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Rousseau in the Philosophy of Eric Voegelin ROUSSEAUINTHEPHILOSOPHYOFERICVOEGELIN CarolinaArmenteros EricVoegelin’srelativesilenceonRousseauisstriking. 1Inthewholeofhiscorrespondence, and in the thirty-four volumes of his collected works, less than a dozen passages refer to Rousseau,andonlyahandfulofthese–comparativelyshort–engagewithhisthought.Given Rousseau’stoweringstatureinthehistoryofphilosophy,andconsideringVoegelin’sprojectto synthesizeWesternthoughtfromantiquitytothepresent,onewondersattheimmensityof suchindifference.Thisisespeciallythecasewhenconsideringthatopportunitiestocomment kept presentingthemselves. Strauss, most notably, mentionedRousseauseveral times in his letterstoVoegelin,butitwasonlywhenhehadtorespondtoStrauss’sarticle,“TheIntention ofRousseau,”thattheAustrianfinallywrotebackwithsomereflectionsontheGenevan.And even then, those reflections were not so much on Rousseau’s thought proper, as on its similaritywithVico’s.2 Why so much reticence? In The Voegelinian Revolution , Ellis Sandoz observes that Voegelin associated Rousseau with the rise of the totalitarian ideologies of the twentieth centuryevenbefore J.L. Talmonwrote TheOriginsof TotalitarianDemocracy (1952).3Thisfact couldhelpexplainVoegelin’ssilencebecausetotalitarianismwasavitalsubjectforhim.After all, his whole life’s work arose froma dual impulse: to explain the totalitarian movements whoserisecausedhisflightfromEurope,andtoreforgeandrevalorizephilosophysoasto 1 I amgrateful to TJohnJamiesonfor havingbroughtthis factto myattention, andsuggestedthe subjectofthispaper. 2LeoStraussandEricVoegelin, FaithandPoliticalPhilosophy:TheCorrespondencebetweenLeoStraussandEric Voegelin,1934-1964 ,tr.anded.PeterEmberleyandBarryCooper(Columbia,MO:TheUniversityof MissouriPress,2004[1993]),p.39. 3 Sandoz, The Voegelinian Revolution: A Biographical Introduction (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers,2000),p.63. maketotalitarianismimpossible.Inthisoptic,remainingtaciturnonRousseaucouldhavebeen astrategytoobscurethephilosophicallybrilliantbeginningsofthetotalitarianworldview. But the matter is more complicated. For the fewtimes that Voegelin does discuss Rousseau,hedoesnotidentifyhimasaharbingeroftotalitarianism.Instead,hesuggeststhat Rousseauwasadeeplymisunderstoodthinker,thatifhehelpedtopreparetotalitarianism,this was less because his philosophywas inherentlyflawed, than because his posterityfailedto recognizeitstrulyimportantaspects–theveryones,infact,thatcouldhavepreventedthe formationofthetotalitarianideology. I Voegelin first discusses Rousseau in his essay “Ought in Kant’s System,” where RousseauandKant appear as epitomies of eighteenth-centuryanthropology. Both thinkers, Voegelin observes, portrayhuman beings as animals who belong to nature, and as moral beingswhopossessauniquecapacityfordeliberativeaction.Theirdualexistenceiscomprised of personal and national variants. The personal variant divides action into natural actions comprising actions of instinct, habit, and reflex, and into actions of culture, that is, those actionsthatarereasonable,technical,andgenuinelyfree. 4Asforthenationalvariant,Voegelin doesnotdetailithere,butweshallseebelowthatitoccupieshimgreatlyinotherworks. Rousseau’s and Kant’s anthropology seems to have interested Voegelin because it madeitpossibletotheorizepersonaltransformationacrosshistoricaltime.“Kant,”hewrote, repeatedlydealtwithcorporeality…asthatofanimpurityoftheinnermostbeingthat oughttobestrippedawayinatemporalprocess,andonseveraloccasionshedrewa parallelbetweenhisownviewandthatofRousseau.Initsbeginnings,thehumanrace 4Voegelin,“OughtinKant’sSystem,”in PublishedEssays,1929-33, in TheCollectedWorksofEricVoegelin , vol.8(2003),pp.181-2. 2 wassubjecttotheruleofitsinstinctsandwasdirectedbythesetowhatwasbestforit. Inthisstate,actionsfollowedpredeterminedmechanismsandneithercommandments andprohibitionsnorinfractionsofethicalnormsexisted.Thishappyestateisdisturbed bythe stirrings of reason, which introduces misery andwretchedness as well as the advantages of culture into the historyof humanity. … Thus the transition fromthe animalistic crudeness andguardianshipof nature to the state of moral freedomand reignofreasonisaprogression,tobesure,butitisatthesametimeanevil.Byit, humanbeingsmovefromalifeofinnocentsecurityandpurityintoalifeofdangers causedbythefree,untrammeled,andhenceuncertainguidanceofreasonandbythe manifold vices and sufferings of culture. In these reflections, Kant’s affinity with Rousseauisatitsclosest. 5 Itwasafelicitousaffinity.“OughtinKant’sSystem”wasanattempttoinfuselegaltheorywith aphilosophyofhumanbeingsandhumanactionsthatshonebyitsabsenceintheworkof contemporaryjurists,whoanalyzedlawonlyasapositivephenomenon.Inthiscontext,Kant and Rousseau’s dual triumph was, firstly, to have investigated the essence of man, and, secondly, to have done so within atemporal frameworkthat enabledthe adaptation of the philosophyof human beings to the intellectual historical problems faced bycontemporary jurists. Inthefirstinstance,then,RousseauwasvaluabletoVoegelinbecausehedevelopeda historicalanthropologythatrevealedtheproblematicaspectsofpersonalexistence,andthat offeredhope for improvement byarguingthat personal existence changedacross historical duration. 5Ibid.,pp.188-9. 3 II Further,Rousseau’santhropologywasvaluablebecauseittheorizedthe national variant ofhumanexistence.ThisistheaspectofRousseau’sphilosophythatmostinterestedVoegelin, andheexposeditintwopassagesthatrevealhowhisownviewsevolved.Thefirstpassage appears in a letter to Eduard Baumgarten dated November 5, 1932. In response to Baumgarten’squestion:howdidtheFrenchmakethestepin1789outoftheisolationofthe willtothe volontégénérale ?Voegelinanswersthatnosuchstepwasevertaken,sinceitwasnot theRevolutionthatcreatedtheconceptofthegeneralwill,butRousseau,whoconceivedofit notasthesummationofindividualwills,butasanentityinitself. ThisisabasicdescriptionofRousseau’sdoctrineofthegeneralwill,butwhatfollows itisunique.AccordingtoVoegelin,Rousseau’sSocialContract , ConstitutionalProjectforCorsica and ConsiderationsontheGovernment of Poland suggest that the apt German translation of “general will”was Volksgeist ,or“spiritofthepeople,”understoodasahistoricalsourceofnationallife. Rousseau,Voegelinmaintains, speaksatlengthofnationalcharacterasthefirstprerequisiteforthepoliticalexistence ofapeopleandverystronglyemphasizes:ifapeoplehasnocharacter,itmustbegiven one.Onlythencanitreceiveaconstitution—andthisnationalcharacteristhe volonté générale .Betweenitandthegeneralwillthereisnocontradiction,becauseinFrancethe individualwillwasalwaysunderstoodtobeamereagens withintheframeworkofthe generalwill.Theindividualwillcanbesostronglyemphasizedbecauseinanycasethe national volonté générale dominates each person with such power that I believe we Germanscanhardlyimagine. 6 6Voegelin, SelectedCorrespondence,1924-49 ,in TheCollectedWorksofEricVoegelin ,ed.JürgenGerbhardt andtr.WilliamPetropoulos(34vols.,Columbia,MO:TheUniversityofMissouriPress,1995-),vol.29 (1995),p.102. 4 InthelettertoBaumgarten,thegeneralwillthusappearsidentifiedwiththe Volksgeist –an identitywithout precedent, or posterity, in Rousseaustudies. Moreover, Voegelin intimates thattheidea–andreality–ofthegeneralwill-nationalspiritwasconsummatedinFrance– since “we Germans can hardly imagine” how strongly the general will dominates each Frenchman. He reiterates this view when observing that for “Durkheim, the student of Rousseau, the objective spirit is identical with the volonté générale , the totalityof norms and regulationsthatarebindingforarespectableFrenchman.”7 FouryearsafterthelettertoBaumgarten,however,in DerautoritäreStaat (completed 1936), Voegelin approaches Rousseau from a different angle. He observes that what is fundamentalaboutRousseau’spoliticalthoughtisnothismuch-toutedtheoryofthegeneral will. Rather, it is his contribution to the theory of law. Voegelin seems to have felt that Rousseau’s interpreters had missed the main point of his political philosophy, which is articulated in Chapter 19 of Book II of The Social Contract . Here, Rousseau distinguishes betweenfourtypesoflaw:politicallaw,civillaw,penallaw,and–mostimportantly–thelaw thatisengravedintheheartsofmen.ItisthislattertypeoflawthatdrewVoegelin’sattention. Scholarshaveattendedtoitlittle,andthisishardlysurprising,since TheSocialContract ,which discusses only political law, does not dwell upon it. But as Voegelin points out, the ConstitutionalProjectforCorsica does.Itidentifiesthelawinscribedintheheartsofmenasthe spiritofthenation. VoegelinconsideredthatthisspiritwasthekeytoRousseau’sthought,andoneofhis mostimportantcontributionstothehistoryofphilosophy.Unfortunately,though(Voegelin implies),thisfacthasbeenneglectedbyinterpreters,whohavefocusedinsteadonthegeneral will,whichisonlythefoundationofRousseau’spolitics.Hisphilosophyhasamuchhigher 7Ibid.,p.103. 5 goal:tograspthephysical,spiritual,characteralandhistoricalfoundationsoftheexistenceofa people. 8UnderstandingthesefoundationsistheartoftheLegislator,themeansthatenable himtoproduceparticularlaws–thatis,lawscomposednotofthecommonalitiesbetweenthe world’slaws,butofthedifferencesbetweenthem.Itisanirretrievablesingularity:“Rousseau wentsofarinhis Socialcontract astoexcludeexpresslythetransferofhisideas,whichwere meantforthemodelofGeneva,toanationalrealmlikeFrance.” 9 WhatVoegelinbelievedwasimportantaboutRousseau’sphilosophy,inshort,washis political particularism, his suggestion that constitutions are viable only insofar as they are adapted to the historyand character of a people. It was a suggestion unique in Rousseau studies, which have generally
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