1. Robert J. Ellrich, Rousseau and His Reader: the Rhetorical Situation of the Major Works (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969)
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
NOTES CHAPTER 1 1. Robert J. Ellrich, Rousseau and His Reader: The Rhetorical Situation of the Major Works (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969). In Rousseau and His Reader, Ellrich sees this sentence as evidence of Rousseau’s “fundamental posture in the work, his presentation of himself to the reader as the virtuous outsider” (28). 2. I use “Controversy” with a capital letter here as a technical term to refer to those writings by Rousseau and his “opponents” that followed the publication of the First Discourse. The Controversy lasted until the publication of Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755). 3. All of these quotes are taken from the entries, “Scandale” and “Scandaleux,” in The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert, trans. Jason Kusnicki, vol. 14 (Ann Arbor: Scholarly Publishing Office of the University of Michigan Library, 2002), 741, available at http://quod.lib.umich.edu/d/did/. Cf. Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, Paris, Neuchâtel, 1751–1765. 4. The Encyclopedia of Diderot & d’Alembert s.v. “scandale.” 5. Dictionnaire de l’Académie française (first edition, 1694) s.v. “scandale,” available at http://colet.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/dico1look.pl?strippedhw=scandale&dicoid=ACAD1694. 6. Gouhier has some very enlightening reflections on Rousseau’s rejection of this dogma in Henri Gaston Gouhier, Les méditations métaphysiques de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris: J. Vrin, 1970). He sees it has Rousseau’s “troisième refus fondamental,” the other two being the historical revelation and the idea of church that would interpret that revelation (37). 7. Christophe de Beaumont quotes this sentence as a proof text (CW 9:4). 8. A translation of Beaumont’s Pastoral Letter is conveniently printed in the Collected Works. The original French text is available in Rousseau, œuvres complètes, vol. 3, ed. Michel Launay (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1977). 9. Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2nd ed., ed. Peter Gay (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989), 74. 10. The full title is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Citoyen de Genève, à Christophe de Beaumont, Archevêque de Paris, Duc de St. Cloud, Pair de France, Commandeur de l’ordre du St. Esprit,, Proviseur de Sorbonne, etc. (Amsterdam: Marc Rey, 1763). For the significance of Rousseau naming himself in the title, or rather making his name a title, see Christopher Kelly, Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One’s Life to the Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 16–19. 11. My discussion of this misconception is based upon the interpretation of the dogma of original sin in James Alison, The Joy of Being Wrong: Original Sin through Easter Eyes (New York: Crossroad, 1998). Hereafter cited as Joy. 186 Notes 12. Alison explains the “foundational mentality” as the “need to shore up identity, to justify oneself . in the ordinary human way of seeking a fundamental (foundational) cause for things.... The foundational mentality has managed to turn original sin into a way of accounting for our present evil by blaming someone: Adam or, sometimes, the serpent” (Joy, 170). 13. Again, as Alison so nicely puts it, “original sin was discovered as it became possible to leave it” (Joy, 221). 14. In commenting on Rousseau’s statement in the “Preface to Narcissus,” in which Rousseau claims to have showed “that all these vices do not belong so much to man as to man poorly governed,” J. H. Broome sees this as Rousseau’s “defence against the doctrine of original sin.” See J. H. Broome, Rousseau: A Study of his Thought (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1963), 32. This understanding of the doctrine has to be called into question. 15. For a somewhat different reading of the argument between Rousseau and Beaumont that concentrates more on the historical situation, see André Ravier, “Le Dieu de Rousseau et le Christianisme,” Archives de Philosophie 41, no. 1 (1978): 408–11. 16. I must part ways with Arthur Melzer in his contention that Rousseau, “going beyond Enlightenment efforts to ‘manage’ religion found in Locke, Hume, Voltaire, and oth- ers,... made an earnest effort to revive and reinvigorate Christianity, if in a new, more politically salutary form” (344). Rousseau is not reviving Christianity. He does not trust in the power of forgiveness to form a society, yet he will not simply go back to the unadorned violence that founded pagan society. The quote is taken from Arthur M Melzer, “The Origin of the Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau and the New Religion of Sincerity,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 2 (1996): 344–60. 17. I do not wish to appear to be nitpicking when I criticize Richard Boyd’s otherwise excel- lent article, “Pity’s Pathologies Portrayed,” for one time using the expression “forgiving society” in reference to what pity may or may not be able to accomplish. The reason I point this out is that Rousseau never aimed toward a forgiving society. Forgiveness is totally absent from his world. Richard Boyd, “Pity’s Pathologies Portrayed: Rousseau and the Limits of Democratic Compassion,” Political Theory 32, no. 4 (2004): 519–46. 18. One could use the language of grace here, and then one would have to concur with Robert Derathe’s conclusion that Rousseau’s religion “ne faite aucune place à la grace [has no place of grace].” “Jean-Jacques Rousseau et le Christianisme” (400). 19. Christopher Kelly, Rousseau’s Exemplary Life: The Confessions as Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), 243. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid., 245. 22. Ibid., 246. 23. Ibid., 244. 24. Pierre Burgelin writes the following concerning Julie: “A certains égards, l’histoire de Julie est celle d’une conversion.... Elle devient vraiment un être nouveau. Mais cette con- version n’implique en rien ce que les spirituels chrétiens appellent sentiment du péché, c’est-à-dire d’offense à Dieu (où est ici la loi divine?), ni au sentiment du pardon.” Pierre Burgelin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la religion de Genève (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1962), 45. 25. The very fine and balanced article by Gustav Lanson, “L’unité de la pensée de Jean- Jacques Rousseau,” was written as a corrective to three intemperate interpretations by Faquet, Lemaître, and Espinas, all of whom attacked Rousseau as being incoherent. His conclusion is worth quoting: “Voilà, comment m’apparaît l’oeuvre de Rousseau: très diverse, tumultueuse, agitée de toute sorte de fluctuations, et pourtant, à partir d’un Notes 187 certain moment, continue et constante en son esprit dans ses directions successives.” Gustave Lanson, “L’unité de la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau 8 (1912): 28. Lanson does not ever use the concept of scandal, but it does seem that his explanation for the text that causes readers to react so violently can be reconciled with my interpretation. Robert Derathé sees Rousseau as so taken by a vision of civic virtue that it makes him aware of the natural goodness that remains unchanged at the bottom of the human heart. Derathé argues that Rousseau’s thought is “double,” but not contradictory. Robert Derathé, “L’unité de la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Neuchâtel: Editions de la Baconnière Switzerland, 1962), 218. By “double,” Derathé means that Rousseau offers the choice between two options, that of natural man in a domestic society, or that of a “denatured” citizen in a political society modeled on the Social Contract. 26. Arthur M. Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau’s Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 4. 27. Ibid., 6. 28. Ibid., 7. 29. Ibid. 30. Ibid.; emphasis original. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid., 9; emphasis original. 33. Ibid. 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed., s.v. “Desultory.” 37. Melzer, Natural Goodness, 12. 38. In his Rousseau’s Exemplary Life: The Confessions as Political Philosophy, Christopher Kelly touches on the religious nature of Rousseau’s thought through a careful delineation of Rousseau’s comparisons between Cato, Socrates, and Jesus, as well as the comparison between each of these figures and himself. But, as Kelly sees, this comparison between fig- ures is not enough. He cannot avoid looking at Rousseau’s “understanding of the true message of Christianity” (66). The context for Jesus’ message is the impossibility of civic virtue, and the exemplary life of civic virtue is not found in any of the figures named so far, rather, it is the elder Brutus who put his children to death. Kelly comments, “This sort of action is precluded by Jesus’ gentleness. Christianity embraces self-sacrifice, but it leaves sacrifices of sons to God the Father” (66). More important, it seems to me, is the fact that Christianity does not allow for self-sacrifice and the sacrifice of others to be equated. Kelly is simply explicating Rousseau’s position here, but one cannot simply allow to pass without comment the thought that for Jesus, Brutus represents a no longer attain- able ideal, and that even for depraved Christianity, he represents a “splendid vice” (66). Rather, it needs to keep clearly in mind that Jesus came to overturn the thinking of Brutus and those who would hold them up as virtuous. Such is the primary anthropological con- tribution of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Any attempt to turn back from this should be resisted. Kelly sees that Brutus’s murders have a purpose, and the purpose is “inspiring an active spirit of sacrifice for the community,” but Kelly fails to fully register that Christian self-sacrifice unmasks this justification of murder through a higher purpose by destroying the myth that justifies it. 39. John McManners, “The Religion of Rousseau,” The Journal of Religious History 5 (1969): 349.