power of discourse: “Consult ancient history; you will find it filled with such ways of addressing arguments to the eyes, and they never fail to produce a more certain effect than all the discourses that might have been put in their place. The object presented before anything is said stimulates the imagination, arouses curiosity, holds the mind in suspense and anticipation of what will be said” (249; 376).88 At first Rousseau seems to praise the image as self-sufficient and simply superior to speech, but the second sentence qualifies this impression – speech is needed to activate the power of the image.

A great deal of articulated understanding is necessary for images to have their power over us, and what Rousseau recommends is poetry that combines images and articulation. In the way that he explains it, it is arguments which are addressed to the eyes, not an immediate experience:

“Colors and sounds can do much as representations and signs, and little as simple objects of sensations” (290; 419). A fair degree of rationality is already required for us to be impressed by the force of an image. While Rousseau concludes that “the most energetic speech is that in which the sign has said everything before a single word is spoken,” these signs require some prior understanding or subsequent elaboration to unlock their power. “The most eloquent discourses are even seen to be those with the most images embedded in them.” Discourses need images to be eloquent, but they are discourses nonetheless. If images make arguments striking, then discourse adds passion to them. “The successive impression made by discourse, striking with cumulative

87 Dobel, “Language in Rousseau’s Political Thought,” 655. Cf. Kelly, Rousseau as Author, 125. 88 Cf. Emile, 322; OC IV, 646.

impact, succeeds in arousing in you a different emotion than does the presence of the object itself which you take in all at one glance” (250; 377).89 The most powerful mode of expression combines compact imagery with a story.

Unsurprisingly given what we have seen, Rousseau suggests that these images and stories should be specific to the nation or locality in question. In extolling the virtues of a good melody, he argues that “it imitates the accents of [various] languages as well as the idiomatic expressions commonly associated in each one of them with given movements of the soul; it not only imitates, it speaks; and its language, though inarticulate, is lively, ardent, passionate, and a hundred times more vigorous than speech itself. This is where musical imitation acquires its force; this is where song acquires its hold on sensitive hearts” (287-288; 416-417). The most powerful discourse, in song, requires appeals to specific passions and experiences that make us feel part of the group that can also recognize these passions and experiences.

Rousseau provides examples to make the foregoing concrete. These examples confirm my analysis in two respects: they combine powerful images with clarifying speech, and activate passions that express the primary emotions of anger and fear against external enemies, and compassion for fellows. First, in every example, a lack of understanding or misunderstanding accompanies the first expression of the image, and only subsequent explanation directs the aroused passions. For instance, Rousseau gives the following example: “Darius waging war in Scythia receives from the King of the Scythians a frog, a bird, a mouse, and five arrows: the Herald transmits his gift in silence and departs. This terrible harangue was understood, and Darius found nothing more urgent than to get back to his country as best he could” (249; 377). Contrary to

Rousseau’s implication that the symbols were self-explanatory, in the passage of Herodotus’s

89 Rousseau tells a parallel story in describing the different powers of music and painting in chapter sixteen.

Histories to which Rousseau is referring, the symbol was powerful, but not interpreted correctly, at least not by Darius. In fact, Darius first reaches precisely the opposite of the correct conclusion before being corrected.90 While the Scythians thought their message clear, most of the Persians did not, although one did. Symbols are more context bound, less automatically effective and less independent than it at first seems. Rousseau suggests that such signs are powerful but require a background of understanding and an act of interpretation to be fully effective. Complex reasoning therefore has a crucial role to play.

Second, all of the examples arouse passions that express or motivate some sort of violent action.91 I take this as an indication that violence and separation form an essential basis of symbolic communication, as they did with early language. As we have seen, language primarily forms to express relative standing. A language that can appeal to and unite others shows the relative standing of a community, and is especially powerful when revealing an opposing group that threatens this community.

VII. Conclusion

This chapter has deepened our understanding of the problems bequeathed by Theatrical

Imitation. First, while we were shown in Theatrical Imitation that human thought and language tends to deceive, we now find that thought and language begin in poetic expression of initially passionately felt experiences. Speech begins by conveying experience, but that experience presents a picture of the object distorted by the passion felt during it. As we concentrate on the object of

90 Herodotus, The Histories, trans. David Grene (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 327-328. 91 Paul De Man, Allegories of Reading: Figural Language in Rousseau, Nietzsche, Rilke and Proust (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1979), 140; Gourevitch, “Political Argument,” 23.

experience, language tends to lose its power to express our subjective experience, and with this lack of connection to our self-interested passions, loses its motivating power as well.

Second, the role of amour-propre in popular speech, which so restricted the possibilities of public art in Theatrical Imitation, turns out to be even more fundamental than it appeared there.

Our first experiences that lead to speech are encounters with others, whom we group as pleasing or helpful, or displeasing or dangerous. From the very outset, expressions of interpersonal concern tend to be about grouping (and demoting) others rather than classifying the natural environment.

The difficulty of using art for reform thus appears to have deepened, or at least it would seem that reshaping public opinion always requires some appeal to group dynamics.

Third, Rousseau’s account in Origin of the way that group identity forms also shows less antagonistic roots of human community. Rousseau indicates that shared local customs based on different environments, along with love, serve as healthier roots of common bonds, and public speech plays an important role in creating such bonds. Still, I argued that in some sense these links both depend on our shared weakness and tend to target a dangerous other in ways that lead to intolerance.

Rousseau is aware of the dangers suggested above and offers more guidance by giving us an extended illustration of the most effective political speech. To the list of examples discussed at the end of chapter one, a list which is almost identical to a mirror passages in Emile, Rousseau adds one to Origin: the story of the Levite of Ephraim, told at the end of the Book of Judges. This paragraph-long example is a prelude to the full-blown retelling of this story in Rousseau’s prose- poem of the same name. The fourth chapter examines this poem in order to see how Rousseau thinks public speech works in political life – both its promise and its inevitable difficulties.

Chapter 4: “The voice of sacred anger” and the reply of reason: Rousseau’s Levite of Ephraim and the linguistic foundations of political life

“And the name of the second he called Ephraim, meaning, God has made me fruitful in the land of my affliction.” – Genesis 41:521

In chapter three I argued that according to Rousseau political speech contains a paradox.

Speech begins as an expression of needs and passions born from self-love. Communities unite and stay together, at least initially, as this sense of self-love stretches from individuals to include a feeling of belonging to the community as a whole. At the same time, the most powerful speech acts that would so unite communities need to be cleverly designed and interpreted. Yet the development of reason tends to undermine political community by encouraging individuals to calculate their own interest at the expense of the community. In Origin Rousseau does not provides us with much direction as to how a community might go about dealing with this need to mix appeals to primeval passion with the reason that seems to undermine such appeals. But he does provide guidance as to where we might find an account of the way speech functions in political life. For while Rousseau says little explicitly about politics in his discussion of the elements of language in Origin, such an elaboration can be found in the final work in Rousseau’s planned triptych, The Levite of Ephraim.

The place to begin for understanding The Levite is the brief version of the same story that

Rousseau introduces in Origin.2 This passage indicates two important purposes of the longer work, both of which concern the puzzle of reconciling the different elements of speech.

1 Robert Alter, trans., The Five Books of Moses (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2004), 238. 2 Some have discussed the connection between Origin and The Levite but do not make this connection central to their interpretation. See e.g. Kochin, “Living with the Bible;” Dugan and Strong, “Representation in Rousseau;” Aubrey Rosenberg, “Rousseau’s Levite, 168; Judith Still, “Rousseau’s Levite D’Ephraim: The Imposition of Meaning (On Women),” French Studies 43 (1989), 25. See also John Scott, Editor’s Notes to Essay on the Origin of Languages, 583.

When the Levite of Ephraim wanted to avenge the death of his wife, he did not write to the Tribes

of Israel; he divided her body into twelve pieces which he sent to them. At this ghastly sight they

rushed to arms crying with one voice: no, never has anything like this happened in Israel, from the

day when our fathers left Egypt until this day. And the Tribe of Benjamin was exterminated.

Nowadays it would have been turned into lawsuits, debates, perhaps even jokes, it would have

dragged on, and the most ghastly crime would finally have gone unpunished.3

As this brief treatment in Origin suggests, The Levite should be approached from two angles. In the first part of the passage from Origin, the Levite’s actions are recounted to illustrate the superior moving and unifying power of signs over written language. This story addresses the puzzle of

Origin on the political level: signs appear to address the question of how to mix passion and reason, at least in certain situations. The Levite develops this teaching on signs to show the fundamental elements that make them effective, while also demonstrating the place of other kinds of speech in political life. In the second part of the passage in Origin, Rousseau notes that modern men would not have punished the crime at all, but rather would have debated it without acting. The contrast in reaction between the ancient Israelites’ extermination of transgressors and the indifference of

Rousseau’s modern readers is a chasm that requires explanation. This passage already indicates that the development of rationality, expressed in such activities as lawsuits and debates, is one of the causes of that gulf. Due to this gulf, Rousseau writes The Levite in a particular manner, to move a modern audience he finds enervated above all by the advance of rationalistic discourse.

This chapter focuses most of its commentary on the first angle, on those elements of the prose poem that provide a narrative illustration of the possibilities and limits of different forms of speech, and the passions they arouse and express, to serve as social and political bonds. The teaching of the work can usefully be divided into two parts, roughly an even split between the

3 Origin, 249-250; 377.

work’s four cantos, and this chapter mostly tracks this division. The first half of The Levite illustrates the elements of speech introduced in Origin as Rousseau envisages them developing in nascent social life.4 It shows how the two elementary kinds of language found in Origin, expansive and beautiful “southern” language, and responsive and cold “northern” language, express themselves before the formation of formal human laws and political bodies, and what their natural tendencies, strengths and difficulties are. “Southern” language, expressing an expanding sense of self-love and manifesting itself in romantic love and appreciation for others, helps create beautiful and unifying speech. However, The Levite reveals the unstable and fragile nature of the social bond created by these forms of communication. The unity created is partly an illusion of the parties involved and is unstable because the sense of attraction felt by the expanding self can pull in multiple directions. Rationality and anger (“northern” language) arise to meet the challenges posed by a volatile situation. But reason proves impotent to identify stable or convincing standards of evaluation or action on its own, a theme that the action of The Levite will continually stress. Driven by anger or rage, reason is empowered instrumentally but also misdirected by the source of its motivation in narrow individual self-love. The first two cantos suggest the need for a more potent agent of unification, the need for coercive force, and most importantly, the need for some sort of consistent direction of the passions.

The second part of the work illustrates how political life develops the primitive passions in more complicated speech acts supported by coercive authority. The turning point at the center of the poem is the Levite’s horrific symbol created from the body of his dead companion. It shows the unifying power of a sign that combines an appeal to compassion and fear for the community as a whole. The rest of The Levite considers the direction of that community. Two possibilities

4 Roughly corresponding to the late state of nature in the Second Discourse (book two, paragraphs 20-31) and the first times of Origin (primarily chapter nine).

lead to an intensification of the passions without giving them helpful direction. As Rousseau casts it, early Hebraic faith solidifies social unity but when in charge amplifies and misdirects original anger. Political compassion also tends to mislead. The end of The Levite shows that successful political speech requires reason to direct and generalize the passions. But faith, compassion and powerful symbolism need to be fostered as motivators to protecting and furthering the goods of the community. On the key question of developed rationality’s role in political life, such reason proves essential, but its role is circumscribed, and The Levite’s narrative suggests that it should not present itself openly if it is to be most effective.

I. Author and audience

Rousseau indicates that he intends not only to show how speech moves communities, but also to move his modern audience. Yet The Levite’s effect on its audience could prevent an investigation into the serious matters it treats. An attempt to draw a serious teaching out of The

Levite might seem perverse given the disturbing nature of the material. My approach contrasts with a significant part of the secondary literature, which regards The Levite as revealing Rousseau’s disturbed psychological state at the time he wrote it.5 The use of such a bloody story does require explanation. But I argue that Rousseau wants the typical modern reader to be both shocked and amazed by the story. They should be shocked, in order to feel the dangers of fanaticism, but amazed and impressed as well by the distant power of ancient virtue, which the reader might in a pale way imitate, by beginning to shake off what Rousseau perceives as the modern reader’s moral

5 See Thomas Kavanagh, “Rousseau’s Le Levite d’Ephraim,” 152; François Van Laere, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, du phantasme à l’écriture (Paris: Minard, 1967); Anjubault Simons, Amitie et passion: Rousseau et Sauttersheim (Geneva: Droz, 1972).

somnolence. Rousseau’s rhetoric may at times be overpowering, but that does not mean that he was overpowered when he wrote.

The Levite’s origin and purpose appear to justify the psychological approach of these commentators, at first glance. Rousseau does submit that the work is of personal import to him.

He calls it the “dearest” of his writings both in the Confessions and in the draft prefaces to The

Levite itself.6 The occasion for the writing of The Levite was Rousseau’s flight from Paris following the warrant for his arrest and the banning of Emile and the Social Contract. His draft prefaces highlight the theme of anger and how to deal with suffering injustice. It is Rousseau’s potential anger which first needs addressing, as The Levite was written “during the cruelest moments of my life … Plunged into a sea of misfortune, overcome with the evils from my ungrateful and barbarous contemporaries.”7 Given the upsetting circumstances and admitted personal attachment, the writing of The Levite could be expressive of Rousseau’s passions in this trying time.

A possible interpretation of the work’s purpose is to take The Levite as a cathartic revenge story. As Nicholas Dent puts it, “One can perhaps imagine that Rousseau saw in this indescribably brutal story some image of the kind of vengeance that should be his for the wrongs he had suffered.

Yet why this was his ‘dearest work’ is, to me, almost incomprehensible.”8 It could be that Rousseau

6 Confessions, 491; OC I, 586. 7 The Levite, 351; 1205. For the rest of this chapter citations from The Levite will be provided in text. On a biographical level, one could again connect The Levite to the triptych, as it shows in practice how to respond responsibly to misfortune. In Theatrical Imitation, Rousseau argues that “the judicious and temperate man … as a victim of ill fortune … will try to turn to profit his very reverses … and, without lamenting like a child … he knows how to bear, if necessary, a hot iron that is salutary for his wound and to make it bleed in order to heal it” (346; 1206). A judicious man will douse the negative passions caused by misfortune with other passions, and take advantage of the situation. Four years later, in his first draft preface, he tells us that “the third [piece]” was written as Rousseau was “plunged into a sea of misfortune” (351; 1205). The writing of the Levite is what a writer should do in a moment of adversity, such as described in Theatrical Imitation. 8 Nicholas Dent, Rousseau (New York: Routledge, 2005), 34.

thought the work showed what was owed to those suffering injustices. Yet I argue that the work remains incomprehensible if one looks at it this way.

Rousseau indicates that the proper response to suffering injustice is not vengeance but measured justice and understanding. I will substantiate this claim in my analysis of the prose poem itself, but the preface already indicates Rousseau’s goals. He suggests in different draft prefaces first that his heart is not devoured by “anger and indignation” and second that “I was much more angry with the injustices of which I was the witness than those of which I was the victim” (351,

352; 1205, 1206). In both prefaces Rousseau stresses his relative lack of indignation at his own situation.9 While he does not deny feeling anger, Rousseau suggests that this anger is directed primarily at the general injustices committed by his persecutors, not at his personal suffering.

Rousseau follows his own implicit advice from Theatrical Imitation in communicating his suffering and weakness to increase identification with the reader, but he does not let anger at that suffering carry him to retributive action. His only revenge is that his enemies are filled with a corrosive and painful hatred (351; 1205). Rousseau argues that The Levite justifies him in the face of this persecution: “If ever some equitable man deigns to take up my defense in compensation for so many outrages and libels, I wish only these words of praise: In the cruelest moments of his life, he wrote The Levite of Ephraim” (351; 1205).10 This justification is due to The Levite’s pleasantness and unvengeful message; Rousseau hopes “that readers take some of the pleasure in reading it that I took in imagining it” because “it has an aspect for which decent men will applaud

9 Bloom argues that “Rousseau makes a great effort to avoid moral indignation, which is the great sophist in the soul and persuades people that their wounded self-interest can be converted into a high moral calling” (Love and Friendship, 70). I argue that Rousseau not only claims that he avoids personal indignation but also shows this problem clearly in the action of the Levite. That said, we will see that Rousseau still thinks collective anger is necessary for the enforcement of justice (thus disagreeing with Martha Nussbaum, for instance, who argues that “anger is not … necessary for the pursuit of justice” (Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 8). 10 This in spite of calling The Levite “bagatelle,” as with Theatrical Imitation (352; 1207).

it … and they will feel that a man who occupied himself in this way when he was tormented is not a very dangerous enemy” (352; 1206). Rousseau thinks that the work justifies him, that there is something pleasing about it for decent men, and that it will convince them he is not dangerous. In other words, his account will not justify or support dangerous retribution but quite the opposite.

My interpretation of The Levite will support Rousseau’s remarks on it.

The proper expression of anger in political life is a theme of The Levite, but not as an expression of Rousseau’s own anger.11 One of his responses to public anger is to help the reader to understand the origin of anger in political life and how it might be put to use for constructive ends. The first two paragraphs introduce anger as a theme of the work and are entirely of

Rousseau’s own devising. The first line is quasi-Homeric: “Sacred anger of virtue, come animate my voice” (352; 1207).12 It is noteworthy that rather than asking a god or a muse for help, Rousseau asks a passion, if a sacred one.13 By calling anger ‘sacred’ and summoning the passion to animate him, Rousseau indicates the potential for a positive purpose for anger in supporting a healthy political community.

Yet anger initially and primarily comes to light as a problem in The Levite, although

Rousseau does not suggest the possibility of doing without it.14 The story that Rousseau tells will initially show the same kind of devastation found in The Iliad. Anger will animate a voice to “tell

11 In this following Emile, which begins with a quote from Seneca’s On Anger. 12 The opening line of the Iliad is “Sing, Goddess, the anger of Peleus’ son Achilleus” (Homer, The Iliad, trans. Richard Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 75). On these Homeric elements, see Kochin, “Living with the Bible,” 315; Dugan and Strong, “Representation in Rousseau,” 315. Although there is precedent for a call for divine assistance for poetic speech in the Bible as well: “Give ear, O heavens, that I may speak, and let the earth hear my mouth’s utterances” (Deuteronomy 32:1). By this evocation of Homer, Rousseau indicates that as in Origin, he will treat the origins of poetry as such and treat Greek poetry along with scripture. 13 The use of sacred should remind of Rousseau’s use of it in the Social Contract to describe the fundamental elements of social unity, such as the contract itself, the work of the lawgiver, and the power of the sovereign and its laws (Social Contract, 41, 70, 151; OC III, 351, 382, 468); see Heinrich Meier, Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 180-181). Anger thus appears to be a constituent component of political life. 14 As for instance, Nussbaum has recently suggested: “I do not believe that anger is necessary as a motivation to pursue justice” (Anger and Forgiveness, 39).

of the crimes of Benjamin and the vengeance of Israel; I will speak of unprecedented infamy and of still more terrible punishments.” Rousseau announces two actions, and the one born of anger appears worse. The story should teach the following lesson: “Mortals, respect beauty, morals, hospitality. Be just without cruelty, merciful without weakness. And know how to pardon the guilty rather than punish the innocent” (352; 1207). As far as the direction of public anger is concerned, the puzzle is how to stray neither to the left of weakness nor the right of rage, how to be just without going too far, how to be merciful without falling into Machiavelli’s criticism of those who would be merciful while allowing cruelty to flourish.15

As indicated in Origin, it is the tendency to be too soft that characterizes Rousseau’s contemporaries, unlike the characters of The Levite. While the first paragraph emphasizes the need for mercy, the second emphasizes that the mercy of Rousseau’s contemporaries is a problem: “O you, easy-going men [hommes débonnaires], enemies of every inhumanity; you who for fear of contemplating the crimes of your brothers prefer to let them go unpunished, what pictures am I going to offer to your eyes?” (352-353; 1207). The images are for the benefit of Rousseau’s easy- going contemporaries, so the answer cannot be simply leaning to the side of mercy. The proper attitude cannot be to ignore crimes: “He who averts his glance from such infamy is a coward, a deserter from justice; genuine humanity contemplates it in order to know it, to judge it, to detest it” (353; 1208). Still, Rousseau does not offer us a solution at the beginning: knowing, judging and detesting are well and good for the philosopher, but not sufficient for the political actor.16 Part of

15 “A Prince … to keep his subjects united and faithful, should not care about the infamy of cruelty, because with very few examples he will be more merciful than those who for the sake of too much mercy allow disorders to continue” (Machiavelli, The Prince, 65). See Clifford Orwin, “Machiavelli’s Unchristian Charity,” American Political Science Review 72 (1978), 1222-1226. 16 Events force action. It is notable that the tribe of Benjamin is called a “sad child of grief,” and in Origin the languages of the north are called “sad children of necessity” (353; 1208). Like those peoples born in the north, Benjamin will serve as Rousseau’s vehicle for investigating the role of necessity in speech and in politics.

the solution, insofar as there is one, will be the effect of this shocking text on the reader, in encouraging him to take the enforcement of justice more seriously.

II. Judges 19-21

The source material that Rousseau chose to awaken the reader could not be more disturbing. Before assessing parts of Rousseau’s narrative, I briefly summarize the Book of Judges

19-21, which Rousseau is recasting, because an awareness of it is important for judging Rousseau’s departures from that narrative. Set in the period after the arrival of the Israelites in the promised land but before the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, the story begins with a man from the tribe of Levi being left by his concubine. He eventually pursues her to her father’s home to retrieve her. He spends three and a half days with the family, being entertained. On the fourth evening, the

Levite, his concubine and his servant set out late and find lodging in the house of an old man in the Benjaminite town of Gibeah. Other residents of Gibeah surround the house and demand that the Levite surrender himself for their pleasure. Instead, the Levite’s concubine is offered, subsequently raped and murdered. The following morning, the Levite dismembers her corpse into twelve pieces to rouse the Israelites against her murderers. The tribes of Israel then unite and act as one, for the first time since their wandering, against Benjamin in a costly war that leaves only

600 Benjaminite men alive. To preserve the tribe of Benjamin, wives are gathered for these men by force before peace is restored.

III. Rousseau’s approach to Judges: A poetic account of the transition from the state of nature

As with Plato’s Republic in Theatrical Imitation, Rousseau takes the source material he finds and makes it his own. Rousseau calls The Levite “a kind of short poem in prose, a paraphrase

of the last three chapters of Judges” (351; 1205). He draws attention to the break in form and content from Biblical narrative to prose poem. As in my analysis of that work, I do not attempt a comprehensive comparison between the Bible and Rousseau but note changes that are particularly indicative of his purposes.17

Such a change greets the reader immediately and signals a difference in tone from primarily negative to positive. The episode in Judges 19 opens, and the book of Judges closes, with the remark “in those days, when there was no king in Israel.”18 Judges as a whole, and this story in particular, shows an ugly chaos resulting from a neglect of law, divine or otherwise. Rousseau’s narrative reveals the dangers of a world without law, but also argues for its advantages. Just as in

Judges, Rousseau begins by announcing a state of relative anarchy; unlike the presentation in

Judges this state does not immediately appear wicked. In Judges the state of anarchy is described as follows: “In those days there was no king in Israel, every man did what was right in his eyes.”19

Rousseau’s version of this statement both obviously designates the story as taking place in the state of nature and suggests the possibility of good things being present in it. “In the days of freedom in which no one reigned over the people of the Lord, there was a time of license in which each, without recognizing either magistrate or judge, was alone his own master and did all that seemed to him good” (353; 1208). The freedom of this time is emphasized, as is the position of each as master and judge of his own actions. The situation is by definition the state of nature as seen not only in Rousseau but also his predecessors – that is, a situation in which all act as their

17 As with his rewriting of Plato, Rousseau here is far from “faithful” in his retelling, contra Kavanagh (“Rousseau’s Le Levite,” 147). For the re-readings of Judges given by Rousseau’s predecessors, see Arthur Bradley, “Let the Lord the Judge Be the Judge: Hobbes and Locke on Jephthah, Liberalism and Martyrdom,” Law, Culture and the Humanities, May 16, 2017, doi:10.1177/1743872117708352. 18 Judges 19:1. I use the translation of Robert Alter, trans. Ancient Israel: The Former Prophets: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2013). 19 Judges 17: 6.

own judge.20 By setting the scene this way, Rousseau indicates that he will elaborate on the picture of our natural state presented in Origin and the Second Discourse.

Rousseau signals that The Levite takes place as the state of nature is coming to an end.21

The work will show the transition from pre-political to political society. At the start of the narrative no central political authority yet exists, and some families can rely on themselves, but metallurgy and agriculture have been invented and political bodies have formed.22 “Israel, then scattered in the fields, had few great cities, and the simplicity of its morals rendered superfluous the empire of laws. But all hearts were not equally pure, and the wicked found the impunity of vice in the security of virtue” (353; 1208). While the presence of cities is ominous, there is some room left for life outside of politics. Aubrey Rosenberg argues that it “is set at the end of the golden age, during the period of decline, but it looks back to the earlier period described in the Essai [on the Origin of

Languages].”23 Rosenberg’s description is apt: the Levite is set when vestiges of what Rousseau calls the golden age, where families can remain relatively apart from others, still exist, but political life has emerged in a way that makes the spread of political bodies inevitable. It is the perfect setting for a consideration of the foundations of political speech.

IV. Expansive language as a basis for political community

After introducing the setting, Rousseau makes a further break with Judges, and tells a love story. The reader familiar with the horrors of Judges will be surprised by the pastoral poetry of

20 Rousseau, Social Contract, book one, chapter six. Cf. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, chapter thirteen; John Locke, Second Treatise on Government, chapter two. 21 It will thus illustrate the following stage from the Second Discourse: “before their were Laws, everyone was sole judge and avenger of the offenses he had received, the goodness suited to the pure state of Nature was no longer the goodness suited to nascent Society … punishments had to become more severe in proportion as the opportunities to offend became more frequent, and that the terror of vengeance had to take the place of Laws’ restraint” (167; OC III, 170). 22 See Second Discourse, 167-168; OC III, 171-172. 23 Rosenberg, “Rousseau’s Levite,” 168.

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Rousseau’s first canto.24 I argue that the first canto primarily elucidates the ability of the

“languages of the south” of Origin, those which express the passions of “love and softness,” to form social bonds.25 However, as in Origin, the obstacles that lead to the “northern” languages expressive of anger and reason also begin to develop at the same time. The Levite presents love and the beautiful language it inspires as an ambiguous basis for political life – indeed for social life at all. Rousseau shows the formation of a happy unity through love and accompanying song and speech, but he also shows that this unity is at bottom still based on changeable self-love, and fragile without guidance.26 The “sweetest sentiments known to man, conjugal love, and Paternal love”27 pull against each other. The passions and language characteristic of southern languages form an attractive root of social life, but they are too unmoored to form a lasting basis for it alone.

Rousseau introduces the love story with an argument for the need to acknowledge and treasure the sort of quiet and peaceful love that history usually ignores.

During one of those short intervals of calm and equality that remain in oblivion because no one

commands others and no evil at all is done, a Levite of the mountains of Ephraim saw in Bethlehem

a young woman who pleased him. He said to her: Young woman of Judah, you are not of my Tribe,

you have no brother; you are like the daughters of Salphaad, and I cannot marry you according to

the law of the Lord. But my heart is yours; come with me, let us live together; we will be united and

24 Although it should be noted that the events of the Book of Ruth, which are said to occur in the time of Judges, might have given Rousseau some inspiration (see Ruth 1-2). Heidi Szpek also notes linguistic echoes of the journey of Hagar (Genesis 16) and love in the Song of Songs (“The Levite’s Concubine: The Story that Never Was,” Women in Judaism 5 (2007): 5-6). Rousseau tells us that he consciously imitated “the delightful images of M. Gessner,” a writer of pastoral poems (352; 1206). 25 Origin, 280; OC V, 408. 26 This ambiguous picture of love is something Rousseau recommends to dramatic imitators: “They ought … to teach the young to distrust the illusions of love, to flee the error of a blind penchant which always believes that it founds itself on esteem, and to be afraid of confiding a virtuous heart to an object that is sometimes unworthy of its attentions” (D’Alembert, 56; OC V, 51). 27 Second Discourse, 164; OC III, 168.

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free: you will make my happiness, and I will make yours. The Levite was young and handsome; the

young woman smiled;28 they were united, then he took her into his mountains (353; 1209).

Rousseau will report the sort of moment no one (including the author of Judges) mentions, he will give us the poetic beauty of peaceful bliss omitted by traditional historians. They do not show us the desirability of such moments, but Rousseau will make them attractive to us. The story is one of a couple united by love, or at least mutual attraction, given freely.29

The life of these two young lovers initially shows how the bliss of conjugal love leads to interpersonal unity based on and expressed through beautiful and evocative language. The ideal reader of Rousseau is no doubt meant to be charmed along with the characters. “There, passing a sweet life, so dear to tender and simple hearts, in this retreat they trusted the charms of a shared life; there, on a sistrum of gold made to sing the praises of the Almighty, he often sang of the charms of his young wife” (353; 1209).30 Here we find the melodic languages of the south, expressed in song, demonstrating and reinforcing the sweetness of a freely chosen shared life, seemingly needing no coercion or restraint.31

The fragility of this situation is exposed in the same paragraph. The sincere emotion maintaining the bond between the lovers is not as unidirectional as it appears and is maintained by

28 In The Levite as in Judges, the young woman never speaks, and only the young woman’s invented counterpart Axa at the end of the work gets a line, which is simply to utter the name of her beloved. This lack of speaking roles for female characters may be due to Rousseau’s insistence that politics as such is a man’s game. It would seem to contrast with the Bible (see Numbers 27.1-4). See: Still, “Rousseau’s Levite,” 19-21. 29 The lack of marriage is odd and may suggest that God’s law may hold some sway. There is also the possibility that the Levite is being disingenuous, as it is not clear that the law he cites applies to their situation. Rousseau cites “Numbers, chap. XXXVI, v. 8” (353; 1209). Here the Lord charges through Moses: “every daughter inheriting an estate from the tribes of the Israelites shall become wife to someone from the clan of her father’s tribe.” As we will find that (in Rousseau’ addition) the young woman has sisters, this law does not clearly apply to her, as another daughter could inherit. Moreover, it is ironic to cite this law which will be so clearly violated (although in the ‘spirit’ of the law, to preserve a tribe) by the Israelites to save the tribe of Benjamin at the end of the story. 30 Rousseau indicated in a note that he would like four scenes illustrated – this was the first. See “Notes et Variances,” OC II, 1926. 31 This life is charming, but also appears irreverent – rather than sing of the Almighty, the given role of his tribe, the Levite sings to his beloved, expressing their shared love. This suggests that love is in tension with God and the larger community.

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an illusion.32 Rousseau writes of the woman of Judah’s “joy” in pressing the gift of a turtledove to her breast – she too seems to be caught up in expressions of love.33 Yet in the next sentence the

Levite’s speech reveals that she is also pulled away: “Daughter of Bethlehem, he said to her, why do you always weep for your family and your country?” (354; 1209). The seemingly happy unity is fractured by discontent as the woman of Judah’s attachment is split between the Levite and her family. On this presentation we can see how the expressions of love occasioned by an expanding sense of self form a fragile bond. The expanding self may feel a strong appreciation for a romantic partner, but familial attachments come earlier and exert a strong counterpull. This is where the action in Judges begins: “And his concubine played the whore against him and went away to her father’s house.”34 In contrast to the biblical account, Rousseau softens the blow and offers an explanation that suggests maintaining love is difficult and its frustrations are thus more deserving of sympathy. He tells us that “the young woman grew bored with the Levite, perhaps because he left nothing for her to desire. She slipped away and fled to her father, to her tender mother, to her frolicsome sisters” (354; 1209). The imaginative language that reinforces romantic love appears highly delicate. The Levite has not read Emile and smothers his partner in affection; the implication is that this causes the imagination which fired her love to cool.35 The delights of her family remain and draw her away.36

32 This is typical of Rousseau’s presentations of both love and friendship. “Love is but illusion; it fashions for itself, so to speak, another universe” (Julie, 10; OC II, 15). See Warner, Problem of Human Relations, 149-151. 33 Like the lovers in Julie, the couple seems to find the countryside more cheerful, the greenery more fresh and lively, the air more pure, the Sky more serene, the birdsong seems more tender and ecstatic” (Julie, 95; OC II, 117). 34 Judges 19.2. What exactly this means is unclear and could be taken in the metaphorical sense of disloyalty as well as the literal one. See Alter, Five Books of Moses, 203. 35 As the tutor says in Emile, “Knots that one wants to tighten too much will burst” (Emile, 476; OC II, 859). See Rosenberg, “Rousseau’s Levite,” 170. Or as Julie says: “Mystery, silence, fearful shame sharpen and conceal its sweet transports” (161; OC II, 198). 36 This freedom to leave is part of Rousseau’s justification for the happiness of pre-political society. “Each family became a small Society, all the better united as mutual attachment and freedom were its only bonds” (Second Discourse 164; OC III, 168). Here we see that such freedom is not equally pleasant for everyone, although Rousseau could suggest that the truly disastrous conflicts of The Levite all result from further advances in sociality.

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Just as in Origin, it is frustration that leads to the development of rationalistic “northern” language as a response. Rousseau portrays this first rationalistic speech as initially ineffective. As spoken by the Levite, rational speech aims at a false universalism that only expresses the self-love of the speaker. The Levite continually reveals himself to be a man who communicates his personal passion and self-interest in universalistic terms – a way of speaking that fails to address the passions and interests of his interlocutor. His last words to his companion are attempts to overcome her attachment to her family that reveal a lack of appreciation for the particularity of affective attachment. The Levite asks: “Do the children of Ephraim not also have feasts, are the daughters of smiling Sichem without grace and without gaiety, do the inhabitants of ancient Atharot lack strength and deftness? Come see their games and embellish them. Give me pleasures, O my beloved; are there for me any others than yours?” (354; 1209). The Levite in vain attempts to overcome the young woman’s love of her own with reasoning which argues that his world is as good as her own. He fails to really address his companion and tries to convince her to stay because of his need for her, without addressing her needs or passions.37 Love as freely given sentiment cannot be kept aflame by efforts at rational persuasion.

The rest of the first canto vividly paints the power but instability of early human sentiments of attachment. The Levite suffers greatly (on Rousseau’s account), and after four months pursues his beloved. Their reunification highlights again the depths of passionate language, as well as its fickleness. The young woman is still pulled by her love: she, “perceiving him far off, shivers, runs before him, and greeting him with caresses, introduces him into the house of her father; who,

37 He might realize that showing how needy he is and suggesting that he is as good as any other are hardly ways to convince someone of your unique lovability. As Plato’s Socrates puts it, “whoever is wise in love-matters, my friend, does not praise his beloved before he catches him … those who are beautiful are filled full with proud thoughts and bragging whenever someone praises them” (Plato, Lysis, trans. David Bolotin (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 206a).

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learning of his arrival, runs up also full of joy, embraces him, receives him – him, his servant, his baggage – and busies himself with treating him well.” Unspoken but direct communication creates a new unity that seems to unite conjugal and paternal love.38

But only one of these families can survive long-term – either the Levite must have his wife or the family its daughter - and the attachments here lead to a great deal of suffering. This touching scene is yet again marred by deep emotional pain: “But the Levite, his heart wrenched with emotion, could not speak; nevertheless, moved by the good welcome of the family, he raised his eyes to his young wife and said to her, Daughter of Israel, why do you flee me? What evil have I done you? The young woman began to cry, covering her face” (354; 1210). The deep pain felt by the Levite is mostly communicated through gesture, and the shame of the young woman cannot be expressed by words. His words again reflect a lack of appreciation for his partner’s viewpoint.39

Any hope of a happy reconciliation between the two sentimental poles of marriage and extended family is quickly destroyed. The Levite again turns to his self-oriented reason to have his way:

“Then he said to the father: give me back my companion; give her to me for love of her; why would she live alone and abandoned? Who other than I can honor as his wife the one whom I received a virgin?” (354; 1210). The woman of Judah will one day need a partner, and due to their tryst, it can only be the Levite. This time the Levite’s reasoning is more successful, even if it is his actions that have prevented the woman of Judah from having other options. The father relents, but in Rousseau’s version cannot let his daughter go so easily and shows the same level of attachment

38 Rousseau changed this scene considerably from his first draft. He cuts out a speech made by the woman’s father: “My son, give us three days … of joy with my family, on the fourth, [take] my daughter, [and] leave in peace” (MS R 14, 4, my translation. A few of the words are impossible to decipher with certainty, but this is the sense). The removal of this speech would seem to bring out more clearly the difficulty of expressing the most intense passions. 39 Kavanagh has gone so far as to suggest that most of the characters of the work share what he calls “solipsism,” a view “directed toward the other, acting upon the other, transforming the other,” rather than shared communication” (Writing the Truth, 74). This seems like a good characteristic of the Levite, but other characters of the work are better able to share the views of others, especially the heroes of the fourth canto.

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as the Levite.40 The whole family cries as the woman of Judah leaves, unable to speak: “But her father embracing her did not cry; his mute clasps were doleful and convulsive; sharp sighs lifted his chest. Alas! He seemed to foresee the horrible fate of the unfortunate one!” (355; 1212). The father, like the Levite, is overcome with emotional attachment and cannot let go. Pre-political family life is revealed as a partially joyous, partially painful oscillation between emotions that cannot be expressed in articulated speech.

At the end of the first canto the reader is left with an appreciation for the beauty of freely given sentiment, along with an awareness of its fragility as a social bond. Rousseau ends the canto with a paean to this unstable happiness: “Happy family, whose peaceful days flow in the most perfect union from the bosom of friendship, and which seems to have only one heart for all its members. O innocence of morals, sweetness of soul, antique simplicity, how lovable you are! How has the brutality of vice been able to find a place amidst you? How is it that the furies of barbarism did not respect your pleasures?” (355-356; 1212, my emphasis). The family appears as a beautiful unity, but as with the couple of the beginning of the canto, it has not been able to maintain itself.

The languages of the south and the passions they express, beautiful and sweet as they are, establish only fragile human community without a standard to guide it. No matter how much Rousseau might promote sincerity or authenticity, from an early historical state sincerity is of questionable value from the point of view of securing human happiness.41

40 In Judges the delay seems to be more about shared drinking and revelry between the Levite and the father (19: 3- 10). Cf. Szpek, “The Levite’s Concubine,” 4-5. 41 Thus it is not right to say that “Sentiment can be harmful … only if it has been corrupted by outside influences. So long as our relationship to sentiment is unmediated, it can be trusted” (Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 82). The sentiments of the Levite, for instance, do not have any external standard, but they can hardly be said to steer him rightly. Neidleman would be closer to correct if we could equate the instinct with sentiment, but I do not think that we can. In any case, instinct does not suffice either – those who are sickly or misguided by their instincts are “no worse off than all the others [animal species” (Second Discourse, 138; OC III, 139) – which means that they will die like those other animals if they are weak or mislead.

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V. The impotence of reason and the causes of anger

As the final two lines of the first canto indicate, the problems of love (and the beautiful language created by it) as social glue only begin with its internal instability and contradictions.

Graver threats await from other sources. The second canto reveals the other origin of human community and the further development of “northern” language in anger and the subsequent desire for justice.42 Such language stems not, as a cursory reading of Origin might suggest, from a harsh natural environment, but a harsh human one. This root of community will prove just as necessary, but also insufficient on its own, to provide for stable political life. This canto shows that attempts to reason about justice absent stable political community lack a sufficient standard of judgment for an informed decision.

The first action of the second canto shows this difficulty of reasoning about political action in the absence of law.43 The Levite has left his father-in-law’s house late. His servant suggests stopping in Jerusalem, then a Canaanite city. The Levite refuses: “God forbid, said the Levite, that

I lodge among an infidel people and that a Canaanite give shelter to the Lord’s minister. No, but let us go as far as Gibeah to seek hospitality among our brothers” (356; 1212). The Levite, of the tribe set aside to minister to the tabernacle, feels a connection to the other tribes of Israel and believes that he will find brothers in the Benjaminite city of Gibeah, and rejects his servant’s suggestion. The servant’s reasoning appears to be that hospitality might be found in any city,

Israelite or not. The Levite thinks rather that a strong bond exists between him and the

42 I thus argue that Rousseau shows anger to be the root of justice, suggesting that he does not have a “transcendent idea of justice” (Lay Williams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment, 94). For an analysis complementary to my own, see Cooper, Rousseau, 128. Rousseau has a view of morality “presupposing natural science” as he understood it (Leo Strauss, “On the Intention of Rousseau,” in Hobbes and Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays, eds. Maurice Cranston and Richard S. Peters (New York: Anchor Books, 1972), 281). 43 No authority enforces their laws at this point, and Rousseau seems to be reminding us that “It is to law alone that men owe justice and freedom” (Political Economy, 10; OC III, 248).

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Benjaminites, fellow Israelites. In the absence of law, his reasoning about his “brothers” will turn out to be mistaken.

Before the horrible events to come, Rousseau offers a justification to his audience for the moral goodness of pre-political life, but one that properly examined reveals the necessity of political life once human beings have become dependent on one another.

Men of our days, do not malign the morals of your fathers. These first times, it is true, did not abound

like yours in the comforts of life; vile metals did not suffice there for everything; but man had

innermost emotions [des entrailles], which did the rest.44 … The sons of Jemini were not the only

ones, doubtless, whose hearts of iron were hardened; but that hardness was not common. With

patience brothers were found everywhere; the voyager deprived of everything did not lack anything

(356; 1213, my emphasis).

The comforts of modern life are contrasted with “innermost emotions,” such as Rousseau has described. Rousseau claims that true viciousness was uncommon, as it has been so far in the narrative. Where injustice did not rear its head, freedom and sincerity reigned, even if not always stably or happily. Yet a Hobbesian might object that this presence of a few vicious apples makes the orchard intolerable, and Rousseau shows that however regrettable, this is the case. Brothers might be found everywhere with patience, but it is difficult to know who a true brother is, and necessity may not always allow for patience.

The fragility of a state without law reveals itself quickly. The Benjaminites of Gibeah prove unwelcoming, but an old man from Ephraim arrives, recognizes the Levite and offers him hospitality. Rousseau’s statement about the hospitality of most ancient people might seem to be affirmed. Unfortunately, the Benjaminites prove worse than inhospitable: interrupting “the gaiety

44 This description of the source of morality in early social life replaced the following in the first draft: “he did not learn to speak of his rights in books, but his heart dictated them to him” (MS R 14, 6, my translation). In the final version nothing so definitive as rights is specified, perhaps fitting better with the loose nature of morality prior to law as Rousseau has portrayed it.

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of a meal offered with joy … without restraint, unbridled, without reserve, and braving Heaven like the Cyclops of Mount Etna, [the Benjaminites] came and surrounded the house … crying to the old man in a menacing tone: Deliver to us that young stranger … so that his beauty may pay us the price of his shelter” (357; 1213). The negative side of a world without law, the freedom to take what one wants, comes to the fore. The Benjaminites do not see the Levite, a “stranger,” as one of their own – the Israelite identity does not exist to them or at least does not affect them, and they wish to punish his presence by rape.45 Feelings of brotherly connection are a fragile bond, requiring a natural goodwill that is not always forthcoming.

It is worth pausing to consider the only explicit reference to classical literature in The

Levite.46 The Benjaminites are said to “brave Heaven” like the lawless cyclops of classical poetry, raising the possibility of divine support for the hospitable old man and his guest.47 As this is a retelling of a Biblical story, the reader might wonder if God will intervene against Gibeah as he did against Sodom (although the reader familiar with Judges will suspect not).48 As the cyclops

45 This desire seems to be more about power than homosexuality, in both Judges and The Levite. As Pamela Reis remarks, the Benjaminites accept the concubine instead because “By hurting and humiliating the woman whose protection is the Levite’s responsibility, these Gibeahites dishonor him” (“The Levite’s Concubine: New Light on a Dark Story,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 20 (2006), 139). The fact that the Benjaminites do not feel of a piece with the Levite suggests that according to Rousseau a fully pre-rational communal basis for political life is impossible. We could not have a national identity where everyone “sympathizes and identifies without inquiry or thought” (Cohler, Rousseau and Nationalism, 68). National identity needs to be created as much as found. 46 As the Cyclops is evoked in a number of places, the source might be Homer (The Odyssey), Euripides (The Cyclops), or Virgil (Georgics). The Georgics seem particularly likely, as The Levite often echoes their pastoral tone. In any case, it suggests a certain equivalence between Biblical and classical literature. The inhospitality and impiety of the “lawless, outrageous cyclops” are emphasized in Homer (Odyssey, trans. Richard Lattimore (New York: Harper and Row, 2007), 140-142). 47 Of course, since the Levite has shown himself to be less than attentive to his lawful role, perhaps he has reason to fear divine punishment as well. The Cyclops were originally connected to the god Poseidon, and might plausibly dole out such punishment. 48 The reader familiar with Genesis will see the obvious echo of the tale of Lot and the Sodomites. There God intervenes to wipe out the unjust cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, sparing only one Hebrew family after being challenged by Abraham to spare the just. In Judges it is an Israelite tribe who prove vicious to the vulnerable. As one commentator aptly puts it, “The biblical author holds up the mirror of Sodom, and the reader sees Israel reflected” (Reis, “The Levite’s Concubine,” 140).

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reference evokes the Homeric epic, one might wonder if an Odysseus might emerge to outsmart these bestial men.

Neither God nor a hero comes to the rescue, however. The possibility of divine assistance will later enter the narrative, but at this point Rousseau shows the vulnerability of human speech, and especially reason. The closest thing to a protagonist here is not the Levite, but the hospitable old man, who tries in Rousseau’s narrative to save the day. The old man’s speech to the

Benjaminites attempting to dissuade them is rich in different forms of communication, but all prove to be vain against lawless force. The old man first attempts moral reasoning with the cyclopean villagers. While he assures the Levite that “these wicked men are not people to be brought round by reason [la raison],” he nonetheless appeals to his “brothers” not to “do this evil before the Lord. Do not thus outrage nature, do not violate sacred hospitality.” Appeals to God’s law, nature or human hospitality are all ineffective. When this appeal fails, he slows their advance by “making a sign with his hand” and offering his virgin daughter instead in “a stronger voice”

(357; 1214). Reason utterly fails, but signs and evocation have some effect in slowing the

Benjaminites. That the Benjaminite is prepared to offer his daughter is the first instance of a disturbing willingness to sacrifice women that haunts the narrative. The overall lesson is that communication of any sort is ineffective where the audience is utterly unwilling to listen, as the

Benjaminites will not be appeased without sacrifice.

What Rousseau shows next is the weakness of speech when not backed up by force, as well as the weakness of human attachment when threatened by violence. The resort to force makes all communication cease. The Levite is too cowardly or selfish to face rape, so rather than sacrifice himself or his host’s daughter, “himself taking his beloved companion, without saying a single word to her, without raising his eyes to her, dragged her to the door and gave her up to the cursed

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men.” The Levite can neither justify himself nor recognize his partner as he casts her to the awaiting “pack of hungry wolves” (358; 1214). The weakness of love is again demonstrated: however powerful the Levite’s love was, it did not prevent him from sacrificing his beloved rather than himself.

Rousseau presages the Levite’s sign-making by using the young woman’s demise as an occasion for arousing compassion and outrage in his readers. Rousseau describes this horrifying scene in graphic detail (Judges does not) as the life goes out of the young woman: “how does her dying beauty not dampen your ferocious desires? See her eyes already closed to the light, her faded features, her dying face; the pallor of death has covered her cheeks, livid violets have chased away roses, she no longer has a voice to moan.” Her assailants are compared to beasts: “Barbarians, unworthy of the name men, your howls resemble the cries of the horrible Hyena, and like it you devour corpses” (358; 1214). The reaction in the reader must be horror at the bestial disregard for beauty and vulnerability. The message to such a merciful or soft modern reader: feel her pain - somehow such crimes must be prevented, or at least avenged. Rousseau changes the Levite’s reaction from Judges in a way that promotes compassion for him as well. In Judges, the Levite initially responds to his concubine’s rape with callous indifference.49 The Levite’s response in

Rousseau’s version is one of intense regret. The Levite weeps all night and awakens in the morning to find his wife on the threshold to the house. His first reaction is to raise “a plaintive cry toward

Heaven avenger of crime,” then to assure his wife that “you are more respectable to me now than

49 “And her master arose in the morning and opened the doors of the house and went out to go on his way. And, look, the woman, his concubine, was fallen at the entrance of the house, her hands on the threshold. And he said to her, ‘Get up, and let us go’” (Judges 19: 27-28).

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before your misfortunes.” Rousseau arouses pity for the Levite by showing his anguish. But in the narrative there is no one left to hear him.50

Rousseau finally reveals such despair as the origin of a certain type of thought and expression. Despair quickly turns to hate: “Is it then for this that I have taken you from your father’s house? Here, then, is the fate that my love prepared for you? He finished these words ready to follow her, and survived her only in order to avenge her” (358; 1215). The death of his beloved effectively ends the Levite’s will to live except for revenge. His love does not save her, but its total frustration empowers his will. This turn to hate sheds light on the languages of the north in Origin.

It can seem as if it is the harsh environment that leads to their harsh and calculating expression.51

But as I argued in chapter three, reflection reveals that scarcity is created by other men as much as by the environment; it is the competition between human beings that leads to “anger and threats,” directed toward others, as “their most natural voices.”52 Calculating designs and the angriest calls come not from facing threats to our needs encountered in nature but those created by clashes with other groups of people.53 The Levite illustrates this line of linguistic development. The hate born in the Levite seems initially to be a boon that imparts to him a powerful rationality. “From that instant … he was deaf to every other feeling; love, regret, pity, were all changed into fury in him.”

The Levite now contemplates his former beloved with “a dry and somber eye,” and comes up with his plan to use her corpse as a symbol (358-359; 1215). His one passion for revenge silences the

50 It is worth noting that in an earlier draft this was not the case. The woman of Judah utters these final words: “O my husband, my body is defiled, but my heart is pure. Do not refuse a coffin to your unfortunate wife” (OC II, 1924, my translation). 51 For instance: “since they [early men] have a hard time subsisting, the poorer they are, the more they cling to the little they have; to get close to them is to threaten their life” (Origin, 208; 408). 52 Origin, 280; 408. 53 In Origin Rousseau argues that “French, English, German are the private languages of men who help one another, who argue with one another in cold blood, or of excited men who get angry” (280-281, 409).

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others and gives him invention and determination. As we will see, however, the sort of rationality that emerges in the Levite remains perverted by its origin in anger.

VI. Unlocking the power of signs

The Levite now constructs his sign, which had been the occasion for Rousseau’s introduction of the episode in Origin. The Levite’s actions illustrate the features of the most powerful signs that lead to political unification, which meld “northern” fear and anger with

“southern” compassion and fellow-feeling, in more detail than the brief passage in Origin allowed.

Although demonstrating its power, Rousseau makes it clear he does not approve of the Levite’s actions, and thus that symbols born of hate should be mistrusted.

Rousseau’s description of the sign is detailed and revealing.

There, without hesitation, without trembling, the barbarous man dares cut that body into twelve

pieces; with a firm and sure hand he strikes without fear, he cuts the flesh and the bones, he separates

the head and the limbs, and afterward had these frightful parcels sent to the Tribes, he precedes them

to Mizpah, tears his clothing, covering his head with ashes, prostrates himself as they arrive and

calls out with great cries for the justice of the God of Israel (359; 1215, my emphasis).

The symbolism here is as impressive as it is terrible (and partly because it is terrible). Receiving a bloody severed limb must be a hair-raising sight. The split in twelve indicates that the whole body of the twelve tribes of Israel has been harmed. The sign partakes of the ferociousness, violence and appeal to fear of the most powerful signs in Origin. To this the symbol adds the compassion the reader and soon the Levite’s Israelite audience feel toward the unfortunate young woman. For the first but not last time, the sacrifice of a vulnerable woman is used to lead to identification.54

54 Feminist literature tends to be critical of Rousseau for the burden he thus seems to assign to women as symbols. see: Still, “Rousseau’s Levite;” Wingrove, “Republic Romance.” For a less critical assessment: Nicole Fermon, Domesticating Passions: Rousseau, Woman, and Nation (Hanover, New Hampshire: Wesleyan University Press, 1997).

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The symbol communicates viscerally the need for unified action while also leaving the reasoning for that need unclear. The Levite has been reading Origin: “The object presented before anything is said stimulates the imagination, arouses curiosity, holds the mind in suspense and anticipation of what will be said.”55 Certainly, the symbol forces the Israelites into a state of suspense and anticipation.

Rousseau leaves no doubt as to the singular power of the Levite’s actions. The beginning of the third canto emphasizes the unity created by his sign: “you would have seen the whole People of God be moved, assemble … all the Tribes hastening to Mizpah before the Lord, as a numerous swarm of bees gathers while humming around their King. They all came, they came from every part, from all the cantons, all in agreement like a single man from Dan to Beer-sheba, and from

Gilead to Mizpah” (359; 1216).56 The creation of this seemingly universal unity is impressive, but the reader is warned by the reappearance of animal language last seen in Rousseau’s description of the Benjaminite ravishers that there is something frighteningly inhuman about this surging mass.

The swarm’s actions will turn out to be both less united than it initially appears, and at least as terrible as what it attacks (as the first lines of the poem also indicate).

Even as Rousseau demonstrates that the root of cries for justice that provide the impulse to unite a community to fight injustice can lie in such hatred, he shows that the rationality created by anger and necessity can only be partial. They emerge from a wounded self and express its pain, not a measured assessment of the situation. However impressive it is, Rousseau means for us to be horrified at the Levite’s action. He has just called the cyclopean Gibeans barbarous, now the Levite earns this designation a well. His great cries for justice are more for revenge than for justice.

Contrary to the view of some commentators, Rousseau does not identify with the Levite – the

55 Origin, 249; 376. 56 This appears to faithfully follow Judges 20.1.

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Levite’s actions, inspired by hate, resemble those hate-filled persecutors Rousseau describes in his prefaces more than they do those of Rousseau.57 Like many of those persecutors, the Levite wishes to inflict violent punishment that Rousseau describes as barbarous.

The Levite’s speech to the assembled Israelites is a powerful but deceptive piece of oratory made possible by his gory sign. The attentive reader will notice the dubious and self-serving character of his reasoning, however effective it is. Having prepared his audience well, the Levite then amplifies the power of this message with his articulation of it.

I entered Gibeah … with my wife to pass the night there, and the people of the country surrounded

the house in which I was lodged, desiring to commit outrage against me and make me perish. I was

forced to deliver my wife to their debauchery, and she died in leaving their hands. Then I took her

body, I tore it to pieces, and I sent it to you each within your boundaries. People of the Lord, I have

spoken the truth; do what will seem to you just before the Almighty (359; 1216).

The Levite relieves himself of the responsibility for sacrificing his wife by claiming that he was forced to give her up. This is not the whole and sincere truth, contra some commentators,58 and is an effective speech not at realizing justice based on truth but at provoking vengeance based on the

Levite’s passion. We thus again cannot conclude that Rousseau wants the reader to identify fully with the Levite or that he approves of this action.

Just as the Levite’s speech is exaggerated, so is its effect. “Instantly a single cry arose in all Israel, but resounding, but unanimous: Let the blood of the young woman fall back upon her murderers. Long live the Eternal One! We will not go back to our dwelling places and none of us will return beneath this roof until Gibeah is exterminated” (359; 1216). The unity and power of

57 Contrary to Kavanagh’s interpretation, Rousseau does not dream of imitating the Levite (“Rousseau’s Le Levite,” 155-158). 58 Kavanagh, “Rousseau’s Le Levite,” 155-158; Still, “Rousseau’s Levite,” 25. Arthur Bradley similarly suggests that the Levite is a “tragic Romantic hero” (“Dismembered: Citizen Sacrifice in Rousseau’s ‘The Levite of Ephraim,’” Review of Politics 81 (2019): 231-253.

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this response is emphasized, but its direction is questionable. That response is not to find the guilty so that they may see justice, but to exterminate the whole city of Gibeah.59 This is not a proportional or appropriate response, at least from Rousseau’s perspective.60

Rousseau’s presentation of the Levite’s final moments shows that “northern” language, which attempts to overcome obstacles, tends to retain the limits of its origins, and to provide energy and reasoning that only furthers the end of the threatened individual. The Levite’s character has been consistently selfish – while he has had the illusion of sharing his goals with others, he has always acted on his own passion. Even his vengeance is for self-gratification. The end of the

Levite’s life is a sad spectacle of passion’s destructive potential. This dramatic ending for the

Levite contrasts sharply with that in Judges, where the Levite is simply not mentioned after his speech. “Then the Levite cried out with a strong voice: Blessed be Israel who punishes infamy and avenges innocent blood. Daughter of Bethlehem, I carry you good news; your memory will not remain without honor. In saying these words, he fell on his face and died” (359; 1216). The

Levite’s “strong voice” blesses the extreme action of Israel. His passion exhausted, he dramatically dies. He might seem to have died a hero’s death.61 But the ensuing nightmare will show that he has primarily done Israel harm, and neither himself nor his dead companion any good. His strong passion produces a powerful drive and the illusion of a need for revenge. But the memory of the

59 Both in Judges and in The Levite, there is an obvious echo of God’s judgment of Sodom and Gomorrah and Abraham’s attempt to save the innocent (Genesis 18-19). While Rousseau does not make it clear how many in Gibeah are guilty, at the very least the old man who had offered the Levite’s entourage shelter is not. 60 I partially disagree with Kochin’s otherwise perceptive analysis of the Levite’s speech when he argues that “These lies [of the Levite], which cover up his unforgivable unmanliness, make the moral solidarity they precipitate all the more estimable in Rousseau’s view. The author turns to the Bible to uncover and then praise the conditions of society that made the unified reception of and response to the Levite’s message possible” (“Living with the Bible,” 322). While it is true that Rousseau wishes to show the people shaped by Moses’ writing and institutions as capable of healthy unified action, this action comes only as the correction of an initial catastrophe. 61 The kernel of truth in those who think that Rousseau admires the Levite is Rousseau’s ambiguous treatment of those with strength of soul, even misdirected. According to Christopher Kelly, “What distinguishes the hero … seems to be simply the ability to compel admiration from most people rather than any necessary prudence or devotion to the common good” (Rousseau as Author, 83). Rousseau certainly shows that the Levite is imprudent and selfish, but there is something he seems to find admirable in his strength nonetheless.

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dead woman will not plausibly be honored by the ensuing massacre. There is no doubt that

Rousseau wishes to show the power of collective anger, but a powerful force misdirected is dangerous and undesirable even if remarkable. The reader is meant to be impressed but horrified.62

VII. Directing political unity 1: How good heaven is at avenging crimes

We have seen that the passions and their expressions in The Levite so far have been overly partial and vulnerable. The first half of The Levite clearly shows that human community cannot be secure without coercive force. Now that they have the force, the Israelites need direction. Most of the third canto, a full fourth of the work, covers the war between the other Israelite tribes and the

Benjaminites. Turning from the point of view of the Levite to that of the Israelite community as a whole, Rousseau in the final two cantos of The Levite illustrates the role of religious language and direction in politics. Religion’s power is essential to giving shape and strength to the passions, especially “northern” anger and desire for vengeance. This is unsurprising given that in the chapter on civil religion in the Social Contract Rousseau argues that religious expression is central to the language that the legislator must use to unite a people.63 The third canto of The Levite shows both the power of Hebrew faith to unite the Israelites, as well as the effects of direction by a priest.

Early Hebrew faith combines the elements of speech in Origin in a powerful arrangement: it tells the story of a chosen people, bound together by their divine calling and a shared history, facing off against fearful opponents. In Rousseau’s analysis, however, this faith, at least under priestly leadership, amplifies anger and its desire for revenge more effectively than it directs it.

62 This ambiguity is found throughout Rousseau. For him, the power of fanaticism makes it worth playing with that fire, even if the burning is often terrible. Hence, as noted by Ghislain Waterlot, “Rousseau never, completely and unambiguously, condemns fanaticism” (Rousseau: Religion et politique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 2004), 36, my translation). 63 In these famous passages the gods must be used “to rally without violence and to persuade without convincing … those whom human prudence could not move” (Social Contract, 71; OC III, 383-384).

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It might appear that Hebrew faith is an effective moderator of the basic passions, and there is some truth to this appearance. In the Social Contract Rousseau seems to cast early Israelite faith as a midway point between pagan religion and Christianity. But the ancient Hebrews hold a significant place in Rousseau’s analysis of religion as exemplars of what he calls the religion of the citizen. Closer examination reveals the ancient Hebrews to be an extreme themselves. “The

Gods of the Pagans were not jealous Gods; they divided the empire of the world among themselves: even Moses and the Hebrew People sometimes countenanced this idea in speaking of the God of

Israel.” But the God of Israel is finally a jealous God, who would “regard as naught the Gods of the Canaanites, proscribed peoples, doomed to destruction” and who would in exile refuse to bow to the gods of the conquerors.64 The Hebrews and their descendants are the longest-lasting of peoples in part because their religion maintains them as a people who sees and feels itself to be above and apart from other peoples.65

The political consequences of early Hebraic faith are particularly effective at political unification, at the price of intolerance and ferocity. It is thus exemplary of what Rousseau calls the religion of the citizen, which encourages civic unity by combining “divine worship and love of the laws,” but also has the negative effect that “becoming elusive and tyrannical, it makes a people bloodthirsty and intolerant; so that it breathes only murder and massacre, and believes it performs a holy deed in killing whoever does not accept its Gods.”66 This disposition to murder and massacre appears to apply much more to the actions of the Hebrews as Rousseau describes them than to the assimilationist and tolerant policies of the Greeks and Romans, as has been noted by

64 Social Contract, 143-144; OC III, 460-461. 65 The mechanisms for maintaining this separateness will be made thematic in chapter five. 66 Social Contract, 147; OC III, 464-465.

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commentators.67 On Rousseau’s presentation, early Hebraic faith takes the logic of exclusive religion to its extreme conclusion – the one true God and the chosen people should not bow before any other, and those of other faiths have a lesser status. The advantage of this exclusivity is that the symbolic and motivating power of said faith is also extreme.

The Levite provides an elaboration of this description of early Hebraic faith. It affirms that such faith has a unifying character, but attention to the action reveals a more complicated critique of the ferocity of this faith than is found in the Social Contract. The intensity of Hebraic faith is

“prejudicial to its own security” not only in placing the “people in a natural state of war with all others,” as in the Social Contract, but in encouraging an exaggerated response to violations of that faith within the community.68 This picture of Hebraic religion in canto three must be supplemented by the more positive one of canto four, but the critique is nonetheless real.69 Devotion to the one true God may lead to a dangerous furor once unleashed, as belief in Him amplifies primal anger and jealousy.70

Still, on Rousseau’s presentation, early Israelite faith also tempers some of their worst impulses. The first action of the Israelites is to swear a murderous oath: “The preparations for the war they were going to undertake began with a solemn oath to put to death anyone who failed to be present” (360; 1216). In their fury, the Israelites bind themselves to punish in an extreme manner any dereliction of duty. Yet to be fair to the Israelites in Rousseau’s version, having cooled from

67 Meier, Political Philosophy, 175fn115. Cf. Ronald Beiner, Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 81. 68 Social Contract, 147; OC III, 465. 69 Thus, I do not think we should go so far as to say that “As Rousseau understands them, the Jews surpass moderns, Christians, and Spartans and Romans because they exemplify a piety that attaches them to compassion and justice without radically detaching them from politics and justice in this world” (Marks, “Rousseau’s Use of Jewish Examples,” 478). Marks’ comment seems to be based on the fourth canto without consideration of the third, but as the fourth is mostly of Rousseau’s invention, this treatment in the third canto would seem to be his analysis of actual ancient Hebrew faith, and in any case cannot be ignored in such an analysis. 70 It is possible that Rousseau means for us to apply this lesson to Christianity as well, given his persecution by Christian authorities while writing the poem.

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their initial anger, they do attempt to reason with the Benjaminites. “But before drawing the sword against their brothers, they sent Heralds to the Tribe of Benjamin, who said to the Benjaminites:

Why is this horrible thing found amidst you? Give those who have committed it over to us so that they may die and that the evil may be removed from the bosom of Israel” (360; 1217). The fellow- feeling generated by their faith leads the Israelites to prefer a moderate solution. Unfortunately, as with the residents of Gibeah, this exhortation falls on deaf ears, but it is noteworthy that the

Israelites were able to consider a fairer and less bloody solution to the conflict.

The initial push for vengeance, even tempered by faith, does not produce happy results.

The war initially goes poorly, consultation of the Lord notwithstanding.71 The Lord responds to inquiry after defeat only with “go and fight; does your duty depend on the outcome?” and the

Israelites go to another defeat (361; 1218). The Lord’s motivating power is great; His guidance does not initially appear to be.

The third and final consultation with God is more detailed and worth considering at length, because it reveals the useful but potentially dangerous power of priestly pronouncements in political life. The people are beside themselves with despair: “God of Abraham, they said moaning, your people spared so many times in your just anger, will it perish for desiring to remove the evil from its bosom?” We are told now that the Israelites do not speak directly to God but “through the mouth of Phineas son of Eleazar,”72 whom they now ask again, “shall we march again against our brothers, or shall we leave Benjamin in peace?” God’s response through Phineas: “March, and no longer have faith in your numbers, but in the Lord who gives and takes away courage as it pleases

71 Rousseau explains the initial defeats by the foolishness and lack of preparation in the Israelite army, “having faith in their force and in their great numbers still more than in the justice of their cause” (360; 1217). 72 It may be worth noting that Phineas is a prominent Biblical character whose introduction seems to be the very height of zeal. He executes two fornicators to abate God’s wrath “when he zealously acted for my zeal,” as God puts it (Numbers 25:11).

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him. Tomorrow I shall deliver Benjamin into your hands” (361; 1218). The reminder of God’s mediation raises the question of who answers here: God or Phineas. The reader is also led to ask what God will do to aid the Israelites, whether he will intervene directly, or indirectly, if at all.

Phineas’ direction (or that of God) fills the Israelites with hope that allows them to conquer their paralyzing despair. Rousseau explains this transformation in a way that permits an entirely secular explanation. “Instantly they … felt the effect of this promise in their hearts. A cold and sure valor succeeded their brutal impetuosity, enlightening and leading them. They calmly prepared for combat and no longer presented themselves for it as wild men, but as wise and brave men who know how to vanquish without fury and die without despair” (361; 1219, my emphasis).

The effect of God’s answer is immediate, calming their passion and allowing the Israelites to reason. The assurance of divine support is as effective at leading to sure reasoning as the Levite’s hatred. But the cold sobriety given to the Levite by his hatred did not transfer beyond its origin in his personal despair, and while the anger at injustice created by his actions gave the Israelites the impetus to act, only their faith can give the community an even temper. The Israelites now think to use military tactics, and set an ambush for the Benjaminites, who have grown overconfident, caught “in the dizziness of a vain success” (361; 1219). The Benjaminites are dramatically routed after the destruction of Gibeah: “they saw with fear the whirlwinds of smoke that announced to them the disaster of Gibeah. Then, struck with terror in their turn, they knew that the arm of the

Lord had reached them” (362; 1219). While there is no direct evidence of divine intervention in the Israelite victory, the language of the whirlwind suggests that the Benjaminites and Israelites both see the arm of the Lord as the cause of the victory.73 Phineas’ speech here seems to have been

73 The “whirlwinds of smoke” evoke the image of God as a whirlwind. The Israelite terror makes the Benjaminites think that God’s justice has reached them. The obverse of divine inspiration is paralyzing divine terror. See e.g. Job 38:1; Jeremiah 23:19. Belief in God might also lead to paralyses.

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most useful as inspiration. Belief in God’s support expressed in dire circumstances leads to more effective action.

But Rousseau shows that this priestly direction came to a bad end. While Phineas’ third intervention saves the Israelites from defeat, they have made destructive oaths and committed terrible acts in their righteousness. The final result is that “on this day of anger and murder, almost the whole Tribe of Benjamin … perished under Israel’s sword” (362; 1220). The ferocious response of the Israelites to injustice leads to the death of 66,000, including those lost in the initial fighting. That Rousseau bemoans this result, like the Israelites and most of his readers, is clear from his description of the event as one of anger and murder. The Israelites regret their actions as well: “raising their voices, they wept: they wept for their victory after having wept for their defeat.

God of Abraham, they cried out in their affliction, oh, where are your promises, and how has this evil happened to your people that a Tribe was extinguished in Israel?” (362; 1220). Regret replaces elation as the Israelites realize what they have done.

The final lines of this canto confirm Rousseau’s critique of the religion of the citizen as energizing political speech at the price of a murderous fanaticism. A response is supplied to the

Israelite lament, but for the only time in The Levite, Rousseau does not specify who responds. It is not unreasonable to think that the response is that of Rousseau the narrator, especially because it condemns not only the Israelites but also the direction of God (or at least Phineas), and thus is unlikely to be a speech of Phineas. This response highlights the need for reason or understanding and the danger of basing action on passion. “Unhappy humans who do not know what is good for you, you have desired well to sanctify [sanctifier] your passions; they always punish you for the excesses they make you commit, and it is by fulfilling your unjust vows that Heaven makes you atone for them” (362; 1220). The accusation is that the Israelites do not understand their own good,

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although we receive no positive indication of what that good might be here. Their misunderstanding of their good leads them to sanctify, or make the basis of their community, their passions, which they take to excess. Their punishment is not bestowed directly by Heaven but is the result of their own actions, actions that God-as-Phineas encouraged them to undertake.

However powerful, political unity directed by priests and faith looks here undesirable. The passions amplified by this faith have created a catastrophe.

VIII. Directing political unity 2: Compassion, justice, heroism

Insofar as The Levite offers a positive teaching on political speech, it is mostly found in canto four. It is useful first to recast the problems that need addressing. The first two cantos of The

Levite end in fragmentation or disaster. The modes of communication used to unite and support pre-political human communities are too fragile. As self-love expands and expresses itself, no mode of communication gives individuals a reliable way to unite. “Southern” language expressive of love and an expanding sense of self relies on beautiful illusions or changeable attachments.

“Northern” reasoning remains too tied to individual need and desire to persuade or asses a situation from the view of another. The third canto showed the problems of the potent combination of northern and southern language in theocratic rule. While Hebrew faith, empowered by a symbol recruiting both sides of human speech, unified the Israelites effectively, Rousseau showed such rule to be a disastrous amplifier of passion, as it retained the partiality of its origin in individual anger. What appears required are forms of speech or institutions that would restrain and direct passion.

In the fourth canto, which, like the first canto, is almost entirely Rousseau’s invention, he illustrates the sorts of communication that can direct a healthy community. From Rousseau’s

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assessment at the end of the third canto, we might hope for an understanding of the political good to direct the passions that have put the Israelites in their situation. The action of the poem does much to fulfill such hopes, at least insofar as that good is political unity and peace. Rousseau again shows the need to weave together the passionate and expansive languages of the south with the reason and concern for justice fostered by the reactive and calculating languages of the north. In the fourth canto, expansive language takes the form of compassion for the weak and the vulnerable of the community. The desire for justice still comes from a “northern” impetus of anger but leads to positive results by taking the form of clever planning and an invocation of general communal rights.

The narrative of The Levite in canto four first lingers revealingly over the role of compassion in Israelite decision making. As far as I am aware, nowhere else does Rousseau make so thematic the role of compassion in politics and political deliberation.74 The lesson of The Levite is that compassion is essential but without direction also misleading.75 When first introduced, compassion provides the initial impetus for healing communal wounds, but by its partiality leads to further disasters. The regretful Israelites are now “moved with compassion for the six hundred” remaining Benjaminites (362; 1220). They feel the harm in their body as if the Benjaminites were their own. This indicates that they have formed an affective identity with them (even if the

Benjaminites have not likewise formed one with them). But they “had sworn to the Lord” what

74 A possible competitor: the description of the sentiment of humanity in the Political Economy (15-16; OC III, 254- 255). 75 This way of articulating the problem is reminiscent of the Emile, but applied to a specific human community: “To prevent pity from degenerating into weakness, it must, therefore, be generalized and extended to the whole of mankind. Then one yields to it insofar as it accords with justice” (253; OC IV, 547). The generalization of pity in the political case must orient it toward the community as a whole. See Orwin, “Rousseau and the Discovery of Political Compassion,” 307-08. As Bloom puts it: “Compassion is not … just in itself, but it is the preparation for understanding and practicing justice” (Love and Friendship, 69). Similarly, Nussbaum suggests that “compassion, engendered prototypically by an individual narrative of distress, can often destabilize good principles through just this particularism” (Political Emotions, 317).

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Rousseau calls a “cruel oath” that they would never marry their daughters to the Benjaminites.

Their compassion runs up against a vow issued in a moment of righteous anger. This leads them to contemplate “still greater” murders in order to find wives so that the tribe of Benjamin may continue. It now turns out that the supposed universal unity of the beginning of canto three, however impressive, was an exaggeration, and that the inhabitants of the town of Jabesh-Gilead had not mustered. Only the four hundred virgin women of this town escape slaughter (363; 1221).

The Israelites are now partial to the Benjaminites due to their compassion and ignore the peril of an entire town in order to abide by their passionate decree.

While disapproving of the killings, Rousseau’s assessment of these villagers assigns them a share of the responsibility, as they were also misled by compassion directed at a particular object.

The villagers, “looking less to the punishment of the crime than to the effusion of fraternal blood, had turned away from vengeance more atrocious than infamy, without considering that perjury and desertion of the common cause are worse than cruelty. Alas! Death, barbarous death was the price for their unjust pity” (363; 1221). Rousseau approves of the villagers’ resistance to excessive punishment but faults them for allowing their pity to lead them to betray their oath and their duty.

The punishment of death for turning away from that duty was “barbarous,” but we still have two instances of compassion disastrously misdirected.

Rousseau then shows for a third and final time that compassion is insufficient and dangerous as a political passion. At the same time, he suggests the possibility of rational direction.

At this point, Rousseau introduces a character, an “old man of Lebonah” who comes up with a flawed plan to prevent further slaughter.76 The introduction of the plan raises the possibility of

76 Canto four contains several characters that appear to be the counterparts of those in the first half of the The Levite. The first instance is this old man of Lebonah, who like the old man of Gibeah, appears as a reasoner attempting to mitigate disaster. In a way they are hidden heroes of the work: Both freely choose to put themselves in harm’s way. The old man of Lebonah will ultimately have more success, but not due to his plan alone.

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skilled, rational leadership and is at least an improvement on the plan of mass murder. But the old man’s plan relies too heavily on compassion and requires the unwilling sacrifice of a particular part of the community. The plan will need to be saved from itself by an assertion of the general will and heroic self-sacrifice. This old man’s plan is relayed behind the scenes and is conveyed only to “the elders”: “Say then to the children of Benjamin: Go, and set an ambush in the vines; then, when you see that the women of Shiloh leave to dance with flutes, then surround them, and each abduct his woman, return to establish yourselves along with them the country of Benjamin”

(364; 1221). Mass murder is replaced by forceful abduction. Compassion is meant to insure the success of the enterprise. To the families of the stolen women, the old man suggests that they say:

“have pity on them [the Benjaminites] for love of us and of yourselves who are their brothers.”

Have pity for the suffering of Israel, of which you are part. Indeed, after the dramatic abduction scene, “the people, moved by compassion for the Benjaminites, took an interest on their behalf”

(364; 1222). The people are moved by compassion for the predicament of the Benjaminites, but in a way that causes them to forget the oppression of the abducted women.

It is here that Rousseau dramatizes an appeal to the general will of the whole community, and the proper relationship that religion should play in reinforcing it. This is one role for rationalism in public speech. Whatever else it is, the general will is a set of general rules, coming from all and applying to all, that protects the essential shared interests of the community.77 As

Rousseau argues in the Social Contract, the role of law and speech promoting and enforcing law is to remind the community of its most important and general foundations, whereas the community

“loses its natural rectitude when it tends toward some individual and determinate object.”78 Not

77 Rousseau’s use of the general will is complicated and the literature mirrors its importance and complexity. Two discussion I have found quite helpful: Melzer, Natural Goodness, 150-199; Gopal Sreenivasan, “What is the General Will?” Philosophical Review 109 (2000): 545-581. 78 Social Contract, 62, OC III 373.

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only the Israelites, but most individuals in The Levite have demonstrated the dangers of particular calculation. Instead, with the adherence to general principles that apply to all, “in this institution, everyone necessarily submits to the conditions which he imposes on others; an admirable agreement between interest and justice which confers on common deliberations a character of equity that is seen to vanish in the discussion of any particular affair.”79 When the community thinks in terms of general rules, it thinks in terms of protecting each member of the whole community, rather than benefitting particular groups or individuals, often at the expense of others.

Rousseau succinctly shows the utility of general reasoning in action in The Levite. He creates a republican scene, with the Israelite people assembled together, hearing arguments.80 To counter the partial appeals of the old man of Lebonah and the compassionate Israelites, the furious fathers of these women appeal to the equal protections due to Israelites qua Israelites. The fathers turn their angry desire for justice in a productive direction: toward the enforcement of communal rights.

Before what Rousseau casts as an “assembly” of all Israel, the fathers of the abductees point to what is owed to any member of the community, not a particular subset of it. “They cried vehemently, will the daughters of Israel be subjected and treated as slaves beneath the eyes of the

Lord? Benjamin will be to us as the Moabite and the Idumean? Where is the freedom of the people of God?” (364; 1222). Now the Israelites are reminded of their special status and the rights that status should provide.

79 Social Contract, 62, OC III, 374. 80 Rousseau follows a trend in modern political thought of using the Hebrews as useful for understanding Republicanism. See: Eric Nelson, The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2010). That said, as Nelson points out, while in the seventeenth century the Hebrews were usually used positively, in the eighteenth century the philosophes “rarely liked what they saw” in the ancient Hebrews (Hebrew Republic, 139). So although there was a tradition of using the ancient Hebrews as an example for republican purposes, Rousseau in The Levite largely opposes his immediate contemporaries. 127

It is important to see what sort of appeal this is and what sort it is not. This appeal is to the pride - the amour-propre – of the Israelites: we should be proud of our God-granted freedom, which other peoples do not have. This invocation of religious particularity seems unequivocally useful as political rhetoric: aren’t we, God’s chosen, too good to surrender our freedom like this?

This is religion as reinforcement for the sacredness of the laws, not director of the law.81 Still, the fathers appeal to a freedom that should “apply to all,”82 and it is in that sense a universalistic rational appeal, to an unnamed general will.83

What the appeal is not is an explicit reference to a teaching called “the general will,” or an example of wide-ranging deliberation (at least that the reader is privy to). Instead, the fathers recognize the enforcement of basic general rights as being entailed by their status as the chosen people. There is no debate about what those rights are or reasoning from general principles.84 That this invocation of general rights does not display any such reasoning suggests that Rousseau does not expect citizens of a functioning polity to think only after having understood the intricacies of the Social Contract. The existence of a general will at the very least does not require refined reflection on political principles. From what we have seen so far, complex individualistic reasoning has tended rather to point away from the community or to be ineffectual. Interpreters who place a

81 As in the civil religion of the Social Contract (252; OC III, 480), religion serves to lend force to the overly rationalistic general will. As Dobel notes, “The social contract can be expressed best as a rational solution to an abstract ethical and political problem, but as such, it suffers from all the same limitations of any abstract solution; it cannot effectively compete with individual desires and passions. Rousseau must imbed the general will in politically effective language” (“Role of Language,” 646). 82 Social Contract, 63; OC III, 373. It is unclear whether the freedom here is meant to come from God or simply to be assured by his favor. For Rousseau, such freedom should “issue from all” as well as apply to all, rather than issue from God. The way Rousseau sets up this situation here, with a complete assembly of the people, does in fact have this freedom at least reaffirmed by the people, even if they do not see it as issuing from them. 83 It is an illustration that somehow the general principles of the social contract are “everywhere tacitly admitted and recognized” (Social Contract, 50; OC III, 360). 84 Thus it seems wrong to characterize such an extension of amour-propre as “seeing every other person orienting his own activity in the same way towards the judgment of a generalized observer” (Axel Honneth, “The depths of recognition” in Engaging with Rousseau: Reactions and Interpretations from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Avi Lifschitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 196). Rather, an extension of amour-propre means that citizens feel that their true identity is that of their state, as if it were an individual that they were part of.

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great deal of emphasis on a shared and highly reflective understanding of the general will go the opposite direction of Rousseau’s own presentation.85

When the appeal to the freedoms granted by the community is reinforced by divine authority, it proves effective. Again it is the partiality of pity that is the problem to be overcome.

“Torn between justice and pity, the assembly at last pronounces that the captives would recover their freedom and decide their fate for themselves. The abductors, forced to cede to the judgment, released them with regret, and tried to substitute for force with more powerful means over their young hearts” (364; 1222). A sense of justice reinforced by attachment to Israel’s special status vis-à-vis other people convinces the assembly to free the abducted women.

As important as Rousseau shows the appeal to general rights to be, he also shows that this appeal can only go so far in dealing with the community’s problems. Communal norms having been established or re-established, the remaining Benjaminites must try persuasion. They attempt to move their former abductees with compassion, and with reason such as the Levite had attempted with his companion (an appeal to their being as good as anyone else): “they followed them, held out their arms, and cried to them: daughters of Shiloh, will you be more happy with others? Are the remnants of Benjamin unworthy of swaying you?” Some are moved by this plea, but others already had “secret attachments” and are not (364; 1222). Such an attempt to move young hearts by a list of abstract goods is again relatively ineffective (of course, the aggression of the

85 Joshua Cohen argues that Rousseau “gives no evidence of believing that a contractual justification for the authority of the general will cannot be given to those who have such a will – no evidence of believing that political legitimacy cannot be reflective and transparent” (A Free Community of Equals, 90). On the contrary, as I have shown, Rousseau does seem to think that too much reflection undermines affective allegiance. Warner argues correctly that “citizen identity is constituted best when citizens themselves do not realize that their identities are being constituted” (Problem of Human Relations, 199). Horowitz similarly notes that “Sparta did not need a theory of contract, although it might be possible to read one back into the Spartan polity forcefully” (Rousseau, 175). See also Honneth, “The depths of recognition,” 198; Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy, 67.

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Benjaminites is a problem itself). The Benjaminites who cannot persuade their targets seem stuck.

Israel’s problems are not amenable to a solution based on general rights or general reasoning.

The effectiveness of the appeal to communal rights cannot go further than protection of those rights, and particular attachments reassert themselves. Only virtuous sacrifice will have the symbolic power necessary to fully heal the community. In the last scene of The Levite, Rousseau reminds the reader of the potent mix of social passions that make political life so difficult, but whose recruitment will also be necessary for its partial redemption. This scene echoes the first canto. The situation poses the risk of leading to events similar to the vengeful action of its titular character. Rousseau tells the story of one of the freed women and her lover. “Axa, the tender Axa, among others … furtively cast her eyes on young Elmacin to whom she had been promised and who came full of grief and rage to free her at the price of his blood. Elmacin saw her again, extended his arms, cried out and could not speak” (365; 1223). Elmacin, like the Levite, is so consumed by his attachment as to be unable to speak. Like the Levite, he is prepared to trigger bloodshed for his beloved (although more bravely and directly). Readers are reminded again of the unstable passions of the first half of The Levite, but the invocation of Israelite freedom has prevented their renewed explosion.

No sooner does Rousseau present some hope that this time love might have its day, institutionalized and sanctioned by marriage and paternal agreement, than he dashes the reader’s hope by showing the high price some individuals must pay for maintaining political community.

The old man that Rousseau had introduced earlier, and who had presented the kidnapping scheme, turns out to be Axa’s father. His plan having reached an impasse, he will now require a great sacrifice. “Axa, he said to her, you know my heart; I love Elmacin, he would have been the consolation of my old age, but the salvation of your people and the honor of your father must win

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out over him. Do your duty, my daughter, and save me from opprobrium among my brothers, for

I have counseled everything that has been done” (365; 1223). We first have the potential for the reconciliation: in this instance, conjugal and paternal love appear to be reconciled in the father’s love of his future son-in-law. Yet the fraught situation requires that the father sacrifice his happiness and that of Axa and Elmacin for the community.

The actions of Axa remind the reader that compassion for the weak is a key ingredient of the most powerful symbols, but also suggest that heroic sacrifice, rather than violence, can be its source. In response to her father’s words, “Axa kisses his head and sighs without responding, but finally, raising her eyes, she encounters those of her venerable father. They said more than his mouth; she makes her choice. Her weak and trembling voice scarcely pronounces, in a weak and last farewell, the name of Elmacin, at whom she dares not look, and instantly turning round half dead, she falls into the arms of the Benjamite” (365; 1223). Axa’s emotions, conveyed through looks, initially pull her in two directions: loyalty to her father and her people, and her love, but her recognition of the need to fulfill her duty in his eyes persuades her. Rousseau does not fully clarify the source of her will to choose the community over her particular will, but perhaps it is in the faith that has motivated so many of her compatriots as much as loyalty to her father.86 In any case, Axa’s determined display of “weakness” arouses the compassion of the onlookers. The compassion that misleads in the rest of the narrative finally serve a productive end. The price for triggering this passionate response is high - Axa must commit herself to someone she does not love.

The couple was well matched, as Elmacin shows himself to be as astute a symbol maker as Axa or the Levite. But whereas the Levite had used his victimized companion to drive the

Israelites to frenzied vengeance, Elmacin completes his beloved’s sacrifice by joining it and tying

86 That it is her faith above all is the thesis of Arthur Bradley: Axa is motivated by a sort of “sacrificial counterfanaticism” that leads her to “meet this sacrificial demand by the state” (“Dismembered,” 242; 240).

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it explicitly to serving the community’s faith. He responds to his former fiancé’s actions in a way that solidifies those actions as politically significant.

A noise arises in the assembly. But Elmacin advances and makes a sign with his hand. Then, raising

his voice: hear, O Axa, he says to her, my solemn vow. Since I cannot be yours, I shall never be

another’s. The sole remembrance of our young years which innocence and love have embellished

are enough for me. Never has the steel passed over my head, never has wine moistened my lips, my

body is as pure as my heart. Priests of the living God: I dedicate myself to your service; receive the

Nazirite of the Lord (365; 1223).

Axa’s dramatic sacrifice rouses Israel, and Elmacin uses a quick hand sign to silence the assembled

Israelites. He will join in her sacrifice by dedicating himself to the living God who assures the unique significance of his community. He becomes something like the new Levite, but one more dedicated to the Lord and whose actions serve the community’s interests rather than his own.87

The beauties of love inspire political unity, but only by being forsworn.88 In this way, beautiful

“southern” language pairs with a sense of Israel’s uniqueness to weave the community back together.

The Levite has come full circle. Where the sign of a gruesome corpse had roused Israel to create more corpses, the virtuous actions of a young couple leads to the community’s reconciliation. The striking sacrifice of Axa and Elmacin fires the imagination of the Israelite women to an act of imitation. “Straightaway, as by a sudden inspiration, all the young women, carried along by the example of Axa, imitate her sacrifice, and renouncing their first loves, they

87 See Numbers 6: 1-21. Though the Nazarene committed to living a life apart from the community through certain practices, it is not clear what the substance of their life entailed. 88 In D’Alembert Rousseau notes that for modern peoples, uninterested and unfamiliar with active political participation, love, “if it is well depicted, it overshadows everything” (55; OC V, 52). Christopher Kelly speculates that this led Rousseau to abandon the writing of his Lucrece, for “the romantic theme is sure to overwhelm the political theme it is meant to support” (Rousseau as Author, 107). Why he left such a sad romance in The Levite is perplexing from this point of view, but might indicate again the quite limited effect that Rousseau thinks he can have on a modern audience. From a philosophical point of view, it also illustrates effectively the high degree of sacrifice necessary for healthy political life.

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deliver themselves to the Benjaminites who pursued them. At this touching sight arose a cry of joy in the midst of the People. Virgins of Ephraim, through you Benjamin is going to be reborn.

Blessed be the God of our fathers! There are still virtues in Israel!” (365; 1223). Virtue and commitment to the idea of Israel overcome personal love. This seems to be a celebratory ending.

The freely chosen sacrifice of Axa and Elmacin replaces the young woman of Judah’s involuntary sacrifice as the inspirational symbol that leads to presumably more stable political unity.

IX. Shocking the lambs, but not making wolves – extreme rhetoric for indolent subjects

Although it has a dramatic resolution, the modern reader may be more stunned and disgusted than happy with The Levite’s ending. The Benjaminites, criminal rebels, are welcomed back into the community, and the community is reminded of the political rights to protection that should come along with its particular status. But this status was effective only with the invocation of that status as exclusive, as belonging only to the Israelites and not to their inferior neighbors.

The route here has been a river of blood, and only the sacrifice of a virtuous family can lead to this new unity. Is it worth it, or this the ending meant to be “ironic” and revolting?89 Rousseau leads us to ask this question. Elizabeth Wingrove argues that “Rousseau demonstrates how romance consummates the rip-off, or in other words, how women’s status as generator of signs is crucial to a social system organized by sexuality and is paradigmatic of a political order that is always, in the final instance, coercive.”90 Two problems, in particular, then, might strike the modern reader: the heavier price paid by women in establishing political order, and the ultimately coercive nature of that order.

89 Rosenberg, “Rousseau’s Levite,” 172. 90 Wingrove, “Republican Romance,” 26.

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Rousseau does not shy away from showing the heavy price women must pay in society, and he gives no evidence in The Levite or elsewhere of thinking that this can be avoided. It cannot be denied that the suffering of women affords the most powerful instances meant to generate compassion in the work, both for the Israelites and Rousseau’s audience. Women are better at arousing compassion by the display of their weakness and vulnerability; Rousseau does not find men equally capable of furnishing this side of the symbolic equation necessary for political speech.

Perhaps better ways can be found to arouse compassion and identification, although Rousseau’s consistent use of women to arouse such feelings of attachment suggests that he does not think so.91

However, Rousseau’s purpose seems to be at least in part to draw attention to and to criticize the price women have paid.92 This critical intent is made clear in a comment Rousseau makes to the old man of Lebonah’s plan to remarry the Benjaminites to captive brides. “What weddings for the timid young virgins, whose brothers, fathers, mothers had just been slaughtered before their eyes, and who received ties of attachment and of love from hands filthy with the blood of their near ones! A sex always slave or tyrant, which man oppresses or adores, and which he can nevertheless make happy or be so himself only by leaving it equal to him” (364; 1221). While arousing the reader’s compassion for the young women, Rousseau also complains that there must be a better way. He advertises briefly a more egalitarian understanding of the sexes which will allow them not to tyrannize one another, a suggestion that points toward his treatment of Emile and Sophie.93 While I cannot elaborate Rousseau’s entire contentious sexual politics here, it must

91 Rousseau’s unfinished tragedy The Death of Lucretia is another prominent example (OC II, 1019-1045). 92 For recent defenses of Rousseau’s treatment of women: Shaeffer, Rousseau on Education, 138; Claudia Schaler, “Over Her Dead Body: Voila La Ciyoyenne?” in Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity, ed. Mark Hulliung (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2016): 63 -85. 93 In Emile Rousseau argues that the sexes are equal but should play different roles (358; OC III, 693-694).

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at least be said that he too thinks it is a problem that societies, and especially unified and virile political societies like that of The Levite, demand so much sacrifice of women.94

As for the coercive nature of politics, Rousseau shows us the heavy price required by free political society and expects the modern reader to be leery of paying it. The community is no doubt coercive in the end. Here though it does not take a Hobbes to see that such coercion, while unpleasant, is not a rip-off. The violence and instability of the late state of nature, as well as the horror of civil war, are worse than the self-abnegation of the virtuous.95

The reaction of disgust by contemporary commentators is apt, however. Rousseau does not want the reader to identify with the Israelites, at least at their most ferocious, or with the barbarous

Levite. As Dugan and Strong suggest, “The decision of these women and Rousseau’s own act of poetry stand in opposition to the savage responses of the Levite and Israelites.”96 Rousseau rather wants the reader to sympathize with sacrifice and with beauty, and to be horrified at barbarism, as the dramatic action and Rousseau’s authorial interventions make clear.

The shocking nature of the text is meant to make readers less complacent in the face of injustice. As Ruth Grant notes, “Rousseau’s … extreme rhetoric … can be justified on prudential grounds. Given a situation where the greatest danger is complacency, rousing rhetoric can be defended despite its inherent risks.”97 Rousseau does not want his readers to be as energetic as the

94 Arthur Bradley is right to suggest that there is a “genuine ambivalence in his representation of Axa which troubles any attempt to reduce her to either martyr or scapegoat, political actor or rape victim: Axa’s decision to marry is indeed presented as free and unforced — her father does implore her to do her duty as a daughter (“fais ton devoir ma fille”) but neither he, her lover, nor even the Benjaminites could be said to physically coerce her into marriage—yet, at the same time, the philosopher’s description of a woman falling “half-dead” into the arms of a man is hardly redolent of the free act of a strong political agent either” (“Dismembered,” 248). 95 Though in the Second Discourse Rousseau casts the birth of political society as being the result of a swindle by the rich over the poor, nevertheless “even the wise saw that they had to make up their mind to sacrifice one part of their freedom to preserve the other” (Second Discourse, 173; OC III, 178). The burdens of society are always shared unequally, but even for Rousseau, this does not mean that we can avoid them or should prefer anarchy or civil war. 96 Dugan and Strong, “Representation in Rousseau,” 347. 97 Grant, Hypocrisy and Integrity, 105.

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ancient Hebrews, but he does not think that this is likely, given his modern audience.98 He can safely encourage virtue, confident that his audience is too distant from the strength of soul characteristic of the ancients to imitate their martial savagery.99 Their disgust at the violence of

The Levite should reinforce their desire to avoid strenuous political commitments if it needs reinforcing. The hope is to have disposed the reader toward the midway point between indifference based on weakness, and martial fury, that Rousseau indicates is his goal in the opening lines of poem.

X. The limits of political speech

Though aspects of the dramatic action help us to see how Rousseau thinks he needs to communicate with a modern audience, the most important results of reading The Levite for the purposes of this dissertation are substantive. Rousseau gives us an illustration of the bases of different types of social speech, and the roles that they play in political life. The Levite begins by elaborating the teaching on the passions and their communication in Origin, showing the reader the most powerful social passions and the difficulty of aligning them in a salutary manner.

A comparison of the two great symbolic actions of the prose poem shows how heroic symbols can be misused and how they can support healthy community. The Levite’s symbol uses a painful evocation of physical violence against an innocent woman to arouse compassion and rage on the part of what had been a disparate community. Axa and Elmacin’s self-sacrifice similarly arouses compassion. Rousseau indicates that it is this sort of combined appeal to individual

98 “Heroism … overwhelms us even more than it moves us, because, what has it do with us?” (D’Alembert, 32). 99 Rousseau seems to have been mistaken about this. I consider this problem in the conclusion.

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weakness and communal vulnerability that makes for the most potent symbolism.100 The vulnerability of the community made manifest requires and elicits a unified response. While both the Levite and Elmacin appeal to Hebrew faith to lead the community once it is at attention, they show different ways this can be done. The Levite points the community toward vengeance, while

Elmacin reinforces commitment to duty and the protection of the community’s special status.

This chapter began by raising the question of the role of calculating reason in political speech above all, and Rousseau provides answers. Developed rationality comes to light as necessary, but its purview limited. It plays two key roles. The first role is that of generalizing passion so that it protects the whole community. The Israelite fathers invoke a general commitment to the protection of rights, but not in terms of rights, the general will, or any other formal principle, but as due specifically to the Israelite people as unique and superior.101 This invocation of what

Rousseau calls justice combines the two sides of “northern” language in a helpful manner: the calculation of interests is empowered by anger at injustice, and anger’s demands are directed by being filtered through a general claim made in the interest of the whole community. The second role for calculation is that of providing direction. In The Levite an old man tries to lead from behind the scenes with a complicated scheme. His cleverness improves the situation, although true political healing requires heroic and symbolic sacrifice. The role of abstract and calculating reason, while key, is thus heavily circumscribed. It allows for political direction, and it helps the community to see the general will. This is important, but such reason in The Levite can neither form the motivational basis of political community and the speech that helps found it, nor is it

100 As Nussbaum notes, “If altruistic national emotion is to have motivational power, it needs to hitch itself to the concrete: named individuals (founders, heroes), physical particulars (features of landscape, vivid images and metaphors), and, above all, narratives of struggle, involving suffering and hope” (Political Emotions, 209). 101 Nussbaum notes this feature of patriotism as something to be continually guarded against (Political Emotions, 206). If Rousseau is right, however, it is constitutive of patriotism as such and is a price that must be paid.

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enough to maintain that basis. As Rousseau casts it, its part is to direct and shape political life without playing the central role on the political stage.

An objection could be posed to my interpretation of The Levite’s significance: if modern people are so different from ancient ones, as Rousseau clearly thinks they are, this raises the possibility that they (or later people) might be able to perfect political speech in a way that no early people could. Perhaps The Levite is so horrifying because it is a warning meant to dispel nostalgia, and its teachings about ancient political life are of purely historical interest. To the contrary: on

Rousseau’s account, no higher synthesis of the unifying and energetic political speech of The

Levite and highly-developed rational argumentation is possible. The essential contours of reason’s limits in politics, and the role that compassion and anger must play in political speech, remain as we have found them in this chapter. To see why Rousseau denies the possibility of a seemingly desirable higher synthesis, and to better see his understanding of modern audiences, I return to

Origin.

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Chapter 5: The progress and decay of political speech

“And it shall be, when he sits on his throne of kingship, that he shall write for himself a copy of this teaching in a book before the Levitical priests. And it shall be with him, and he shall read it in all the days of his life, so that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this teaching and these statutes, to do them, so that his heart be not haughty over his brothers and so that he swerve not from what is commanded right or left, in order that he may long endure in his kingship, he and his sons, in the midst of Israel.” – Deuteronomy 17: 17-21

“But whence each of these gods came into existence, or whether they were for ever, and what kind of shape they had were not known until the day before yesterday, if I may use the expression; for I believe that Homer and Hesiod were four hundred years before my time – and no more than that. It is they who created for the Greeks their Theogony; it is they who gave the gods the special names for their descent from their ancestors and divided among them their honors, their arts, and their shapes.” – Herodotus, Histories, 2.53

“I hate books. They only teach one to talk about what one does not know.” – Rousseau, Emile, 184

In The Levite Rousseau dramatized the creation of an energetic polity maintained through powerful signs and speech, along with force. But Rousseau sees his modern readers as largely incapable of such speech and action. This chapter explains how language became less politically potent, and the impact that this decline has on the limits and possibilities faced by modern peoples.

Along with the difficulty of joining together the different human passions displayed in chapters three and four, there is a natural tendency of the forms of language to undermine one another, which always occurs to some extent as language develops. The first section of this chapter explains this dynamic. The second section shows the background conditions necessary for societies, such as the Israelites in The Levite, to resist this dynamic that tends to render political language impotent. The third section shows how most of the societies that maintained powerful political speech lost it through specific social developments that exacerbate the tendency of the progress of language to undermine political life: the advent and advance of commerce, despotic and distant governance, Christianity, and most importantly, the progress of the arts and sciences.

In the final two sections of the chapter I argue that according to Rousseau modern societies cannot fully repair the decay of political speech, against a substantial movement in Rousseau scholarship that argues he has a more optimistic view. Rousseau’s diagnosis does leave some hope

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that the decline of language can be slowed in a few relatively isolated modern societies. But the chapter culminates in an exploration of Emile as the most complete solution to the problems posed in Origin as well as Theatrical Imitation. I argue that it is in Emile that Rousseau attempts to create a modern man who resists the problems caused by the decay of speech while retaining some of the advantages of the development of reason. Yet I also argue that Emile, the exemplary solution to the problems of language in modern times, is not a political model with wide applicability.

I. The decay of civilized language: The separation of speech and writing, accuracy and precision

The fundamental tension that leads to the decline of language can be stated as a paradox: as language becomes more precise at articulating clear ideas and complicated phenomena, it tends to become less accurate at expressing our lived experiences and passions. To return to the analysis of the previous chapters, Rousseau posits two functions of language: as expression of our sentiments and experiences of the world, and as a tool to understand and manipulate the world to overcome resistance. Expressive language was characterized as “southern” and manipulative and reactive language “northern” – but successful politics managed to mix the two, and all languages have some elements of both. The basic problem of this chapter is that as language develops, the function of understanding and manipulating the world more and more displaces the expressive function. The attempt to understand and manipulate the physical world makes language more accurate, in the sense that it provides human beings with increased ability to use that world. There is no doubt that humankind’s abilities in the arts and technology make progress. Yet this development comes with drawbacks. In his chapter “On Writing,” Rousseau argues that “in proportion as needs increase, as [men’s] dealings get more entangled, as enlightenment spreads, language changes in character; it becomes more precise and less passionate; it substitutes ideas

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for sentiments, it no longer speaks to the heart but to reason. As a result accent dies out, articulation spreads, language becomes more exact, clearer, but more sluggish, more muted and colder. This progress seems to me entirely natural”1 (256; 384, my emphasis). As we think more about satisfying complex needs and the manipulation of nature (including human nature) necessary to satisfy these needs, language changes in character to precisely assess the external world. In the process, it loses its focus on powerfully expressing our experiences. Rousseau suggests that this process is a natural one in the sense that it is a tendency inherent in the structure of language itself.

The two functions of language tend to separate as society becomes more complex, as both a consequence and a reinforcing cause of its development.

The split in the functioning of language is encouraged by the different purposes of speech and writing, on Rousseau’s account.2 Writing effectively performs the function of precisely determining ideas and speech is effective at expressing experience and the passions that enliven that experience – until the qualities of speech and writing mix, to the detriment of both.

Writing, which might be expected to fix language, is precisely what adulterates it; it changes not its

words but its genius; it substitutes precision for expressiveness. One conveys one’s sentiments in

speaking, and one’s ideas in writing. In writing one is forced to use every word in conformity with

common usage; but a speaker alters meanings by his tone of voice, determining them as he wishes;

since he is less constrained to be clear, he stresses forcefulness more, and a language that is written

cannot possibly retain for long the liveliness of one that is only spoken (260; 388, my emphasis).

1 Origin, 256; 384, my emphasis. For the rest of this chapter citations from Origin will be provided in text, with the exception of the section Emile as Solution?. 2 This criticism of writing is the main concern of Derrida in Of Grammatology. Derrida defends the position that all language partakes of the character of writing in referring to some sort of sign, but he accuses Rousseau of suggesting that there is a mystical original sign that writing cannot reach. “Either writing was never a simple ‘supplement,’ or it is urgently necessary to construct a new logic of the ‘supplement.’ It is this urgency which will guide us further in reading Rousseau” (Derrida, Of Grammatology, 7). There is some truth to Derrida’s claim, in that Rousseau thinks speech can do a more or less effective job of articulating our true needs and experiences. His appeal to the sincere expression of sentiment and experience, however, does not mean that Rousseau thinks that we can have pure or immediate access to the outside world.

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Rousseau’s analysis here is surprising, as he suggests in the opening sentence. The ability to spend time thinking about the effects of each expression might be expected to allow for the perfection of language and improve the ability of writing to communicate. However, the need to appeal to referents that many readers can understand constrains the writer in his ability to communicate passionately, and he loses the ability to express moving sentiments to the reader – the very sort of sentiments that can form common emotional links. The sort of commonness writing tends to create is one of thinner, less motivating substance than that found in speech.

Rousseau explains that speech requires immediacy and flexibility to be successful in communicating experience and passion to others. Such immediacy and flexibility is hard to retain in writing. “What gets written down are words, not sounds; yet in an accented language it is the sounds, the accents, the inflections of every sort, that constitute the greatest part of the vigor of the language; and make a phrase, that is otherwise common, the only appropriate one in the place where it is. The means used to substitute for this enlarge [and] stretch written language, and as they pass from books into discourse, they enervate speech itself” (260-261; 388). On this account, when writing attempts to retain something of the vigor of speech, it is unable to do so without many sorts of signs to stretch written meanings. These signs are not quite sufficient to indicate the intended effect to all readers, and as accent marks are used to extend the possible meanings of writing, they tend to limit the range of speech as speakers recite writing. As writing and speaking mix, this curtailment of spoken forcefulness enfeebles the passions in speech, as people begin to speak as they write. Writing lacks precision if it must continually contort itself to communicate unique experience. The rigid and common nature of writing and the passionate and moving nature

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of speech work to corrupt one another. Writing encourages the development of ways of speaking that leave speech cold.3

As societies becomes more complicated the problem is exacerbated by a second ‘natural’ transformation of language. On Rousseau’s account, the manipulating function of language itself splits in two directions. This split occurs because the manipulating function of language confronts two different sorts of challenges: those presented by the physical world, and those presented by the social state of human beings.

The development of instrumental speech in the social world creates practical difficulties that take speech further way from communicating our feelings and experiences. The speaker turns to focus on the reaction of the one being spoken to, which can come at the expense of focusing on and communicating the speaker’s actual experience. The increased use of the manipulating function of language on the social world means that language is less concerned to articulate individual experiences – it becomes other-focused, the speech a civilized man longs to hear is “the testimony of others rather than his own.”4

This focus on others further extends the manipulating function of speech away from considerations of our needs and experience because when it turns toward the social world, speech and thought do not always find the same relatively stable referents found in the physical world. As human beings compete for advantage and above all prestige, they manipulate the linguistically expressed social world to achieve approval and distinction. This competition leads to instrumental speech becoming more precise and rarified, but as it contorts to fit or shape the social codes of the day its precision will tend to have a tenuous relationship to the needs and healthy desires of most

3 Taylor notes a similar dynamic: “this explosive growth of theory could never have come about without an equally impressive expansion of external memory, from writing to the Internet” (Language Animal, 75). He too notes that such a development tends to come at the expense of expression. 4 Second Discourse, 187; OC III, 193.

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human beings.5 We arrive back at the analysis Rousseau provided in Theatrical Imitation. Since the goal of other-oriented speech is to impress or confuse others, there is an incentive to conform or to innovate in directions that have little or no relationship to concrete experience. We lose a sense of ourselves and fail to perceive or articulate our experience in its own terms. Language becomes less true or expressive of our concrete experiences and interests as it becomes truer to what brings applause from the social world.6

II. Legislation and tradition in political life

Yet despite its natural tendency to decay, the preceding chapter showed the arrangement in which political speech can be most effective. In this section I examine the political environment that sustains such speech, in order to see how it differs from modern political life. Successful political environments are launched by legislators; here I focus on Rousseau’s treatment of Homer and Mohammed in Origin and Moses in Poland. Homer managed to bring the power of sung poetry into written word, as did Mohammed, and the communities they inspired sustained the power of their verse by connecting their poems to active political traditions. Rousseau shows that to maintain a connection to concrete experience, a written tradition should be performed regularly, articulate goals to be pursued by the community, and reinforce that community’s sense of its unique and superior status. It is within this kind of community that the signs of The Levite perform their role

5 I thus disagree with Arash Abizadeh, who argues that “Rousseau believes in a myth of ‘concreteness,’ which holds that it is just a fact of human nature that our affections cannot firmly attach themselves to abstract objects (in contrast to allegedly concrete ones)” (“Banishing the Particular: Rousseau on Rhetoric, Patrie and the Passions,” Political Theory 29 (2001), 572). If abstract objects – that is, those constructed partly or entirely in our imaginations - could not become important for us, due to our pride, the problem that troubles Rousseau here would not exist. For an account similar to my own: Black, Rousseau’s Critique, 10. 6 Again Rousseau anticipates a dynamic that Taylor assigns to others, “the important post-Romantic theme of seeking the real language, the living creative one, which reconnects, as against the dead language which simply designates things that everyone can see, and allows us to manipulate them, totally ignoring their sign-character” (Language Animal, 344). 144

most effectively. Unless citizens all work toward a common goal, as they focus on the external world and the opinions of others, they become more and more wrapped up in manipulating the linguistic world and through it, each other.7

Rousseau’s treatment of Homer shows the difficulty of transferring poetic speech into writing. Rousseau devotes a chapter to “Whether it is Likely that Homer knew how to Write.” His treatment of Homer is an examination of how the power of speech might be carried over into written tradition. Rousseau argues that Homer emerged out of an exclusively oral tradition and provides a number of reasons to support his argument that neither Homer nor the Greeks of his time could write.8 The most important evidence of a prior oral tradition for Rousseau is the role that Homer played in Greek life. “If the Iliad had been written it would have been sung less often,

Rhapsodes would have been less in demand and their number would have increased less” (261;

389). Homer’s poems employed so many singers because they were not written down – oral transmission sustained these powerful stories in disparate communities.9 Rousseau likens memory to writing in his understanding of this oral tradition. “For a long time these Poems were written

[écrits] only in men’s memories; they were compiled in written form rather late and with considerable difficulty” (262; 390).10 Rousseau’s wording blurs the distinction between oral and

7 Here I follow Michael Davis: “Language – initially spoken, poetic, and tonally accented – has a natural tendency to aim at a precision of articulation that so celebrates the ‘objective’ that it ends by rendering the subject invisible and thereby, ironically, becomes less objective” (“The Music of Reason in Rousseau’s Essay on the Origin of Languages,” Review of Politics 74 (2012), 398). 8 Rousseau is aware that writing is mentioned in the Iliad but suggests that this line may be an interpolation by later compilers. He also adduces as evidence the plot of the Odyssey, with its lack of letters between separated parties, as evidence that “its Heroes knew nothing of writing” (261; 389). Modern historians tend to agree with Rousseau that the evidence points to “a common tradition of oral epic poetry on the Trojan war” predating its crystallization by an author named Homer (Simon Price and Peter Thonemann, The Birth of Classical Europe: A History from Troy to Augustine (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 101). 9 Rousseau seems not to consider the need for storytellers in a society with low literacy rates. However, given that he ultimately thinks that writing can, in optimal circumstances, keep much of the vigor of spoken stories, this problem is not a decisive one for his account. 10 Statements like these suggest that Rousseau’s division between expression and articulation is not as clear-cut as it sometimes seems. It might be the case that unreflective and faithful recitation of a written text by Rhapsodes had some of the defects of writing.

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written tradition, which would appear here to be continuous in function.11 The difference, as we will see below, is that recitation keeps the meaning of the poems fresh and passionate in the minds of their reciters and listeners in a way that writing alone has trouble doing.

At some point an author who came to be called Homer wrote a version of the stories down, and this version became definitive. The poems retained much of their spoken power: it was “when

Greece began to abound in books and written poetry that the whole charm of Homer’s poetry came to be felt by comparison. The other Poets wrote, Homer alone had sung, and these divine songs ceased to be listened to with delight only after Europe was blanketed with barbarians who took it upon themselves to judge what they were incapable of feeling” (262; 390). A great deal of Homer’s moving poetic beauty, then, was transferrable to writing.12 The puzzle for political life is how to preserve the power of spoken stories, such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, which can be written in the mind, in fixed texts, which tend to depart from the sort of understanding “written” in the mind based on actual experience. Homer attests to the possibility of success of creating a written text that empowers active political speech and action, but Rousseau here also raises the difficulty that many cannot “hear” his voice.

Later in Origin Rousseau shows what is necessary for readers to “hear” powerful writing.

In a passage on the power of “southern” language, Rousseau adduces the Koran as a second example of the potential power of the written word. “A man able to read a little Arabic smiles as he leafs through the Koran, who, if he had heard Mohammed himself proclaim it in that eloquent

11 Rousseau is considering the same problem as Socrates and Phaedrus, of how to maintain a link between vital speech and written tradition. As Phaedrus puts it, their relationship would seem to be that of “a speech living and endowed with soul, of which the written speech might justly be said to be a certain image” (Plato, Phaedrus, trans. James Nichols (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998), 276a). 12 See Davis, “Essence of Babel,” 237. Neidleman asserts that “As a pathway to truth, language is even worse than thinking – more restricted and confined by social conventions,” but then goes on to argue that “a style of philosophical writing that escapes the impotence of words by using them as components of composition, as a poet does, or as a musician uses notes, or as an orator uses rhetoric” (Rousseau’s Ethics, 78).

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and rhythmic language, in that resonant and persuasive voice which seduced the ear before it did the heart, constantly animating his pithy sayings with the accent of enthusiasm, would have prostrated himself on the ground crying out, Great Prophet, Messenger of God, lead us to glory, to martyrdom; we want to conquer or to die for you!” (281; 409-410). The Koran read alone by someone who knows only a little Arabic does not have much effect. The Koran heard out loud by a native speaker is irresistible. But Rousseau suggests that the book itself can approach its spoken effect with the right audience. That Rousseau specifies the reader’s lack of true familiarity with

Arabic implies that those who are more familiar with the language, who truly live Arabic, can hear something of the Prophet’s voice ringing in their ears when they read.13 The examples of Homer and Mohammed both point to the essential role that written traditions play in maintaining political community, which must persist long after the living voice of its initial legislator has gone silent.

The above analysis is developed in Rousseau’s other works, where he shows the important role played by such fixed texts in political life. Writing can arouse passion and create unity if connected to a living language and way of life. Rousseau writes in Poland:

The same spirit guided all the ancient Legislators in their institutions. All looked for bonds which

attached the Citizens to the fatherland and each to each other, and they found them in distinctive

practices, in religious ceremonies which were always exclusive and national by their nature … in

games which kept the citizens assembled very much, in exercises which increased their pride and

self-esteem along with their vigor and strength, in spectacles which, recalling to them the history of

their ancestors, their misfortunes, their virtues, their victories, gained the interest of their hearts,

inflamed them with a lively emulation, and strongly attached them to that fatherland with which

they were kept ceaselessly occupied (my emphasis).14

13 Rousseau makes no mention of how he can know this about Arabic, although it cannot have been from first-hand experience. His analysis seems to be drawn from second-hand accounts and from his principles, which suggest the character that a true southern language must have. 14 Poland, 173; OC III, 956-957.

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Rousseau begins this passage by stressing the active participation of the community. This active participation, mixed with fixed practices and spectacles, animated the ancients. The very fixed and exclusive natures of the practices and teachings of ancient legislatures gave them their strength, so long as they were attached to lived experiences.15 Collective identities need to be based on unique practices; as Rousseau showed in The Levite, once such an identity is formed it can be the effective basis for collective action and the assertion of rights. When he turns to spectacles, Rousseau emphasizes that the hearts of citizens were inflamed by stories of the travails and victories of their ancestors, which they then wished to emulate by overcoming difficulties faced by their city in times of strife.16 Horowitz rightly notes that “competition is, in primitive society, directly for public esteem, for the direct and personal recognition of qualities of personal excellence. This is what also makes for the limitation of the struggle. It is not yet the impersonal market that rewards and punishes.”17 These spectacles encouraged the protection of the true interests of the community, the “securing of the goods, the life and the freedom of each member.”18 It is these solid accomplishments that the poetic edifice of citizen life seeks to preserve.19

15 It is important to keep in mind that this strength was often dangerous, as shown in The Levite. Certainly, it often came at the expense of enemy communities. 16 Here I disagree with Paul Rahe, who argues that “according to Rousseau, the ties that bind human beings to one another and make of them fellow citizens are entirely imaginary. They have no substantive existence. They are artificial and illusory; they have to be constructed in the mind” (Soft Despotism, Democracy’s Drift: Montesquieu, Rousseau, Tocqueville and the Modern Project (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009), 127). Bloom says more accurately: “Rousseau’s project is to form the imagination in such a way that men’s preferences will tend toward serious objects, the enjoyment of which might result in happiness and a life in conformity with decent social relations” (Love and Friendship, 57). For Rousseau the strongest ties should contain an element of active shared interest and concern; participation and spectatorship should reinforce one another. The spectacles refer to real interests even if they represent something imaginary. This is not to deny that the assimilation of each citizen to the whole of the community occurs in the imagination. 17 (Rousseau, 94). What is true of primitive society might be less true of the classical city, but it still retains something of this link between real accomplishment and public esteem. Wokler suggests that there “the ideological principles enunciated in language were … not divorced from the real substance of social life; they were its very foundation” (Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, 224). 18 Political Economy, 9; OC III, 248. For a useful discussion of what Rousseau considers our true needs to be, see the discussion of what Gopal Sreenivasan calls “critical interests”: (“What is the General Will?” The Philosophical Review 109 (2000), 552; 577-580). 19 As Bloom suggests, “for Rousseau all meaningful speeches refer back to ultimately bodily sentiments and feelings” (Love and Friendship, 147).

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Rousseau then notes the crucial role played by performances of Homer and the tragedians in the civic education of the Greeks.

It is the poems of Homer recited to the Greeks solemnly assembled, not in boxes, on stages and cash

in hand, but in the open air and as a body of the nation; it is the tragedies of Aeschylus, of Sophocles,

and of Euripides, often represented before them, it is the prizes with which, to the acclamations of

all of Greece, the victors in their games were crowned which continuously set them aflame with

emulation and glory, brought their courage and their virtues to that degree of energy of which

nothing today gives us any idea, and which the moderns cannot even believe.20

The tradition inspired by Homer reminded the Greeks of their particular history and the greatness to which they might aspire. This is a tradition preserved by writing, and part of its strength derives from being written down, which gives the community fixed referents with which the audience might identify and around which it can maintain a shared and mutually intelligible language and set of aspirations.21 Rousseau cannot be said then to resist all fixity in writing, as some degree of written specificity helps to bind together a particular people and to remind them of their very particularity.22

Such traditions are essential to forming peoples, who must continually experience the particular drama of their people in order to see and feel themselves to be part of its larger whole.

In Political Economy Rousseau explains the essential need for such traditions to maintain civic life. The world that citizens occupy must be shaped in such a way that they feel and see themselves as part of a larger whole during their entire lives.

20 Poland, 173, OC III, 957, my emphasis. Cf. D’Alembert, 33; OC V 31. 21 For a similar position: Dobel, “Role of Language,” 648. 22 I disagree with commentators like Tracy Strong who think that for Rousseau the permanence of language is an entirely negative thing (Politics of the Ordinary, 38). Rousseau is clear that it is good and useful if many old laws accompany the old stories in being revered for their antiquity: “the prejudice in favor of antiquity renders [the laws] daily more venerable; whereas wherever the laws grow weaker as they grow older it is proof that there is no longer any legislative power” (Social Contract, 109-110; OC III, 425).

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While men cannot be taught not to love anything, it is not impossible to teach them to love one

object rather than another, and to love what is genuinely fine rather than another. If, for example,

they are taught from sufficiently early on never to look upon their individual [self] except in its

relations with the body of the state, and to perceive their own existence as, so to speak, identifying

with this larger whole, to feel themselves members of the fatherland, to love it with that exquisite

sentiment which any isolated man has only for himself, to raise their soul perpetually to this great

object, and thus to transform into a sublime virtue the dangerous disposition that gives rise to all of

our vices.23

Particular cultural constructs will be in vain if they do not exist in an atmosphere of imitative works that reinforce collective identity. Without such a background, “it is too late to change our natural inclinations once they are set in their course, and habit has joined amour-propre; it is too late to draw us out of ourselves once the human self, concentrated within our hearts, has there become actively engaged in the contemptible concerns that do away with all virtue and make up the life of petty souls. … what is left for fellow-citizens of a heart already divided between greed, a mistress, and vanity?”24 This analysis develops the political implications of the last chapter. Language and art must first create the shared space in which reason can operate, or that reason will be concerned with material gain, pleasure, and self-advancement at the expense of the community.

Rousseau has shown the necessity of supporting a living artistic tradition with such authoritative writing. But he also suggested that without a proper understanding of the language and experience of the passions, this writing will be a dead letter. Modern peoples seem to have lost the ability to hear the song in the written text; our next task is to see how that happened. Only then will it be possible to see if these developments might admit of amelioration.

23 Political Economy, 20; OC III, 259. 24 Ibid.

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III. The course of decay in the West

While the functions of language have a natural tendency to separate, Rousseau argues that certain political and social factors increase this tendency. In the West, the advance of commerce, despotism, Christianity, and scientific development all contribute to the poor state of modern language. These developments all reduce language to a common and cold currency of instrumental exchange or a matter of vain innovation and speculation, rather than deriving from and reinforcing a shared environment in which particular peoples could express their needs and aspirations. In investigating these factors, we come to see the political problems created by the decay of language, which any attempt to rectify that decay would have to address.

Abstract language and writing are in part born due to commerce, and the expansion of commercial society tends to increase the abstract and instrumental side of language. In Origin

Rousseau shows that the development of commerce played a key role in the history of writing, which it continues to influence. Rousseau lists three types of writing, by “allegorical figures, as the Egyptians formerly did,” “to represent words and propositions by conventional characters … such is the writing of the Chinese,” and that of contemporary Europeans, “to break up the speaking voice into a number of elementary parts.” Rousseau conjectures that by the nature of things, the allegorical is the oldest form of writing, and the alphabetical the newest (255-256; 384). He seems to prefer the middle method, which has the advantage that it works to “genuinely … depict sounds and … speaks to the eyes.” Alphabetical writing, on the other hand, “must have been imagined by peoples engaged in commerce who, since they traveled in various countries and had to speak various languages, were forced to invent characters that could be common to all of them. To do this is not exactly to depict speech, it is to analyze it” (256; 384). Commercial people invented

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letters because they needed a way to understand all peoples, to communicate with them in order to turn their particular goods into the universal good of money.

The spread of commerce, which has greatly increased in modern times,25 continues the process of reducing the particular in language to a spare and universal speech just as it reduces the particular goods that people produce to a universal currency. This instrumentalization of language saps the character from languages as it does from peoples, as they focus not on their traditional ways of life or on virtue but on making what will sell for the highest price. Commerce drives human speech into characterlessness and human beings into slavishness, on Rousseau’s account.

As Patrick Dobel notes, “like abstract language, ‘cash’ and ‘mute impersonal signs’ of wealth have no content but all other worth can be reduced to them.”26 Commercial people pay attention to language that can make them money and lose sight of the public rhetoric that would preserve their freedom.27 To restore passion to public speech, then, a society would need to reduce the role of commerce.

Rousseau takes the advance of distant, impersonal and illegitimate (despotic) rule to be another feature of human life that tends to increase with civilizational complexity.28 Along with commerce, despotism reduces human beings to fungible and utilitarian atoms, and in doing so drains the passion from their languages.29 Rousseau cites the Roman empire as his primary historical example, but the logic of despotism’s effect on language applies more broadly. The

25 See for instance Rousseau’s famous recasting of Montesquieu: “The ancient politicians forever spoke of morals and virtue, ours speak only of commerce and of money” (First Discourse, 18; OC III, 19). 26 Dobel, “Role of Language,” 650. See also Horowitz, Rousseau, 123. 27 The Social Contract also makes the relationship of commerce to language apparent. “The word finance is a slave’s word; it is unknown in the city” (113; OC III, 429). Later: “your muted languages cannot make themselves heard in the open, you care more for your gain than for your freedom, and you fear slavery less than you fear poverty (115; OC III, 431). 28 The extent to which he would see the relative success of liberal democracy as having countered this notion is up for debate. For the purposes of this essay, most liberal democracies would still seem to suffer from the distance of politics from the direct participation of most citizens. 29 For a similar position, see Scott, “Melodious Language of Freedom,” 819.

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Roman empire quickened the decline of the languages of peoples already losing their linguistic uniqueness and strength to the increased intermingling and commercial relations of people.

“Greece in chains lost the fire that warms only free souls, and she never recovered for the praise of her tyrants the tone in which she had sung her Heroes” (296; 425). The self-directed activities of free people and their investment in the fate of their polity impassions language, but they lose the impetus to create beautiful speech under despotism. Rousseau explains: “In ancient times when persuasion occupied the place of public force eloquence was necessary. Of what use would it be today, when public force replaces persuasion? It takes neither art nor figures of speech to say such is my pleasure” (298; 428, Rousseau’s emphasis). In a society where the people have some power, speakers must appeal to the needs and passions of the people in order to advance their goals or to gain approval. Without that animating drive, public speech declines in power as speakers lose their incentive to use it with care. Commerce and despotism in fact reinforce one another in this regard:

“Societies have assumed their final forms, nothing can be changed in them any more except by arms and cash, and since there is nothing left to say to the people but, give money, it is said with posters on street corners or with soldiers in private homes; for this there is no need to assemble anyone: on the contrary, subjects must be kept scattered; this is the first maxim of modern politics”

(298-299; 428). People concerned primarily with money have little to say and can be spoken to in simple orders. Such subjects can be easily reduced to political abjection, as they have no shared sense of community or interest and no way to communicate effectively to re-form such a sense.30

In the despotic state the complexity of language becomes another institution of oppression.

When subjects have no shared political interests to recur to, others lead them in their interest. In

30 See also Second Discourse, 184; OC III, 189. Distracted and dependent citizens live in a disconnected world. As Horowitz notes, “It is this simultaneity of dependence and capricious will that weakens the sense of reality, thus blocking the possibility of sublimation and increasing the hold of magical thinking” (Rousseau, 236).

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matters of taste, “those who lead us are the artists, the nobles, and the rich, and what leads them is their interest or their vanity. The rich, in order to display their wealth, and the artists, in order to take advantage of that wealth, vie in the quest for new means of expense.”31 Language becomes cold, except where it is used to interest subjects in helping to advance those in power. The enlightenment is again implicated in political oppression.32 As we saw in Theatrical Imitation, without a tangible interest to appeal to, audiences tend to get swept up and enjoy being part of a flattering artistic trend or movement. Their amour-propre is piqued as they are cheated and oppressed.33 Just as a decrease in participation enervates speech, an increase in political freedom then would also help to reinvigorate public speech.

To these causes that render language abstract and citizens unmoved, Rousseau adds

Christianity, at least as it developed historically. Christianity helped despotism to separate language from political action by orienting music and the passions it appeals to toward a world beyond politics.34 My proposition must be demonstrated, as Christianity, unlike the other

Abrahamic faiths, is never explicitly mentioned in the entirety of Origin (or, for that matter,

31 Emile, 341; OC IV, 672. Dobel puts it well: “In a corrupt state, the rich, powerful, and brilliant are unfettered by the evocative strength of sign, word, and language. They wield language as a weapon to leave individuals in a state of befuddled inferiority” (“Role of Language,” 655). 32 A particularly good articulation of this oppressive dynamic: “Rousseau accuses the man of letters not only of selfishness and poor citizenship but ... of active collaboration in the subordination and enslavement of the public. Instead of exposing social reality and offering avenues of aspiration … art conspires with the king in his absolute rule. It blinds man to the fact of his eroding freedom by pre-occupying his mind with an illusory, aesthetic realm of values and events.” (James Hamilton, Rousseau’s Theory of Literature: The Poetics of Nature (York, South Carolina: French Literature Publications Company, 1979), 12). 33 “Citizens let themselves be oppressed only so far as they are swept up by blind ambition and, looking below more than above themselves, come to hold Domination dearer than independence and consent to bear chains so that they might impose chains in turn” (Second Discourse, 183; OC III, 188). This seems to happen in the literary realm as well – as long as citizens feel part of an enlightened club, they tolerate actual indifference or oppression. Indeed, the modern public is not “very careful to judge its true interests … it is ordinarily nonchalant enough to leave them to the direction of people who are totally opposed to them, and it prefers to complain eternally of being badly served rather than to take the trouble to be better served” (Dissertation on Modern Music, 27; OC V, 157). 34 Wokler: “political discourse has become barren, and we have all succeeded in bringing our original manner of speaking up to date only by becoming the speechless auditors of those who rule by diatribes and recitations from the pulpit” (Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, 65).

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Theatrical Imitation or The Levite).35 The passage below, from the chapter “How Music

Degenerated,” initially appears to discuss the destructive power of the further spread of commerce and the mixing between languages and peoples during the collapse of the Roman Empire. Upon closer examination, Christianity’s impact on language emerges as a problem.

Finally the catastrophe occurred which destroyed the progress of the human spirit, without

eliminating the vices that were its product. Europe, overrun by barbarians and subjugated by

ignorant men, at one and the same time lost her sciences, her arts, and the universal instrument of

both, to wit a harmonious and perfected language. These crude men whom the North had fathered

gradually accustomed all ears to the coarseness of their organ; their harsh and accent-less voice was

noisy without being sonorous. The Emperor Julian compared the speech of the Gauls to the croaking

of frogs (296).

Music, language and science were devastated at one stroke by the invasion of the barbarians.

Initially this seems solely due to the ignorance of the invaders and the harsh and instrumental qualities that Rousseau assigns to the speech of northern peoples. No doubt these were problems.

The inclusion of the Emperor Julian’s insult to the Gauls, however, points to another problem.

Julian was famously known as ‘the Apostate’ for his late attempt to oppose the Christianization of the Roman Empire. The insult toward the Gauls that Rousseau refers to is from Julian’s

Misopogon, a satire on the corruption of Antioch, in part due to its Christianity.36

35 This alone is striking given how moving Rousseau suggests that the Bible can be. The Savoyard Vicar proclaims that “the majesty of the Scriptures amazes me, and … the holiness of the Gospel speaks to my heart” (Emile, 307). 36 Gourevitch, “Notes to The Discourses,” 407. Rousseau could have learned this strategy of lionizing Julian to criticize Christianity from many of his predecessors, as it was a common trope. It seems to have begun with Montaigne, who calls Julian “a very great and rare man” and defends his treatment of Christianity (Essays, trans. Donald Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958, 507). Another likely source is Montesquieu, who in criticizing the effects of Christianity says of Julian that “since him there has been no prince more worthy of governing men” (Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Anne Cohler, Basia Miller, and Harold Stone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 466)). See Vickie Sullivan, Montesquieu and the Despotic Ideas of Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 114. The strategy was also used by Voltaire (“The Philosopher Julien: Roman Emperor” in Philosophical Dictionary, ed. Theodore Besterman (New York: Penguin Books, 1972), 265-272).

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The subsequent history of European music confirms the suspicion that Christianity is a problem. Rousseau’s critical description of the singing of the invaders sounds suspiciously like the chanting of monks. “Soon song was nothing but a dreary and slow succession of drawled and shouted sounds, devoid alike of sweetness, measure, and grace” (296; 426). This suspicion can be confirmed, because as John Scott notes, Rousseau’s Dictionary of Music article Plein-Chant (Plain

Chant) seems to allude to this discussion in its language.37 There Rousseau does not assign all of the responsibility of a decay in music to the Catholic Church, but he does assign some: “The

Christians having taken Music in the state that they found it, took from it the great force that remained.”38 Christianity arose within the Roman Empire, where language had already decayed due to despotism. As music was put in the service of the church, its variety and power faded further as it was more definitively removed from public life.

The centuries following the fall of Rome and the spread of Christianity witnessed the progressive decay of music, an essential part of communal public speech. This decay was encouraged by the institution of the church. For “many centuries musicians kept going in circles around vain questions” in the musical theories of such authors as Jean de Muris and Bontempi

(297; 426). These were two prominent musical theorists of the high middle ages and early modern

Europe, respectively, who were, as any prominent musician of the time was likely to be, heavily involved in the church.39 They focused on perfecting a harmony that Rousseau calls “a Gothic invention” (293-294; 422). This reference to the Gothic was a typical mode of referring to

37 Scott, “Notes,” 580. See also Wokler, Rousseau, the Age of Enlightenment, 72. 38 OC V, 983, my translation. 39 Johannes des Muris (c.1300-1350) and Giovanni-Andrea Angelini-Bontempi (c.1630-1704), whose Istoria Musica Rousseau apparently read enthusiastically (Scott, “Notes,” 580). Both seem also to have been scientists and mathematicians as well as composers. The mixing of Christianity and science seems to be particularly dangerous, leading to “scientific jargon more contemptible still than ignorance” (First Discourse 7; OC III, 7). For a summary of the mixing of geometry and Church in the former, see Lawrence Gushee, “New Sources for the Biography of Johannes de Muris,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 22 (1969): 3-26.

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Christianity in the eighteenth century.40 What Rousseau suggests here is that these Christian composers were misled about the true power of music. After centuries of such writing, music now abounds in “arbitrariness … which only prejudice prevents us from perceiving.”41

Christianity’s negative effects on music and language, Rousseau implies, are the result of its otherworldly, private, and universalistic character. It makes music that is disconnected from the political community and arbitrary from a human point of view. This separation from its political and social purpose is a problem even if elsewhere Rousseau has more positive things to say about contemporary music; from the point of view of politics, music has decayed.42 In his final chapter of Origin, which follows immediately after this description of the decline of music, Rousseau criticizes contemporary political speakers as capable only of delivering “sermons” to small, indifferent numbers (298; 427). As he remarks in the Social Contract, even the true Christianity of the gospels “has no particular relation to the body politic” and “detaches [Citizens] from [the

State] as from all earthly things.”43 Christianity is concerned with superhuman perfection and the afterlife. Christianity’s neglect or redirection of particular moral passions harms the power of music and encourages instead the dominance of music directed at a system that is arbitrary from the point of view of the needs of the body politic. At the end of his discussion of the decay of music in Origin, Rousseau argues that music has now been “deprived of the moral effects it used to produce when it was doubly the voice of nature” (297; 426). When composers want human

40 Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, Volume 2: The Science of Freedom (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977), 217-218. 41 In the Letter to Franquières, Rousseau goes so far as to say that “all formulae in matters of faith seem to me to be so many chains of iniquity, falseness, hypocrisy and tyranny” (Letter to Franquières in Social Contract, 280; OC IV, 1142). On the way that theologians corrupt language: Ronald Grimsley, Rousseau and the Religious Quest, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968, 38-39. 42 Even while condemning French music, Rousseau admits that the modern French “have had excellent Poets and even some Musicians who have not been without genius” (Letter on French Music, 141; OC V, 288). To the abiding anger of the French of Rousseau’s time, the Italians come in for higher praise (Letter on French Music, 148; OC V, 297). 43 Social Contract, 147; 465.

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beings to hear the voice of God, they no longer focus on speaking to or about their passions or earthly needs.44 Lessening the hold of Christianity, or somehow making it less abstract and otherworldly, would also help to reinvigorate political speech.

The final and most important cause of the decay of political speech is the advance of science and the arts.45 Science tends to point language toward a purely transactional and mathematical language: “by a natural progress all lettered languages must change character and lose force as they gain in clarity, that the more one insists on perfecting grammar and logic the more one accelerates this progress, and that in order to cause a language to grow rapidly frigid and monotonous, one need only establish academies among the people who speak it” (265; 392, my emphasis). The effects of this progress in precision has the same impact on the fine arts.46

Rousseau makes clear that it is not only Enlightenment science which has this effect:

“This was also the period when the wonders gradually ceased which it had wrought when it was but

the accent and the harmony of poetry, and when it endowed poetry with a power over the passions

which speech has since exercised only over reason. Indeed, once Greece abounded in Sophists and

Philosophers it no longer had famous poets or musicians. In cultivating the art of convincing [men],

the art of moving [them] was lost. Even Plato, jealous of Homer and Euripides, decried the one and

was incapable of imitating the other” (295-296; 425).

Even the philosophers of ancient Greece could not maintain both accuracy and passion at the same time. Their advances in reasoning caused the initial decline in poetry exacerbated by the problems noted above.

44 A good analysis of this change: Waterlot, Rousseau: Religion et politique, esp. 75-77. 45 For complementary analyses: Shklar, Men and Citizens, 84; Wokler, Rousseau, the Enlightenment, 225. 46 “As language became perfected, melody imperceptibly lost some of its former vigor by imposing new rules on itself … Once theater had assumed a fixed form, all singing in it was restricted to prescribed modes; and as the number of rules for imitation increased, imitative language weakened” (295; 425).

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Still, in Emile Rousseau suggests that classical thought was less afflicted with a detachment from experience than later scientific thought, because as science develops, retaining a first-hand understanding becomes increasingly difficult. He argues that “the ancients, since they came first, are closest to nature, and their genius is more their own. … there is no true progress of reason in the human species, because all that is gained on one side is lost on the other: all minds always start from the same point, and since the time used in finding out what others have thought is wasted for learning to think for ourselves, we have acquired more enlightenment and less vigor of mind.”47

An ancient thinker had to reason for himself from his own experience to truly understand something, not having as much of a tradition to lean on. Modern scientists can try to build on the work of their predecessors, but in doing so, they risk not having properly understood what they read. They can say more but tend not to understand what they are saying as well. A derivative understanding develops that covers over the basis for received opinions.

Rousseau implies that this more dogmatic way of knowing is a moral issue by targeting the

Enlightenment thinker Fontenelle. “Fontenelle said that this whole dispute about ancients and moderns comes down to knowing whether the trees in the past were bigger than those today. If agriculture had changed, it would not be impertinent to ask this question.”48 Fontenelle pokes fun at those who side with the ancients by asking if nature had somehow been more vigorous in the past.49 Rousseau responds that in a certain sense our trees seem taller, because we have grown

47 Emile, 343, OC II, 675, my emphasis. 48 Ibid. 49 “The whole question of preeminence between the ancients and the moderns once having been discussed, reduces to knowing if the trees that once grew in our countryside were larger than those of today. If they were, Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, could not have been equaled in these past centuries, but if our trees are as large as those of old, we can equal Homer, Plato and Demosthenes” (Bernard La Bouyer de Fontenelle, Digression sur les Anciens et les Modernes in Ouevre de Fontenelle, IV (Paris: Peytieux, 1825), 235, my translation). Fontenelle offers a complicated argument that grants the beauty of ancient thought. But he ultimately sides with the possibility of progress, and “nothing stops the progress of things so much, nothing restricts minds as much as the excessive admiration of the ancients” (253, my translation).

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dependent on one another, and can no longer reach the same heights on our own once reached by those nurtured in more independent soil.50 This makes us less capable of thinking and acting of our own accord, and thus more easily manipulated by others.51

Unsurprisingly given his analysis in Emile, it is to a modern example that Rousseau turns in Origin to illustrate the worst effects of science on moving language, which combine arbitrariness with precision in a sophisticated and arbitrary combination. This extended illustration draws out in more detail the criticisms of Jean-Philipe Rameau and contemporary art and science begun in

Theatrical Imitation. Rousseau introduces a hypothetical situation that turns out to be remarkably close to reality.

Suppose a country where they had no idea of drawing, but where many people who spent their lives

combining, mixing, grading colors, believed that they excelled in painting ... If they were told about

the emotion which beautiful paintings arouse in us and the charm of being moved by a pathetic

scene; their scholars would immediately delve into the matter, comparing their colors with ours,

seeing whether our green is more delicate or our red more brilliant; they would inquire what

combination of colors can cause weeping, what others arouse anger? (284; 413).

The country Rousseau is interested in is actually France, where musical theorists like Rameau think that the power of music can be understood through the examination of elementary units (in

50 This passage perhaps sheds light on two others. Rousseau often uses agricultural metaphors to convey the great plasticity of human beings, both in being shaped by a changing natural environment, and then by the social environment made by man. In the Second Discourse Rousseau notes at the beginning of part two that “the height of Trees,” which had not troubled man in the state of nature of part one, began to do so (Second Discourse 161; OC III, 165). In Origin Rousseau notes that for natural man, “Fruit does not shrink from our grasp,” (253; 380). The physical world does become more challenging as our needs increase, and thus we “shrink,” unable to reach satisfaction any longer. 51 To some extent Rousseau agrees that in certain circumstances we can grow in our own soil: “In a little town, proportionally less activity is unquestionably to be found than in the capital, because the passions are less intense and the needs less pressing, but more original spirits, more inventive industry, more really new things are found there because the people are less imitative; having few models, each draws more from himself and puts more of his own in everything he does; because the human mind, less spread out, less drowned in vulgar opinions, elaborates itself and ferments better in tranquil solitude; because, in seeing less, more is imagined; finally, because less pressed for time, there is more leisure to extend and digest one’s ideas” (D’Alembert, 60; 55, my emphasis).

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Rameau’s case, sounds).52 As with the fictional country obsessed with reconstructing painting by analysis of colors, many of the French think that technical mastery, through an assessment of different types of sounds, can lead to a full understanding of the effects of music. The advance of science tends to encourage an obsession with elementary units and precision at the expense of a holistic account of moral phenomena. It leads whole societies to confuse precise but arbitrary systems with an understanding of the world of our experience.

The resulting society then becomes proud of its self-mystification, for reasons already suggested in chapter two, which makes the erroneous world-view all the harder to see beyond.53

Rousseau imagines the claims of the hypothetical modern scientist: “I … have shown you the great, the true principles of the art. What am I saying, of the art? Of all the arts, Gentlemen, of all the Sciences. The analysis of colors, the measurements of prismatic refractions provide you with the only precise relations to be found in nature, with the rule for all relations. Now, everything in the universe is only relations. Hence one knows everything once one knows how to paint, one knows everything once one knows how to match colors.” Modern artists think that they have found a superior unifying principle in precise relations. This tool allows them to claim a great and magnificent advance on their predecessors. According to Rousseau, their precision is perfectly inaccurate and misunderstands that the power of fine art derives from imitating moral passions.

Rousseau acerbically asserts of those who would reduce art to physical causes: “We would send the [painter] off to paint the woodwork, and condemn the [musician] to compose French operas”

52 For this critique in reference to Rameau, see especially Examination of Two Principles Advanced by M. Rameau in His Brochure Entitled: “Errors on Music in the Encyclopedia,” 279-280; OC V, 358-359. Michael O’Dea notes that Rameau’s view was typical: “In the first half of the [eighteenth] century music … is above all seen by the learned as a science, and mathematical analysis of harmonic relations is seen as the appropriate mode for studying this science” (Michael O’Dea, “How to Be Modern in Music: Rousseau between Greece, Italy, and Vienna” in Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity, ed. Mark Hulliung (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2016), 91). 53 As Wokler remarks, “In civilized societies we have come to be imprisoned by our symbols, ensnared by the images of our freedom as we run headlong into our chains, altogether captivated by our accomplishments which are in fact no more than the trappings of culture” (Rousseau, the Enlightenment, 18).

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(285; 414). Such obsession with technique becomes an end in itself and ruins art that can arouse political passions.54

The arbitrary sort of science can have worse effects than taking the power from abstract science and fine art. Philosophy will even aim at “destroying and degrading all that is sacred among men” due to its “rage for distinction.”55 As philosophers compete to outdo one another they end up attacking and undermining remaining healthy social structures and stable moral standards.

Vanity fuels an endless attempt to make new systems, further exacerbating the natural tendency of specialized speech toward arbitrariness.56 The public competition between philosophers is a serious problem, and their retreat from direct participation in the public sphere would be a blessing for political speech.

IV. From Description to Prescription?

We learn political lessons from Rousseau’s historical analysis of linguistic decline. On the one hand, if societies truly have reached “their final form,” the political situation is dire, requiring or at least not forbidding extreme action and rhetoric. On the other hand, Rousseau provides the general direction politics might go to restore some health to political speech: if commerce, despotism, otherworldly Christianity and public science caused the decay of language, then a less commercial society, where science was kept on the margins, and where political freedom and a less otherworldly religion reigned, might help revive language. There is some truth to this impression. In his two prescriptive interventions making recommendations to Poland and Corsica,

54 Rousseau ends this argument by noting that if painting and music could be understood by their physical qualities alone, “they would both be natural sciences, not fine arts” (286; 414). This implies that if kept properly separated, each could play a positive role. 55 First Discourse, 18; OC III, 19. 56 For instance: “The first Philosophers earned great renown by teaching men to perform their duties and the principles of virtue. But before long these precepts had become commonplaces, and in order to achieve distinction men had to strike out in opposite directions” (Preface to Narcissus, 98; OC III, 965). 162

Rousseau advises these peoples to make their politics more republican, and to limit commerce.

Rousseau leaves Christianity relatively untouched, although he makes suggestions about curtailing its influence at the margins.57

The most difficult question remains the role of developed and scientific reason in such societies. As John Warner has recently put it, the “scholarly debate over the character of civic education … is perhaps the central controversy in contemporary Rousseau scholarship.”58 There are broadly two possibilities. First, Rousseau is suggesting that marginal societies like Poland or

Corsica retain as much of the strength of political speech as possible in essentially the same way as the Israelite republic of The Levite. The public role of reason in these societies would remain relatively limited. A second possibility is that modern states should go further to incorporate more highly developed rational institutions. I argue for the necessity of the former position, but a substantial part of the contemporary literature argues that the limits of reason in The Levite are left behind.59 Denise Schaeffer argues that “[Rousseau’s] understanding of civic education draws attention to the importance of good judgment on the part of citizens, rather than attempting to circumvent the need of judgment by substituting deep conditioning of the passions.”60 If that is so, then perhaps judgment or reason can be a deeper and more public element of modern politics than my analysis has suggested so far.

57 For republicanism, see especially Poland, 184-202; OC III, 971-993 and Corsica, 130-132; OC III, 909-913. For limited commerce: Poland, 209-216; OC III, 1003-1011 and almost the entirety of Corsica. He discusses the Catholicism of Poland little and Corsica less, but in neither case suggests any major changes. Christianity appears too deeply entrenched, in Rousseau’s time, and was firmly part of the national identities of the nations he was addressing. There is a fragment where he explicitly advises the Corsicans to lessen the role of the Church in favor of civic public festivals, but it was not added to the main manuscript (OC III, 944). 58 Problem of Human Relations, 28. 59 It is also possible that Rousseau thought that each response was appropriate to different situations. For the reasons I give below, I do not think that the progressive response works in any situation identified by Rousseau. 60 Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, 195.

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No doubt there is something to Schaeffer’s position. She bases her argument largely on

Poland. Rousseau argues that all offices in Poland should be temporary, and advancement made according to publicly acknowledged merit.61 This advancement through offices tests good judgment and cultivates reason in ambitious members of the body politic. Features like this lead

Schaeffer to argue that “the implicit but perhaps most fundamental lesson of Government of

Poland is that the only real means of reviving republican virtue is to cultivate the people’s capacity for good judgment.”62 It is useful to have a reminder that Rousseau thinks that some level of judgment is necessary, and especially, as he continually says, among the governing class.63

Nonetheless, the question is: how central a role should reason play? An accompanying question: why is it that Rousseau appears to make its role marginal, such that he has often given the impression of wanting to do away with its public manifestations as much as possible? Schaeffer admits that “in Rousseau’s political works, he does not discuss, on an institutional or procedural level, how or where the deliberations that guide judgment are to take place.”64 By all appearances at least Rousseau did not share many a commentator’s desire to bring complex deliberation and judgment out into the public.

While this is not the place for a consideration of Poland in its entirety, it appears that there too rational judgment is subordinated to creating a passionately experienced shared environment.

This can be seen clearly in the nature of judges. “This is the means for justice to be well

61 “I should like all public functions to lead to each other … so that no one would arrange to stay in his own, would not make it into a lucrative profession for himself, and would not put himself above the judgment of men” (Poland, 207; OC III, 1001). 62 Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, 183. 63 Rousseau recommends an elected aristocracy in the Social Contract, “a means by which probity, enlightenment, experience, and all the other reasons for public preferment and esteem are so many further guarantees of being well governed” (93; OC III, 407). Similarly, in Corsica, where the Corsicans should “confer the administration only upon a small number, which allows the selection of enlightened people” (128; OC III, 907). For a critical take that brings out this side of Rousseau’s thought applied to Rome: John McCormick, “Rousseau’s Rome and the Repudiation of Populist Republicanism,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 10 (2007): 3-27. 64 Schaeffer, Rousseau, 195.

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administered – with a few clear and simple laws and even with few judges – leaving to judges the power to interpret and to supplement the laws at need by the natural lights of rectitude and good sense.”65 Judges should apply and even supplement laws applied to specific cases: there is certainly reasoning and judgment here.

But as Rousseau continues to describe education in the law it becomes increasingly clear that a basis in passionate identification must undergird the development of complex rational judgment. All laws should be “taught … in all the schools, and no other body of right will be needed. All the rules of natural right are better engraved in the hearts of men … Only make them honest and virtuous and I will answer to you for it that they will know enough about right.”66 The laws should be few and simple – the real assurance of rectitude is the virtuous outlook cultivated by the education of the regime. This education requires rational design and application, and does to some extend cultivate judgment. However, that judgment is to remain circumscribed in nature.

My analysis of this passage comports with what Rousseau says explicitly about education: “It is education that must give the national form to souls, and direct their opinions and their tastes so that they will be patriots by inclination, by passion, by necessity.”67 The most obvious lesson from

Rousseau’s political texts then is that the essential limits of reason in politics apply to modern polities as well. This does not mean that no reason or judgment is developed, but that such development is secondary to and reliant upon affective identification.68

65 Poland, 207, OC III, 1000. 66 Ibid. 67 Poland, 178, OC III, 966, my emphasis. 68 “In the Polish context, incorporation into the social union comes at the cost of developing anything resembling an autonomous self. The moi, far from establishing the ground of robust citizenship, is instead sacrificed to the patrie, which becomes the source of being” (Warner, Problem of Social Relations, 168).

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V. Emile as solution?

Schaeffer’s book primarily emphasizes Emile’s education and tries to draw a continuity between it and Rousseau’s political thought. Although she does not go so far as to equate the two educations, her analysis points in the direction of the renewed attempt in the secondary literature to argue that the education of Emile is meant to be the education of a citizen of a healthy social contract regime. Characteristic of such positions is that of Frederick Neuhauser: “Rousseau alerts us to the existence of ‘two contrary forms of instruction’ not with the purpose of identifying Emile with one of the alternatives – an education that produces hommes – but instead to define its aim as the overcoming of that opposition … The ultimate aim of Emile’s education … is to produce a

‘man-citizen.’”69 On this account, Emile and potential citizens like him are educated in political judgment so as to self-consciously “submit to the general will only on the basis of their own rational insight into the goodness of the laws that obligate them.”70 Emile’s rationality and his attachment to political order are not in conflict, but mutually reinforcing, on this view.

This section supports the opposing position that argues for the incompatibility of Emile’s education and the education of good citizens.71 The purpose of this section of the essay is to underline that the thicket of difficulties created by history cannot be fully cut through. My foregoing analysis can help us to see that the type of education supplied to Emile cannot provide

69 Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 20. Neuhouser’s position is in some ways similar to the “middle- way” literature of Schaeffer and Marks, although neither go so far as to equate Emile’s education with that of the citizen. Schaeffer’s analysis is sometimes ambiguous. It begins by suggesting that the attempt to “combine rational detachment with passionate attachment in order to achieve the capacity for exercising independent judgment and hence self-rule … remains … resolutely problematic in the overtly political works” (Rousseau, 6). But her later analysis of these works appears more optimistic, as we have seen. For a classical statement of the position of compatibility between Emile and Rousseau’s politics: Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 123. From a different perspective, and seemingly contrary to many of his students, Leo Strauss also argues that “Emile … is meant to become a leader in a republican society … this man educated for an apolotical life is to fulfill political functions” (“Seminar in Political Philosophy: Rousseau,” course lectures, The University of Chicago, 1962, 306). 70 Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy, 22. 71 For two statements: Melzer, Natural Goodness of Man, 90-113; Shklar, Man and Citizen, 33-74.

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the template for introducing highly developed reason into political speech. This is so even though

Emile might at first glance seem to be a promising avenue for such an improvement of political speech. Few commentators highlight the degree to which Emile focuses on the development of

Emile’s speech and orientation toward various forms of artistic media.72 It is the work where

Rousseau most thoroughly experiments with healing the rifts in language described in the first part of this chapter. Emile’s education is in part meant to supply a solution to the splitting apart of the different functions of language at the level of the individual. The tutor embodies the traits of the philosopher in Theatrical Imitation, and Emile himself is trained to imitate nature rather than human beings, and to be largely impervious to the conformist dynamic articulated in Theatrical

Imitation and Origin. Emile’s upbringing also accounts for the specific dangers to modern language. He is made self-sufficient and capable of living in varied political and economic conditions so that they will not sweep away his own understanding. He is spared Christianity until he is inured against its dangers. And his reason will not make him a miserable manipulator of others. But Emile is not raised in the sort of linguistic and artist milieu that we saw above was necessary to form the passionate attachment of the citizen. In fact, as I will show, Emile’s speech is primarily (and remains, even after his socialization) that of the utilitarian and rationalistic

“northern languages,” and is meant to insure his autonomy, at the expense of political attachment.

The role that Rousseau adopts as author of Emile signals early on that Emile will take a rationalistic route. In Emile Rousseau plays the role of nondogmatic philosopher outlined in

Theatrical Imitation. He will be the sort of author who invites questioning and who avoids peddling deceptive dogmas. He emphasizes that he expects active reading, that he is not presenting

72 Although consider the treatment of Timothy O’Hagan, Rousseau (London: Routledge, 1999), 140-151.

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settled teachings but walking the reader through experiences.73 “In expounding freely my sentiment, I so little expect that it be taken as authoritative that I always join to it my reasons so that they may be weighed and I be judged”74 (34; 241). The reader should check Rousseau’s reasonings, weigh them, and judge the author Rousseau’s sentiments and reasons accordingly. This is the sort of activity we had seen in Theatrical Imitation would only be followed by a limited audience, which should already signal to us that his goals at reform must be limited. But by this complex activity Rousseau is not caught in the net of conformist artistry because of his lack of party: “A man, who from his retirement casts his pages out among the public, without boosters, without a party that defends them, without even knowing what is thought or said about them, need not fear that, if he is mistaken, his errors will be accepted without examination” (33; 240).

Rousseau does not have a party to speak to, so the individual reader can learn something real about the world of experience from him rather than simply internalizing another rehearsal of a familiar party line. He claims to be outside of a circle of arbitrary precision. He underlines his own fallibility repeatedly in order to encourage his readers to sympathize with him, but also to challenge him.75 He reminds the reader at a number of points of his nonpartisan nature,76 and the necessity that they weigh his teachings against their own experience.77 “Unfortunate people! If you have to

73 Two useful accounts of this dialectical method: John Scott, “Do You See What I See? The Education of the Reader in Rousseau’s Emile,” Review of Politics 74 (2012): 443-464 and Schaeffer, Rousseau. 74 Emile, 34; 241. For the rest of this section citations from Emile will be provided in text. 75 Following Scott: “in recounting these examples Rousseau is able to admit that he—unlike the tutor Jean-Jacques— is fallible and has misinterpreted the evidence before his eyes, thus enabling the reader to enter into sympathetic recognition with the author and thereby learn to revisualize the world” (“Do You See What I See?, 451). See also: Schaeffer, Rousseau, 34. 76 “Readers, always remember that he who speaks to you is neither a scholar nor a philosopher, but a simple man, a friend of the truth, without party, without system; a solitary who, living little among men, has less occasion to contract their prejudices and more time to reflect on what strikes him when he has commerce with them. My reasonings are founded less on principles than on facts; and I believe that I cannot better put you in a position to judge of them than often to report to you some examples of the observations which suggested them to me” (110; 348). See also 112fn; 350. 77 This is part because for the reader no less than Emile, words, even those of someone so exact and presumably trustworthy as Rousseau, cannot always match ideas. Rousseau suggests in a footnote: “it is impossible in a long work always to give the same meanings to the same words. There is no language rich enough to furnish as many terms,

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be told, how will you understand it?” (111; 349). His reader will avoid the trap posed by most books only if they read his book as an entry for conversation, rather than a dogmatic treatise in a predetermined enterprise.78

Although often portrayed as nearly omnipotent by Rousseau the author, the tutor Jean-

Jacques mirrors Rousseau’s guidance in his lessons, in that Emile is not to learn dogmas but to draw his ideas from his own experiences. As Emile learns to speak, the world (properly arranged by his tutor) should be his teacher: “Do not give your pupil any kind of verbal lessons; he ought to receive them only from experience” (92; 320). Emile must learn by direct experience, and he must believe this to be his own accomplishment, rather than one provided by others.

Each advance in learning to speak must relate to things and not, initially, to people, in order to keep Emile’s language from being concerned more with manipulating others than with expressing himself or understanding nature.79 Emile keeps the two functions of language together; he will learn about his needs as he learns to fulfill them, so as not to let his relationship to the external world escape his understanding of his own experience.80 His language is to be an instrumental one reflecting Emile’s understanding of simple experiences and things. “I would want the first articulations which he is made to hear to be rare, easy, distinct, often repeated, and that the words they express relate only to objects of the senses which can in the first place be shown to the child. The unfortunate facility we have for dazzling people with words we do not understand

turns, and phrases as our ideas can have modifications … I do not believe that I contradict myself in my ideas; but I cannot gainsay that I often contradict myself in my expressions” (108fn; 345). 78 “I hate books. They only teach one to talk about what one does not know” (184; 453). 79 This education begins immediately. Only the true needs of the child should be met; he cannot learn to think of his tutor or parents as servants. “The first tears of children are prayers. If one is not careful, they soon become orders” (66; 278). 80 This is not to say that his education is without reflection. He must reflect on his experience in order to understand it, so that it would be wrong to say that “Emile’s education is grounded in experience and sentiment, which are immediate, rather than in reason and abstraction” (Neidleman, Rousseau’s Ethics, 40). As we saw in chapter three, once linguistic, human experience and sentiment cannot help but be mediated.

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begins earlier than is thought” (70; 293, my emphasis).81 Somehow Emile must be kept from all words he cannot understand, and the tutor must speak a limited language, so that the child does not know words unlinked to sensations.82 Speech should reflect the limited abilities of the child:

“Reason and judgment comes slowly; prejudices come in crowds; it is from them that he must be preserved” (171; 430). At all costs Emile’s speech must be unconcerned with impressing others, as this will cause his speech and understanding to lose contact with the natural world in favor of an arbitrary human one. “Listen to a little fellow who has just been indoctrinated. Let him chatter, question, utter foolishness at his ease, and you are going to be surprising at the strange turn your reasonings have taken in his mind” (96; 328). To keep the child’s reasoning and language related to his true needs, he will initially learn only to speak of them, and not of those social needs and forms he cannot understand.83 This focus on learning to satisfy only those needs that he understands and only by means he has learned himself imposes serious limits on how much Emile can learn, as we noted in looking at Rousseau’s disagreement with Fontenelle above. No human beings have the time to learn many things thoroughly and completely.84

Emile will imitate, but he will take nature and his physical needs as standards for his imitation, rather than fluctuating human opinion. Rousseau argues that children must learn by imitation. “Man is an imitator. Even animals are. The taste for imitation belongs to well-ordered

81 “The spirit of my education consists not in teaching the child many things, but in never letting anything but accurate and clear ideas enter his brain” (171; 430). 82 As with many parts of Emile’s education, this does not seem wholly possible. Rousseau asserted on multiple occasions that Emile was not meant as a practical manual for direct imitation: “You quite rightly say that it is impossible to make an Emile; but could you believe that this was my goal …? It is more or less philosophical work on the principle put forward by the author in other works, that man is naturally good” (Rousseau to Philibert Cramer, October 13, 1764, quoted in Scott, “Do You See What I See,” 449). 83 See Schaeffer, Rousseau, 39; 51. 84 This might be another reason for the undesirability of trying to replicate Emile, as it could lead to a society of narrow-minded utilitarian conformists, who know a few practical things only. Perhaps better “a salutary servitude that permits him to make good use of his freedom” (Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. Harvey C. Mansfield and Delba Winthrop (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 408). Tocqueville considers this problem of how to make isolated individuals expand their opinions beyond a narrow scope at length in the opening chapters of volume two of the work, perhaps with Rousseau in mind.

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nature, but in society it degenerates into vice” (104; 338).85 Human beings love to imitate, and especially children: “I can imagine nothing the taste, even the rage, for which cannot with a bit of skill be inspired in children, without vanity, without emulation, without jealousy. Their vivacity, their imitative spirit suffices” (130; 373, my emphasis). But the models to be imitated must be drawn from the lessons of nature, not of human beings. This is easily seen with the example of drawing, which appears as a necessity, for “children, who are great imitators, all try to draw” (143;

397). The goal is to help Emile see the link between his art and nature:

“I will … carefully avoid giving him a drawing master who would give him only imitations to imitate

and would make him draw only from drawings. I want him to have no other master than nature and

no other model than objects. I want him to have before his eyes the original itself and not the paper

representing it, to sketch a house from a house, a tree from a tree, a man from a man, so that he gets

accustomed to observing bodies and their appearances well and not to taking false and conventional

imitations for true imitations” (144; 397, my emphasis).

Emile will only draw objects where he can see the direct relation between his drawing and the thing drawn. He will imitate the physical world, not the human one.

As Emile nears puberty he is taught to understand human beings, but from a perspective outside public opinion.86 He is always asked of any new opinion that he is introduced to, “what is it good for?” (179; 446). He must learn to judge what is useful and not among human things before his sentiments of relation to others are activated: “Before instructing him in our sentiments, begin by teaching him to evaluate them. … if you begin by instructing him in public opinion before teaching him to appraise it, rest assured that, whatever you may do, it will become his, and you

85 Thus it goes too far to argue that “Rousseau categorically denies the educational power of example” (Cassirer, Question, 124). 86 This contrasts with say, the Socratic method of gaining independence from opinion, which interrogates authoritative human opinion from within. Emile’s perspective relative to his fellows may not be wholly objective, but it is his own, not that of the ‘cave’ of his society. Bloom puts it this way: “Plato purified poetry so as to make its view of the world less hostile to reason, and he replaced the ordinary lies by a noble lie. Rousseau banishes poetry altogether and suppresses all lies” (Introduction to Emile, 9).

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will no longer be able to destroy it” (187; 458). This restriction continues until puberty: “Do not make speeches to the child which he cannot understand. No descriptions, no eloquence, no figures, no poetry. … continue to be clear, simple, and cold” (169; 432). In other words, Emile’s first language, even regarding other people, will be the exact opposite of the first languages of the first human beings. Until puberty he will not learn any language of communal relationships.87

Rousseau’s explanation of the essential results is worth examining in full, because it confirms the “northern,” rational, and asocial character of Emile’s language. At the end of childhood,

“Emile has only natural and purely physical knowledge. He does not know even the name of history,

or what metaphysics and morals are. He knows the essential relations of man to things but nothing

of the moral relations of man to man. He hardly knows how to generalize ideas and hardly how to

make abstractions. He sees common qualities in certain bodies without reasoning about these

qualities in themselves. He knows abstract extension with the aid of the figures of geometry, and he

knows abstract quantity with the aid of the signs of algebra” (207; 487).

In the terms of Origin, Emile has only northern language related to needs. But this northern language in actual history tended to be born of dire circumstances and was concerned with manipulating others or appealing to their conventions. Emile, in contrast, can supply his basic needs and more, based on experience, without the negative consequences which often attended historical development. He is thus an improvement on historical human beings from the point of view of psychological wholeness as well as clarity of thought.88

87 “Imitative and theatrical music is not for his age” (149; 405). Thus we cannot say that “Emile will receive an education modelled on that which would have been most likely in and suitable to primitive society” (Horowitz, Rousseau, 217). 88 Although Emile’s hardiness certainly still falls short of primitive human beings; he is made for civilized life, even if on its margins.

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The way Emile learns to speak and reason addresses the practical problems of the modern world. He will not be trapped in a role where he must pay constant attention to the opinions of others. He is given a job, carpentry, that relies on his solid understanding and which can be useful anywhere.89 Emile maintains his separation from opinion by avoiding those jobs, such as “an architect or a painter” or “an embroiderer, a gilder … a varnisher, like Locke’s gentlemen,” or “a musician, an actor, or a writer of books,” for all of these trades make one “a plaything of public opinion” (196; 197, 472; 473). Emile’s education has prepared him to be saved from such a vortex, and his practical skills ensure that he does not need to enter it.

There is an obvious objection to my characterization of Emile’s education thus far: this education in “northern” speech is not sufficient. Perhaps Emile’s subsequent education makes him politically oriented as well as self-sufficient and rational, as Neuhauser suggests.90 So far Emile’s linguistic education is an Enlightenment experiment along the lines suggested by Locke and

Condillac.91 It is right to say that this is not sufficient for Rousseau but wrong to think that Emile’s speech, thought and passions are expanded in a way that would make him a good citizen. They make him a good man and a good husband, but that is something different.

It is true that Emile cannot remain an animal satisfying his physical needs, and that

Rousseau thinks that his predecessors did not go far enough in considering a linguistic education in sentiments.92 “We have made an active and thinking being. It remains for us, in order to complete the man, only to make a loving and feeling being – that is to say, to perfect reason by

89 “Of all conditions, the artisan’s is the most independent of fortune and men” (195; 471). And the carpenter most of all (201; 480). 90 Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy, 20-22; 171-172. 91 “No doubt a child might be so ordered, as to have but a very few, even of ordinary ideas, till he were grown up to a man,” (Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (London: Penguin Classics, 2004), 111; see also 366. Consider also Condillac, Origin of Knowledge, 215. Allan Bloom notes that “Rousseau makes his young Emile an embodiment of the Enlightenment’s new scientific method” (Introduction to Emile, 15). Cf. Warner, Problem of Human Relations, 41. 92 Rousseau directly criticizes Locke for omitting this education (357; 692).

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sentiment” (203; 481). Emile must develop some passion, and a language which binds him to others. “One has a hold on the passions only by means of the passions. It is by their empire that their tyranny must be combated; and it is always from nature itself that the proper instruments to regulate nature must be drawn” (327; 653). Language must be express passions in order to motivate human beings, as we have seen.

At this point Rousseau introduces religion and sexuality. Until puberty Emile is protected from the otherworldliness of Christianity, indeed from any religious notions at all. He does not encounter the world as a mysterious place like early human beings, but only a world he can understand.93 Rousseau traces “the whole first age of my pupil without speaking to him of religion”

(257; 554). Emile will as a young adult “choose the one [religion] to which the best use of his reason ought to lead him” (260; 559). For Emile religion will support his limited but solid self- understanding.

That said, his religious education does expand Emile’s sense of self and give him duties toward others.

How many new means we have for speaking to his heart! It is only then that he finds his true interest

in being good, in doing good far from the sight of men and without being forced by the laws, in

being just between God and himself, in fulfilling his duty, even at the expense of his life, and in

carrying virtue in his heart. He does this not only for the love of order, to which each of us always

prefers love of self, but for the love of the Author of his being – a love which is confounded with

that same love of self – and, finally, for the enjoyment of that durable happiness which the repose

of a good conscience and the contemplation of this Supreme Being promise him in the other life

after he has spent this one well (Emile, 314; 635).

93 “During the first ages men were frightened of everything and saw nothing dead in nature” (256, 553).

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Rousseau emphasizes that religion primarily moves Emile’s heart to love God as the author of his own being. Emile understands fulfilling his duties as an extension of his earthly self-concern to others.94 While he is taught the afterlife to encourage concern with his duties, he is never shown to focus on the life to come.95 Religion broadens his sentiments and interests generally, not intensely and specifically toward a particular community. His religion encourages him to be more active in aiding his neighbors than his aloof contemporaries, but not devoted to them like a citizen.

Emile must be brought closer to others, but he is only brought so far. At the edge of adulthood, Emile is too strong-souled, and hence too unlike, his fellows. As Emile develops pity and attachment to others, the tutor thus teaches him the dynamics of strength and weakness found in Theatrical Imitation and The Levite. The tutor first makes himself pitiable in order to teach his pupil to pity. “All those perfect people are neither touching nor persuasive. One always tells oneself that it is quite easy for them to combat passions they do not feel. Show your weakness to your pupil if you want to cure his own. Let him see that you undergo the same struggles which he experiences. Let him learn to conquer himself by your example” (334; 664). Emile too must learn to temper his strength:

In the theater, you saw heroes, overcome by extreme pains, make the stage reverberate with their

senseless cries, grieving like women, crying like children, and thus meriting public applause. Do

you remember how scandalized you were by these lamentations, cries, and complaints on the part

of men from whom one ought to except only acts of constancy and firmness? ‘What?’ you said very

indignantly. ‘Are these the examples we are given to follow, the models we are offered for imitation!

Are they afraid that man is not small enough, unhappy enough, and weak enough without someone

94 See Bloom, Love and Friendship, 84. 95 Whether it is equivalent to that of the Savoyard Vicar is unclear, although some are sure that it is (e.g. Grimsley, Rousseau and the Religious Quest, x; O’Hagan, Rousseau, 10). Strauss suggests that “the man and the citizen are reconciled in Emile, and the reconciliation takes place through the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar” (“Rousseau,” 1962, 484). Against this position: Bloom, Love and Friendship, 71-86. 175

extolling his weakness under the false image of virtue?’ My young friend, be more indulgent with

the stage henceforward. Now you have become one of its heroes (443; 816, my emphasis).

This passage is a qualification of what might seem to be the argument of Theatrical Imitation – that we should fight the self-indulgence encouraged by the theater. But it supports my argument that Rousseau thinks that indulgence of human weakness is necessary for persuasive speech, and useful for living with others. It is necessary for living among human beings, especially modern ones. With his core of reason based on nature Emile can now safely enjoy books and the theater in order to learn moral lessons and taste (342-344; 673-676).

At this point Emile will learn a more sophisticated version of the language of love and mutual appreciation idealized in Origin as the language of the south. This language attaches him fiercely to a life with Sophie, in a way that further separates him from politics. He will be preserved from following the generality of men into debauchery, according to Rousseau, because it is imitation of arbitrary convention that encourages such behavior, and Emile is immune to that sort of imitation. Young men “imitate other giddy fellows, just as they want to be imitated,” but “who in the world is less of an imitator than Emile?” (332, 331; 659, 658). Emile will not imitate corrupt human beings. Rather, Emile is inspired by the image of Sophie, a good woman.96 “If it he takes pleasure in the image, he will soon hope that it has an original” (329; 655). Imitation can again be used to direct Emile because he can see the image as good for him and has no desire to imitate that which he cannot see the good of, even if others praise it.

Love of his spouse will turn out to be Emile’s only strong passion. This is also to say that he will never develop patriotism, or love of his country, as his energy is reserved for family life.

96 For Sophie’s speech and education, see Schaeffer, Rousseau, 134-157. Schaeffer argues that in some ways Sophie is a more impressive character than Emile, with a more developed sense of rationality. “Just as the reader must be seduced by Emile’s example but also critically detached from it, Sophie must be both inside and outside the whole that is formed by her relationship with Emile. In order to maintain the illusion on which that relationship rests, Sophie must not be simply taken in by it” (Rousseau, 142).

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Emile is “a young man for whom this is not only his first love but his first passion of any kind. On this passion, perhaps the only one he will feel intensely his whole life, depends the final form his character is going to take” (416; 778). That his love be strong enough to overpower his other passions is crucial to Emile’s education. The birth of this passion completes his linguistic education. Emile and Sophie sing and dance together (425; 790). They read each other’s books

(414; 775). These linguistic exchanges enchant their shared life.

To the suggestion that Emile is not made to be attached to citizenship it has sensibly been objected: what of Emile’s education in the principles of the Social Contract?97 However, Rousseau tells us the purpose of this education: it is for Emile’s good judgment, and to show him the limits of political life and the distance of modern political life from the heights of the possible. “It is necessary to know what ought to be in order to judge soundly about what is” (458; 832). And what is, according to Rousseau, is a state very far from a healthy one, one where “the social contract has not been observed” (473; 858). Emile’s political education shows him his more limited duties and allows him to see the difficult political reality that he lives in for what it is: somewhat dangerous and rather unattractive. He will not be duped into being a happy slave or unhappy participant in despotic rhetoric.

To the extent readers imitate Emile, they are also encouraged to see their situation as unfavorable for political involvement. Emile and Sophie are an ideal image encouraging imitation of their autarkic retreat.98 Their time together is a happier version of the romantic scenes in the

97 “If one fails to see that what Rousseau denies is only the possibility of simultaneously forming children into both men and citizens, it is impossible to account for the obvious fact that part of Emile’s education … consists in preparing him to assume his place as a member of the state” (Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy, 172). 98 This is also the purpose of Julie, meant to encourage retreat in a corrupt age: “Great cities must have theaters; and corrupt peoples, Novels” (Julie, 3; OC II, 1). I disagree with Joshua Cohen that “Rousseau is sometimes said to have exalted the simple life, but this is entirely misguided. His concern is always about the price that we pay for the good of developing and exercising our powers, and about whether it is possible to achieve that good without paying a terrible price” (A Free Community of Equals, 25). While in certain respects Emile has developed his rationality, Rousseau’s promotion of the simple life is not simply about appreciating the price for our development.

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first canto of The Levite, presented for the same purpose. Rousseau suggests that the properly educated reader does not even need poetry. Rejecting the help of “Albani and Raphael … Divine

Milton,” Rousseau asserts that “you need only have sensitive hearts and decent souls, then let your imagination wander without constraint in contemplating the transports of two young lovers who

… are untroubled as they yield themselves to the sweet illusion delighting them; in the intoxication of their desires they advance slowly toward their goal, weaving flowers and garlands around the happy bond which is going to unite them until the grave” (424; 789).99 If Rousseau has educated his readers well enough, they will not need him to do any more than to set the stage for a touching scene, which they will imagine for themselves. By their quiet and loving life, Sophie and Emile can inspire others: “one of the examples good men ought to give others is that of the patriarchal and rustic life, man’s first life, which is the most peaceful, the most natural, and the sweetest life for anyone who does not have a corrupt heart” (474; 859). The figure of Emile can perhaps inspire a more self-sufficient, beautiful and simple way of life for some. The beauty of that way of life ends up being a key complement to it, for Emile himself, on Rousseau’s presentation.

To conclude this section: while Emile does largely retain the advantages of the different functions of speech in modern times, he is not a political model. In terms of the basic puzzle of this chapter, Emile manages to hold together experience and developed reason in a modern setting.

This is first because for most of his education the two are never allowed to separate. Once Emile does learn about the complex human world, he does so from a perspective outside of it, which prevents his reason from becoming arbitrary. His job as a carpenter, his natural religion, and his

99 This image recalls the “garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which they are laden” spread by “the Sciences, Letters, and Arts” in the First Discourse (6; OC III, 7). Sophie and Emile’s bond, then, has something of the constraining quality of political life and will need the charms of the imagination to be felt as consistently enjoyable.

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attachment to Sophie largely protect him from the commerce, despotism, and abstract religion that might distort his language and understanding.

His education, though, holds Emile at some remove from attachment to his or any other particular society. This is not to say that Emile would make a bad or criminal citizen, but nor would he make an excellent one. Emile is not brought up committed passionately to a particular political body – his passionate commitment is only to Sophie. 100 However, it is not quite enough to say that

Emile and Sophie “exercise their beneficence in local communities and do so more for the sake of their families than out of concern for the general good. When called to more strenuous civil duties, they comply but are glad to return to private life.”101 For what if Emile’s duty to his family and to his country conflict? It is not at all clear that he would side with the latter. Emile is designed to live happily on the margins of corrupt societies, not as an active member or enthusiastic supporter of a healthy one.102

Emile’s detachment can be seen particularly clearly if one looks at his linguistic and symbolic world. His example suggests that for Rousseau, the rifts in language that occur naturally and increase with history cannot be reconciled on the political level. He does not have the symbolic attachment or vocabulary to link him to a particular community. He speaks a utilitarian language and one of love, not one of political rhetoric and persuasion. His speech is adorned by his humanity

100 To return to the work of Denise Schaeffer, she does not go so far as to suggest that Emile’s education in judgment is equivalent to the development of political judgment because she recognizes that “all existing political orders will hamper his independence. He has … attached himself to imperishable principles, to the exclusion of any particular attachments (apart from Sophie)” (Rousseau, 156). Warner puts it well: “The regime as the regime means nothing to Emile. His universal morality makes him as bad a patriot as he is a good neighbor” (Problem of Human Relations, 106). 101 Kelly, Rousseau as Author, 96. 102 His example is not an optimistic one from the point of view of politics, such that we could say that “in raising up Emile in his imagination, Rousseau has sought to indicate that a lifting of excess denaturation would make possible a society in which alienation could be overcome” (Horowitz, Rousseau, 247). Warner argues that “the regime Emile chooses for his family is not and would not be the one outlined in the Social Contract, but rather one that makes far less stringent demands on his time and attention (Problem of Human Relations, 89). Indeed, while the citizen “once removed from his homeland, is not only no longer a citizen – he no longer is … Emile … can leave his home country without losing his identity” (168).

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and his bond to Sophie, but it is not that of the legislator or the citizen.103 When he reasons, it will not be in terms of the general will.104 His sentiments are not attached to a particular political order or tradition, as we saw of healthy citizens in Poland. His amour-propre is satisfied by his individual and familial accomplishments, not contributions to the civic order.

VI. Conclusion

This chapter has shown how the instrumental, manipulative function of language tends to undermine expression as it detaches us from ourselves to focus on the physical world, and much more so as that expression gets caught up in a world of human making and self-and-other manipulation. The dangers of developed speech are thus even more serious than they appeared in prior chapters. But Rousseau argued that while the corruption of language was a natural tendency, writing and an orientation toward the opinions of others are necessary to support healthy political communities. These traditions need to be directed toward the defense and glorification of the community, and they need to be linked to the lived experiences of the readers and spectators in order for these traditions to retain their force and utility.

For the most part the modern world no longer has these sorts of living traditions and the independent free communities they support. The natural tendency to drift away from this relative harmony was encouraged by historical factors that have exacerbated the problem. The commerce among peoples, both their mixing, but especially their mixing for monetary exchange, despotism, and the popularization of science all tend to contribute to the decline of political speech in civilized societies. In the West, Christianity also contributed to rendering language less passionate and

103 As Kelly points out, the limits of Emile’s rhetoric are shown by its failure in Emile and Sophie: “Like his own actions, his rhetoric is based on self-interest. His coolness yields only four or five recruits” in an attempted slave rebellion (Rousseau as Author, 96). 104 See: Waterlot, Rousseau, 28.

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particular. Thus, an important conclusion of this chapter is: on Rousseau’s account, we could improve our language and the communities it helps to create by less focus on commerce, more political freedom, and less focus on abstract popular science and otherworldly religion. To the extent that these trends are irreversible, however, it is necessary to accept certain limits on what political speech can accomplish.

Rousseau in Emile thinks through what it would take to bring the features of speech back into some kind of harmony in an individual. Perhaps surprisingly if one has read Origin, such an attempt involves anchoring the individual’s speech and reason in utility first and foremost, even if the beauty of relational speech is later developed. In part because of the deeply individualistic nature of Emile’s education, including in its linguistic elements, this approach to reconciling the different elements of speech could not serve as a model for political speech (even were it possible to replicate Emile’s education). Rousseau’s work thus maintains that in terms of speech and rationality, a society cannot have all good things together.

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Conclusion: Assessing Rousseau’s articulation of the problem of political speech

In this conclusion I recapitulate the argument of the dissertation and in so doing return to the problems of the introduction. The essential problem of political speech stems from Rousseau’s radical individualism: the individual’s natural self-absorption makes bridging the gap between human beings through language a fraught endeavor even in the best of circumstances. As we saw in Rousseau’s analysis of Theatrical Imitation and Origin, because human beings need and desire each other but remain largely self-concerned, most speech is not about discerning the truth of the external world but about social positioning in order to obtain power and esteem. Worse, when speech does try to get to the bottom of things, this attempt tends to undermine the types of speech that support free community. These problems only increase as human society becomes more complex.

Rousseau’s articulation of the problem of political speech is most visibly a critique of public reason and enlightenment. Rousseau argues that precise speech and complex argument cannot serve as the foundation for political life, for two reasons. Most simply, this weakness of scientific speech is (he asserts) due to an ineradicable feature of human nature: most people cannot be primarily concerned with trying to get to the bottom of things – they have neither the time nor the interest and doing so is difficult. We can be made interested in rational calculation, but only when it serves our strongest desire – to advance our own individual interest. And according to

Rousseau, when individuals consider their self-interest, it will lead them to think and act contrary to the interests of the community more often than not, because there are many instances in which it will appear that they can benefit at the expense of the community.1

1 John Warner puts it well in his recent study: “The underlying problem in the just polity – as elsewhere – is the intransigence of natural, individuating self-love, which resists with overwhelming strength all efforts to recruit it for social and political purposes” (Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations, 4).

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One might object that the general will is formed by a certain type of rational calculation, where each citizen asks themselves what they think the general will of the community is. But as we saw in The Levite, when Rousseau presents a society with at least an instance of a functioning general will, the commitment to the good of the whole community does not express itself after a prolonged debate about what the general will is or after quiet reflection. The citizens of a healthy polity know the general will without having to engage in deep reflection on it.

Political speech can never be essentially concerned with expressing the results of philosophic or scientific inquiry. Yet a fragile synthesis of philosophical reason and more symbolic political speech is possible, and in optimal circumstances public speech can often grasp, express and promote the essential basic needs of a political community. While Rousseau is critical of the effects of complex rationality on public discourse, that does not mean that the public should not benefit from the abilities of a genius or the advances of science. His explicit modesty notwithstanding, Rousseau thinks that he has been able to obtain a superior standpoint on politics, at least, and one that does not simply reject philosophic reason.2 As was shown in my analysis of

The Levite, sophisticated rationality continues to play a role in Rousseau’s political thought.

Leaders, either legislators or members of the government, need to exercise a great deal of invention in directing institutions and creating narratives and symbols. But such reasoning remains the purview of an elite few. For Rousseau, the bridge between the more sophisticated understanding needed by a few and the simpler one needed for most is an affective basis for political speech and action in an artistic and performative milieu that reinforces a common story about a given

2 This despite his doubts about reason’s ability to grasp and articulate either the external world or the opinions of other people. Rousseau’s skepticism can seem to have egalitarian implications, and he is at pains to always cast his advice as merely that, the opinion of one man with a limited perspective. When defending himself, he admits that his reasons might be shaped by his self-interest: “When he is deeply wounded, the most just man rarely sees things as they are. I surely do not want to deceive you, but I can deceive myself” (Letter from the Mountain, 134; OC III, 687). When advising the Poles, Rousseau is careful to always cast his advice as one possible route (although no doubt the one he thinks best), which the Poles must decide if they want to choose for themselves (Poland, 210; OC III, 1003).

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community. If such an affective basis forms, citizens naturally associate their good with that of the community, at least in many instances, and this has much more to do with habit than with explicit reasoning. The only way to ensure that calculation about shared goods occurs is to ground that reasoning in such shared passions and views.3 If a common viewpoint is created, a sophisticated leadership can direct the polity and be guarded against corruption by a vigilant citizenry invested in their common endeavor and the enforcement of common rights.

The need to undergird political speech with a symbolic and narrative edifice has frequently provoked concerns from Rousseau’s readers. As we saw in the introduction, there are suggestions that what Rousseau wants is brain-washing in patriotism. He has recently been charged with being the forefather of populist rhetoric.4 According to a contemporary scholar, Rousseau’s rhetoric is a form of identity politics that is critical of elites and dangerously anti-liberal because anti-pluralist

(in the sense of aiming for a unified single viewpoint rather than acknowledging the legitimacy of multiple interests and perspectives).5

Some rejoinder on behalf of a liberal interpretation of Rousseau is possible. I argued in the introduction that institutionally Rousseau argues for the necessity of allowing for debate, and unlike some populists in representative democracy, legitimate politics for Rousseau should give all citizens scope to participate actively in self-government.6 As for his rhetoric, this dissertation

3 As Christopher Kelly writes, “The existence of a common way of life founded in custom and language is indispensable. When fellow members of a nation look at each other they see something as close to themselves as possible. …good citizens identity with and imitate the same things” (“Rousseau on the foundations of national cultures,” History of European Ideas 16 (1993), 525). 4 Jan Werner Muller, What is Populism? (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), 33. 5 Muller, What is Populism? 2-3. 6 Muller makes this latter point: “the major difference between populist representation of the people and Rousseau’s general will [is that] the formation of the latter requires actual participation by citizens; the populist, on the other hand, can divine the proper will of the people on the basis of what it means, for instance, to be a ‘real American’” (What is Populism?, 33). Against this attempt to disassociate Rousseau from populism, it might be objected that for him citizen participation does not have to count equally. See John McCormick, “Rousseau’s Rome and the Repudiation of Populist Republicanism,” Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy 10 (2007): 3-27. McCormick uses the word populism to signify a truly participatory democracy, not the contemporary phenomenon identified by Muller.

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has hoped to show that Rousseau’s account of political speech is nuanced and not as anti- rationalistic as some have asserted. All speech contains some understanding and articulation, however partial or vague, such that no pure appeal to passion is possible.

But in the final analysis Rousseau’s assessment of political speech does end up promoting forms of political speech that are dangerous from a liberal perspective. On Rousseau’s premises, maintaining a shared world in speech is more effectively achieved in an exclusive (preferably small) community and his thought encourages such exclusivity.7 Community is not natural to

Rousseau, but more homogenous communities are closer to nature – not only historically, but also in terms of the natural propensity for our identity to contract. Because our interest naturally tends to contract toward what feels closer to the individual self, and we want to feel that our sphere is superior to that of others, most individuals can only remain fully committed to a circumscribed group. Speech is primarily about forging connections with a group of others who we come to see as essentially like us, and of positioning one’s self and one’s group against others whom we feel to be competitors. Rousseau consistently argues that the story that a community tells about itself should have heroes and victims in order to evoke pride [amour-propre] and pity – and an enemy to which these heroes and victims are opposed in order to circumscribe and intensify that pride and pity. Opposition to outsiders and compassion for those who are victims of those outsiders are essential for the building of a communal ethos. This opposition can have the effect of encouraging disregard of, or violence toward, outsiders. Such a price of potential violence and exclusion is one that Rousseau argues that successful politics must pay.8 This is true even though he tries to lessen

7 Rousseau can partly be held responsible for encouraging modern nationalism, both in its positive aspects and its destructive ones, contra modern defenders. (“Quite simply, the nineteenth-century state and nationalism have nothing to do with Rousseau’s thought” (Mark Hulliung, “Rousseau’s Response to the Social Contract Tradition” in Rousseau and the Dilemmas of Modernity, ed. Mark Hulliung (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2016), 33). 8 See for instance the well-known passage from Emile: “Every patriot is harsh with foreigners. They are only men. They are nothing in his eyes. This is a drawback, inevitable but not compelling. The essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives” (39; OC IV, 248). As we have seen, the patriot too sometimes thinks instrumentally,

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the dangers of exclusive nationalism by encouraging an isolationist and defensive posture.9 Group exclusivity might be well-directed, but it cannot be removed, and always has attendant dangers.

I. History’s destruction of the synthesis

Even if modern citizens wanted to pay the price necessary for political unity, it is not clear that they could pay it successfully. The problem of political speech only becomes more difficult, on Rousseau’s account. The ability to understand the basic needs and rights of a given political community becomes increasingly difficult as history advances and societies become more complicated. Language mirrors society in developing an increasing sophistication to match the complexity of the distant institutions that come to dominate political life. Unfortunately, Rousseau suggests that at the point where civilization is highly multifaceted it becomes harder, not to say impossible, to support a truly free society. Most of the time a distant despotism will operate at a remove from everyday life and attempt to draw a veil over its domination – to distract its subjects and obscure their true interests.

Rousseau’s diagnosis has been echoed by contemporary commentators, suggesting that his concerns remain relevant. While the advance of science can empower the rare genius or legislator to make improved plans to further the public good, or the scientific community to make technological advances, the spread of increasingly specialized forms of science and technology comes at the cost of our being able to understand the world in a common way. Tzvetan Todorov notes that “our own era has seen the divorce of everyday language, accessible to all and therefore

but from the standpoint of the whole community. But in partaking in such instrumental thinking the patriot still finds that it is in his interest to exploit other communities and individuals more often than not. 9 The Corsicans should “think about foreign powers no more than one would if none of them existed” (Corsica, 125; OC IIII, 904). The distinctiveness of the nation is meant to prevent foreign conquest, not encourage aggression: “If you make it so that a Pole can never become a Russian, I answer to you for it that Russia will never subjugate Poland” (Poland, 174; OC III, 960).

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intended for all, from specialized language – those of philosophers, psychologists, economists, and others – languages that are addressed to professionals, and to them alone.”10 Even when helpful in their own spheres, the development of different specialized languages and scientific approaches makes it harder for citizens to interact with the powers governing their world. Citizens are left at the mercy of experts who may or may not have their best interests in mind (or understand those interests even if these experts are well intentioned).

Worse, as these new vocabularies become disconnected from everyday experience, they can become arbitrary and are easily available for misuse by those in power to make political understanding and opposition more difficult. Pierre Manent argues that “by their determination to lay down the law concerning social perceptions and the words that translate them, our governments are increasingly abandoning the domain of actual political action. They proceed as if social life were a spectacle and as if the parts of the body politic were objects the perception of which were subject to command.”11 Manent’s concern is that the distance of citizens from political life and a government able to make use of technology to manipulate its appearance gives governments a growing ability to obscure and deny the existence of problems that need addressing. Manent has in mind particularly the French government’s refusal to acknowledge – and its active dismissal as

Islamophobic those who acknowledge – real tensions between France’s Muslim and nonMuslim citizens, in a way that makes addressing these tensions impossible.12 This practice of obscuring practical political reality is also visible in concerted efforts by some governments to craft a

10 Frail Happiness, 1. Similarly: “The inflation of specialized vocabularies, far from giving us the means for a more refined and rigorous understanding, multiplies the crutches with which we try in vain to make up for loss of confidence in our capacity to understand and to speak” (Pierre Manent, Seeing Things Politically: Interviews with Bénédicte Delorme-Montini, trans. Ralph C. Hancock (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2015), 111). Manent considers these problems in relation to Rousseau in Naissances de la politique moderne (Paris: Gallimard, 2007), esp. 192-193. 11 Pierre Manent, Beyond Radical Secularism: How France and the Christian West Should Respond to the Islamic Challenge, trans. Ralph C. Hancock (South Bend, Indiana: St. Augustine’s Press, 2016), 75. 12 Ibid.

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comprehensive narrative about the political world that supports their exclusive interests, amplified by modern technology.13 The lack of connection between political speech and lived experience allows governments to manipulate the appearance of their actions (or inactions) without citizens being able to easily identify their transgressions in order to hold them accountable. Much of the contemporary political scene shows how difficult constructing public reason is, due to causes that confirm Rousseau’s diagnosis.

A natural response to these problems might seem to be campaigns of public education.

Proponents of modernity often suggest that increasing enlightenment can help citizens understand a more complex world.14 Yet such attempts to transcend Rousseau’s diagnosis – to create a higher synthesis that avoids the problems created by Rousseau’s costly solution as well as by history – will only make matters worse, on Rousseau’s account. He argues that attempting to overcome the limits of political speech by public enlightenment will lead to the rule of an ideology of enlightenment that conceals both the truth in the philosophic sense as well as the true goods of the citizens. It is possible to attract a large public to an identity focused on making progress in understanding that transcends their individual experience, but not in a way that they will understand. Those who claim that society is becoming more enlightened deceive the public into believing that it has made progress with flashy art and scientific discoveries, while in fact these

13 There is a range of effectiveness and reach in attempts to exercise control. Useful popular analysis: Maria Konnikova, “Trump’s Lies vs. Your Brain,” Politico, January/February 2017, https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/donald-trump-lies-liar-effect-brain-214658; Zoltan Simon, “Orban’s Propaganda Machine Keeps Hungarian Protests in Check,” Bloomberg, January 11, 2019, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-11/orban-s-propaganda-machine-keeps-hungarian-protests-in- check; Alexey Kovalev, “In Putin’s Russia, the hollowed-out media mirrors the state,” The Guardian, March 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/mar/24/putin-russia-media-state-government-control. 14 Dan Pfeiffer confidently asserts that younger citizens are becoming more rational. Millennials “have a natural and well-earned skepticism about what they read online, as well as the skills to verify or debunk anything. As millennials become a larger part of the electorate, the propaganda tactics of the Right are going to be less and less effective” (Yes we (still) can, 149). Pfeiffer seems to consider the phenomenon of groupthink as largely ephemeral, rather than deeply rooted in human psychology and experience.

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artificial advances merely distract the public from seeing that its rights and true needs are being ignored or trampled. The preachers of enlightenment make it harder for citizens to see solid political truth by encouraging their natural propensity to indulge their pride by thinking that they already see it.

The practical effect of attempts at enlightenment is partisanship. Different groups will base their claims to superiority on a supposed advantage in education, which will prevent them from taking other positions seriously or questioning their own views. Our present situation bears ample evidence of this problem. Even some who think of themselves as progressives have noted a counterproductive dismissiveness in progressive discourse, relying largely on a claim to superior education.15 Many conservatives view the situation in the same way - as a conflict between the enlightened and the ignorant - even if they often lack the institutional pedigree of their opponents.16

What is missing is the thought that both sides might be partial and politics in need of a more holistic perspective or compromise. Unfortunately, Rousseau denies that such a perspective can be forthcoming through discussion – rather, a basis must be established for it in popular stories, practices and institutions.

There are thus historical as well as natural problems for those who would interpret

Rousseau as a rationalist or attempt to move his understanding of speech in a more rationalist direction. Both Rawls and Habermas attempt just such a modification of elements of Rousseau’s thought, by trying to improve upon his teaching of the general will in specifying conditions in which citizens can use formal reasoning procedures to produce just outcomes.17 We can now say

15 Sometimes noted by self-styled liberals themselves: Emmett Rensin, “The smug style in American liberalism,” Vox, April 21, 2016, https://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11451378/smug-american-liberalism. 16 James Allan, “Evil vs dumb: Where the Left sees morality, conservatives see stupidity,” The Spectator, May 12, 2018, https://www.spectator.co.uk/2018/05/evil-vs-dumb/. 17 There are features of Rousseau’s thought that genuinely encourage such an appropriation. As we have seen, although Rousseau does not abandon the need for substantive reasoning about particulars, he does cast doubt on such reasoning and does demote it rhetorically, while emphasizing communal education and the activity of the general will. The

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more about what makes these approaches dubious, from Rousseau’s perspective. Rousseau would suggest that they cannot help us understand how to think about the possibilities of actual public speech. Political speech simply cannot take on a transparent character; trying to introduce such rationalism introduces new problems. Rawls and Habermas do see something of the problem of instrumental reason suggested by Rousseau – but rather than try to extend our identification prior to calculation, they suggest imagining ourselves without any specific characteristics or social qualities that we might promote at the expense of others. Rawls argues that we should draw a “veil of ignorance” over such matters.18 Habermas asks that we take the view of a “nonparticipant” to decide what rights we should have as participants.19 Rousseau could object that if introduced into political practice such views, or practices based on them, would either be unappealing and ineffective, because too abstracted from individual or communal concerns, or counterproductive and reinforcing of individuation by focusing our imagination on our individual needs and desires.20

Rousseau’s understanding of the limits of political speech also sheds light on the practical problems of the introduction. As noted there, the Obama administration observed some of the dynamics addressed in this dissertation – in particular, the retreat of political speech from a shared understanding of concrete political reality and the concomitant emergence of opposing partisan discourses. In response, Obama gave a great deal of thought to telling a common story that would

attractiveness of appealing to the formalism of the general will seems to have inspired later thinkers to attempt further formal solutions with much greater goals. It is thus not inaccurate to see Rousseau as part of the basis for the very overzealous rationalism that this study hoped to address. 18 Rawls, Justice as Fairness, 15. 19 Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998), 118. 20 Celine Spector has recently developed a similar argument, that while “Rousseau seems to be one of the main inspirations of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice and Political Liberalism,” Rawls’s assessment of Rousseau is untenable due to its rationalism (“Rousseau at Harvard: John Rawls and Judith Shklar on realistic utopia” in Engaging with Rousseau: Reactions and Interpretations from the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Avi Lifschitz (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 152)). See also: Patrick Neal, “In the Shadow of the General Will: Rawls, Kant, and Rousseau,” Review of Politics 49 (1987): 389-419; Robert Jubb,” Rawls and Rousseau: Amour- Propre and the Strains of Commitment,” Res Publica 17 (2011): 245-260. On Habermas’s debt to Rousseau, see Wokler, Rousseau, 117.

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transcend the increasing partisanship that beset Obama’s tenure in office.21 The former president argued that such a story is essential and that it is possible to construct one that will avoid the high price that Rousseau thinks must be paid for forming a strong civic identity, in terms of appealing to a set of exclusive communal standards. In his July 2018 speech in South Africa, Obama asserted that “things may go backwards for a while, but ultimately, right makes might, not the other way around, ultimately, the better story can win out.”22 The specific story that Obama has in mind is “the irreducible worth of every person, the insistence that every life is precious, the radical and necessary notion that we are part of a single human family — that is the story that we all must tell.”23

Obama took seriously the evidence that most human stories have been about smaller groups that operated on a logic that was exclusive and exclusionary, if not worse.24 But he and those who helped him write his speeches seem to have hoped that his unique person – both American and belonging to a visible minority – would uniquely suit him to bridge the national and the human.25

Ben Rhodes writes that “Obama was unique in that the mere fact of his own identity was going to leave an imprint on people abroad. In addition to being the American president, he was a symbol

21 I offer no similar analysis of the rhetoric of the Trump Administration primarily because it does not seem to me to have the ambition of transcending the problems diagnosed in this dissertation. 22 Obama, “Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture.” (speech, Johannesburg, South Africa, July 17, 2018), Time, http://time.com/5341180/barack-obama-south-africa-speech-transcript/. 23 Barack Obama, “Hiroshima Speech,” (speech, Hiroshima, Japan, May 27, 2016), New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/28/world/asia/text-of-president-obamas-speech-in-hiroshima-japan.html 24 “Nations arise telling a story that binds people together in sacrifice and cooperation, allowing for remarkable feats. But those same stories have so often been used to oppress and dehumanize those who are different” (Obama, Hiroshima Speech). These stories do not have to disappear as a broader identity is born: “Embracing our common humanity does not mean that we have to abandon our unique ethnic and national and religious identities” (Obama, South Africa Speech). 25 Herder makes the philosophical case for such a synthesis. He begins from Rousseau’s defensive nationalism but suggests that a sort of progressive competition between nations is possible: “all the peoples of Europe (not excluding other parts of the world) are now in contest of, not physical, but mental and artistic forces with each other” (Philosophical Writings, 377; see also 379, 406). Herder’s optimism seems in part due to beginning from premises less individualistic than Rousseau’s. He goes so far as to argue that “the tendency of human nature contains within it a universe whose inscription is: ‘No one for himself only, each for all; thus are you all dear to each other and happy. An infinite variety striving for a unity that lies in all, that advances all. Its name is …. understanding, justice, goodness, feeling of humanity” (424).

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for the aspirations of billions of people—particularly ethnic minorities in the developed world and young people in the developing world.”26 The bridging of the divide between Americans would be accomplished by noting the dangers of group rivalry – “any world order that elevates one group of people over another will fail,” and by showing how Americans benefitted from being connected to humanity at large.27 Appealing to both Obama as a unifying symbol and common interests could lead not only to reconciling divisions emerging within the United States, but perhaps even to those between it and other states.

To the extent that Rousseau’s understanding of the problem of political speech is correct, attempts of those like the Obama administration to create a broader human identity at home and abroad will have serious limits and internal tensions (which is not to deny that it has had some obvious success). The administration seemed to count on the possibility that a strong shared human bond could be created without any kind of external opposition, and that this could be done in part by showing the interconnectedness of human needs. But the administration’s rhetoric required the appreciation of benefits that come from a complex international system few (if any) can fully understand, and which is in many ways detached from daily experience. Obama’s rhetoric would, on Rousseau’s estimation, lack the necessary passionate specificity to reach beyond a limited range of experiences and at best create an attractive ideology that in fact served (or at least appeared to serve) the interests of a particular group of human beings. The attempt to transcend the good of the particular (American) community would limit the ability of such rhetoric to consistently appeal to and reinforce that community. Indeed, thus far the evidence is that many Americans (and non-

Americans) do not perceive themselves to be part of Obama’s humanity, and the former president

26 Rhodes, The world as it is, 63. 27 Obama quoted in Rhodes, The world as it is, 65.

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does not really quibble with calling them out as enemies.28 His rhetoric may in fact be motivating to his supporters, but it seems to do so only insofar as it borrows something from the logic that

Obama claims to be trying to escape.

Research continues on how these divisions might be overcome, but the results mostly confirm Rousseau’s analysis and suggest that fully overcoming tribalism in our political speech is untenable. Cass Sunstein, who served under the administration for several years, has summarized and contributed to this research consistently over the past two decades. Sunstein’s research suggests some ways to make groups more amenable to revising their views, but even he acknowledges that this rationality tends to come with a price. The current social science research suggests that exclusive groups are more energized, while reasoning can lead to paralysis: “Group polarization promotes engagement; conversations with multiple others can produce inaction and paralysis. A political process might well depend on a situation in which many groups of like- minded types spur their members to seek change.”29 The idea that political action and broad, rationally developed support go together has been challenged by the recent literature and supports

Rousseau’s analysis that the two do not often or naturally occur together. His distinctive

28 The current Republican message is “manufactured by the powerful and the privileged who want to keep us divided and keep us angry and keep us cynical, because it helps them maintain the status quo, and keep their power, and keep their privilege,” (“Paul H. Douglas Award acceptance speech,” (speech, Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, United States, September 7, 2018), The Atlantic, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/09/barack-obama-american- democracy-trump-speech/569605/.) 29 Sunstein, Going to Extremes, 151. As another social scientist notes, “the participatory and deliberative approaches to democracy are often seen as espousing compatible virtues, as both advocate greater civic engagement. However, recent empirical work demonstrates that the two are in important senses antithetical. Deliberation discourages participation, because it increases ambivalence and forces citizens to reveal political positions that can exact social costs. Greater participation discourages deliberation because engaged citizens become more politically extreme and committed, limiting their own and others’ discussion of alternatives” (Marietta, “Democratic Consequences of Sacred Rhetoric,” 208). For an application to the contemporary political situation: Morgan Marietta, Tyler Farley, Tyler Cote and Paul Murphy, “The Rhetorical Psychology of Trumpism: Threat, Absolutism, and the Absolutist Threat,” The Forum 15 (2017): 313-332. See also Katherina Schmid and Orla Muldoon, “Perceived Threat, Social Identification, and Psychological Well-Being: The Effect of Political Conflict Exposure,” Political Psychology 36 (2015): 75-92.

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contribution was to provide a compelling analysis of why this situation is inherent to political speech and only likely to be exacerbated as history progresses.

II. Speaking in a vacuum: Resignation or Revolution?

Rousseau’s pessimism leaves readers in a difficult place. Should they simply resign themselves to ineffective speech? If political speech cannot rise to its previous heights, what should a concerned citizen do? Rousseau sometimes seems to have considered resignation as the proper response to his diagnosis. But at least as often his understanding of the limits of all political speech lead him instead to extreme rhetoric. It is untenable to assert, as Nelson Lund does, that “the poisonous fruits of Rousseau’s supposed influence all rest on distorted extensions of some aspect of his thought. They are, moreover, better seen as the results of inner weaknesses in the

Enlightenment project, which Rousseau only diagnosed.”30 It is true that Rousseau’s thought gives us the tools to understand how absurd hopes could take hold without a firm basis in practice by showing how language tends to become detached from experience, but he nonetheless seems to have thought that the modern situation was so unsatisfying and despotic as to warrant dangerous and powerful rhetoric stressing the direness of the situation and the manifest superiority of alternatives.31 There is more than a little to concerns such as those raised by Alexis de Tocqueville

(following others), blaming Rousseau for promoting a vague and sentimental literary spirit in politics aimed at motivation without particular enough aims.32 In this dissertation we have seen,

30 Lund, Rousseau’s Rejuvenation, 268. 31 This seems to be in part because Rousseau felt that happiness required a life of unity and intensity that the modern world rendered increasingly unlikely. The oppressed and divided bourgeois were thus very much in need of saving, for “to live is not to breathe; it is to act; it is to make use of our organs, our senses, our faculties, of all the parts of ourselves which give us the sentiment of existence. The man who has lived the most is not he who has counted the most years but he who has most felt life” (Emile, 42; OC IV, 265). 32 Tocqueville characterizes Rousseau’s influence on the advances stages of the French Revolution as “a flood which has momentarily submerged this whole part of the human mind and the human sciences” (The Old Regime and the Revolution, Vol II: Notes on the French Revolution and Napoleon, trans. Alan S. Kahan (Chicago: The University of

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especially in chapter nine of Origin and The Levite, a rhetoric appealing to a primordial golden age of free and open communion, and in the latter, an encouragement of ferocious political action to defend a community with some residue of that communion. I have argued that Rousseau was pessimistic about the possibility that either of these appeals could be effective. Rousseau’s goals thus seem to have been to encourage certain types of modern individuals in the direction of the limited happiness possible in their time. His pessimism encouraged him to shout in order to be heard, even if his loud rhetoric was always qualified. But if Rousseau was too pessimistic about the naturalness of human community – but right enough about how to encourage energetic communal assertion, then his rhetoric would not be a salve for tormented souls but steroids for political community.

Moreover, Rousseau cannot be said to be unaware of the problem that he would be misunderstood or misappropriated. Rousseau argues that all popular speech will be misunderstood, and from the start he asserted that he would be. He nonetheless had the ambition of making a large impact upon a broader public, of living beyond his century, in ways that would not be simply or even primarily fully understood.33 And to a great extent he succeeded: “In every generation since, commercial society has had as its Doppelganger a powerful, bohemian counter-culture grounded in a vulgarization of one or more aspects of the thinking of Rousseau.”34 That Rousseau knew he

Chicago Press, 2001), 83). For an insightful analysis: Richard Avramenko, “The Grammar of Indifference: Tocqueville and the Language of Democracy,” Political Theory 45 (2017), 507. It is also worth noting that Avramenko’s account of Tocqueville’s analysis of democratic speech, where “words lose their fixedness and specificity,” and citizens develop a self-interested “grammar of indifference” appears rather close to Rousseau’s analysis of the decay of language in Origin. See also Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (Oxford: Oxford World’s Classics, 2009), 274-275. 33 From the preface of the First Discourse: “Crashing head on with all that is today admired by men, I can only expect universal blame: and it is not for having been honored by the approbation of a few Wise men, that I should expect the approbation of the public” (4; OC III, 3). Rousseau expect to be misunderstood, but still wanted “to live beyond one’s century.” See Black, Rousseau’s Critique of Science, 28-31. 34 Rahe, Soft Despotism, 139.

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would be vulgarized suggests that at least to some extent he should be held responsible for these vulgarizations.

Even if one found his assessment of the situation of his time convincing, Rousseau’s suggestion that human beings could change drastically over time meant that he could expect that his rhetoric might one day be more effective than it appeared to be in his time. A mere generation after his death, his appeals to erotic nostalgia and virtue had a much greater appeal than he supposed.35 Rousseau held out the hope for an artistic transformation of politics, and “the

Romantic writers who refused to accept Rousseau’s statement of the human problem as final tried to go beyond him by seeking out a higher synthesis wherever Rousseau had seen irreconcilable antinomies. Above all, they turned to art itself as the great mediating force, a way of reconciling nature with civilization.”36 Rousseau argued for the possibility that political speech could, in ideal circumstances, encourage societal transformation, and his many caveats and doubts were less attractive than the diamond of hope hiding in the rough. Rousseau’s own way of speaking, it would seem, tends to encourage the dynamic of anomie or communal ferocity that he diagnosed. To counter the alternation between these extremes, it might be necessary to mount a critique of the fundamental premises of Rousseau’s thought – that is, to argue for an analysis of political speech

(and human happiness) that begins somewhere else than the individual self.

None of this should diminish what can be learned from Rousseau’s penetrating analysis, and for those who take the time to read him carefully, Rousseau often leaves his readers reasons to embrace moderation. It is worth reiterating that for Rousseau an ideal arrangement of political

35 While I will not here enter the debate about Rousseau’s responsibility for the French Revolution, the analysis in this dissertation suggests that his understanding of political speech, and even more than that his presentation of that understanding, lend themselves to revolutionary expropriation. See: Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The language of politics in the French Revolution (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986). 36 Cantor, Creature and Creator: Myth-making and English Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), xv.

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speech can only reinforce and encourage a situation that possesses certain institutional arrangements. “Languages are naturally formed according to men’s needs; they change and deteriorate as these same needs change.”37 We must actually share a life with certain elements in common, and we must need each other and understand something of that need, in order to successfully construct a common story about it. The more that the life of a given place tends to become multiple very different ways of life, the more difficult the construction of a common story is going to be, and the more likely that such a society will fragment into competing factions.38

Rhetoric may keep citizens from seeing the truth of their situation, but that does not mean that it can completely control their perception. Rather, rationalistic speech, rhetoric and lived experience pull in different directions, often leaving confusion and paralysis or vague assertions of will. I have shown that for Rousseau, we have no effective conscience or inner light to appeal to that is reliable absent external guidance. A concerned citizen, then, might take moderate steps at trying to build common interests and institutions with his fellows, even if success is likely to be modest at best.

Whatever its dangers, Rousseau’s thought on political speech is a useful corrective to unrestrained hopes and an invitation to reflect on reform more fitted to our time and less extreme than what he himself suggested.

37 Origin, 298; OC V, 428. 38 As some commentators have pointed out given the renewed interest in rhetoric and messaging, messaging may in many instances be less important than real disagreements and material separations. For instance, Robert Howse argues that “how to handle globalization divides among themselves liberals in the Democratic Party to this day, and a way out of this division is, I believe, politically much more important for Democrats than managing or overcoming identity politics” (“The Retro Style in Liberal Politics: A Review of Mark Lilla’s The Once and Future Liberal: After Identity Politics,” VerfBlog, 2017/8/25, http://verfassungsblog.de/the-retro-style-in-liberal-politics-a-review-of-mark-lillas- the-once-and-future-liberal-after-identity-politics/, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.17176/20170825-124308.)

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