This essay is a response to Thompson.
Irony in Rousseau's Emile
J.J. Chambliss
Rutgers University
Professor Thompson sees a common ground in the theories of Jean-Jacques
Rousseau and Carter G. Woodson, in that both "stress the centrality of
experience and the importance of a nurturing and supportive environment that
allows learners to explore their possibilities to the fullest." Yet they
differ from one another in that Rousseau's child-centered education "tends
to equate authenticity with unmediated, politically innocent individual
experience," and "typically assumes some degree of detachment
from...social conditions." Woodson's adult-centered education seeks
authenticity in shared political experience, beginning with "the social,
political, cultural, economic, and historical situation of learners." This
is a suggestive and useful distinction, and Professor Thompson's
characterization of the differing roles of teachers which these differences
suggest is quite persuasive.
Yet in characterizing
Woodson's teachers as those whose "pedagogical focus is on the situated
student," and in portraying Rousseau's "good and pure man," an
image that requires "approaches that reference education to the 'innocent'
child," Professor Thompson conveys the impression that Rousseau (as the
fictional Jean-Jacques in Emile) did not study the situation but only the
student. Concerning the problem of finding uncontaminated teachers, Professor
Thompson says, Rousseau "neatly finesses...by fictionalizing his account -
saying in effect, just suppose that we start with the kind of tutor we require,
and just suppose that that person is me."
I would like to offer
a different reading of Rousseau, with the aim of viewing his portrayal of
Emile's education from another perspective. There is no doubt that Emile is
fictional; in the book's Preface Rousseau says that what he has written is
"less an educational treatise than a visionary's dreams about
education."1 This puts us in mind of Rousseau's Discourse
on Inequality, where he says that he is "laying aside facts"2 and writing a "hypothetical history of
governments."3 Both the Discourse and Emile are
"hypothetical accounts."
It is important to
note that in Emile, not only is Emile a fictional person, but so is the
tutor Jean-Jacques. To recognize this is to suggest that Rousseau's appeal,
instead of being "to the occasional pure man, such as himself," is to
a hypothetical Jean-Jacques. I am suggesting that it is just because Rousseau
is not a "pure man," and just because he has not found anyone who is,
that he creates a hypothetical Jean-Jacques. Not knowing what such a tutor must
do to teach a hypothetical Emile, Rousseau has Jean-Jacques act as if he knows
what he must do. And, not knowing what the hypothetical Emile will do in
response to Jean-Jacques, Rousseau has him respond as if Jean-Jacques knows
what he is doing.
Jean-Jacques, in
crafting Emile's education, does not work with "the student alone,"
but creates an entire situation in which Emile grows from one age to another.
Not trusting the mis-educative influences of the larger society, Jean-Jacques
removes Emile from it and creates a hypothetical society. It is a miniature
society, populated by Jean-Jacques and Emile. Yet Jean-Jacques brings other
characters into it when he finds them necessary to further Emile's development:
for example, the gardener, whose property Emile violates when he plants beans;
the carnival man, when Emile needs a different lesson; and, of course, Sophie
appears when it is time for Emile to meet a woman. Jean-Jacques must change the
situation as Emile moves on from childhood toward the "age of
reason." Rousseau characterizes Emile's needs when he attains that age:
Now, needs change according to the situation of
men. There is a great difference between the natural man living in the state of
nature and the natural man living in the state of society. Emile is not a
savage to be relegated to the desert. He is a savage made to inhabit cities. He
has to know how to find his necessities in them, to take advantage of their
inhabitants, and to live, if not like them, at least with them.4
It is not too much to
say that Emile's "innocence" is less important to Rousseau than what
is necessary for his growth; indeed, the frequency with which the terms
"necessary" and "necessity" appear in Emile attests
to their importance. And, what is more, if we take Emile as a
hypothetical account of educating an individual, to be a counterpart of the Discourse
on Inequality as a hypothetical account of the development of the human
race, we can find in the Discourse a kind of social situation in which
Emile could be happy. The "best" social situation for Emile would be
like the one in Rousseau's hypothetical history, in which:
the development of the human faculties, holding
a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant
activity of egoism, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The
more we reflect on this state, the more convinced we shall be, that it was the
least subject of any to revolutions, the best for man....this condition is the
real youth of the world, and...all ulterior improvements have been so many
steps, in appearance towards perfection of individuals, but in fact toward the
decrepitness of the species.5
Emile's education must
not make him another example of "the decrepitness of the species";
instead, Emile must exemplify a mean between indolence and egoism.
Yet, when Emile
attains the age of reason, prepares to marry Sophie, and takes the "grand
tour" to observe what society is like, Emile finds that there is no city
fit for a "savage" such as he. He has come to understand the truth in
Jean-Jacques' earlier claim - that Emile must learn to live with inhabitants of
cities, but that he will not be like them. Thus there is a certain irony in
Rousseau's hypothetical account of Emile's education. After Emile becomes the
kind of person who would not succumb to "the petulant activity of
egoism," he finds that there is no place to live which is not
characterized by that sort of activity. Emile cannot be free under the
conditions of society as it exists. Near the end of Emile, Jean-Jacques
says to Emile: "Freedom is found in no form of government; it is in the
heart of the free man. He takes it with him everywhere."6
Finally, then,
Rousseau the author is so far from being a "pure man" that he makes a
hypothetical one whose hypothetical tutoring shapes a hypothetical Emile who
learns that he cannot live like others, but must make do by living with them.
"Pure men" such as Jean-Jacques and Emile are not to be found in
actual cities, but only in hypothetical ones.
1. Jean-Jacques
Rousseau, Emile or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic
Books, 1979), 34.
2. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The
Social Contract and Discourse on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among
Mankind, ed. Lester G. Crocker (New York: Washington Square Press, 1967),
177.
3. Rousseau, Discourse, 173.
4. Rousseau, Emile,
205.
5. Rousseau, Discourse, 219-20.
6. Rousseau, Emile, 473.