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The Social Contract and the First and Second Discourses JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

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The Social Contract and the First and Second Discourses JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Rethinking the Western Tradition The volumes in this series seek to address the present debate over the Western tradition by reprinting key works of that tradition along with essays that evaluate each text from di√erent perspectives. EDITORIAL COMMITTEE FOR Rethinking the Western Tradition David Bromwich Yale University Gerald Graff University of Illinois at Chicago Geoffrey Hartman Yale University Samuel Lipman (deceased) The New Criterion Gary Saul Morson Northwestern University Jaroslav Pelikan Yale University Marjorie Perloff Stanford University Richard Rorty Stanford University Alan Ryan New College, Oxford Ian Shapiro Yale University Frank M. Turner Yale University Allen W. Wood Stanford University The Social Contract and The First and Second Discourses JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Edited and with an Introduction by Susan Dunn with essays by Gita May Robert N. Bellah David Bromwich Conor Cruise O’Brien Yale University Press New Haven and London Copyright ∫ 2002 by Yale University. Translations of The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and The Social Contract copyright ∫ 2002 by Susan Dunn. All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publishers. Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778. [Selections. English. 2002] The social contract ; and, The first and second discourses / Jean-Jacques Rousseau ; edited and with an introduction by Susan Dunn ; with essays by Gita May...[et al.]. p. cm. — (Rethinking the Western tradition) Includes bibliographical references. isbn 0-300-09140-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 0-300-09141-9 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Political science—Early works to 1800. 2. Social contract—Early works to 1800. 3. Civilization—Early works to 1800. I. Dunn, Susan. II. May, Gita. III. Title. IV. Series. jc179 .r7 2002 320%.01—dc21 2001046557 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contributors Robert N. Bellah is Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the Univer- sity of California at Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, includ- ing Beyond Belief and The Broken Covenant, and is co-author of Habits of the Heart and The Good Society. David Bromwich is Housum Professor of English at Yale University. He is the author of several books, including Politics by Other Means: Higher Education and Group Thinking, Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Po- etry, and A Choice of Inheritance: Self and Community from Edmund Burke to Robert Frost. Susan Dunn is professor of French literature and the history of ideas at Williams College. She is the author of The Deaths of Louis XVI: Regicide and the French Political Imagination and Sister Revolutions: French Light- ning, American Light, and is co-author with James MacGregor Burns of The Three Roosevelts. Gita May is professor of French literature at Columbia University. She is the author of De Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Madame Roland: Essai sur la sensibilité préromantique et révolutionnaire, Diderot et Baudelaire, cri- tiques d’art, Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution, and Stendhal and the Age of Napoleon. Conor Cruise O’Brien is a statesman, diplomat, and political commentator who lives in Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of many books including God Land: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism, The Great Melody: A The- matic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke, and The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800. Contents Susan Dunn: Introduction: Rousseau’s Political Triptych 1 Chronology of Rousseau’s Life 36 The First Discourse: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts 43 The Second Discourse: Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Mankind 69 The Social Contract 149 Rethinking The First and Second Discourses and The Social Contract Gita May: Rousseau, Cultural Critic 257 Robert N. Bellah: Rousseau on Society and the Individual 266 David Bromwich: Rousseau and the Self without Property 288 Conor Cruise O’Brien: Rousseau, Robespierre, Burke, Jefferson, and the French Revolution 301 Introduction: Rousseau’s Political Triptych SUSAN DUNN Is there any deed more shocking, more hateful, more infamous than the willful burning of a library? Is there any blow more devastating to the core of human civilization? In the mid-eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rous- seau startled—and excited—his readers by praising Caliph Omar, who in the year 650 ordered the incineration of the glorious library in Alexandria.∞ In his first important work, The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (1750), also known as the First Discourse, Rousseau held that the search for knowledge was so socially and morally destructive that book burning and the subsequent return to ignorance, innocence, and poverty would be a step forward rather than a step backward in the history of civilization. He was convinced that only cultural and material regression could accompany the movement of society toward morality. The entire rational enterprise of the Enlightenment found itself unexpectedly under fierce and principled attack. When Rousseau burst upon the intellectual scene, the philosophers and writers of eighteenth-century France had for decades been passionately engaged in an audacious, innovative project: the questioning and disman- tling of all the traditional underpinnings of their society. Their daring charge entailed exposing to the light of reason all preconceived ideas, supernatural dogmas and superstitious beliefs, all political and social as- sumptions. Intellectuals were challenging the theological foundation of monarchy, the privileges of the aristocracy, the doctrines of Catholicism. Having wiped their intellectual slate as clean as they could, men of letters in France embarked upon the bold plan of using human reason to address people’s needs: how they should live, govern themselves, organize society, and conceive morality. Their goal was a rational society dedicated to equal- ity, freedom, and happiness. Life had become an intellectual adventure, and people were optimistic that they could shape their own destinies. Rousseau had once participated in this luminous and probing culture. He too had wanted to embrace all knowledge; he too had known the joy of intellectual curiosity, the bliss of creativity. Mingling and collaborating with artists, musicians, philosophers, and writers—the great philosophe 2 Susan Dunn Voltaire, the composer Rameau, the versatile man of letters Diderot, the witty playwright Marivaux, the philosophe Fontenelle—he had reveled in the aristocratic world of brilliant salons, where luxury, elegance, and genius combined to make life a joy for the mind and the senses.≤ But his fascination with the sophisticated world of the Enlightenment was also colored by bitterness and resentment, the result of his humiliating experience in 1743 working as the secretary for the French Ambassador in Venice; by his disappointments in life, especially his dismay in 1745 at not having received more recognition for his part in a musical collaboration with Voltaire and Rameau; and by his own deep insecurities and demons, his paranoid feeling that he was the target of various cabals conspiring to undermine and discredit him. Suddenly his eyes bored into the heart of this dazzling culture. He judged. He condemned. Behind the splendid façade, he concluded, lay a world that was superficial, corrupt, and cruel. Astonishingly, Rousseau turned against the entire Enlightenment proj- ect. He branded the daring intellectual, scientific, and artistic culture of eighteenth-century France a lie, a vast devolution, a symptom of alarming moral decline. Nothing more than a fake veneer, the century’s worldly accomplishments were all the more perfidious because they masked so effectively the deep corruption of a decadent, unequal society. The quest for knowledge and intellectual advancement was a superficial luxury that, in- stead of serving society, reinforced its self-indulgence and decay. ‘‘We have physicists, geometers, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, painters,’’ he remarked, adding tellingly that ‘‘we no longer have citizens.’’ People, Rousseau was convinced, had been deceived, seduced, and cor- rupted by the radiance of the Enlightenment. And what was worse, they cherished their corruption, for it seemed to mark the summit of progress and civilization. Everywhere Rousseau saw educated individuals who resem- bled ‘‘happy slaves,’’ preferring the glitter of high culture to true freedom and happiness.≥ The search for knowledge had merely taken on a life of its own, divorced from the real needs of society and citizens. Skepticism and vain inquiry attracted people more than a search for a meaningful life. People believed that they knew everything, Rousseau re- marked, but they did not know the meaning of the words magnanimity, equity, temperance, humanity, courage, fatherland, and God. Overwhelmed by pretension, affectation, and deceit, the values that create robust citi- zens and a healthy society—self-sacrifice, sincere friendships, love of country—had disappeared. The principles of science and
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