articledemocraticvirtue UNPDF

ABSTRACT

Title of Dissertation:

A PECULIAR FAITH:

NAVIGATING ROUSSEAU’S ROAD TO

DEMOCRATIC VIRTUE

Joshua Karant, Ph.D., 2004

Dissertation Directed By:

Professor Benjamin R. Barber, Department of

Government and Politics

The relationship between religion and politics poses a pressing—and

oftentimes combustible—problem for contemporary democracies. The terror of

September 11 th , global suicide bombings, and attacks on America’s abortion clinics

illustrate the imminent dangers of political protest driven by fanatical faith. But

authors such as Machiavelli, Tocqueville and, more recently, William Galston and

Manning Marable suggest something different. Religion, they argue, cultivates virtue

amongst citizens and must be incorporated into the pluralist fold.

These dissonant conclusions underscore the difficulty of navigating the

tension between spiritual and secular values. Does religion subvert liberal democratic

principles of neutrality and equality under law, or does it offer an essential foundation

for secular virtue? If religion provides a moral compass compatible with democracy,

do religious systems inevitably undermine open, participatory politics? If so, how

might we cultivate political virtue without compromising strong citizenship?

For Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the answer lies in Civil Religion, a model

wherein spiritual virtue and religious piety uphold political liberty and strong

citizenship. Does Rousseau ask too much? Does he attempt to marry irreconcilable

partners, or is his vision practicable and persuasive? Adopting the divisive

relationship between religion and politics as its central concern, A Peculiar Faith

examines Rousseau’s secular theology as a means of confronting this contentious and

still-relevant dilemma.

A PECULIAR FAITH:

NAVIGATING ROUSSEAU’S ROAD TO DEMOCRATIC VIRTUE

By

Joshua Karant

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the

University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment

of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

2004

Advisory Committee:

Professor Benjamin R. Barber, Chair

Professor Charles E. Butterworth

Professor William A. Galston

Professor James E. Miller

Professor Vladimir Tismaneanu

Joshua Karant

2004

ii

Dedication

To Luka and Jan .

iii

Acknowledgements

The sentences you are about to read are mine, but they would not have been

written without the guidance and support of colleagues, friends and family. First and

foremost, I owe tremendous gratitude to Benjamin R. Barber. I first met Dr. Barber

in a Rousseau seminar at Rutgers University. When he accepted an offer to join the

faculty at the University of Maryland, he graciously suggested that I accompany him.

What, at the time, seemed a potentially brash gamble proved, in hindsight, to be the

most significant decision of my academic career. I cannot thank Barber enough for

his contributions to my personal and professional development, his generosity in

funding my interests and supporting me at every turn, and his role as an educator,

mentor and friend. I am as grateful for his warmth, insight, and encouragement, as I

am for the passion with which he challenged, provoked, confronted and tested me.

The work at hand is a testament to, and reflection of, our relationship.

If Barber was my fountainhead, several prepared me for his tutelage. My path

to political theory began at Pomona College, and the blame (as it were) rests largely

on the shoulders of John Seery. To this day, Seery remains a gadfly, a confidant, a

compatriot, and one of the most influential professors with whom I have had the

pleasure of studying. The same holds true for James Miller and Richard Shusterman.

I happened across Miller’s Passion of Michel Foucault while living in Oahu, and

made the fruitful pilgrimage to New York to work with him at the New School. His

commitment to my intellectual growth never wavered (even when I did), and I was

fortunate to have benefited from his affection, erudition, scholarly rigor, and utter

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lack of artifice. He taught me how to approach texts critically but independently,

with a disciplined eye for precision that never sacrificed creativity. Shusterman

proved a particularly empathetic ally as well. Sensitive to my interests, strengths and

weaknesses alike, he treated me as an equal and exposed me to an art of life towards

which I continue to humbly, and hopefully, aspire.

It is barely possible to list every person who influenced and assisted me

during my academic training, but several others warrant especial acknowledgment.

Wilson Carey McWilliams’ wisdom and warmth provided great inspiration, solace,

and guidance both during and well beyond my tenure at Rutgers. And at the

University of Maryland, I was fortunate to have worked with William Galston and

Vladimir Tismaneanu. Galston’s decency, attentiveness, sound judgment, and

remarkably fluid mind made the move to College Park wholly worthwhile.

Tismaneanu likewise graced me with his generous spirit, critical acuity, and

wonderfully provocative reading of Rousseau. Along with the accomplished and

estimable Charles Butterworth, and Barber and Miller, they formed a committee

invaluable in realizing and honing the vision that guided this work.

I am also grateful for the feedback and critique I received from friends and

colleagues alike, including Derek Barker, Isabelle V. Barker, Sharon E. Goldman,

Bryan McGraw, Philip Spivey, and Matthew Voorhees. Charles Kim also merits

special recognition. Kim took significant time from his own research on Korean

history to provide as close, thoughtful and thorough a reading of early drafts as any I

received.

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In addition, this work would not have been possible without support from the

Democracy Collaborative. The Collaborative went above and beyond the call of duty

in ensuring my sustained and generous funding as a Research Fellow, providing the

framework and autonomy to pursue my own scholarly interests while simultaneously

realizing projects on global citizenship and civic education.

Finally, these acknowledgments would be woefully incomplete without a

recognition of Janet Austin. Harboring a graduate student is no mean feat,

particularly in my case. At times I would have been hard-pressed to find my way out

of a paper bag, let alone write a coherent work. Yet throughout it all, Janet provided

not merely encouragement and affection, but also grounding, focus, strength, and the

wellsprings of her tremendous organizational skills. When I drifted off into sermons

on the Pelagian heresy, she reminded me of the task at hand; when I suggested fleeing

to Paris, she kept me at my computer in Brooklyn, plugging ahead; and whenever the

goal seemed beyond my capacities, she insisted otherwise. It is with love and

admiration that I dedicate A Peculiar Faith to her.

Brooklyn, New York

November 8, 2004

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Table of Contents

Dedication ..................................................................................................................... ii

Acknowledgements...................................................................................................... iii

Table of Contents ......................................................................................................... vi

Note on Translation..................................................................................................... vii

List of Abbreviations ................................................................................................. viii

Introduction................................................................................................................... 1

Chapter 1: Strained Relations ..................................................................................... 10

Chapter 2: The Virtue of Paradox ............................................................................... 35

Chapter 3: A Claim of Innocence ............................................................................... 86

Chapter 4: The Reluctant Recluse............................................................................ 150

Chapter 5: Church and State ..................................................................................... 200

Chapter 6: The Road to Vincennes ........................................................................... 247

Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 269

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Note on Translation

Rather than recreating the wheel, and for the sake of consistency, translations

of Rousseau’s works are largely based upon the wonderful University Press of New

England series, The Collected Writings of Rousseau . I have only occasionally found

need to make corrections (based upon the Pléiade edition), or draw attention to

nuances particular to the French language. All other translations are mine, unless

noted.

viii

List of Abbreviations

In French

OC Oeuvres complètes, tomes 1-5 . Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond, eds.

(Paris: Éditions Gallimard/Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959-1995).

CC Correspondance complète de Jean-Jacques Rousseau , R.A. Leigh, ed.

(Genève: Institut et Museé Voltaire, 1965— )

In Translation

CW The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vols. 1-10 . Roger D. Masters and

Christopher Kelly, eds. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England,

1990-2004).

E

Emile, or On Education , Allan Bloom, tr. (New York: Basic Books, 1979).

1

Introduction

Rousseau touched the hearts of a great many people who felt the author spoke

directly to them. 1 Yet the reputation of his works is dogged by their perceived

contradictions. Rousseau vehemently rejected such charges, even as he admitted to

the paradoxical nature of his thought. If the temperamental author had his way,

readers would surely follow the fictional Frenchman’s lead in his Dialogues and

recognize his oeuvres as “things that were profoundly thought out, forming a coherent

system which might not be true but which offered nothing contradictory.” 2

Rousseau’s insistent claims notwithstanding, his writings strike inharmonious chords.

Of these, perhaps none rings more awkwardly than his simultaneous embrace of

religiosity and secularism.

Writing as if attuned to the means of salvation, Rousseau incorporated both

Christian and Pagan traditions within a vision of strong democratic citizenship and

corporeal improvement. How did these competing influences unfold as a model of

practicable reform? Was their synthesis compelling? Or even coherent? What might

we make of Rousseau’s religious conviction, and its relation to civic harmony and

political virtue? And for a thinker so obviously concerned with secular affairs, why

was religion necessary to his thought?

1 See: Robert Darnton, “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity,” in

The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History . (New York: Basic Books,

1983).

2 In claiming both that his works “offered nothing contradictory” and that paradox was “necessary” to

his thought, Rousseau forced a crucial distinction between paradox and inconsistency discussed in

Chapter 2 above. Dialogues . CW I.209; OC I.930.

2

Because Rousseau’s writings are rife with paradoxes and antinomies, answers

do not come easily. Indeed, his efforts have conspicuously divided audiences. In

Rousseau’s own age, Frederick the Great believed that the Genevan’s moral rigor was

matched only by his saint-like self-castigation. 3 Yet the Archduke Christophe de

Beaumont derided him as a dangerous heretic, the living epitome of Saint Paul’s

prophecy of “perilous days” destined to cloud mankind’s future. 4 To most—his

friends, foes, and intellectual peers alike—Rousseau was a rabble-rouser cut of

Diogenes the Cynic’s abrasive cloth. Yet to himself, he was one of the last few true

Christians, believers who followed the gospel of Christ rather than the Church’s

dictates.

Was Jean-Jacques pious or profane, a disciple of Jesus or a radical Pagan

upstart? Evidence suggests that each of these descriptions bears some measure of

truth. Deeply engaged with the corporeal world as critic and reformer, he drew a

paradoxical faith in the capacity for human redemption from a heterodox assumption

of man’s natural goodness. Applying virulent social criticism to an optimistic vision

of political reform, he rose to fame as a demonstrative recluse—a thinker ill-at-ease in

the society to whose improvement he was so deeply committed. Such engagement

reflects wholly secular concerns, yet Rousseau’s work also betrayed strong

religiosity. His faith in human innocence rested upon a self-professed love of divine

order and the natural world of God’s creation. From his very first Discourse , to the

Vicar’s Profession , to the final Reveries , Rousseau urged us to follow the principles

3 For a detailed discussion of Frederick’s claim, see Chapter 4 below.

4 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.3. Beaumont’s Biblical reference is to 2 Timothy 3:1-4, 8.

3

of virtue “engraved in all hearts” and revealed through the God-given conscience

from which socialized man had alienated himself.

One of his epoch’s most virulent anti-Clericalists, Rousseau nonetheless

embraced religion as a necessary foundation for individual and collective

improvement. Yet his vision of piety rested upon a Pelagian heresy, a claim of

ontological innocence that was itself colored by a profound mistrust of human

society. A self-designated recluse, he expressed personal distaste for social

obligation, duty and convention. A champion of cohesive communities, he found

peace only in solitude, alone amongst nature while lost in his passionate reveries.

Perhaps the greatest social critic of his age, he staked his career—and following his

motto, 5 his very life—on a mission of public service: pursuing the truth and revealing

it to his peers. Yet this secular calling was itself the fruit borne of a spiritual

conversion, an epiphany that changed his life on the road to Vincennes.

Such are the beds of Rousseau’s making, and the conspicuously strange

bedfellows he conjured. Taken together, his skepticism of men (as social creatures

infected with amour-propre) and faith in man ( en générale , as creations of God

endowed with conscience) appear to be incompatible. Rousseau’s sunny view of

human nature seems ill-fitted with his belief in Divine order and an afterlife, two

concepts traditionally used to literally instill the fear of God in the descendents of

Adam. His acute distrust of formal religion only complicates matters. If man is

good and religion is necessary, yet men have grown as wicked and corrupt as

religious institutions, can we honestly hope for improvement? What concrete lesson

5 Namely, Vitam impendere vero ( Dedicate life to truth ). For a more thorough examination of

Rousseau’s motto see Chapter 2 below.

4

might we draw from these inchoate conclusions? Can such a dissonant theory

materialize in practice?

Again, Rousseau’s readers harbored strong doubts. Even those who

appreciated his work have wished aloud that the Genevan abandon his dialectic

approach for a more singular methodology and agenda. If only Rousseau had chosen

a more righteous path unencumbered by earthly affairs, perhaps he would have

survived the Enlightenment as one of the world’s great martyrs, a figure deified

without irony or scorn. Infighting with the philosophes , repentant success,

hypersensitivity over his reputation and legacy, and eventual exile only heightened

his discomfort and fueled his critics; yet he never relinquished his burdensome

commitment to corporeal reform.

Rousseau was, after all, equally enamored with spiritual and secular

improvement. To abandon one would have been to destroy the provocative dialectic

that makes his thought so compelling. Had he convincingly renounced his ties to the

world, the questions that now confront us would be irrelevant. He would not have

struggled to envision religious associations compatible with liberal democratic

principles of tolerance, equality and strong citizenship. He would not, in other words,

have formulated his theory of Civil Religion.

Civil Religion is a nexus of Rousseau’s earthly and otherworldly concerns.

One of his most widely-disparaged writings, this attempt to found a “purely civil

faith” (a term which itself testifies to his confluence of spiritual and secular values)

marked a culminating point in Rousseau’s life-consuming quest to foster religious

and political reform. In it, we find an author struggling to apply his faith to practice,

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to reconcile his dour view of the world as it was with his dream of society as it should

be . 6 In the end, was he successful? Were his apparently competing influences and

aims irreconcilable? Or does Rousseau offer a powerful lens through which to

reconsider the relationship between religion and politics?

* * * * *

Readers may yet ask, why another book about Rousseau? Although the topic

of his religiosity has been long-studied, I believe it could be better studied. After all,

the most thorough and widely-acclaimed writings are both aged and unavailable in

English: P.-M. Masson and William Cuendet wrote nearly one century ago, while

comparable works from renowned scholars such as Robert Dérathe and Pierre

Burgelin date from the middle of the twentieth-century. 7

To be fair, contemporary authors have expanded upon these pioneering

efforts. James Miller and Helena Rosenblatt discussed Rousseau’s relationship to

Protestantism in illuminating the significance of his Swiss heritage. 8 In Not By

Reason Alone , Joshua Mitchell explored the influence of Christian and Protestant

6 This is, of course, a reference to The Social Contract ’s opening lines: “I want to inquire whether there

can be a legitimate and reliable rule of administration in the civil order, taking men as they are and

laws as they can be .” As we will see, this dialectic between realism and idealism is central to

Rousseau’s religious and political thought alike. The Social Contract . CW IV.131; OC III.351. (My

emphasis.)

7 See: Pierre-Maurice Masson, La Religion de J. J. Rousseau , Vols. I-III. (Paris: Librairie Hachette,

1916); William Cuendet, La Philosophie religieuse de Jean-Jacques Rousseau et ses sources . (Geneva:

A. Jullien, 1913); Robert Dérathe, Le rationalisme de Jean-Jacques Rousseau . (Paris: Presses

Universitaires de France, 1948); Pierre Burgelin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la religion de Genève .

(Geneva: Éditions Labor et Fides, 1962).

8 See: James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy . (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984);

Helena Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva: From the First discourse to the Social Contract , 1749-

1762 . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

6

authors upon his thought. 9 Ann Hartle’s eloquent work, The Modern Self in

Rousseau’s Confessions , 10 analyzed the Augustinian elements within his model of

self-discovery, a connection likewise detailed by Christopher Brooke 11 and

Christopher Kelly. 12 Victor Gourevitch 13 drew attention to Rousseau’s providential

description of “nature,” while Ronald Grimsley 14 expounded upon his Biblical

concept of redemption. And Patrick Riley’s well-documented The General Will

Before Rousseau illustrated the Malebranchian influence upon his concept of

voluntarism, while charting the general will’s movement from a divine to a civic

emphasis. 15

Despite the breadth and depth of such scholarship, however, rarely is

Rousseau’s religion considered as a keystone to his political vision, and a crucial

linkage which unites his entire oeuvres . 16 Quite the contrary, far more effort has been

9 Mitchell goes so far as to claim that “Rousseau and Luther embark on identical projects” of social

criticism. Joshua Mitchell, Not By Reason Alone: Religion, History and Identity in Early Modern

Political Thought . (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993).

10 See: Ann Hartle, The Modern Self in Rousseau’s Confessions: A Reply to Saint Augustine . (Notre

Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).

11 Christopher Brooke, “Rousseau’s Political Philosophy: Stoic and Augustinian Origins,” in Patrick

Riley, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

12 Christopher Kelly, Rousseau’s Exemplary Life: The “Confessions” as Political Philosophy . (Ithaca,

NY: Cornell University Press, 1987).

13 Victor Gourevitch, “The Religious Thought,” in Riley.

14 Ronald Grimsley, Rousseau and the Religious Quest . (London: Oxford University Press, 1968).

15 Patrick Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic .

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

16 Instead, scholars often look for ways to subvert or disprove Jean-Jacques’ claim of consistency. The

most compelling example of this approach is Judith Shklar’s Men and Citizens . Shklar argued

forcefully that Rousseau was a deeply pessimistic thinker whose vision of secular redemption—of

cultivating men and citizens—was, by his own admission and example, fatally flawed. With due

respect, I believe that Shklar subverts his significant and sincere optimism (a value tied to his

religiosity) by exaggerating the extent and implications of his pessimism. Yet Rousseau’s writings did

not fall into the category of philosophical speculation he so loathed; he meant his vision to be

implemented in practice. We should, however, note that not all authors follow Shklar’s skeptical lead.

As much as anyone, Jean Starobinski struggled to identify the underlying coherence of Rousseau’s

work. In La transparence et l’obstacle , he noted the simultaneous piety and profanity that

characterized the Genevan’s morality, without taking this as evidence of his inconsistency. This work

is therefore in part an attempt to flesh out Starobinski’s claim, to determine where exactly Rousseau’s

opposed values coalesced within his singular vision of democratic virtue. See: Judith N. Shklar, Men

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made to use his concept of religion against him: to argue that his spiritual optimism is

fundamentally incoherent and incompatible with his political vision; that his Civil

Religion reveals a despotic, totalitarian temperament; and that his conversions from

Protestantism to Catholicism back to Protestantism attest to his capricious nature. 17

A fresh perspective is needed, one which defends Rousseau from these claims

by clarifying the significance of his religiosity, particularly as it informs a coherent

model of democratic virtue. Towards this end, we will explore the Pagan and

Christian traditions evident in concepts central to his life and writings; examine his

more contentious theological beliefs, particularly his sorely overlooked Pelagianism,

his proclamations of Christian faith, and his self-defense against the charges of heresy

brought against Emile ; and explore how his simultaneous piety and profanity shapes a

compelling vision of political reform.

Drawing upon previous efforts, considerable space will be devoted to textual,

historical, and biographical analysis. We will also take seriously the abundant

misgivings put forth by Rousseau’s critics, and broach the question of his consistency

and coherence from the outset. In addition to addressing oft-overlooked figures (both

Pagan and Christian alike) crucial to fleshing out the complexity of his faith, we will

also explore Rousseau’s more neglected writings: the many letters, fragments, and

and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Thought . (London and New York: Cambridge University

Press, 1969); Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction . Arthur

Goldhammer, tr. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988). Originally published as Jean-

Jacques Rousseau: La transparence et l’obstacle suivi de Sept essais sur Rousseau . (Paris: Éditions

Gallimard, 1971).

17 See: J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy . (London: Martin Secker & Warburg,

Ltd., 1952); Lester G. Crocker, Rousseau’s Social Contract . (Cleveland: Press of Case Western

Reserve University, 1968); Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty . (New York: Oxford University

Press, 1969); J. H. Huizinga, Rousseau: The Self Made Saint . (New York: Viking Press, 1976); Arthur

M. Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau’s Thought . (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1990).

8

minor works that supplement his (in)famous chapters On Civil Religion and the

Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar . Finally, we will examine Civil Religion as

the practical realization of Rousseau’s religious and secular convictions, before

concluding on the very path where he claimed his career began: the road to

Vincennes, where a life-changing revelation pressed him to serve both God and man.

Although we begin by introducing politico-theological relations as a tension

still-relevant (perhaps more than ever) to democratic theory, this is not a work of

public policy. It makes no claim to provide programmatic solutions to the

contentious relationship between religion and politics, nor even explicitly apply

Rousseau’s writings to contemporary problems. Nor, for that matter, is it an attempt

to draw linear relations between the Genevan and his Christian and Pagan forebears.

It rather suggests that Rousseau offers valuable insight into the relationship between

religion and politics; that his secular thought cannot be understood without reference

to his views on religion; and that his connection to such disparate figures as

Augustine and Pelagius, Diogenes and Saint Antony, Hobbes and Saint Paul, clarifies

the roots, innovations, and implications of Rousseau’s peculiar 18 faith. By examining

these inchoate influences, we may determine why Rousseau lauded religion yet was

so critical of religious dogmatism; why he was condemned as a heretic, despite

insisting upon his piety; and how his radical faith in man and God alike informed a

distinctly political vision of virtue with decidedly religious undertones. In the end, by

reconciling Rousseau’s uncompromising amalgam of spiritual and secular traditions,

18 According to The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary . (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1971), the term peculiar has two senses equally applicable to Rousseau’s faith: particular to him,

and highly unusual.

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we will be poised not only to explain the necessity of religion to his thought, but also

glean a coherent political lesson from its role in the path to civic virtue.

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Chapter 1: Strained Relations

On February 11, 1906, Pope Pius X unleashed an eloquent fury on the French

government. The object of his wrath was La Loi concernant la séparation des

Églises et de l'État (December 9, 1905), which instituted a formal separation between

church and state in France. In an elaborate Encyclical entitled Vehementer Nos , Pius

condemned the legislation on moral, political, practical and legal grounds, levying the

following censure on behalf of the Vatican:

We do, by virtue of the supreme authority which God has confided to

Us … reprove and condemn the law voted in France for the separation

of Church and State, as deeply unjust to God whom it denies, and as

laying down the principle that the Republic recognizes no cult. We

reprove and condemn it as violating the natural law, the law of nations,

and fidelity to treaties; as contrary to the Divine constitution of the

Church, to her essential rights and to her liberty; as destroying justice

and trampling underfoot the rights of property which the Church has

acquired by many titles and, in addition, by virtue of the Concordat.

We reprove and condemn it as gravely offensive to the dignity of the

Apostolic See, to Our own person, to the Episcopacy, and to the clergy

and all the Catholics of France. Therefore, We protest solemnly and

with all Our strength against the introduction, the voting and the

promulgation of this law, declaring that it can never be alleged against

the imprescriptible rights of the Church.” (§13) 19

Amongst his many specific charges, he concluded that French legislators were “guilty

of a great injustice to God” (§3). Evoking Augustine’s City of God , he argued that

the separation sabotaged the state’s “ultimate object which is man’s eternal happiness

after this short life shall have run its course.” (§3) Such disregard “inflicts great

injury on society itself, for it cannot either prosper or last long when due place is not

19 All section numbers refer to: Vehementer Nos , Encyclical of Pope Pius X, promulgated on February

11, 1906. All quotes are taken from the official Vatican translation.

11

left for religion, which is the supreme rule and the sovereign mistress in all questions

touching the rights and the duties of men.” (§3) The ruling betrayed a nation’s

ungratefulness, as France had been “during the course of centuries the object of…

great and special predilection on the part of the [Roman Catholic Church].” (§4) It

constituted a breach of international treaty law by unceremoniously revoking the

bilateral Concordat between the Roman Pontiff and the French Government. (§5) La

Loi also subverted a Papal hierarchy rooted in both divine and natural law, placing

“the Church under the domination of the civil power” (§7), and assigning “the

administration and the supervision of public worship… to an association formed of

laymen,” provisions which “seriously violate the rights of the Church, and are in

opposition with her Divine constitution.” (§8)

Labeling the legislation “an event of the gravest import, and one that must be

deplored by all the right-minded, for it is as disastrous to society as it is to religion,”

Pius admitted that “it is an event which surprised nobody who has paid any attention

to the religious policy followed in France of late years.” (§1) Indeed, though La Loi

stands as the legal foundation of France’s separation between church and state, its

inception marked the culmination of a hundred-year movement towards strict

secularism. A process which began in 1792 during the short-lived First Republic, the

subsequent century saw a series of legislation which instituted a civil code (1804) and

civil marriage mandates (1810), abolished an 1814 law prohibiting work on Sundays

and holidays (1880), and barred public prayers before parliamentary sessions (1884).

During this period, France also secularized its schools and hospitals, enlisted clerics

in military service, banished Catholic practices and emblems from all public

12

establishments, and removed religious references from its judicial oath. The 1905

law formally upheld the spirit of these measures, reasserting on no uncertain terms

what had been a central theme of post-Jacobin politics: “La République assure la

liberté de conscience.” 20 The official separation of church and state, codified at the

start of the twentieth century, was deemed essential to protecting this liberty. By

prohibiting federal support of religious institutions, the ruling broadly denounced

preferential treatment towards any one particular faith; égalité , as much as liberté ,

was the law’s guiding spirit.

It was not without concern, then, that a debate of some consequence began in

France in the early days of 2003. On January 17, according to Le Monde , Secretary

of State Pierre Bédier and government spokesman Jean-François Copé announced

unequivocally that la Loi de 1905 was sorely in need of reform. 21 The catalysts to

this claim were the September 11, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center,

subsequent bombings conducted by the Al Qaeda network, and a correlative fear of

future fundamentalist violence. As justification for his proposal, Bédier drew an

explicit connection between the dangers posed by Islamic extremism today and

Catholicism one hundred years prior: “In 1905, the government thought that Catholics

were anti-republican, and constituted a menace as such. Today, Islam poses a similar

problem. It would be unrealistic to ignore this concern.” 22

At heart of this debate are anxieties associated with the foreign financing of

Muslim mosques. Although la Loi explicitly prohibits public sponsorship of houses

20 La Loi concernant la séparation des Eglises et de l'Etat , Article 1. Promulgated on July 3, 1905

with 314 votes for, 233 against.

21 “Faut-il réviser la loi de séparation des Eglises et de l’Etat?” Le Monde , January 17, 2003.

22 Ibid., Le Monde , January 17, 2003.

13

of worship (a practice sometimes circumvented by partitions which establish ‘non-

prayer’ areas), there is growing concern that mosques are financed by persons or

organizations with terrorist ties or sympathies; that they might either serve as covert

terrorist communities, or distribute laundered funds to extremist cells within France;

and that state subsidization could effectively limit the amount of suspicious capital

entering from abroad. Alluding to both an “Islamic league” and unspecified Saudi

sources as possible perpetrators, Bédier cited the need for “extreme vigilance” in

regulating money arriving from ill-intentioned “foreign powers.” 23 An “Islam of

France,” he argued, must supplant “Islam in France”—the religion must be sponsored

and regulated by the government, and not merely allowed to infiltrate the nation’s

borders. 24

Leaving aside the logic of this argument and the vagueness of its targets, the

proposal is radical: the state must oversee the affairs of one specific creed. 25 To

monitor mosques and prevent the laundering of “terrorist” funds, France must first

reform a hard-fought hallmark of its democracy (the strict separation of church and

state). To protect republican virtues, Bédier and Copé argue, they must revise a

paradigmatic republican law. Whereas in 1905 similar fears of Catholicism inspired a

strict separation of church and state, misgivings about Muslimism are now prompting

the French government to reconsider its abstention.

23 “Bédier souhaite un ‘islam de France’ et non plus un ‘islam en France.’” Agence France-Presse ,

January 23, 2003.

24 If Bédier’s distinction is not terribly clear, we might consider it in relation to Rousseau, who was a

man in Paris but never considered himself a man of Paris. Ibid. (My emphasis.)

25 It is worth noting that this charge takes issue with the church (or, more precisely, the Mosque), and

not the religious practice itself.

14

The seeds for such revisionism had already been planted five years prior,

when, on October 7, 1998, the National Assembly unanimously approved Décret n°

98-890 . The decree instituted mission interministérielle de lutte contre les sects

(MILS), an interdepartmental effort which “incites public services to take, in respect

of public liberties, appropriate measures to anticipate and combat sects who

undermine personal human dignity or who threaten the public order.” 26 Under the

auspices of civic welfare—to “inform the public of the dangers posed by the sectarian

phenomenon”—the French government established an agency to officially monitor

religious factions. 27

These are striking examples of a democratic nation rethinking the interstices

of religion and politics, but not isolated ones. On December 12, 2002, George W.

Bush passed a unilateral Executive Order entitled “Equal Protection of the Laws for

Faith-based and Community Organizations.” This so-called “Faith-based initiative”

entitled religious groups to receive federal tax dollars for “social service programs”—

those which provide “services directed at reducing poverty, improving opportunities

for low-income children, revitalizing low-income communities, empowering low-

income families and low-income individuals to become self-sufficient, or otherwise

26 “Décret n° 98-890 du 7 octobre 1998 instituant une mission interministérielle de lutte contre les

sectes .” Taken from: Journal Officiel N° 234, du 9 Octobre 1998, page 15286.

27 Earlier in the same year, the United States passed the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998

“To express United States foreign policy with respect to, and to strengthen United States advocacy on

behalf of, individuals persecuted in foreign countries on account of religion.” According to the

subsequent “International Religious Freedom Report of 2002” released by the Bureau of Democracy,

Human Rights, and Labor, religious groups in France “continued to be concerned about the possible

impact of [recent] legislation passed,” although “no overall change in the status of respect for religious

freedom” was noted. See: “International Religious Freedom Act of 1998” (H.R. 2431), and the U.S.

Department of State “International Religious Freedom Report 2002: France.”

15

helping people in need.” 28 Immediately condemned by The New York Times as being

“unconstitutional, and fundamentally unfair,” and running “counter to decades of

First Amendment law, which holds that government dollars cannot be used to

promote religion,” the initiative has nonetheless garnered support from citizens of all

faiths who cite the growing need for spiritual guidance amongst charitable

organizations. 29

If the separation of church and state offers an essential foundation of a strong,

pluralist democracy, then the new millennium has begun on an ominous note. In very

different manners and for very different reasons, two of the world’s leading

democratic powers are redrawing the boundaries between secular and spiritual

institutions. In part, such revisionism is a sign of the times. Since September 11,

2001, ours has been a climate in which the ambiguous and ubiquitous use of the word

“terrorist” has supplanted “communist” as this era’s primary antonym for democracy,

and where terrorism is often conflated with Muslim fundamentalism. Yet amidst this

atmosphere of mistrust, western nations have increasingly embraced another creed—

Christianity—for guidance in social, moral, political, and educational reform. 30 If

France has deemed Islam a potential threat to republican order and “public liberties,”

the United States has approached faith-based groups as heretofore neglected sources

28 George W. Bush, “Equal Protection of the Laws for Faith-based and Community Organizations.”

Executive Order 13279 of December 12, 2002.

29 “Using Tax Dollars for Churches.” The New York Times , December 30, 2002.

30 Shortly after the World Trade Center attacks, British Prime Minister Tony Blair proposed increasing

state-funding for religious schools as part of a New Labour Party plan to reform secondary education.

Although roughly 7,000 of Britain’s 25,000 schools already have religious affiliations, the measure

was in part seen as a means of luring middle class families—an increasing number of whom send

children to privately financed schools—back to the public sector. More recently (in 2002), Polish

president Aleksander Kwasniewski successfully solicited Pope John Paul II to raise public support for

inclsion into the European Union, arguing that such an alliance would help to “restore Christian

values in Western Europe.” See: “Tony and the little children” ( The Economist , December 6, 2001);

“Preaching for the European Union” ( The Economist , March 14, 2002).

16

of “helping people in need.” Whether guided by skeptical mistrust or philanthropic

idealism, such divergent positions and policies reveal a common conviction:

democracies cannot ignore the civic significance (for better or worse) of religious

associations. Furthermore, in both instances (and no matter the motives) the end

result is similar: democratic states are increasingly involved in religious affairs.

Given these turns of events, we may well ask: was Nietzsche wrong? When

the prophetic German foretold the death of God, when he heralded that “belief in the

Christian god has become unbelievable,” had he spoken too soon? 31 Ours is certainly

an age of scientific rationalism and global capitalism, of a liberalism whose most

visible ambassadors travel through television and film, music and internet lines. Pat

Buchanan’s infamous “Culture War” speech and his Republican National Convention

address of 1992 were both offensive and vitriolic, but were they entirely far-

fetched? 32 America does seem awash in the godless libertinism of popular culture;

the nuclear family is a dying unit; we are increasingly tolerant, and do parade our

sexual, ethnic and political diversity with pride rather than shame.

But ours is equally an age of religious resurgence, of Jihad and missionaries,

of the sudden integration of church and state. According to The Economist ,

Millenarianism—the fundamentalist “belief in the thousand-year reign of King

Jesus”—has appealed to broader audiences since September 11, a rise evidenced by

both its popularity amongst conservative radio station audiences, and the soaring sales

31 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science , Walter Kaufmann, tr. (New York: Random House, Inc.,

1974), §343, p. 279.

32 According to Buchanan, “There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America. It

is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the Cold War itself.” See:

Patrick J. Buchanan, “1992 Republican National Convention Speech” (August 17, 1992). Similarly, in

his speech entitled “The Cultural War for the Soul of America” (September 14, 1992), Buchanan asks:

“Are we any longer ‘one nation under God,’ or has one-half of that nation already begun to secede

from the other?”

17

of the bestselling evangelical novel series “Left Behind” which molds a message of

Old Testament fire-and-brimstone fury to isolationist politics. 33 Even more centrally,

membership in Christian churches exceeded two billion in the new millennium, a

growth of roughly 1.2 billion over 30 years. 34 In America alone, the number of

Christians have risen by over 200 percent in the past 50 years (to 171 million);

membership in churches of all faiths now comprises over 60 percent of the

population, or roughly twice what it was in the mid-nineteenth century. These

circumstances should give us pause. Has the “cheerfulness” Nietzsche saw in a

Europe released from the shadow of God already begun to fade, in both the Continent

and the New World?

Clearly, Nietzsche’s assertion is debatable now, just as it was when written.

In 1885, three years following the publication of the first edition of The Gay

Science , 35 Pope Leo XIII described church-state relations in organic terms, arguing

that “[t]here must … exist between these two powers a certain orderly connection,

which may be compared to the union of the soul and body in man.” 36 What the

German reviled as a slavish specter haunting human livelihood, the Roman extolled

as natural and necessary. What Nietzsche attacked as systematic self-inurement, Leo

XIII lauded as both physically and spiritually healthy. Neither vision triumphed

wholly. The relationship between religious and political institutions is still hotly

33 The first book alone (of this as yet nine-book series) has sold over 7 million copies to date. See:

Lexington, “Behold the Rapture.” The Economist , August 22, 2002.

34 “The fight for God.” The Economist , December 19, 2002.

35 Nietzsche first writes of “the death of God” in The Gay Science , §108. He also discusses this

phenomenon in §343, as well as in Thus Spoke Zarathustra pp. 124f., 191, 202, 294, 371-379, 398f. in

The Portable Nietzsche , Walter Kaufmann, tr. (New York: The Viking Press, 1954).

36 Immortale Dei , Encyclical of Pope Leo XIII, promulgated on November 1, 1885.

18

contested, particularly when drawing boundaries according to liberal democratic

principles of neutrality and equality under law.

A tension clearly relevant to contemporary democratic discourse, less evident

is how it may be resolved. Perhaps religion generally is neither reducible to the

philanthropic salvation central to Bush’s vision, nor the vengeful violence of

fundamentalist terrorism. Perhaps its relationship to democracy is significantly more

complicated, and begs further examination, rather than the reactionary regulation and

surveillance advocated by Bédier and Copé. To arrive at a more nuanced assessment

we might turn to a thinker whose beliefs encompassed both poles, one enamored with

and mistrustful of religion’s relationship to the secular state, who identified spiritual

faith as a cornerstone of civic morality, and spiritual associations as potentially

divisive sources of intolerance and exclusion. To better assess the relationship

between religion and politics generally, and Christianity and democracy specifically,

we might cast our gaze back to one of the first modern democrats, himself a

Protestant: 37 Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

* * * * *

It is within Rousseau that we find both piousness and profanity, a secular

theodicy in which man (rather than God) bears the burdens of enacting his own

salvation. Standing at a pivotal crossroads in political thought, one where

37 Although Rousseau was born a Protestant, he converted to Catholicism at the age of 16. For

Rousseau’s own account, see: The Confessions , CW V.38-40; OC I.45-47. In The Reveries of the

Solitary Walker (Third Promenade), Rousseau adds this: “Given into my own keeping while still a

child and enticed by caresses, seduced by vanity, lured by hope, forced by necessity, I became a

Catholic, but I always remained a Christian.” CW IX.19; OC I.1013. For Rousseau’s description of

his rejoining the Protestant faith in 1754, see: CW V.329-330; OC I.392-393.

19

Enlightenment philosophes challenged the theologism dominant since the age of

Augustine, the Genevan straddled awkward lines indeed. On one hand he was a

compelling secularist, a prolific author who championed radical reform drawn

according to democratic principles of liberty and equality. Rousseau’s vision of

legitimate sovereignty was rooted in the common will of citizens (rather than God),

and supported by the primacy of positive law. Yet he was also enraptured with an

incomprehensibly harmonious divine order revealed in nature, and urged men to

willfully follow their God-given conscience to live in greater accord with this

heavenly example.

Incorporating both Christian and secular sources within a singular model of

legitimate democratic governance, Rousseau illustrates one possible means of

reconciling religion and politics. Guided by a dual sense of past failings and future

potential, 38 he neither categorically dismissed nor blindly accepted the compatibility

of corporeal and spiritual associations. Indeed, despite arguing for their integration,

Rousseau took seriously the premise that man’s earthly and otherworldly needs can

be either mutually exclusive or mutually enriching; the choice, as he presents it, is

entirely up to us. Religion can serve as a shared source of moral duty, a means of

unifying individuals and cultivating our natural sense of brotherly love. It can also

breed artificial divisions between people of different creeds, acting as a catalyst to the

sectarianism and violent persecution so destructive of common welfare. Religion can

38 Elsewhere I describe this dual sense of past failings and future potential as pessimistic realism and

heuristic idealism . These two stances are two mutually constitutive within Rousseau’s work. His deep

dissatisfaction with the status quo pressed to him envision a better possible future, even as it forced

him to recognize the difficulties in bringing about substantive change. This phenomenon is

particularly evident in his assessment of positive religion: Rousseau’s condemnation of Catholicism

provided impetus for him to found a more virtuous, civil alternative.

20

damn man to hell, and also nurture a sense of interdependence and faith in better

times. As with politics, it can adopt different forms , some legitimate, some coercive;

some enriching, some self-destructive; some polarizing, some unifying. If papist

dogma presented an example of religion at its most harmful, Rousseau struggled to

clarify the terms of a truly beneficial piety: one that cultivated reverence towards God

and man, binding us to our fellows, community and Creator alike.

The faith upon which his vision rested was paradoxical in both senses of the

word: it contradicted the commonly held truths of his age, and drew upon apparently

incompatible beliefs in man’s intrinsic innocence and his capacity for wickedness.

Directly refuting orthodox Roman Catholicism, Rousseau revived the Pelagian heresy

that humankind was naturally good. Yet this belief was qualified by his equally

vociferous insistence upon man’s capacity for wickedness, a propensity evidenced by

our well-documented history of decline. His solution to the problem of theodicy 39 —

namely, the question of how evil can exist in a world created by an omnipotent

God—forced us to consider salvation in secular terms, taking recourse in the very

faculties and traits (willing, pride, perfectionism) that led us astray from our

inherently pure natures. Yet he never failed to remind men of their self-incurred

failings, the degree to which they had strayed from their state of natural harmony.

Rousseau’s theory of redemption was simultaneously informed by this pessimistic

view of human history and optimistic assessment of human nature; if man had made a

mess of society, he also possessed the capacity to correct his self-incurred failings.

Unlike Augustine, for whom free will offered a moral test geared towards post-

39 To compare Rousseau’s views with those of Leibniz see: Theodicy I.7-8. For Rousseau’s self-

distancing from Leibniz see: Letter to Philopolis . CW III.129-130; OC III.232-234.

21

mortem salvation (and thus comprised God’s gift to humankind), man replaced God

as the facilitator of a salvation possible in this world and this lifetime.

However, far from absolving religion of a role in politics Rousseau

appropriated Christian tropes to serve civic ends, through secular measures. His

portrait of human history evoked a fall of Biblical proportions, yet he framed the

means of possible redemption in exclusively corporeal terms. 40 In this, the Genevan’s

formula stood in sharp contrast to his Christian voluntarist forebears. Augustine

understood divine forgiveness as the sole antidote to Adam’s debilitating legacy.

Salvation, if at all possible, lay in God’s merciful grace; human lives were grueling

trials of which conformity was the aim. Life was best served by emulating, to the

best of our meager human ability, a magnificent, unified divine will. Luther and

Calvin shared this sentiment, arguing that man had little recourse to alter his divinely-

determined fate. 41 For Luther, the “false idea of ‘free-will’ is a real threat to

salvation, and a delusion fraught with the most perilous consequences”—namely, the

misguided premise that human agency influences divine redemption. 42 Calvin

likewise insisted that the human will was emphatically not free, meaning neither

40 It can be argued that this is untrue of all of Rousseau’s works. To wit, Julie and the Reveries seek

solace to varying degrees (and for varying reasons) after life ends. But even these aims are established

after earthly remedies have apparently failed. Transcendent post-mortem redemption is a last resort,

rather than (as for Augustine) a guiding principle. Although this tension will be examined in greater

detail in later chapters, I will side here with Starobinski, who urges his readers to locate consistency in

Jean-Jacques’ work. Clearly, the bulk of the Genevan’s writings grapple with secular solutions to

moral and political problems.

41 There are obviously crucial differences between Luther and Calvin, not least of which involves the

latter’s emphasis upon the role of good works in gauging the possibility of election. For the purposes

of this introduction, however, they both fall under the broad rubric of Protestant voluntarism, under

whose terms God alone affects salvation.

42 Martin Luther, “Bondage of the Will,” in Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings , John

Dillenberger, tr. and ed. (New York: Anchor Books, 1961), p. 189.

22

strictly autonomous nor capable of emulating a divine, omnipotent will. 43 Salvation

rested solely on the shoulders of God, whose will alone dictated an individual’s fate.

In breaking with this tradition, Rousseau understood our decline as a temporal

crisis in need of earthly solutions. The woeful state of human affairs—emblematized

by the ironic “triumph” of science and reasoning over nature—was empirically

demonstrable throughout history, evidenced by growing inequality and individual

alienation from our harmonious, divine natures. Rousseau’s ambivalent view of

progress did not, however, cause him to categorically condemn humankind as

inherently sinful. Rather, modern society was the object of his scorn, a source of

moral indeterminacy in need of a political balm. Two thousand years prior, Socrates

famously argued that men never knowingly commit evil: acts of ill-repute revealed

ignorance more than malfeasance. 44 As Ernst Cassirer rightly noted, eighteenth

century thinkers clarified this sentiment, condemning “not ignorance as such, but

ignorance which pretends to be truth and wants to pass for truth.” 45

Self-delusion—

that which “inflicts the mortal wound on knowledge”—found its most egregious form

in superstition. Presaging Kant, who famously described enlightenment as “ man’s

43 See: John Calvin, On God and Political Duty, Second Revised Edition , John Allen and Benjamin B.

Warfield, eds. (New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956); Institutes of the Christian

Religion in Two Volumes , John T. McNeill, ed. and Ford Lewis Battles, tr. (Philadelphia: The

Westminster Press, 1960).

44 As Socrates argued in Timaeus (86d), “almost all those affections which are called by way of

reproach ‘incontinence in pleasure,’ as though the wicked acted voluntarily, are wrongly so

reproached; for no one is voluntarily wicked.” Similarly, he asserted in Protagoras (345d-345e) that

“I am fairly certain that no wise man believes anyone sins willingly or willingly perpetrates any evil or

base act. They know very well that all evil or base action is involuntary.” And finally, the Athenian

argued in The Laws (731c-731d) that “no unjust man is ever voluntarily unjust. For no one anywhere

would ever voluntarily take the greatest evil into his most honorable possession and keep it for the rest

of his life. So the unjust man, like the man who possesses bad things, is pitiable in every way, and it is

permissible to pity such a man when his illness is curable.” See: Protagoras and Meno , W.K.C.

Guthrie, tr. (New York: Penguin Books, 1956), pp. 80-81; The Laws of Plato , Thomas L. Pangle, tr.

(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988), p. 117.

45 Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment , Fritz C. A. Koelln & James P. Pettegrove, trs.

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 161.

23

emergence from his self-incurred immaturity … [namely] the inability to use one’s

own understanding without the guidance of another,”

46 Rousseau expounded upon

this idea, arguing that doing good depends on knowing and actively pursuing the

good, a goal realized through education, and fortification against the vain temptations

cultivated by societal pressures. Such practical wisdom was gleaned through sober

assessment and individual effort, rather than revelation or divine intervention. 47

Hobbes had also stayed the hand of God in arguing for a radical corporeal

solution to the pressing problems of political instability and resultant (apolitical)

anarchy. 48 Yet whereas Jean-Jacques’ Social Contract promised virtuous rapture, the

Englishman’s renunciation of individual will (to the Monarch’s authority) offered a

more physical assurance: protection in a world torn asunder by the war of all against

all. Hobbesian psychology, rooted in a hedonistic physics of appetite and aversion,

allowed little room for nuance much less transcendence. His was a world-view in

which crisis was a universal condition; humankind had little hope for stability beyond

self-abrogating, strong-armed rule. As Charles Taylor noted, Hobbes “thought of our

world picture as almost literally put together out of building blocks—which were

ultimately the sensations or ideas produced by experience.” 49 By contrast,

Rousseau’s puzzle was built of more awkward pieces: innocence and guilt,

46 Immanuel Kant, “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?” in Political Writings ,

Second Enlarged Edition , Hans Reiss, ed. and H.B. Nisbet, tr. (Cambridge: Cambridge University

Press, 1991), p. 54.

47 As we will discuss, Rousseau also stressed the necessity of following our divinely-instilled

conscience, although he recognized the acute difficulties this task posed to denatured, socialized

creatures.

48 This statement follows the basic assumption of C.B. MacPherson, who saw in Hobbes’ “state of

nature” a thinly-veiled description of Civil War-torn England. See: The Political Theory of Possessive

Individualism: Hobbes to Locke . (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp. 64-67.

49 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity . (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1989), p. 197.

24

involvement and retreat, freedom and chains, individual liberty facilitated by

conformity to divine order and corporeal sovereignty, historical decline and the

possibility of secular salvation. 50

Given Rousseau’s cacophonous terms, and the critical tone of his own

exegeses, a specific problem confronts us from the outset: how can man claim purity

of heart if history (and Jean-Jacques himself) suggest quite the opposite? It is

tempting to suppose that he cannot: the evidence weighs too heavily against him.

Following Rousseau’s own account, society is of man’s making; amour propre and

urbanity are perverse human predilections. Given this assessment, Jean-Jacques’

insistence upon individual innocence seems inconsistent at best. Redemption, after

all, presupposes guilt. One cannot rise again without having first fallen. In the

Christian tradition, the source of our guilt (free will) is axiomatic; in Rousseau’s

analysis, blame is more ambiguous. Although Jean-Jacques follows a Biblical

narrative replete with innocence, corruption, and redemption, he insists throughout

that individuals en générale are not culpable because we are not beholden to Adam’s

sinful legacy. 51 He adheres to an orthodox narrative of decline, while subverting the

very foundations of Roman Catholic ontology. Yet perhaps this tension is not as

incoherent as it might appear. Recalling Rousseau’s famous plea to forgive him of

his paradoxes, 52 the dialectic born of these competing visions serves a substantive

purpose: it makes Rousseau’s visionary perfectionism remarkably compelling. The

50 As we will discuss, Rousseau also maintained his faith in eternal redemption. Indeed, following his

exile after the publication of Emile , he increasingly embraced the afterlife as a source of solace, a point

when God (in contrast to his peers) would recognize and reward his goodness.

51 As we will examine in Chapters 2 and 3, this proved to be Rousseau’s most controversial paradox.

52 “Common readers, pardon me my paradoxes. They are necessary when one reflects, and no matter

what you might say, I prefer to be a man of paradoxes than a man of prejudices.” OC IV.323; E 93.

25

strength of his solution lies in its stubbornness, in its steadfast adherence to both

Biblical form and secular means. It is powerful precisely because it speaks of

salvation, and identifies common man as catalytic agent.

Writing amidst an age of accelerated spiritual debauchery, of urbanization and

cosmopolitan hubris, Rousseau finds redemption in the very faculties which have led

humankind to stray from its sympathetic nature. We can, the abbreviated lesson goes,

save ourselves only by being true to ourselves: by redirecting our naturally pure wills,

and recasting the objects of our desires. A shepherd of sorts, Jean-Jacques challenges

us to follow him in simply being , in cultivating our intrinsically virtuous natures on a

moral and practical path towards earthly redemption. Although we are good at heart,

society has swayed our judgment and clouded our conscience. We must therefore re-

educate ourselves, solidify our resolution with Spartan fortitude and forge a strong

general will to combat the errant appetites of modern particularism. More precisely,

the means of existential improvement employ the very faculties (such as self-interest)

which have perverted our natural goodness. Man himself has strayed from a virtuous

course, and man himself must right his own ship. Prophetic punch combined with

clear heresy: such is Rousseau’s attachment to and break from orthodox theological

discourse, a dissonant rupture that begs clarification.

Examining the confluence of theological and secular sources in Rousseau’s

work therefore serves three purposes. First, it reveals which aspects of his philosophy

are Pagan in origin and which are indebted to earlier Christian traditions. Second, it

clarifies both the radical, paradoxical newness of Rousseau’s vision (how it departed

from existent tradition and commonly held opinion) and the genuine connectedness

26

he shared with Christian voluntarism. 53 And third, exploring these linkages offers a

means of reassessing the relationship between spiritual and secular values. Using

Rousseau as a lens, we might revisit a “strong” model of democracy enriched and

invigorated by its diverse roots, one that sacrifices neither earthly nor otherworldly

welfare, balances a skeptical view of positive religion with an undying faith in divine

order, and encourages us to move beyond the overly simplistic dichotomies that

characterize discussions of the relationship between religion and politics.

Given these terms, this work is best understood as descriptive, restorative and

argumentative. Descriptive, in that it identifies Rousseau’s appropriation of both

Christian and Pagan concepts of virtue. Restorative, in that it involves—not unlike

either Confessions —the recollection and attempted reconciliation of these divided

(conceptual) histories. And argumentative, in that it finds within Rousseau’s

awkward alliance of conflicting traditions a compelling means of incorporating

religion into the fabric of a virtuous democracy.

In l’Ancien régime et la révolution , Alexis de Tocqueville argued that the

Jacobin “campaign against all forms of religion was merely incidental to the French

Revolution, a spectacular but transient phenomenon, a brief reaction to the ideologies,

emotions, and events which led up to it—but in no sense basic to its program.” 54 This

work is also, therefore, in part a rejoinder to the prescient Frenchman. I use

53 We may consequently read Rousseau not simply as a “modern” with “ancient” affinities, but as a

complicated amalgam of competing philosophical, political, ontological and religious world-views.

Allan Bloom famously disagreed. As he argued, the “Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns”

dominated philosophical discourse in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. For Bloom, “[n]o

issue is more important in the history of thought, and Rousseau emphatically takes the side of the

ancients… at least so far as literature and morals are concerned.” Although this conclusion is lacking

in nuance, we might still accept his claim that “[n]o study of Rousseau can be serious which does not

take seriously ‘The Quarrel.’” See: Bloom, Emile , p. 492 n. 86.

54 Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution , Stuart Gilbert, tr. (New York:

Anchor Books/Doubleday, 1955), pp. 5-6.

27

“rejoinder” rather than “repudiation” because I agree with Tocqueville’s basic

premise: the spirit of the French Revolution seemed rightly cosmopolitan, and

aggressively agonistic; it aimed at the overhaul of humankind , a revision which

heralded the death of obsolete hierarchies and mores, secular and spiritual institutions

alike. Yet l’Ancien régime errs in drawing a sharp distinction between supposedly

enlightened, anarchistic, revolutionary upheaval and the attack of specific political

and religious institutions. 55

As Rousseau’s writings make plain, the political landscape of pre-

revolutionary France was dominated by papal interests. Political reform required

religious reform because the two authorities were so deeply linked. Although

Tocqueville concurred, in Democracy and America he also identified the New

World’s religiosity as a primary source of its admirably fierce liberal spirit. 56

According to Tocqueville, religion (free of clerical dogmatism) fostered community

and solidarity, a phenomenon exemplified by American constitutional faith. Given

this predilection, it should come as no surprise that when assessing his native land he

carefully distinguished between the populist “resuscitation” of man and the “studious

ferocity” of anti-Church sentiment. 57 He was quick to draw a line between popular

sovereignty and anti-religiosity because, as America demonstrated, the two were not

mutually dependent. Yet in so doing, Tocqueville concealed a point I will attempt to

problematize: that the democratic revolution envisioned by Rousseau was both

55 Readers should note that although Tocqueville argues that the events of 1789 were neither explicitly

political nor religious in aim, he nonetheless details similarities between the Reformation and the

French Revolution. Ibid., §I.3.

56 As with Rousseau, Tocqueville’s writings force a crucial distinction between anticlericalism and

irreligiosity. Arguing that papists exerted a corrupting influence upon the ancient régime , he also held

that America’s religious spirit was a crucial component of its robust civic culture.

57 Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution , p. 6.

28

indebted to and radically dismissive of theological tradition. If Jean-Jacques praised

religiosity’s moral role within secular polities, so did he repudiate papal authority

(which cultivated subordination and political alienation) and Catholic ontology

(rooted in the narrative of Original Sin). 58

According to Rousseau, society could hardly rise from the ashes of our self-

incurred wickedness were we not first been able to place trust in our intrinsic

innocence as creations of a benevolent deity. Nor, more generally, could the French

Revolution have occurred sans le Siècle des lumières , an age characterized by its

simultaneous embrace of reason and sharp critique of clericalism. Although Voltaire,

Diderot, Helvétius, Holbach and d’Alembert made Church-bashing a spectator sport,

far less obvious is the degree to which this period of thought—like, following

Tocqueville, the Jacobin fervor and the France of his day—was still deeply mired in

Christian tropes of redemption, rebirth and enlightenment itself. 59 Rousseau offers

the best example of a thinker at such a nexus of spiritual faith and scientific reason,

one whose work at turns drew upon and rejected both traditional theology and

Enlightenment rationalism.

58 This is not to say that democracy and Christian ontology are necessarily mutually exclusive, but

rather to stress this relationship within Rousseau’s works.

59 By contrast, David P. Jordan argues the following: “Robespierre would speak at significant moments

in his career about some providential scheme of which he was a part, but his providence is so

politically conceived, so deliberately tailored to the immediate needs of the French Revolution, that it

would be wrong to think of these appeals in traditional religious terms.” Although the French

Revolution falls beyond the immediate scope of this work, I would argue merely in passing that this

assertion follows the “error” already identified in Tocqueville: that the semantic and substantive use of

“providence,” in this instance, does reveal a connection to “traditional religious terms,” even if these

terms are opportunistically, politically, purposefully, or even perversely employed. See Jordan, The

Revolutionary Career of Maximilien Robespierre . (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1985),

p. 9.

29

This dialectical quality permeated Rousseau’s religious, political and

biographical 60 works alike. As Pierre Hadot rightly notes, the Genevan consistently

conveyed “both the echo of ancient traditions and the anticipation of certain modern

attitudes.” 61 A radical visionary wedded to classical virtue, he applied a deeply

Protestant perfectionism to secular politics. No stranger to personal sin, 62 he waged a

veritable holy war of innocence regained in hell-bent times. From the early spitfire of

the discourses, to his final Reveries (whose longing spirit is well-captured by

Matthew 5:8: “Blessed are the pure of heart for they shall see God”), Rousseau’s was

a will at war not so much with itself—unlike Augustine—but with society. He drew

an emphatic line in the sand, daring men of letters to quell the revolution of the

common man : he was the harbinger of a revolution in politics founded firmly upon

the broad shoulders of les peuples , their exemplar and liberator alike.

Given the severity of Rousseau’s project—his do-or-die terms, his moral

righteousness—it should come as no surprise that the standard range of critiques

applied to Jean-Jacques mirrors modern critiques of Christianity’s place in politics.

The Genevan was, by diverse accounts, anything from a hopeless Utopist to a proto-

60 Rousseau makes his life central to his political philosophy. He wrote numerous autobiographical

texts ( The Confessions , The Dialogues , and the Reveries , as well as fragments, documents, and letters)

that, significantly, comprise the first volume of the Pléaide edition of his Oeuvres Complètes . The

bulk of his additional works also bear marks of intimacy: he addressed readers as Jean-Jacques,

revealed intimate details of his life, and stressed the openness of his writings as a testament of his

honesty and sincerity. As such, any study of Rousseau must recognize the unusual personal tenor of

his works, and treat his life as he suggested: as a text to be read in conjunction with his more

traditional philosophical and political writings. Towards this end, Christopher Kelly succeeds

wonderfully with Rousseau’s Exemplary Life: The Confessions as Political Philosophy .

61 Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life , Michael Chase, tr. and Arnold I. Davison, ed. (Oxford:

Blackwell Publishers Ltd., 1995), p. 259.

62 In The Confessions , Rousseau admits to—amongst other things—a bizarre sexual appetite (being

spanked, flashing strangers), his erotic relationship with the older Mme. de Warens (whom he called

‘maman’), his escapades with various women in France, the abandonment of his children on the

footsteps of an orphanage, and lying and thieving as a youth.

30

Totalitarian. 63 These charges prove equally worthy of consideration when applied to

Christianity, which classically urges men to place faith in an afterlife, to renounce

their individual desires and conform to a divine will. There is a reason such critiques

are levied against both Christianity and Rousseau—both tradition and man are prone

to similar excesses. Prominent authors from Tocqueville to, more recently, William

Galston and Manning Marable have argued for the inclusion of religious groups into

the fabric of pluralist politics. 64 But compelling evidence suggests that religion in

practice —the positive worship and tenets of organized congregations and creeds—is

the proverbial oil to democratic water, a force historically at odds with popular

sovereignty. 65

Democracy is, after all, a politics of pragmatic consensus reflective of its

citizenry’s general will. Rule of the masses can hardly be confused with Platonic

elevation or Christian humility. The strength of democratic theory rather lies in its

emphasis upon the common good, an embrace of temporal progress and potential. A

government which allows each to pursue his own vision without infringing upon the

rights of others surely upholds these values. Yet perhaps a democracy which also

adopts transcendent plateaus offers a productive balance to pure proceduralism.

Succumbing neither to the surreal remoteness ridiculed by Aristophanes, 66 nor the dry

63 See: J. L. Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy ; Lester G. Crocker, Rousseau’s Social

Contract ; Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty ; J. H. Huizinga, Rousseau: The Self Made Saint ;

Arthur M. Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau’s Thought .

64 See: William A. Galston, Liberal Pluralism: The Implications of Value Pluralism for Political

Theory and Practice . (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002); Manning Marable, The Great

Wells of Democracy: The Meaning of Race in American Life . (New York: BasicCivitas Books, 2002).

65 As we will discuss in Chapter 5, Rousseau himself makes precisely this point in On Civil Religion .

66 See: The Clouds in Four Plays by Aristophanes , William Arrowsmith, Richard Lattimore, and

Douglass Parker, trs. (New York: Meridian, 1994).

31

conciliation pioneered by Dewey, 67 we may foster a democracy guided by a vigorous

dialectic between reason and spirit, pragmatism and idealism, what is and what ought

to be . 68 Might we not, as Rousseau did, keep one foot firmly planted on our home

turf, whilst our gaze is cast towards a better future?

The problem, of course, is that a politics which seeks both the here and now

and the proverbial pie in the sky seems divided by mutually exclusive aims. Karl

Lowith made precisely this point regarding modernity writ large, arguing that modern

man is tragically torn between competing senses of history. 69 “The modern mind,” he

wrote, “has not made up its mind whether it should be Christian or Pagan. It sees

with one eye of faith and one eye of reason.” 70 The modern world “is the outcome of

an age-long process of secularization”; it is “worldly and irreligious and yet

dependent on the Christian creed from which it is emancipated”; in sum, “it is

Christian by derivation and anti-Christian by consequence.” 71

Georges Poulet located a like-minded dissonance in contemporary concepts of

time. 72 During the Eighteenth Century, he observed, “[m]an is revealed as the

feckless creator of man,” an awkward burden under which we invariably fail to meet

our own lofty, self-imposed standards. 73 Echoing Nietzsche, he argued that amidst

this intoxicating moment “man suddenly feels for the first time in the Christian era

that the instant of his existence is an instant free of all dependence, liberated from all

67 See: John Dewey, The Public and Its Problems . (Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press/Ohio University

Press, 1954).

68 Again, readers should consult: The Social Contract . CW IV.131; OC III.351.

69 See Karl Lowith, Meaning in History , (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1949), especially

pp. 19, 194, 207.

70 Ibid., p. 207.

71 Ibid., pp. 201-202

72 See Georges Poulet, Studies in Human Time , Elliott Coleman, tr. (New York: The Johns Hopkins

Press, 1956), especially pp. 25-29.

73 Poulet, p. 26.

32

duration, equal to all its own potentialities … It knows itself to be faultless.” 74

Although neither Poulet nor Lowith specifically addressed Rousseau in these

instances, the Genevan is not above either charge. Caught between ancient and

modern notions of fraternity and autonomy, societal guilt and individual innocence,

future grace and corporeal redemption, perfectionism and fallibility, Jean-Jacque’s

“man” stood at a complicated crossroads indeed.

How, then, did people and politics look for Rousseau, in the real world? To

paraphrase Christopher Wallace, was it all a dream , or are his reveries coherent? 75 If

we follow Lowith and Poulet, perhaps not. Perhaps the confluence of modern and

ancient, Christian and secular, divine and human, subverts the constancy

characteristic of a strong theory. But perhaps we may yet accept these analyses and

still find in their effects some measure of strength: not one gleaned from the sole

standard of either Christian piety or Pagan virtue, but from a democratic amalgam

enriched by its eclectic roots. Was this not the conclusion Rousseau himself

solicited? Appropriating contrasting traditions within a single model of reform, he

forced us to envision a democratic polity supported by religious practice, one which

sacrificed neither the spiritual nor secular welfare of its citizens.

This was a peculiar reverie indeed. As Jean Starobinski rightly notes,

“Rousseau formule sans doute ici une morale toute profane, mais elle ne se comprend

qu’en référence à un modèle religieux.” 76

Jean-Jacques himself told us as much. He

slammed his ill-matched cards on the table for all to see, calling our bluff. He alone

was a virtuous homme á Paris , wandering much as Diogenes the Cynic combed

74 Poulet, p. 21.

75 Notorious B.I.G., “Juicy.” From the album: Ready to Die , Bad Boy Records, 1994.

76 Starobinski, La transparence et l’obstacle , p. 83 (tr. p. 63).

33

Athens’ streets nearly four centuries Before Christ, searching with lit lantern in broad

daylight for another real man. 77 With the original Cynic’s force, and religious zeal,

Jean-Jacques dared us to follow him in enacting a plan previously left in God’s hands.

The bait lies in full sight: Spartan stoicism and civil religion; a defense of natural

innocence corrupted by artifice and hubris; Enlightenment Deism which rejects

philosophe atheism; a patriotic hymn shunned by Geneva; Rousseau’s own

conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism, back to Protestantism; an ode to fallen

man (both himself and others) raised by the sheer force of his own divinely-guided

will; the fervor of a vision which accepts no compromise. If Rousseau’s secular

stylings marginalized divinity as never before, they bore the divine marks of an all-

seeing eye and a master plan. It is, in the final analysis, this mixture of piousness and

profanity that makes the Genevan’s prescriptions so provocative.

By fleshing out this challenging dialectic, we might achieve some measure of

clarity regarding Rousseau’s peculiar faith generally, and his practical contribution to

the reconciliation of religion and politics specifically. Plagued by potentially

irreconcilable divisions, how does his amalgam of Christian and Pagan ideals allow

us to reconceptualize the relationship between spiritual and secular values within

democratic polities? Are Rousseau’s contradictory aims fatally debilitating? Does he

merely prop humankind up to fail, charging us with a task (secular salvation) we are

incapable of fulfilling? Or do his discordant sources offer an unlikely foundation for

democratic meliorism, specifically one that recognizes a positive role for religion?

77 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers: Volume II , R.D. Hicks, tr. (Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1925), p. 43.

34

It is my belief—and this work’s central argument—that Rousseau offers a

uniquely revealing lens through which to examine the tensions between religion and

politics. Yet because the value of his contribution lies precisely in its recourse to

conflicting traditions (Pagan and Christian) and sentiments (deep pessimism and

profound optimism), the coherence and (dare we say) utility of his paradoxical project

is far from self-evident. Attacked as heretical, Rousseau’s reverie of secular salvation

drew heavily upon Christian ideals and assumptions. Mistrustful of religious

associations, he urged us to accept divine reverence as a foundation for moral duty

and civic unity alike. Contemptuous of society, he found solace in the natural order

of God’s creation, and nurtured a faith in mankind’s intrinsic innocence. An

awkward mix that coalesced as a singular contention, Rousseau insisted that

religiosity both encouraged and preserved democratic virtue. Was his vision

practicable, much less compelling? Because the unity of his aim so sharply belies the

dissonance of his means, it remains to be seen. Until that point in time we might

summon our courage, and even a bit of faith, as we follow our provocative, peculiar

guide down this thorny path.

35

Chapter 2: The Virtue of Paradox

As Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men of

corrupt mind and counterfeit faith; but they will not get very far, for their folly will be

plain to all.

—The Second Letter of Paul to Timothy, 3.8, The New Testament 78

I believe in God quite as strongly as I believe any other truth.

—Rousseau, Letter to Voltaire 79

A study of Rousseau’s religiosity serves at least three purposes: it sheds light

on his broader philosophic project; it offers a possible means of locating the

consistency he claimed was intrinsic to his works; and it provides a lens through

which to reconsider the relationship between spiritual and secular values. Still, critics

of Rousseau have contended that his collective musings on God, human nature, and

society were of little utility because, taken as a whole, they were neither consistent

nor coherent. Naysayers attributed this failing to our peculiar author’s penchant for

paradox, a charge from which he hardly retreated.

Consider, for example, Rousseau’s request (polite yet insistent) in Book II of

Emile : “Common 80 readers, pardon me my paradoxes. They are necessary when one

78 2 Timothy 3.8. All Biblical passages not quoted in primary sources are taken from the following

edition: The New Oxford Annotated Bible, Revised Standard Version , Herbert G. May and Bruce M.

Metzger, eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).

79 Letter to Voltaire , August 18, 1756. OC IV.1071; CW III.117.

80 Rousseau uses the word vulgaire , which is understood as common when coupled with reader . It is

worth noting that vulgaire has a more confrontational (and negative) connotation than other, more

familiar word choices, such as commun or ordinaire .

36

reflects, and no matter what you might say, I prefer to be a man of paradoxes than a

man of prejudices.” 81

Pardon me my paradoxes . Not even halfway through his massive pedagogical

tome, the Tutor’s confession stands out like a sore thumb; it seems a lot to ask. In

common contemporary usage, paradox often implies contradiction, or even

irreconcilable confusion. Could it be that Rousseau was subverting himself at this

early stage? Was he merely presaging the criticisms of a text whose reception

pressed him into exile for his remaining years? Was it self-deprecation, or brutally

honest self-scrutiny? Should we don investigative caps and uncover the hidden

context? Or must we, common readers, take him at his oft-repeated word to take him

at his word.

Rousseau never claimed to be a virtuous man, and his Confessions make clear

an early pattern of less than upright actions. But he did claim to be a good man, a

unique man, and a consistent and honest man. 82 Giving him the benefit of the doubt,

and seeking clarity, I turned to the Oxford English Dictionary and found this under

Paradox : 83

81 “Lecteurs vulgaires, pardonnez-moi mes paradoxes. Il en faut faire quand on réfléchit, et quoi que

vous puissiez dire, j’aime mieux être homme à paradoxes qu’homme à préjuges.” OC IV.323; E 93.

82 In his Letter to Beaumont , Rousseau applies this consistency to his own defense: “Thus the foolish

public vacillates about me, knowing as little why it detests me as why it liked me before. As for

myself, I have always remained the same: more ardent in my quests, but sincere in everything, even

against myself; simple and good, but sensitive and weak, often doing evil and always loving the

good…” CW IX.22; OC IV.928-9; and: “…all these Books [of mine], which you have read, since

you judge them, breath the same maxims; the same ways ( manières ) of thinking are not more disguised

in them.” OC IV.933; CW IX.26.

83 We might also consider the etymology. Paradox comes from the Latin paradoxum , from the Greek

paradoxus , meaning “contrary to received opinion or expectation,” and “past, beyond, contrary to

opinion.” According to Raymond Trousson and Frédéric S. Eigeldinger, the Encyclopédie entry for

paradoxe (penned by d’Alembert) presented a relatively new meaning of the word most frequently in

used in relation to the sciences. This sense implied an “iconoclastic idea, if not heretical, that is to say

a false idea.” In fact, d’Alembert’s definition was more ambiguous: “ en Philosophie , c'est une

proposition absurde en apparence, à cause qu'elle est contraire aux opinions reçues, & qui néanmoins

37

A statement or tenet contrary to received opinion or belief; often with

the implication that it is marvelous or incredible; sometimes with

unfavourable connotation, as being discordant with what is held to be

established truth, and hence absurd or fantastic; sometimes with

favourable connotation, as a correction of vulgar error. 84

Pardon me my paradoxes might therefore be rephrased as pardon me my statements

which stand in contrast to commonly held opinion . 85

On this—the contrariness and correlative uniqueness of his thought—

Rousseau was certainly consistent. Throughout Emile , as in many of his other works,

he reminded us of his opposition to the two major intellectual forces of his age: the

Christian ecclesiasts and the philosophes . No meager foes, Church and academy

dominated the production and dissemination of political, social and spiritual thought.

This was no mean feat in a century described then—and, nearly three centuries later,

now—as an age driven by ideas, by the illumination born of inspired reasoning.

est vraie au fond, ou du - moins peut recevoir un air de vérité.” (“ in Philosophy , it is a seemingly

absurd proposition, because it is contrary to received opinions, & it nevertheless is basically true, or at

least can hold an inkling of truth.”) See: Trousson and Eigeldinger, Dictionnaire de Jean-Jacques

Rousseau . (Paris: Honoré Champion Éditeur, 2001), p. 683. For d’Alembert’s definition see: Diderot,

Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des Sciences, des Arts, et des Métiers, par une société de gens

de lettres, première édition de 1751-1780 . (Neuchâtel: Chez Samuel Faulche & Compagnie, 1765),

Tome XI, pp. 894-895.

84 The Oxford English Dictionary . Long before Rousseau, Socrates popularized paradox as a

philosophical method of seeking the truth. Throughout Emile , Rousseau affirms the most central

Socratic injunction to “know thyself.” His Socratic lineage is often raised in relation to this Delphic

command. Less frequently mentioned is their common insistence upon the pedagogical value of

paradox—the exercise of contradictory opinion as a means of seeking and uncovering the truth. For

examples of the importance of self-knowledge in Emile see: E 48, 74, 83, 213, 240, 243-4, 270, 287.

85 Three French dictionaries confirm this reading. In his 1690 Dictionnaire Universel , Furetière

describes “paradoxe” as a “[p]roposition surprenant et difficile à croire, à cause qu’elle choque les

opinions communes et reçues.” As examples, he cites the Stoics and Copernicus. The Grand

Larousse likewise lists “paradoxe” as both an “[o]pinion contraire aux vues communément admises,”

and (more negatively) as something “qui paraissent défier la logique parce qu’ils présentent en eux-

mêmes des aspects contradictoires.” Hugo’s label of Rousseau—the “Don Quixote of Paradox”—is

attributed to the former sense. The Dictionnaire historique de la langue française confirms this less

critical usage in the eighteenth century. Although as early as 1662 Pascal implied that paradoxes

clashed with “good sense” (a charge clearly shared by Rousseau’s critics), this more pejorative

connotation was not formally adopted in dictionaries until 1832. See: Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire

Universel , Tome III. (The Hague and Rotterdam: Chez Arnout & Reinier Leers, 1690). Grand

Larousse de la langue française en sept volumes: tome cinquième . (Paris: Librairie Larousse, 1976), p.

3956. Dictionnaire historique de la langue française , Alain Rey, ed. (Paris: Dictionnaires LE

ROBERT, 1992), p. 1422.

38

Contemporary readers may scoff at priests or professors, as purveyors of

pedophilia, or a tweedy clan totally removed from the machinations of real world

politics. But during Rousseau’s age, these men of the cloth and men of letters

wielded an influence far beyond the scope of their professional domains. To attack

either one was a feat of daring, and (because they were mutually antagonistic) a

corresponding proclamation of allegiance to either philosophy or the papacy.

Attacking both might have seemed, especially in hindsight, to possess the reckless

energy of a suicidal mission. At the very least, it left so bold a protagonist with few

compatriots.

Such was Rousseau’s fate. The tragedy, the inevitability, the sheer weight of

that ancient term holds particularly true to a thinker for whom truth-telling (as he saw

it) was less an option than an obligation, a destiny, a civic duty. 86 He alone was

poised to tell the truth, because he alone recognized so clearly the problems of and

prescriptions for his age. Urgent necessity underscored Rousseau’s descriptions of

human history’s abject spiral, and his prescriptions for the possible means of our

redemption. By his own admission, he had little choice; our collective future

depended upon bringing these truths to light.

It was this dire term—not personal safety, security, welfare, or reputation—

that drove the Genevan’s quest. Consider this soliloquy, taken from the twelfth

fragment of his Letter to Christophe de Beaumont :

86 The compulsive nature of Rousseau’s confessional style notwithstanding, he was deeply ambivalent

about his career as an author. I explore this dynamic elsewhere in greater detail, addressing issues

such as: his epiphany and subsequent “conversion” en route to Vincennes; his insistence that he

defends himself in writing only out of necessity; his elusions to being “forced” to take up his pen; and

his aspiration to abandon writing and the public life for a solitary, self-contained existence. This study

draws much from Jean Starobinski’s reading of Rousseau as a fundamentally passive figure in

Transparency and Obstruction .

39

My own interest is to say what is useful to others without regard to my

own utility, and that honor which I alone will have among the authors

of my century will always cause me to be distinguished from them all

and will compensate me for all their advantages. If one wishes they

will be better philosophers and finer wits, they will be more profound

thinkers, more precise reasoners, more pleasing writers; but I, I will be

more disinterested in my maxims, more sincere in my sentiments,

more an enemy of satire, bolder in speaking the truth, when it is useful

to others without troubling myself about my fortune nor about my

safety. They may deserve pensions, employments, places in

academies, and I, I will have only insults and slights; they will be

decorated and I, I will be stigmatized, but it does not matter, my

disgraces will honor my courage… 87

Voltaire may revel in his witticisms. Diderot’s plays may delight more people.

Philosophers may enjoy their profundity and sophistication. Others may be honored

in academies and salons, and decorated by their governments. But these gains were

of little concern to Jean-Jacques. He had only his claim to the truth, and the courage

to press this upon a people ‘tyrannized’ by irresponsible élites.

Rousseau’s argument drew upon classical tales of individual courage

legitimized by both resistance to authority and an ascetic aversion to prosperity;

persecution and privation actually offered testimony of his sincerity. 88 In so

defending himself, he resurrected tropes pioneered by Socrates, the Stoics, and the

figure of Jesus. Socrates famously refused compensation for his teachings, and

87 Letter to Beaumont . OC IV.1022; CW IX.94. The original passage reads: “Mon intérêt à moi est de

dire ce qui est utile aux autres sans égard à ma propre utilité, et cet honneur que j’aurai seul parmi les

auteurs de mon siècle me fera toujours distinguer d’eux tous et me dédommagera de tous leurs

avantages. Ils seront si l’on veut meilleurs philosophes et plus beaux esprits, ils seront penseurs plus

profond[s], raisonneurs plus exacts, écrivains plus agréables ; mais moi je serai plus désintéressé dans

mes maximes, plus sincère dans mes sentiments, plus ennemi de la satire, plus hardi a dire la vérité,

quand elle est utile aux autres sans m’embarrasser de ma fortune ni de ma sûreté. Ils pourront mériter

des pensions, des emplois, des places d’académies et moi je n’aurai que des injures et des affronts ; ils

seront décorés et moi je serai flétri, mais n’importe, mes disgrâces honoreront mon courage…”

88 The word testimony has strong Biblical connotations. In Scriptural language, it refers to the Mosaic

Decalogue. See, for example, Exodus 31.18: “And he gave to Moses, when he had made an end of

speaking with him upon Mount Sinai, the two tables of the testimony, tables of stone, written with the

finger of God.”

40

presented his poverty as an exhibit of self-defense during his trial. 89 Seneca and the

Stoics shunned material possessions as a virtuous means of living in greater accord

with nature. And Jesus, Saint Paul revealed, willfully abandoned riches for rags, a

sacrifice committed for the spiritual wealth of his followers. 90

Rousseau made a similar claim. For the sake of his fellow citizens and,

indeed, the human race, he willfully denied his material best-interests. Even if his

own age misunderstood him, in the end he trusted his reputation to the hindsight of

history. His “disgrace will honor his courage” because eventually his paradoxes

would reveal the goodness of his heart, the truthfulness of his writings, the practical

value of his vision, and the short-sightedness of those contemporaries scornful of his

insights.

Truth be told, no matter the cost; his Confessions drives this point home,

exposing past episodes of un truthfulness in explicit detail. The shame of his petits

mensonges are left to public domain, a testament to his honesty even when it reveals a

pattern of dis honesty. His second apprenticeship to the engraver M. Ducommun gave

him “vices that I would have hated, such as lying, laziness, theft.” 91 After being

cajoled by a journeyman named Verrat, he commits his first theft, stealing asparagus

and reselling it for pocket change. 92 He reveals an unsavory penchant for flashing

strangers “of the opposite sex” from dark alleys. After one such episode he was

chased down and, upon being caught, attempted to excuse himself by way of a tall

89 See: The Apology , 19D-21A in Plato, The Last Days of Socrates , Hugh Tredennick, tr. (New York:

Penguin Books, 1969), pp. 48-49.

90 2 Corinthians 2 8.9: “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet

for your sake he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich.”

91 The Confessions . CW V.39; OC I.31.

92 The Confessions . CW V.27-8; OC I.32-33.

41

tale: he claimed to be “a young foreigner of high birth whose brain was deranged.” 93

Most memorably, he forces himself to admit “the long remembrances of crime and

the unbearable weight of remorse with which my conscience is still burdened after

forty years,” 94 the stealing of a pretty pink ribbon whose theft he imputed to a young

innocent, a local girl named Marion.

Ribbons and vegetables, a proclivity for perversity, an adolescent streak of

erratic judgment. A riches of embarrassment, certainly, but necessary to understand

Rousseau as he truly was. His was a heart unmasked, a life laid bare to the public.

His work turned on this principle of honesty: the honesty with which he presents both

himself and his age, with which he reveals strengths and weaknesses with equal

candor. Humankind was naturally good, society artificially bad. In so arguing, was

Rousseau not compelled to press this critique upon himself? He too was a good man

guilty of actions with ignoble consequences. 95 To hide such memorable

transgressions would have been, not in poor taste, but in poor faith. Guarding his

missteps would have been, not an act of paradox, but an act of self-subversion that

undermined the very quest to which Rousseau had dedicated his life: to seek and

reveal the truth.

As he wrote unabashedly in Emile , “[z]eal and good faith have taken the place

of prudence for me up to now. I hope these guarantors will not abandon me in time

of need. Readers, do not fear from me precautions unworthy of a friend of the truth.

93 The Confessions . CW V.74-75; OC I.88-90.

94 The Confessions . CW V.70; OC I.84. For Rousseau’s full account see CW.V 70-73; OC I.84-87.

95 As he makes plain in The Confessions , “I have shown myself as I was, contemptible and low when I

was so, good, generous, sublime when I was so.” CW V.5; OC I.V.

42

I shall never forget my motto.” 96 His motto, clipped from Juvenal’s Satires , was

Vitam impendere vero ( Dedicate life to truth ). 97 Truth cast a broad swath indeed, and

took its sharpest stabs when revealing flaws: of his own, of the Church, of the

academy, of human society. This critical acumen proved a costly profession,

particularly for a mere man of the peoples, a Genevan set loose in the hotbed that was

eighteenth century Paris, an expatriate slowed by a urinary tract disorder no less.

Truth be damned, the odds were against him; an individual attacking both papists and

philosophers was bound to lose something .

Yet attack he did. Rousseau has been accused of many things by his

compatriots and posthumous critics alike, but cowardly he was not. He targeted

theological and intellectual élites with equal force and candor. Although mutual

enemies, Rousseau charged both with similar offenses: they were deceptive

dogmatists cultivating private interests under the auspices of public good. Both were

grossly self-promoting, driven by vanity and amour-propre , rather than a concern

with the welfare of society and ses peuples . They were fundamentally dishonest,

preaching salvation through subservience (to either dogma or reason), while

subordinating the welfare of all to exclusive, sectarian interests. Presenting

themselves as above reproach, they deserved our greatest censure.

96 Emile . E 206.

97 Rousseau also mentions this “motto” in his Letter to d’Alembert , the epigraph to Letters Written

From the Mountain , and The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Fourth Promenade). Its original context

is quite revealing. The Satire in which it appears is a story illustrating the Emperor Domitian’s tyranny

and absurdity. Domitian summons his cringing court to solve a ridiculous problem: how to cook a fish

too large for its pan. We are told that one of these members, Crispus, never spoke out against him and

thus “he survived for eighty winters and as many summers, protected by that armour” of passive

obedience. (IV.92-93) As Juvenal writes, “Crispus never struck out against the current, nor was he

ever that noble type of Roman subject who could freely state his opinions and risk his life for the

truth.” (IV.89-91) In adopting this last line as his motto, Rousseau identifies himself precisely with the

“noble” citizen who would —and did—risk personal livelihood “for the truth.” See: Juvenal, The

Satires , Niall Rudd, tr. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 28.

43

The Church, for example, taught a “barbarous education which sacrifices the

present to an uncertain future, which burdens a child with chains of every sort and

begins by making him miserable in order to prepare him from afar for I know not

what pretended happiness which is to be believed he will never enjoy.” 98 With their

“insipid lessons,” “long-winded moralizing,” and “eternal catechisms,” 99 they

promoted a “false wisdom which incessantly projects us outside of ourselves, which

always counts the present for nothing, and which, pursuing without respite a future

that retreats in proportion as we advance, by dint of transporting us where we are not,

transports us where we shall never be.” 100 The chimera of post-mortem redemption

lures us to seek an ever-elusive salvation. In the process, it discourages the

possibility of genuine reform and salvation in this world, instead fixing our gaze on

an indeterminate future while chaining us to a grim present.

Philosophers were no better. “Raised in all the corruption of the colleges,” 101

enraptured by their own hubris, 102 their vanity and pride was no less pernicious than

that of their orthodox enemies. “Where,” Rousseau asked, “is the philosopher who

would not gladly deliver mankind for his own glory? Where is the one who in the

secrecy of his heart sets himself any other goal than that of distinguishing

himself?” 103 His contemporary hommes à lettres claimed to possess truth, but taught

only vainglory. “Under the haughty pretext that they alone are enlightened, true, and

of good faith, they imperiously subject us to their peremptory decisions and claim to

98 Emile . E 79.

99 Emile . E 316.

100 Emile . E 79.

101 Emile . E 221.

102 “I know of no philosopher who has yet been so bold as to say: this is the limit of what man can

attain and beyond which he cannot go. We do not know what our nature permits us to be.” ( Emile . E

62.)

103 Emile . E 269.

44

give us as the true principles of things the unintelligible systems they have built in

their imagination.” 104 Their purported truths were elaborate feats of fancy whose

want of substance was rivaled only by a conspicuous incoherence. Philosophic

perfectionism mixed Spartan coercion and Athenian frivolousness, to decidedly

deleterious consequences. Rather than aiding society, they increased the speed of its

downfall. Rather than putting their erudition and learning to practical purposes, they

wasted their time (and ours) on vain frivolities.

The church and the academy were, in short, two birds of a feather. “The two

parties attack each other reciprocally with so many sophisms,” yet neither fostered

virtue, goodness or meaningful enlightenment. 105 Put more strongly, they actually

caused much harm. Both falsely claimed to possess a monopoly on truth, and used

this self-anointed grace to subject humankind to the tyranny of elaborately justified

opinions. Peddling ideals unfulfilled in practice, priest and philosopher alike

demanded contrition to hollow promises. As such, they epitomized society’s most

perverse influence: the denaturing rule of doxa .

It was a story of muses whose lulling tunes promise big payoff but lead to

swift demise. Jean-Jacques ignored their refrains, and refused to bow to their

authority. Instead, he countered with paradox in its sharpest form: a severe mistrust

of these dominant poles of opinion whose empires—Christian dogmatism and

philosophic rationalism—were enemies of truth and societal welfare alike.

To better gauge Rousseau’s request of pardon, we must therefore bear in mind

the contentious nature of his paradoxes, and the vigorous charges he levies against the

104 Emile . E 312.

105 Emile . E, 312n.

45

established “truths,” and so-called truth-tellers, of his age. To pardon Rousseau, we

must first accept the substance of his accusations. Doing so, in turn, requires

acknowledging his candid evaluations of his influential adversaries. Forgiveness in

this instance is an act of solidarity. Rousseau demands not simply siding with him

(both the “honest” author and the “good” man), but rejecting the targets of his wrath.

Rousseau was perhaps the most famous to press this demand upon his readers,

but certainly not the first. His much-maligned foil Hobbes said just as much in 1656,

in a moment of aggressive self-defense. In 1645, Hobbes and the Anglican Bishop

John Bramhall, both Royalists forced into exile during the Civil War, were invited by

William Cavendish, the Marquess of Newcastle, to debate the question of human

freedom at his Paris home. These discussions led to the publication some nineteen

years later of Hobbes’ The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance . In

this work, Hobbes railed against Bramhall and linguistic ignorance in one fell swoop:

The Bishop speaks often of Paradoxes with such scorn or detestation,

that a simple Reader would take a Paradox either for Felony, or some

other heinous crime, or else for some ridiculous turpitude; whereas

perhaps a Judicious Reader knows what the word signifies; And that a

Paradox, is an opinion not yet generally received. 106

“Simple” readers conflate paradox with unpardonable offense. The more “judicious”

exercise greater restraint in judgment. They understand that paradoxes are

unfashionable, but not necessarily erroneous.

To punctuate this point, Hobbes reminds us that even “Christian religion was

once a Paradox.” 107 Historically, he is correct. As Karl Jaspers argued, although “it

is not possible to base a portrait of Jesus on compelling historic proof, his reality is

106 Thomas Hobbes, The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance . (London: Printed for

Andrew Crook, 1656), p. 239.

107 Ibid., p. 239.

46

clearly discernible through the veil of tradition.” 108 For reasons unclear, we know

that Jesus did in fact go to Jerusalem preaching what were then paradoxes, and was

crucified for his teachings. 109

Hobbes’ reminder is twofold: popular opinion is fallible and relative in

character, and contrary opinions may be redeemed in time. Nonconformity

demonized in one age or locale can pass for gospel in another. In fact, canonization

and martyrdom occur only through the passage of time (through reification). This is

particularly true of Christianity, a phenomenon whose appreciation emerged in

hindsight, and drew legitimacy from its resistance to the remarkable hostility with

which it was first received. What was once paradox, what once begged a sentence of

death, became the most wildly influential spiritual, political and intellectual force of

Hobbes’ realm.

Again, the lesson is simple: paradoxes are relative by definition. They are

measured in relation to temporal opinion, rather than objective standards of truth or

virtue. Although paradoxes run contrary to general opinion, they are neither

inherently ill-conceived, nor categorically criminal. Yet for Rousseau, this distinction

was moot. As with Jesus, the Genevan’s paradoxes did criminalize him, particularly

following the publication of Emile . And here, Hobbes’ example sounds a powerful

108 Karl Jaspers, Socrates, Buddha, Confucius, Jesus: The Paradigmatic Individuals , Hannah Arendt,

ed. and Ralph Manheim, tr. (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1962), p. 64. Jaspers also

demonstrates the relative unimportance of historic accuracy to Christian believers, a point compatible

with Rousseau’s own appreciation of myth. (See pp. 64-86.) For an extended discussion of this theme

in Rousseau’s works, see below.

109 “This God who for Jesus was not physically present—not in visions and not in voices—was able to

put absolutely everything in the world in question,” Jaspers writes. The consequences were radically

contrary: “Jesus broke free from every practical order in the world. He saw that all orders and habits

had become pharisaical; he points to the source in which they melt to nothingness. All earthly reality

is deprived of its foundation, absolutely and definitively. All orders whatsoever, the bonds of piety, of

law, of reasonable custom, collapse.” Humankind kind is left only with the absolute imperative “to

follow God into the kingdom of heaven.” See: Jaspers, p. 79.

47

note. The once-hunted—Christian religion—had become the hunter; Jean-Jacques,

condemned for impiety, was its prey.

* * * * *

Rousseau should have known better. Evidence suggests that he in fact did. In

Fragment VII of Institutions politiques ,

110 “Luxury, Commerce, and the Arts,” he

admitted that “I have learned through experience the damage that demonstrated

propositions can suffer from being called Paradoxes.” 111 Rousseau was referring to

the abundant criticism that followed the publication of his Discourses . As Genevan

naturalist Charles Bonnet (under the antagonistic pseudonym M. Philopolis, or “Mr.

City-lover”) wrote in a letter dated August 25, 1755, Jean-Jacques “has adopted ideas

that seem to me so opposed to the truth and so ill suited to make happy people” that

“[m]uch will, without doubt, be written against this new Discourse, as much has been

written against the one that won the prize of the Academy of Dijon.” 112 Rousseau

paraded banners of natural goodness and truth, but presented only misery and

falsehoods. This was “a paradox that he has cherished only too much.” 113 In closing,

110 In its preface, Rousseau describes The Social Contract as a “short treatise… taken from a more

extensive work, which I undertook in the past without considering my strength, and have long since

abandoned.” ( Social Contract . CW IV.131; OC III.349). The “more extensive work” was his

intended masterpiece, Institutions politiques . Rousseau began writing this unfinished work sometime

between 1754 and 1759. Fragment VII was likely written no earlier than 1756, and no later than 1758.

This would place its composition after the publication of the Second Discourse , and before the

publication of the Letter to d’Alembert . For Rousseau’s description see: The Confessions . CW V.340-

341; OC I.404-405.

111 Political Fragments . CW IV.46; OC III.518.

112 Letter from M. Philopolis on the Subject of the Discourse of M. J.-J. Rousseau of Geneva on the

Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men . CW III.123; OC III.1383.

113 Letter from M. Philopolis . CW III.123; OC III.1383.

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Bonnet struck an incredulous note: “Had we ever presumed that a Writer who thinks,

would advance in a century like ours this strange paradox”? 114

According to Bonnet, Jean-Jacques was a depressing rabble-rouser, his

writings desolate tirades, and his inexplicable contrariness an affect to garner

attention. 115 Rousseau bristled at the charges. He was particularly upset with the

implication that his paradoxes were falsehoods, and perverse sources of personal

pride. “Let us suppose,” he wrote in rebuttal, “that a singular mind ( esprit ), bizarre,

and in fact a man of paradoxes , then dared to reproach others for the absurdity of

their maxims, to prove to them that they run to death in seeking tranquility, that by

dint of being reasonable they do nothing but ramble.” 116

The note of pardon struck later in Emile here smacks of indignation.

Rousseau the contrary, Rousseau the unique, was merely holding his peers

accountable for the “absurdity” of their “ramblings.” At this early date he was

conscious of the practical dangers of writing paradox; he simply threw caution to the

wind. The truth of one was all the more important considering the falsehoods of

many . Drawing courage from faith in his own truthfulness, Rousseau was firmly

convinced that his contemporaries were in the wrong. Their maxims posed the

philosophical equivalent of lemmings, leading us from steep cliffs towards

accelerated demise. His Discourses offered an alternate path to tread.

114 Letter from M. Philopolis . “Eût-on jamais présumé qu’un Écrivain qui pense, avanceroit dans un

siècle tel que le nôtre cet étrange paradoxe, qui renferme seul une si grande foule d’inconséquences,

pour ne rien dire de plus fort ?” OC III.1385; CW III.125.

115 This follows Diderot’s charge that Rousseau had reversed his position on the arts and sciences,

implying that a critical stance would garner more attention than an affirmative case.

116 Letter from J.-J. Rousseau to M. Philopolis . OC.III.231; CW III.127. (My emphasis.)

49

In asking pardon some years later, Rousseau softened his tone—though not

his resolve. Still convinced of the value of his contentiousness, he turned to readers

for reprieve. Demanding that we pardon him his paradoxes, Jean-Jacques was

certainly begging an important question; he was just asking it of the wrong people.

“Common readers” were clearly not his most pointed critics. In the years

following his exchange with Bonnet, Julie became the best-selling novel of the

eighteenth century. 117

Le Devin du village , an opera composed in the Italian style,

opened in Fontainebleu to a stunningly positive reception. In spite of unequivocal

censure and censoring, Emile was widely read and followed (to the extent that

breastfeeding became très chic amongst French mothers). And his Social Contract

was embraced as far as Poland, for whose government he wrote a commissioned

piece on political reform.

Although Rousseau’s influential detractors multiplied their protests following

his 1762 publications, 118 evidence in the form of letters suggest that the public had

not yet followed suit. On June 15, 1762, d’Alembert wrote Rousseau to assure him

that the French peoples applauded his controversial writings. 119 And one day later,

Genevan minister Paul-Claude Moultou comforted his friend that a majority of his

117 Robert Darnton labeled Julie Rousseau’s “supreme best-seller.” The Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-

Revolutionary France , (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1995), p. 66.

118 Namely, The Social Contract and Emile .

119 Raymond Trousson and Frédéric S. Eigeldinger, Rousseau au jour le jour: Chronologie . (Paris:

Honoré Champion Éditeur, 1998), p. 172. Notably, d’Alembert was the only philosophe to offer such

support, save Charles Duclos. In The Confessions , Rousseau seems characteristically ungrateful,

underscoring the fact that d’Alembert had not signed the letter. For Rousseau’s account see: The

Confessions , OC I.574; CW V.480. Quoted in Maurice Cranston, The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques

Rousseau in Exile and Adversity . (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 2-3. Letter

appears in CC XI.1874.82-84.

50

fellow Swiss (“ nos bourgeois ”) admired The Social Contract as the “arsenal of

liberty.” 120

Common readers were certainly far more forgiving than the subjects of his

scorn. Rousseau’s intellectual peers, a proud lot of atheists and anti-Clericalists,

might have been more supportive had he not already alienated and infuriated them.

His friendship with Diderot deteriorated over a controversy dating from 1757. In his

play Le fils naturel , Diderot attacks the idea of a solitary individual (whose part is

played by Dorval, a character based on Rousseau) with a line much to Jean-Jacques’

disliking: “il n' y a que le méchant qui soit seul.” 121 On August 30, 1755, Voltaire

wrote a letter to Rousseau in which he described the Second Discourse as a “book

against the human race.” 122 Voltaire sounds both hostile and dumbfounded, quipping

that “[n]ever has so much intelligence been used in seeking to make us stupid.” 123

Following Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert (denouncing a proposed Genevan theater)

nearly three years later, Voltaire wrote his own letter to d’Alembert dismissing

Rousseau as “a Diogène barking.” 124 “There is a double ingratitude in him,” Voltaire

120 “Nos bourgeois n’en disent pas moins que ce Contrat social est l’arsenal de la liberté, et tandis

qu’un petit nombre jette feu & flammes, la multitude triomphe.” Le minister Paul-Claude Moultou à

Rousseau . CC XI.1877.90.

121 The full sentence is actually quite inflammatory. Diderot’s character Constance uses a Rousseauist

argument (an ‘appeal to the heart’) to convince Dorval that the “good man” exists only in society: “

J'en appelle à votre coeur; interrogez-le; et il vous dira que l'homme de bien est dans la société, et qu' il

n' y a que le méchant qui soit seul.” From Le fils naturel , Act IV, Scene 3. In: Diderot: Œuvres , Tome

IV: Esthétique – Théâtre , Laurent Versini, ed. (Paris: Éditions Robert Laffont, S.A., 1996), p. 1113.

For Rousseau’s reaction to this “scathing and harsh sentence without any qualification,” see: The

Confessions . CW V.382; OC I.455.

122 Letter from Voltaire to Rousseau (August 30, 1755). CW III.102; CC III.317.156.

123 Letter from Voltaire to Rousseau (August 30, 1755). CW III.102; CC III.317.157. Voltaire’s

sentence reads: “On n’a jamais tant employé d’esprit a vouloir nous rendre Bêtes.”

124 Quoted in Cranston, The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754-1762 . (Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 137. Voltaire here compares Rousseau to Diogenes the Cynic,

one of the most colorful figures in the history of Greek philosophy. An exile himself (from his native

Sinope), Diogenes’ practice of Cynicism was notably flamboyant. Embracing hardship as a training

method for self-sufficiency, he earned an (in)famous reputation for spectacles such as public

masturbation, begging to statues, and sleeping in hard tubs. He was often described as a “mad dog”

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continued. “He attacks an art which he practices himself, and he has written against

you, who have overwhelmed him with praises.” 125 Years later, Rousseau’s reputation

as an ingrate magnified. Retreating from the continent following the furor of 1762,

he even managed to enrage his host, the notoriously mild-mannered Hume, who

vilified him as “the blackest and most atrocious villain, beyond comparison, that now

exists in the world.” 126

If Rousseau’s personality incensed his peers, his paradoxes—particularly

those detailed in The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar —aroused the wrath of

Church and state alike. Despite his fame as an author throughout Europe, official

critics in France and Geneva greeted his 1762 publications with swift orders of

interdiction. In Moultou’s same June 16 letter pledging Swiss popular support, he

also warned Rousseau that the Petit Conseil had banned The Social Contract and

begun a formal investigation of Emile . 127

The news came as no surprise. One week prior, on June 9, the French

Parlement had issued a warrant for his arrest. The Genevan was charged with

penning a work of “impious and detestable principles” contemptuous of religion,

and a “Socrates gone mad.” See: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers: Volume II , pp.

23-85.

125 Quoted in Ibid., p. 137. Voltaire vigorously repeated these charges in a subsequent letter to

d’Alembert. (See Ibid., p. 278). These correspondences followed his biting (and very personal)

attacks on Julie and its author, written under the pseudonym Marquis de Ximénès. See: Lettres à M.

de Voltaire sur La Nouvelle Héloïse (Geneva: 1761, 25 pages in octavio ).

126 Quoted in Cranston, The Solitary Self , 168. In leaving England, Rousseau also rejected the one

hundred pound yearly pension granted him by King George III. For a concise exposition of the sudden

demise of the relationship between Rousseau and Hume, see pp. 165-169. See also: Edward Duffy,

Rousseau in England: The Context for Shelley’s Critique of the Enlightenment . (Berkeley: University

of California Press, 1979).

127 Moultou à Rousseau . CC XI.1877.90. Dates confirmed in Trousson and Eigeldinger, Rousseau au

jour le jour , p. 172. The works were formally investigated, beginning on June 11, 1762. By June 14,

both were officially deemed “very dangerous.” See: James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy ,

pp. 81-82.

52

Church and King alike. 128 The court order condemned him as a blasphemer “who

subjects Religion to the examination of reason, who establishes nothing but a purely

human faith, and who accepts neither truths nor dogmas in the matter of Religion.” 129

Adding insult to impiety, Rousseau also asserted “propositions which tend to give a

false and odious character to the sovereign authority, to destroy the principle of

obedience due to him, and to weaken the respect and the love of the People for their

King.” 130

Rousseau had struck a passionate nerve, one not easily calmed. Nearly three

months later, on August 28, Archduke Christophe de Beaumont continued the robust

denouncement. In a Pastoral Letter, he condemned Emile for

containing an abominable doctrine, suited to overturning natural Law

and to destroying the foundations of the Christian Religion;

establishing maxims contrary to Evangelical morality; tending to

disturb the peace of States, to stir up Subjects against the authority of

their Sovereign; as containing a very great number of propositions

respectively false, scandalous, full of hatred against the Church and its

Ministers, departing from the respect due to Sacred Scripture and the

Tradition of the Church, erroneous, impious, blasphemous, and

heretical. 131

Beaumont described the work’s author as “a character given to paradoxes of opinions

and conduct, zeal for ancient maxims with the rage for establishing novelties, the

obscurity of retreat with the desire to be known by everyone.” 132 The ensuing order

128 These quotes appear in the Extrait des Registres du Parlement , Arrêt de la cour de Parlement , Qui

condamne un Imprimé ayant pour titre Émile , ou de l’Éducation , par J. J. Rousseau , imprimé à La

Hage… M.DCC.LXII ., à être lacéré & brûlé par l’Exécuteur de la Haute Justice . The text is

reproduced in the beginning of Rousseau’s Letter to Beaumont , 1763 edition. See: Jean-Jacques

Rousseau, Citoyen à 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, &c . (Amsterdam: Chez

Marc Michel Rey, 1763). See also: CC XI.A254.262-266.

129 Ibid.

130 Ibid.

131 Pastoral Letter of His Grace, the Archbishop of Paris . CW IX.16.

132 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.4.

53

of contraband reiterated what the Parlement had previously made plain. Emile was a

work deeply threatening to the very fabrics of eighteenth century order. It was

immoral, revolutionary, hateful, and fundamentally wrong . Rousseau’s “paradoxes”

were irresolvable contradictions, the public ravings of a supposedly solitary

individual who evoked traditionalism in the service of its own destruction. They also

carried the stigma of a communicable disease: not only were they offensive, they

would infect the masses with dreams of overthrowing Church and Sovereign alike. A

work of imminent danger, its distribution had to be stopped, its author held

accountable.

It should now be clear why Maurice Cranston describes, without exaggeration,

this latter third of Jean-Jacques’ life as a period of “exile and adversity.” 133 Woody

Allen once dubbed paranoia another word for realism; for Rousseau, the hostile

suspicion which swelled within him after 1762 was rooted in an all-too-real

persecution waged on theological, political and intellectual fronts.

Given this turn of events, Rousseau’s request of pardon in Emile seems

particularly prescient and all the more compelling. As contemporary readers armed

with historical hindsight, we are surely poised to grant him reprieve. Still, before

doing so we must answer two questions: what, specifically, were the theological and

political paradoxes put forth, and why were they necessary to his thought, as he so

forthrightly claimed?

* * * * *

133 Cranston, The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity .

54

Emile holds the dubious distinction of being Rousseau’s most controversial

book. Burned and banned for impiousness in 1762, critics were especially incensed

by its third-person Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar . A substantial section of

Book IV, this deistic sermon preached two particularly unpopular paradoxes: the

pressing need for religious tolerance, and the Pelagian heresy that man was naturally

innocent. If these proved to be Rousseau’s most threatening ideas, their exposition

was not without precedent. He had argued analogous points eight years prior in the

Discourse on Inequality . Presented as searing socio-political critique, Rousseau’s

Second Discourse tempered a deeply critical genealogy of human history with the

radical optimism of a doctrine of natural goodness.

Even then, Rousseau understood the dangers in making such claims. He

began the Discourse with a declaration of courage: the questions raised within its

pages were “not proposed by those who are afraid of honoring the truth.” 134 The

Genevan had no such fear; but to honor veritas , he first abandoned the facts. 135

Without a hint of irony, he urged his readers to follow him, to

begin by setting all the facts aside, for they do not affect the question.

The Researches which can be undertaken concerning this Subject must

not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and

conditional reasonings better suited to clarify the Nature of things than

to show their genuine origin. 136

Rousseau’s logic here offers yet another paradox, a rejoinder to the scientific method

popularized by his Enlightenment peers. But it also reflects a methodology privileged

134 Second Discourse . CW III.18; OC III.131.

135 By contrast, Bloom writes that in Emile , “Rousseau banishes poetry altogether and suppresses all

lies.” (E 8) As noted above, this is not entirely accurate. Rousseau was, indeed, a self-proclaimed

“friend of truth.” But his relationship with the arts and fiction reflects deep ambivalence rather than

categorical condemnation. Rousseau clearly appreciates arts which serve a specific social function

(such as the education of virtue).

136 Second Discourse . CW III.19; OC III.132-133.

55

throughout his works: namely, the use of subjective memory in writing political

philosophy. The clearest example is that of his autobiography. Halfway through the

text Rousseau himself reminded us that the “first part [of The Confessions ] was

written entirely from memory and I must have made many errors in it. Forced to

write the second from memory also, I will probably make many more.” 137 Recent

scholarship has confirmed greater historical accuracy than Jean-Jacques would have

us believe, yet the discrepancies to which he drew our attention have been verified. 138

Even more dramatically, scholars have described in detail the dissonance between

Rousseau’s ideal vision of Geneva and the city in practice in works such as Letters

Written From the Mountain , Letter to d’Alembert , La Nouvelle Héloïse, and the

dedicatory epistle to the Second Discourse . 139

For Rousseau, these inaccuracies actually served a distinct purpose. As he

reiterated in Emile , facts are not always useful in teaching virtue. He gleaned this

lesson from ancient Pagan histories, epic works of men like Plutarch “filled with

views which one could use even if the facts which present them were false.” 140

His

age, by contrast, ignored the vitality of this lesson. “Critical erudition absorbs

everything, as if it were very important whether a fact is true, provided that a useful

teaching can be drawn from it.” 141 In their haste to compile and systematize

knowledge, the encyclopedic lumières discounted the pedagogical value of fabled

137 The Confessions . CW V.233; OC I.277.

138 By far the most impressive of such efforts is Raymond Trousson and Frédéric S. Eigeldinger,

Rousseau au jour le jour: Chronologie . Although certainly not aligned with the spirit Rousseau here

articulates, the Chronologie is a remarkable feat of scholarship tracing nearly every day in the life of

Jean-Jacques, and detailing what he did, where he went, and with whom he corresponded.

139 See: Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy , pp. 93-96; Benjamin Barber, “How Swiss is

Rousseau?” Political Theory , Vol. 13, No. 4, November 1985.

140 Emile . E 156; OC IV.415.

141 Emile . E 156; OC IV.415.

56

histories. Unlike the dissemination of cold facts, tales of glorious deeds—of Spartan

rigor, of Robinson Crusoe’s self-sufficiency 142 —serve the most noble of aims: they

lead by example, allowing us to revel in reveries of greatness. “Critical erudition”

might enhance our knowledge of science or refine philosophic discourse, but it

contributes little to the subject of instituting virtue amongst individuals in a corrupted

society. 143

Such was the scope of Rousseau’s ambition. By his own admission, education

had less to do with child-rearing than the pursuit of a more enlightened social order.

Rousseau reiterated this point in the Letters Written From the Mountain , insisting that

“[i]t is a question of a new system of education the plan of which I offer to the

examination of the wise, and not of a method for fathers and mothers, about which I

never dreamed.” 144

Emile —like Plato’s Republic —taught us how to reclaim virtue amidst a

society in decline. Rousseau pointed us towards this very connection in Book I: “Do

you want to get an idea of public education? Read Plato’s Republic . It is not at all a

political work, as think those who judge books only by their titles. It is the most

142 Rousseau makes countless glowing references to Sparta throughout his works. Robinson Crusoe ,

the story of solitary virtue par excellence , is the first and only book Emile reads: “Since we absolutely

must have books, there exists one which, to my taste, provides the most felicitous treatise on natural

education. This book will be the first that my Emile will read… What, them, is this marvelous book?

Is it Aristotle? Is it Pliny? Is it Buffon? No. It is Robinson Crusoe .” E 184; OC IV.454-455.

143 Rousseau uses this standard of general merit in his own defense in Letters Written From the

Mountain . “My God, what would happen if, in a great work full of useful truths, lessons of humanity,

piety, and virtue, one was allowed to go looking with a malicious precision for all the errors, all the

equivocal, suspect, or ill-considered propositions, all the inconsistencies that amid the detail can elude

an Author overburdened with his material, overwhelmed by the numerous ideas it suggests to him,

distracted from some by the others, and who can hardly assemble in his head all the parts of his vast

plan?” Even the Gospel, Rousseau concludes, would fare poorly in the face of such “slanderous

analysis.” CW IX.150-151; OC III.708-709. From a moral standpoint, intent is more significant than

execution. As Rousseau writes in the Reveries (Fourth Promenade), “Only the intention of the speaker

gives them their worth and determines their degree of malice or goodness.” CW VIII.32; OC I.1029.

144 Letters Written From the Mountain (Fifth Letter). CW IX.211; OC III.783.

57

beautiful educational treatise ever written.” 145 As in Emile , Plato presented a model

of how to live virtuously. And like Rousseau, he employed myth to teach this

difficult lesson. 146

Methodology notwithstanding, Socrates opened Book X of the Republic by

emphasizing the dangers of poetry. Poesis , he reminded us, was misleading; it

provided only seductive simulacrums of ideal forms. Even the works of “tragic

poets… seem to maim the thought of those who hear them and do not as a remedy

have the knowledge of how they really are.” 147 Socrates’ objection echoed his belief

that philosophers must always prefer true wisdom to a pale or distorted shade;

anything less, particularly an imitative art, distracts us from our pursuit of the good.

For Socrates, “[t]he maker of the phantom, the imitator” was essentially

superficial; he “understands nothing of what is but rather of what looks like it is.” 148

Imitation was a form of “wizardry”; it ruled from the throne of doxa , tended towards

imprudence, and reflected a fundamental disunity of the soul (the dissonance between

reality and appearance). 149 Poetry was also dangerous because it unleashed excessive

spiritedness: “we give ourselves over to following the imitation; suffering along with

145 Emile . E 40.

146 In the Laws , Plato’s Athenian counters those who “opine that the gods exist, but scorn and neglect

human affairs.” (900b) Against “him who loves to censure the gods for neglect,” he first uses force

before conceding that “he needs also, as it seems to me, some words of counsel to act as a charm upon

him.” (903b) To do so, the Athenian evokes Odysseus and the myth of transported souls to illustrate

his lesson. Myth here plays a vital role in the philosophic education, persuading where force alone

cannot. (903b-905d) See: Plato, Laws , R. G. Bury, tr. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1926),

pp. 353, 363-371. See also: Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy , pp. 92-104.

147 The Republic X.595b. (Bloom 277) All quotes are taken from: Plato, The Republic of Plato , Second

Edition , Allan Bloom, tr. (New York: Basic Books, 1968 & 1991).

148 The Republic X.601b (Bloom 284).

149 See: The Republic X.602d, 603a-c. (Bloom 285-287).

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the hero in all seriousness, we praise as a good poet the man who most puts us in this

state.” 150

The Athenian sage seemed to draw a Manichaean line. Yet immediately after,

he introduces Homer 151 as neither a philosopher nor an imitator, but a class in-

between “able to recognize what sorts of practices make human beings better or

worse in private and in public.” 152 Homer is redeemed from the status of phantom-

menace because he both understood and taught virtuous conduct: “it is told that

Homer, while he was himself alive, was in private a leader for education for certain

men who cherished him for his intercourse and handed down a certain Homeric way

of life to those who came after.” 153 His art possessed normative value because it

lighted the path to pursue higher goods.

Rousseau’s simultaneous (and at face value, awkward) embrace of truth and

‘dismissal’ of facts fulfils a similar purpose. For Rousseau, pseudo-fictionalized

histories conjured visions of possible virtue unrealized in his modern world. Tales of

inspired heroism, epic wisdom, or ideal polities offered heuristic models that both

inspired appreciation and urged action. 154

Socrates—and, for that matter, the poetic Plato—demonstrated this dynamic

by evoking the myth of Er. The latter part of Republic’s Book X recounts this fable

150 The Republic X.605d (Bloom 289).

151 This follows Socrates’ condemnation of Homer in Book II: “we mustn’t accept Homer’s—or any

other poet’s—foolishly making this mistake about the gods” being “the cause of everything” for

humans. See: The Republic II.379c-d (Bloom 57).

152 The Republic X.599d (Bloom 282).

153 Plato adds that “Pythagoras himself was particularly cherished for this reason, and his successors

even now still give Pythagoras’ name to a way of life that makes them seem somehow outstanding

among men.” The Republic X.600a (Bloom 283).

154 Furthermore, Rousseau believes such fictions to possess meaningful truths. “Fictions which have a

moral purpose are called allegories or fables; and as their purpose is or ought to be only to wrap useful

truths in easily perceived and pleasing forms, in such cases we hardly care about hiding the de facto

lie, which is only the cloak of truth; and he who merely sets forth a fable as a fable in no way lies.”

Reveries (Fourth Promenade). CW VIII.32; OC I.1029.

59

of a warrior’s descent into a demonic place where souls must choose hosts to inhabit.

Odysseus, remembering the honor of past deeds, wisely claims “the life of a private

man who minds his own business.” 155 This story is one of redemption that

demonstrates through allegory the significance of sound judgment in both this and the

next life. 156 Socrates’ company learns a persuasive lesson of agency—“[t]he blame

belongs to him who chooses, god is blameless” 157 —and are reminded of mankind’s

challenge “always to choose the better from among those that are possible.” 158 In so

doing, Odysseus demonstrates the practical benefits of wisdom and the eternal

repercussions of choice.

Regardless of the facts, the myth is useful if the lesson holds. As Socrates

tells Glaucon, “a tale was saved and not lost; and it could save us, if we were

persuaded by it, and we shall make a good crossing of the river of Lethe and not

defile our soul.” 159 Rousseau was perhaps more concerned with this life than the

next, 160 but the point he undoubtedly drew from the Republic stands: parable can offer

a powerful tool of learning. 161

Unlike poetry for Plato, or theater and the hollow speech of philosophes , Jean-

Jacque’s historical conjecture serves a practical and virtuous aim: an education

committed to social transformation. Reverie acts as a heuristic device, a pseudo-

fictional means of posing both clear and present problems (our history of decline) and

155 The Republic X 620c (Bloom 303).

156 It is worth noting that Rousseau also accepted the immortality of the soul.

157 The Republic X.617e (Bloom 300).

158 The Republic X.618b-c (Bloom 301).

159 The Republic X.621b-c (Bloom 303).

160 We must, however, bear in mind that Rousseau placed increasing faith in future redemption as the

persecution of his works and person increased: in an afterlife, in the annals of history, from readers.

As we will later see, this was particularly evident in his posthumously-published Reveries .

161 Readers should compare this position to Rousseau’s assessment of the arts in his Letter to

d’Alembert and the First Discourse ..

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viable solutions (sociopolitical reform). Epic histories encourage a process of

discovery and improvement by painting vivid canvasses of how life might have been

and how it ought to be . In Rousseau’s own works, this dual purpose serves a single

end: teaching humankind to enact a better future as both individuals and citizens. 162

As he writes near the end of Emile , if “[t]he golden age is treated as a chimera,…

What, then, would be required to give it a new birth? One single but impossible

thing: to love it.” 163 Such love—of our fellow citizens, of society, of mankind’s

future—begins precisely with the courage to dream the virtuous dream.

At this point, skeptical readers may charge Rousseau with the very crimes he

imputes to theologians and academicians. If his philosophical musings indeed present

“a reality to be encountered, experienced, and savored,” 164 why are they not also

guilty of vain or misguided perfectionism? The answer lies in an indelicate balance.

If Rousseau embraces myth as a form of pedagogy, his idealized images—of Geneva,

162 Judith Shklar takes a grim view of Rousseau’s worldview, one which she believes “offers no

occasion for happiness or civic virtue.” Shklar ends her book with this overstatement: “When he

called upon his readers to choose between man and the citizen he was forcing them to face the moral

realities of social life. They were asked, in fact, not to choose, but to recognize that the choice was

impossible, and that they were not and would never become either men or citizens.” (p. 214) This is

misleading in two significant ways. First, Rousseau’s concept of moral individualism is coterminous

with society in the sense that morality is nonexistent in the state of nature. The duties and relations

born of citizenship constrict and pervert individual goodness, particularly in large cosmopolitan cities

such as Athens and Paris. But Rousseau’s vision of virtue also finds fruition within societies—whether

those of quaint Geneva, or the self-contained community under Wolmar’s watchful eye (in Julie ), or

through the general will. His attempt to apply The Social Contract to the politically-challenged nation

of Poland also illustrates an effort to institute a greater measure of virtue under less-than-ideal

conditions. Still, in her Appendix , Shklar notes the dismal failures of Emile and Sophie to reenter

society in Les Solitaires : “The happy end of Emile is false,… and Emile’s character cannot reveal itself

until he really becomes a man, that is, a suffering victim.” (p. 235) Again, it is hard to argue against

the extreme difficulty of living virtuously within society. It is quite another thing to take this as

evidence that Rousseau condemns the human condition to one of permanent, necessary suffering. At

the very least, readers must reconcile this conclusion with the abject optimism of his Pelagianism, and

the sincerity of his efforts to promote political reform. If this tension is irreconcilable, it still suggests

Rousseau is a dialectician rather than an abject pessimist. See: Shklar, Men and Citizens . For a more

balanced assessment of Rousseau’s sense of futility as an idea later adopted by nineteenth-century

conservatives, see: Starobinski, p. 100.

163 Emile . E 474.

164 Barber, “How Swiss is Rousseau?” p. 477

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of Poland, of society—are always moderated by blunt honesty. The Church demands

abject deference. Philosophy cultivates egregious hubris. Rousseau’s worldview, by

contrast, combines both critical realism and active idealism; he worked within the

boundaries of the actual in outlining the horizons of the possible. This is why Poland

may yet democratize, even though the nation fulfilled so few of the essential tenets

outlined in The Social Contract . This is why theater—so deadly a threat to virtuous

Geneva—must be accepted in cosmopolitan Paris, a city already given to sin. As for

society, he writes to Voltaire, “a time comes when the evil is such that the very causes

that gave birth to it are necessary to prevent it from becoming larger. It is the sword

that must be left in the wound for fear that the wounded person will die when it is

removed.” 165 In dreaming of a better future, Rousseau is always nagged by this

sword in his side.

This is not simply dramatic overstatement; virtuous reform necessarily begins

with such an honest awareness of man as he is . As described in the preface to the

Second Discourse , “[t]he most useful and least advanced of all human knowledge

seems to me to be that of man; and I dare say that the inscription of the Temple of

Delphi alone contained a Precept more important and more difficult than all the thick

Volumes of the Moralists.” 166 Know thyself! Political philosophers must invoke the

Oracle’s inscription. 167 As with Socrates, wise or useful speculation proceeds only

from self-knowledge. 168 It is from this understanding of the “very Nature of man,…

165 Réponse à Voltaire , September 10, 1755. CW III.106; OC 227.

166 Preface to the Second Discourse . CW III.12; OC III.122.

167 Readers should consult Socrates’ description of the Delphic injunction in Apology 20D-22E. See:

Plato, The Last Days of Socrates , pp. 49-51.

168 By contrast, Tracy Strong argues that for Rousseau it is “precisely ‘becoming someone else’ that

enables him to know himself.” “The purpose of knowing himself is not in the end self -knowledge,”

but a means of painting “a portrait of himself as he is, as a human being… [that] will then be available

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his constitution and his state, that the principles of that science [of natural right] must

be deduced.” 169 Likewise, as Rousseau later asserts in the Social Contract , only by

understanding “men as they are” might we deduce “laws as they can be.” 170

No mean feat, studying man involves a good deal of conjecture. Philosophers

possess a meager understanding of nature, and “one notes the little agreement which

prevails on this important matter among the various Authors who have discussed

it.” 171 Yet neither this lack of consensus, nor the difficulty of the enterprise, deterred

Rousseau. As he wrote in the Preface to the Second Discourse ,

The same study of original man, of his true needs, and of the

fundamental principles of his duties, is also the only good means one

could use to remove those crowds of difficulties which present

themselves concerning the origin of moral inequality, the true

foundations of the Body politic, the reciprocal rights of its members,

and a thousand similar questions as important as they are ill

explained. 172

Genealogy, we are reminded, is an essentially negative enterprise. It looks backwards

and reveals problems, as in Nietzsche’s exposé of Judeo-Christian morality and

Foucault’s histories of punishment and sexuality. 173 For Rousseau, genealogy is also

to others.” Strong uses this argument to debunk the possible conclusion that Rousseau is engaging in a

precursory form of identity politics. Perhaps. But as I argue here, self-knowledge is a necessary

starting point for species-knowledge, without which prescriptive politics are untenable. Rousseau’s

image of himself certainly provides a pedagogical model for others. Yet structurally, in the Second

Discourse for example, self-knowledge precedes the transformation of society (the phenomenon

Strong labels “becoming someone else”). Simply put, to envision reform, we must first understand the

subject of reform. For Rousseau, this clarity begins with following the Delphic injunction. See: Tracy

B. Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary , New Edition . (Lanham, MD:

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), p. 17.

169 Preface to the Second Discourse . CW III.13; OC.III.124.

170 The Social Contract . CW IV.131; OC III.351.

171 Preface to the Second Discourse . CW III.13; OC III.124.

172 Preface to the Second Discourse . CW III.15; OC III.126.

173 See: Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo , Walter Kaufmann and R.J.

Hollingdale, tr. (New York: Random House, 1967); Michel Foucault, Discipline & Punish: The Birth

of the Prison , Alan Sheridan, tr. (New York: Random House, 1979); Foucault, The History of

Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction , Robert Hurley, tr. (New York: Random House, 1978).

63

practical and prescriptive. 174 Exploring our origins and development allows us to

contrast our unfettered selves in nature with our denatured political identities. In turn,

we can define and distinguish between natural and political rights, natural freedoms

and political obligation. Virtuous political reform demands understanding our present

woes, which logically follows the study of our physical, social and moral

evolution. 175

There is an additional motive at play in Rousseau’s use of speculative history,

one that returns us to the problem of paradox. In his narrative of the fall, he

challenged the Christian ontology of Original Sin as a false opinion. To pacify an

audience which accepted Adam’s legacy as gospel truth, Rousseau qualified his

counter-narrative as conjecture. As he described,

Religion commands us to believe that since God Himself took Men out

of the state of Nature immediately after creation, they are unequal

because He wanted them to be so; but it does not forbid us to form

conjectures, drawn solely from the nature of man and the Beings

surrounding him, about what the human Race might have become if it

had remained abandoned to itself. 176

Rousseau here understood “religion” as Christianity. Scripture taught us that God

banished man from Eden. Our fall was our fault, the result of a sinfully curious (and

174 Interestingly, Robert Nozick—whose worldview is fairly categorized as antithetical to Rousseau’s

own—makes a similar claim. As Nozick argues, “State-of-nature explanations of the political realm

are fundamental potential explanations of this realm, and pack explanatory punch and illumination,

even if incorrect.” Additionally, “We learn much by seeing how the state could have arisen, even if it

didn’t arise that way. If it didn’t arise that way, we would also learn much by determining why it

didn’t; by trying to explain why the particular bit of the real world that diverges from the state-of-

nature model is as it is.” As with Rousseau, Nozick’s endeavor is not, by his own description,

necessarily accurate. A state-of-nature argument may not explain every event in the real world.

Actual events may well deviate from this theoretical model. But even if nature and state, theory and

event, follow divergent paths, investigating this schism is itself revealing, and necessary in defining the

state’s legitimacy. See Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia . (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1974), pp.

4, 6, 8-9.

175 As Rousseau writes in The Confessions , “[t]o establish the duties of man one must go back to their

principle.” CW V.77; OC I.91.

176 Second Discourse . CW III.19; OC III.133.

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curiously sinful) nature, and the imperfection of our less-than-divine, errant free will.

Yet because God crafted us, this fateful descent conformed to His divine design.

Papal logic therefore placed Original Sin above reproach; challenging the notion was

tantamount to attacking the will of the “Author of all things.” Undeterred, Rousseau

identified a loophole. This doctrine of Original Sin came from Scripture as

interpreted by man . As another mere mortal, was he not also free to speculate? Was

this not the very enterprise undertaken by the Church itself in cultivating such myths?

And if freed from the punitive fable of a vengeful God, he wondered, what might we

look like? How might we shape our future, and wherein lies the key to our

redemption?

For starters, we must redress the guilt of crimes imputed to us by the Christian

narrative. It is precisely on this point of intrinsic goodness that papists and

philosophers have erred. Hobbes, for example, incorrectly concluded that “because

man has no idea of goodness [in the state of nature] he is naturally evil; that he is

vicious because he does not know virtue.” 177 In typically paradoxical fashion,

Rousseau argued precisely the contrary, outlining his first concise doctrine of natural

goodness. This goodness is defined by its innocence, sheltered in a natural state from

the pernicious effects of society and social interactions. In this pre-moral, pre-human

state, envy, hubris, and the most destructive human passions have yet to be born. We

feel only simple amour-de-soi and pitié .

Pitié , a “natural feeling,” fulfills several functions: it

contributes to the mutual preservation of the entire species. It carries

us to the aid of those whom we see suffer; in the state of Nature, it

177 This is a slightly misleading description of Hobbes, for whom man in nature was morally neutral

and aggressively self-interested. Second Discourse . CW III.35; OC III.153.

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takes the place of Laws, morals, and virtue, with the advantage that no

one is tempted to disobey its gentle voice; it will deter every robust

Savage from robbing a weak child or an infirm old man of his hard-

won subsistence if he himself hopes to be able to find his own

elsewhere. 178

The Hobbesian state of nature portrayed a war of all-against-all waged by calculating,

rationally self-interested individuals. 179 For Rousseau, Hobbes’ confusion was

conceptual. He imputed denatured developmental faculties (reason, avarice) to

natural creatures. Our natural state was plagued by none of these vices. More

precisely, vice ( and virtue) followed societal development, particularly civic

interactions, mores, and laws. Rousseau’s depiction of the natural state was by

contrast a benign condition of individuals characterized by instinctual self-

preservation ( amour-de-soi ), and bound by an innate recognition of interdependence,

the intuition that survival is somehow linked to that of one’s fellow creatures ( pitié ).

Rousseau gleaned a golden rule from these concepts, one that supplanted “that

sublime maxim of reasoned justice, Do unto others as you would have them do unto

you ” with “this other maxim of natural goodness, much less perfect but perhaps more

useful than the preceding one: Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to

others .” 180 We possess natural sentiments of both self-preservation and

connectedness to our species. This combination of amour-de-soi and pitié provides a

178 Second Discourse . CW.III.37; OC.III.156.

179 From De Cive , Chapter I, “In men’s mutual fear,” §12: “…it cannot be denied that men’s natural

state, before they came together into society, was War; and not simply war, but a war of every man

against every man.” Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen , Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne, trs.

(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 29. From Leviathan , Part I, Chapter 13: “Hereby

it is manifest, that during the time men live without a common Power to keep them all in awe, they are

in that condition which is called Warre; and such a warre, as if of every man, against every man.”

Hobbes, Leviathan , Revised Edition , Richard Tuck, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1996), p. 88.

180 Second Discourse . CW III.37-38; OC III.156.

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pre-moral code which, unlike juridical law, we instinctively obey to mutually

beneficial results.

“In a word,” Rousseau argued, “it is this Natural feeling, rather than in subtle

arguments, that we must seek the cause of the repugnance every man would feel in

doing evil.” 181 The evidence of our capacity to cohabitate lies inscribed in our very

natures. Where a justification based upon “subtle argumentation” requires reason and

reflection, Rousseau’s proofs were unmediated by the intellect. His argument speaks

directly to our hearts, and may be confirmed by the mind. It intuitively makes sense .

And it assumes, of course, that humankind is not sinful by nature.

Long before the Savoyard Vicar , then, Rousseau was preaching a form of

Pelagianism. 182 His vision of reform—of creating more virtuous bonds in an

unnatural world, thereby reinstituting our natural freedom—presupposed this positive

foundation of natural goodness. Freed from Adam’s legacy, we might drastically

improve our fates; an innocent nature suggested nothing less. This assertion that

untainted by society, we would seek what is best for ourselves and those around us,

therefore preceded the more explicit denial of Original Sin found in Emile . But the

essential charge remained: the problem of vice is social, and therefore of man’s

making, not ontological, or of God’s making. Adam’s legacy was swiftly debunked,

replaced by an unnecessarily self-incurred fall.

Vice came from without, from the advent of social relations in denatured

societies. How, then, did society emerge? 183 Humankind, increasing in numbers,

aligned in herds, free associations held together by passing needs, limited obligations,

181 Second Discourse . CW III.38; OC III.156.

182 For a further discussion of this connection see Chapter 3 below.

183 For Rousseau’s full account see: Second Discourse , CW III.43-55; OC III.164-179.

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and immediate interests. From this occurred the “first revolution”: the familial unit,

where language and conjugal love develop. Families over time evolved into tribes,

which in turn gave rise to social distinctions and morality, virtue and vice. The

turning point occurred when “[t]he first person who, having fenced off a plot of

ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to

believe him.” 184 This concept of private property, the true foundation of civil society

and an idea born slowly over time, led us to “forget that the fruits belong to all and

the Earth to no one.” 185 It also transformed natural inequalities into social

inequalities. The stronger and the smarter, for example, used these natural benefits to

acquire property, and establish and secure social institutions that privileged the fruits

of their labors. The dangerous pride of possessive self-interest subsequently took

root, and the rest, as they say, is history—woeful, at that.

Rousseau’s narrative was received by many as the pessimistic polemic of a

deranged luddite. Prodded by his paradoxes, people not only vilified the Genevan;

they also misread him. He was most commonly charged with promoting a retarding

socialism, with seeking to send us back to egalitarian nature, tails between our legs.

As Voltaire put it, “[o]ne acquires the desire to walk on all fours when one reads your

work.” 186 But Rousseau’s ideas were far more threatening. In an age of progress and

perfectionism, he dared to propose that human development had ambivalent

consequences. To Christian nations, he had the temerity to reject Original Sin. And

against the upper classes, he attacked property generally and vested interests

specifically. His pessimism and optimism alike were affronts to the age.

184 Second Discourse . CW III.43; OC III.164.

185 Second Discourse . CW III.43; OC III.164.

186 Letter from Voltaire to Rousseau (August 30, 1755). CW III.102; CC III.317.157.

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Rousseau made plain that humankind neither should nor can (by definition)

return to a pre-human existence. We might and must , however, redirect the miserable

course of our history. We must redouble our efforts not on an impossible return, but

on social solutions which redeem and protect natural freedom and goodness, while

correcting the damage wrought of artificial inequalities.

* * * * *

If history offers any indication, the odds of success seem unlikely. After all,

our fall was steady and precipitous; reversing this trend requires nothing less than

social reformation. On these points, the Second Discourse is unequivocal.

Redressing our self-incurred wrongs calls for a radical reeducation, a pedagogy which

both inures us to and recasts the social relationships which subject our freedom to the

tyrannies of inequality and opinion.

It is thus that Rousseau’s educational treatise necessarily employs paradox.

Not only does he challenge the educational paradigms of his age, he questions the

very mechanisms of society, the very essence of contemporary opinion. Chained by

adverse attachments and desires, individuals might reclaim their natural goodness

only by first resisting the coercive pull of social relations. To reverse our fall we

must strike at the heart of our misery, challenging opinions such as Original Sin

(which leave us hopelessly at God’s post-mortem mercy), but also the opinions of our

fellow creatures (which cultivate perverse passions and destructive desires).

69

If The Social Contract envisioned a good society to promote natural goodness,

Emile wondered how individuals may preserve their goodness in a bad society. We

quickly learn that the well-educated individual—one raised in accord with nature—

must be sheltered from harmful influence. As Rousseau advised in Book II of Emile ,

“the first education ought to be purely negative. It consists not at all in teaching

virtue or truth but in securing the heart from vice and the mind from error.” 187

Education is negative in the defensive sense: it guards individuals against external

corruption. Such resistance is possible only if we allow children to develop their

natural instinct and judgment. “Reason alone teaches us to know good and bad,”

Rousseau writes. “Conscience, which makes us love the former and hate the latter,

although independent of reason, cannot therefore be developed without it.” 188

Conscience (emotion and will), not reason (mind and intellect) provides humankind

with a natural moral compass. 189 As the Vicar reminds, “I have only to consult

myself about what I want to do. Everything I sense to be good is good; everything I

sense to be bad is bad.” 190 Conscience, that “innate principle of justice and virtue

according to which, in spite of our own maxims, we judge our actions and those of

others as good or bad,” 191 is nonetheless

timid; it likes refuge and peace. The world and noise scare it; the

prejudices from which they claim it is born are its cruelest enemies. It

flees or keeps quiet before them. Their noisy voices stifle its voice and

prevent it from making itself heard. Fanaticism dares to counterfeit it

and to dictate crime in its name. It finally gives up as a result of being

dismissed.” 192

187 Emile . E 93.

188 Emile . E 67.

189 In this, Rousseau follows a classically voluntarist trope which identifies the will (and not the

intellect) as humankind’s most Divine faculty.

190 Emile . E 286.

191 Emile . E 289.

192 Emile . E 291.

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If Rousseau presupposed human goodness, he also assumed society’s perverseness.

Conscience, a timid woodland creature, must therefore be nurtured in nature away

from the prejudices of the cruel, noisy world.

Given this corrupting dynamic of social interactions, people require

compelling force to follow their natural instincts. Until they are capable of clear

reasoning and sound judgment, pupils must be unknowing subjects discouraged from

acquiring social attachments. In Rousseau’s ominous words, “Let him always believe

he is the master, and let it always be you who are. There is no subjection so perfect

as that which keeps the appearance of freedom. Thus the will itself is made

captive.” 193

Emile’s positive moral lessons are also drawn in negative terms: “The only

lesson of morality appropriate to childhood, and the most important for every age, is

never to harm anyone.” 194 We have already seen this “golden rule” introduced in the

Second Discourse . In addition, it draws upon a discussion of justice in the Republic

in which Socrates concludes that “it has become apparent to us that it is never just to

harm anyone.” 195 Rousseau also follows Luther, who argued that good works (which

we can control, unlike motives or good faith) are no measure of a grace free of

193 Emile . E 120. Sentences such as these do not help Rousseau’s reputation as a totalitarian thinker.

The tutor-pupil role clearly evokes Antonio Gramsci’s definition of hegemony as a coercive system

strengthened by its insidiousness. In Rousseau’s defense, the control of a young pupil’s will is

necessary for two reasons: first, youth are not yet developmentally capable of sound judgment and self-

rule; and second, his extreme stance is dictated by an extreme situation. Raising people according to

nature while shielding them from society demands holding their uncorrupted wills in captivity. The

Tutor must “force” Emile to be free in order to manipulate his pupil to follow his natural conscience.

Readers should compare this to The Social Contract , I.VII: “whoever refuses to obey the general will

shall be constrained to do so by the entire body; which means only that he will be forced to be free.”

CW IV.141; OC III.364.

194 Emile . E 104.

195 The Republic I.335e (Bloom 13).

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contrivance. 196 Good works do not offer a normative moral standard, for “[w]ho does

not do good? Everybody does it—the wicked man as well as others. He makes one

man happy at the expense of making a hundred men miserable; and this is the source

of all our calamities.” 197 What is good for one is not necessarily good for many.

Recalling Rousseau’s study of inequality, this simple reminder reinforces the

dangers of particular self-interest, even when acted upon under the auspices of public

good. The architects of Lisbon, for example, may well have believed that they were

serving society’s best interests in building the eighteenth-century equivalent of sky-

scrapers. But the earthquake of 1755, and the subsequent damage precipitated by the

destruction of such unnatural constructions, multiplied our misery. 198 As such,

Rousseau concludes that caution is sometimes in order. “The most sublime virtues

are negative” because restraint reduces the likelihood that we will harm our

fellows. 199

Finally, even the Savoyard Vicar begins his sermon with a negative lesson. In

matters of speculation he learns “to limit my researches to what was immediately

related to my interest, to leave myself in a profound ignorance of all the rest, and to

worry myself to the point of doubt only about things it was important for me to

196 For Luther, a good heart (not good works) reveals the depth of human faith. If anything, good

works are misleading, allowing those of impure motives an easy way of serving God. Clearly for

Luther, “ease” had no role in true piousness. As he writes in Preface to the Epistle of Saint Paul to the

Romans : “God judges according to your inmost convictions; His law must be fulfilled in your very

heart, and cannot be obeyed if you merely perform certain acts.” And in The Freedom of a Christian :

“Let this suffice concerning the inner man, his liberty, and the source of his liberty, the righteousness

of faith. He needs neither laws nor good works but, on the contrary, is injured by them if he believes

that he is justified by them.” From: Martin Luther: Selections from His Writings , pp. 20, 66-67.

197 Emile . E 105.

198 Readers should consult Pope’s Essay on Man and Voltaire’s Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne .

199 Emile . E 105.

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know.” 200 Against the vain grasp of philosophers generally and the dysfunctional

doubt of skeptics specifically, he preaches the practical value of self-imposed limits.

Following these examples, Emile’s tutelage may be described as negative in at

least four respects. First, it reflects a critical assessment of contemporary education.

Second, it understands virtue as a passive value (doing “no harm” rather than doing

“some good”). Third, it describes development as a process of sheltering and

resistance. And fourth, it guards against the cultivation of unnatural desires, urges

defined by the weakness of unnecessary want or perceived lack.

In brief, Emile’s education finds fortitude through resistance. As late as Book

IV Jean-Jacques notes with some satisfaction that “[o]pinion, whose actions [Emile]

sees, has not acquired its empire over him.” 201 Soon after, he writes that “[i]t suffices

that, enclosed in a social whirlpool, [Emile] not let himself get carried away by either

the passions or the opinions of men.” 202 And finally, we are asked “who in the world

is less of an imitator than Emile? Who is less governed by ridicule than the man who

has no prejudices and does not know how to concede anything to those of others?” 203

In other words, who is more immune to the empire of opinion than the Tutor’s prized

pupil?

Rousseau’s education inures Emile to the opinions of others, and for as long

as possible. But why? Prior to Vicar’s Profession of Faith , he justifies this practice

in terms reminiscent of the Second Discourse’s fall. Amidst a discussion on love,

200 Emile . E 269. Rousseau reiterates this claim (in his “own” voice) in the Reveries . Describing how

he overcame the doubts instilled in him by his philosophe peers which left him “not wiser, more

learned, or of better faith than when I settled all those great questions,” he concludes that “I therefore

limited myself to what was within my reach, without getting myself involved in what went beyond it.”

See: Reveries (Third Promenade). CW VIII.25; OC I.1021-1022.

201 Emile . E 244.

202 Emile . E 255.

203 Emile . E 331.

73

Rousseau describes the evolution of human attachment. We begin with hearts

naturally overflowing with love, yet lacking companionship. In a desire to secure

reciprocal adoration, we acquire a mistress. This new intimacy in turn creates a

correlative need for friendship. From this apparently harmless (and undoubtedly

natural) pull, we suddenly fall prey to the opinions of others. “With love and

friendship are born dissensions, enmity, and hate. From the bosom of so many

diverse passions I see opinion raising an unshakable throne, and stupid mortals,

subjected to its empire, basing their own existence on the judgment of others.” 204

The turn of events is somewhat shocking. We start, innocently enough, with

pure hearts and motives, and end under the rule of doxa’s “unshakable throne,”

trapped by the attachments to which we were naturally drawn. Here, then, is the

evolution of amour-de-soi to amour-propre described in social terms, with no less

disastrous consequences. To preserve Emile’s freedom and natural goodness, the

Tutor must occlude his reliance upon others. The impressionable youth must rely

upon the singular judgment of his ward until he is capable of self-legislation. He

must be sheltered from society until he is strong enough to resist its pull.

The pupil must also avoid exposure to that which his mind cannot yet

comprehend. This is why the Tutor withholds religion. “I foresee how many readers

will be surprised at seeing me trace the whole first age of my pupil without speaking

to him of religion,” Rousseau writes. “At fifteen he did not know whether he had a

soul. And perhaps at eighteen it is not yet time to learn it; for if he learns it sooner

than he ought, he runs the risk of never knowing it.” 205 The argument is logistical,

204 Emile . E 215.

205 Emile . E 257.

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not theological. Children are not developmentally capable of understanding religion,

any more than they are capable of fine reasoning or self-rule. Rousseau therefore

does “not see what is gained by teaching [catechisms] to children, unless it be that

they learn how to lie early.” 206 The mysteries of God and divinity are lost on youth

for whom, “[a]t the age when everything is mystery, there are no mysteries strictly

speaking.” 207 If “[t]he obligation to believe assumes the possibility of doing so,”

children are simply not able. 208

Where the Second Discourse painted in broad, sweeping strokes, Emile is

much more specific. The Church requires children to learn lessons contrary to

nature. 209 It inundates pupils with ideas which they cannot yet comprehend. This

emphasis on rote repetition reflects a more significant problem: by privileging their

own hollow platitudes, the Church fails to cultivate genuine faith. If “[i]t is especially

in matters of religion that opinion triumphs,” there is no greater culprit than a Church

whose righteous opinions take the dangerous form of aggressively intolerant

gospel. 210

By Rousseau’s description, papists also ground their authority on a tautology:

“The Church decides that the Church has the right to decide.” 211 The certainty of

their judgment is matched only by the circularity of their logic. More dangerously,

the dogmatism of this conviction breeds despotic conformity. Presaging Rousseau’s

own censure, the Vicar asks “what is there to do? If someone dared to publish among

206 Emile . E 257.

207 Emile . E 257.

208 Emile . E 257.

209 Given Rousseau’s description of nature as a product (and reflection) of the divine will, this also

represented an offense against God.

210 Emile . E 260.

211 Emile . E 304.

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us books in which Judaism were openly favored, we would punish the author, the

publisher, the bookseller. This is a convenient and sure policy for always being right.

There is a pleasure in refuting people who do not dare to speak.” 212

Rousseau was no deliberative democrat, as the Social Contract makes clear. 213

But neither was he a totalitarian. 214 The general will is by definition the will shared

by all in common, not the will imposed upon us from above. By contrast, the Church

would have us believe that they alone possess true faith, and criminalize opposing

visions. But if we simply look around us, piety is evident in all peoples. “Cast your

eyes on all the nations of the world, go through all the histories,” the Vicar urges.

“Among so many inhuman and bizarre cults, among this prodigious diversity of

morals and characters, you will find everywhere the same ideas of justice and

decency, everywhere the same notions of good and bad.” 215 Even in Pagan cultures

has “[t]he holy voice of nature, stronger than that of the gods, made itself respected

212 Emile . E 303-304. In an author’s note, Rousseau earlier takes the Stoics to task for similarly

discounting the value of discussion: “Plutarch reports that the Stoics maintained, among other bizarre

paradoxes, that in an adversary proceeding it was useless to hear the two parties.” (E 302n) The

reference is to Plutarch’s essay “On Stoic Self-Contradictions,” 1034E: “Against him who said / Nor

give your verdict till you’ve heard both sides / Zeno asserted the contrary with an argument something

like this: The second speaker must not be heard whether the former speaker proved his case (for then

the inquiry is at an end) or did not prove it (for that is tantamount to his not having appeared when

summoned or to having responded to the summons with mere gibberish); but either he proved his case

or he did not prove it; therefore, the second speaker must not be heard. After he had propounded this

argument, however, he continued to write against Plato’s Republic, to refute sophisms, and to bid his

pupils to learn dialectic on the ground that it enables one to do this. Yet either Plato proved or did not

prove what is in the Republic, and either way it was not necessary but was utterly superfluous and vain

to write against it. The same thing can be said about sophisms also.” See: Plutarch, Moralia: Volume

XIII, Part II , Harold Cherniss, tr. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 427 & 429.

213 See: The Social Contract Book II, Chapter 3, “Whether the General Will Can Err.”

214 For “totalitarian” critiques of Rousseau see: Talmon, The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy ;

Crocker, Rousseau’s Social Contract ; Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty ; Huizinga, The Self Made Saint .

Arthur M. Melzer also argues that Rousseau promotes an “antiliberal” democracy “not to establish, but

to eliminate men’s rights against the state. All private, natural rights are to be totally alienated in

exchange for political rights, for a share in control over the absolute and unlimited state.” At the very

least, this reading misappropriates Rousseau’s strict division between general (public) and particular

(private) rights, and obscures his definition of the general will as the will that each individual shares in

common. See: The Natural Goodness of Man , p. 109.

215 Emile . E 288.

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on earth and seemed to regulate crime, along with the guilty, to heaven.” 216 Well

before the Church, reverence of nature—much like pitié and more than polytheism—

served a normative social function in the form of a regulative moral code. Its

authority was rooted not in the sophistication of human reasoning, but in a simple

appreciation of the natural world order. It is in such divine—not human—creations

that we may find evidence of the “Author of all things,” and glean necessary

inspiration from His perfection.

By forcing us to comply to their mediated vision, Christians ironically debase

faith and breed intolerance. Speaking on salvation, the Vicar explains: “ You must

believe in God to be saved . This dogma badly understood is the principle of

sanguinary intolerance and the cause of all those vain instructions that strike a fatal

blow to human reason in accustoming it to satisfy itself with words.” 217 But

salvation, like true piety, is more than a matter of rote repetition: “if in order to obtain

it, it is enough to repeat certain words, I do not see what prevents us from peopling

heaven with starlings and magpies just as well as with children.” 218

If the Church parades dogma as spirituality, reduces worship to compulsory

recitation, and peddles it to unawares, what is Rousseau’s alternative vision of true

religion? What is genuine faith? It appears as a form of both rational appreciation

and an awareness of the limitations of human reason: appreciating God’s creation,

and accepting the incomprehensible wisdom of his order. As the Vicar expounds,

216 Emile . E 288-289.

217 Emile . E 257.

218 Emile . E 257. For a similar argument, readers should also consult Montaigne’s Of Pedantry in The

Complete Essays of Montaigne , Donald M. Frame, tr. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1958), pp.

97-106.

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The greatest ideas of the divinity come to us from reason alone. View

the spectacle of nature; hear the inner voice. Has God not told

everything to our eyes, to our conscience, to our judgment? What

more will men tell us? Their revelations have only the effect of

degrading God by giving Him human passions. I see that particular

dogmas, far from clarifying the notions of the great Being, confuse

them; that far from ennobling them, they debase them; that to the

inconceivable mysteries surrounding the great Being they add absurd

contradictions; that they make man proud, intolerant, and cruel; that,

instead of establishing peace on earth, they bring sword and fire to it. I

ask myself what good all this does, without knowing what to answer. I

see in it only the crimes of men and the miseries of mankind. 219

Teaching by negation, we learn that religion is not a particularly misguided vision of

God. It is not the imposition of human passions upon a Being surely devoid of these

qualities. If the Author of all things is characterized by immaculate order,

contradictions and confusions do not describe him. If he is a wise, benevolent deity

who loves his creations, his worship should not facilitate cruel intolerance. To

understand religion we must first reject the dogmas preached by an historically

violent church and look to nature, whose wonder and coherent order is a clearer

testament of God’s grace than any catechism.

Although spoken by the Vicar, the charge reveals themes consistent with

Rousseau’s own beliefs. Foremost amongst them is his abhorrence of mediation. 220

Papists have attributed vengeance and justified bloodshed to the service of a surely

munificent God. And in so doing, they have committed an act of vile

transubstantiation, imputing their own malicious, particular interests to the One they

purportedly serve. As Rousseau later writes in the first of his Letters Written From

the Mountain , his enemies “put themselves in the place of God to do the work of the

219 Emile . E 295.

220 In Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction , Starobinski persuasively identifies this

love of immediacy and detestation of mediation as the unifying theme of Rousseau’s oeuvres .

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Devil.” 221 Entranced by “that dangerous amour-propre which always wants to carry

men above his sphere,” they have lowered God to ours while placing themselves in-

between. 222

The empire of their opinion knows no bounds. The papacy has extended their

rule to the heavens. They would have us accept their interpretation as gospel, and

God as their puppet. “As soon as peoples took it into their heads to make God speak,

each made Him speak in its own way and made Him say what it wanted,” the Vicar

laments. 223 Yet “[i]f one had listened only to what God says to the heart of man,

there would never have been more than one religion on earth.” 224

This argument for religious tolerance is grounded in a classically voluntarist

belief in the impenetrable mysteries of divinity. Neither Rousseau, nor the Vicar, nor

M. de Beaumont can tell us who God really is, what He looks like, or when He speaks

only to us. 225 And unlike mythic Pagan history, such interpretations have served

decidedly unvirtuous ends. Instead of solidifying universal brotherhood, the Church

has used dogma and Scripture to create divisions, to bring blood and fire upon the

earth of God’s creation. Instead of affirming the truth that God created us all, they

221 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). OC III.697; CW.IX.141.

222 Emile . E 296.

223 Emile . E 295.

224 Emile . E 295.

225 Although voiced by the Vicar, this mirrors Rousseau’s own condemnation of miracles as vain

presumptions that God would take the time to speak directly to select individuals. In this position,

Rousseau follows Malebranche, who argued that God was defined by simplicity and consistency in His

perfection, not intrusion into the particular affairs of humankind. In Elucidations of the Search After

Truth , Malebranche says that sinners “would have God perform miracles in their favor and not follow

the ordinary laws of grace.” More directly, in the Fourth of his Dialogues on Metaphysics , he states

that “God never performs miracles. He never acts by special volitions contrary to His own laws which

Order does not require or permit. His conduct always manifests the character of His attributes.”

Miracles clearly “do not follow His general laws.” (Eighth Dialogue) From: Nicolas Malebranche:

Philosophical Selections , Steven Nadler, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1992),

pp. 109, 188-189, 242. For a convincing, clear and thorough discussion of this connection see: Riley,

The General Will Before Rousseau .

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cultivate violent artificial boundaries. Yet rather than accept such deadly

interpretations as God’s word, we can (and should) intuitively feel His existence, and

recognize our common bond as His creations. This heartfelt sentiment is confirmed

by observation: by appreciating the world of his making, by finding examples of

pious love and fraternity in peoples of all nations.

Following in the Protestant tradition, the Vicar reminds us to

not confuse the ceremony of religion with religion itself. The worship

God asks for is that of the heart. And that worship, when it is sincere,

is always uniform. One must be possessed of a mad vanity indeed to

imagine that God takes so great an interest in the form of the priest’s

costume, in the order of the words he pronounces, in the gestures he

makes at the altar, and in all his genuflections. 226

Worship is a matter of individual conscience, not conformity to sectarian ceremony.

If God truly presides over this and all other worlds, his adulation should be equally

unconstrained. This, after all, “is the duty of all religions, all countries, all men” who

serve a (or more precisely the ) single deity. 227

Beyond that, particular forms of worship are somewhat arbitrary. 228 “The

226 Emile . E 296.

227 Emile . E 296

228 Paolo Toscanelli (1397-1482), an accomplished mathematician and scholar, believed that ships

could sail to Asia far more quickly than had previously been imagined by altering traditional westward

routes. He presented a chart of his findings to the Court of Portugal. Although King John II was wary,

Christopher Columbus—then a mapmaker and entrepreneur—was intrigued. This conclusion

reaffirmed the work of classical geographer Marinus of Tyre, the travelogues of Venetian merchant

Marco Polo, and Columbus’ own study of the Apocrypha (particularly II Esdras 6:42) that argued the

earth was almost entirely (six-sevenths) composed of land. Armed with Toscanelli’s support,

Columbus eventually convinced the Spanish monarchy (under Ferdinand) to fund an Oriental

expedition. This voyage, of course, led him eastwards , where he “discovered” a New World inhabited

by “savages”—peoples untouched by Christianity.

Columbus’ accidental discovery led many others to follow his mistaken path to the Americas.

One of these explorers was his friend Amerigo Vespucci who, beginning in 1502, made several

voyages to the New World. It was during this period that Vespucci’s cousin Agostino served as both

confidant and assistant to Niccolo Machiavelli (assisting, for example, on an ambitious engineering

project of Machiavelli’s between 1503 and 1506). Machiavelli, famously denounced by Jesuits,

Humanists, Roman Catholics, counter-Reformationists, Huguenots, and French Monarchists (amongst

others) was seen as an intellectual threat to the political and philosophical dominance of Christian

theology in the pre-Enlightenment world.

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faith of children and of many men is a question of geography.” 229 Choice of religion

is likewise “the effect of chance; to blame [non-Catholics] for it is iniquitous. It is to

reward or punish them for being born in this or in that country. To dare to say that

God judges us in this way is to insult His justice.” 230 Intolerance is anything but

pious. As the Vicar elaborates, “[i]f there were a religion on earth outside of whose

worship there was only eternal suffering, and if in some place in the world a single

mortal of good faith had not been struck by its obviousness, the God of that religion

would be the most iniquitous and cruel of tyrants.” 231

But He is not. His justice and grace are both indisputable and universal, and

must be confirmed by appealing to conscience and reason, not dogmatism and

Machiavelli’s godlessness was widely assumed, although (like Rousseau) he is more

accurately described as anticlerical. His Discourses identify religion as a crucial catalyst to ancient

Rome’s republican virtue: Numa, not Solon, is credited with this accomplishment. Machiavelli’s

blatant hostility towards the church is storied, but his connection to the New World explorers often

goes unnoticed. The two, I believe, are related.

Christianity assumed a privileged role amongst religions because it was said its missionaries

graced the entire world. The exposure of a vast continent of peoples untouched by the hand of a

Christian God severely tested this supposition. Machiavelli, closely privy to such information, was

certainly aware of this demystifying discovery, whose influence may be gleaned in his denouncement

of the Church. The argument Rousseau makes in the Emile on the arbitrariness of particular forms of

worship—written especially in rebuttal to the Papal order—similarly assumes that non-Christians may

be pious, even if they are ignorant of the Church raised in His name. In so doing, he draws upon

precisely such discoveries of heathen lands.

Consider this argument posed by the Vicar: “Two-thirds of mankind are neither Jews nor

Mohammedans nor Christians, and how many million men have never heard of Moses, Jesus Christ, or

Mohammed? This is denied; it is maintained that our missionaries go everywhere. That is easily said.

But do they go into the still unknown heart of Africa,… to deepest Tartary,” Japan or Asia? “Do they

go into the immense continents of America, where whole nations still do not know that peoples from

another world have set foot in theirs?” (E 304) The conclusion is glaring: Christianity is just another

religion . This argument rests specifically upon the discovery of “the immense continents of America”

(also the subject of Rousseau’s early opera, La Découverte du Nouveau Monde ), and its non-Christian

communities. Given this evidence, deism is the only form of piety capable of reconciling the universal

truth God’s existence with the seeming savagery of a continent untouched by the Church’s mores.

Readers should consult: Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy , Julia Conaway Bondanella and

Peter Bondanella, trs. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), I.11, pp. 50-53; La Découverte du

Nouveau Monde . OC I.815-841; CW X.12-36. In addition, I am grateful to Roger D. Masters for

bringing this matter to my attention, and taking the time to sketch its significance.

229 Emile . E 258.

230 Emile . E 297.

231 Emile . E 297.

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revelation. As the Vicar quips, it matters not what the Church commands in questions

of faith: “I need reasons for subjecting my reason.” 232 Demonstrative proofs, not

human mediation, reveal the will of God: “When I believe what he says, it is not

because he says it but because he proves it. Therefore the testimony of men is at

bottom only that of my own reason and adds nothing to the natural means God gave

me for knowing the truth.” 233

The Church therefore deals in the worst form of sophism, a manipulation of

opinion which compromises our highest, most natural relationship. Consider the

following paragraph, written with an indignation worthy of Luther:

Apostle of the truth, what then have you to tell me of which I do not

remain the judge? “God Himself has spoken. Hear His revelation.”

That is something else. God has spoken! That is surely a great

statement. To whom has He spoken? “He has spoken to men.” Why,

then, did I hear nothing about it? “He has directed other men to give

you His word.” I understand: it is men who are going to tell me what

God has said. I should have preferred to have heard God himself. It

would have cost Him nothing more, and I would have been sheltered

from seduction. 234

This is a mock dialogue in both senses of the word. Taking the form of a hypothetical

conversation with a cleric, it ridicules the idea that only a select few may mediate and

dictate our relationship with God. The very suggestion leaves the Vicar incensed.

“What! Always human testimony? Always men who report to me what other men

have reported! So many men between God and me!” 235 So many fallible human

opinions perverting the practice of faith! So many meddlers confounding the natural

purity of conscience!

232 Emile . E 297.

233 Emile . E 297.

234 Emile . E 297.

235 Emile . E 297.

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Rousseau was not simply nay-saying. He firmly believed that dogmatism

discouraged the pious adoration of God. In dictating the terms of external worship,

papal intrusion into corporeal affairs carries unjust consequences. Specific religious

customs, accidents of history and geography but also the free interpretations of the

Divinity’s creatures, are a matter settled amongst citizens, not man and God. “As to

the external worship,” the Vicar advises, “if it must be uniform for the sake of good

order, that is purely a question of public policy; no revelation is needed for that.” 236

Religious custom boils down to a political question of “public policy”; its form must

support the “good order” of strong civil society. 237

This is a social prescription, one which presses upon us the necessity for

living in mutual harmony. Papists (like philosophers) sacrifice society’s general

welfare for the sake of their own (particular) interests. Rousseau, by contrast, insists

that all forms of religion must be allowed so long as they encourage virtuous

(general) order. Conversely, sects which divide and conquer must be banned; they

serve neither God nor state. This becomes a problem of practical fruition, one whose

difficulty is compounded by Rousseau’s own claims. We are innocent by nature and

literally guilty by association. Our fall was ushered by our interactions in society,

which corrupt individual virtue. If the empire of opinion (a ripe phenomenon

amongst religious sects) is particularly blameworthy, how might we find a religion

which retains its civic benefits while avoiding its social pitfalls?

Rousseau outlined his solutions in Emile and The Social Contract , but his

prescriptions were overshadowed by the grating character of his paradoxes. Jean

236 Emile . E 296.

237 Readers should consult Rousseau’s concept of Civil Religion in The Social Contract , IV.8 and the

Geneva Manuscript , Book III, both of which I discuss elsewhere in detail.

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Starobinski illuminates the irony of this predicament, noting that “Rousseau made

himself a stranger to man in order to protect against the alienation that makes men

strangers to one another.” 238 His “renunciation of the world’s vanities and…

conversion to ‘another moral world’ 239 took Rousseau not toward the Church but

toward the forest and the life of the vagabond.” 240 It would still take Rousseau some

ten years after Emile’s publication to return to the woods for good, to reintroduce

himself to botany and write his final works. But his estrangement began long before

his final retreat.

This rift was facilitated by Rousseau’s paradoxical nature. It was also a

consequence of his inimitable style, the force and certainty with which he pursued

truth and exposed ideas. Prior to 1762, Rousseau nonetheless cast blame elsewhere.

It was the opinions of others which rightfully deserve the loaded label of paradox. As

he asserted in the Introduction to his Fragments politiques ,

But since I have learned through experience the damage that

demonstrated propositions can suffer from being called Paradoxes, I

am relieved to remove this resource in advance from those who have

none other to argue against what I am about to prove. I warn them,

therefore, that it is the opinion I attack that should be called a paradox,

as unheard of to this day as it is ridiculous and pernicious; and that by

refuting this soft and effeminate Philosophy whose convenient maxims

have won it so many supporters among us, I only add my voice to the

cry of all nations, and plead the cause of common sense as well as that

of society. 241

This dual cause—of (naturally) good sense and social welfare—inspired his

contrariness. In the matter of religion, piety is essential and true to both society and

238 Starobinski, p. 41

239 Starobinski’s reference is to the following quote: “Une grande révolution qui venoit de se faire en

moi, un autre monde moral qui se devoiloit à mes regards…” Reveries (Third Promenade). OC

I.1015; CW VIII.20.

240 Starobinski, pp. 39-40.

241 Political Fragments 1. CW IV.46; OC III.518.

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human nature. God’s very magnificence—the scope and effect of his will—reminds

us of his existence, and our mutually-supportive duties as His creations. But the faith

of men as dictated by the Catholic Church discourages such reverence.

As Rousseau’s paradoxes grew even more specific they elicited more severe

consequences. Just as he was compelled to write as he felt, so did he feel compelled

to defend himself from mounting attacks. In the self-justifying works following

1762, he turned to readers to rescue him from the judgments levied by his age. Too

many men of power had too many interests vested in the ideas he opposed. This,

finally, is why Rousseau begged “common readers” to pardon him his paradoxes;

they were, supposedly, written on behalf of the people to whom he appealed.

His request of pardon still belies the insistence of his prose. Paradox was

necessary , Rousseau writes—and therefore not, strictly speaking, a matter of choice.

But common people—of society, and also of God and nature—might still choose.

Pardon him? The choice is ultimately left neither to Church nor state nor academy,

but to fellow men and citizens. Defending the Vicar’s deism in his Letters Written

From the Mountain , Rousseau makes the question characteristically blunt:

[T]he doctrine in question is good for the human race and bad for its

oppressors. In what absolute category must it be put? I have faithfully

stated the pros and cons. Compare and choose. 242

Was he right or wrong, decent or vicious, worthy of praise or blame? In the end, was

his belief in man’s innocence, society’s guilt, and divine beneficence of any use to the

human race? Such are the choices laid before us. Our response either redeems

Rousseau’s perplexing paradoxes, or casts them from the realm of virtuous reverie to

one of well-forgotten memory.

242 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.146; OC III.702.

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Chapter 3: A Claim of Innocence

And so it was “not I” that brought this about “but sin which dwelt in me,” sin

resulting from the punishment of a more freely chosen sin, because I was a son of

Adam.

—Augustine, Confessions 243

True innocence is ashamed of nothing.

—Rousseau, Emile 244

When Rousseau begged us to pardon his paradoxes, 245 the request was hardly

hollow. The proliferation of contradictory thought—at odds with others and,

according to critics, 246 itself—gives us ample opportunity to do so. The decision is

still ours to make, but before either granting or denying Rousseau his wish we might

revisit his most compelling, controversial (and hence potentially unpardonable)

paradox: namely, innocence.

243 Saint Augustine, Confessions , Henry Chadwick, tr. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991),

VII.x.22, p. 149. Augustine’s Biblical reference is to Romans 7:17, 20.

244 Emile . E 217.

245 Emile . E 93; OC IV.323.

246 Most notably J.H. Huizinga who, citing Benjamin Constant, writes that Rousseau “thrashes about

among a thousand contrary ideas as in a dark night lit up by frequent flashes of lightening.” Rousseau:

The Self-Made Saint , p. 268. Huizinga also lists amongst Rousseau’s notable critics William Ralph

Inge, a Christian Platonist and dean of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral. “The influence of this

sentimental rhetorician,” Inge wrote, “has perhaps been more pernicious than that of any other man

who has ever lived.” Inge, Christian Ethics and Modern Problems . (New York: The Knickerbocker

Press, 1930), pp. 249-250. French literary critic Jules Lemaître (“thanks to human credulity and

stupidity no man had ever done more harm to mankind than the writer who, it seems, hardly knew

what he was writing”) and François Mauriac, 1952 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (“the

modern era is rooted in his lies… It has taken a century and a half for his poison to accomplish its

work”) likewise saw Rousseau’s legacy as catastrophic. See also: Jules Lemaître, Jean-Jacques

Rousseau . (New York: The McClure Company, 1907); François Mauriac, Trois grands hommes devant

Dieu . (Paris: Editions du capitale, 1930).

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Throughout his works, Rousseau maintained his innocence in three crucial

senses: 247 as an individual whose writings revealed a uniquely good soul bared to the

public; as a human being , an ontological claim that contradicted the orthodox

Christian narrative of Original Sin; and as a defendant , a refutation of the charges

levied against him following the publications of Emile and The Social Contract .

Despite his paradoxes, Rousseau claimed his oeuvres were characterized by their

consistency. 248 A thread linking his most provocative positions, innocence offers a

means of locating this continuity.

Such common ground is particularly helpful when reconciling Rousseau’s

religious and political beliefs. After all, his spiritual optimism (epitomized by his

rejection of Original Sin) and social pessimism (revealed in his stark critiques of

contemporary society and human history) seem to push readers in opposite directions.

Rousseau framed the fall of humankind in decidedly Edenic terms as a genealogy of

decline from a blissful natural state to one corrupted by illegitimate societal chains.

Yet he based this dour history upon an optimistic heresy, a renunciation of Original

Sin and correlative faith in the intrinsic goodness of man.

This paradoxical stance left him open to charges of hypocrisy. A virulent

social critic who exalted human nature, Rousseau insisted that society had corrupted

otherwise benevolent creatures. Marveling at the wonder of a natural world alienated

by human artifice, he urged us to follow our God-given consciences and embrace our

divinely-created natures. This is a refrain sung throughout Rousseau’s writings, one

247 Together, this triple claim evokes the four major senses of innocence cited by the Oxford English

Dictionary : “freedom from sin, guilt, or moral wrong in general” or “moral purity”; “freedom from

specific guilt” or “not being guilty of that with which one is charged”; “freedom from cunning or

artifice” or “guilelessness”; and “harmlessness, innocuousness.”

248 As I later discuss, Rousseau makes this consistency central to his defense of Emile .

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concisely captured in Emile ’s famous opening line: “Everything is good as it leaves

the hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” 249

An individual uniquely attuned to this intrinsic goodness, Rousseau presented himself

as a testament to the possibility of regeneration. 250

Of course, as his autobiographical writings make clear, Jean-Jacques was no

saint. Far from it, his life was characterized by impulsiveness and fluctuation, from

his early abandonment of Geneva, to his rather capricious conversion to Catholicism,

to his sudden epiphany on the road to Vincennes. He was also guilty of what is

generally considered unsavory or immoral behavior: romantic affairs, indecent

exposure, lies and theft. A man of such blatantly self-described faults who frequently

succumbed to his overwhelming passions should hardly claim absolution from guilt.

Yet for Rousseau, innocence was rooted in something deeper than acts: namely the

goodness of our natural will, a faculty often led astray by social interactions. 251

Given his own suspect personal history, such self-exculpation proved

unconvincing to the many who found him abjectly guilty of crimes against the

church, his patrie , and his religion, and breaches of friendship, civic duty, and

249 Emile . E 37.

250 By this, I do not mean to suggest that Rousseau asks us to follow his life as a model. After all, it is

not entirely evident that this is possible. Consider, for example, his emphasis upon his uniqueness (the

prefatory note to The Confessions describes the work as “the only portrait of a man, painted exactly

according to nature and in all its truth, that exists and that probably will ever exist”), and discrepancies

between his own autonomous education (self-directed immersion and remarkable erudition) and that of

Emile’s (which, under the guidance of a highly controlling tutor, actively discourages reading). I do

believe that Rousseau reveals himself as a testament to the possibility of living more naturally. If he

himself is an anomaly, his life is still exemplary, and therefore serves a heuristic purpose.

251 As Rousseau writes in Emile , “let us set down as an incontestable maxim that the first movements

of nature are always right. There is no original perversity in the human heart.” By contrast, “there is

not a single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered.” Because the

natural will never errs and all vice is artificially constructed, actions guided by inner sentiment follow

innocent motives. A return to our innocent nature occurs only in society through this act of free will.

Emile . E 92. For the foundation of this argument see: Second Discourse . CW III.36-38; OC III.155-

157.

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philosophic decorum. Condemned as an author, an individual, and a human being,

his claim of innocence also constituted a self-defense. Pardoning Rousseau this

paradox therefore determines his culpability—where he errs, where his accusers make

legitimate claims, and (most broadly) where his renunciation of guilt informs a

coherent philosophical vision rather than a convenient self-acquittal.

Whatever the verdict, Rousseau’s triple claim of innocence can hardly be

confined to a question of individual reputation. More than a matter of narrow

interest, it underlies his faith in both religion as a virtuous moral guide and

democracy as the self-rule of essentially good creatures. Do his caustic accusations

and personal misdeeds compromise this optimism? More specifically, does his

renunciation of Original Sin stand at irreconcilable odds with his deeply pessimistic

view of human society? Or does Rousseau’s paradoxical insistence unfold as a

compelling catalyst for politico-theological reform?

To investigate these questions, we will begin by addressing Rousseau’s

testament of personal innocence particularly as revealed in his Confessions . Next we

will turn to a discussion of Pelagianism as the foundation of his religious thought, a

creed he most clearly develops in the voice of the Savoyard Vicar. We will then

explore his response to the charges raised in the censure of Emile , a defense in which

Rousseau reiterates both his individual and ontological innocence. After examining

this concept in its three major guises, we will be poised to judge the coherence and

cohesion of his claim. In so doing, we will determine not only whether we may

pardon him his most illustrious paradox; we may also see how this controversial

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notion illuminates the dialectic between spiritual perfectionism and secular pessimism

so central to his political philosophy.

* * * * *

To read Rousseau as he requested we must allow him his manifold paradoxes

while struggling to find unity between his many discourses and novels, letters and

plays, treatises and personal reveries. Reading Rousseau therefore demands not

simply a strong constitution; it also requires a good deal of patience. To hold him to

his oft-repeated claims of consistency and honesty, utility and acuity, we must treat

his massive oeuvre as an old Genevan watch: dissect it with courage and caution,

while wondering whether the parts still fit a working whole.

Answers are far from self-evident. In different styles and tones Rousseau

revealed sharply different takes on humankind’s past (a descent from natural harmony

to artificial subjugation), present (a disastrous empire of opinion guided by academic

and papal hubris), and possible future (legitimizing the chains of our mutual

attachments through radical democratic reform). The very faculties—free will,

imagination, sociability—that contributed to our decline allowed us the possibility of

redemption. This purported solution was further complicated by Rousseau’s

subversiveness: both his pessimistic realism and optimistic perfectionism were based

upon stark critiques of his own age.

Rousseau’s contentious, contradictory methodology clearly evokes the role of

Socrates, the gadfly immortalized for his prodding attempts to awaken the great, lazy

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beast that was Athens. 252 In delivering his social criticism as the accusations of a

truth-seeking man, Rousseau likewise urged his peers to know—and question—

themselves and the society of their making. Reform was hardly possible without

honest self-assessment; 253 this was the challenge pressed upon his audience as both

individuals and members of society, and the first stage in reclaiming the hereditary

fruits of our natural goodness.

To paint Rousseau as an Enlightenment-era Socrates is nonetheless hasty.

After all, as Christopher Kelly reminds us, Rousseau was no Socrates. 254 The

Athenian never left his city’s walls save for a brief military expedition and one

conversation with Phaedrus; 255 the Genevan, by contrast, spent most of his life away

from his birthplace. Socrates accepted death by hemlock after his final, ill-fated

apology; Rousseau never even stood trial, fleeing his home before Parisian authorities

arrived to execute the Parlement’s arrest warrant. The most telling difference,

however, is revealed in a simple fact: in discussing his life and writings, Rousseau

was wholly unapologetic. 256 Not only did he justify the supposed misdeeds of his

life, he made their candid revelation a testament of his individual innocence.

Nowhere is this more clear than in his autobiography.

252 As Socrates argues in The Apology , “It is literally true (even if it sounds rather comical) that God

has specially appointed me to this city, as though it were a large thoroughbred horse which because of

its great size is inclined to be lazy and needs the stimulation of some stinging fly.” Plato, The Last

Days of Socrates , pp. 62-63. For a comparison of how Rousseau’s shamelessness differs from that of

Diogenes the Cynic (the “Socrates gone mad”), see Chapter 4 above.

253 For a fine summary of the scholarly debate surrounding Rousseau’s ability to honestly appraise

himself see: Kelly, Rousseau ’ s Exemplary Life : The “Confessions” as Political Philosophy , pp. 5-8.

254 Ibid., pp. 10, 54-57, 64-75.

255 See: Plato, Phaedrus and the Seventh and Eighth Letters , Walter Hamilton, tr. (New York: Penguin

Books, 1973), p. 21.

256 Socrates’ own “apology” was clearly not devoid of ironic criticism. However, the very fact that he

accepted the verdict of his peers greatly distinguishes him from Rousseau.

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The subtitle to The Neuchâtel Preface 257 of The Confessions claims to contain

“the detailed account of the events of [the author’s] life, and of his secret feelings in

all the situations in which he has found himself.” 258 In its final printed version,

Rousseau reiterates this declaration as a hypothetical monologue:

Behold what I have done, what I have thought, what I have been. I

have told the good and the evil with the same frankness. I have been

silent about nothing bad, added nothing good… I have shown myself

as I was, contemptible and low when I was so, good, generous,

sublime when I was so. 259

That he presents these lines as the speech he will “loudly” deliver to God on his day

of judgment is of no small consequence. Taken alone, this admission possesses a

notable dearth of humility; when read as a proclamation of merit to “the Sovereign

Judge” it sounds abjectly heretical.

After all, Augustine’s own archetypal Confessions eloquently espoused

mankind’s unworthiness in relation to God. In the Saint’s narrative, salvation was a

gift bestowed upon humankind solely by the mercy and grace of God. Man had little

hope of incurring redemption by affecting His will, much less by fearlessly

proclaiming innocence on Judgment Day. For Augustine the hallmark of human

nature was inescapable guilt, a hereditary affliction levied against the descendents of

Adam as punishment for Original Sin. Man could only hope for salvation through

divine mercy, a fate stipulating unassertive deference before God. In stark contrast,

Rousseau suggests that he has nothing to fear (much less regret) on his day of

257 This is the earlier, incomplete draft of The Confessions . Of the two completed editions—the

“Geneva” and “Paris” manuscripts—neither is considered definitive. For an explanation see: CW

V.xxxv.

258 The Neuchâtel Preface to The Confessions of J . -J . Rousseau . CW V.585; OC I.1148.

259 The Confessions . CW V.5; OC I.5.

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judgment. 260 When Kierkegaard later lamented Rousseau’s conspicuous dearth of

Christian humility, he surely had this episode in mind. 261 Was it not pride in a life

well-lived, rather than the burdens of incurable sin, that Jean-Jacques trumpets at the

gates of heaven? 262

Even the non-God-fearing must cringe slightly at Rousseau’s resoluteness.

He is certain of his thoroughness, having revealed “what I have done, what I have

thought, what I have been.” He is convinced of his objectivity (“I have shown myself

as I was”). He suggests that forthrightly admitting his “contemptible” deeds merits

his salvation. And he delivers all of this in a defiant tone, begging the question of

whether or not God, as Rousseau pictured Him, really appreciates anyone raising his

or her voice in His presence. Yet such are the uncompromising terms of Rousseau’s

openness, a value championed from the outset of an autobiography whose author

makes plain that he will hide nothing. The text itself is a realization of this

transparency, a revelation of far more than the mere details of one man’s life. As

Rousseau declares to God, “I have unveiled my interior as Thou hast seen it

Thyself.” 263

The Confessions is his testament, its readers his witnesses. 264

Such grandiose claims seem to ignore the difficulty of self-revelation. As

Philippe Lejeune reminds us, autobiography poses a distinct methodological problem:

260 See: Reveries . (Third Promenade). CW VIII.22; OC I.1019.

261 Søren Kierkegaard, Journals (4: 252-253). I address Kierkegaard’s claim in further detail in

Chapter 4.

262 Compare this with Julie’s description of her “Christian end” emboldened by a clear conscience.

Julie . CW VI.586-589, 598; OC II.713-718, 729.

263 The Confessions . CW V.5; OC I.5.

264 Although this speech is ostensibly delivered before God such revelation is superfluous because, as

Rousseau reminds us, God sees all. This is therefore a testament made before man, a declaration of

innocence and not (as with Augustine) a public display of humility.

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“Est-il possible de raconteur sa vie?” 265

Is it, he elaborates, possible to truly recall,

disseminate, and articulate the essence (or even events) of one’s own life? Rousseau

appears untroubled by the subjective complexity of his enterprise. Not only has he

told his life’s story, he has peered within his very soul and “unveiled” his interior,

revealing the insight of a gaze often exclusively attributed to divine beings. 266

Furthermore, he challenges anyone who would cast aspersions. “Eternal Being,” he

requests, “assemble around me the countless host of my fellows: let them listen to my

confessions, let them shudder at my unworthiness, let them blush at my woes. Let

each of them in his turn uncover his heart at the foot of Thy throne with the same

sincerity; and then let a single one say to Thee, if he dares: ‘ I was better than that

man .’” 267

We must take the term “unworthiness” lightly, for little in these opening lines

suggest anything of the sort. Rousseau is, in fact, claiming precisely the opposite. He

is worthy: to stand before God, without shame or fear, openly touting the goodness of

his bared soul. He has nothing to fear, not because he was better behaved than the

next man. He has nothing to fear because he is like any man—exhibiting faults and

failings, goodness and generosity—with one monumental caveat: he has looked

within himself, and delighted in the natural innocence to which he is closely attuned.

Augustine also looked inward, albeit to a decidedly different conclusion. Soul

searching left the Saint with an ineradicable sense of shame. Bowed under the weight

265 Philippe Lejeune, L’autobiographie en France , Deuxième Édition . (Paris: Armand Colin, 1998), p.

58.

266 Judith Shklar discusses the all-knowing eye of Wolmar the atheist in great detail in Men and

Citizens . The Vicar also claims similar insight: “I can observe and know the beings and their relations,

I can sense what order, beauty, and virtue are, I can contemplate the universe and raise myself up to the

hand which governs it.” Emile . E 278.

267 The Confessions . CW V.5; OC I.5.

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of his own human sinfulness, he had little hope but to pay deference to the One whose

goodness immeasurably surpassed his own, and dictated the course of his fate. By

contrast, Rousseau drew courage from the insights borne of self-examination.

Unveiling his soul revealed a source of solace in a corrupt world: an individual, a

human being , whose natural innocence remained intact.

If Rousseau seems prone to self-glorification, his affirmation posed a far more

compelling problem to Catholic authorities. It conveyed an abject heresy

(conspicuous pride in human nature), one that sharply distinguishes The Confessions

of Rousseau from that of Augustine. Although the works bear substantive and

structural similarities, 268 this fundamental difference divides them: Augustine is

consumed by the certainty of his own guilt, while Rousseau bears little in the way of

regret. More specifically, while Augustine holds himself (as both an individual and a

descendent of Adam) accountable for his sinfulness, Rousseau attributes his own

wavering will to “mitigating factors” beyond his control. 269 Kelly wonderfully

illustrates this schism by contrasting each author’s recollection of youthful

misdemeanors. 270 Reactions worth revisiting, consider first Augustine’s:

I wanted to carry out an act of theft and did so, driven by no kind of

need other than my inner lack of any sense of, or feeling for, justice.

Wickedness filled me. I stole something which I had in plenty and of

268 Lionel Gossman, “The Innocent Art of Confession and Reverie,” Daedalus , Vol. 7, No. 103

(Summer, 1978), p. 60. For a careful comparison of these works see: Ann Hartle, The Modern Self in

Rousseau’s Confessions : A Reply to St. Augustine .

269 Kelly, p. 105.

270 Ibid., pp. 100-108. It is worth noting that Kelly uses a different example, focusing on Rousseau’s

first theft (of asparagus). Kelly uses this to demonstrate the centrality of private property within

Rousseau’s concept of injustice. Readers might compare this with Emile’s experience of ruining a

farmer’s melon seeds by planting his own beans in the same soil. In Emile , both parties reach a

mutually acceptable compromise, and thus learn how to navigate the difficult tension between self-

interest and the common good. For Rousseau’s first theft (and candid discussion of his thieving

techniques) see: The Confessions . CW V.27-30; OC I.32-36. For the beans and melons incident see:

Emile . E 98-99.

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much better quality. My desire was to enjoy not what I sought by

stealing but merely the excitement of thieving and the doing of what

was wrong. 271

The object of theft in question—pears from the tree of a plentiful vineyard—were

carried off in a “huge load… not for our feasts but merely to throw to the pigs.” This

seems a routine juvenile prank, quaint by contemporary standards and harmless

enough to all save the pigs and perhaps a disgruntled farmer. But Augustine

describes his actions as a “foul” example of “wickedness itself,” a testament to his

“lack of any sense of, or feeling for, justice.” His recollections lead him to a

humorless conclusion, one whose gravity far outweighs the physical act itself: “I

loved the self-destruction, I loved my fall, not the object for which I had fallen but my

fall itself. My depraved soul leaped down from your firmament to ruin. I was

seeking not to gain anything by shameful means, but shame for its own sake.” 272

In relatively light-hearted contrast, Rousseau opens his Confessions with a

“short and veracious history of all my childish misdeeds.” 273 Admitting to a doting

upbringing (at the expense of his neglected older brother), Rousseau writes that “the

children of Kings could not have been cared for with greater zeal than I was during

my earliest years.” 274 Idealized pampering notwithstanding, he still possessed “the

flaws of my age; I was a babbler, a glutton, sometimes a liar. I would have stolen

fruits, candies, food.” 275 He even recalls “once having pissed into the cooking pot of

one of our neighbors… while she was at church,” a memory that “still makes me

271 Augustine, Confessions , II.iv.9, p. 29.

272 Ibid., p. 29.

273 The Confessions . CW V.9; OC I.10. Although Rousseau elsewhere draws ample attention to his

various misdeeds (including theft), this short paragraph marks The Confessions ’ first mention of vice.

274 The Confessions . CW V.9; OC I.10.

275 The Confessions . CW V.9; OC I.10.

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laugh.” 276 This rather disgusting (and decidedly unneighborly) episode elicits only

mirth in recollection, and immediately follows a claim of personal innocence oddly

detached from the act to which he has just confessed: “I never took pleasure in doing

harm, damage, in accusing others, in tormenting poor animals.” 277

This comparison underscores the striking discrepancy with which each author

holds himself accountable for his actions. What Augustine identifies as symptomatic

of eternal, hereditary sin, Rousseau dismisses as the tomfoolery of a well-nurtured

lad. What leads Augustine to grueling self-examination and a tortured assessment of

his own depravity leaves Rousseau mildly amused. While Augustine interprets his

theft as a microcosm for the failings of his entire species, Rousseau couches his

“misdeeds” within a declaration of individual goodness, a natural quality cultivated

by his loving upbringing amongst “the best people in the world.” 278

Differences notwithstanding, we must recall that Rousseau’s Confessions

adhere to Augustine’s formula in one decisive fashion: both works involve “a

repudiation of worldly signs and pleasure, of art and literature; both offer themselves

therefore not as art, but as inmost truth.” 279 The 17 th Century contributed its share of

such autobiographical literature—most notably Duclos’ 1741 Confessions du Comte

de ***—which, as Lionel Gossman describes, “drew attention to the private

personality, the inner life and time of the individual as opposed to the public events,

the public personalities, and the external chronology and history, to which the

276 The Confessions . CW V.9; OC I.10.

277 Rousseau’s mention of “tormenting poor animals” seems particularly incongruous, unless we read

in it a sly critique of Augustine (who had, as just noted, confessed to throwing pears at pigs). The

Confessions . CW V.9; OC I.10.

278 The Confessions . CW V.9; OC I.10. Given his upbringing, Rousseau finds the very idea that he

might have possessed a vicious nature to be inconceivable: “How could I have become wicked, since

under my eyes I had only examples of gentleness, and around me only the best people in the world?”

279 Gossman, p. 60.

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authors… bore witness.” 280 Yet few before Rousseau had paraded their flaws with

such simultaneous straightforwardness and obvious lack of regret. It was the

unrepentant conclusions his quest unearthed, rather than the journey inwards, that

most clearly distinguished him from the confessional tradition. He established a

pattern of admission and qualification (revealing sundry details as pardonable

reactions to external circumstances), shifting the source of accountability from

indigenous failings to exogenous forces. Peer pressure, locked city gates, the sinful

culture of Paris, a desire to please, honest self-assessment, and an overflowing heart

explain (in order) his first theft, his leaving Geneva, his argumentative writings, his

conversion to Catholicism, the abandonment of his children, and his romantic affairs.

In each instance Rousseau exculpates himself, requesting that we judge him on his

intentions rather than his actions. 281

Given his illustrious past, such a standard seems baldly self-serving. After all,

Jean-Jacques was a naughty boy. We know this because he tells us, over many pages

and through many incidents in The Confessions . Yet from the outset he initiates a

trend that continues throughout the work: Rousseau is unrepentant. Because he never

sought to harm (the maxim of his “golden rule” from the Second Discourse ), 282 he

can reflect upon misdeeds with a clear conscience. In examining and revealing his

life he never pleads mea culpa , but rather reduces errant behavior to either

developmental immaturity or weakness in the face of exogenous pressures. What

280 Ibid., p. 60.

281 As Rousseau later writes in the Reveries (Fourth Promenade): “Only the intention of the speaker

gives them their worth and determines their degree of malice or goodness.” CW VIII.32; OC I.1029.

282 Second Discourse . CW III.38; OC III.156.

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Augustine accepted as evidence of an intrinsically sinful nature, Rousseau deflects to

forces external (and thereby foreign or alien) to himself.

By several accounts, this pattern of admission and rationalization presented

the eighteenth century with a radically new vision of self-examination. As Lejeune

writes, “Rousseau est le premier à s’apercevoir qu’il faudrait un ‘langage nouveau,’ et

inaugure un critique des techniques du récit au nom du réalisme subjectif.” 283

This

generous assessment—one made by Rousseau himself in the famous first lines of The

Confessions 284 —was not shared by those who found his “subjective realism” to be

entirely more subjective than real. As Hérault de Séschelles wrote in 1800,

Rousseau’s was an “errant life,” one “abandonnée aux hasard et aux passions.” 285

This was a common charge amongst critics of the age who found such unbridled

passion ill-suited for an author of his stature, let alone a self-proclaimed bearer of

truth. 286

More recently, Edgar Quinet reiterated and clarified this concern. “Les seuls

livres dangereux pour moi sont ceux où l’on me donne comme réel ce qui ne l’est

pas.” 287

Rousseau was dangerous for precisely this reason. He presented interior

narratives and reverie as objective manifestations of a truth more useful than

283 Lejeune also identifies Rousseau as a founding member of the first generation of a “new form of

biography” which spoke in the first-person, emphasized training, displayed a pre-romanticist

sensitivity, and demonstrated a deep involvement with the contemporary world. Lejeune, pp. 31, 24,

58.

284 “I am forming an undertaking which has no precedent, and the execution of which will have no

imitator whatsoever. I wish to show my fellows a man in all the truth of nature; and this man will be

myself. Myself alone.” The Confessions . CW V.5; CW I.5.

285 Hérault de Séschelles, Voyage à Montbard , (Paris: 1800), pp. 37-38. Quoted in Bernard Gagnebin,

“L’Étrange accueil fait aux ‘Confessions’ de Rousseau au XVIII Siècle,” Annales de la Société Jean-

Jacques Rousseau , Tome 38, 1969-1971 (Geneva: A. Jullien, Éditeur), p. 119.

286 For additional examples of this criticism see: Gagnebin, pp. 108-112, 121-123.

287 Edgar Quinet, Histoire de mes idées . (Paris: Flammarion, 1972), p 47.

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empirical certainty. 288 Echoing de Séschelles, Quinet finds such musings

fundamentally irresponsible: they point us down a slippery slope of self-justification

wherein hyper-subjective “feelings” are conflated with, and presented as, impartial

“reality.” To be fair, Rousseau’s writings offer an anticipatory rebuttal. In an age

ruled by the empire of opinion, the sophisticated logic of philosophers and the

righteous dogma of papists were the real enemies of truth masquerading self-interest

as certainty. Such adroit minds twisted supposedly objective facts to serve

particularist agendas “good only at destructive criticism.” 289 By contrast, Rousseau

argued that his internal sentiments were uncontrived, and served only the common

good. The certainty that Quinet finds perilously misrepresented might only be

uncovered by looking inwards.

Amongst Rousseau’s contemporaries, this standard was typically (and in the

case of Voltaire, sarcastically) 290 dismissed as ill-conceived self-justification or

inflated pride; far more menacing were his practical claims. In assailing private

property, ridiculing scientific advancement, rejecting Original Sin, and calling for

religious tolerance and legitimized self-rule, he threatened Church, state and

Academy alike. His image as an anti-hierarchical thinker was only confirmed by The

Confessions , a work that defied conventional boundaries of Enlightenment society

288 As Plutarch reminds us, facts are only valuable if they help to instill virtue. In Rousseau’s age, by

contrast, “Critical erudition absorbs everything, as if it were very important whether a fact is true,

provided that a useful teaching can be drawn from it.” Emile . E 156; OC IV.415. For further

discussion of this position see Chapter 2 above.

289 Emile . E 268. The ensuing paragraph further discusses the limits of reason and the utility of

imagination. Delivered by the Vicar, these lines conform to Rousseau’s hierarchy of human faculties.

290 Voltaire’s most famous quip against Rousseau followed the Second Discourse : “One acquires the

desire to walk on all fours when one reads your work.” Letter from Voltaire to Rousseau , August 30,

1755. CW III.102; CC III.317.157. In a similar spirit, following the Letter to d’Alembert , Voltaire

wondered if Rousseau had “become a priest of the Church?” Theodore Besterman, ed., Voltaire's

Correspondence . (Genève: Institut et Musée Voltaire, 1953-1965), XIX.D7864.

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and elicited shrill “disapproval of the author’s rejection of the neoclassical

discriminations of noble and base, high and low, public and private, tragic and

comic.” 291 As Gossman explains, Rousseau’s “candor about the details of his sexual

life was not in itself shocking; what was, was the seriousness with which he treated

them and asked the reader to treat them,” an approach that blatantly ignored

traditional dismissals of the body as a crass domain ill-suited for philosophical

inquiry. 292

If Jean-Jacques was guilty of indecent exposure, 293 Gossman locates a

democratic impulse in his breach of propriety, a tacit valorization of common (in both

senses of the word) experience. Rousseau’s somatic emphasis also offered a sharp

rejoinder to Augustine, who had urged his audience to look beyond the corporeal

world in anticipation of an eternal life freed from physical desire. 294 For Augustine,

the body was a symbol of man’s most visible weakness (concupiscence) and a

reminder of our fall from grace and distance from God; physical shame was a

logically pious stance given the sins of our flesh. His writings therefore take the body

seriously only as a threat to salvation, an object of denial and repression, and a

hereditary punishment levied upon man for Adam’s transgression. In defying this

tradition Rousseau was not merely titillating his audience or challenging the literary

291 Gossman, pp. 60-61.

292 Ibid., pp. 60-61.

293 I use this term both literally and figuratively. In The Confessions , Rousseau admits to a penchant

for seeking out “dark alleys, hidden nooks where I could expose myself from afar to persons of the

opposite sex.” CW V.74; OC I.88-89. He was also charged with slandering the memories of

upstanding citoyens such as Mme. de Warens by revealing unsavory details of his romantic affairs. As

M. Geoffrey wrote in the Année littéraire (1783, V.vii.99-100), such candor was particularly indecent

for “a Philosopher, a Sage, a Legislator of morals.” For examples of similar critiques see: Gagnebin,

pp. 110-112, 121, 123.

294 This reflects a classical bias of philosophy as well, one epitomized by Plato (for whom wisdom was

an absolute form encumbered by physical trappings). For a thorough overview of this problem see:

Richard Shusterman, Pragmatist Aesthetics: Living Beauty, Rethinking Art . (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992).

102

standards of a prudish élite. His elevation of somatic concerns reveals, more

pointedly, a repudiation of the denigration of the corporeal life. 295 Dwelling on his

sexual proclivities, uncontrolled appetites, and sundry weaknesses was necessary

given his commitment to revealing the truth. But such exposure also taught an

affirmative lesson, one accessible to those of all walks of life: fear not our corporeal

sins, for they are only skin-deep. 296

At heart of Rousseau’s argument is a faith in the innocence of human nature.

Rather than teaching us to humble ourselves as woefully inadequate creatures before

God, he urged us to follow his lead in The Confessions , to draw courage from our

status as divine creations. Jean-Jacques’ candor was therefore calculated or

purposeful in that it lighted a hopeful path to reform. It was also deeply problematic,

for it left him open to charges of blatant hypocrisy and gave detractors a convenient

means of dismissing him. 297 His authority as a moral critic lay in his relative lack of

culpability. But by unveiling the sundry details of his life he presented the portrait of

an individual objectively ill-suited to exculpate himself.

In his own defense, Rousseau reiterated his guiding principals (natural

goodness, and a pursuit of truth that demanded unmitigated revelation) while

deflecting the significance of his actions. In a world of corrupting attachments, he

ascribed guilt to external sources. The radical implications of his rationalization

295 From his very first Discourse , Rousseau had argued that “the needs of the body are the foundations

of society.” First Discourse . CW II.5; OC III.6.

296 In this, Rousseau falls between Machiavelli and Nietzsche who both recognized “slavishness” in

Christian morality. See: Discourses on Livy , II.2.159.

297 Rousseau was particularly insulted by this charge. As he asks Beaumont, “Why would I be a

hypocrite, and what would I gain from being one? I attacked all particular interests, I aroused all

factions against me, I upheld only the cause of God and humanity, and who cares about that?”

Rousseau suggests that he would have been far less prosecuted if, following the philosophes , “I had

openly declared myself in favor of atheism.” Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.50; OC OV.964.

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cannot be understated. In it we find a neophyte theory of political victimization, one

that attributes blame to unjust social forms rather than intrinsically flawed beings. 298

Nurture, not nature, is the culprit in this equation. As an individual raised in idyllic

circumstances, Rousseau was uniquely nurtured to follow his nature, an exemplar of

goodness particularly resistant to society’s influence. His personal innocence

therefore supports his claim of ontological innocence: the life he revealed to the

public offered testament to his species’ inherent worth.

This is the “truth” put before the audience to whom he bears his very soul, an

argument pressed upon his peers. After all, Rousseau was far more anxious about

being misjudged by men than God. If he begins his Confessions by testifying before

the Sovereign Judge, he reminds us of the superfluity of this revelation. God sees us

for who we are; this is why Rousseau is unafraid to assert his innocence in His

presence. By contrast, human judgment is far more fallible, our reason woefully

limited. 299 This boundary is acutely evident in our comprehension of divinity, a

failing discussed at length by the Savoyard Vicar in Emile . The Vicar chastises

humankind for believing “we possess intelligence for piercing… [such] mysteries,”

when in fact “all we have is imagination.” It is “through this imaginary world [that]

each blazes a trail he believes to be good. None can know whether his leads to the

goal [of salvation]. Nevertheless we want to penetrate everything, to know

298 Inge labeled this “sentimental humanitarianism” Rousseau’s single worst contribution to the

modern world, a “mawkish travesty of Christianity which transforms morality by basing it solely on

pity, and transfers guilt from the individual to the state under which he lives. Man is always innocent,

the government always guilty.” (Inge, p. 250) Arthur Melzer offers a more judicious assessment,

noting that Rousseau “initiates the philosophic tendency, which has dominated almost all subsequent

thought, to understand the human problem in terms of historical, social, or environmental causes rather

than natural or divine ones.” Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man, p. 17.

299 Compare with René Descartes’ Sixth Meditation in Meditations on First Philosophy , Revised

Edition , John Cottingham, ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

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everything.” 300 Although raised by the Vicar, this concern articulates a problem later

posed in The Confessions . 301 Not only do we believe ourselves capable of

comprehending God, we parade these “imaginary” visions as righteous, intolerant

truths. This vanity is twofold: because the limits of our reasoning prevent us from

clearly comprehending the divine state we personalize God, reducing Him to an

extension of our own particular predilections and worldviews. 302 As Rousseau

elaborates,

In general, believers make God as they are themselves, the good make

him good, the wicked make him wicked; the devout who are spiteful

and choleric see only Hell because they would like to damn the whole

world: loving and gentle souls hardly believe in it. 303

The reduction of God to the self-image of the worshipper is therefore morally

ambiguous. It can have wicked (for the wicked) and just (for the just) consequences.

Given his scathing criticism of Catholic dogma, Rousseau likely had papists in mind

as those who “damn the whole world” to Hell. But he also poses a positive

alternative, the “loving and gentle souls” who place faith in a benevolent deity.

To illustrate this, Rousseau presents Mme. de Warens as a unique figure in a

corrupt age, a “soul without bitterness, which could not imagine God as vindictive

and always wrathful, saw only clemency and mercy where the devout saw only

300 Emile . E 268.

301 This argument is also consistent with the Second Discourse . In this case, artificial desires

(encouraged by amour-propre ) are self-destructive because they surpass both our natural needs and

capacities for fulfillment.

302 In this, Rousseau follows Malebranche who similarly preached the generality and simplicity of

God. For a thorough study of this connection see: Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau .

303 The Confessions . CW V.192; OC I.228-229. It is worth noting that the pressure exerted by the

Church was overwhelming, affecting even the noble Fénelon: “one of the astonishing things from

which I cannot recover is to see the good Fénelon speak about it in his Telemachus , as if he truly

believed it: but I hope that he was lying then; for in the end however truthful one may be, one certainly

must lie sometimes when one is a Bishop.” In the Dialogues , Rousseau describes Fénelon as one of

the few virtuous men who “did honor to modern times,” praise affirmed by Telemachus ’ role in

Emile’s education. CW I.158; OC I.863-864.

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justice and punishment.” 304 A woman of rare gentleness, de Warens’ vision of divine

mercy lies in sharp contrast with the vengeful figure propagated by the Catholic

Church. She hardly believed the Author of all things had endowed His creations with

an irreparably sinful nature. Rousseau’s beloved maman found failing not in God,

but in His misleading portrayal by men: “It seemed to her that Scripture was

explained too literally and too harshly,” and when discussing specific articles of the

Bible “it happened that she saw [each] completely differently from the Church, even

while always submitting to it.” 305 More specifically, she believed Purgatory—not

eternal damnation—offered a suitable fate for the wicked, a group “always very

vexing both in this world and in the other.” 306

What begins as a passing (and seemingly innocent) plea for theological

moderation immediately leads to a radical renunciation. As Rousseau hastily

concludes, “one sees that the whole doctrine of original sin and redemption is

destroyed by this system [of Purgatory], and the basis of vulgar Christianity is shaken

by it, and that at least Catholicism cannot subsist.” 307 The certainty of his conclusion

is matched only by the suddenness of its intrusion into the text. Rousseau, it appears,

is eager to remind readers that Adam’s supposed legacy of hereditary sin is a fallacy

propagated by men, one debunked with as little effort as the passing mention of

Purgatory. In one fell swoop, he claims a startling accomplishment: crippling

Catholicism by shaking the “vulgar” foundations upon which it rests.

304 The Confessions . CW 192; OC I.229.

305 The Confessions . CW 192; OC I.229.

306 Given the rosy glow that often shades Rousseau’s recollections of de Warens, his account may be

inaccurate. If this were the case, Rousseau would be repeating the crime imputed to him by Christophe

de Beaumont of presenting impious beliefs in “chimerical voices,” a charge discussed in greater detail

below.

307 The Confessions . CW 192; OC I.229.

106

Rousseau’s antagonism towards the Church reflects what Ernst Cassirer

described as a principal fear of Enlightenment philosophers, that to “change religion

into mere opinion… [is to] deprive it of its real moral and political force.” 308 Unlike

his philosophe peers, however, Rousseau shared this concern without abandoning his

faith in God. More strongly, he insisted that religious associations provided a

necessary moral foundation for virtuous democratic societies. 309 Yet papal faith

should not be considered genuine; it denuded religion of its ethical and practical

value, supplanting divine truths with vicious myths. Nowhere was the blasphemy of

their orthodoxy more evident than in the narrative of Original Sin.

* * * * *

The innocence of which Rousseau speaks is surely personal, yet its

implications extend far beyond the author himself. This is evident in his self-

justification: Jean-Jacques, more natural than his denatured peers, was subsequently

more innocent. In ontological terms, this position assumes that humankind is good by

nature and not tainted by Adam’s fall. Far from it, we have corrupted ourselves,

introducing evils that place us at sharp odds with our divinely-crafted natures.

Rousseau’s rebuke of hereditary guilt lies at the heart of The Confessions , just as it

rests at Emile ’s center. 310 It was also the reason he fled Paris in 1762: he escaped an

arrest warrant issued by the Parlement and applauded by the Church, both of whom

308 Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment , p. 165. This claim is demonstrable in the influence

of Bayle upon the philosophe circle, particularly Diderot (and his Encyclopédie article on Pyrrhonism).

309 See Chapter 5 below.

310 Not only does Rousseau describe the Profession as Emile ’s moral core, it appears literally halfway

through the text.

107

viewed his renunciation of Original Sin as a threat to spiritual and political order. 311

What might strike contemporary readers as a dry and distant debate was a life-

changing event for Rousseau. In this, he was not alone; roughly fourteen centuries

prior, the Christian ascetic Pelagius rejected hereditary guilt to equally momentous

consequences. 312

Rousseau’s indebtedness to Pelagius is typically assumed. This was true as

early as 1765 when, in passing, the Abby Laurent François identified Pelagianism in

Rousseau’s diminution of grace as a means of salvation. 313 More recently, Karl Barth

described the Genevan’s doctrine of natural goodness as “the apogee of humanist

Pelagianism,” while Jean Guehenno located a Pelagian legacy within Rousseau’s

mistrust of metaphysics, his “sentimental” emphasis upon freedom, and the righteous

tenor of his social criticism. 314 Pierre Burgelin saw shadows of Pelagius in Saint-

Preux’s defense of human liberty, a figure commonly assumed to be modeled after

Rousseau himself. And Jean-François Thomas—in the only work devoted

exclusively to this relation—concluded that Rousseau was indeed a semi-Pelagian,

albeit one very much indebted to Molinism and Jesuit writings on freedom and

311 Extrait des Registres du Parlement , June 9, 1762. CC XI.A254.262-266.

312 Accused of heresy in Jerusalem in 415, newly condemned for his De libero arbitrio ( On Free Will )

in 416, Pelagius was finally condemned and excommunicated in 417 by Pope Innocent I, a ruling

confirmed by Innocent’s successor Zosimus in 418. This verdict was influenced by the verbose wrath

of Augustine, who wrote volumes against Pelagius and went so far as to demand his public censure: “I

do not hesitate at once to affirm that such a man [as Pelagius] ought to be removed from the public ear,

and to be anathematized by every mouth.” Augustine, A Treatise Concerning Man’s Perfection in

Righteousness , Chapter XXI (44) in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church: Volume

V , Benjamin B. Warfield, tr. (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1971), p.

176.

313 Robert Derathé, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau et le Christianisme,” in Revue de Métaphysique et de

Morale (1948), p. 379.

314 Jacques-François Thomas, Le Pélagianisme de J . -J . Rousseau . (Paris: Librairie Nizet, 1956), pp. 8-

9.

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grace. 315 Although many have labeled Rousseau’s concept of innocence Pelagian,

few have explored the association in any detail. 316 Correcting this paucity allows us

to both impart coherence to an oft-bandied yet ill-defined term, and shed light upon

the seeds from which Rousseau’s most controversial theological paradox grows. 317

Before discussing parallels between Pelagius and Rousseau, we might begin

with an obvious difference. Unlike the well-documented Genevan, the figure of

Pelagius is marked by relative obscurity. 318 We know little of the details of his life

save that he was well-educated and born some time after 350 AD, probably in

Britain. 319 We also know that he was an exile of sorts. He left his birth land for

reasons unknown 320 and arrived in Rome circa 380 AD, becoming a spiritual advisor

315 In the late sixteenth century in works such as Concordia liberi arbitrii cum gratiae donis ( The

Harmony of Free Will with Gifts of Grace ), the Jesuit theologian Molina attempted to reconcile a

concept of free will with his faith in divine justice and mercy. He presented a notably optimistic view

of human nature, one that allowed man sufficient grace to aspire towards redemption. For a thoughtful

exposition of the Jesuit influence upon Rousseau during his stay in Montmorency see: Gilbert Py,

“Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la Congrégation des Prêtres de l’Oratoire de Jésus,” Annales de la Société

Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Tome 38 (Geneva: A. Jullien, 1969-1971), pp. 127-153.

316 More striking than the typical brevity with which this connection is raised are the thoughtful studies

that fail to even mention Pelagius’ name. Allan Bloom examines Rousseau’s concept of goodness in

great length. P. M. Masson’s unrivaled three-volume La Religion de J. J. Rousseau work investigates

the heretical foundations of Rousseau’s theological thought. And in The Natural Goodness of Man ,

Arthur Melzer discusses Rousseau’s radical renunciation of Original Sin. In all of these studies,

Pelagius is conspicuously absent.

317 I do not mean to suggest that Rousseau was steeped in (or even directly influenced by) the writings

of Pelagius, but rather argue that a study of Pelagianism illuminates a problem central to Rousseau: the

concomitant concern with spiritual and secular values. A figure who also expressed deep faith in

heretical terms, Pelagius is far more helpful on this count than Augustine (who similarly described sin

as a self-incurred disease, yet concluded that only God might cure us).

318 “The writings of the Pelagians are notoriously anonymous,” Peter Brown notes, “and so are their

supporters.” Much of what we know about Pelagius and his followers comes from writings assumed to

be theirs, references in works of their contemporaries (most notably Augustine and Jerome), and a

small number of primary sources (governmental and ecclesiastical documents). B. R. Rees attributes

Pelagianism’s “poor press” to this scarcity of definitive primary sources. See: Peter Brown, Religion

and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine . (London: Faber and Faber, 1972), p. 208; and The Letters of

Pelagius and His Followers , B. R. Rees, tr. (Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 1991), p. 1.

319 See: Pelagius’s Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans , Theodore de Bruyn, tr. (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1993), p. 10; Rees, Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic . (Suffolk: The Boydell Press,

1988), pp. xii-xiv.

320 The two most common explanations are career ambitions and a spat with his father. Rees, Ibid., p.

xiii.

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to Roman Christian aristocrats. 321 Pelagius entered Rome during a period of wealth

and flamboyance but also insecurity and striving, one ruled by a gluttonous

aristocracy both habituated to and increasingly disgusted with its routine

decadence. 322 The practical consequence of such ambivalence was a demand for

guidance. Nobles were “in constant need of mentors—from teachers of literature to

father-confessors”—to instruct them to rise above the concupiscence so rampant

amongst their socially-illustrious ranks. 323

It was an age “clouded with doubts” not simply about the plight of the

privileged, but around a core tenet of the Catholic Church: the origin and legacy of

the Fall of the human soul, a subject of protracted (and indeterminate) writings,

debate and dialogue. 324 Before Pelagianism “there had been little open debate about

matters of doctrine and belief.” 325 Indeed, history suggests that the Catholic Church

lacked a “coherent body of doctrine tried, tested and refined in the furnace of

321 This was a popular practice amongst the wealthy and spiritually ambitious. Brown, pp. 186-188.

322 Brown describes the privileged class of statesmen and orators as “a heterogeneous and, in part, a

nondescript body of men.” Yet they could hardly be accused of dullness, baring all the exaggerated

marks of ancient decadence: conspicuous consumption, lusty indiscretions, a propensity for gambling,

and a distaste for scholarly work. Roman élites were also notably competitive, “determined to live

according to… distinctive standards of excellence”—an aspiration guided by both “their sense of high

birth” and the desire to distinguish themselves from their peers. There was also a vocal conservative

backlash reared by the pagan orator Symmachus (who upheld strict protocol and ceremony in the

Senate) and the Christian Senator Jerome (who no less disapprovingly beseeched his peers to “learn

from me a holy arrogance”). Ibid., pp. 186-188.

323 In becoming a spiritual advisor, Pelagius was simply joining a well-established and increasingly

popular profession. The neo-Platonist Plotinus, an influence upon the young Augustine, was one of the

earliest figureheads of this tutorial tradition. Ibid., p. 188.

324 Ibid., p. 220. The free-will debates had spanned over 200 years. Augustine’s eventual victory over

Pelagius was aided more by the Saint’s tireless public sermons and growing influence than unified

doctrinal consensus amongst Church fathers.

325 Rees, The Letters of Pelagius and His Followers , p. 10. Rees goes so far as to suggest that “[t]here

had been no heresy before this one, if one excludes Priscillianism which arose in the peripheral area of

Spain.” One must also exclude Arianism (an early fourth century movement rejecting the divinity of

Jesus Christ), as well as smaller sects such as the Manichaeans and Gnostics (from which

Priscillianism is derived). It is worth noting that in his 1690 Dictionnaire Universel , Furetière names

only three examples of heretics: Arius, Luther and Calvin; Pelagius is conspicuously absent. See:

Furetière’s Dictionnaire Universel , Tome II.

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controversy.” 326 Although Pelagius and his followers claimed to be integri Christiani

(authentic Christians), prior to his writings there existed little consensus as to what

this term actually meant. 327

If by the late fourth century orthodox dogma was still a work in progress, 328 a

definitive position had begun to coalesce around Augustine’s influential sermons on

free will. According to Augustine, Scripture is unequivocal on the origins and

transmission of sin: Genesis 3 describes the fall of man as punishment for Adam’s

errant appetite; 1 Corinthians 15 teaches that Christ died for our sins and was raised

by God as a redeemer; and Romans 5 describes sin as an ineradicable hereditary

disease. Adam was held accountable for tasting fruit from the tree of knowledge

because he was told not to (by God) and free not to (through an act of will). In falling

to temptation, Adam revealed the weakness of a will whose divided nature stood in

hideous contrast to the unified Divine will. Such was the legacy passed on to his

species. Fatally self-subverting and the source of enduring shame, our very natures

predisposed us to stray from God’s righteous example. 329

At first glance, Pelagius’ teachings may seem compatible with this

Augustinian (and decidedly un-Rousseauist) world-view. He urged his brethren to

live a stern, disciplined life, envisioning a Christian community connected by what

Peter Brown describes as an “icy puritanism,” hither unto binding ideals of propriety

326 Rees, Ibid., p. 10.

327 Brown, pp. 192-3.

328 Rees, Pelagius: A Reluctant Heretic , p. 56. For a summary of the two main theories of Original Sin

in the second and third centuries—what N. P. Williams describes as “Hellenic, once-born or

minimizing” and “African, twice-born or maximizing”—see pp. 57-58.

329 Under this view, our only hope for redemption lay after earthly penance was paid, at the

postmortem, grace of the Being whose laws we are incapable of following. For Augustine, then, the

first penalty of Adam’s eternal gaffe—mortality—also provides our only hope. Because Original Man

had sinned, all men must die; yet because we all lay at God’s mercy, salvation might only be attained

following death.

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and piousness, secular conduct aimed at spiritual elevation consummated by the grace

of Christ. 330 Yet Pelagius understood asceticism as redemptive corporeal vigilance

rather than shameful self-denial. Far from discounting human action, he granted

somatic reform a central role in the grueling struggle towards Christian elevation.

Unlike Augustine, for whom salvation depended solely upon God’s grace, Pelagius

shifted the burden of redemption upon man’s meager shoulders. Where Augustine

understood human free will as the catalyst for sin, Pelagius located the means of

training ourselves to live righteously. Where Augustine saw grace as the only means

of transcending Adam’s legacy, Pelagius identified an antidote independent of God’s

will. Where Augustine felt sin permeate the marrow of his soul, Pelagius saw a

superficial (albeit ubiquitous) condition—bad habits reified through the ages—in

need of a corporeal remedy. 331 Pelagius therefore presented a twofold offense to the

teachings of Augustine: not only did he soften the impact of the Fall, he claimed that

Christians should and could raise themselves . 332 Because man was not irreparably

330 Brown, p. 194. Although Rees affirms the severity of the Pelagian “evangelical, salvationist and

didactic” vision ( Letters , p. 12), not everyone agrees. De Bruyn reminds us that “[f]or most Christians,

both clergy and laity, the regime advocated by zealots was too severe. Even those who approved of

asceticism in general were disturbed by extreme manifestations.” He describes Pelagius as just such a

moderate, citing his position on a heated dispute of Manichaean origins: whether or not Christians

should eat meat. Pelagius carefully abstains from passing categorical judgment, instead claiming that

scripture does not explicitly require vegetarianism of the faithful. De Bruyn overly signifies this

concession, one that hardly conforms to Pelagianism’s broader Christian “ascetic program” that

“envisaged not the end of corporeal existence, but rather the extirpation of the passions which obscured

the vision of God.” Furthermore, this isolated instance of compromise does not even distinguish

Pelagius from Augustine who arrived at a similarly cautious defense of meat-eating in the Confessions

(xxxi.45). See: De Bruyn, pp. 2-7, 12, 15; and Pelagius ’ Commentary on the Romans 14:1-23, pp.

140-144.

331 Rousseau shared a skeptical view of habit. In an author’s note to Emile he describes a vicious

circle: “The appeal of habit comes from the laziness natural to man, and that laziness increases in

abandoning oneself to habit.” Both he and Pelagius faced criticism for failing to explain habituated sin

in light of natural goodness. See: De Bruyn, p. 24; Emile . E 160n.

332 This divergence is acutely evident in their competing beliefs about baptism. Augustine preached

the necessity of infant baptism as the first stage of redeeming ourselves in God’s eyes. By contrast,

Pelagius understood baptism as a commitment to self-conscious change, one only meaningful to

mature adults. Rousseau makes a similar argument about religion in Emile , stressing the need

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burdened with guilt, human agency in addition to divine grace could cleanse us of our

sins.

In works such as the Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans and On

Nature , Pelagius argued that sin was not a hereditary condition but a habituated lapse

in judgment. 333 Predating Rousseau’s description of denatured man, he argued that

corruption “lives as a guest” in humankind “as an accidental quality, not a natural

one.” 334 Drawing upon the metaphor of an unwanted disease attacking a host-victim,

Pelagius claimed that “carnal habit,” far from characterizing human desire, actually

“opposes the will.” 335 As with Rousseau, corruption distorts and disserves (rather

than epitomizes) our divinely-crafted natures.

In framing this argument, Pelagius draws upon a vision of a tough-but-fair

God, a figurehead who would hardly set us up to fail by establishing a standard of

conduct impossible to fulfill. 336 Nor would He levy eternal punishment upon

creatures whom He both loved and created in His image. Rather than wait for

salvation in an afterlife, we must rethink the mantra of accountability that plays so

prominent a role in Augustine’s narrative of the Fall. We must bear responsibility for

our own actions, using Adam’s model as a lesson of malfeasance rather than proof of

introduce God only after human beings are developmentally capable of comprehending Divinity (“for

if he learns it sooner than he ought, he runs the risk of never knowing it”). E 257.

333 It is in these works that Pelagius developed what Augustine later described as the “three principal

heads in the Pelagian heresy”: the denial of Original Sin; the contention that “the grace of God

whereby we are justified is not given freely, but according to our merits”; and the argument that “in

mortal man, however holy and well doing, there is so great righteousness that even after the washing of

regeneration [Baptism], until he finishes this life of his, forgiveness is not necessary to him.” His

influence as a spiritual leader had grown with his role as a pedagogue, but it was not until

approximately 405 AD, after these works had reached Augustine’s disapproving eye, that he became

embroiled in controversy. See: Augustine, Against Two Letters of the Pelagians , Book III, Chapter 24.

(Warfield, p. 414)

334 Commentary on the Romans , 7:17. (De Bruyn, p. 104)

335 Ibid., 7:18, p. 104.

336 Readers should note this parallels the position Rousseau approvingly attributes to de Warens in The

Confessions .

113

irredeemable guilt. As Pelagius concludes, “I myself have provided myself with this

compulsion.” 337 If “I” am the agent, it follows logically that “I” must take

responsibility for curing my self-incurred concupiscence.

To support his case, Pelagius distinguished between rational instinct and

irrational desire. “Habitual desires, or the persuading of the enemy” is opposed to

“ The law of my mind . Namely, of natural conscience, or of the divine law, which

resides in the mind.” 338 In terms clearly presaging Rousseau, “divine law” is

inscribed upon our “natural conscience.” Wickedness results from a failure to

comprehend and follow this order, an estrangement whose redress requires the

cultivation of our natural God-given ability to determine right from wrong. As

Pelagius argues, we must retrain our wills, not damn our natures, because “the will

was arraigned, not the nature, which God created in such a way that it [was able] not

to sin.” 339 Carnal impulse does not mask the stench of irredeemably tainted flesh; it

rather reveals the force of habit and the prevalence of poor decision-making amongst

humankind. As with Rousseau, a stifled conscience is no sign of irredeemable fault;

it rather punctuates the need to reawaken this innate faculty through meaningful

corporeal reform.

Augustine found in these urgings utter blasphemy. 340 Defining corruption as

habitual rather than necessary reduced sin to a problem of human “negligence,” one

curable through an act of will. 341 Where Augustine saw “confirmed invalids,”

337 Commentary on the Romans , 7:20. (De Bruyn, p. 104)

338 Ibid., 7:22, p. 107.

339 Commentary on the Romans , 8:3, (De Bruyn, p. 107).

340 Augustine found this position Scripturally unsound. Citing Psalms 12:1 & 8; 41:4, he reminds us

that the “[t]he nature of which our author [Pelagius] speaks is corrupted.” Augustine, On Nature and

Grace , Ch. 57 (Warfield, pp. 140-141).

341 Ibid., Ch. 14 [XIII] (p. 125).

114

Pelagius envisioned humankind “like the man found wounded on the road from

Jerusalem to Jericho—saved from certain death… [yet] resigned to spending a

lifetime of precarious convalescence in the Inn of the Catholic Church.” 342 Neither

might be confused with a libertine, and despite Augustine’s portrayal Pelagius was

hardly an unqualified optimist. Like Rousseau, he recognized the ubiquity of societal

corruption and—in a tone reminiscent of Seneca 343 —the difficulty of reform. Yet as

with Rousseau, Pelagius looked squarely in the eyes of what he believed was a

decadent culture, and challenged the necessity of this decline. Where Rousseau later

invoked our divinely-crafted nature as evidence of inherent innocence, so did

Pelagius take recourse in our intrinsic God-given goodness. Rousseau and Pelagius

agreed that men had made a mess of a divine creation; man must therefore halt his

self-incurred fall, reorient himself to follow his conscience with the knowledge that

sin was actually the logical and finite consequence of improvident action.

Because God is the “Author” of nature (a phrase Rousseau also frequents),

natural order must reflect his unquestionable goodness. Pelagius applied this logic to

human nature which, as a divine creation, possessed the capacity for goodness. Yet

in making the ontological claim that humankind is naturally good and not necessarily

342 Brown, p. 203.

343 The Stoic sage, according to Seneca, is of so rare character that one “perhaps springs into existence,

like the phoenix, only once in five hundred years.” ( Epistulae Morales xiii.1) Sages are beings

hardened to external circumstances and worldly forces who follow a moral code drawn in accordance

with nature. Despite manifold difficulties, Seneca advises that the human will, can, with enough effort,

achieve this plateau through personal fortification, an act of will that overcomes “weakness of the

mind,” ( De Ira II.ii.2) and an indifference to forces beyond one’s control, a state Martha C. Nussbaum

labels “radical detachment” (both external resistance and internal command of one’s emotions). For a

discussion of this term see: The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics ,

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), pp. 363-364. On Tertullian’s reference to Seneca as

“often one of us [Christians]” see: A. A. Long, Hellenistic Philosophy , Second Edition . (Berkeley:

University of California Press, 1986), p. 236. Saint Jerome also makes this connection in Against

Rufinus . See: Dogmatic and Polemical Works , John N. Hritzu, tr. (Washington, DC: The Catholic

University of America Press, 1965), p. 210.

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beholden to sin, Pelagius rendered an unqualified blasphemy: he negated the value of

Jesus Christ’s sacrificial death on the cross. As Augustine lamented, the mere

possibility of man’s innocence “renders the cross of Christ of none effect.” 344

Denying man’s hereditary guilt as descendents of Adam did not merely disserve the

obedience we owe God (as the only possible cause of our redemption), or brazenly

raise our self-estimation; it meant that “Christ [is] dead in vain.” 345 Jesus could not

have died a sacrificial death (bearing a brutal punishment for our sins) were we not all

sinners. By reducing a crime of eternal guilt to one of temporal circumstance, human

goodness renders the terms of his sacrifice moot.

Not that Pelagius was lenient. If eating from the tree of knowledge did not

elicit eternal punishment, God’s vengeance was still indisputably fierce. After all,

Adam received “the death-penalty for breaking one single prohibition; and even he

was less to blame than us, for he did not have the great benefit of the previous

execution of a human being to deter him.” 346 To understand Pelagius’ feud with

Augustine as a conflict over severity is therefore inaccurate; Augustine was far more

agitated by Pelagius’ emphasis .

Let us recall the Saint’s two distinct albeit related lines of criticisms: first,

Pelagianism gives man an inflated sense of the value of his actions; and second, so

doing demeans the role of God in our lives. If humankind is endowed with

conscience, free will and a universal potential to rise above sin, this might also

suggest a democratic vision of egalitarian reform. However, asceticism—a practical

remedy for societal decay—posed a challenge few would except, one that conformed

344 Augustine, On Nature and Grace , Ch. 21, p. 127. See also: Ch. 9, p. 124.

345 Ibid., Ch. 9, p. 124.

346 Brown, p. 204.

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to a rigid and grueling vision of the Christian life prone, much like Seneca’s quest for

enlightened wisdom, to failure. In the end, and unlike Rousseau, Pelagius was neither

republican nor Protestant; he was simply “looking for better Christians and not for a

more democratic form of government.” 347

In the Social Contract , Rousseau makes a strong distinction between “the

Religion of man and that of the Citizen” and demands that we choose. 348 For

Pelagius, there was hardly a choice; Christians, not citizens, were his overarching

concern. Furthermore, “he sincerely believed that his teaching was orthodox and

consistent with that [Catholic] Church’s tradition.” As B. R. Rees argues, this belief

guided his protracted self-defense: “it was in order to prove [his orthodoxy] to his

critics that he allowed himself to become involved in an arduous and prolonged

controversy for which he was by ethos and training quite unsuited.” 349 If, as Rees

concludes, we should consider Pelagius a “reluctant” heretic we might also consider

him a “stubborn” heretic, so certain was he of his own piety.

Whatever the qualifying adjective, Pelagius’ heresy is indisputable in

hindsight. He maintained theological doctrine in opposition, or held to be contrary, to

the Roman Catholic Church. Yet Brown reminds us that Augustine—not Pelagius—

“abandoned a great tradition of Western Christianity” by denying that “it was ever

possible for a man to slough off his past; neither baptism nor the experience of

conversion could break the monotonous continuity of a life that was ‘one long

temptation.’” 350 By contrast, Pelagius adhered to the “the idea that conversion and

347 Rees, A Reluctant Heretic , p. 112.

348 The Social Contract . CW 219; OC III.464.

349 Rees, A Reluctant Heretic , p. 131.

350 Brown, p. 200.

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initiation could make a total break in personality,” a belief that W. H. C. Frend

describes as “the Christianity of discontinuity.” 351 In claiming that man might be

reborn through an act of will, Pelagius revealed himself to be “the last, the most

radical, and the most paradoxical exponent” of the ancient faith. 352

And here we return to this chapter’s initial concern. Heresies are, by

definition, paradoxical; they are defined by the rejection of commonly held truths.

Pelagian heterodoxy offers an additional paradox—one charged to Rousseau as

well—by using traditional values as the foundation of radical revisionism. Both men

preached ontological innocence as a heuristic catalyst to reform; both refused to

abandon core Christian doctrines including the existence of an afterlife and the moral

guidance provided by God (as revealed in either the natural world or scripture); and

both set redemptive doctrines against the backdrop of pessimistic realism (stark

sociopolitical critique). Most significantly, both insisted upon the righteousness of

their paradoxical faiths, maintaining the conviction that they were more pious than

their many detractors.

* * * * *

If the messages were similar, the messengers were less so. Pelagius was an

austere ascetic who lived as he preached. Rousseau was neither sternly disciplined

nor God-fearing, facts that did not prevent him from passing judgment. Curiously,

for a thinker wedded to the idea of innocence life appeared anything but. Man may

be intrinsically good but the society of his making was undoubtedly corrupting, “fit

351 Ibid., p. 200. See also: W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church (1964), p.

402.

352 Ibid., p. 200.

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only for making double men.” 353 In evoking this image Rousseau hearkened back to

Augustine, whose Confessions provides the locus classicus of divided individualism.

As the Saint described, “in the process of deliberation a single soul is wavering

between different wills” that pull us towards mutually exclusive loves of spiritual and

carnal gratification. 354 This morbid, painful condition “pull[s] apart the human heart”

and debilitates the mind. 355 Yet for Augustine, such was man’s lot: this internalized

“struggle of myself against myself” was a manifestation of the “‘sin which dwelt in

me,’ sin resulting from the punishment of a more freely chosen sin, because I was a

son of Adam.” 356

By contrast, Rousseau understood such contradictory impulses as a struggle

between nature and artifice, natural instincts and social pressures, man (as divine

creations) and men (as socially distorted creatures):

Swept along in contrary routes by nature and by men, forced to divide

ourselves between these different impulses, we follow a composite

impulse which leads us to neither one goal nor the other. Thus, in

conflict and floating during the whole course of our life, we end it

without having been able to put ourselves in harmony with ourselves,

and without having been good either for ourselves or for others. 357

Far from epitomizing human nature, divergent wills oppose it. 358 In broader terms,

“conflict and floating” is symptomatic of a disconnect between the way things truly

353 Emile . E 41.

354 Augustine, Confessions , VIII.x.23, p. 149.

355 Ibid., VIII.ix.21 & VIII.x.24. pp. 148 & 150.

356 Ibid., VIII.xi.27 & VIII.x.22, pp. 152 & 149. Augustine’s reference is to Romans 7: 17, 20.

357 Emile . E 41.

358 In works such as The Social Contract and Poland , Rousseau sought to reform society by

legitimizing political institutions. Yet in Emile he seems far more withdrawn, suggesting we raise “a

man… uniquely for himself.” Such “negative” or defensive education protects individuals from a

corrupt world while cultivating their natural goodness. “To form this rare man” we must “prevent

anything from being done.” (E 41) As he elaborates in his Letter to Beaumont , “If man is good by his

nature, as I believe I have demonstrated, it follows that he remains so as long as nothing foreign to

himself spoils him. And if men are wicked, as [papists] have gone to the trouble of teaching me, it

follows that their wickedness comes from elsewhere. Close the entrance to vice, then, and the human

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are by nature and the way they are made to seem in a denatured world. For Rousseau,

this condition was a source of tremendous angst, one which he repeatedly confronts

throughout his works. 359 It was also, as Jean Starobinski believes, a preoccupation

rooted in personal experience. 360

As a youth in Bossey, Rousseau was a house servant to the Lambercier

family. Alone in a room where his master’s comb was found broken and “no one but

myself had entered,” he appeared guilty of vandalism. 361 Despite the weight of

evidence and the Lamberciers’ dogged interrogations, he “stubbornly persisted” in

denying any wrongdoing. “I would have suffered death and I was resolved to do so,”

he thunders, rather than suffer the indignation of taking responsibility for a crime he

had not committed. 362 As his vivid recollection of an incident that occurred more

than fifty years prior makes plain, Rousseau was still haunted by the memory of this

false accusation. It marked his conversion from naive innocent to outraged victim. In

his own words, he was transformed from

a child always governed by the voice of reason, always treated with

gentleness, equity, kindness; who did not even have the idea of

injustice, and who suffers such a terrible one for the first time from

precisely the people he loves and respects the most. What a reversal of

heart will always be good. On this principle, I established the negative education as the best or rather

as the only good one. I show how all positive education, no matter how it is pursued, follows a path

contrary to its goal. And I show how one tends to the same goal and how one reaches it by the route I

have sketched.” CW IX.35; OC IV.945.

359 Here I follow Starobinski, who cites “transparency” as Rousseau’s primary unifying concern. This

manifests itself both positively (as baring his soul in The Confessions , for example), and negatively—

as the rejection of mediating bodies in religion (the church), politics (representative democracy), and

the arts (theater).

360 It is worth noting that Kelly disagrees: “Contrary to what Starobinski claims, Jean-Jacques feels no

split between appearance and truth. He feels a split between the Lamberciers’ past gentleness and their

present injustice.” (Kelly, p. 94) However, these points are not mutually exclusive. The “present

injustice” of denatured society, for example, also indicates a failure to act in accord with our “true”

natures.

361 The Confessions . CW V.16; OC I.18. For Rousseau’s full account see: CW V.16-17; OC I.18-20.

362 The Confessions . CW V.16-17; OC I.19.

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ideas! what disorder of feelings! what an upheaval in his heart, in his

brain, in all his little intellectual and moral being! 363

Falsely impugned guilt left him with a “feeling of violence and injustice,” one that

“has remained so deeply engraved on my soul, that all the ideas related to it give me

back my first emotion.” 364 An enduring source of indignation, Rousseau drew upon a

general hatred from this particular experience: “my heart is inflamed at the spectacle

of all unjust actions—whatever their object might be and wherever they are

committed—just as if their effect fell on me.” 365 This was a point of no return, one

which evoked a bitter conclusion: “From that moment I ceased to enjoy a pure

happiness, and even today I feel that the remembrance of the charms of my childhood

stops there.” 366

Under Rousseau’s adroit pen, a broken comb adopts the significance of

Adam’s fall from Eden. It is an event replete with crime, accusation, punishment,

breach of trust, epiphany, and a sudden and enduring loss of innocent bliss—with one

crucial caveat. He insists that his Original Sin was a crime in appearance only: “Jean-

Jacques appears to be guilty although in fact he is not. He appears to lie when in fact

he is sincere.” 367 His experience becomes a sacrificial testament of integrity, one

where an innocent victim bears the individual burden of a general failure to determine

truth from opinion. Furthermore, an error of this sort carries dire consequences.

363 The Confessions . CW V.17; OC I.19.

364 The Confessions . CW V.17; OC I.20.

365 The Confessions . CW V.17; OC I.20.

366 The Confessions . CW V.18; OC I.20.

367 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction , p. 7.

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Rousseau was forced not simply from his masters’ home, but from the very “serenity

of my childlike life.” 368

In Edenic terms, this rude awakening forces us to consider the significance of

a Fall in which man is not guilty. It was an idea first developed (in relatively

impersonal terms) in the Second Discourse where, as with Jean-Jacques himself,

humankind begins in a natural state of benign bliss and falls victim to apparently

arbitrary, corrupting circumstances beyond its immediate control. As in The

Confession s, an underlying claim of innocence appears to contradict empirical

evidence. In each instance, readers must dismiss the facts Rousseau himself

introduces—be it ubiquitous corruption or his sole access to a broken comb—in order

to arrive at a deeper truth. Whether the subject is Jean-Jacques or humankind, readers

are asked to sympathize with the innocent wronged.

Rousseau repeats this request in Emile , lamenting that sometimes a youth “is

chastised before he is able to know his offenses or, rather, to commit any.” 369 Yet by

falsely imputing malice we actually awaken it. “We fill up his young heart at the

outset with the passions which later we impute to nature.” 370 This unfounded

ascription epitomizes societal corruption for two reasons: it attributes intrinsic guilt to

innocent creatures, and plants “the development of the artificial seeds” of amour

propre and malicious self-interest. A child so reared grows to become a dangerous

man, a “slave and tyrant, full of science and bereft of sense, frail in body and soul

alike.” Inept and proud, a carrier of vice, this unnatural product “becomes the basis

368 The Confessions . CW V.18; OC I.20.

369 Emile . E 48.

370 “After having taken efforts to make him wicked, we complain about finding him so.” Emile . E 48.

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for our deploring human misery and perversity.” 371 Such a dour conclusion is,

however, misguided. “He is the man of our whims; the man of nature is differently

constituted.” 372

At heart of this argument is an undying faith in the ontological innocence of

humankind, a connection Rousseau reinforces by suddenly directing us to his most

provocative Pelagian treatise, The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar . 373

The

Profession itself makes an equally conspicuous entrance into Emile . Neither taught to

the prized pupil nor told in the tutor’s voice, it follows an introductory caveat: “I am

not propounding to you the sentiment of another or my own as a rule. I am offering it

to you for examination.” 374 The “other” in question is the “decent ecclesiast,” a

nameless Vicar 375 who begins his soliloquy with a refrain suspiciously familiar to

Jean-Jacques himself. “Do not expect either learned spectacles or profound reasoning

from me,” he warns. “I am not a great philosopher, and I care little to be one. But I

sometimes have good sense, and I always love the truth.” 376

This humble sense of limitation immediately leads the Vicar to question his

obligations as a Catholic cleric. As he admits, “it was not long before I sensed that in

371 Emile . E 48.

372 Emile . E 48. Hobbes, for one, got it wrong when he “called the wicked man a robust child.” This

is somewhat misleading. As Hobbes wrote in the Preface to De Cive , children are pre-moral only

because they are not bound by duty: “because not having the use of reason, they are totally exempt

from duties. If they continue to do the same things when they are grown up and have acquired the

strength to do harm, then they begin to be evil and to be called so. Thus an evil man is rather like a

sturdy boy, or a man of childish mind, and evil is simply want of reason at an age when it normally

accrues to men by nature governed by discipline and experience of harm.” Hobbes, On the Citizen , p.

11.

373 Amidst a discussion of innate moral sense, conscience, and natural love of goodness, Rousseau

writes: “See hereafter the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” Emile . E 67

374 Emile . E 260.

375 The Vicar is based on two Abbés Rousseau encountered (and admired) as a youth: “the decent M.

Gaime” and “the most gentle of men,” M. Gâtier. See: The Confessions . CW V.76-77, 99-100; OC

I.90-92, 118-119.

376 Emile . E 266.

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obliging myself not to be a man I had promised more than I could keep.” 377 His sense

of imminent failure—of the unnatural demands pressed upon him—caused him to

question his piety. “I was in that frame of mind of uncertainty and doubt that

Descartes demands for the quest for truth.” This “disturbing and painful” state, one

“hardly made to last,” compounded his misgivings of doubt itself. “How can one

systematically and in good faith be a skeptic,” he asks? “I cannot understand it.

These skeptic philosophers either do not exist or are the unhappiest of men.” 378

Rousseau knew perfectly well that such philosophers did exist, and—from

Pyrrho to Montaigne—were famous for their preternatural calm. But the Vicar’s

sensational claim establishes his creed’s guiding principle: given the limits of human

reasoning, piety cannot rest upon reason alone. As evidence he points to the

“diversity of sentiments,” the variety of religious opinions whose sheer numbers

subvert any one’s claim to possessing an exclusive truth. 379 Their incongruity reveals

not righteousness but “the insufficiency of the human mind” guided by excessive

“pride.” “Insufficiency” prevents us from truly comprehending God, while hubris

deludes us into thinking otherwise. Divine mysteries are nonetheless impenetrable:

[They] surround us on all sides; they are above the region accessible to

the senses. We believe we possess intelligence for piercing thee

mysteries, but all we have is imagination. Through this imaginary

world each blazes a trail he believes to be good. None can know

whether his leads to the goal. Nevertheless we want to penetrate

everything, to know everything. The only thing we know is how to be

ignorant of what we cannot know. We would rather decide at random

and believe what is not than admit that none of us can see what is. We

are a small part of a great whole whose limits escape us and whose

Author delivers us to our mad disputes; but we are vain enough to

377 Emile . E 367.

378 Emile . E 367-368.

379 Emile . E 268. On this point, Rousseau’s influence can be seen in William James’ The Varieties of

Religious Experience .

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want to decide what this whole is in itself and what we are in relation

to it. 380

Definitive knowledge of the divine is, however, nothing short of self-delusion. More

specifically, such claims are both dangerous and unnecessary. Dangerous because, as

the history of the Catholic church illustrates, dogmatic certainty leads to violent

intolerance; and unnecessary because they do not cultivate true piety. The Vicar

accepts as “true” only that which he feels “in the sincerity of my heart.” Everything

else is left in a sort of spiritual purgatory, a state of “uncertainty without rejecting it

or accepting it and without tormenting myself to clarify it if it leads to nothing useful

for practice.” 381

Admitting not to “know why the universe exists,” he approaches it “like a man

who saw a watch opened for the first time,” admiring the craftsmanship without

understanding the mechanics. 382 He is also certain that its parts “are moving in

harmony only for a common end which it is impossible for me to perceive.” But such

380 Emile . E 268. Compare this with the Vicar’s remarks on the difficulties of contemplating God

(285), and the tutor’s description of God as an “incomprehensible Being who embraces everything,

who gives motion to the world and forms the whole system of beings, Is neither visible to our eyes nor

palpable to our hands; He escapes all our senses.” (255). This position adheres to a traditional

voluntarist belief in the incomprehensibility of God, one shared by thinkers as diverse as Augustine,

Ockham, Duns Scotus and Malebranche.

381 Emile . E 270. The Vicar’s skepticism sets the stage for his diminution of belabored reasoning.

Although conscience (our moral compass) never errs, the faculty of comparison is prone to error—it

relies upon “understanding, which judges the relations, mixes its errors in with the truth of the

sensations, which only reveal the objects.” (E 271) Descartes reached a similar conclusion in his Sixth

Meditation , but understood man’s “confusion” as a consequence of his nature, “a combination of mind

and body… that is bound to mislead him from time to time.” The Vicar modifies this dualism: man’s

dividedness is a consequence of denaturization . Pitié and amour-de-soi are the sole impulses guiding

our will in the natural state, and they never lead us astray. In the Second Discourse , Rousseau

describes willing as a “purely spiritual act.” Perception and sentiment defines man’s first state, while

willing, desire and fear “will be the first and almost the only operations of his soul.” (CW III.26-27;

OC III.142-143.) As evidence, he offers two articles of faith. First, “a will moves the universe and

animates nature.” (E 273) And second, because “moved matter” reveals a causal act of will, “matter

moved according to certain laws shows me an intelligence.” (E 275) A retreat to conscience therefore

offers a point of communion with God, a deference to the “intelligence” that orders the natural world.

See also: Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy , VI.88, p. 61.

382 Emile . E 275.

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absolute comprehension is unnecessary. Where reason requires certitude, faith is

affirmed through simple observance of a divine order, one revealed “not only in the

heavens which turn, not only in the star which gives us light, not only in myself, but

in the ewe which grazes, in the bird which flies, in the stone which falls, in the leaf

carried by the wind.” 383 Such is evidence of a “supreme intelligence” neither

“healthy mind” nor “unprejudiced eyes” can refute. 384

Lest we think him an incurable romantic or a long-gone hippie, the Vicar turns

his gaze to the real world. The results shock him from his starry-eyed sentimentality.

“What a spectacle! Where is the order I had observed? The picture of nature had

presented me with only harmony and proportion; that of mankind presents me with

confusion and disorder!... Beneficent Being, what has become of your power? I see

evil on earth.” 385 As with Pelagius, the Vicar concludes that corruption is self-

inflicted. “Our sorrows, our cares, and our sufferings come to us from ourselves.

Moral evil is incontestably our own wor .”

386 Of this he is certain.

Man, seek the author of evil no longer. It is yourself. No evil exists

other than that which you do or suffer, and both come to you from

yourself. General evil can exist only in disorder, and I see in the

system of the world an unfailing order. Particular evil exists only in

383 Emile . E 275. Invocations such as these have led many to associate Rousseau with Deism, the

belief that religious sentiment is inborn and not acquired strictly through revelation or Church

teachings.

384 By contrast, theological “sophisms” are not simply contestable; they lead to debilitating doubt and

actually make it “impossible to recognize the harmony of the beings and the admirable concurrences of

each piece in the preservation of others.” (E 275) This “harmony”—the ordered expression of divine

will—justifies the Vicar’s celebration of humanity: “content with the place in which God has put me, I

see nothing, except for Him, that is better than my species.” As with Pelagius, evidence of man’s

innocence “lies precisely in his being a peculiar, special creature of God.” Robert F. Evans, Pelagius:

Inquiries and Reappraisals . (New York: The Seabury Press, 1968), p. 92. For a discussion of this

“new idealism” (which, along with radical skepticism and humble realism informs Rousseau’s concept

of natural goodness) see: Melzer, p. 26.

385 Emile . E 278.

386 Emile . E 281. (My emphasis.)

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the sentiment of the suffering being, and man did not receive this

sentiment from nature: he gave it to himself. 387

Evil is a corporeal affliction, one that exists only as a finite sentiment. Attributing its

cause (and absolution) to the will of God disserves both the Author and His creation

alike. To do so “is to want Him to do my work while I collect the wages for it. Not

to be contented with my condition is to want no longer to be a man, it is to want

something other than what is, it is to want disorder and evil.” 388 If, as the Vicar

laments, we were only “satisfied to be what we are, we would not have to lament our

fate.” 389 Rather than embrace our divinely-crafted natures we seek “imaginary well-

being,” a process that “give[s] ourselves countless real ills.” An argument familiar to

Rousseau’s readers, the unfettered pursuit of unnatural desires has disastrous

consequences. As the Vicar makes plain, “take away our fatal progress, take away

our errors and our vices, take away the work of man, and everything is good.” 390

A return to God is clearly in order. But if, as the Vicar confides, “the more

effort I make to contemplate His infinite essence, the less I can conceive it,” how

might we commune? 391 Given the limits of reason we must look within. “Let us

return to ourselves,” the Vicar exclaims! “Let us examine, all personal interest aside,

387 Emile . E 282. In stressing the coherence of a general divine order Rousseau again follows

Malebranche.

388 Emile . E 294. Following Pelagius, because our sins are self-inflicted their remission does not

require divine grace. As the Vicar makes plain, “death is the remedy for the evils you do to

yourselves; nature”—and therefore God—“did not want you to suffer forever.” (E 281) Note that this

both precedes and supports Rousseau’s “purgatory” argument from The Confessions .

389 Emile . E 281. As in The Confessions , the Discourses , and the Letter to d’Alembert , man’s desire to

live beyond his natural limits is the source of significant woe.

390 Emile . E 282. Rousseau began Emile with a similar claim: “Everything is good as it leaves the

hands of the Author of things; everything degenerates in the hands of man.” (E 37)

391 Emile . E 286.

127

where our inclinations lead us.” 392 It is this very examination that, as with Rousseau,

leads him to affirm his natural goodness:

All the morality of our actions is in the judgment we ourselves make

of them. If it is true that the good is good, it must be so in the depths

of our hearts as it is in our works… If moral goodness is in

conformity with our nature, man could be healthy of spirit or well

constituted only to the extent that he is good. If it is not and man is

naturally wicked, he cannot cease to be so without being corrupted,

and goodness in him is only a vice contrary to nature. 393

Here is a Pelagian manifesto of notable assertiveness and simplicity. Man is either

good or bad. “If he were made to do harm to his kind, as a wolf is made to slaughter

his prey… virtue would leave us with remorse” because it would contradict our God-

given natures. 394 But it does not. We are gratified by the happiness of others, find

beneficent acts more agreeable than wicked ones, and possess “admiration for heroic

actions” and “raptures of love for great souls.” Furthermore, the Vicar notes,

“[a]mong so many inhuman and bizarre cults, among this prodigious diversity of

morals and characters, you will find everywhere the same ideas of justice and

decency, everywhere the same notions of good and bad.” 395 Such sentiments attest to

an underlying universal order, one to which all men are naturally drawn regardless of

their social differences. As creatures of the same God, we are beholden to the same

divine law. 396

“If one had listened only to what God says to the heart of man,” the Vicar

argues, “there would never have been more than one religion on earth.” 397 Because a

392 Emile . E 287.

393 Emile . E 287.

394 Emile . E 287.

395 Emile . E 288.

396 Emile . E 286.

397 Emile . E 295.

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“just heart is the true temple of the divinity,” one accessible to “every country and

every sect,” the “true duties of religion are independent of the institutions of men.” 398

Specific forms of worship are therefore somewhat arbitrary, based upon

contingencies such as birthplace and familial tradition, but not the embodiment of

exclusive truths. 399 A positive argument for religious tolerance, this also serves as a

renunciation of revelation. “View the spectacle of nature; hear the inner voice,” he

urges. “Has God not told everything to our eyes, to our conscience, to our judgment?

What more will men tell us?” 400 Not only is human testimony superfluous, it is also

demeaning.

[R]evelations have only the effect of degrading God by giving Him

human passions. I see that particular dogmas, far from clarifying the

notions of the great Being, confuse them; that far from ennobling

them, they debase them; that to the inconceivable mysteries

surrounding the great Being they add absurd contradictions; that they

make man proud, intolerant, and cruel; that, instead of establishing

peace on earth, they bring sword and fire to it. I ask myself what good

all this does, without knowing what to answer. I see in it only the

crimes of men and the miseries of mankind. 401

As in The Confessions , man’s meddling only corrupts religion’s spiritual and practical

value. “As soon as peoples took it into their heads to make God speak, each made

Him speak in its own way and made Him say what it wanted.” 402 Reduced to a

reflection of human passions and “absurd contradictions,” God becomes a puppet of

those who arrogantly assume to represent him.

398 Emile . E 311.

399 Nature “made itself respected on earth and seemed to relegate crime, along with the guilty, to

heaven.” Emile . E 288-289. Compare this with the Vicar’s dismissal from E 296: only “a mad

vanity” could convince us “that God takes so great an interest in the form of the priest’s costume, in

the order of the words he pronounces, in the gestures he makes at the altar, and in all his

genuflections.” External worship “is purely a question of public policy” and civil harmony. By

contrast, true piety—“that of the heart”—is nourished internally.

400 Emile . E 295.

401 Emile . E 295.

402 Emile . E 295.

129

The Vicar suggests his provocative creed should only inspire “reasons for

doubt,” and demands that we “seek the truth” for ourselves. This qualification

precedes a condemnation of those who, by contrast, believe “that they alone are

enlightened, true, and of good faith,” and “imperiously subject us to their peremptory

decisions.” 403 It is at this point that we find Rousseau’s most revealing intrusion in

his own voice, in an author’s note. He takes the Vicar’s critique as an opportunity to

air his own grievances, specifically against papists. “Are the people who traffic in

religion those who are religious? All the crimes committed among the clergy, as

elsewhere, do not prove that religion is useless, but that very few people are

religious.” 404 Thus an argument for tolerance ends as an attack against the self-

anointed mediators of God’s will. 405

A claim of innocence that contradicts Catholic orthodoxy; a strike against the

vanity of those who purport to comprehend and represent God; a defense of religious

tolerance and condemnation of fanatical dogmatism. 406 All this coupled with a

forthright accusation against the self-proclaimed faithful who prove “that very few

people are religious.” Should there be any surprise that this work was anathematized?

What began as a skeptical quest to uncover simple answers to complicated questions

unfolds as a renunciation of Original Sin and Catholic authority alike. Rousseau was

403 Emile . E 295, 312. For a extended discussion of this claim see: Ch. 4, “Rousseau as Recluse.”

404 Emile . E 313.

405 This was precisely the line of argumentation Rousseau adopted in The Social Contract ’s discussion

of Civil Religion. Readers should consult Chapter 5 below for a detailed examination.

406 However, in typically paradoxical fashion, Rousseau actually defends fanaticism as preferable to

irreligion: “fanaticism, although more deadly in its immediate effects than what is today called the

philosophic spirit, is much less so in its consequences.” In a tone presaging Nietzsche, Rousseau

laments that “indifference to the good” born of the “philosophic spirit” is the greater of two evils, one

that “quietly saps the true foundations of every society.” Emile . E 312.

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soon held accountable for these heresies and forced, yet again, to defend his

innocence.

* * * * *

Reaction to Emile was unprecedented. As P.-M. Masson notes, it marked the

first time the publicly-sold work of a celebrated author approved by the censor

Malesherbes had elicited such severe reprobation. 407 Rousseau’s critical attitude

towards Catholicism hardly distinguished him from the philosophes of his age, but his

writings lacked their “ordinary hypocrisies” and “irony.” 408 He attacked papal

authority as neither an atheist nor a libertine, but a champion of genuine religious

faith. The resultant scandal was so loud, the refutation so imperious, “que la justice

fut obligée si sévir.” 409 Ruthless it was: on June 7, 1762 Emile was brought before

the general assembly and publicly burned in Paris four days later. On June 19, the

Genevan government burned both Emile and The Social Contract following the

Conclusions du Procureur général . 410 And on July 18, Emile was banned in notably

tolerant Amsterdam. 411

In The Confessions Rousseau professed obliviousness to these impending

storms, although his private correspondence suggests otherwise. 412 He had previously

expressed anxiety over Emile ’s reception in a November 30, 1761 letter to

407 Masson, La Religion de J. J. Rousseau , vol. III, p. 47.

408 Ibid., vol. III, p. 47.

409 Masson, “La profession de foi du Vicaire Savoyard” de Jean-Jacques Rousseau , édition critique .

(Fribourg-Paris, 1914), pp. liii-liv.

410 Conclusions du Procureur général sur deux livres intitulés de Contract Social & de l’Education .

CC XI.A266, pp. 298-301. See also: la Condamnation . CC.A267, pp. 301-302.

411 Les Etats de Hollande et de West-Frise à la Municipalité d’Amsterdam . CC XI.A268, pp. 302-303.

412 See: The Confessions . CW V.481-482; OC 575.

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Malesherbes. 413 And in a May 29, 1762 letter to his publisher Michel Rey, he

described The Social Contract as a work that would be neither “admitted nor tolerated

in France.” 414 Reaction to his political treatise was decidedly more muted, most

threatening to the Genevan Council who viewed it as a radical critique of their own

government 415 yet greeted in France as “one of many abstract books on the

philosophy of law, which, because of its obtuse nature, could not have a great

influence on the public.” 416

Emile , however, received no such reprieve.

Marcel Françon described its censure as an “injustice and cruelty without

equal,” arguing that the charge of blasphemy was a “pretext” obscuring the malicious

machinations of “Voltaire et son clan pour perdre Rousseau.” 417 This was, of course,

the argument Jean-Jacques presented in his autobiography. So convinced was he of

both his own piety and a “Holbachian” plot against him that he reduced Emile ’s

condemnation to an elaborate personal vendetta. 418 Françon’s accord

notwithstanding, Rousseau’s conspiracy theory is at best incomplete: it hardly

acknowledges the unmistakably heretical substance of his condemned work. 419

413 Quoted in Marcel Françon, “La condamnation de ‘l’Émile,’” Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques

Rousseau , Tome 31 (Geneva: A. Jullien, 1946-1949), p. 227.

414 Quoted in Ibid., p. 233.

415 Rousseau’s most elaborate response to the Genevan Council’s condemnation of the Social Contract

is found in his Letters Written From the Mountain .

416 “During the commotion caused by the Emile and the religious ideas that it contained,” Rosenblatt

continues, “the Social Contract had practically been ignored in France.” Helena Rosenblatt, Rousseau

and Geneva , p. 271.

417 Françon, p. 244

418 The Confessions . CW V.482;OC I.576.

419 In its entry on Heresy , the 1957 edition of A Catholic Dictionary makes an apparent concession to

Protestants: “Such Protestants as are in good faith and sincerely desirous of knowing the truth are not

heretics in the formal sense, inasmuch as they do not pertinaciously reject the Church’s teaching.

Their heresy is material only—their tenets are in themselves heretical, but they are not formal heretics:

they do not incur the guilt of heresy.” This conclusion is indebted to Aquinas, for whom the heretic’s

guilt was incurred by willfully contradicting orthodoxy: “certain doctors seem to have differed either in

matters the holding of which in this or that way is of no consequence, so far as faith is concerned, or

even in matters of faith, which were not as yet defined by the Church; although if anyone were

obstinately to deny them after they had been defined by the authority of the universal Church, he

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As we have already seen, the Profession of Faith renounced Original Sin,

Catholic revelation and papal authority alike. Espoused by the Vicar, it nonetheless

developed views Rousseau presented elsewhere in his own voice. This concordance

did not escape his most vociferous critics. As the Archbishop of Paris Christophe de

Beaumont commented, the use of an “assumed character who serves him as

mouthpiece” was a literary sleight-of-hand, the thinly-veiled attempt of an author to

distance himself from what he surely knew were inflammatory paradoxes. By

renouncing Original Sin “through the organ of a chimerical character,” Rousseau was

not simply blasphemous; he was also a coward. 420

More gravely, Beaumont’s Pastoral Letter presents the author of Emile as

living proof that the “ perilous days ” of Saint Paul’s predictions had come to pass. 421

An exemplar “ of corrupt spirit and perverted Faith ,” Rousseau’s disbelief took many

forms: the “light, pleasant, frivolous style” of novels (such as Julie ) aimed at stoking

the imagination, seducing the mind, and corrupting the heart; the feigned “air of

profundity and sublimity” in works like The Second Discourse that pretend “to go

back to the first principles of our knowledge… in order to shake off a yoke that,

according to it, dishonors humanity, even the Divinity”; “enraged” attacks “against

Religion’s zeal,” and misguided defenses of “universal tolerance.” Sometimes,

Beaumont concludes, disbelief unites

all these diverse languages, it mixes the serious with playfulness, pure

maxims with obscenities, great truths with great errors, Faith with

blasphemy; it undertakes, in a word, to harmonize light with shadows,

would be deemed a heretic.” ( Summa Theologica , 2.2.11) Although Rousseau claimed to be in good

faith, he clearly rejected Catholic orthodoxy; his heresy was therefore more than merely “material,”

and indisputable even by these relatively generous standards.

420 Pastoral Letter of His Grace the Archbishop of Paris . CW IX.8.

421 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.3. Beaumont’s Biblical reference is to 2 Timothy 3:1-4, 8.

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Jesus Christ with Belial. And such is especially, My Very Dear

Brethren, the object that appears to have been proposed in a recent

Work, which has as its title Emile , or on Education . 422

Emile was a perverse amalgam, a paradoxical pairing of God and Satan that paraded

purity as obscenity, error as truth, heterodoxy as faith. It was also woefully

impractical, proposing “a plan of education that, far from agreeing with Christianity,

is not even suited to making Citizens or Men.” 423 Rousseau spoke in “contradictory

language,” ignored empirical evidence (“an infinite number of facts, even prior to that

of Christian Revelation, that it would be absurd to doubt”), 424 and exhibited “glaring

bad faith.” 425 He slandered the papacy (“in clouds, he cunningly imputes to us

dealings that dishonor reason”), 426 Catholics (as evidenced by the “revolting…

language he puts into the mouth of a supposed Catholic,” the Vicar), and monarchs

(“Kings who are the images of God”). 427

In short, Rousseau posed a theological and political threat. A heretic who

took “pleasure in poisoning the sources of public felicity, by inspiring maxims that

tend only to produce anarchy and all the calamities that follow from it,” 428 he

undermined both Church and state. These ruling bodies were intimately linked and

literally above reproach, their authority synonymous with that of Christ Himself, the

“one through whom Kings reign .” 429 Because “ there is no Power that does not come

422 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.3.

423 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.4.

424 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.9-10.

425 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.12. Beaumont repeats his charge of “bad faith” on pp. 10 & 13.

426 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.10.

427 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.13.

428 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.14.

429 “The constitution of Christianity, the Spirit of the Gospel, even the errors and the weakness of the

human mind lead to the demonstration that the Church established by Jesus Christ is an infallible

Church.” Pastoral Letter . CW IX.13. Beaumont’s Biblical reference is to Proverbs 8:15.

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from God ,” 430 Beaumont argued, anyone who “ resists the Powers resists the order of

God .” As with Adam, such offenders “ draw damnation upon themselves .” 431

Rousseau was therefore guilty on two counts. As an author, he refused to submit to

this “Doctrine of a Book that cannot have been invented by men.” 432 And as a human

being, he carried the legacy of “the deplorable fall of our first Father,” the “striking

mixture of greatness and baseness, of zeal for truth and taste for error, of inclination

to virtue and penchant to vice” that defines our very nature. 433

According to Beaumont, only a “delicate and laborious” Christian education

might uproot, “as much as possible, those vicious inclinations that are the sad effects

of our hereditary corruption.” 434 In rejecting Original Sin, Rousseau disagreed.

Because corruption was self-inflicted, healing began by first embracing our natures;

the Catholic Church actually impeded convalescence by preaching that sin was

intrinsic. 435 The Archbishop bristled at this “erroneous, impious, blasphemous, and

heretical” suggestion. 436 By renouncing orthodox precepts as unnecessary to

salvation, Beaumont concluded that Jean-Jacques had sealed his own eternal fate.

430 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.14. Beaumont’s Biblical reference is to Peter 2:17 which teaches us to

“ Fear god , respect the King .”

431 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.14. Beaumont’s Biblical reference is to Romans 13:1-2.

432 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.11-12.

433 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.4-5. If Adam’s legacy imparts any lesson it is “ to live in this world with

temperance according to justice and with piety, while waiting for the beatitude for which we hope !”

(15) Beaumont’s Biblical reference is to Titus 2:12-13. For Paul’s pedagogy, see also 2 Timothy 4:1-2.

434 Pastoral Letter . CW IX.14-15.

435 As Beaumont warns: “Woe to you, woe to society, if your children were brought up in accordance

with the principles of the Author of Emile ! Just as there is nothing but religion that has taught us to

know man, his greatness, his misery, his future destiny, it also belongs to it alone to form his reason, to

perfect his morals, to procure for him a solid happiness in this life and in the other.” Pastoral Letter .

CW IX.14.

436 Beaumont’s final ruling reads very much like the Parlement’s court order: “We condemn the said

Book [ Emile ] as contained an abominable doctrine, suited to overturning natural Law and to destroying

the foundations of the Christian Religion; establishing maxims contrary to Evangelical Morality;

tending to disturb the peace of States, to stir up Subjects against the authority of their Sovereign; as

containing a very great number of propositions respectively false, scandalous, full of hatred against the

Church and its Ministers, departing from the respect due to Sacred Scripture and the Tradition of the

135

As Rousseau’s response made clear, he did not take such damning lightly.

His retort—the November 18, 1762 Letter to Beaumont —opened, provocatively

enough, with a quote from Augustine: “Pardon me if I have spoken too freely—it was

not to dishonor you, but to defend myself. I have relied on your seriousness and

prudence, because you can measure how great [a] necessity you imposed on me of

answering you.” 437 If Rousseau felt forced to respond he did so with great verve,

issuing a rebuttal more than four times the length of the Pastoral Letter . He began

his passionate defense by recalling the facts that led to his censure:

A Genevan has a Book printed in Holland, 438 and by degree of the

Parlement of Paris this Book is burned without regard for the

Sovereign whose authorization it bears. A Protestant poses objections

to the Roman Church in a Protestant country, and a warrant is issued

against him by the Parlement of Paris. A Republican states objections

against the monarchic State in a Republic, and a warrant is issued

against him by the Parlement of Paris. The Parlement of Paris must

have strange ideas about its dominion and believe itself the legitimate

judge of the human race. 439

In one terse paragraph, Rousseau defends his legal rights, suggests a violation of

sovereign jurisdiction, 440 and attributes this abuse to an unholy alliance between

Church, erroneous, impious, blasphemous, and heretical. In consequence We very expressly forbid all

people of our Diocese to read or possess said Book, under penalty of law.” Pastoral Letter . CW

IX.16.

437 The lines Rousseau uses as his dedicatory epistle to the Letter to Beaumont are taken from

Augustine’s Epistle 238 . This was the first of two letters written to Pascentius, an Arian count and tax-

collector known for his vocal attacks against Catholicism and the “energetic” (read: greedy) execution

of his office. Following a public debate with Augustine that he claimed to have won (although he

presented little in the way of argument save personal opinion), Pascentius ignored further

correspondence from Augustine. The context of this letter makes its invocation all the more

inflammatory. Not only did Rousseau appropriate Beaumont’s most beloved theologian, he has

usurped a letter written against a heretic. Note also that the preceding line—“truth must necessarily

prevail, whether we deny it or admit it”—expresses a markedly Rousseauist faith in the righteousness

of truth against the delusion of opinion. Saint Augustine: Letters , Volume V (204-270) , Sister Wilfrid

Parsons, tr. (New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1956), p. 209.

438 This was the only version authorized by Rousseau for printing. Françon, p. 234.

439 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.23; OC IV.929.

440 As we will discuss in Chapter 5, this jurisdictional boundary was crucial to Rousseau’s Civil

Religion as well.

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Church and state. He raises issues of discrimination and tolerance, legitimate

authority, and the rights individuals possess in relation to unjust institutions. And he

concludes that Catholic, monarchal Parisian authorities possessed neither the legal,

political nor moral authority to censure a work printed with the permission of the

Holland government and written by a Protestant, republican Genevan. 441 But they did

and, as with the comb incident, the fate of the free world seemed to hinge on their

ruling. “I do not know how this fits with international law, but I know very well that,

with such procedures, every man’s freedom and perhaps his life is at the mercy of the

first Printer.” 442

Although the implications of this case extend far beyond Jean-Jacques

himself, Rousseau cannot help but lament his own particular fate. Having taken up

his pen “only for the good of my fellows,” his reward was the encroachment of

bailiffs and an arrest warrant. At a time “when I hoped that my life’s troubles were

about to end,” he rues, “my greatest misfortunes began.” 443 This was not the first

moment Rousseau described as his life’s worst, 444 but we may here allow him his

histrionics. For once, he was not exaggerating.

The censure of Emile indeed marked new heights of persecution, and it was

due in large part to the Profession of Faith . Yet rather than defend this work as his

own, he initially attempted to absolve himself of responsibility. Rousseau was the

441 As Rousseau had written in an earlier draft, “I admit to you that it is not without surprise that I see

myself summoned in some manner before you, and that I would not have understood very well on what

grounds J.J. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva, would have been accountable for his writings to a catholic

Prelate.” Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 5). CW IX.86; OC IV.1012.

442 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.23; OC IV.929.

443 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.22; OC IV.929.

444 In addition to the comb incident, Rousseau rued his epiphany en route to Vincennes, his fame as an

author, various plots hatched by his enemies, and his stay with Hume in England (to cite just a few

examples).

137

self-proclaimed “editor” ( not the author) of the Vicar’s sermon. In a fragment

entitled On Proceedings against Writers , he was the hapless victim held accountable

simply because “I put my name at the head of the book.” 445 And in dissociative

language, he argued that “one cannot… impute [the Vicar’s] sentiments to him [the

editor] unless he has expressly adopted them.” 446 This initial strategy seems facile, if

not downright specious. After all, Rousseau never refers to himself as an “editor” in

Emile itself; all but two of his major works bore his name; and if he did not

“expressly” adopt the Vicar’s soliloquy as his own, he presents it as the thoughts of “a

man more worthy than [himself].” 447

Most significantly, however, Rousseau’s self-distancing collapses within the

Letter to Beaumont itself, which on no uncertain terms reiterates the controversial

core of the Vicar’s creed: man’s natural innocence. As Rousseau soon points out, this

Pelagian faith unites his entire oeuvres :

The fundamental principle of all morality about which I have reasoned

in all my Writings and developed in this last one with all the clarity of

which I was capable, is that man is a naturally good being , loving

justice and order; that there is no original perversity in the human

heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right. 448

445 On Proceedings Against Writers . CW IX.100; OC IV.1029. Readers should note that anti-papal

works were almost always published anonymously in the eighteenth century. Rousseau’s openness

both underscored his courage as an author (despite Beaumont’s charge to the contrary), and suggested

a tacit critique of philosophes such as Voltaire, Helvétius, and Holbach whose controversial writings

on religion never bore their names.

446 On Proceedings Against Writers . CW IX.100; OC IV.1029.

447 Emile . E 260.

448 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.28; OC IV.935-936. (My emphasis.) As Rousseau continues: “I have

shown that the only passion born with man, namely amour de soi , is a passion in itself indifferent to

good and evil; that it becomes good or bad only by accident and depending on the circumstances in

which it develops. I have shown that all the vices imputed to the human heart are not natural to it; I

have stated the manner in which they are born. I have followed their genealogy, so to speak, and I

have shown how, through continuous deterioration of their original goodness, men finally become

what they are.” This reiterates what Rousseau makes explicit in Emile (E 92) and the Second

Discourse (CW III.36-38; OC III.155-157). Note that “ amour de soi ” reflects the corrected version of

the “manifestly false” original edition which read “ amour-propre .” OC IV.1734 (936a).

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His courage raised, Rousseau proceeds to interrogate his Catholic rival. “You say we

are sinners because of our first father’s sin,” he continues. “But why was our first

father himself a sinner?” 449 At loss for a coherent explanation 450 he concludes that

Adam’s transgression “seems to me less a true prohibition than paternal advice. It is

a warning to abstain from a pernicious fruit that brings death.” This account is

“surely more consistent with the idea one should have of God’s goodness.” 451

Still, Rousseau is not content to merely challenge the myth of hereditary guilt.

He compounds his heresy by trivializing the gravity of Adam’s fatal choice.

There is… such a natural motive of indulgence and commiseration in

the tempter’s ruse and in the woman’s seduction 452 that, considering

Adam’s sin in all its circumstances, it can be found to be only the

slightest of faults. Yet according to them, what a fearful punishment!

It is even impossible to conceive of a more terrible one. For what

other castigation could Adam have sustained for the greatest crimes 453

449 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.30; OC IV.939.

450 This assumption is inadequate for three reasons: it follows faulty logic (“Why wouldn’t the same

reason by which you explain his sin apply to his descendants without original sin”?); disserves God (to

whom “we impute an injustice… by making ourselves sinners and punishable because of the vice of

our birth”); and rests upon a circular argument (explaining “everything except its own principle”). By

contrast, Rousseau “illumines even the fault of the first man.” But “the only thing [Beaumont] can see

is man in the hands of the Devil, while I see how he fell into them. The cause of evil, according to

you, is corrupted nature, and this corruption itself is an evil whose cause had to be sought. Man was

created good. We both agree on that, I believe. But you say he is wicked because he was wicked.

And I show how he was wicked.” Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.30-31; OC IV.939-940.

451 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.31; OC IV.940. Rousseau also makes a philological argument, noting

that “as for the menace of double death, it has been shown that this term morte morieris does not have

the emphasis they give it and is merely a Hebraic turn of phrase used in other places where this

emphasis cannot apply.” Theologians, in other words, are quick to distort the message of the Old

Testament. This reference is to Genesis 2:17 (“of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall

not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die”). For examples of the diverse usage of morte

morieris see: Genesis 20:7; Samuel 14:44, 22:16; 2 Kings 1:4, 6, 16; and Ezekiel 3:18, 33:8, 14.

452 This view of women as “tempters” and men as helpless victims, while not inconsistent with

Rousseau’s broader sentiment of victimization, is the understandable source of debate. For critiques of

his stance particularly as developed in Emile , see: Lynda Lange, “Rousseau and Modern Feminism”;

Leah Bradshaw, “Rousseau on Civic Virtue, Male Autonomy, and the Construction of the Divided

Female”; Linda Zerilli, “‘Une Maîtresse Impérieuse’: Women in Rousseau’s Semiotic Republic”; and

Rebecca Kukla, “The Coupling of Human Souls: Rousseau and the Problem of Gender Relations” in

Feminist Interpretations of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Lange, ed. (University Park, PA: The

Pennsylvania State University Press, 2002).

453 An earlier draft of this sentence reads: “But do you consider that the more you extenuate the fault

the more cruel you render the punishment, for what more terrible punishment could Adam have borne

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other than being condemned to death, himself and all his race, in this

world and to spend eternity in the other one consumed by the fires of

hell? Is that the penalty imposed by the God of mercy on a poor

wretch for letting himself be fooled? 454

Adam was just a man, one “fooled” by the opposite sex. This was a vulnerability

with which Rousseau clearly identified and, as The Confessions detail, one to which

he frequently succumbed. To condemn Adam for falling to this temptation was to

admit his own culpability. Yet because this weakness is instinctual, it is a desire

instilled in us by God, rather than an affront to His order. 455 Guilt is instead ascribed

to those who bitterly damn man for simply adhering to his nature. “How I hate the

disheartening doctrine of our harsh Theologians,” Rousseau decries! “If I were

tempted for a moment to acknowledge it, that is when I would believe I were

blaspheming.” 456

But he did not. He insisted upon his piety, finally summoning the confidence

to defend the Profession directly. We learn that the Vicar’s creed is composed of two

sections. “The first part, which is the longer, the more important, the more filled with

striking and new truths, is intended to combat modern materialism, to establish the

existence of God and natural Religion with all the force of which the Author is

capable.” 457 This is the Vicar’s ode to God and rebuttal to philosophic atheism.

Although the second part, “very much shorter, less regular, and less thorough, raises

for the greatest crimes…” The phrase “could Adam have borne” replaced “could God have inflicted.”

Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 5). CW IX.89; OC IV.1016, 1758 (1016b).

454 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.31; OC IV.940.

455 As Rousseau writes in Emile , “Our passions are the principal instruments of our preservation. It is,

therefore, an enterprise as vain as it is ridiculous to want to destroy them—it is to control nature, it is it

is to reform the work of God. If God were to tell men to annihilate the passions which He gives him,

God would will and not will; He would contradict himself. Never did He give this senseless order.

Nothing of the kind is written in the human heart.” E 212. Compare with E 445-446.

456 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.31; OC IV.940.

457 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.75; OC IV.996.

140

doubts and difficulties about revelations in general,” it does so purposefully “to make

each more circumspect from within his own Religion about accusing others of bad

faith within theirs, and to show that the proofs of each one are not so conclusive to all

eyes that those who do not see them with the same clarity as we do must be treated as

guilty people.” 458

The Profession is therefore above reproach: it pays deference to the Creator;

addresses only what is “truly essential to Religion”; arrives at these powerful truths

by confronting the Vicar’s “objections, his difficulties, his doubts”; is supported by

appeals to both conscience and reason; teaches circumspection; and uncovers

certainty only “about essential dogmas,” maintaining “a respectful skepticism about

the others.” 459 This was Rousseau’s recipe for cultivating true faith, a sentiment

nourished in the heart, not pressed upon the will or convoluted in the mind. If these

views were heretical, he maintained that they were not irreligious. Rather, he argued,

Catholic orthodoxy—not the Vicar—was guilty of disserving God.

If such ideas shocked Beaumont, Rousseau insisted that they could be found

in all his works. “I have written on various subjects, but always with the same

principles: always the same morality, the same belief, the same maxims, and if you

will the same opinions. Yet,” he laments, “contradictory judgments about my books,

or rather, about the Author of my books, have been made.” 460 Following the First

Discourse , he was labeled a man of paradoxes; after his Letter on French Music , he

became “the avowed enemy of the nation.” The Second Discourse changed his

reputation to that of “an atheist and a misanthrope,” the Letter to d’Alembert

458 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.75; OC IV.996-997.

459 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.75-76; OC IV.996-997.

460 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.22; OC IV.928.

141

presented him as “the defender of Christian morality,” and Julie was considered

“tender and mawkish.” 461 The inconsistency of his audience is clearly a point of

contention:

the foolish public vacillates about me, knowing as little why it detests

me as why it liked me before. As for myself, I have always remained

the same: more ardent than enlightened in my quests, but sincere in

everything, even against myself; simple and good, but sensitive and

weak, often doing evil and always loving the good… demanding

nothing of men and not wishing to depend on them, yielding no more

to their prejudices than to their wills and keeping my own as free as

my reason; fearing God without being afraid of hell, reasoning about

Religion without libertinism, liking neither impiety nor fanaticism; but

hating intolerant people even more than freethinkers. 462

Here, then, is Rousseau as he sees himself: sincere in an insincere world; asking little

and giving much; a seeker of truth loathed by dogmatists and their gullible subjects;

loving God without bitterness; hating intolerance (especially when directed towards

him) and artifice. An innocent man condemned, he wanted only to reveal himself to

the public, “to hide my ways of thinking from no one, without pretense, without

artifice in all things, telling my faults to my friends, my sentiments to all the world,

and, to the public, the truths that concern it.” 463

In the end this confession reads very much like his autobiography, and

culminates in an equally confrontational conclusion. “Such are my crimes, and such

are my virtues,” Jean-Jacques declares; readers are again pressed to judge. Still, he

461 Rousseau adds: “Now [following Emile ] I am impious. Soon perhaps I will be devout.” Letter to

Beaumont . CW IX.22; OC IV.928.

462 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.22; OC IV.928-929.

463 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.22; OC IV.929.

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seemed ill-equipped to handle a negative ruling, particularly the vilification of

Emile . 464

My Discourse on Inequality circulated throughout your Diocese, and

you did not write a Pastoral Letter. The New Heloise circulated

throughout your diocese and you did not write a Pastoral Letter. Yet

all these Books, which you have read, since you judge them, are

imbued with the same maxims. The same modes of thought are not

more disguised in them. If the subject was not suited to developing

them to the same extent… the Author’s profession of faith is found

expressed there with less reserve than that of the Savoyard Vicar. 465

This is especially true of Julie , whose heroine’s dying soliloquy reads like a

condensed Profession . 466 Yet unlike the virtuous matriarch’s fictional speech (or

even the speculative history of the Second Discourse ), the Vicar’s sermon stands as

the moral core of a pedagogical treatise. Delivered as a lesson for its audience to

absorb by no less than a Catholic cleric, this heretical teaching was not easily

dismissed.

Although Rousseau claimed all his writings exposed “my sentiments in

matters of Religion… as they have always been in my mouth and in my heart,” he

himself felt Emile was different. 467 As he confessed to Beaumont, “I will always

consider [ The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar ] the best and most useful

464 At one point he insists that Beaumont was politically motivated and would not have attacked him

“if my Book had not been denounced in Parlement.” Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.26; OC IV.933.

465 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.26; OC IV.933. Rousseau repeats this claim in The Confessions :

“Everything that is bold in The Social Contract was previously in the Discourse on Inequality ;

everything that was bold in Emile was previously in Julie.” CW V.342; OC I.407.

466 La Nouvelle Héloïse appeared to applause although “the profession of faith of that very Héloïse is

exactly the same as that of the Savoyard Vicar.” The Confessions . OC V.342; OC I.407. Rousseau

also argued that his Profession of Faith was a reiteration of Julie’s dying soliloquy: “In Emile one finds

the profession of faith of a Catholic Priest, and in Heloise that of a pious woman: These two Pieces are

sufficiently in accord that one can explain one of them by the other.” Letters Written From the

Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.139; OC III.694. The novel itself justifies these claims. See: Julie ,

Part VI, Letter XI, esp. pp. 584-590. See also Part VI, Letter XII on Julie’s “confession without

shame” of her love for Saint Preux. She is innocent of this indiscretion because she upheld her duty as

a wife and matriarch, even though her will could not alter her heart. CW VI.608-609; OC II.740-741.

467 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.46; OC IV.960.

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Writing in the century during which I published it,” an estimation that “neither the

stake nor arrest warrants” might change. 468 The Vicar taught a Christian morality

essential to man’s well-being, one that emphasized our natural, divinely-scribed

potential (universally applicable to creations of the same God) rather than artificial

sectarian difference. No matter the pressure placed upon Rousseau by papists or

philosophes , he refused to abandon this conviction. “In ordering me to be humble,

the Theologians will not make me false; and in taxing me with hypocrisy, the

philosophers will not make me profess unbelief. I shall speak of my Religion,

because I have one, and I shall speak of it loudly because I have the courage to do so

and because it would be desirable for the good of men if it were that of the human

race.” 469

Attacked by atheists and Ecclesiasts alike, Rousseau maintained a belief in his

own piety. As he pled to Beaumont, “Your Grace, I am Christian, and sincerely

Christian, according to the doctrine of the Gospel.” 470 But his faith carried a crucial

caveat: “I am Christian not as a disciple of the Priests, but as a disciple of Jesus

Christ. 471 My Master quibbled little over dogma and insisted much on duties.”

Foremost amongst these duties is brotherly love: “whoever loves God above all things

468 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.46-47; OC IV.960.

469 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.47; OC IV.960.

470 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.47; OC IV.960. Rousseau repeats and expands this claim (“I declare

myself Christian”) in Letters Written From the Mountain (Third Letter). CW IX.168; OC III.729.

471 By “Christian” Rousseau clearly means “Protestant” and not “Catholic.” As explained to

Beaumont, “fortunate to be born into the most reasonable and holy Religion on earth, I remain

inviolably attached to the worship of my Fathers. Like them, I take Scripture and reason for the unique

rules of my belief. Like them, I challenge the authority of men and agree to submit to their formulas

only to the extent I perceive their truth. Like them, I join in my heart with the true servants of Jesus

Christ and the true adorers of God, to offer him the homages of his Church in the communion of the

faithful.” CW IX.47; OC IV.960.

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and his neighbor as himself is a true Christian.” 472 Because it “seems certain” that

“man is made for society, the truest Religion is also the most social and the most

humane.” 473 Still, Rousseau admitted that empirical evidence hardly confirmed his

conclusion. His peculiar faith was “subject to great difficulties from the historical

account and the facts that contradict it.” Despite insisting that religion benefited

society, Jews (they “began their establishment by destroying seven nations”),

Christians (“all… have had wars of Religion”), and the celibate demonstrated that

religious practice often disserves man’s best interests. 474

Rather than discourage him, this harsh reality only affirmed his belief in the

value of the Vicar’s sermon. To bridge the gap between how things are and how they

should be, we must maintain faith in man’s innocence despite overwhelming evidence

to the contrary. The Vicar provides such hope amidst despair because, like God

Himself, he speaks directly to the heart independently of both mind and will. 475

Unlike papal dogma, he convinces without coercion. And unlike atheism, he raises

doubts, dissentions, and objections to human religion without abandoning God. This

is why “every man who believes in God, of whatever religion he might be, will never

read the profession of the Savoyard vicar without being moved by it.” 476 No matter

what others claimed, this creed offered a genuinely beneficial faith to denatured

individuals desperately in need of guidance from their benevolent, omnipotent

Creator.

472 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.47; OC IV.960. Citing Matthew 7:12 and Galatians 5:14, Rousseau

reminds us that when Christ “summed up the Law and the Prophets, it was more in acts of virtue than

in formulas of belief, and he told me himself and through his Apostles that the person who loves his

brother has fulfilled the Law.”

473 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.54; OC IV.969.

474 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.54-55; OC IV.970.

475 Julie . CW VI.609; OC II.741.

476 Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 14). CW IX.98; OC IV.1026.

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* * * * *

The Vicar’s profession ends as it began, with a declaration of love of the truth.

Its pursuit is our principal duty on earth, he concludes, one to uphold no matter the

costs. “Whether they love you or hate you, whether they read or despise your

writings, it does not matter; speak the truth; do the good.” 477 Taking this love “as my

whole philosophy,” he wonders where is “the philosopher who would not gladly

deceive mankind for his own glory? Where is the one who in the secrecy of his heart

sets himself any other goal than that of distinguishing himself?” 478 By his own

account, Rousseau himself. In adopting Juvenal’s lines as his motto, he had dedicated

his life to this very aim. 479

Less well known is an earlier maxim that graced only two of his published

writings. Taken from Ovid’s Tristia , it first appears in the closing of a January 17,

1742 correspondence to François-Joseph de Conzié: “Here it is that I am a barbarian,

understood by nobody.” 480 In this letter the quote is used quite literally: Jean-Jacques

hopes the comte will “take his frankness in the meaning in which it is offered,” not to

offend but as the honest testimony of an oft-misread man “who speaks from

477 Emile . E 313.

478 Emile . E 269.

479 See: Juvenal, The Satires , IV.89-91. Rousseau mentions this motto in Emile (E 206), Letter to

d’Alembert , the epigraph to Letters Written From the Mountain , and The Reveries of the Solitary

Walker (Fourth Promenade).

480 Rousseau à François-Joseph de Conzié , comte des Charmettes , January 17, 1742. CC I.43.139.

Translation from Tristia V.x.36 taken from Ovid, Volume VI , Arthur Leslie Wheeler, tr. (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 249. In the letter, Rousseau adds line 37 (“the Gatae laugh

stupidly at Latin words”) which does not appear in the dedicatory epistles to the First Discourse and

Dialogues .

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experience.” 481 As with falsely impugned guilt Rousseau abhorred misunderstanding,

particularly of his forthright oeuvre . Expecting that his age would identify within

them “the heart of a good man,” he encountered only scorn. “The people hate me, I

know it, but that is not their fault; this hatred is again the work of its tyrants; it is not

me that it hates, it is what it has been told I was.” 482

Rousseau’s paranoia is, however, misleading. The people did not hate him: he

was acclaimed throughout Europe, Julie was the century’s bestselling novel, and he

received an inordinate amount of fan mail from readers who felt personally touched

by his passionate works. 483 Even more striking than the inaccuracy of Rousseau’s

assessment is the helplessness he attributes to his peers. They are easily manipulated

by “tyrants,” cruel, “self-interested and jealous men” like the papists, philosophers

and Parlement officials who used pastoral letters, stakes and warrants to “disturb and

deceive.” Even as he trusted les peuples to read his heart, he seemed convinced of

their incapacity to do so. Yet like himself they were innocent victims subject to the

wicked machinations of forces beyond their control, and therefore not to blame.

Awash in discouragement, Rousseau looked for redemption in a possible

future. 484 One day his enemies’ “outcries will finally end and my writings will

481 CC I.43.139. When Ovid’s quote appears again (as the dedicatory epistle of the First Discourse ), it

raises a striking paradox: Rousseau initiated his literary career by attacking the arts, and used as his

dedication the words of a misunderstood poet. Puffendorf also quotes the same verse in his Right of

Nature and of Nations (IV.I.vi) when discussing the origin of languages.

482 Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 12). CW IX.94; OC IV.1021-1022.

483 See: Darnton, “Readers Respond to Rousseau: The Fabrication of Romantic Sensitivity”; The

Forbidden Best-Sellers of Pre-Revolutionary France .

484 “One day perhaps what is the shame of my century will be its glory, and those who will read my

book [ Emile ] will say with admiration: How angelic those times must have been in which a book like

that was regarded as impious, doubtless then all writings breathed the most sublime devoutness and the

earth was covered with nothing but saints.” Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 14). CW IX.98; OC

IV.1026. Dripping with sarcasm, this claim prepares us for the opening to The Confessions in which

Rousseau suggests to his audience that they were certainly no better than he. Note that in the final

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remain to [their] shame.” Only then would he be avenged by “less prejudiced

Christians” who might recognize the concord, charity, and “morality of their divine

master” imbued in his ideas. 485 In so casting his gaze, Rousseau looked as he often

did, in different directions—towards a better future while dwelling on a disappointing

past. Possible redemption offered some solace, and he was willing to sacrifice his

present happiness to serve a higher good. 486 This sense of martyrdom placed him in

the shadows of Jesus and Socrates. “They crucified my master and gave hemlock to a

man who was worth more than I,” Rousseau confides. 487 If he was not their equal he

nonetheless felt their burden. Preaching truths to a vengeful, intolerant society, he

assumed history would treat his paradoxes as kindly as it did those of his forebears.

Only then would “the glory to which I laid claim” be recognized. 488

If such faith seems irreconcilable with his acute doubt, we must remember

that Rousseau never conflated natural goodness with incorruptibility. Far from it, the

Vicar notes, “the fact that I act in good faith does not mean I believe myself

infallible.” 489 Nor did Jean-Jacques. As his own testimony proves, he was a man of

many flaws, one who (despite insistence otherwise) occasionally acted in bad faith.

He simply did not take his errancy as proof of irredeemable guilt. Rather, to

printed version, he removes an explicit mention of the Vicar’s faith. Compare with: Letter to

Beaumont . CW IX.60; OC IV.984-985.

485 Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 12). CW IX.94; OC IV.1021.

486 “I said to myself, oh what good would be done for men by the one who would tell them the truth

without disguise, without fear, without satire and without flattery, the one who, uprooting their base

prejudices, would dry up the source of their miseries, the one who would make them see that they are

wicked only because they are dupes, and unhappy only because they are foolish, the one who would

teach them that they are made to be happy and good and what they have to do to be so… I have tried to

be that man; at least I dared to be him, and what is most difficult in this enterprise is courage.” Letter

to Beaumont (Fragment 10). CW IX.91-92; OC IV.1018-1019.

487 Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 5). CW IX.89; OC IV.1016.

488 Rousseau describes this “glory” as “a sincere desire to be useful and true, disinterestedness, and

good faith.” His faith is evidenced by both his dedication to public welfare and his non-partisanship.

Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 10). CW IX.92; OC IV.1019.

489 Emile . E 294.

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Rousseau and society alike, lapses merely reiterated the need for positive guidance.

“As I justly distrust myself,” the Vicar divulges, “the only thing that I ask of [God],

or rather that I expect of His justice, is to correct my error if I am led astray and if this

error is dangerous to me.” Yet if the strength to stay a steady course fails, “of what

can I be guilty? It is up to the truth to come nearer.” 490

This, finally, was Rousseau’s objective: to bring the truth nearer. This is what

drove him to explain how we had fallen from our natural state; how everything

degenerates in human hands; why man was/is 491 born free, yet everywhere in chains;

why divine guidance was both accessible and necessary; where society erred, and

how individuals might still be redeemed by rekindling the divine sentiment within us.

Yet how can we be both free and in chains? Inherently good and authors of sin?

Deeply innocent yet demonstrably guilty? Ruled by dogmatists if God’s order is so

evident and compelling? Paradoxes such as these have beguiled readers for more

than two hundred years; are they only now resolvable, much less pardonable?

If we approach Rousseau’s paradoxes not as contradictions demanding

definitive resolutions, but as antinomies intrinsic to the human condition, they might

yet serve a practical purpose: stoking our courage and desire to change a world itself

characterized by vicious contradictions, without letting us lapse into cynical apathy.

After all, Rousseau himself believed that his combined expression of acute discomfort

and unbounded faith was a necessary catalyst for reform. Still, we need not rush to

judgment. Before assessing the coherence and practical utility of his dissonant vision,

490 Emile . E 294.

491 The original sentence—“L’homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers”—is ambiguous. In

French, it can refer to both a past and present condition: man either “was” or “is” born free. The Social

Contract . OC III.351. For a discussion of the implications of each translation see CW IV.xiii.

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we might first turn to another theme that illustrates the confluence of religious and

secular traditions so crucial to his work: reclusiveness.

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Chapter 4: The Reluctant Recluse

A truly happy being is a solitary being. God alone enjoys an absolute happiness. But

who among us has the idea of it?

—Rousseau, Emile 492

Il n' y a que le méchant qui soit seul.

—Diderot, Le fils naturel , Act IV, Scene III. 493

As with innocence, reclusiveness is a theme prominent within Rousseau’s life

and works, and one that illustrates his peculiar incorporation of Christian and Pagan

traditions. 494 In praising solitude, Rousseau (in)famously distanced himself from his

peers, stressing his uniqueness while levying stark critiques upon the society of his

contemporaries’ making. He championed the virtues of Geneva as an expatriate in

France, and waxed eloquent on mankind’s natural state of ignorant, innocent

isolation. What began as a largely theoretical enterprise—a public figure’s praise of

isolation and withdrawal—took a highly politicized turn towards the literal.

Following the publication of his most controversial work— Emile , and its chapter The

Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar —Rousseau was exiled, forced into the very

seclusion he had for so long argued was an antidote to corrupting social relations.

492 Emile . E 221.

493 “Only the wicked are alone.” Diderot, Œuvres , Tome IV , p. 1113.

494 The etymology of the word “recluse” confirms its religious overtones. According to the Oxford

English Dictionary , “recluse” refers to persons “secluded from society, especially as a religious

discipline.” A recluses can describe either “[a] person shut up from the world for the purpose of

religious meditation” (such as monks or hermits), or someone “who lives a retired life, one who mixes

little with society.”

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If Rousseau is far more religious than is commonly held, his religiosity is

nonetheless qualified by a concurrent commitment to temporal aims and secular

values. This phenomenon is particularly evident in his appropriation of Christian and

Pagan models of withdrawal. To support this claim, I will examine Rousseau’s

evolution as a recluse from the demonstrative self-distancing of his early career, to a

more mature incorporation of isolation into a model of civic education, to his final,

literal retreat from Montmorency following the censure of Emile and The Social

Contract .

Despite its many guises, the theme of reclusiveness remained central to

Rousseau’s thought. He was, in practice if not by design, 495 a consummate outsider.

This applies in three senses of the word. First, figuratively , as “[o]ne who is outside

any enclosure, barrier, or boundary.” 496 Second, practically , as “[a] person who is

isolated from or does not ‘fit’ into conventional society either through choice or on

account of some social, intellectual, etc., reason.” 497 And third, literally , as “[o]ne

whose position is on the outside of some group or series,” “a non-member.” 498

Throughout his works, Rousseau reminds us that he was “not made like any

[other] that exist.” 499 A “natural” individual in a denatured society, an honest author

at odds with his vain philosophical peers, and a truly pious believer deeply critical of

495 The self-consciousness with which Rousseau pursued his highly unfashionable claim to the truth

supports the argument that his solitude was in fact calculated from the outset. Numerous examples in

his early writings stress the fact that he understood and accepted the alienating consequences of his

political philosophy. At the same time, Rousseau can be read as a highly unaccountable author, a

phenomenon discussed at great length by Jean Starobinski as evidence of his passivity and propensity

towards personal deflection. In this sense, Rousseau’s solitude may be read as the consequence of

forces beyond his control, a description particularly suited to his discussion of his flight from

Montmorency in The Confessions .

496 The Oxford English Dictionary , Sense 1A.

497 Ibid., Sense 1C.

498 Ibid., Sense 2 and 1A.

499 The Confessions . CW V.5; OC I.5.

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the Catholic church, these distinctions established his unabashed uniqueness. He was

also a man of unbounded temperament: the force of his writings, the frequency of his

fractured relationships, and his willingness to adopt unfashionable stances—to attack,

for example, both atheists and papists alike—testify to this fierce independence.

Rousseau’s resistance to assimilate was the result of choices made, but ones

over which he professes to have had very little control. 500 The reasons were in part

social. He was born to a petty bourgeois family and identified himself with the

common man; he abhorred the vacuous privileges of the upper class and the hierarchy

of European social castes; he abandoned fashionable garb for Cossack robes, and

stressed his inability to master social conventions; 501 and he repeatedly subverted any

chances he had in securing a life of upward mobility. 502 In defying convention,

Rousseau challenged boundaries both formally and substantively, using opera, novels,

letters, plays, prose and dialogues as vehicles for his sharp social commentary.

The Genevan was particularly an outsider in his religious thought. Convinced

of his piety yet charged with heresy, he condemned Church and academy alike for

furthering their own particular aims at the expense of the general good. Catholic

500 Starobinski interprets Rousseau’s passivity as a justification for his lack of control. As he writes in

Transparency and Obstruction , “Rousseau almost always prefers to avoid action and effort.” See:

Transparency and Obstruction , p. 91.

501 Rousseau also claimed to have practical reasons for wearing robes: they purportedly alleviated the

pains of his well-publicized urinary tract disorder.

502 To this point, consider Rousseau’s following recollection: “I renounced forever every project of

fortune and advancement. Determined to pass the little time I had left to live in independence and

poverty, I applied all the strength of my soul to breaking the irons of opinion, and to doing

courageously everything that appeared good to me, without bothering myself in any way about the

judgment of men.” The Confessions . CW V.303-304; OC I.362. Rousseau offers numerous additional

examples, including his frequent (and abrupt) career changes, his failure to meet the King of France

one day after Le Devin du Village premiered, and his dispute with Hume and subsequent rejection of

King George III’s offer of an annual pension.

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leaders labeled him a dangerous heretic, 503 while his attack on the arts and sciences

prompted Voltaire to wonder, “What about Jean-Jacques’ book against the theater?

Has he become a priest of the Church?” 504 It is no mean feat to simultaneously

alienate atheists and papists; but for Rousseau, solitaire extraordinaire , such

estrangement exemplifies the isolating effects of his thought.

Taken within the context of his broader political project, we may understand

Rousseau’s aggressive self-distancing as the means to a coherent end: society’s

redemption, an aspiration at times facilitated by active withdrawal. Yet even if we

allow him the consistency he claimed was a hallmark of his entire oeuvres , 505 how

might we make sense of the apparent contradictions at play? An outsider so deeply

involved with the in-crowd, so insistently proud of a nation to which he never

returned (and eventually renounced), 506 so scornful of the public eye his writings

resoundingly drew, Rousseau was a man of conundrums if not outright

contradictions.

A natural individual caught in the perverse machinations of a denatured world,

he sought recourse in solitude. But what, specifically, did his praise of withdrawal

suggest? Was it the wicked rumination of a misguided misanthrope, as Diderot

implied? The embrace of a ‘horrible’ life opposed to society, as described in the

503 The Archbishop Christophe de Beaumont condemned Emile (and, by implication, its author) as

“containing an abominable doctrine, suited to overturning natural Law and to destroying the

foundations of the Christian Religion… tending to disturb the peace of States, to stir up Subjects

against the authority of their Sovereign,” in short, a “scandalous” work, “erroneous, impious,

blasphemous, and heretical.” Pastoral Letter of his Grace the Archbishop of Paris . CW IX.16.

504 Besterman XIX.D7864. See also: Cranston, The Noble Savage , p. 137.

505 Rousseau begins his religious self-defense in the Letter to Beaumont by stressing his consistency: “I

have written on various subjects, but always with the same maxims, and if you will the same

opinions.” This is an oft-repeated claim of Rousseau’s, specifically evoked to defend himself from the

increasing controversy his works generated. See: Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.22; OC IV.928.

506 Rousseau renounced his Genevan citizenship on May 12, 1763.

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Encyclopédie ? 507 The retreat of a religious individual unconcerned with earthly

affairs? Or the compelling reaction of a good man caught in a less-than-virtuous

society? 508 What forms did it take, and what does this reveal about the broader

tension in his works between spiritual and secular salvation, heuristic idealism and

pessimistic realism? How does a study of this theme illuminate our understanding of

Rousseau generally, and his secular appropriation of Christian themes specifically? Is

his model of reclusiveness compatible with his dream of democratic virtue, or does it

merely punctuate the incoherence of his enterprise?

The road to these answers winds through three stages and three different

senses of retreat. Before treading down this path, let us begin from the beginning, not

of Jean-Jacques’ life, but of his career.

* * * * *

Rousseau was a recluse. To anyone familiar with the author, this point should

hardly seem contentious. According to his Confessions , even the most perfunctory of

social obligations left him deeply disconcerted. 509 A sensitive soul whose life’s work

507 In his entry, Jaucourt condemns solitude as an horreur (even, notably, for the Christian) and “[un]

état opposé à celui de la société.” The solitary man is no less spared: “Cet état est celui où l'on conçoit

que se trouveroit l'homme s'il vivoit absolument seul abandonné à lui-même, & destitué de tout

commerce avec ses semblables. Un tel homme seroit sans doute bien misérable, & se trouveroit sans

cesse exposé par sa foiblesse & son ignorance à périr de faim, de froid, ou par les dents de quelque

bête féroce. L'état de société pourvoit à ses besoins, & lui procure la sûreté, la nourriture & les

douceurs de la vie.” Diderot, Encyclopédie , Tome XV, p. 325.

508 In his introduction to the English translation of The Confessions , Christopher Kelly distinguishes

between “goodness” and “virtue” in Rousseau’s works: “Goodness allows one to follow one’s

inclinations without (usually) harming anyone else. Virtue allows one to overcome one’s inclinations

on those occasions when they would lead to harming someone else. While goodness is a natural

quality, virtue is a moral quality made necessary by the complexity of social life.” This distinction

helps reconcile the tension posed by Rousseau’s formulation that man is naturally good although

society lacks virtue. For Kelly’s full discussion see: CW V.xxiii-xxiv.

509 According to Rousseau, his social skills were subverted by “slowness in thinking joined with…

liveliness in feeling,” a condition that afflicted him both alone and in company. “So little master of my

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thrust him into the public spotlight, the added attention caused him significant woe.

In the 1763 preface to his First Discourse , Rousseau disparaged his “celebrity” as “an

abyss of miseries.” 510 Truth be told, not everyone has the stomach for such a life (as

his remorse makes painfully clear). But Rousseau’s “miseries” reflect much deeper

concerns. By the Second Discourse we learn that social attachments opened

Pandora’s box. Mankind—innocent, ignorant and content in the state of nature—was

corrupted, subjugated by the inegalitarian relations borne of civil society.

Rousseau—innocent, 511 learned, profoundly malcontent—took this perverse

development to heart.

His critique of inequality took sweeping aim at social relations, and drew

resounding protest from those threatened by his assessments of private property and

contemporary society alike. Yet he continued to speak his mind, no matter the

consequences. Rousseau was well aware of the alienating effect his ideas had; the

enmity of his contemporaries was simply not enough to deter him. “I foresee that I

will not easily be forgiven for the side I have dared to take,” he admits. “Running

counter to everything that men admire today, I can expect only universal blame.” 512

But unlike Crispus, who appeased the tyrant Domitian with tactful silence, Rousseau

vowed to do what the Roman courtesan had not: “freely state his opinions and risk his

mind when I am all by myself, one can judge what I must be in conversation, where, in order to speak

to the point one must think about a thousand things simultaneously and on the spot. The mere idea of

so many social conventions, at least one of which I am certain to forget, is enough to intimidate me. I

do not understand how one even dares to speak in a social circle.” The Confessions . CW V.95-96; OC

I.113-115.

510 This comes from a Forward to the revised Preface, written approximately thirteen years after the

First Discourse was first published. First Discourse (1763 Forward). CW II.3; OC I.1237.

511 I am referring to Rousseau’s triple claim of innocence: natural (the Pelagian heresy at the heart of

the Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar ); juridical (in the charges levied against Emile and The

Social Contract ); and personal (an individual who is good of heart and attuned to his natural

innocence).

512 1763 Preface to the First Discourse . CW II.3; OC III.3.

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life for the truth.” 513 Taking these words as his motto, Rousseau drew a line between

himself and his entire age, particularly “the Witty or the Fashionable” 514

philosophes

who wrote with smug self-satisfaction, and papists whose dogmatism dictated the

terms of individual material worship.

Rousseau was no stranger to contrariness. Yet in typically paradoxical

fashion, he decried its frequency amongst philosophers as a form of sophistry, a vain

method of self-promotion used to garner recognition. Academics favored personal

accolades above the public good, and cherished individual success more than genuine

virtue. As Rousseau clarified in his 1753 Preface to Narcisse , the “taste for letters…

is born from the desire to distinguish oneself.” 515 This desire “necessarily produces

ills that are infinitely more dangerous than all the good that they do is useful,” and

“makes those who surrender to it very unscrupulous about means for succeeding.” 516

The philosopher’s quest is painted in terms reminiscent of the Bible’s Edenic lesson:

the fruits of knowledge may be tempting, but their acquisition precipitates a morally

crippling sacrifice. In the zeal to acquire individual enlightenment, to distinguish

themselves from their peers, philosophers succumb to self-interest while shirking

their duties as citizens.

Although Rousseau does not categorically dismiss philosophical speculation,

he wags a stiff finger at those who pursue wisdom under false pretenses and seek

recognition at any cost. In one frenzied stroke, and along these lines, he castigates

513 Juvenal, The Satires , p. 28.

514 Rousseau strikes a grandiose concern for posterity: “One must not write for such Readers when one

wants to live beyond one’s century.” 1763 Preface to the First Discourse . CW II.3; OC III.3.

515 Preface to Narcisse . CW II.191; OC II.965.

516 Preface to Narcisse . CW II.191; OC II.965.

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two thousand years of Western political thought from ancient Greece to the Middle

Ages:

The first Philosophers made a great reputation for themselves by

teaching men the practice of their duties and the principles of virtue.

But soon these precepts having become common, it was necessary to

distinguish oneself by opening up contrary routes. Such is the origin

of the absurd systems of Leucippus, Diogenes, Pyrrho, Protagoras,

Lucretius. Hobbes, Mandeville and a thousand others have pretended

to distinguish themselves among us; and their dangerous doctrine has

borne such fruit, that although we still have some Philosophers ardent

to recall the laws of humanity and virtue to our hearts, one is surprised

to see to what point our reasoning century has pushed disdain for the

duties of man and of citizen to its maxims. 517

Those who seek “to recall the laws of humanity and virtue to our hearts” form a

lonely minority. Most philosophers are, by contrast, charged with grave negligence,

vain ambition, and the correlative “fruit” of self-glorification. In attempting to further

their reputations, they privilege spectacle above substance or utility. And from a

moral standpoint, they neglect their most truly noble service: namely, the “duties of

man and of citizen,” subsumed under the satiation of self-interest. As Rousseau

elaborates, “[t]he taste for letters, philosophy and the fine arts destroys love of our

primary duties and of genuine glory. Once talents have seized the honors due to

virtue, everyone wishes to be an agreeable man and no one concerns himself with

being a good man.” 518

The harsh certainty of Jean-Jacques’ judgment soon proved ironic. Two years

later, fellow Genevan Charles Bonnet levied precisely the same charge against hi ,

attacking the Second Discourse as the paradoxical work of a self-promoting rabble-

517 Preface to Narcisse . CW II.191; OC II.965-966.

518 Preface to Narcisse . CW II.191; OC II.966.

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rouser. 519 This followed Diderot’s claim (echoed by Voltaire) that the First

Discourse represented a deliberate change of heart, a position on the arts and sciences

calculated to garner its author attention and notoriety. Infuriated by the insinuation,

Rousseau rose to his own defense. 520 Certain that his work served society’s best

interests, he defended himself by stressing his own uniqueness. Unlike his more

decorated peers, he was both capable of recognizing the “absurdity” of their maxims,

and bold enough to challenge them. 521 The singularity of his vision was matched

only by his dedication to revealing the truth, qualities that distinguished him as a

champion of society’s salvation. 522 It was this unique combination of clarity and

courage in the face of overwhelming pressure that set him apart. Far from serving his

own self-interest, Rousseau was the sole author of his age who dared to challenge the

mighty empires of both philosophe and Papal dogma. 523

Compelled to respond against the very charges he had levied upon

philosophers in his First Discourse , Rousseau’s defense came at a price: it further

isolated him. Having taken society to task, he was forced to emphasize his role as a

recluse amongst philosophers, the sole intellectual who stood apart—and alone—on

519 See: Letter from M. Philopolis . CW III.123-126; OC III.1383-1386.

520 Although James Miller downplays Rousseau’s efforts to rebuke Voltaire’s barbs, Rousseau’s

correspondence suggests that he responded passionately on numerous occasions. See Rousseau:

Dreamer of Democracy , p. 53.

521 As Rousseau replies, “Let us suppose that a singular mind ( esprit ), bizarre, and in fact a man of

paradoxes, then dared to reproach others for the absurdity of their maxims, to prove to them that they

run to death in seeking tranquility, that by dint of being reasonable they do nothing but ramble.” Letter

from J.-J. Rousseau to M. Philopolis . OC.III.231; CW III.127. It is also worth noting that Bonnet’s

pseudonym, “Mr. City-lover,” was certainly conceived in antagonism towards Rousseau.

522 Rousseau’s sense of his own uniqueness is, in this respect, greatly exaggerated. There were, of

course, dozens of other entries for the prize of Dijon that likewise attacked the arts and sciences as a

corrupt influence upon society. For a further discussion of this theme see: P-M Masson, La religion de

Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Vol. I, pp. 259-261.

523 For Rousseau, Church and academy were birds of a feather: “The two parties attack each other

reciprocally with so many sophisms,” yet neither fosters virtue, goodness or meaningful

enlightenment Emile . E 312n.

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behalf of all. The condemnation he had foreseen as a consequence of his contrariness

was materializing. In claiming his innocence, he merely drove a deeper wedge

between himself and his culpable age. Attacking ideas and occupations his powerful

counterparts held dear, he was forced to retreat from their ranks. His praise of

solitude, coupled with a condemnation of society, placed him in a lonely corner

indeed.

A philosopher who attacked philosophers, a storied member of the

Enlightenment who was also one of its most vociferous critics, 524 Rousseau pulled

few punches. If vainglory was a capital offense, masquerading private interests as

public goods was a cardinal sin. Philosophers, that “troop of charlatans, each crying

from his own spot on a public square: Come to me, I alone do not deceive,” were

doubly guilty. 525 Like Christian clerics, they presented their ideas as gospel, coercing

men to bow under the authority of their vacuous reasoning. “Under the haughty

pretext that they alone are enlightened, true, and of good faith,” Rousseau’s Vicar

chides, “they imperiously subject us to their peremptory decisions and claim to give

us as the true principles of things the unintelligible systems they have built in their

imagination.” 526 Like Catholic clerics, philosophers abuse the privileges of their self-

anointed grace, parading elaborate, incoherent opinion as irrefutable truth. And in so

doing, they demand subservience to hollow ideals unfulfilled in practice, a

524 Darrin M. McMahon describes Rousseau’s influence on anti- philosophes who “borrowed from him

extensively, citing Rousseau’s passages against their common enemies; sharing his dissatisfaction with

the corruption of the age; and echoing his belief that sentiment, emotion, and feeling were wellsprings

of faith.” See: McMahon, Enemies of the Enlightenment: The French Counter-Enlightenment and the

Making of Modernity . (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 35.

525 First Discourse . CW II.20; OC III.27.

526 Emile . E 312.

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phenomenon exemplifying society’s most perverse pressure: the denaturing rule of

doxa .

By contrast, Rousseau presented himself to the public as a good, honest soul

attuned to their best interests. Yet he challenged the motives of philosophers while

producing an enormous body of philosophical literature; he attacked their ersatz

claims to supposed truths while dedicating his life to that very pursuit. What, then,

made Rousseau any different? Why were his works alone free of the self-interested

sophistry so rampant amongst his much-maligned peers?

For one, Jean-Jacques took shelter in his self-proclaimed commonness. In the

penultimate paragraph of his First Discourse , he addressed average readers as one of

their ranks: “As for us, common men not endowed by Heaven with such great talents

and not destined for so much glory, let us remain in our obscurity. Let us not chase

after a reputation which would escape us, and which in the present state of things

would never be worth what it cost, even if we had all the qualifications to obtain

it.” 527 Rousseau was not entirely without cause in siding with the common man.

After all, his origins were humble: the son of a Genevan watch-maker, a largely self-

taught runaway who toiled through various ignoble positions on a circuitous and

surprising path to fame. Yet what most set Rousseau apart from his fellow

philosophes was the very insistence with which he set himself apart. He cultivated

his commonness as an antidote to their erudition, 528 stressing his solidarity with a

527 First Discourse . CW II.22; OC III.30. It is worth noting the language of Rousseau’s phrase: “As

for us, common men…” Bear in mind that this essay was written for the Academy at Dijon—and

certainly not the so-called “ hommes vulgaires ” with whom Rousseau identifies and purportedly

addresses.

528 Despite Rousseau’s charge, he was a notably erudite and voraciously self-educated figure. What

separates him from other “philosophers” was not his degree of learnedness, but rather his application

of scholarly knowledge to practical problems such as civic duty and religious reform.

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general populace endowed with neither the means nor the motive to distinguish

themselves. Insistent upon his uniqueness, Rousseau took refuge in his affinity for

the average.

At this beginning stage in his career, he had not yet achieved the fame and

recognition that he would almost immediately rue. As such, it would be premature to

simply dismiss him as a blind hypocrite. Yet the very fact that his career in letters

began with a renunciation of a career in letters, that his arrival into the philosophe

circle was coupled with a hyperbolic criticism of philosophy, that he established his

uniqueness by praising his commonness, attests to a curious methodology. Had

Rousseau been a recluse in the strictest sense of the word, he would have kept quiet

(or, at the very least, less visible). Instead, he raised his voice to a fevered pitch and

in so doing invited scrutiny upon himself. Why would someone so philosophically

gifted subvert the very enterprise he had chosen to undertake? Why would an author

of operas and plays criticize the arts and sciences? Why would Rousseau attack

contrariness and self-promotion while trumpeting his own honesty, utility and

forthrightness in decidedly contrary prose?

His simultaneous isolation and involvement sounded the demonstrative outcry

of a social reformer. If Rousseau was sincere in his praise of solitude, so was he

equally concerned with civic welfare: the society in which he felt entirely ill at ease

was desperately in need of salvation. Although his acute discomfort certainly

informed his recourse to retreat, in taking seriously his duty as a citizen he could not

in good faith (nor in good conscience) abandon his fellow men. For the Rousseau of

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these early years, his reclusiveness was necessarily demonstrative: he was far too

concerned to completely absolve himself, and far to critical to assimilate.

Alone amongst philosophers, his solitary role as champion of les peuples

served a distinct pedagogical purpose: to demonstrate the folly of his hubristic peers

while reminding us of the true path to a more natural, virtuous existence. As he

rhapsodizes in the First Discourse ’s final paragraph, “O virtue! Sublime science of

simple souls, are so many difficulties and preparations needed to know you? Are not

your principles engraved in all hearts, and is it not enough in order to learn your Laws

to return into oneself and listen to the voice of one’s conscience in the silence of the

passions?” 529 The retreat is three-fold. In claiming that true virtue—that “sublime

science”—is engraved in our hearts and revealed through conscience, Rousseau

discredits and distances himself from the mediating roles of Church and academy,

withdraws into the company of the indeterminate and anonymous everyman, and

retreats into the depths of his heart (with divinely-crafted conscience as guide) to

recapture his innate moral sensibility.

The proposal is radical. Retreat—from vain ambition, from the path to

academic success, from the “vanity and emptiness of those proud titles that dazzle

us,” 530 from the seductions of sophistic logic, from self-serving erudition—is nothing

short of necessary. If virtue is inscribed on our very hearts (works of God’s

authorship), its acquisition calls for little more than looking inwards, withdrawing

from a perverse society to retrieve our natural goodness.

529 First Discourse . CW II.22; OC III.30.

530 First Discourse . CW II.12; OC III.16.

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The Pelagian overtones are explicit. Despite his earlier description of

philosophical wisdom as a dangerous “fruit,” any mention of Adam’s debilitating

legacy is conspicuously absent in Rousseau’s praise of human nature. Instead, he

argues, we must place faith in our innate goodness. Foreshadowing his later, more

explicit denial of Original Sin in Emile , 531 Rousseau insists from the outset that

society—not man as God’s creation—is to blame. Natural man is above reproach,

but socialized men are prone to wickedness. Rousseau’s unerring faith in natural

goodness is nonetheless problematized by his polemics. There appears to be a

discrepancy between his ontology and his empiricism, between his description of

human nature and his observations of human society: if man is good, how can men be

so wicked? 532

The Second Discourse clarified this dilemma, presenting a concise genealogy

of humankind’s fall from grace. In our natural state we are innocent and ignorant,

pre-moral creatures bound only by amour-de-soi and pitié , sentiments that

encouraged self-preservation and mutual sympathy. It was not until the emergence of

civil society—a revolution following the advent of private property—that natural

531 The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar spawned the Pelagian controversy central to Emile ’s

censure. In defense, Rousseau reiterated the consistency of his works, city his Second Discourse ,

Letter to d’Alembert , and Julie as being “imbued with the same maxims. The same modes of thought

are not more disguised in them… and the Author’s profession of faith is found expressed there with

less reserve than that of the Savoyard Vicar.” Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.26; OC IV.933. Compare

this with the following statement from The Confessions : “I dare to say… what seems almost

unbelievable, the profession of faith of that very Héloïse dying is exactly the same as that of the

Savoyard Vicar. Everything that is bold in The Social Contract was previously in the Discourse on

Inequality ; everything that was bold in Emile was previously in Julie . Now these bold things excited

no clamor against the two former works; thus they were not the things that excited it against the latter.”

CW V.342; OC I.407.

532 Rousseau stands by this logic in his Letter to Beaumont : “If man is good by his nature, as I believe I

have demonstrated, it follows that he remains so as long as nothing foreign to himself spoils him. And

if men are wicked, as they have gone to the trouble of teaching me, it follows that their wickedness

comes from somewhere else.” CW IX.35; OC IV.945. For an extended discussion of this tension,

refer to note 18 (above).

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inequalities fostered social inequalities, that vicious divisions were introduced and

reified by social institutions privileging the interests of few above the welfare of

all. 533

Although Voltaire famously chided that Rousseau would send us back to the

woods crawling on all fours, 534 the latter makes plain that humankind cannot retreat to

a state of nature. Rousseau adamantly maintained that “such a return would be a

miracle both so great and so harmful that only God could do it and only the Devil

could wish it.” 535 Society is, for better or (more often) worse, a necessary facet of

human life. In later works such as The Social Contract , and writings on Poland,

Corsica and Geneva, Rousseau presented concrete models of political reform,

envisioning virtuous societies conducive to legitimized self-rule. Yet at this early

stage, his prescriptive optimism was overshadowed by his brash skepticism.

Although firm in his belief that human existence was inextricably tied to society,

Jean-Jacques’ deep discomfort implied that if we could not return to nature, we might

do well to withdraw.

Strong words notwithstanding, Rousseau removed himself in spirit more than

flesh. His initial period of withdrawal took the form of contrariness, vocal retaliation

against his illustrious peers and soon-to-be former friends. If anything, his

533 For Rousseau’s full account see: Second Discourse . CW III.43-55; OC III.164-179. He describes

the “invention” of private property as a deceptively simple ruse: “The first person who, having fenced

off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe

him.” Second Discourse . CW III.43; OC III.164.

534 As Voltaire quipped, “[o]ne acquires the desire to walk on all fours when one reads your work.”

Letter from Voltaire to Rousseau , August 30, 1755. CW III.102; CC III.317.157. Rousseau himself

invited such barbs in a long author’s note of the Second Discourse . Although the note argues that there

are “far better reasons to state in affirming that man is a biped” rather than a quadruped, his lengthy

discussion prompted Voltaire’s famously biting dismissal. See: Second Discourse (Note III). CW

III.68-71; OC III.196-198.

535 Letter from Rousseau to Voltaire , September 10, 1755. CW III.105; OC III.226.

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unexpected decoration hardened this resolve. As he laments in The Confessions ,

“[t]he success of my first Writings had put me in fashion… [and] stirred up curiosity:

They wanted to know this bizarre man who sought out no one and cared about

nothing except living freely and happily in his way.” 536 Recognized with awards and

adulation, the subject of rampant “curiosity,” well on his way to best-selling 537 fame

throughout the continent, the First Discourse left Rousseau embroiled in the very life

he so passionately loathed.

Clearly discomforted, Jean-Jacques responded by reiterating his central

concern—society was a catalyst for corruption—in increasingly hyperbolic prose.

The Second Discourse , substantively similar to his prize-winning piece, proved

significantly more controversial. He attacked not simply the arts, but property, civil

society, human history itself. This forceful work garnered further notoriety and

increasing mistrust. Rousseau, a once-charming Luddite, had now ruffled far too

many feathers.

If this paradoxical stance set him on a path to literal solitude, a turning point

of sorts occurred in 1758 with his Letter to d’Alembert . The piece began with a bold

proclamation: “I am at fault if I have on this occasion taken up my pen without

necessity.” 538 In sharp contrast to the “vain philosophical chatter” of his

contemporaries, Rousseau claimed to illuminate “a practical truth important to a

whole people.” 539 The “truth” to which he alluded was the danger of a theater taking

root in his beloved Geneva.

536 The Confessions . CW V.308; OC I.367.

537 This was, of course, prior to the publication of Julie , or the New Heloise .

538 Letter to d’Alembert . CW X.253; OC V.3.

539 Letter to d’Alembert . CW X.255; OC V.6.

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What is curious is not that Rousseau rose to the defense of his fatherland—a

common practice prior to his renunciation of citizenship in 1763—but rather the

severity of his rebuttal. At first glance, Rousseau’s response outmatched on every

level (passion, persuasiveness, depth, thoughtfulness, length) d’Alembert’s passing

suggestions in an unremarkable Encyclopédie entry on Geneva. 540 How, then, could

this parenthetical interjection have elicited such a powerful reaction? Why did

Rousseau really take up his pen in arms?

The Genevan described his motivation with a mix of self-deprecation and

obligation: “My [Swiss] compatriots have no need of my advice; I know it well. But

I have need to do myself honor in showing that I think as they do about our

maxims.” 541 In scribing d’Alembert , Rousseau’s humility was overcome by his sense

of obligation. Guided by honorific duty, he addressed an issue important, if not to a

whole people, than certainly to his fellow citoyens .

Most striking in this brief introduction to d’Alembert is the seriousness with

which Rousseau gauged the significance of his efforts. He considered the idea of a

Genevan theatre a matter of grave importance, an instance when the false

consciousness and alienation born of theatrical performance threatened the city in

which he found an exemplar of modern civic virtue. The idea of a Swiss stage did not

offend Rousseau because he putatively rejected theater (he had himself written

several petit dramas, and directly dismisses such charges towards the end of

540 The phrase that incensed Rousseau is as follows: “ Genève auroit des spectacles & des moeurs, &

joüiroit de l'avantage des uns & des autres: les représentations théâtrales formeroient le goût des

citoyens, & leur donneroient une finesse de tact, une délicatesse de sentiment qu'il est très - difficile

d'acquérir sans ce secours; la littérature en profiteroit, sans que le libertinage fît des progrès, & Genève

réuniroit à la sagesse de Lacédémone la politesse d'Athènes.” Diderot, Encyclopédie , Tome VII, pp.

576-577. It is generally recognized that Voltaire had “planted” this suggestion, as part of his broader

campaign to bring theater to Geneva.

541 Letter to d’Alembert . CW X.255; OC V.6.

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d’Alembert ). Instead, a theater in Switzerland posed very real dangers to the body of

its people: to its virtuous salon culture and civil society, to its economic welfare and

harmonious social fabric. What therefore drove Rousseau to write in this instance

was his self-described citizen’s duty to defend civic virtue.

That he wrote this work as an expatriate in France, and that he denounced one

of the few philosophes who would later defend him following the tumultuous

reception of Emile and The Social Contract , is no small matter. Rousseau, the self-

imposed exile defending a city in which he would never again settle, attacked the

work of a fellow intellectual relatively sympathetic to his writings. 542 These

circumstances did not go unnoticed. On September 29, 1758, in his own letter to

d’Alembert, Voltaire charged Jean-Jacques with “a double ingratitude.” In attacking

both “an art which he practices himself” and an author who had “overwhelmed him

with praises,” Voltaire decried Rousseau as an ingrate far more concerned with

garnering attention than demonstrating loyalty to his friends, or adhering to his

ideals. 543 Jean-Jacques was unprincipled, sensationalist, and eminently

untrustworthy; he was, in brief, a maverick unleashed, “a Diogène barking.” 544

Voltaire here compares Rousseau to Diogenes the Cynic, one of the most

flamboyant figures in the history of Western philosophy. Diogenes earned his

542 By relative, I am comparing d’Alembert’s sympathy for Rousseau with those of his peers—notably,

Diderot, Voltaire and Holbach. On June 15, 1762, d’Alembert wrote Rousseau to assure him that the

French peoples applauded The Social Contract and Emile . d’Alembert was the only philosophe to

offer such support, save Charles Duclos. In The Confessions , Rousseau seems characteristically

ungrateful, harping on the fact that d’Alembert had not signed the letter. For Rousseau’s account see:

The Confessions , OC I.574; CW V.480. Quoted in Cranston, The Solitary Self , pp. 2-3. d’Alembert’s

letter appears in CC XI.1874.82-84.

543 We must again recall Voltaire’s complicity in d’Alembert’s Genève article, and his own vested

interest in establishing a Genevan theater. Quoted in Cranston, The Noble Savage , p. 137.

544 Quoted in Ibid., p. 137. From Besterman XIX.D7842. See: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent

Philosophers: Volume II , pp. 23-85.

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infamous reputation as a “mad dog” and a “Socrates gone mad” from spectacles such

as masturbating in a public marketplace and urinating on a taunting crowd. 545

Although Rousseau had earlier 546 denounced the Cynic as a conspicuously absurd

figure, their resemblance was commonly noted by the philosophes and even

Rousseau’s later admirers. 547 In his lectures on ethics, for example, Kant labeled

Rousseau a “subtle Diogenes” whose work captured the Cynic “ideal of innocence or

rather simplicity.” 548 Whether affirmed in malice or praise, the similarities seemed

obvious to those familiar with both men. As Heinrich Niehues-Pröbsting

summarizes, “[t]he transition from Diogenes to Rousseau suggested itself, especially

since Rousseau seemed to follow the tracks of the Cynic in his cultural critique and

the idealization of untouched nature in the first and second Discours .” 549 In short—

and despite his own deeply personal interest in establishing a Genevan theater—

Voltaire had a point.

Rousseau nonetheless actively resisted such comparisons. 550 If the likenesses

were as obvious and ubiquitous as Niehues-Pröbsting believes, Jean-Jacques turned a

blind eye. He directly refers to Diogenes only thrice in his major works: in the

545 Both aliases were given him by Plato. See: Laertius, VI.40 & VI.54 (pp. 41 & 55). For Diogenes’

exploits see: VI.69 & VI.46 (pp. 71 & 27).

546 Preface to Narcisse . CW II.191; OC II.965.

547 Heinrich Niehues-Pröbsting, “The Modern Reception of Cynicism: Diogenes in the

Enlightenment,” in The Cynics: The Cynic Movement in Antiquity and Its Legacy , R. Bracht Branham

and Marie-Odile Goulet-Cazé, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), p. 340.

548 Ibid., p. 340.

549 Ibid., p. 340. In support, he cites Maximilian Forschner’s 1977 work Rousseau , and Jean

Starobinski’s article “Diderot’s Satire ‘Rameau’s Neffe” (in Das Rettende in der Gefahr: Kunstgriffe

der Aufklärung , 1990).

550 In circuitous fashion, Rousseau describes his Cynical attitude as a sort of temporary insanity

brought on by urban living. After leaving Paris for Montmorency, he notes that “the spectacle of that

big City’s vices ceased to nourish the indignation it had inspired in me. When I no longer saw men, I

ceased to despise them; when I no longer saw the wicked I ceased to hate them. My heart, which is

hardly formed for hatred, could no longer do anything but deplore their misery… and, without anyone

noticing it, almost without noticing it myself, I again became fearful, accommodating, timid, in a word

the same Jean-Jacques I had been before.” The Confessions . CW V.350; OC I.417.

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Preface to Narcisse , the Second Discourse , and The Dialogues . 551 In Narcisse ,

Diogenes is quickly dismissed as a typical self-promoting philosopher. 552 In the

Dialogues , Rousseau refutes the charge that his onetime career as a music-copyist

was “an affectation of simplicity or poverty to copy an Epictetus or Diogenes” as

many had claimed. 553 Only in the Discourse does Rousseau demonstrate even

passing sympathy with the Cynic’s agenda: he concludes that “the reason Diogenes

did not find a man was that he sought amongst his contemporaries the man of a time

that no longer existed.” 554

Rousseau here refers to the famous anecdote, recorded by Diogenes Laertius,

that Diogenes “lit a lamp in broad daylight and said, as he went about, ‘I am looking

for a man.’” 555 Rousseau’s affinity for this spectacle seems logical enough. If

virtuous men were hard to find in ancient Athens, they were (he often reminded)

nearly extinct in eighteenth-century Paris. 556 Where Diogenes took to the streets,

Rousseau took to his pen. In both cases, onlookers were asked to judge themselves

551 Rousseau also refers to Diogenes in a letter written to Laurent Aymont de Franquières dated

January 15, 1769. In it, Rousseau expresses a classically Cynical emphasis on action: “I think that

everyone will be judged not concerning what he has believed, but concerning what he has done.”

Later in the letter, he offers cautious praise of Diogenes who, in a fashion atypical of philosophers,

followed his conscience when refuting Zeno: “Was it not this alone which made Diogenes walk as his

only reply before Zeno who was denying movement?” See: Letter to Franquières . CW VIII.262 &

264; OC IV.1137 & 1139.

552 Preface to Narcisse . CW II.191; OC II.965.

553 Dialogues . CW I.132; OC I.830.

554 It is worth noting that in the very next sentence, Rousseau evokes Cato— not Diogenes—as “the

greatest of men” and a paragon of virtue “out of place in his century.” See: Second Discourse . CW

III.65; OC III.192.

555 Laertius, VI.41 (p. 43). This was a recurring theme in Diogenes’ repertoire. Laertius records two

other incidents with similar messages. First: when the Cynic is “asked where in Greece he saw good

men, he replied, ‘Good men nowhere, but good boys at Lacedaemon.’” (VI.27) And second: “One day

he shouted out for men, and when people collected, hit out at them with his stick, saying, ‘It was men I

called for, not scoundrels.’” (VI.32)

556 Fénelon—whom Rousseau praised in the Dialogues as a virtuous man who “did honor to modern

times”—provided one of the few notable exceptions to this rule. CW I.158; OC I.863-864.

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against the weight of the accusation, to measure themselves against a standard of

(natural) virtue far removed from their actual (social) condition.

At heart of these critiques was a shared appreciation of the self-sufficient life

lived in greater accord with nature, and a vision of virtue rooted in simple adherence

to this ideal. Yet if the Cynic preached simplicity as an antidote to society’s

corruptions, his life—like Rousseau’s—was anything but. Indeed, even Diogenes’

unlikely path to philosophy was characteristically colorful. Forced to flee his native

Sinope over a money-laundering scandal and sold into slavery, this sudden escape

transformed a banker’s greedy son into an unruly philosophic gadfly. 557 It was

precisely his exile that forced him to seek “the means of adapting himself to

circumstances” which he found in a strenuous model of philosophy aimed at inuring

himself to misfortune. 558

As with Rousseau, the Cynic began his career as a foreigner in an urbane city.

Set adrift in Athens (the Paris to Sparta’s Geneva), Diogenes grew disturbed by the

decadence of his surroundings. He reacted by embracing hardship as a catalyst for

self-sufficiency, and shunning the shallow pleasures (physical comfort, refined

appearance, gluttony) in which his peers indulged. This aggressive asceticism taught

him to become “capable of overcoming anything,” 559 a resiliency he pressed upon his

557 As Laertius recounts, Diogenes fled Sinope (a port town in northern Turkey on the Black Sea

peninsula) “because his father [the banker Hicesius] was entrusted with the money of the state and

adultered the coinage.” Several accounts report very different findings: that Diogenes himself

confessed to the crime; that he was coerced by workmen to do so; that the Delphic oracle gave him

permission to alter currency and he mistook the god’s words. See: Laertius, VI.20-21 (p. 23).

558 Ibid., VI.22 (p. 25). “When someone reproached [Diogenes] with his exile,” Laertius writes, “his

reply was, ‘Nay, it was through that, you miserable fellow, that I came to be a philosopher.’” VI.49 (p.

51).

559 Ibid., VI.71 (p. 73).

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students by insisting they conform to a Spartan standard of living. 560 He told a

perfumed boy that sweet smells might “cause an ill odor in your life.” 561 He hugged

snowy statues on cold days. He made a bed of a bathtub, and begged to a statue “to

get practice in being refused.” 562

By all accounts, Diogenes “was great at pouring scorn on his

contemporaries.” 563 And like Rousseau, he saved his sharpest contempt for the

privileged classes. “He would,” Laertius recounts, “ridicule good birth and fame and

all such distinctions, calling them showy ornaments of vice.” 564 The marks of wealth

signaled corruption: dependence upon trivial comforts and self-gratification, the

antithesis of the Cynic ideal of autarkeia . 565 Diogenes was particularly hostile

towards philosophical esotericism, then epitomized by the teachings of Plato. 566

Similar to Rousseau, the Cynic denigrated the value of philosophic discourse, arguing

that actions spoke infinitely louder than words and were far more useful in teaching

virtue. This is why he labeled a man who had requested his writings “a simpleton,”

chiding “you do not choose painted figs, but real ones; and yet you pass over the true

training and would apply yourself to written rules.” 567 Clearly, philosophy rings

hollow if preached but not practiced, just as wisdom is worthless if disconnected from

560 As Laertius recounts, “he taught them to wait upon themselves, and to be content with plain fare

and water to drink. He used to make them crop their hair close and to wear it unadorned, and to go

lightly clad, barefoot, silent, and not looking about them in the streets.” Ibid., VI.31 (p. 33).

561 Ibid., VI.66 (p. 69).

562 Ibid., VI.49 (p. 51).

563 Ibid., VI.24 (p. 27).

564 Ibid., VI.72 (p. 75).

565 Often translated as “self-sufficiency.” This is a value championed by Rousseau as the basis of

independence. Autarchy was also a Stoic ideal, a “moral argument” Starobinski describes as the lesson

that “the soul must seek its gratifications within itself and among its own possessions , without calling

upon outside assistance.” See: Starobinski, pp. 104-105.

566 According to Laertius, Diogenes regularly reproached Plato. In one example the Cynic ridiculed

Plato’s theory of the forms, quipping that “table and cup I see; but your tablehood and cuphood… I can

nowise see.” Ibid., VI.53 (p. 55).

567 Ibid., VI.48 (p. 51).

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life. As if to punctuate his point, Diogenes (unlike Rousseau) left no writings: he

conveyed lessons solely through vivid, often outrageous exhibitionism. 568

Exiled in a decadent land, the Cynic’s flamboyant strategy served a concrete

pedagogical purpose. In order to demonstrate the folly of society, he acted out; in

order to present a more virtuous alternative, he led by example; in order to disturb the

status quo, he embraced absurd excess. Furthermore, by welcoming difficulty (and

not simply ignoring hardship), he offered constant reminders of his integrity.

To validate his own writings, Rousseau likewise had to lead by example.

Following the embrace of his First Discourse , he had no choice but to reiterate his

resistance to society’s corrupting influence; withdrawal offered proof of his critical

detachment and testified to the sincerity of his writings. What Voltaire dismissed as

hyperbole and ingratitude, Rousseau understood as the only honest position for one of

his beliefs. In striking a self-distanced stance he stood much as Diogenes did two

centuries prior, carrying a proverbial lantern through the streets of Paris to illuminate

the failings of his peers. With the original Cynic’s force and righteous moral zeal,

Rousseau dared his readers to confront the dire direction human history had taken,

and perhaps join him in standing apart.

* * * * *

Like his Pagan forebear Diogenes, Rousseau challenged his contemporaries to

assess themselves and embrace the simple virtues of a more natural subsistence. He

did so as an outsider, yet one deeply involved with the society whose welfare he so

568 Most of what we know today about Diogenes comes to us from the anecdotes collected by the

ancient Greek historian Laertius.

173

steadfastly served. In a similarly dissonant manner, Rousseau’s role as a recluse drew

upon conflicting traditions: the demonstrative stance of Cynical exile, a Pelagian

vision of natural goodness, and the moralizing tone of an Edenic narrative.

Following the Second Discourse , Rousseau maintained this precarious

balancing act. Redoubling his efforts he published longer, more personally revealing,

more ambitious works that touched upon the theme of reclusiveness. Some of these

efforts were explicit addendums to earlier writings. The Essay on the Origin of

Languages , for example, was described in a prefatory draft as being “at first merely a

fragment of the discourse on inequality which I omitted from it as too long and out of

place.” 569 Revised several times before completion in 1763, 570 the Essay revisited

Rousseau’s idyllic depiction of the natural state:

Assume a perpetual spring on earth; assume water, livestock,

pasturage everywhere; assume men leaving the hands of nature, once

dispersed throughout all this; I cannot imagine how they would ever

have renounced their primitive freedom and forsaken the isolated and

pastoral life so suited to their natural indolence, in order needlessly to

impose on themselves the slavery, the labors, the miseries inseparable

from the social state. 571

The bounty and freedom of nature is matched only by the “slavery” and “miseries” of

society. A study of extremes, Rousseau is hard-pressed to find a reasonable

explanation for our socialization. Yet the effects of this revolutionary event are clear:

569 Essay on the Origin of Languages . CW VII.289; OC V.373.

570 Believed to have been completed in 1763, dating the Essay on the Origin of Languages (as well as

determining its relation to the Second Discourse ) is a matter of some dispute amongst Rousseau

scholars. For a concise discussion of these matters, see: CW VII.xxvii-xxviii. For two major critical

discussions of the significance of the Essay in relation to both Western thought and Rousseau’s

oeuvres , see (respectively): Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology , Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, tr.

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974); and Jean Starobinski, “Rousseau and the Origin of

Languages,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction .

571 Essay on the Origin of Languages . CW VII.310; OC V.400-401.

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the earth of God’s creation was now “adorned or disfigured by the hands of man.” 572

For Rousseau, this development was born of desire rather than practical necessity. As

he laments, “[t]he first languages, daughters of pleasure and not of need, long bore

the sign of their father; their seductive accent faded only with the feelings that had

caused them to arise, when new needs introduced among men forced each to consider

only himself and to withdraw his heart within himself.” 573

Although “[s]peech distinguishes man from the animals” 574 and thus

constitutes an intrinsic human faculty, its spontaneous advent led us down a slippery

slope. Once introduced, language evolved from an expression of natural sexual desire

to a catalyst for self-interest, from the simple spontaneous outpour of amour to the

corrupting influence of amour propre . The Essay on the Origin of Languages

reinforced what the Second Discourse had already made plain: speech, like society,

had innocent origins and unvirtuous consequences.

In both works, Rousseau refused to abandon a provocative dialectic: man may

be naturally good, but his socializing inventions were deeply flawed. Having led us

far astray from the idyll pastures of our natural content, the gravest consequence of

this transition was moral. Consider Rousseau’s “golden rule” as taken from the

Second Discourse : “ Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to

others .” 575 This negative sense of freedom recurs in Emile : “O what good is

necessarily done to his fellows by the one among them, if there is such a one, who

never does them harm! What an intrepid soul, what a vigorous character he needs for

572 Essay on the Origin of Languages . CW VII.312; OC V.403-404.

573 Essay on the Origin of Languages . CW VII.315; OC V.407.

574 Essay on the Origin of Languages . CW VII.289; OC V.375.

575 Second Discourse . CW III.38; OC III.156.

175

that! It is not in reasoning about this maxim, but in trying to put it into practice, that

one feels how great it is and how difficult of success.” 576

The problem lies in the practice. How might we protect individual freedom in

society, particularly in congested urban cities such as Paris? Perhaps, as Emile’s

tutelage suggests, through withdrawal. Given the terms of freedom, solitude adopts a

practical value underscored by a moral dimension. Isolated, we literally cannot harm

peers with whom we have no contact; and in not causing another grief, we both act

morally and revive some measure of natural goodness in a denatured world.

Rousseau affirmed the value of retreat in an author’s note in Emile :

The precept of never hurting another carries with it that of being

attached to human society as little as possible, for in the social state the

good of one necessarily constitutes the harm of another. This relation

is in the essence of the thing, and nothing can change it. On the basis

of this principle, let one investigate who is the better: the social man or

the solitary man. An illustrious author says it is only the wicked man

who is alone. I say that it is only the good man who is alone. If this

proposition is less sententious, it is truer and better reasoned than the

former one. If the wicked man were alone, what harm would he do?

It is in society that he sets up his devices for hurting others. 577

In addition to clarifying his position, this paragraph offered a direct rebuttal to a line

in Diderot’s play Le fils naturel . Written shortly after Rousseau’s withdrawal to

Montmorency, Diderot condemned solitude as the misguided reverie of a wicked

misanthrope: 578 “Il n' y a que le méchant qui soit seul.” 579

Clearly, Rousseau

576 Emile . E 105.

577 Emile . E 105.

578 For Rousseau’s recollections of the incident see: The Confessions . OC I.455-456; Dialogues . OC

I.788-789. Readers might also compare Rousseau’s “golden rule” to Plato’s Republic , (I.335e) where,

during a discussion of justice, Socrates concludes that “it has become apparent to us that it is never just

to harm anyone.”

579 The full sentence is actually quite inflammatory. Dderot’s character Constance uses a Rousseauist

argument (an ‘appeal to the heart’) to convince Dorval (a character based on Rousseau) that the “good

man” exists only in society: “J'en appelle à votre coeur; interrogez-le; et il vous dira que l'homme de

bien est dans la société, et qu' il n' y a que le méchant qui soit seul.” From Le fils naturel , Act IV,

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disagreed. Instead, it was “only the good man who is alone.” Who is more harmful

to his fellow citizens? Whose actions are more likely to jeopardize the welfare and

freedom of others? A man removed from society, or a man caught within its

nefarious webs?

Emile argues unequivocally for the former. Turning upon the principle of

fortitude through solitude, the pupil’s education is an attempt to instill virtue in a

child raised in accord with his innocent nature. In the final paragraph of Book III, the

tutor summarizes Emile’s accomplishments. The carefully reared youth is a model

individual: “He considers himself without regard to others and finds it good that

others do not think of him. He demands nothing of anyone and believes he owes

nothing to anyone. He is alone in human society; he counts himself alone. More than

anyone else, he has the right to count on himself, for he is all that one can be at his

age.” 580 Here, then, is Rousseau’s idealized solitaire, a child raised sheltered from

society. Retreat has cultivated a faultless individual, one with “no errors,” “no vices,”

“a healthy body, agile limbs, a precise and unprejudiced mind, a heart that is free and

without passions.” 581 Most significantly, “ amour-propre , the first and most natural of

all the passions, is still hardly aroused in him. Without troubling the repose of

anyone, he has lived satisfied, happy, and free insofar as nature has permitted.” 582 In

short, he is free at the expense of no one.

Yet this solitary bliss seems fatefully impermanent. After all, Rousseau

reminds us, our sociability is a necessary evil. We have little choice in the matter; our

Scene 3. In: Diderot: Œuvres , Tome IV , p. 1113. For Rousseau’s reaction to this “scathing and harsh

sentence without any qualification” see: The Confessions . CW V.382; OC I.455.

580 Emile . E 208.

581 Emile . E 208.

582 Emile . E 208.

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very natures are defined by our interdependence. “It is man’s weakness which makes

him sociable; it is our common miseries which turn our hearts to humanity,” he

explains. Yet “we would owe humanity nothing [only] if we were not men.” 583 Only

God—completely independent and a model of perfect solitude—has no need of

others. Man has no such luxury. “Every attachment is a sign of insufficiency,”

Rousseau laments. “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.” 584 Yet without this “very infirmity,” we would not be human. Much as

Rousseau might admire Robinson Crusoe , the lesson is clear: no man is an island.

Put more strongly, every man has need of others.

Evoking classical voluntarist descriptions of God as a completely self-

sufficient, perfectly ordered whole unto himself, Rousseau reminds us that man is a

far cry from such perfection: “A truly happy being is a solitary being. God alone

enjoys an absolute happiness. But who among us has the idea of it?” 585 By our very

natures, no one; our mutual dependence defines our humanity. It is from this honest

assessment that Rousseau’s vision of reform flows. He seeks to change our

conventions, not our natures, employing the very faculties that have precipitated our

fall from natural grace to legitimize the “chains” of our necessary attachments. 586

However, to move forward we must sometimes first withdraw. Under dire

social circumstances and extreme social pressures, retreat provides a politically useful

action. Near the end of Emile , exile is presented as a necessary stage in the pupil’s

583 Emile . E 221.

584 Emile . E 221.

585 Emile . E 221.

586 To wit, such is the guiding principle of the general will under which self-interested individualism is

applied in service of the common good.

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carefully planned pedagogy. Ringing a clearly autobiographical note, the tutor

describes with some melancholy a situation very much like Rousseau’s own:

There are circumstances in which a man can be more useful to his

fellow citizens outside of his fatherland than if he were living in its

bosom. Then he ought to listen only to his zeal and to endure his exile

without grumbling. This exile itself is one of his duties. 587

As an allusion to Rousseau’s own life, the lines read as a justification for his flight

from Geneva. Exile offers not an excuse for “grumbling,” but a civic duty to be

accepted as the “most useful” means of serving a greater good (his patrie ).

Reiterating the utility of retreat, the tutor surmises that “[a]ll men who withdraw from

the hub of society are useful precisely because they withdraw from it, since its vices

come from its being overpopulated. They are even more useful when they can bring

life, cultivation, and the love of their first state to forsaken places.” 588 His

justification is twofold. First, withdrawal serves a pragmatic aim: depopulating

“overpopulated” society and diminishing the congestion conducive to social vices.

And second, the recluse can act as a type of ambassador. Removed from their

homelands, stuck in “forsaken” cultures, their status and experience as outsiders

allows them to import “life, cultivation, and the love of their first state.”

Exile is also a casualty of serving the truth, the very pursuit to which

Rousseau had dedicated his life. In his Fragments autobiographiques , he

underscored the lonely, sacrificial fruits born of this calling: “Persecution has

elevated my soul. I feel that the love of truth has become dear to me because it has

cost me dearly. Perhaps at first it was no more than a system for me, now it is my

587 Emile . E 474.

588 Emile . E 474.

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dominant passion… the most noble that can befall the heart of man.” 589 Emile has no

such bittersweet burden to bear:

But you, good Emile, on whom nothing imposes these painful

sacrifices, you who have not taken on the sad job of telling the truth to

men, go and live in their midst, cultivate their friendship in sweet

association, be their benefactor and their model. Your example will

serve them better than all our books, and the good they see you do will

touch them more than all our vain speeches.” 590

Privileged with the self-sufficiency and sound judgment of an isolated education, free

of the truth-bearer’s onus, Emile must reemerge, return from withdrawal and act as a

beacon amongst men, a “benefactor” and “model” applying his virtuous education to

the service of his fellow citizens.

After all, he must reenter society. This is the final lesson pressed upon the

pupil, and one whose events unfold to disastrous consequences in Emile ’s sequel, Les

solitaires . Harping on this outcome, Judith Shklar reads in Rousseau a deep and

unflinching pessimism. Taking a grim view of his worldview, one which “offers no

occasion for happiness or civic virtue,” 591 Shklar notes the dismal failures of Emile

and Sophie to live amongst their peers: “The happy end of Emile is false,… and

Emile’s character cannot reveal itself until he really becomes a man, that is, a

suffering victim.” 592 As Rousseau readily admits, man surely suffers: “Always more

suffering than enjoyment; this relation between the two is common to all men. Man’s

felicity on earth is, hence, only a negative condition; the smallest number of ills he

can suffer ought to constitute its measure.” 593 Furthermore, this condition is

589 Fragments autobiographiques (18). OC I.1164.

590 Emile . E 474.

591 Shklar, Men and Citizens , p. 214.

592 Ibid., p. 235.

593 Emile . E 80.

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symptomatic of human desire, a negative need defined by want or lack that “supposes

privation, and all sensed privations are painful.” 594

Given this dour assessment, we might well be tempted to follow Shklar’s lead

and read Rousseau’s ontology as a manifesto of victimization. But rather than

succumb to the weight of his own analysis, he describes how we may yet attain a

measure of peace. As he writes in Emile ,

In what, then, consists human wisdom or the road of true happiness?

It is not precisely in diminishing our desires, for if they were beneath

our power, a part of our faculties would remain idle, and we would not

enjoy our whole being. Neither is it in extending our faculties, for if,

proportionate to them, our desires were more extended, we would as a

result only become unhappier. But it is in diminishing the excess of

the desires over the faculties and putting power and will in perfect

equality. It is only then that, with all the powers in action, the soul

will nevertheless remain peaceful and that man will be well ordered. 595

Here is the lesson of the Second Discourse , concisely captured: contentment is

possible only if our desires do not exceed our abilities to satiate them. To achieve

this balance we must accept, not lament, our natural limits as human beings. We

must, to paraphrase The Social Contract , recognize what we are while striving to

realize what we should be. 596

“What is more,” Rousseau elaborates, diminishing the distance between our

wants and needs conforms to the will of God: “the Author of things provides not only

for the needs He gives us but also for those we give ourselves; and it is in order to

place desire always at the side of need that He causes our tastes to change and be

594 Emile . E 80.

595 Emile . E 80.

596 Again, The Social Contract ’s opening phrase—“I want to inquire whether there can be a legitimate

and reliable rule of administration in the civil order, taking men as they are and laws as they can be”—

establishes the dialectic between heuristic idealism and pessimistic realism that guides much of

Rousseau’s work. The Social Contract . CW IV.131; OC III.351.

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modified with our ways of life.” 597 In society, our wants far outpace our needs.

Rather than increase this artificial imbalance, we must recognize the virtue of self-

restraint and contain the excess of desires that so disserves denatured man. 598

As is often the case with Rousseau, he couples unflinching criticism with

programmatic optimism, an exegesis of how things are with a vision of how they

could be better. We should not therefore conflate his deep mistrust of society with

abject pessimism. As with Diogenes, Rousseau’s harsh criticism was fueled by

concern; the depth of his remorse spoke to the necessity of active reform (rather than

debilitating misery). Similarly, retreat must not be confused with misanthropy; if

anything, Rousseau loved far too deeply. In this, he was not alone. Taking recourse

in solitude, he followed a Christian tradition in which withdrawal offers protection

from temptation, allowing men to contemplate God while sheltered from the sinful

distractions of society. To clarify this point, we need only examine the hagiography

of a Stylite.

Some fifteen hundred years before Rousseau, when martyrs cared little for

writing or reception, Saint Antony fled society to resist Satan’s sway. After retreating

to a cave for twenty years, immersed in a life of self-imposed hardship, living on a

strict diet of bread, salt and water while shunning humans and demons alike, Antony

emerged with a clear sense of dutiful purpose: live humbly, do not fear hardship,

place faith wholly in God. “Virtue exists when the soul maintains its intellectual part

597 Emile . E 151.

598 By Rousseau’s description, aligning our wants and needs serves both God and humankind; it

reflects a deference to the divine will, and limits the self-destructive consequences of excessive desire.

182

according to nature,” he writes, “when it remains as it was made—and it was made

beautiful and perfectly straight.” 599

Predating Rousseau’s praise of natural harmony, Antony describes the human

soul as God’s handiwork (and “God made nothing bad”). 600 The virtuous life

therefore demands that our minds embrace the divine model latent within our spirits.

The challenge Antony imposes upon himself—and others seeking heavenly

redemption—is to keep evil at bay, to resist the Devil’s malicious attempts to corrupt

our pure relationships with God. External and internal fortitude are demanded of a

holy battle against evil (personified by demons), where integrity is not merely an

eventual aim but an ever-present necessity to resist corruption.

For Antony, as with both Rousseau and Diogenes, such enlightened fortitude

is not borne of scholarly rigor. Rather, he proposes a decidedly anti-intellectual

vision of wisdom, declaring that “none of us is judged for what he does not know, any

more than one is counted blessed because he is learned and possesses knowledge.” 601

Sincere observance, undying faith, and (above all) prayer are the true means of self-

betterment, for they offer proof of virtue (enlightened action), inspire personal

determination, and solicit God’s spiritual support. Indeed, “for those in whom the

action through faith is present, the demonstration through argument is unnecessary,

perhaps even useless.” 602

True faith is demonstrated by certitude, stability and consistency, no matter

the corporeal challenges. If cultivating such strenuous devotion requires a concrete

599 Athanasius, The Life of Antony and the Letter to Marcellinus , Robert C. Gregg, tr. (Mahwah, NJ:

Paulist Press, 1980), p. 46.

600 Ibid., p. 47.

601 Ibid., p. 57.

602 Ibid., p. 87.

183

model, Antony offers an unflinching example. While God is benevolent, a prolific

author of righteous covenants, he is unfortunately much duller than the Devil. And it

is this demon’s outrageous efforts to corrupt that dictate the severe terms of faith. His

efforts to tempt and torture the Desert Saint range from sloppy (throwing silver plates

in his path) to severe (unleashing the apparitions of vicious beasts on his body).

“How many wrestlings he endured… against destructive demons” 603 in the desert, yet

he maintained his poise and hurled holy words at them, and “they fled, being driven

away by the remark as by a whip.” 604 The desert molds Antony into a warrior monk,

a hero-hermit who fights Satan’s many forms—greed, pride, doubt, deterrence,

disgust, and lust—with righteous resistance strengthened by the courage of his

convictions.

His methods proved wildly popular. A social loner, Antony drew stadium-

sized crowds to observe him perched on a desert pole, where he won many over with

physical proofs of the benefits of his faith (dispelling the demons of a man’s

daughter, inspiring his sister’s virginity, foreseeing a despot’s death). The ubiquity of

Christian conversion only strengthened his resolve to serve God and spread His

teachings no matter the consequences. As Antony confidently argued, “the faith and

teaching of Christ, ridiculed… and persecuted frequently by rulers, has [nonetheless]

filled the world.” 605 In spite of opposition, followers in every land had come to

embrace the glorious truth of Christ.

No stranger to persecution, Rousseau also found solace in the physical proofs

of his convictions. As evidence he looked to nature, a testament of God’s

603 Ibid., p. 69.

604 Ibid., p. 70.

605 Ibid., p. 88.

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magnificence far more compelling than academic arguments or the catechisms of

Clerics. As with Antony, Rousseau found virtue in abandoning himself to a perfect

order. Yet because both recognized the imminence of temptation, be it the Devil’s

seductive measures or society’s provocative pleasures (theater, recognition, wealth),

they framed this quest in terms of aggressive isolation. Both saw training as a

necessary stage in the service of higher truths, a means of self-fortification to remain

steadfast in the face of corruption. And for Antony and Rousseau alike, the courage

of their convictions was strengthened by looking inwards.

Furthermore, in both instances retreat was incomplete without reentry—

returning to the belly of the beast, to a society prone to vice, as a living model of man

redeemed. Antony returned from the mountains. Emile was reared as society’s

prodigal son. Even Rousseau (the citizen of Geneva) fancied himself an exemplar of

sorts in France. Yet while Emile’s imaginary fate is a matter of speculation,

Rousseau’s was not.

Just as Antony was followed and worshipped as a martyr to the truth,

Rousseau was also revered throughout Europe, inundated with letters of praise and

the author of his century’s bestselling novel. 606 His popularity amongst readers

notwithstanding, the publication of Emile and The Social Contract met with almost

immediate censure and led, quite suddenly, to his unplanned retreat. If Rousseau had

seriously struggled to apply his ideas in practice, if he had praised withdrawal as a

means to a civic end, he would have no chance to return bearing hope. Twelve years

after the First Discourse took top prize at Dijon, Jean-Jacques was delivered a harsh

606 Namely, Julie . See: Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural

Histor .

185

reproach: served with arrest papers and forced from his home, society had finally

begged his leave.

* * * * *

From the sociological exegesis of his discourses, to the remote, self-styled

community of Julie , 607 to Emile’s virtuous education sheltered from society, 608 to his

final bittersweet ode to solitude in the Reveries , Jean-Jacques’ mistrust of social

attachments grew ever more insistent and decidedly more personal. Contemporary

society had not only evolved contrary to man’s best interests; it had also done

Rousseau a great personal injustice. 609 Alienated by fractured relationships with

friends and peers, condemned for subverting Catholic, aristocratic, and monarchal

values, Rousseau was increasingly a man on his own. Retreat was finally—and

unequivocally—pressed upon him following the 1762 publications of Emile and The

Social Contract . These books were burned from Paris to Geneva, 610 its author

criminalized for their content. Rousseau, the wunderkind who had denounced his

own startling fame, excommunicated himself from his social and intellectual

607 See, for example, Rousseau’s description of the Valais and his enchantment with the

disinterestedness of its inhabitants: “The most agreeable part of their welcome, it seemed to me, was to

detect in it not the slightest vestige of constraint either for them or for me. They lived in their homes

as if I was not there, and I was free to do as if I were there alone.” In this instance, solitude enables a

negative freedom, the lack of imposition of another’s will on his actions. Julie . CW VI 66; OC II.80-

81. Readers should compare this to Rousseau’s description of Geneva in his Letter to d’Alembert , in

which he stresses his native town’s independence as a mark of its freedom.

608 In contrast to Emile , The Social Contract envisions good citizens in a good society, a comparison

beyond the immediate scope of this piece.

609 Rousseau’s indignation was evident in nearly all of his writings after 1762, including the Letter to

Beaumont , Letters Written From the Mountain , The Confessions , The Dialogues , and The Reveries of

the Solitary Walker .

610 According to Rousseau, “ The Social Contract was not burned anywhere except Geneva where it

was not printed.” The Genevan magistrates were threatened by the work’s depiction of a constitution

that very much resembled their own, and far less concerned with the more controversial Emile . Letters

Written From the Mountain (Sixth Letter). CW IX.234; OC III.810.

186

community, and dared to attack both Papal and Enlightenment ideals, was now finally

forced to abscond from the society which had for so long served as the object of his

wrath.

Although this final stage of Rousseau’s life marked a bitter withdrawal from

society, he fled neither strictly of his own volition, nor into silence. On the morning

of June 9, 1762, Omer and Guillaume Joly de Fleury, Attorney-General and

Procurator-General of France, presented magistrate Maupeou’s Parlement with an

unequivocal indictment of Rousseau. 611 Condemning Emile (and, more precisely, its

deistic Profession of Faith ) as subversive, seditious, impious and unholy, the brothers

de Fleury called for the immediate imprisonment and interrogation of its purportedly

blasphemous author. 612 The clock had not yet struck ten. More than six hours later,

when court officers arrived to execute their order by escorting Rousseau to the

Bastille, their fugitive was already in flight to Switzerland and, soon after, the

Prussian border.

Rousseau describes these events in great detail in The Confessions . He

greeted rumors of imminent legal proceedings with a mixture of stubbornness and

naïveté. “The dull roar that preceded the storm began to make itself heard and all

slightly perceptive people saw very well that some plot was brewing over the subject

611 Cranston, The Noble Savage , p. 358.

612 In the June 9 warrant issued for his arrest, the French Parlement accused Rousseau of promoting

“impious and detestable principles” contemptuous of religion, Church and King alike. From: Extrait

des Registres du Parlement , Arrêt de la cour de Parlement , Qui condamne un Imprimé ayant pour titre

Émile , ou de l’Éducation , par J. J. Rousseau , imprimé à La Hage… M.DCC.LXII ., à être lacéré &

brûlé par l’Exécuteur de la Haute Justice . The text is reproduced in the beginning of Jean-Jacques

Rousseau, Citoyen à 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, &c . (Amsterdam: Chez

Marc Michel Rey, 1763).

187

of my book [ Emile ] and myself that would not take long to burst out.” 613 Still, he

admits that he lacked such meager awareness: “my feeling of security, my stupidity

was such that, far from foreseeing my misfortune, I did not even suspect its cause

after I felt its effect.” 614 French authorities sounded warning as they “began by rather

skillfully circulating the idea that since they had dealt severely with the Jesuits they

could not show a partial indulgence for books and authors who attacked Religion.” 615

Sectarian tensions mounted, a development that acutely affected Rousseau’s own

creed. He learned in October, 1761 of the arrests of Francois Rouchette (a Protestant

pastor) and the Grenin brothers (three Protestant laymen) in Toulouse, all of whom

were executed weeks later. 616

Dark clouds were gathering yet Rousseau “remained calm.” 617 In spite of his

megalomaniac paranoia—he speaks of “plots” hatched against him by

“Holbachians,” 618 certain that “it was very much me they were after” 619 —he still

613 The Confessions . CW V.481-482; OC 575.

614 The Confessions . CW V.482; OC 575.

615 The Confessions . CW V.482; OC 575-6.

616 The letter warning Rousseau was from fellow Protestant Jean Ribotte, who asked Rousseau to

publish a manifesto on behalf of religious tolerance and write an appeal to the provincial Governor

Duc de Richelieu. Rousseau refused, citing the Pauline doctrine of compliance. Ribotte also made the

same request of Voltaire, who failed to act before the executions. For Ribotte’s letter see: CC IX.1498.

For Rousseau’s response see: CC IX.1521. For a concise account of these events see: Cranston, The

Noble Savage , pp. 299-301. It is also worth noting that only two months later, Ribotte alerted both

Rousseau and Voltaire of the infamous Calas affair, again begging their intervention. On October 13,

1761, Huguenot merchant Jean Calas had discovered his oldest son dead (by hanging) in his Toulouse

shop. Attributing the death to suicide, Calas was charged by local magistrates with murdering the

youth to prevent him from converting to Catholicism. Incited by a wave of religious (and anti-

Huguenot) intolerance throughout the region, Calas was condemned to death on March 9, 1762, and

publicly broken on the wheel, strangled, and burned the following day. The execution led Voltaire,

“ l’homme de Calas ,” to petition for religious tolerance. A panel of fifty judges was appointed to

review the case, and reversed the ruling on March 9, 1765. Although this affair marked a catalyst in

the reform of religious tolerance laws, it was not until 1787 that Louis XVI granted official tolerance to

the Huguenots, and 1905 that Church and State were officially made separate in France.

617 The Confessions . CW V.482; OC I.576.

618 As “[t]he rumors increased and soon changed their tone” and “the threats became addressed directly

at me,” Rousseau admits that he “did not at all doubt that this [rumor of the Parlement’s censure] was

an invention of the Holbachians to seek to frighten me and to incite me to flee.” Rousseau is here

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“could not resolve to flee.” 620 Yet he was forced to confront mounting evidence. In a

letter to M. le Maréchal from the Curate de Deuil, Jean-Jacques learned from a

reliable source that

Parlement was to proceed against me with the ultimate severity, and

that on a certain day, which he noted, a warrant would be issued for

my arrest. I judged this warrant to be of Holbachian fabrications; I

knew that Parlement was very attentive to legal formalities, and that to

begin on this occasion with a warrant of arrest, before knowing

juridically whether I acknowledged the book [ Emile ] and whether I

was really its author, was to violate all of them. 621

But Emile , like all of his major works save the First Discourse and Julie , was openly

inscribed with his name and self-appointed title: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Citoyen de

Genève . 622 He had already corresponded with the censor Malesherbes over its

content, and had publicly wrangled with the French publisher Duchesne to ensure that

it went to press in a timely fashion. 623

The obviousness of the situation still seemed to escape Rousseau. Even after

friends warned him of imminent legal action, he stubbornly refused to accept the

increasing precariousness of his situation.

Since I felt very well that underneath all this there was some mystery

which they did not want to tell me, I calmly awaited the event,

referring to Baron d’Holbach, a prominent philosophe and avowed atheist. The Confessions . CW

V.482;OC I.576.

619 The Confessions . CW V.483;OC I.577.

620 The Confessions . CW V.484;OC I.578.

621 The Confessions . CW V.484;OC I.578.

622 The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts was attributed to a nameless “Citoyen de Genève.” See:

OC III.1. Julie , the “Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps,” was

described as being “Collected and Published by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.” OC II.3. In the Second

Preface to Julie , Rousseau writes that he omitted the designation of his Genevan citizenship to “not

profane the name of my fatherland; I only put it on writings I believe will do it honor.” CW VI.20; OC

II.27.

623 Rousseau was concerned that the book would not be set in type in a timely fashion. As Cranston

describes, “Rousseau suggested there were only two ways to thwart the pirates [from printing

unauthorized copies], secrecy and diligence; and since there was no longer any secrecy about Emile ,

diligence was all the more necessary.” This supports the contention that people knew of Emile (and

who its author was) long before it went to press. See: Cranston, The Noble Savage , pp. 300-301.

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counting upon my uprightness and my innocence in this whole

business, and only too happy, whatever persecution was to await me,

to be called to the honor of suffering for the truth. Far from being

afraid and keeping myself hidden, every day I went to the Chateau and

in the afternoons I took my usual walk. 624

Rather than face facts, he “was tempted to believe that the entire world had gone

mad.” 625 He attributes this to his certainty of vaguely defined conspiracy theories, a

naïve faith in his own innocence, and a stubbornness to resist submission to the will

of his persecutors. He retired to bed with his “usual reading at night” 626 —the Bible—

and finished the Book of Judges , 19. It was then (at two in the morning) that his wife

Therese and M. la Roche entered with a letter on behalf on Mme. le Maréchal 627 from

M. le Prince de Conti. “The fermentation,” Rousseau recalls the letter as having said,

“is extreme; nothing can ward off the blow, the Court demands it, Parlement wishes

it; at seven o’clock in the morning a warrant will be issued for his [Rousseau’s] arrest,

and they will send to arrest him on the spot; I have obtained assurances that they will

not pursue him if he gets away; but if he persists in wanting to let himself be arrested,

he will be arrested.” 628

After a brief conference with le Maréchal, Rousseau concluded that it was

time to skip town. “I did not feel that I had either enough presence of mind, or

enough skill, or perhaps enough firmness to avoid compromising her if I was sharply

pressed. That made me decide to sacrifice my glory to her tranquility, to do for her

624 The Confessions . CW V.485;OC I.579.

625 The Confessions . CW V.485;OC I.579.

626 In light of the charges (of impiety), the more suspicious amongst us might view this claim as

pandering. Regardless, Rousseau notably portrays himself as a pious Christian whose bedtime routine

involved Bible study.

627 Mme. le Maréchal was a benefactor of Rousseau’s in Montmorency whom he describes earlier in

The Confessions as “a lovable and powerful woman, to whom, in truth, I was becoming more attached

day by day.” CW V.446; OC I.532.

628 The Confessions . CW V.485;OC I.580. For the correspondence to which Rousseau refers, see: CC

XI.1843.

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on this occasion what nothing would have made me do for myself.” 629 The claim is

passive, stubborn, and sacrificial. Rousseau leaves Montmorency to assuage the

anxiety of his female friend. He follows his heart against his reasoned judgment,

foregoing personal “glory” to calm his companion’s fears. Regardless of his

retrospective reluctance, Rousseau’s flight was a harbinger of his life to come.

Outlawed from Paris to Geneva, the publication of Emile set in motion Rousseau’s

transformation from self-styled hermit to criminalized outcast. 630

Rousseau’s resistance to retreat may still strike an odd chord. Had he not

spent a career reiterating the practical, political and moral benefits of solitude? Yet

even in his earlier embrace of reclusiveness, he never completely abandoned society.

As Emile made plain, literal solitude was the fate of God, not man; the pupil’s

seclusion was a prelude to the involvement so central to Rousseau’s concept of civic

duty.

The Parlement’s arrest warrant changed everything. No longer granted the

luxury of peripheral asylum, Jean-Jacques was now an outcast. Hounded from

Môtiers to Bern, denounced by dear Geneva, he wandered in search of a homeland

while decrying his fate. During this “not all unwarranted” paranoia characteristic of

Rousseau’s waning years, Maurice Cranston argues, he “came to see himself as a

social outcast and concentrated on writing autobiographical works aimed at revealing

his essential innocence and truthfulness.” 631 He was indeed consumed with his own

acquittal. His ensuing works—from the Letter to Beaumont and Letters Written From

629 The Confessions . CW V.486;OC I.580-581.

630 Following this conversion of sorts, Jean-Jacques’ subsequent writings reflect an impassioned need

for acquittal. From The Confessions and Dialogues to the final Reveries , these later works bear the

distinct burden of an author in search of redemption, either in the public’s or God’s eye.

631 Cranston, The Solitary Self , p. xii.

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a Mountain to the Dialogues and Reveries —were written with an eye for redemption,

proffering numerous rejoinders to the grave injustice of his all-too-public persecution.

As an exile, Jean-Jacques felt compelled not only to defend himself but to

confront the consequences of his now-literal solitude. Where his retreat had earlier

served demonstrative and pedagogical purposes, he now approached reclusiveness as

an intensely personal matter. This development is most evident in his final work, The

Reveries of the Solitary Walker . Rousseau begins his swansong by stressing its self-

involvement, admitting (to whom, it is unclear) that “[t]here will be much concerning

me in them, because a solitary person who reflects is necessarily greatly preoccupied

with himself.” 632 Whereas Montaigne “wrote his Essays only for others,” Rousseau

wrote “only for myself.” 633 Taking self-examination as an enterprise in self-

edification, his work’s overarching concern was not society’s progress but its author’s

individual growth: “I will be happy if… I learn to leave life not better, for that is not

possible,” he confesses, “but more virtuous than I entered it.” 634

Crazier things have happened. After all, his entrance into the world was

dubious at best. “Cast from childhood into the whirlwind of the world,” Rousseau

confides, “I soon learned from experience that I was not made to live in it and that in

632 Reveries (First Promenade). CW VIII.7; OC I.1000.

633 Reveries (First Promenade). CW VIII.8; OC I.1001. Rousseau’s charge is somewhat misleading.

In his prefatory note “To the Reader,” Montaigne writes: “This book was written in good faith, reader.

It warns you from the outset that in it I have set myself no goal but a domestic and private one. I have

had no thought of serving either you or my own glory. My powers are inadequate for such a purpose.

I have dedicated it to the private convenience of my relatives and friends.” This is not, as Rousseau

suggests, the “complete opposite” of writing only for oneself. Furthermore, Montaigne’s work pursues

self-knowledge through measured self-examination, the same “goal” (and methodology) that Rousseau

sets for his Reveries : “to make myself aware of the modifications of my soul and of their sequence.”

Reveries (First Promenade). CW VIII.7; OC I.1000. See also: Montaigne, The Complete Essays , p. 2.

634 Reveries . (Third Promenade). CW VIII.27; OC I.1023.

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it I would never reach the state my heart felt a need for.” 635 His life was plagued with

adversity, the pernicious twist of fate personalized as “undoubtedly a great teacher…

[that nonetheless] charges dearly for its lessons.” 636 Unfortunately, Rousseau was a

slow pupil. “What benefits do I get from such late and painfully acquired

enlightenment concerning my fate and concerning other people’s passions,” he asks

during the Third Walk ? “By coming to know men better, I have only felt better the

misery into which they have thrust me; and while this knowledge has shown me all

their snares, it has not enabled me to avoid any.” 637

By the Fifth Walk , however, Jean-Jacques sings a slightly different tune. In

reflecting upon his life’s experiences, he gleans not sadness but solace. “I regret

these experiences in no way,” he now concludes, “since through reflection they have

given me new insights into knowledge of myself and into the true motives for my

conduct in a thousand circumstances I have so often deluded myself about.” 638

For

the beleaguered solitaire, life was a grueling test characterized by “years of

agitation” 639 which, in reflection, yielded retrospective clarity and eventual calm in

the face of adversity. 640

Rousseau’s ruminations still lead him towards a lonely conclusion: “of all the

studies I have tried to undertake during my life in the midst of men, there is hardly

635 Reveries . (Second Promenade). CW VIII.18; OC I.1012.

636 Reveries . (Third Promenade). CW VIII.17; OC I.1011.

637 Reveries . (Third Promenade). CW VIII.17; OC I.1011.

638 Reveries . (Sixth Promenade). CW VIII.51; OC I.1052.

639 Reveries . (Third Promenade). CW VIII.24; OC I.1019.

640 Rousseau’s position here begs a comparison with Seneca. Following his exile from Rome, Seneca

approached his banishment as a period of “retirement.” He used this opportunity for reflection to

compose his Epistulae Morales , a work in which solitude is a catalyst for self-appraisal and measured

self-growth. I discuss Rousseau’s awkward relationship with Stoicism—his self-proclaimed affinity

and his decidedly un-Stoic behavior—in greater length elsewhere.

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any I could not just as well have undertaken alone on a desert island.” 641 Far from

facilitating his desire to engage with the world, his antagonists seemed to thwart him

at every turn. “The greatest care of those who rule my fate having been to make

everything appear only false and deceptive to me, an occasion for virtue is never

anything but a lure they hold to draw me into the snare they want to enlace me in.” 642

The maliciousness of his nameless enemies weighs heavily upon his memories.

Apparently resigned to being at their mercy and convinced that he cannot act

independent of their influence, he retreats to a familiar refrain: “I know that the only

good which might henceforth be within my power is to abstain from acting, from fear

of doing evil without wanting to and without knowing it.” 643

Presented as an epiphany of sorts, the sentiment was nothing new. His pledge

of abstention harkened back to the “golden rule” of the Second Discourse . 644

Invoking the exile’s duty first described in Emile —“to bear the yoke of necessity

without complaining”—he again embraces inactivity and withdrawal as the key to his

liberation. Could such passive resistance free him from the yoke of his antagonists?

Only if Rousseau’s heart submitted to his mind; only if his reasoned conclusion

regarding the chimerical folly of virtue could quell his desire to seek virtue. In

Rousseau’s writings, Starobinski observes, “[t]he reflective man knows how to

641 Reveries (Third Promenade). CW VIII.18; OC I.1013. Readers might here recall Rousseau’s

fascination with Robinson Crusoe , although even Crusoe had Friday by his side. As the first book

Emile is given to read see: Emile . E 184; OC IV.454-455.

642 Reveries (Sixth Promenade). CW VIII.50; OC I.1051. Although the tone of this statement is

unabashedly paranoid (and borderline deranged), its substance is consistent with statements from

Rousseau’s earlier works on the safety and relative virtue of inactivity.

643 Reveries . (Sixth Promenade). CW VIII.50; OC I.1051.. Because Rousseau maintains the innocence

of the human heart, he is accurately identified with Pelagianism. Yet he greatly mistrusts his active

will when swayed by social or societal pressures. If such “artificial” forces so frequently manipulate

and distort his “naturally” good will, does this render his affirmation of natural goodness moot? Put

another way, might Rousseau’s mistrust of activity reflect a more orthodox vision of humankind’s

sinfulness than his Pelagianism suggests?

644 Second Discourse . CW III.38; OC III.156.

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govern the mind of the sensuous man.” 645 Just as Wolmar guides Saint Preux and the

Tutor controls Emile, so did Rousseau (the exile-in-reflection) now call upon Jean-

Jacques (the sensual dreamer) to submit.

If action had indeed become futile and vaguely self-incriminating, Rousseau

presented himself two alternatives: to await salvation at the hands of divine

Providence, or abandon himself to his transcendent reveries. Although he began his

Confessions invoking his day of reckoning (“Let the trumpet of the last judgment

sound when it will; I shall come with this book in my hands to present myself before

the Sovereign Judge”), 646 his Reveries turned with equal eagerness to flights of

imaginative fancy. The Island of Saint-Pierre became, through recollection, an

earthly heaven which sparked in him “[t]he sentiment of existence, stripped of any

other emotion… a precious sentiment of contentment and of peace which alone would

suffice to make this existence dear and sweet to anyone able to spurn all the sensual

and earthly impressions which incessantly come to distract us from it and to trouble

its sweetness here-below.” 647 Retreating from the frustrations of his physical life,

Rousseau once again found solace in nature and dream.

Although he recognized God’s hand in his own misfortunes—troubles too

swiftly orchestrated and coherently executed to be rooted in mere human will or non-

determinate chance—he did “not go so far as St. Augustine who would have consoled

himself to be damned if such had been the will of God.” 648 Indeed, his deferential

praise of God (the only true judge of innocence who alone is “the cause of my

645 Starobinski, 215

646 The Confessions . CW V.5; OC I.5.

647 Reveries (Fifth Promenade). CW VIII.46; OC I.1047. Reverie elevates Rousseau to a transcendent,

divine-like state: “As long as this state lasts, we are sufficient unto ourselves, like God.”

648 Reveries . (Second Promenade). CW VIII.16; OC I.1010.

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confidence”) 649 rings somewhat hollow. Rousseau did not, after all, rebuke his

earthly deeds as unpardonable sins. Quite the opposite, he stubbornly clung to his

own experiences as the simultaneous evidence of his goodness (he lived honestly and

truthfully) and source of his misery (others vengefully disagreed). Although acting

with integrity, speaking his mind, and trusting his friends furthered the severity of his

downfall, these experiences were without disgrace and even worthy of praise.

Kierkegaard understandably saw in this claim a notable dearth of Christian

humility: “What he lacks is the ideal, the Christian ideal, to humble him and teach

him how little he suffers compared with the saints, and to sustain his efforts by

preventing him from falling into the reverie and sloth of the poet.” Far from a martyr,

Rousseau simply “shows us how hard it is for a man to die to the world.” 650 Despite

asserting that self-examination has taught him the ability to accept hardship with

Stoic (or even Cynic) aplomb, Rousseau suffered horribly. More specifically, he

suffered as a man convinced of his innocence, not as a Christian who accepted his

ontological guilt. He assumed his worthiness in the eyes of God, while deflecting

culpability to those who controlled his corporeal fate.

Where men have failed Rousseau, the Lord will redeem him; of this he is sure.

“God is just,” he concludes; “He wills that I suffer; and He knows that I am innocent.

That is the cause of my confidence.” 651 But, as Kierkegaard reminds, who amongst

us is innocent? Augustine spent every waking minute of a far more pious life

affirming his own culpability. Maintaining faith is a grueling struggle for a man—

649 Reveries . (Second Promenade). CW VIII.16; OC I.1010.

650 Søren Kierkegaard, Journals (4: 252-253), as quoted in Starobinski, p. 384 n. 23. For additional

discussion of Kierkegaard and Rousseau, see: Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy , p. 190;

Grimsley, Rousseau and the Religious Quest .

651 Reveries (Second Promenade). CW VIII.16; OC I.1010.

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even a Saint—painfully aware that his very nature is tainted by sin. Yet for

Rousseau, “serene in my innocence,” 652 Divine contemplation offered detached peace

of mind. “Let me, therefore, leave men and fate to go their ways. Let me learn to

suffer without a murmur,” he concluded. “In the end, everything must return to order,

and my turn will come sooner or later.” 653 He was without blame, society guilty. In

confidently casting this stone, what was there to fear from One who surely grasped

this truth?

Rather than dreading his “turn,” Rousseau awaited divine judgment as a

framed man anticipates a noble trial. Cherishing the inevitability of his redemption,

he found one final companion in God—the only Being left who understood him. In

the end, Rousseau the recluse still sought solace in another , a final grasp that

illuminates the extent of his all-to-human attachment to attachment. Intoxicated by

the comfort of his own reveries, certain that he had “never been truly suited for civil

society,” convinced that “everything contributed to detach my affections from this

world, even before the misfortunes which were destined to alienate me from it

completely,” he seemed poised in the Reveries to finally retreat in peace. 654

Still, one cannot help but sense that perhaps as he did with Emile (nature’s

child pushed back into society), Rousseau had again set himself up to fail. His feet

straddled too many islands: a love of man and a mistrust of men, faith in political

reform and fear of hegemonic coercion, civic duty and social aversion, Cynic

shamelessness and Christian faith. Was the solitude born of these tensions

compelling, much less coherent? Did his recourse to reclusiveness illustrate the

652 Reveries (Third Promenade). CW VIII.22; OC I.1019.

653 Reveries (Second Promenade). CW VIII.16; OC I.1010.

654 Reveries (Sixth Promenade). CW VIII.56; OC I.1059.

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political and moral value of retreat? Did his appropriation of both spiritual and

secular tropes coalesce into something practicable, or did his model of retreat collapse

under the weight of its own conflicting concerns?

The temptation, as often befalls those confronting Rousseau, is to say that he

failed—that his theory was too fraught with contradictions, his character too weak to

realize the strength of his vision. But if we take him both as he was and as he wished

to be, perhaps we may still redeem him in the end.

For Rousseau, retreat provided a necessary means of enacting a noble plan, of

resisting societal corruption and girding oneself for the strenuous task of reform.

Return was its necessary correlative, the final, unavoidable test of applying lessons

learned in seclusion from the world to which we are inescapably bound. Only when

Rousseau was fiercely unwelcome did he supposedly abandon his earthly ties, tilting

his delicate balance by placing faith wholly in God and retreating into the solipsistic

daydreams of a defeated, isolated man.

Still, it took Rousseau until the year of his death to convince himself that he

had abandoned all hope. At that late stage, his acquiescence seemed terribly forced

and somewhat suspect. If we survey the evidence of his life and thought we might

instead conclude that Rousseau was never able to fully retreat, even when he had little

choice. What Kierkegaard identified as a lack of humility might therefore be

appraised as a deep-seated fear of abandonment—of relinquishing his civic duty and

leaving his peers to stumble towards a very suspect fate. To be sure, Rousseau

affirmed the virtues of passivity and inactivity, surrendering himself to nature,

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reverie, and the forces that conspired against him. Yet he did so, Starobinski notes,

“with such energy as to belie the passivity in which he sought refuge.” 655

In 1762, Frederick the Great had this to say of the man to whom he granted

asylum in Neuchâtel:

I believe Rousseau missed his calling. He clearly had what it takes to

become a famous hermit, a Desert Father impressive because of his

moral rigor and his self-castigation, or a stylite. He would have

performed miracles, would have been canonized, and would have

increased the catalogue of martyrs even more. Nowadays, however,

he is seen only as a philosophical eccentric who tries to revive the sect

of Diogenes after two millennia. It does not pay to eat grass and make

enemies of all contemporary philosophers. 656

By this analysis, it was Rousseau’s involvement—not his solitude—that ushered his

downfall. Had he simply possessed the courage to abandon himself to an elusive

ideal he might have achieved the glory of martyrdom. But as history proves, he could

not stomach the severity of either Cynicism or Sainthood. Unlike Antony, he soiled

his hands in the affairs of men and never fully transcended their influence. And

unlike Diogenes, his outrage was a conceit adopted to mask the deep sensitivity of his

soul. Rather than embrace either model wholly, Rousseau straddled the line. His life

as a recluse was both demonstrative and resigned, righteous and profane. He found in

solitude a value that only God possessed, and urged it upon a corrupt, congested

world. He retreated—from Geneva, from Paris, from his peers, within himself—to

rekindle the divinely-scribed goodness lodged deep within his heart. Yet in

attempting to follow his conscience, he was freighted by the ever-present weight of

social pressures and earthly concerns.

655 Starobinski, p. 248.

656 Taken from Frederick the Great’s letter to the Governor of Neuchâtel, Lord George Keith, in

support of granting Rousseau asylum. Support notwithstanding, Frederick obviously took this

opportunity to air his grievances against Jean-Jacques. Quoted in: Niehues-Pröbsting, 344-345.

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Rousseau might only have heeded Frederick’s advice to adverse

consequences. After all, the uniqueness of his vision lay in its amalgamation, its

stubborn mix of heuristic idealism and pessimistic realism, spiritual transcendence

and political virtue, piety and profanity. There is something both humble and brash in

a solitary thinker who nurtured both a Christian preoccupation with redemption and a

Pagan emphasis on corporeal achievement. Yet as he writes in The Confessions , “I

wished to live in independence but still needed to survive.” 657 Honest to the end, this,

finally, is the lesson of Rousseau: dreamer and recluse certainly, but one very much

involved with the society he never fully abandoned.

657 The Confessions . OC I.363; CW V.304.

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Chapter 5: Church and State

…the true disciples of Christ must suffer persecution; but that the church of Christ

should persecute others, and force others by fire and sword to embrace her faith and

doctrine, I could never yet find in any of the books of the New Testament.

—Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration 658

Now that there is no longer and can never again be an exclusive national Religion,

one should tolerate all those religions that tolerate others insofar as their dogmas are

in no way contrary to the duties of the Citizen. But whoever dares to say there is no

Salvation outside of the Church should be chased out of the State…

—Rousseau, The Social Contract 659

Had Rousseau abandoned his concern with either spiritual welfare or secular

reform, he would not have struggled to envision a model of religious practice

compatible with democratic values of liberty, equality and tolerance. He would not,

in other words, have conceived of a Civil Religion. In Letters Written from the

Mountain , Rousseau describes this chapter of his Social Contract as “researches on

the manner in which Religion can and ought to enter as a constitutive part into the

composition of the body politic.” 660 The Contract ’s most controversial section, 661 his

effort to transform religious associations was met with immediate, unmitigated scorn

by the Genevan Council. 662 Over two centuries later, criticism persists. Henri Gaston

Gouhier interpreted Civil Religion as an unabashed argument for total secularization

658 John Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1990), p. 25.

659 The Social Contract . CW IV.223-224; OC III.469.

660 Letters Written From the Mountain (Sixth Letter). CW IX.233; OC III.809.

661 Readers should consult Robert Derathé’s summary in OC III.1498-1500.

662 Helena Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 1749-

1762 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 258. For Rousseau’s response see: Letters

Written From the Mountain .

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of the state. 663 More common rejoinders—such as that of Ronald Ian Boss—portray

Rousseau’s model as a thinly veiled justification for religious coercion. 664 Alfred

Cobban notes that Civil Religion has greatly contributed to Jean-Jacques’ reputation

“as the apostle of tyranny and an enemy to liberty in the state.” 665 And Lester G.

Crocker is most blunt, arguing that the practical consequences of Rousseau’s civic

faith “can only be imagined from the worst excesses of the Terror, or Stalinism, or of

Chinese communism.” 666

It seems fitting that our paradoxical author should again draw so much ire.

Perhaps part of this backlash is attributable to his task (reconciling two oft-

conflicting, passionately-held belief systems) and personality (a controversial figure

no matter his subject). Yet in one crucial aspect, Rousseau rendered himself an easy

target: earnest or no, his intentions were subverted by a sub-par effort. Tersely

developed as the last substantive chapter in The Social Contract , Civil Religion seems

as conspicuously awkward a fit as the Profession of Faith did in Emile . Of meager

length and polemic in tone, his engagement with this spirited topic smacks of

afterthought and ambivalence. 667 On one hand, Rousseau appears to follow in the

footsteps of thinkers like Montesquieu, 668 espousing traditional republican beliefs in

religion as a necessary foundation of civic virtue. He also devotes a majority of the

663 Henri Gaston Gouhier, Les méditations métaphysiques de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris: J. Vrin,

1970), p. 255.

664 See: Ronald Ian Boss, “Rousseau’s Civil Religion and the Meaning of Belief: An Answer to

Bayle’s Paradox,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth-Century , 84, 1971, p. 123-193.

665 Alfred Cobban, Rousseau and the Modern State (London: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1934), p. 88.

666 Lester G. Crocker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau , Volume II (New York: Macmillan Publishers, 1963), p.

184.

667 As Derathé notes, On Civil Religion was not in the draft of The Social Contract (the so-called

Geneva Manuscript ) that Rousseau initially sent to his publisher Michel Rey in December, 1760. OC

III.1498. Only after one year, in a letter to Rey dated December 23, 1761, did Rousseau admit to

adding this controversial section. CC IX.346.

668 See: Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws , Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold

Samuel Stone, eds. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Part V Books 24-25.

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text to denouncing religious practice’s role within polities. Discussing three inclusive

strains of worship—interior, exterior, and ecclesiastical—he concludes that all fail to

cultivate a strong, unified social body. He insists upon the necessity of religious

tolerance, yet his “civil” alternative regulates faith with an iron fist, even proposing

the death penalty to non-compliers—a strong claim offered almost in passing, without

due justification. 669

Winston Churchill once quipped that politicians should be judged by the level

of animosity they arouse amongst their opponents. 670 If Rousseau were a politician

today, he might give Bill Clinton a run for his money. But he was a political theorist,

and must be judged on the value of his thought rather than the passion of his

detractors. Considering its overwhelmingly negative reception, we might wonder if

his glaringly brief chapter On Civil Religion possesses any value whatsoever. Why

approach this problematic text when its author provides us with other works relevant

to our subject? Because we are using Jean-Jacques as a lens through which to

examine the relationship between religion and politics, and because Civil Religion

offers the Genevan’s most famously concise practical application of this subject, it

begs closer scrutiny.

A measure of caution is nonetheless needed. In light of the heightened

controversy we will proceed slowly, devoting considerable space to examining the

development of Rousseau’s argument along with his more notorious contentions.

Keeping an eye to Civil Religion ’s internal coherence while locating its affinity with

(and context within) his broader oeuvre , we will then assess its merits as the

669 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468.

670 The full quote attributed to Churchill reads as follows: “I have always felt that a politician is to be

judged by the animosities he excites among his opponents.”

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practical solution Rousseau envisioned. In the final analysis, how does his “purely

civil profession of faith” resolve the dialectic between secularism and spirituality?

Does it present a viable means of reconciling the relationship between religious and

political institutions? Or does it merely add flame to this still-burning fire?

* * * * *

Rousseau began his chapter “On Civil Religion” with historical conjecture:

“Men at first had no other Kings than Gods, nor any other government than

theocracy.” 671 Well before the period when “men could bring themselves to accept a

fellow man as a master and flatter themselves that this was a good arrangement,” they

looked to divine rulers for governance. 672 Religion therefore served an explicitly

political function from the outset of human history. Long before the idea of self-

rule—even that exercised by a monarch or prince—seemed feasible, the

contemplation of heavenly figures provided a source of normative authority.

As he had in the Second Discourse , Rousseau again argued that socialization

changed everything. Individuals formed loose congregations which (over time)

evolved into nations, and citizens began to worship common deities legitimized by

corporeal leaders. “By the sole fact that God was placed at the head of every political

society,” Rousseau notes, “it followed that there were as many Gods as there were

peoples.” 673 Subsequent homogenization and centralization of these divine

figureheads within territorial borders helped to define national identities, but it also

671 The Social Contract . CW IV.216; OC III.460.

672 Compare with the Vicar’s similar observation in Emile . E 288-289.

673 The Social Contract . CW IV.216; OC III.460.

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enflamed national rivalries. Because “peoples foreign to each other and nearly

always enemies could not recognize the same master… [nor] obey the same leader,”

politico-theological differences became a source of conflict. “Thus,” Rousseau

argues, “national divisions resulted in polytheism, and beyond that in theological as

well as civil intolerance.” 674 Despite these antagonistic conditions, he insists that

religious wars were nonexistent in Pagan times. This is because “each State, having

its own cult as well as its Government, did not distinguish between its Gods and its

laws. Political war was also Theological.” 675

This was certainly true of the Greeks, who brashly appointed themselves

“natural Sovereigns” of foreign tribes. This claim of dominion followed a theological

assumption: barbarians fell under Greece’s political jurisdiction because both peoples

worshipped the same Pagan Gods (even if unwittingly so). Such rationale was also

held by the Romans, for whom political and religious conquest was inextricably

linked. 676 Rome was, however, an Empire whose vast geopolitical expansion enabled

the unprecedented spread of its deities. This phenomenon incurred a sort of

theological globalization: “the Romans, having spread their cult and their Gods along

with their empire, and having themselves often adopted the Gods of the vanquished

by granting legal status… to them all, the peoples of that vast empire gradually

674 In describing these prejudices as “synonymous,” Rousseau establishes a core contention of his

chapter On Civil Religion : religious and civil liberty (like religious and civil intolerance ) are connected

values. The Social Contract . CW IV.216; OC III.460.

675 The Social Contract . CW IV.216; OC III.460.

676 History confirms Rousseau’s analysis of the conflation between spiritual and secular authority. It

was during Rome’s territorial expansion that jus gentium and jus naturale were formally codified, a

political necessity to institute and regulate Roman Catholicism throughout a sweeping Empire, when

the Mosaic Decalogue no longer sufficed to bind colonizers to colonies.

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[came] to have multitudes of Gods and of cults, which were approximately the same

everywhere.” 677

Ironically, the very conditions which facilitated the proliferation of Rome’s

religion also contributed to its diffusion. Because the burgeoning Empire was

logistically incapable of micro-managing worship in newly-acquired territories, its

pantheon’s authority eroded. Although Rome continued to export deities throughout

it colonies, the sheer scope of its expansion prohibited the strict imposition and

codification of Roman faith. Religious cults flourished in this absence of strong,

centralized religious authority. In practice, nations incorporated into the Empire’s

fold (that lay beyond their conqueror’s immediate grasp) continued to worship their

own Gods even, Rousseau observes, with Rome’s legal approbation.

The emergence of autonomous cults within the Empire’s territories marked a

catalyst for momentous change. Specifically, it ushered the separation between

church and state, a radical schism with decidedly deleterious consequences. “By

separating the theological system from the political system,” Rousseau laments, “this

brought about the end of the unity of the State.” 678 The divorce of religion from

politics struck at the very heart of Pagan civic cohesion, and left subjects with two

distinct, competing authorities. “It was under these circumstances,” Rousseau argues,

“that Jesus came to establish a spiritual kingdom on earth.” 679 Initially, Jesus and his

followers sought merely to practice their worship without persecution from the state.

Skeptical Pagan leaders sensed a graver danger, regarding the sect “as true rebels

who, beneath a hypocritical submissiveness, were only awaiting the moment to

677 The Social Contract . CW IV.217; OC III.462.

678 The Social Contract . CW IV.217; OC III.462.

679 The Social Contract . CW IV.217; OC III.462.

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become independent of the masters, and to usurp adroitly the authority they pretended

to respect out of weakness.” 680 Pagan fears were realized when, following Jesus’

cataclysmic death, “the humble Christians changed their language, and soon this

supposedly otherworldly kingdom was seen to become, under a visible leader, the

most violent despotism in this world.” 681

Rousseau’s sudden, sharp conclusion begs emphasis: the destructive

relationship between religion and politics began not with their integration but their

radical separation. To reiterate his argument, religious cults flourished as Rome’s

political and spiritual authority weakened. The most enduring and infectious amongst

these—Christianity—rejected the jurisdiction of secular governments in spiritual

affairs, and anointed Christ mankind’s unequivocal master. As the Christian

following increased so did its clergy’s political power extend, eventually ruling the

very corporeal dominion it had originally shunned. The once-hunted cult of “the

Way” became a prolific hunter: “[t]he spirit of Christianity has won over everything,”

Jean-Jacques observes, in spiritual and secular realms alike. 682

It was a victory not without cost. According to Rousseau, clerical dominance

of secular polities crippled civil society. The seeds of disunity planted during Rome’s

downfall had blossomed into governments divided by mutually conflicting loyalties

to God and monarch. Civil and spiritual authorities butted heads, as this “double

power has resulted in a perpetual conflict of jurisdiction that has made any good

polity impossible in christian States.” 683 Jurisdictional schizophrenia cultivated a

680 The Social Contract . CW IV.217; OC III.462.

681 The Social Contract . CW IV.217-218; OC III.462.

682 The Social Contract . CW IV.218; OC III.462.

683 The Social Contract . CW IV.218; OC III.462.

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perpetual confusion under which “no people has ever been able to figure out whom it

was obligated to obey, the master or the priest.” 684

This was true even when master was priest. As Rousseau writes, the Kings

and Czars of England and Russia—rulers who had “established themselves as heads

of the Church”—were ultimately subordinate to ecclesiastical authority. Dual

allegiances to earthly and otherworldly interests rendered them impotent. Their

powers became more managerial than legislative: “They have acquired not so much

the right to change [the church] as the power to maintain it.” 685 As “ministers”

subordinate to papal precepts (rather than autonomous “masters” of their realms),

these leaders possessed neither the political nor moral authority to rule or reform the

Church.

Papal dominance therefore posed a real-world threat to secular rule, one that

Hobbes had identified a century prior. Like Rousseau he “saw the evil and the

remedy” of divided sovereignty and “dared to propose the reunification of the two

heads of the eagle, and the complete return to political unity, without which no State

or Government will ever be well constituted.” 686 Still, Hobbes’ monarchal solution

was ultimately impractical; he underestimated the Church’s influence upon a single

ruler, no matter how powerful. As Rousseau chided, he was a “Christian Author” 687

who “ought to have seen that the dominating spirit of Christianity was incompatible

with his system, and that the interest of the Priest would always be stronger than that

684 The Social Contract . CW IV.218; OC III.462.

685 The Social Contract . CW IV.218; OC III.463.

686 The Social Contract . CW IV.218; OC III.463.

687 Despite Rousseau’s certainty, Hobbes’ religious beliefs were—and remain—a matter of significant

dispute. For a fine summary of the various arguments in recent scholarship see: Patricia Springborg,

“Hobbes on religion,” in The Cambridge Companion to Hobbes , Tom Sorell, ed. (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 346-347, 369 n. 1.

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of the State.” 688 Hobbes should have known that his own solution failed to

realistically anticipate organized religion’s predatory instincts. Sword be damned, 689

the Leviathan’s rule would inevitably be subjugated by the power of the priests.

In all fairness, Rousseau’s dismissal obscures the thoughtfulness with which

Hobbes confronted the politico-theological problem. After all, half of his Leviathan

is devoted to the subject of religion. In Chapter 43 he explicitly identifies the

competing pulls of secular and spiritual loyalties as the principal cause of civil

conflict: “The most frequent pretext of Sedition, and Civil War, in Christian

Commonwealths hath a long time proceeded from a difficulty, not yet sufficiently

resolved, of obeying at once, both God, and man, then when their commandments are

one contrary to the other.” 690 Hobbes had a ready answer, one that showed deference

to the divine will. In such instances “when a man receiveth two contrary commands,

and knows that one of them is God's, he ought to obey that, and not the other, though

it be the command even of his lawful sovereign (whether a Monarch, or a sovereign

Assembly,) or the command of his Father.” 691

688 In an author’s note, Rousseau offers a very concise explanation of the clergy’s uniquely potent

authority. Fused “into a body” by a “social compact” (centered around communion and

excommunication), priests cultivate a singular will. A “political masterpiece,” their covenant unites

adherents “from opposite ends of the earth” under one common authority. This strong civil unity

explains why the clergy “will always be master of [divided] peoples and Kings”: they, like the

hypothetical citizens bound by Rousseau’s civil faith, derive political strength from adhering to a

common, unified will. The Social Contract . CW IV.218n; OC III.463n.

689 Rousseau’s critique may sound hyperbolic, but he identifies a cogent problem with Hobbes’

formulation: namely, the fact that Hobbes’ source of regulative order—corporeal punishment, or “the

sword”—holds little sway for those solely concerned with the afterlife and divine redemption. See

note 44 below.

690 Hobbes, Leviathan , Ch. 43 [321], p. 402.

691 To support this claim Hobbes cites Matthew 10:28: “ Fear not those that kill the body, but cannot

kill the soul .” For Hobbes, divine retribution merits far more fear than the sovereign’s wrath. As he

explains: “If the command [of the sovereign] be such as cannot be obeyed without being damned to

eternal death, then it were madness to obey it, and the counsel of our Saviour takes place.” Ibid., Ch.

43 [321], p. 403.

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This solution to the “most frequent pretext” of civil strife is not as naïve as

Rousseau would have us believe. Hobbes immediately recognized that his emphasis

upon obedience raised a logistical difficulty: “men when they are commanded in the

name of God, know not in diverse Cases, whether the command be from God, or

whether he that commandeth, do but abuse God’s name for some private ends of his

own.” 692 Although more staid in tone, these concerns revealed a sentiment consistent

with Rousseau’s own mistrust of ecclesiasts. Just as “many false Prophets” 693

bolstered their own reputations amongst ancient Jews with “feigned Dreams, and

Visions,” Hobbes continued, “so there have been in all times in the Church of Christ,

false Teachers, that seek reputation with the people, by fantastical and false

Doctrines; that seek reputation (as is the nature of Ambition,) to govern them for their

private benefit.” 694 He, like Rousseau, was acutely aware of the dangers

manipulative, ambitious priests posed to a gullible flock.

This common mistrust notwithstanding, they diverged sharply on two major

theological points. First, Hobbes believed that “we are all guilty of disobedience to

God’s Law” both ontologically (as descendents of Adam) and individually (“by our

own transgressions”). 695 And second, in De Cive he argued that the right to interpret

692 Ibid., Ch. 43 [321], p. 403.

693 Rousseau directly levied this charge of “false prophecy” against Beaumont, evoking Moses in

support of his refutation of miracles. The passage to which Rousseau referred comes from the Old

Testament in Deuteronomy 13.1-3: “If a prophet arises among you, or a dreamer of dreams, and gives

you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or wonder which he tells you comes to pass, and if he says, ‘Let

us hp after other gods,’ which you have not known, ‘and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the

words of that prophet or to that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you, to know

whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul.” See: Letter to

Beaumont . CW IX.70; OC IV.990.

694 Hobbes, Leviathan , Ch. 43 [321], p. 403.

695 Ibid., Ch. 43 [322], p. 403.

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scripture—the basis of divine law—“belongs to individual churches .” 696 As he

explained, such a power falls beyond the jurisdiction of “civil authority” and must

“depend either on the judgment of individual citizens or an outside authority. But it

cannot depend on the judgment of individual citizens: that can be seen from the

inconveniences and absurdities it would give rise to.” 697 In sum, “it is the task of a

church to settle disputes; and therefore it is for a church , not for individuals, to

interpret holy scripture.” 698 As a Genevan Protestant with Pelagian sympathies,

Rousseau must have abhorred both conclusions. 699 He viewed the relationship

between God and man as a strictly private matter. Furthermore, as we have already

seen, he championed mankind’s natural innocence and rejected the narrative of

Original Sin. Given these profound disagreements, Rousseau could hardly have

considered Hobbes an ally in the politico-theological debates.

The Genevan was born into a heritage that shunned Roman Catholic directives

as intrusions upon the individual liberty to worship, breaches of political jurisdiction,

and offenses to the lessons of the Gospel. 700 On a more intimate note, this inherited

anticlericalism was reinforced by personal experience. 701 No stranger to the

ecclesiasts’ wrath, Jean-Jacques understood all-too-well the dangerous repercussions

of openly defying orthodox precepts. 702 For such a widely-read public figure as he—

696 Hobbes, De Cive , p. 230.

697 Ibid., p. 230.

698 Ibid., p. 231. See also: p. 245.

699 As he wrote to Voltaire, “whatever the Sophist Hobbes might have been able to say on this, when a

man serves the State well, he does not owe an account to anyone of the matter in which he serves

God.” Letter from Rousseau to Voltaire , August 18, 1756. CW III.119; OC IV.1072.

700 See: Rosenblatt, pp. 259-260.

701 For a summary of Rousseau’s exile see Chapter Four above.

702 Rousseau’s lack of anonymity separated him from other authors who dared take controversial

stances on religion such as, most notably, Voltaire.

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one who dared challenge the priest’s authority—the politico-theological question was

hardly academic.

On both general and personal levels, Rousseau was firmly convinced that the

Catholic Church had overstepped legitimate spiritual and secular bounds. They

abused their duties as a religious authority by dictating terms of material worship that

both assumed humankind’s intrinsic guilt and required rote (and hence unfeeling)

repetition of hollow catechisms. And they exploited their political influence,

purveying an agenda of particularist interests characterized by hegemonic intolerance

and persecution. Subjecting citizens to their narrow interpretations of religious duty,

positive law, and spiritual salvation alike, they subverted the very foundation of a

healthy polity: civic cohesion reflective of a general will and grounded in the

Gospel’s benevolent, harmonious spirit.

In criticizing orthodox Catholicism, Rousseau had not merely entered a

Scriptural debate. His charge denied the Church’s authority as a legitimate mediator

between man and God. Interior faith was a matter of individual conscience and

personal belief; any ruling body which intervened contradicted the very will of God.

If true faith was nourished in the heart, particular rites fell under the realm of public

jurisdiction; exterior worship was by contrast a matter (as he quipped in Emile ) of

public policy. 703 Yet following the terms established in The Social Contract ,

religious congregations (like any civic association) were legitimate only if they

reflected a truly general will. 704 By contrast, the unilateral dictates of papists

703 Rousseau here sides with the Vicar, who argued that “external worship, if it must be uniform for the

sake of good order… is purely a question of public policy.” Emile . E 296.

704 Furthermore, because God imbued us with an inherent sense of pitié and universal brotherhood, this

unifying aim is consistent with Rousseau’s understanding of adherence to the divine will.

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cultivated a singular dogmatism which disserved both God and man. Correcting

these abuses posed practical and political challenges: disavowing the Church of its

sole authority in spiritual matters; and reforming public worship in accord with the

democratic tenets of tolerance and civic unity.

As we have already seen, Rousseau insisted upon the necessity and utility of

his thought. The pragmatic emphasis evident in his introduction to Civil Religion was

equally explicit in the Geneva Manuscript . 705 Rousseau began this earlier draft by

stating his objective: “to put the machine in running order.” 706 By “machine” he

meant the political institutions that necessarily order social life. As in the Second

Discourse , malfunction was a consequence of denaturization, a development that

created new needs which “bring us together in proportion as our passions divide

us.” 707 Although human beings are naturally innocent, socialization gave rise to

wickedness. As our wants grew to surpass our needs, the “cupidity” exemplified by

amour-propre weakened man’s sense of collective welfare and interdependence. 708

The satiation of particularist desires undermined natural harmony, an intuitive

sentiment which served as “the first bonds of general society” and “the foundations

of… universal good will.” 709 Still, “the more we become enemies of our fellow

men”—the more we pursue personal gain at the expense of others—“the less we can

705 Although the sections I address (I.1 and I.2) of the Geneva Manuscript were deleted from The

Social Contract , certain passages from I.2 are appropriated in Rousseau’s final chapter On Civil

Religion .

706 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.76; OC III.281.

707 Rousseau’s influence upon Hegel is evident in his dialectical analysis: “Thus the same causes that

make us wicked also make us slaves and reduce us to servitude by depraving us.” Geneva Manuscript .

CW IV.76; OC III.282.

708 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.76; OC III.282.

709 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.76-77; OC III.282.

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do without them.” 710 This was a dilemma whose redress required hard labor, yet

“universal goodwill” remained a “fruit everyone would like to reap without being

obliged to cultivate it.” 711

If effort was wanting, the need was undeniable. In society, a “new order of

things gives rise to a multitude of relationships lacking order, regulation, and

stability.” 712 To further complicate matters, Rousseau admits that “nature’s gentle

voice is no longer an infallible guide for us, nor is the independence we have received

from her a desirable state.” 713 Human beings are, for better or worse, social creatures.

In this deracinated state, we no longer follow (let alone discern) the guidance of our

God-given conscience. Mankind is also painfully oblivious: “the sublime concepts of

a God of the wise, the gentle laws of brotherhood He imposes upon us, the social

virtues of pure souls—which are the true cult He desires of us—will always escape

the multitude.” 714 This is because people are easily swayed. They are fed “senseless”

Gods who, far from upholding morality and social cohesion, would lead them to

“indulge in a thousand horrible, destructive passions… if Philosophy and laws did not

hold back the furies of fanaticism.” 715

710 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.76; OC III.282.

711 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.77; OC III.282.

712 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.77; OC III.282.

713 The remainder of this passage offered a sharp rejoinder to those (most famously Voltaire) who

depicted Rousseau as overly-romanticizing nature. Here, however, Jean-Jacques is a hard realist: “We

lost peace and innocence forever before we had appreciated their delights. Unfelt by the stupid men of

earliest times, lost to the enlightened man of later times, the happy life of the golden age was always a

state foreign to the human race, either because it went unrecognized when humans could have enjoyed

it or because it had been lost when humans could have known it.” His bluntly honest assessment

underscores the pragmatism that I argue is central to Rousseau’s formulation of Civil Religion.

Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.77; OC III.283.

714 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.79; OC III.285.

715 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.79; OC III.285.

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The problem, however, lies with sectarianism rather than religion. 716 “Ever

since particular instructions became necessary, each People has its own ideas which it

is taught are the only valid ones, and which lead to Carnage and murder more often

than to harmony and peace.” 717 Rousseau instead urged us to “set aside the sacred

precepts of the various Religions, whose abuse causes as many crimes as their use can

avoid, and give back to the Philosopher the examination of a question that the

Theologian has never dealt with except to the detriment of the human race.” 718

Although these lines were removed in The Social Contract , they strike an odd chord

coming from one so mistrustful of the philosophes . Rather than read this as a reversal

of Rousseau’s well-documented suspicions, we should recognize in his plea an

unflinching indictment of those charged with religion’s keeping. Forced to choose

(on society’s behalf) between priests and philosophers, he sides here with the latter. 719

Although this admission occurs only in passing (in a draft, at that), it underscores an

insistence consistent throughout Rousseau’s oeuvre : theologians have made a mess

of religious institutions, a grievous gaffe for which humankind has paid a dear price.

Clearly, those charged with safeguarding and promoting that “greatest good of

all” (positive religion) have failed men where they are most in need. As Rousseau

concludes,

716 Given Rousseau’s historical analysis of religious associations, readers might wonder if sectarianism

and religion are fundamentally inseparable. Yet unless we allow him this crucial distinction, we

cannot accept his “civil faith” as a practical alternative to despotic dogmatism.

717 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.80; OC III.286.

718 For additional examples of Rousseau’s anticlericalism in The Social Contract ’s final version

(beyond his chapter On Civil Religion ), see Book II, Chapters 6-7 and Book IV, Chapter 7. Geneva

Manuscript . CW IV.80; OC III.286.

719 Of course, Rousseau vacillates on this subject. In Emile , for example, he writes that “fanaticism,

although more deadly in its immediate effects than what is today called the philosophic spirit, is much

less so in its consequences.” Emile . E 312.

215

although there is no natural and general society among men, although

men become unhappy and wicked in becoming sociable, although the

laws of justice and equality mean nothing to those who live both in the

freedom of the state of nature and subject to the needs of the social

state, far from thinking that there is neither virtue nor happiness for us

and that heaven has abandoned us without resources to the deprivation

of the species, let us attempt to draw from the ill itself the remedy that

should cure it. Let us use new associations to correct, if possible, the

defect of the general association. 720

Seemingly awash in despair, Rousseau draws hope from his faith in natural human

innocence and divine beneficence. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,

God has not abandoned His worthy creations. 721 Rather than meekly suffer an

inalterable fate, we must summon courage and employ that most human of traits 722 —

perfectibility—to reform the “particular institutions” as necessary to human religion

as governments are to socialized man.

Writing on politics, education and social relations, Rousseau used starkly

honest critique—what I have previously referred to as pessimistic realism —as a

catalyst for heuristic idealism . 723 His approach to the politico-theological problem 724

was no different. As with inequalities, religious intolerance was a byproduct of

socialization, a corruption of the natural harmony instilled in us as creatures of God.

The dominance of papists perverted the spirit of the gospel by dictating terms of

salvation inconsistent with divine mercy and natural goodness, just as the Catholic

church infected society by dividing citizens and sovereignty. As in the Second

720 Geneva Manuscript . CW IV.81-82; OC III.288.

721 Rousseau immediately notes that “the human race… alone ought to decide [in such matters of faith]

because the greatest good of all is the only passion it has.” In typically paradoxical fashion,

Rousseau’s pessimistic realism and ontological optimism are in simultaneous evidence. Geneva

Manuscript . CW IV.80; OC III.286.

722 In the Second Discourse , Rousseau argued that free will and perfectibility are uniquely human traits

(unlike pitié and self-preservation, which animals possess). See: CW III.26-27; OC III.141-143.

723 For a further discussion of these terms, see Chapter One above.

724 As defined earlier, I use this term to mean the consideration of religion as it relates to politics.

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Discourse , redressing these wrongs demanded drawing “from the ill itself the remedy

that should cure it”: creating new associations to replace those that have failed us in

politics, society, and religion alike. If positive religion is particularly adrift, and its

reform is essential to a polity’s well-being, the task of instituting a civil religion is

nothing short of imperative.

* * * * *

We might here recall that Rousseau begins The Social Contract in search of

“legitimate and reliable rule.” 725 His vision takes shape as strong citizenship guided

by the general will, a unified volition shared and exercised by all. Reconceptualizing

the relationship between religion and politics (a nexus of divided loyalties) is

necessary to enact such valid political reform. If citizens do not resolve this

debilitating tension, they will be left dazed and confused, ruled by “two powers, two

Sovereigns” 726 —that of Christ as defined by a hegemonic church, and that of the state

as putatively defined by a monarch.

In the Second Discourse , speculative genealogy laid the foundation for a

sociopolitical critique of inequality. As in this earlier work, Rousseau’s introduction

to Civil Religion served a similar purpose: identifying the source of a social problem

in need of political redress. In both cases, an examination of the past established the

context to better assess and correct present failings. We may here take a moment to

725 The Social Contract . CW IV.131; OC III.351.

726 The Social Contract . CW IV.218; OC III.463.

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review Rousseau’s historical account of religion, as it defines the problems

theoretically solved by Civil Religion.

Although the relationship between religion and politics took the initial form of

a relatively benign polytheism (much like early societies were characterized as loose

congregations of cooperative individuals), it became a source of despotism amongst

human societies. In the Second Discourse , the invention of private property marked a

decisive turning point in the evolution of civil society. In Civil Religion , Rousseau

locates a similar world-changing moment in the history of spiritual worship: the

advent of theological intolerance between nation-states, and the subsequent export of

deities to vanquished territories. Rome’s overexpansion subverted this practice, as

fringe cults sprouted throughout the Empire’s territory. Amongst these, Christianity

proved most enduring, and divested spiritual faith of its need for political affirmation.

More strongly, Christians opposed an Empire’s authority, drawing legitimacy from

faith in a single omnipotent divinity, and creating an autonomous ruling body who

answered to Christ above the Emperor. What began as a movement opposed to

earthly involvement eventually grew to dominate corporeal affairs.

In addition to providing a conceptual and historical foundation for his

argument, Rousseau’s introduction establishes three main concerns. First, theological

and civil intolerance—prejudices he describes as synonymous 727 —are products of

human history, unnatural to the extent that (like inequalities) they develop with

socialization and are nonexistent in the natural state. Second, politics and religion

were intimately linked from the first seedlings of human society. This relationship

was initially mutually beneficial, as divine rule served a normative, legislative,

727 The Social Contract . CW IV.216; OC III.460.

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unifying political function. Third, this balance was fundamentally (and permanently)

altered by Christianity, a faith that supplanted nationally-sponsored deities with a

universal God whose authority was autonomous from (and far more powerful than)

the state. This schism between religious and secular authority in turn created a

political problem, the phenomenon of sovereignty divided amongst monarchs and

priests. As Rousseau observes, the “sacred cult has always remained, or again

become independent of the Sovereign, and without a necessary bond with the body of

the State.” 728 It was this “necessary bond” that he sought to repair.

Before developing his solution, Rousseau quickly distances himself from the

fray of contemporary theological debate. Describing the two dominant poles of

thought epitomized by “the opposing sentiments of Bayle and Warburton, one of

whom claims that no Religion is useful to the body politic, the other of whom

maintains, to the contrary, that Christianity is its firmest support,” 729 he makes clear

his distaste for such arguments. Rousseau’s overriding aim is to re-forge religion’s

civic ties and reunite civil and religious faith, thereby imbuing strong democratic self-

rule with religion’s unifying moral foundation. He dismisses chic theological and

728 Rousseau’s comments on Islam underscore the tolerance he grants non-Christian faiths:

“Mohammed had very sound views; he tied his political system together well, and as long as the form

of the Government subsisted under his successors the Caliphs, the Government was completely

unified, and good for that reason. But when the Arabs became prosperous, lettered, polished, soft, and

weak, they were subjugated by barbarians. Then the division between the two powers began again…

[although] it is less apparent among the mohammedans than among the Christians.” Under this

assessment, corporeal prosperity—and not beliefs intrinsic to the Islamic faith—injured Arabic civil

unity; if anything, Christianity is more prone to divided sovereignty. This directly refutes

Montesquieu’s conclusion that “moderate government is better suited to the Christian religion, and

despotic government to Mohammedanism,” and offers a rejoinder to Locke’s proscription of the

“Mahometan” as one who could not live in political harmony with Christians. See: Montesquieu, The

Spirit of the Laws , p. 461; Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration , pp. 63-64; The Social Contract .

CW IV.218; OC III.462-463.

729 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.463-464.

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philosophical arguments as fundamentally irrelevant to his study, one guided by

practical—not metaphysical—concerns.

Rousseau’s aversion to theological debates reflects an even deeper conviction.

As we saw in Chapter 3, he believed divine mysteries were ultimately impenetrable.

Humankind was capable of discerning only the most general characteristics of God

(omnipotence and beneficence) and His will (exemplified in the order of the natural

world). Beyond these vague certainties, theological speculation was wholly

indeterminate. Efforts to apply particular characteristics to a Being beyond human

comprehension were vain in both senses of the word: ineffectual and unduly proud.

Rather than attempt to settle questions irresolvable to the human mind, 730 Rousseau

strove only to “give a little more precision to the overly vague ideas about Religion

that are relevant to my subject.” 731

Before developing his subject—a “purely civil profession of faith”—Rousseau

begins with a typology, dividing religion “into two types, namely the Religion of man

and that of the Citizen.” 732 The first “is the pure and simple Religion of the Gospel…

and what may be called natural divine right,” an internal worship “without Temples,

altars, or rituals.” 733 The second is practiced by and within specific countries, an

external worship of “dogma, rites, and external cult… prescribed by law.” 734

Rousseau adds a “third, more bizarre, type of Religion which, by giving men two

730 Note that Rousseau here sides with the Stoic critique of rhetoric recounted in Plutarch’s Moralia ,

Volume XIII, Part II, and discussed in Chapter 2 above.

731 On the subject of clarity, although religion is (according to the Oxford English Dictionary ) of

“doubtful etymology” writers after Cicero frequently attributed its origins to the term religre , “to

bind.” Rousseau draws upon this sense of legitimate constraint in claiming that a purely civil faith can

be regulated by a corporeal sovereign. The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

732 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

733 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

734 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

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legislative systems, two leaders, and two fatherlands, subjects them to contradictory

duties, and prevents them from being simultaneously devout men and Citizens.” 735

He has in mind Roman Catholicism or “the religion of the Priest,” one that “leads to a

type of mixed and unsocial right that has no name.” 736

Rousseau immediately (and categorically) dismisses the “religion of the

Priest” as being “so manifestly bad that it is a waste of time to amuse oneself by

proving it.” 737 Catholicism fails to uphold the most basic requisites of the social

contract: it “destroys social unity” and “put[s] man in contradiction with himself,”

rendering it “worthless” and—given Rousseau’s concept of divine order—

fundamentally irreligious. 738 The remaining categories have more forgivable flaws.

External worship “combines the divine cult and love of the laws,” a union that

renders “the fatherland the object of the Citizens’ adoration.” 739 Such a formula

transforms the state into a “tutelary God,” a “kind of Theocracy in which there ought

to be no other pontiff than the Prince, nor other priests than the magistrates.” 740 If

Rousseau appreciated such patriotic eros , he remained mistrustful of unilateral

hierarchical authority. Like papists, theocrats conflated secular and spiritual

jurisdiction. 741 Furthermore, their muddled creed was “bad in that, being based on

error and falsehood, it deceives men, makes them credulous, superstitious, and

735 Readers should note Rousseau’s wholly dismissive numeration. By initially claiming that religion

can be “divided into two types,” he implies that Catholicism (a “third, more bizarre, type”) barely even

qualifies as a religion. The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

736 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

737 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

738 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464.

739 The Social Contract . CW IV.219; OC III.464-465.

740 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.465.

741 Furthermore, both Roman Catholicism and theocracy failed to coherently define (and subsequently

separate) these two distinct domains. As a Genevan, Helena Rosenblatt argues, Rousseau was

“particularly sensitive” to such matters. The experience of his patrie had illustrated the more

dangerous “political uses of religion and… political implications of certain beliefs. He was well aware

that some dogmas were being used by the authorities to depoliticize the people.” Rosenblatt, p. 261.

221

drowns the true cult of divinity in empty ceremonial.” 742 Under this system, the

gospel was supplanted by arbitrary ritual, cultivating a faith based upon credulity and

intolerance rather than the truth and harmony characteristic of God’s will.

Having examined the problems of state- and priest-based worship, Rousseau

returns to his first category: “the Religion of man, or Christianity,” which he

immediately distinguishes from “that of today.” The faith he envisions is a “saintly,

sublime, genuine Religion, [which urges] men—all children of the same God—[to]

acknowledge one another as brothers,” a bond which survives even death. 743 From

the perspective of civil society, the problem with Christianity is that it lacks any

“particular relation to the body politic, [and] leaves laws with only their intrinsic

force, without adding any other force to them.” 744 Rousseau here resurrected a

familiar critique of Christianity’s incompatibility with political action, describing

earthly indifference as a symptom of solely focusing upon the afterlife. As he

lamented, “far from attaching the Citizens’ hearts to the State, it detaches them from

it as from all worldly things,” a phenomenon completely “contrary to the social

spirit.” 745 Even more strongly, he argued that “a society of true christians would no

longer be a society of men.” 746 Such individuals would be wholly united with God

and wholly detached from their fellows.

This is because “Christianity is a totally spiritual religion, uniquely concerned

with Heavenly matters.” 747 Although true Christians are dutiful, law-abiding,

742 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.465.

743 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.465.

744 In so doing, Christian corporeal indifference weakens “one of [society’s] great bonds.” The Social

Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.465.

745 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.465.

746 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.465.

747 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.466.

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moderate, incorruptible, brave and temperate, “[t]he Christian’s fatherland is not of

this world.” 748 Civil duties would be performed “with profound indifference for the

good or bad outcomes of his efforts.” 749 Whatever his state’s fortunes may be, the

Christian either ignores its felicity or “blesses the hand of God that weighs heavily on

his people.” 750 He allows himself neither pride in his patrie , nor the will needed to

reform a polity in decline. As we have already seen, this mirrors a fundamental

division between Augustine and Pelagius. Augustine saw little hope in meaningful

human reform, save constant vigilance carried out with the realization that

redemption might only follow the grace of God. By contrast, Pelagius embraced

corporeal improvement as a means of actively soliciting the divine Creator’s mercy.

Arguing that salvation and earthly improvement were mutually constitutive aims,

Rousseau seemed to side with Pelagius.

If the Christian state denuded citizens of their capacity for physical self-

betterment, it possessed another fatal weakness. Such a polity could prosper only if

“all Citizens without exception… [were] equally good Christians.” This is because

those truly devoted to Christ are not simply indifferent to their corporeal fates; they

are also utterly naïve, awash in blind brotherly love that makes them easy victims for

even “a single ambitious man, a single hypocrite.” 751 Such ingenuousness combined

with a passive attribution of fate to the will of God do not strong citizens make.

748 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.466.

749 The Social Contract . CW IV.220; OC III.466.

750 The Social Contract . CW IV.221; OC III.466.

751 If Rousseau’s fear appears to be at odds with his belief in man’s natural goodness, we must recall

that he hardly withheld from casting blame. Although man might be innocent by nature, men had

certainly made a mess of denatured society. As with Pelagius, his faith in natural goodness never

blinded him to the shortcomings of society. In this he (as an individual) differs sharply from the

Christian for whom “charity makes it hard to think ill of one’s neighbor.” The Social Contract . CW

IV.221; OC III.466.

223

Because the Christian’s “essential thing is to go to paradise,” they lack the worldly

devotion needed to cultivate or defend their States. 752 Christianity may nourish

deeper existential truths and worship a just deity, but—like natural man—its “true”

practitioners are ill-suited for society. As Rousseau concludes,

I am mistaken when I speak of a Christian Republic; 753 these two

words are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches nothing but

servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favorable to tyranny that

tyranny always profits from it. True Christians are made to be slaves.

They know it and are scarcely moved thereby; this brief life is of too

little worth in their view. 754

Passages such as these evoke thinkers from Machiavelli 755 to Nietzsche 756 who levied

stark critiques against the slavish disposition of Christian faith. As Machiavelli wrote

in the Discourses on Livy , “while our religion has shown us truth and the true path, it

also makes us place a lower value on worldly honor.” 757 In addition, Christianity

“has more often glorified humble and contemplative men rather than active ones,”

and “defined the supreme good as humility, abjection, and contempt of worldly

things.” 758 Just as Rousseau asserted that Christians neglect corporeal concerns in an

752 “Suppose that your christian republic is face to face with Sparta or Rome,” Rousseau wonders. The

results would not be pretty: “the pious christians will be beaten, crushed, destroyed before they have

had time to look around, or they will owe their salvation only to the scorn their enemies will conceive

for them.” The Social Contract . CW IV.221; OC III.466-467.

753 For a comparison with Locke’s similar assertion, see below.

754 The Social Contract . CW IV.221; OC III.467.

755 The association is none too favorable. In the 1539 Apologia Reginaldi Poli ad Carolum V ,

Reginald Pole described Machiavelli’s works as “written by the finger of Satan,” a not uncommon

view amongst the more spirited detractors. It is nonetheless worth noting that, as with Rousseau, not

everyone saw the Devil as Machiavelli’s muse. In his massive 1668 Apologie pour Machiavel

(commissioned by Cardinal Richelieu), Louis Machon defended the Discourses and The Prince as

saintly efforts “drawn from the book of books” itself, the Holy Scripture. Peter S. Donaldson,

Machiavelli and the Mystery of State (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. xi, 9 & 188.

756 In addition to Genealogy of Morals I.11, readers should also consult I.7, I.13, II.7, as well as the

following: Beyond Good and Evil §62, 260; The Will to Power §8, 90; The Antichrist §571.

757 Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy , II.2 p. 158.

758 Ibid., II.2 p. 159.

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effort “to go to paradise,” so did Machiavelli argue that “in order to go to paradise,

most men think more about enduring their pains than about avenging them.” 759

If Rousseau’s indictment of Christian citizens followed Machiavelli (at times

to the letter), it also resurrected Bayle’s depiction of Christian states as fundamentally

apolitical entities. 760 By reviving these controversial stances Rousseau seemed to

enter the very theological debates he had dismissed mere pages earlier. Such

apparent reversals make Civil Religion a particularly frustrating text, even by

Rousseau’s paradoxical standards. Yet what appears blatantly contradictory more

accurately alludes to a deep ambivalence. Rousseau insisted upon the necessity of

integrating religious practice within legitimate political associations. At the same

time, he recognized that organized religion historically opposed republican civic

interests: theocratic states were built upon lies and cultivated credulous intolerance;

and Catholic polities were dominated by dangerous dogmatists. Even “true”

Christians were ill-suited to the rigorous corporeal duties of strong citizenship.

Each form of religious practice categorically undermines the conditions

requisite of a prosperous civic body. None are capable of simultaneously preserving

religion’s most beneficial elements (truth, harmony, connectedness, moral will) and

the core values of legitimate polities (freedom, tolerance, unity). In all three

instances, spiritual associations seem fatally incompatible with political associations,

doomed either to dominate corporeal governance, supplant true faith with narrow-

minded superstition, or create a citizenry fatally disinterested in worldly affairs.

Before even sketching his alternative, Rousseau has planted a significant doubt: are

759 Ibid., II.2 p. 159.

760 Readers should refer to Pierre Bayle’s 1697 Dictionnaire historique et critique . For a refutation of

Bayle see: Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws Part V, Book 23, Chapters 2 & 6.

225

religion and politics fundamentally incompatible, or can Civil Religion succeed

where all others have failed? In provoking such uncertainty, he prods readers to

question his very enterprise.

Because Rousseau seemed to portray religious associations as the proverbial

oil to a healthy polity’s water, it should come as no surprise that commentators have

read his chapter On Civil Religion as a wholly secular plea in spiritual clothing and

(more broadly) labeled its author emphatically irreligious. The evidence for such an

interpretation lies in plain view. Yet as I have argued throughout, such conclusions

dismiss a crucial element of Rousseau’s thought: his sincere religiosity. To ignore

this is to place him in the company of atheist philosophes such as Helvétius, Holbach

and d’Alembert whose views, he argued in Emile , were more dangerous than

fanaticism itself. 761 Religion fulfills a unique and fundamental role in the moral

composition and civic harmony of communities. That dogmatic creeds nullify this

value should compel rather than deter us to reform spiritual associations. An essential

facet of human life, like social bonds they must be repaired. 762

To justify this claim that Rousseau was a thinker equally committed to secular

and spiritual well-being, we must nonetheless resolve the doubts his condemnation of

Christianity rightfully raise. Rousseau’s critique of the Christian citizen is

problematic on at least three levels. First, it seems to render his very enterprise

(“considering [religion] in relation to society”) moot by placing religion in

fundamental opposition to society. Second, it seems self-subverting when considered

761 See: Emile . E 312.

762 Again, this position sharply separates Rousseau from his atheist philosophe peers.

226

in relation to Rousseau’s descriptions of himself as a “true” Christian. 763 Finally,

unlike his anticlericalism which attacks overtly (and actively) self-serving papists, it

targets a relatively benign group: the genuinely faithful. What then are we to make of

an argument to integrate religious practice into civil society that begins by dismissing

even the most exemplary practitioners?

By way of explanation, Helena Rosenblatt argues that these “provocative

statements… should not be taken at face value.” 764

Placing Rousseau’s chapter on

Civil Religion within the context of Genevan politics, she describes Rousseau’s

“strategy” as a method of “adopt[ing] and amplify[ing] the Genevan patriciate’s

version of Christianity, only to turn it against them.” 765 To secure their own political

power, the patriciate “claimed that Christianity preached only otherworldliness,

submission, and resignation.” 766 Rousseau simply took this conclusion to its logical

extreme, describing a “Christian republic” as a contradiction in terms. 767 According

to Rosenblatt, his position was deliberate, a means of “provoking people to defend

their religion and, in the process, to refute the patriciate’s ‘Christian submission’

763 For an assessment of Rousseau’s self-description as a “true Christian” see Chapter Six below,

where I discuss his religiosity through the lens of his “conversions” to both Catholicism (as a youth

under de Warens’ direction) and philosophy (on the road to Vincennes).

764 Rosenblatt, p. 263.

765 Rousseau himself substantiated this reading in a 1763 letter to Deluc: “The surest way to refute [the

Genevan patriciate’s] maxims is to force them to deduce the consequences of them themselves and to

take them as far as they will go.” From CC XVII.279-280, as quoted in Ibid., p. 263.

766 Ibid., pp. 263-264.

767 Locke similarly claimed that “there is absolutely no such thing… as a Christian commonwealth.”

His argument was rooted in a technical reading of the Gospel, in which he finds no evidence that a

commonwealth was ever “constituted upon that foundation” of Christian faith, or “in which God

himself was the legislator.” Lest we overemphasize their affinities, readers might also consult

Rousseau’s refutation of Lockean epistemology written in a 1755 letter to Voltaire: “The true

principles of optimism can be drawn neither from the properties of matter, nor from the mechanics of

the universe, but only by inference from the perfections of God who presides over everything.” Locke,

A Letter Concerning Toleration , pp. 52-53. Letter to Voltaire (August 30, 1755). CW III.115; OC

IV.1068.

227

argument. Rousseau’s readers had to choose: either Christianity does not preach

submission, or its political relevance must be rejected.” 768

Because Civil Religion proceeds from the premise that religion is politically

relevant, Rosenblatt argues that its exaggerated anti-Christian stance must be read as

a negative lesson, a means of prodding readers to understand the dangers in

categorically dismissing Christianity’s political value. This was the very explanation

Genevan minister Antoine-Jacques Roustan offered in an amicable retort to his

friend’s hyperbolic position. In O f rande aux Autels et à la Patrie , Roustan wondered

aloud if “M. Rousseau believe[s what he has written] himself.” 769 After all,

Christianity requires good acts; it encourages self-sacrifice in the face of tyranny; and

it preaches submission only as a last resort.

Yet if these values were well-suited to republicanism, and “if Christianity is

so favorable to liberty, [why are there] so few free states in Europe?” 770 Roustan

provided a decidedly Rousseauist answer to this Rousseauist question: “because there

are so few Christians.” 771 As he continued, “an ambitious person… would have to

think twice before attacking the liberty of a really Christian people, whose citizens

would scorn riches, would lead a simple, laborious, frugal life, would love each other

like brothers and future fellow-citizens of heaven.” 772 This analysis tacitly suggests

that greed and covetousness (qualities Rousseau associated with the Genevan

patriciate), not humility and brotherly love, threaten strong citizenship. It also

768 Rosenblatt, p. 264.

769 Roustan was also instrumental in getting Rousseau’s Social Contract approved (by the censors) and

published. Antoine-Jacques Roustan, Offrande aux Autels et à la Patrie (Amsterdam: Michel Rey,

1764), as quoted in Ibid., p. 264.

770 Ibid., p. 265.

771 Readers should note that Diogenes the Cynic reached a similar conclusion when searching for a

“real man” in broad daylight while holding a lantern. See Chapter Four above.

772 Ibid., p. 265.

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reiterates an argument familiar to Rousseau’s readers: religion rightly understood

bears little in common with most contemporary religious practice.

Just as Papal abuses should not obscure true religion’s value to humankind,

Jean-Jacques’ anticlericalism should not be confused with irreligiosity. Indeed, his

vision of a legitimate society was grounded in a unified sense of duty or “moral will”

which, in turn, “was dependent upon the existence of God.” 773 Did these convictions

redeem him from charges of impiety? Rousseau certainly thought so. Revisiting The

Social Contract in the Third of his Letters Written from the Mountain , his writes:

One cannot say… that I attack morality in a Book in which I establish

with all my power the preference for the general good over the private

good and in which I relate our duties toward men to our duties toward

God; the only principle upon which morality can be founded, in order

to be real and go beyond appearance. 774

An obligation to serve God, fellow man, and the general good: these are the moral

precepts Rousseau draws from his belief in a divine universal order. And as the

“most reasonable and holy Religion on earth,” Christianity powerfully affirms these

duties. 775

Jean-Jacques was emphatic on this point. Flatly denying “that Christianity is

attacked in my [ Social Contract ],” 776 he described it as “a book where the truth,

utility, and necessity of Religion in general is established with the greatest force;

where, without making any exception, the Author prefers the Christian Religion to

773 Despite their shared skepticism, this position clearly distinguishes Rousseau from that of Bayle.

Rosenblatt, p. 265.

774 Letters Written from the Mountain (Third Letter). CW IX.191; OC III.758.

775 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.47; OC IV.960.

776 Again, what he did attack were “the distinctive dogmas of the Catholics” quick to condemn man in

both this and the after-life. As Rousseau protested, “ to machinate … is to do what certain people”—

namely, Roman Catholics—“do against Christianity and against me.” Letters Written From the

Mountain (Third Letter). CW IX.190; OC III.757.

229

any other worship and the evangelical Reformation to any other sect.” 777 Yet despite

this praise, Rousseau never retracted his more disparaging sentiments about the

“purely spiritual faith.” Clarifying his critical position, he argued that Christianity—

although “making men just, moderate, and friends of peace” and being “very

favorable to the general society”—“weakens the force of the political spring [and]

complicates the movements of the machine.” 778 Being “not sufficiently suited to

[corporeal politics]… it must either degenerate or remain a foreign and cumbersome

component.” 779 Although Christianity served human life and livelihood, it was still a

disembodied belief-system ill-equipped to impose the rigorous corporeal duties

essential to a strong polity’s welfare. Rousseau’s conclusion, borne of realistically

appraising the practical values and limits of different forms of religion, carved a sharp

distinction between interior and exterior worship. In the process, it also forced

readers to judge his project on its own explicitly social terms.

* * * * *

True religion neither divides nor oppresses humankind; it simply cultivates a

healthy deference to divine order. Yet as Rousseau illustrated, religious associations

rarely reinforced God’s harmonious will. In a 1755 letter to Voltaire, he blamed “the

Priests and the Devout” for this failing. 780 Rather than developing our moral sense by

777 It is worth noting that as evidence, Rousseau entreats readers (in an author’s note) to consult his

postscript to the Vicar’s Profession in Emile . Letters Written From the Mountain (Second Letter).

CW IX.159; OC III.718-719.

778 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.148; OC III.705.

779 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.148; OC III.705.

780 This was, of course, a typically Protestant stance that Rousseau here adopts.

230

preaching compliance with “the established order,” they “have Divine justice

intervene” only when it serves their dogmatic teachings. 781 They supplant the

fraternité and pitié natural to God’s creations with fear of papal authority and

intolerance towards non-believers. And finally, because “it matters greatly to the

State that each Citizen have a Religion that causes him to love his [civic and moral]

duties,” they undermined the very requisites of healthy, virtuous polities. 782

Rousseau’s alternative to such a divisive dogmatism was Civil Religion, a

purely civic faith fettered only by “the limits of public utility.” 783 Beyond this

guiding principle, his formulation was purposefully broad. 784 So long as religious

worship did not conflict with society’s general interests, the specific tenets of the faith

were irrelevant:

the dogmas of that Religion are of no interest either to the State or to

its members; except insofar as these dogmas relate to morality, and to

the duties that anyone who professes it is obliged to fulfill toward

others. Everyone can have whatever opinions he pleases beyond that,

without the Sovereign having to know what they are. For since the

sovereign has no competence in the other world, whatever the fate of

subjects in the life hereafter, it is none of its business, as long as they

are good citizens. 785

A sharp line is carved in stone. The State has no business intruding upon personal

beliefs which do not compromise the general welfare of its citizens. Although our

relationship with God is a sacred and private source of individual moral strength,

religious associations must serve public interests and be held accountable to the same

civic standards applicable to any legitimate community.

781 Letter from Rousseau to Voltaire , August 30, 1755. CW III.116; OC IV.1068-1069.

782 The Social Contract . CW IV.222; OC III.468.

783 The Social Contract . CW IV.222 OC III.467.

784 In this, Rousseau sides with the Vicar who argued that “particular dogmas” confuse and debase

“notions of the great Being… instead of establishing peace on earth, they bring sword and fire to it,”

making “man proud, intolerant, and cruel.” Emile . E 295.

785 The Social Contract . CW IV.222; OC IV.468.

231

Because the articles of such a “purely civil profession of faith” are less

“Religious dogmas” than “sentiments of sociability without which it is impossible to

be a good Citizen or a faithful subject,” they must be established by the Sovereign. 786

Precepts essential to a polity’s moral health, they reflect only the most general,

universally accessible tenets of the Gospel. In this, Rousseau sides with his Vicar:

“The dogmas of the civil Religion ought to be simple, few in number, stated with

precision, without explanation or commentaries.” 787 Specifically, they require belief

in “[t]he existence of a powerful, intelligent, beneficent, foresighted, and providential

Divinity; the afterlife; the happiness of the just; the punishment of the wicked.” 788

Rousseau also adds a strict civil caveat to these core Christian assumptions: “the

sanctity of the social Contract and the Laws” must always be observed. 789

From the outset, Civil Religion shows simultaneous deference to both divine

and human order, vesting its authority in spiritual truths and secular precepts. Beliefs

in an omnipotent God and the afterlife, and a righteous heavenly order which rewards

justice and punishes wickedness are balanced by the inviolability of positive law

defined by the general will. To these “positive” stipulations, however, Rousseau adds

one crucial “negative” dogma: intolerance is proscribed. 790 A caveat essential to

upholding individual liberty, this final term reflects Jean-Jacques’ insistence that

intolerance fundamentally opposes spiritual and secular freedom.

786 Pierre Burgelin rightly notes the spiritual quality of this secular covenant, a pact between citizens

and sovereign that “must be called sacred .” This is because the social contract rests upon an act of

will , what Rousseau described in the Second Discourse as a Cartesian ‘operation of the soul.’ As he

made clear, “in the sentiment of this power [of willing] are found only purely spiritual acts about

which the Laws of Mechanics explain nothing.” (My emphasis.) Second Discourse . CW III.26-27;

OC III.142-143. Pierre Burgelin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la religion de Genève , p. 32.

787 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468.

788 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468.

789 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468.

790 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468-469.

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His negative dogma also reveals a deep mistrust of a creed like Catholicism

which “dares to say there is no Salvation outside of the Church .” 791 Such

presumptuous sects should, on no uncertain terms, “be chased out of the state.” 792

Their expulsion is merited by crimes against both civil and theological order:

claiming to monopolize the gift of salvation, ecclesiasts falsely usurp a power held

solely by God; and they sharply divide polities by condemning those outside their

flocks to Hell. This is certainly no way to build a congregation, much less a society.

As Rousseau notes, on a practical level “[i]t is impossible to live in peace with people

whom one believes are damned. To love them would be to hate God who punishes

them. They must absolutely be brought into the faith or tormented.” 793 A theological

stance with decidedly despotic corporeal consequences, the Catholic position on

salvation forces the Church to either “torment” or convert nonbelievers. Presenting

itself as the sole executor of God’s will, this singular spiritual authority acts out of

wrath and intolerance, rather than truly divine motives of forgiveness and love.

Politically, the consequences of one creed claiming jurisdiction over an entire

species’ eternal fate is devastating. If humankind’s greatest prize is controlled by a

single dogmatic authority, then no citizen is free; even “the Sovereign is no longer

Sovereign… over temporal matters.” 794

Although Rousseau’s exposé builds a strong case for religious tolerance,

closer scrutiny reveals a serious discrepancy in his argument: Jean-Jacques is wholly

791 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468.

792 The Social Contract . CW IV.224; OC III.468.

793 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.469.

794 As Rousseau had argued in the introduction to On Civil Religion , under these circumstances

“Priests are the true masters; Kings are merely their officers.” The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC

III.469.

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intolerant towards the intolerant. “Without being able to obligate anyone to believe

[its dogmas],” he writes, “the sovereign can banish from the State anyone who does

not believe them.” 795 Expulsion is a legitimate punishment not for the “impious” but

for the “unsociable; for [a citizen] incapable of sincerely loving the laws, justice, and

of giving his life, if need be, for his duty.” 796 Those who reject Civil Religion reject

the very terms of sociability critical to society’s well-being. Such dissenters cannot

be trusted to uphold the rigorous demands of citizenship, or devote sacrificial love to

a value (common welfare) or entity (the state) that transcends their own particular

interests. Failure to accept a civil faith therefore indicates a fundamentally antisocial

pathology punishable by the revocation of citizenship. Rousseau’s unbending tone is

only reinforced by a sudden threat: “If someone who has publicly acknowledged

these same dogmas behaves as though he does not believe them, he should be

punished with death. He has committed the greatest of crimes: he lied before the

law.” 797

These sentiments are discomforting for several reasons. First, Rousseau

advocates banishment without so much as suggesting the possibility of individual

reform or allowing space for public dialogue. Second, he is notably quick to

violence, threatening the death penalty to those who lie “before the law.” And third,

he seems to foster a culture of persecution; Civil Religion’s positive dogmas

presumably exclude atheists from a state in which all citizens must recognize the

795 The Social Contract . CW IV.222-223; OC III.468.

796 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468.

797 The Social Contract . CW IV.223; OC III.468.

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existence of a beneficent Divinity. 798 Rosenblatt argues that “Rousseau’s chapter on

civil religion should be seen as an attack on the political uses of religion by an

absolutizing and oligarchical regime,” yet his Civil Religion seems unapologetically

draconian when taken on its own “simple” terms. 799 How does a model built around

the sanctity of tolerance, fraternity, and individual liberty so swiftly descend into a

platform of forced exile and corporal punishment? Can a truly democratic society

exclude any of its members, particularly atheists? Are such proposals even in accord

with Rousseau’s own Golden Rule, to do “ what is good for you with the least possible

harm to others ”? 800 Or was Lester Crocker correct in labeling this work a

premonition of twentieth century totalitarianism?

Lest the more sensitive readers amongst us conclude that our mercurial author

has finally gone mad, we might offer two explanations in Rousseau’s defense. The

first comes courtesy of Christopher Kelly and Roger Masters who locate within Civil

Religion a “‘toughness’… that is often overlooked” in Rousseau’s thought. 801

Certainly, beneath the surface of his gentle reveries on nature, God, and the

possibility of human redemption lies an unyielding backbone aligned with Spartan

severity. Yet even Kelly and Masters soften this disposition, stressing “that for

Rousseau, only behavior—and never an opinion or belief—can be punished by

798 Locke claimed that “those are not at all to be trusted who deny the being of God.” This was

because contracts “[p]romises, covenants, and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have

no hold upon an atheist.” Although atheism qualifies as a “private belief” (and thus an individual

liberty), On Civil Religion seemed to side with Locke. Each citizen had to uphold its four positive

dogmas, including the recognition of God’s existence. However, as we shall see below, Rousseau’s

position is more ambiguous; he also decried the persecution of atheism in an author’s note from Julie .

See: Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration , p. 64.

799 Rosenblatt, p. 267.

800 Second Discourse . CW III.37-38; OC III.156.

801 CW IV.266, n. 140.

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society.” 802 Their argument relies upon a generous assessment of Civil Religion’s

jurisdictional limits. Rousseau certainly protects individual faith from magisterial

authority, but he qualifies this liberty by insisting upon compliance with the four

positive dogmas, and buttressing this condition with the threat of physical force. If,

for example, denying the existence of the afterlife constitutes a rejection of the civil

code (and, therefore, a crime against the social order), beliefs would appear to be

punishable by law. 803

No matter the degree, Civil Religion certainly exhibits “toughness.” But this

should hardly assuage our fears. Instead, let us consider Rousseau’s controversial

proposals within the context of his Social Contract ’s broader aim: legitimizing the

“chains” of denatured society by instituting associations under which equality,

individual liberty and civil unity might flourish. For Rousseau, ecclesiastical dogma

was anathema 804 to such legitimate political reform. Because sectarian creeds posed

ever-present threats to civil and spiritual harmony alike, their influence had to be

contained at all costs. Forced to make difficult choices between a world liberated

from the papist’s grasp and a polity which excluded members destructive of its civic

unity, On Civil Religion unequivocally advocates the latter. 805 We might therefore

consider the intolerant terms of Rousseau’s civil faith as a sort of heuristic threat: the

802 CW IV.266, n. 140.

803 Rousseau does not satisfactorily clarify his position, leaving readers to wonder if rejecting the

positive dogmas constitutes a crime against the state, of if citizens might publicly profess adherence

despite private disbelief, the very schism between belief and practice that he attributes Catholic

coercion.

804 According to the Oxford English Dictionary , anathema is “anything accursed, or consigned to

damnation,” a sense derived from its Biblical usage as “a thing devoted to evil, an accursed thing” in

Paul’s Romans ix.3. I use it here purposefully to suggest the religious terms with which Rousseau’s

phrased the problem of civic unity.

805 Again, we must also bear in mind Rousseau’s depiction of philosophic atheism as its own form of

debilitating fanaticism in Emile . See: E 312.

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lengths to which the author is willing to go in order to ensure that religious practice

does not subvert the requisites of legitimate self-rule. 806

Rousseau’s hard-line stance should come as no surprise. After all, sometimes

man must be forced into freedom. 807 This was particularly true in politico-theological

matters where only the combined forces of law, individual consent and group

consensus could counteract sectarianism’s strongly antidemocratic impulses.

Although Civil Religion made painfully clear the difficulty of this challenge, grim

reality (as in the Second Discourse ) did not deter Rousseau from envisioning its

fruition. 808 Quite the opposite. Taking religion as it was and religious associations as

they should be, dissatisfaction provided the impetus for radical reform. Yet even if

his ambitions were well-intentioned, the intolerant terms of his proposal are still

unsettling. In suggesting exile and the death penalty, was Rousseau subverting his

own aims, substituting one form of intolerance (religious) for another (civic)? Did

the “end” of civil liberty necessarily beg such questionable means?

806 As Rousseau stipulates, “the fundamental problem which is solved by the social contract” is to

“[f]ind a form of association that defends and protects the person and goods of each associate with all

the common force, and by means of which each one, uniting with all, nevertheless obeys only himself

and remains as free as before.” Because this solution requires each citizen’s willful support, anyone

who rejects the essential articles of a Civil Religion refuse the terms of legitimate association. The

Social Contract . CW IV.138; OC III.360.

807 As Rousseau (in)famously argued, “in order for the social compact not to be an ineffectual formula,

it tacitly includes the following engagement, which alone can give force to the others: that whoever

refuses to obey the general will shall be constrained to do so by the entire body; which means only that

he will be forced to be free.” The Social Contract . CW IV.141; OC III.364.

808 If Rousseau’s idealized visions presented a theodicy of sorts (the best possible world), they also

reflected his acute critical awareness and ability to compromise. Even his most seemingly

impracticable proposals establish heights towards which humankind should strive, no matter if

evidence suggests we will fall short; this is what I have termed Rousseau’s “heuristic idealism”

throughout. To my mind, the best illustration of this dynamic is revealed in a comparison between The

Social Contract and On the Government of Poland . In his Contract , Rousseau lists apparently

necessary qualities of people “suited for legislation” which, by the authors own admission, are “hard to

find together.” (In all of Europe only Corsica was “still… capable of legislation.”) Poland—a large,

diffuse, disunited nation threatened by foreign invaders on multiple fronts—was particularly ill-suited

to the Contract ’s terms. Yet this did not prevent Rousseau from earnestly envisioning reforms which

would allow the Poles rewrite their history and work towards a more legitimate political future. The

Social Contract . CW IV.162; OC III.390-391.

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As an attempt to marry religious and political faiths under a liberal democratic

framework, On Civil Religion marked an auspicious beginning. Even Rousseau

himself seemed unsatisfied with its outcome. Subsequent correspondences to his

friend Moultou and the pastor Usteri find him both clarifying and even modifying his

position. 809 He further refined his stance in the Letter to Beaumont , adhering to Civil

Religion ’s core assertions while abandoning its more reactionary threats. Rousseau

began by repeating a refrain consistent throughout his works: “if man is made for

society, the truest Religion is also the most social and the most humane.” 810 Still, he

forthrightly admitted that “this sentiment is subject to great difficulties from the

historical account and the facts that contradict it.” 811 As he elaborated,

I neither say nor think there is no good Religion on earth. But I do

say, and it is only too true, that there is none among those that are or

have been dominant that has not cruelly wounded humanity. All

parties have tormented their brothers, all have offered to God

sacrifices of human blood. Whatever the source of these

contradictions, they exist. Is it a crime to want to eliminate them? 812

Here, in a nutshell, was Rousseau’s self-defense of Civil Religion . His text did not

categorically condemn “Religion on earth”; it merely recognized a problem in need of

redress, the fact that “dominant” religions had scorched God’s earth, shed man’s

blood, and wounded social unity.

As explanations go, Rousseau’s was conspicuously unrepentant. He forced a

dubious distinction between practical observation and profane censure, one further

blurred by his subsequent critique of the meek masses. If creeds had “cruelly

809 See: CC XVI.2626, 2662, 2768; and XV.2825.

810 Rousseau completes this sentence with a refutation of ontological guilt: “For God wants us to be as

he made us, and if it were true that he had made us wicked, it would be disobeying him to want to

cease being so.” Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.54; OC IV.969. Readers should compare this with

Emile . E 212, 281.

811 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.54; OC IV.970.

812 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.55; OC IV.970-971.

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wounded humanity,” their followers voiced little objection. As Rousseau lamented,

“[p]eople submit in silence,” conforming without protest to the pernicious precepts of

domineering papists. 813 Despite appearances, Jean-Jacques was not simply decrying

the subservience of a slavish flock. He viewed such complicity as a natural reaction

to clerical coercion. Indeed, his point was even firmer: outer compliance did not

reveal inward complicity because individual belief systems could not be bullied into

submission.

He was hardly the first to air such opinions. Luther had argued forcefully that

outward obedience offered little proof of sincere conviction; unlike motives or faith,

good works were easily contrived. 814 And in his Letter Concerning Toleration , Locke

insisted that “no man can, [even] if he would, conform his faith to the dictates of

another.” 815 Because “the life and power of true religion consists in the inward and

full persuasion of the true mind[,] faith is not faith without believing.” 816

Furthermore, for Locke “the liberty of conscience is every man’s natural right.” 817

Rousseau likewise championed the sanctity of individual conscience, and agreed that

813 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.57; OC IV.973.

814 We must recall that Luther, unlike Rousseau, was (as Quentin Skinner perfectly puts it) “obsessed

by the idea of man’s complete unworthiness.” His argument that “[g]ood works do not make a good

man, but a good man does good works” refuted the papal authority in granting “indulgences”

(remissions of temporal sins through penance), but it also served to instill a self-deprecating fear of

God in a species profoundly incapable of affecting its eternal fate. Luther, The Freedom of a Christian

in Selections From His Writings , p. 69. Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political

Thought: Volume Two: The Age of Reformation (London and New York: Cambridge University Press,

1978), p. 3.

815 Locke, A Letter Concerning Toleration , p. 19.

816 Ibid., p. 19.

817 Ibid., p. 65

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external force did not cultivate internal conviction. Superficial compliance to

orthodox precepts was just that: “only in appearance.” 818

The “inconsistency… noted between [subjects’] morality and their actions”

was therefore less the fault of individuals than institutions which demanded public

affirmation of opinions private by nature. 819 As Rousseau countered in Civil

Religion , only the most general tenets shared by all could serve as a basis for civil

communion; individual beliefs lay beyond the jurisdiction of Church and State alike.

Reiterating this argument in his Letter to Beaumont , Rousseau wondered:

Why does one man have the right of inspection over another man’s

belief, and why does the State have it over the belief of the Citizens?

It is because it is assumed that what men believe determines their

morality, and that their conduct in this life is dependent upon their

ideas about the life to come. If this is not true, what difference does it

make what they believe or what they pretend to believe? 820

The answer is none, so long as citizens uphold the common duties necessary to

preserve their polity’s well-being. 821 In society, “everyone has the right to find out

whether another person believes himself obligated to be just, and the Sovereign has

the right to examine the reasons on which each person bases this obligation.” 822 This

standard did not, however, apply to an individual’s faith. As Rousseau emphasized,

for “opinions that are not connected to morality, that do not influence actions in any

818 For a discussion of the problem between appearance and reality used as a justification for

Rousseau’s sense of individual innocence, see Chapter 3 above. Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.57; OC

IV.973.

819 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.57; OC IV.973.

820 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.57; OC IV.973.

821 Locke similarly argued that a heathen who rejected “both Testaments” should not be “punished as a

pernicious citizen,” because such beliefs affect neither the security of magisterial power nor “the

estates of the people.” Even though he “readily grant[s] that these opinions are false and absurd,”

Locke maintained that “the business of laws is not to provide for the truth of opinions, but for the

safety and security of the commonwealth, and of every particular man’s goods and person.” Locke, A

Letter Concerning Toleration , pp. 55-56.

822 Letter to Beaumont . Beaumont CW IX.57; OC IV.973.

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way, and that do not transgress Laws, each person has only his own judgment as a

master on these, and no one has either right or interest in prescribing his way of

thinking for others.” 823

Jean-Jacques further developed this distinction between public and private

faith in his Letters Written from the Mountain . Beginning with a tripartite division of

religion into dogma, morality, and worship (“which is only ceremonial”), he split

“dogma further into two parts, namely the one which in setting forth the principles of

our duties serves as a foundation for morality, and the one which, purely of faith,

contains only speculative dogmas.” 824 Rousseau’s civil faith was concerned only

with the former, foundational codes which define society’s moral will.

As for the part of Religion that deals with morality, that is to say

justice, the public good, obedience to the natural and positive Laws,

the social virtues and all the duties of man and Citizen, it is the

business of government to take cognizance of them. It is on this point

alone that Religion falls directly under its jurisdiction, and that it must

banish not error, of which it is not the judge, but every harmful

sentiment that tends to cut the social knot. 825

As his stance on Christianity made clear, religion takes different forms, each with its

own unique function. Those that serve morality, justice, the public good and civic

duty define the terms of social relations, and therefore fall under the domain of

sovereign jurisdiction.

Reiterating his claim that “it is important for the State not to be without

Religion… for serious reasons, upon which I have strongly insisted throughout,”

Rousseau nonetheless argued that it would be better to do without “than to have a

barbarous and persecuting [creed] that, tyrannizing the Laws themselves, would

823 Letter to Beaumont . Beaumont CW IX.57; OC IV.973.

824 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.139; OC III.694.

825 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.140; OC III.694-695.

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thwart the duties of the Citizen.” 826 In this worst of possible scenarios, a wise

Legislator is left with only two options:

the first is to establish a purely civil Religion, which includes all

fundamental dogmas of every good Religion, all dogmas truly useful

to either a universal or a particular society… The other expedient is to

leave Christianity as it is in its genuine spirit: free, disengaged from all

bonds of flesh, with no other obligation than that of conscience, no

other constraint in its dogmas than morals and Laws. 827

Because “the Gospel has only one aim… to call and save all men,” and because this

lesson is fundamentally removed from worldly concerns (as Jesus himself said “a

thousand times”), “Christianity as it is” could not combat the tyranny of a “barbarous

and persecuting” creed. Under such circumstances, Legislators had only one feasible

strategy: “removing the Christian Religion from national Institutions” and instituting

a Civil Religion. In so urging Rousseau claimed to “establish what is best for the

human race,” a religious association distinct from (and protective of) interior faith

which actively fostered civic duty.

His solution to the politico-theological problem therefore demanded sharp

jurisdictional boundaries, a clear understanding of the varieties of religious practice,

and a sober assessment of religion’s strengths and weaknesses when “considered in

relation to society.” The only way to preserve Christianity was to keep it out of

politics. This argument was consistent with the lesson (as Rousseau understood it) of

Jesus, the first to completely divest religion of corporeal concerns. Furthermore, as

we have also seen, Rousseau believed that “purely spiritual” faiths tended towards

political apathy or (when appropriated by theocrats and papists) dogmatic intolerance,

and were thus ill-suited to the specific demands of citizenship. By contrast, the only

826 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.148; OC III.705.

827 Letters Written From the Mountain (First Letter). CW IX.148; OC III.705-706.

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way to protect society and preserve true adherence to divine order was to implement a

“purely civil” faith. If Civil Religion discouraged dogmatism, cultivated civic unity,

and conformed to the general will, it also upheld the sanctity of personal religious

belief so necessary to keep man attuned to his divinely-scribed nature.

Rousseau’s dual commitment to religious piety and individual liberty are easy

to overlook in a text which errs on the side of authoritarianism. After all, he presents

exile and corporal punishment as threats necessary to protect a greater good. Yet for

Rousseau, attacks upon individual faith had always aroused such unbending hostility.

Consider these two examples of righteous indignation from earlier works, first in his

August 30, 1756 Letter to Voltaire and then in Julie :

I am indignant that the faith of everyone is not in the most perfect

liberty, and that man dares control the interior of consciences, where

he is unable to penetrate, as if it depended on us to believe in matters

where demonstration has no place. 828

[N]o true believer can possibly practice intolerance or persecution. If I

were a judge, and the law prescribed the death penalty against atheists,

I would begin by having burned for atheism anyone who came to turn

in someone else. 829

To Voltaire, Rousseau forthrightly denounced those who would dare “control the

interior of consciences.” And in Julie , he suggested that those who condemned non-

believers to death were themselves more deserved of execution.

828 Letter from Rousseau to Voltaire , August 18, 1756. CW III.119; OC IV.1072.

829 The context of these lines is particularly revealing. A letter detailing Wolmar’s atheism notes that

“he had in his whole life found no more than three Priests who believed in God.” In an author’s note,

Rousseau qualifies this third-person statement: “God forbid I should approve these harsh and

outrageous assertions; I merely affirm that there are people who make them and whose excess is only

too often justified by the clergy of all countries and all sects.” Although, as we have seen, Rousseau

himself charged ecclesiasts with irreligiosity, here he claims to want only to provide “clarity [in] my

sentiment on this point”: namely, that genuine religious belief and intolerance are mutually

incompatible. Julie . CW VI.482n; OC II.589n.

243

If Rousseau sustained these severe sentiments throughout his career, On Civil

Religion nonetheless marked a turning point, a struggle to apply his convictions to

practice. It was the concrete culmination of a vague idea initially conceived in 1756

as “a sort of profession of faith that the laws can impose.” 830 Even at this nascent

stage, however, Rousseau sounded obdurate. He approached the task of religious

reform as though it were war, warning that “there can exist Religions which attack the

foundation of society, and… it is necessary to begin by exterminating these Religions

in order to assure the peace of the State.” 831 So were set the harsh tones of a battle he

returned to wage in full more than six years later.

Why did Rousseau strike so violent a pose from beginning to end? In a 1755

letter to Voltaire, he made plain that sometimes “evil is such that the very causes that

gave birth to it are necessary to prevent it from becoming larger. It is the sword that

must be left in the wound for fear that the wounded person will die when it is

removed.” 832 Sometimes, evil cannot be completely eradicated; and sometimes, as

the Second Discourse and Social Contract argued, the very faculties which corrupt us

can facilitate our salvation; sometimes, in these extreme instances, you have to fight

fire with fire.

Desperate times may require desperate measures, but never apathy or

resignation. This was precisely the challenge posed in Civil Religion . In claiming to

solely represent God, clerics undermined His benevolence and misrepresented His

830 Letter from Rousseau to Voltaire , August 18, 1756. CW III.119; OC IV.1073.

831 As in Civil Religion , Rousseau claimed that “intolerance [was] easily the most odious” of dogmas

meriting proscription. This was because an intolerant person “imagines that one cannot be a good man

without believing everything that he believes, and damns unmercifully all those who do not think like

him.” This was the very critique he presented in The Social Contract , and a crime attributed to papists

throughout his writings (specifically when denouncing Original Sin). Letter from Rousseau to

Voltaire , August 18, 1756. CW III.119; OC IV.1073.

832 Letter from Rousseau to Voltaire , September 10, 1755. CW III.106; OC III.226-227.

244

very will. Their coercive creeds crippled social unity, assailed individual liberty, and

perverted His magnificent order. Rather than remain complacent, Rousseau urged

readers to fight back. After all, the secular and spiritual damage wrought by papists

could only be repaired through radical reform. Only by instituting a faith which

rejected despotic dogma and expunged religious intolerance could Jean-Jacques’

vision of secular and spiritual salvation achieve fruition. 833

Towards this end, Rousseau made one essential demand. He asked that we

keep our relationship with God to ourselves, and allow others the same freedom.

Consider as evidence his response to being pressed on a theological point of

contention:

after telling [an interlocutor] I do not understand it and do not care

about understanding it, I would ask him as decently as I could to mind

his own business, and it he persisted, I would leave him there.

That is the only principle on which something stable and equitable can

be established about disputes of Religion. Lacking that, everyone

establishes on his own part what is in question, there will never be

agreement on anything, people will never in their lives understand one

another, and Religion, which ought to make men happy, will always

cause their greatest ills. 834

In short, mind your own business . This was less a suggestion than an imperative.

Religion “ought to make men happy” because it affirmed our connection to God and

His benevolent order. Doctrinal differences subverted this relationship, serving only

to enflame corporeal divisions. Since men could never settle such “disputes,” they

must agree to not agree. This was wholly possible because, as Rousseau argued,

833 If Civil Religion’s more reactionary proposals reflect this adamant condition, Rousseau’s model

also drew upon the dictate of his Golden Rule, to do “ what is good … with the least possible harm to

others .” Second Discourse . CW III.37-38; OC III.156.

834 Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.57; OC IV.973.

245

every believer regardless of creed shared certain fundamental tenets. 835 And only

these most general of beliefs could foster an inclusive, unifying, truly civil morality

grounded in religious piety.

Perhaps On Civil Religion failed to strike the right balance. Perhaps it

succumbed too heavily to its author’s fear of dogmatism and preoccupation with

social order. Or perhaps it was subverted by conflicting loyalties, by the “strange

confusion of the profane and the sacred” Robert Derathé identified in its manifold

claims. 836 Rousseau accepted man’s needs as creations of God dependent upon

divine guidance, and denatured creatures dependent upon legitimate institutions. He

examined religion as a source of moral virtue, and religious associations as a catalyst

for human oppression. He identified the necessity of social harmony and the threats

to this order. And he concluded that the only way to truly serve mankind—to satisfy

our equally compelling spiritual and secular needs—was to draw from religion only

those principles we knew were true (no matter our creed), while forging the

legitimized chains necessary to preserve our freedom. As with the treatise on Poland ,

Civil Religion sincerely struggled to implement a social contract under less-than-ideal

circumstances.

In the final analysis, Rousseau refused to abandon his commitment to either

spiritual or corporeal improvement because he believed they were so deeply

interrelated. Society needed social order, just as individuals needed faith. After all,

835 In this, Rousseau’s stance mirrors the Vicar’s deistic anti-sectarianism. This shared beliefs also

serve as Civil Religion’s four “positive” dogmas.

836 Derathé interpreted this “confusion” as evidence of escapism, arguing that Rousseau had vainly

attempted to tidy up the paradoxes and dualisms so characteristic of his works. Judith Shklar had

levied a similar charge against Rousseau in Men and Citizens . OC III.1505. For a rebuttal to Shklar’s

argument, see Chapter Two above.

246

human beings were both creations of God and denatured individuals. We were

blessed with conscience and free will, natural goodness and the ability to err. God

gave us perfectibility, the faculty that enabled our history of decline and allowed us

the means of self-redemption. Civil Religion reflects this tense dialectic: it is both

pious and profane, pessimistic and idealistic, civil and intolerant, civic-minded and

individualistic, reasoned and emotive, historically-grounded and forward-thinking. In

striking so many dissonant chords it grabs our attention, prodding us to accept

religion and man as they are , and envision the relationship between religion and

politics as it should be .

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Chapter 6: The Road to Vincennes

I do not mean… that one can be virtuous without Religion; I held this erroneous

opinion for a long time, but now I am only too disabused.

—Rousseau, Letter to d’Alembert 837

I have suffered too much in this life not to expect another one. All the subtleties of

Metaphysics will not make me doubt for a moment the immortality of the soul, and a

beneficent Providence. I feel it, I believe it, I wish it, I hope it, I shall defend it until

my last breath; and it will be, of all the controversies that I shall have sustained, the

only one where my interest will not be forgotten.

—Rousseau, Letter to Voltaire 838

Taking organized religion as it was, Rousseau imagined a civil faith as it

should be: serving both God and man, facilitating moral virtue and political

prosperity, and occluding the violent intolerance characteristic of dogmatic

sectarianism. His prescription was in part reactionary, a positive alternative to the

divisive creed of Roman Catholicism. Instilling fear of a rancorous God amongst

subjects, the “religion of the priests” partitioned humankind into two mutually

antagonistic camps: those who either conformed to or rejected Catholic tenets. The

837 Although Rousseau insists that one cannot “be virtuous without religion,” he adds a significant

qualifier: “a Believer can sometimes, from motives of purely social virtue, abstain from certain actions,

indifferent in themselves and which do not immediately involve the conscience, such as going to the

theater in a place where it is not good to tolerate it.” Notably, a secular sense of “social virtue” can

serve a religious moral function. Without debasing the moral necessity of religion, he defers to a

pragmatic position: in his example, both the religious and socially virtuous individual would shun a

Genevan theater. The end result (abstinence) is more significant than the source of guidance. This

position is wholly consistent with Rousseau’s broader vision of political reform, one which employs

social or artificial remedies to cultivate virtue in a denatured society. In addition, this argument

suggests a mutually beneficial relationship between spiritual and secular morality, one in which a

social remedy mimics the benefits of religious piety. Letter to d’Alembert . CW X.322n; OC V.89n.

Readers should also compare this to Rousseau’s claim, ten years later, that “[t]o root out all belief in

God from the heart of man is to destroy all virtue there.” Letter to Franquières . CW VIII.266-167;

OC IV.1142.

838 Letter to Voltaire , August 18, 1756. CW III.121; OC IV.1075.

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former were deemed eligible for divine redemption, while the latter were condemned

as heathens and sentenced to an eternity of damnation. 839

As Rousseau noted, this brash verdict followed an equally egregious

assumption. Papal authorities believed themselves to be the sole mediators and

arbiters of a divine will that was, in fact, ultimately incomprehensible to the human

mind. And in claiming to exclusively represent the Author of all things, clerics

actually disserved their presumed Creator and His creations alike. Perpetuating

dogmatic myths of a sinful species and punitive deity, they cast a dark shadow over

the true beauty, wisdom and order characteristic of our divinely-scribed world.

Furthermore, in damning human ontology as fatally flawed, Roman Catholicism

decreed that remission (and, hence, redemption) was possible only through strict

adherence to its tenets. Rousseau sharply disagreed, dismissing orthodox positions on

Original Sin, miracles, and revelation, while soundly rejecting the Church’s assertion

that it alone possessed the authority to mete out man’s salvation.

Virulent anti-clericalism notwithstanding, Jean-Jacques was hardly irreligious.

Rather, he argued that religion and faith were keystones of a virtuous polity. The

problem was simply that Catholicism 840 did not cultivate the values (tolerance,

liberty, and equality under the law) essential to a vibrant democratic culture’s welfare.

In remedy, Rousseau offered a bold alternative: a Civil Religion that both enriched

corporeal life and upheld divine order.

839 Readers should also note the socially divisive consequences of this verdict. As Maurice Cranston

describes, Rousseau’s was “an age when nonconformity was everywhere severely penalized.” This

phenomenon was particularly acute in sectarian matters, as the infamous Calas affair and routine

persecution of non-Catholics illustrates. Cranston, The Noble Savage , p. 1.

840 As we saw in Chapter 5, Catholicism epitomized the social and political failings that (in On Civil

Religion ) he attributed to all dogmatic and theocratic creeds.

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The ambitiousness of his solution cannot be understated. Rousseau did not

merely dismiss the merits of papism; he attempted to found a new religion entirely, a

“purely civil” faith that served God and man alike. Civil Religion certainly adhered

to foundational Christian beliefs (in an omnipotent Creator, the existence of an

afterlife, and a divine moral code) and drew upon a Protestant model of individual

worship. 841 Yet it was also deeply secular, designed in conformity with the requisites

of a legitimate polity established in The Social Contract . Where Catholicism molded

subjects who cowered before God and monarch alike, Rousseau claimed that his civic

creed cultivated autonomous, pious citizens. Where clerics damned mankind as

Adam’s infected progeny, the Genevan dared to suggest that, as naturally innocent

creations, salvation was possible in this world and the next.

From whence did he summon the nerve to voice such radical beliefs? We

might here recall that Rousseau once described Jesus and Socrates as his spiritual and

moral forebears. 842 Like these storied figures, he acted as a man possessed by a

higher calling. Jean-Jacques may have lacked the self-possession of Socrates and the

sheer fearlessness of Jesus. But, as his motto reminds us, he shared their commitment

to reveal the truth no matter the cost. Following divinely-instilled missions, Jesus and

Socrates 843 sacrificed individual welfare to point their slumbering peers towards

841 According to Rousseau, “the two fundamental points of the Reform… [were] to acknowledge the

Bible as rule of one’s belief, and not to admit any other interpreter of the meaning of the Bible than

oneself.” This was because Reformers had established “the individual mind… as the sole interpreter of

Scripture” while rejecting “the authority of the Church.” Letters Written From the Mountain: Second

Letter . CW IX.154; OC III.712-713.

842 See: Letter to Beaumont (Fragment 5). CW IX.89; OC IV.1016.

843 As Socrates asserted, “I want you to think of my adventures as a sort of pilgrimage undertaken to

establish the truth of the oracle.” The reference is to the Delphic oracle, to whose divine injunction

Socrates attributed his calling as a gadfly. See: The Apology , 20D-22A in Plato, The Last Days of

Socrates , pp. 49-51. What Socrates considered divine inspiration (the priestess’ pronouncements),

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redemption amidst a world beset by decay. Rousseau was similarly consumed,

drawing upon faith in divine beneficence and human potential to dream of—and

struggle to realize—a better future for all.

The Genevan attributed his intense convictions to a life-changing event. Like

Paul on the road to Damascus, he was struck by a supernatural epiphany that occurred

en route to Vincennes. 844 Rousseau described his conversion as the epicenter of his

career, the catalyst to his every oeuvre . A moment of profound clarity and physical

exhaustion, transcendent bliss and tearful collapse, Rousseau’s transformation was

also, quite notably, Christian in form and Pagan in content. Seemingly touched by

the hand of God, he was reborn as a proselyte 845 for human glory and corporeal

redemption: his spiritual awakening crystallized as a mandate of secular reform. A

stunning amalgam of the themes with which we have grappled throughout, the road

on which Jean-Jacques began life anew marks a particularly fitting point for our own

study to conclude.

* * * * *

modern science suggests were in fact ethylene-induced hallucinations. See: William J. Broad, “For

Delphic Oracle, Fumes and Visions,” The New York Times , March 19, 2002.

844 Rousseau was visiting Diderot, who had been imprisoned in the dungeons of Vincennes on July 24,

1749 for anti-Catholic writings, and had recently been moved to a château where he was permitted to

receive visitors. For a summary of the political climate that led to Diderot’s arrest—specifically, of the

rise in censorship following the Austrian Succession—see: Cranston, Jean-Jacques: The Early Life

and Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , 1712-1754. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982),

pp. 226-227.

845 In The Confessions , Rousseau reveals that his uncle was a preacher, and that he had considered a

career as a minister (which he forewent due to financial considerations): “I preferred to be a minister

[to a watchmaker or a lawyer], for I found it very fine to preach. But the small income from my

mother’s property which was to be divided between my brother and myself was not enough for

furthering my studies.” CW V.21; OC I.25.

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Rousseau changed creeds twice in his life, from Protestantism to Catholicism

and back to Protestantism. If the first 846 was juvenile, a trite decision he made as a

teenage runaway charmed by a Savoyard priest over dinner and fine Frangi wine, the

second 847 was commonly viewed as a matter of expediency “to recover his rights and

privileges as a citizen of Geneva.” 848 No matter the circumstances, neither of these

formal conversions suggest a calling in the Biblical sense of the term. 849 Fittingly

enough for our paradoxical author, Rousseau’s most Christian conversion—in form if

not content—was to political philosophy.

Jean-Jacques’ first and most elaborate description of this life-changing event

appeared in a series of 1762 850 correspondences to the censor Malesherbes. 851 He

846 In his sixteenth year, Rousseau missed his city’s curfew, and found himself locked out of Geneva’s

gates. In reaction, he fled, making his way to Savoy. He there met Benoit de Pontverre, the first of

two figures he credits as inspiration for his fictional Savoyard Vicar. Pontverre took the wayward lad

into his home, and urged him to renounce his native Protestantism for Catholicism. As Rousseau

writes, “I did not dream of changing religion; and very far from growing accustomed so quickly to that

idea, I envisaged it only with a horror that ought to have kept it away from me for a long time; I only

wanted not to anger these people who were cajoling me with that intention; I wanted to cultivate their

benevolence and to leave them the hope of success by appearing less well armed than I was in fact.”

Passivity and purported politeness aside, he did in fact convert, and soon departed to Annency where

he met the woman entrusted with his care—Louise Eleonor de Warens. The Confessions . CW V.39;

OC I.46-47.

847 As Rousseau wrote after his Protestant conversion of 1754, “I am attached in good faith to that true

and holy Religion, and I shall be until my last breath. I wish always to be united to that church in

public as I am in the depths of my heart, and however consoling it will be for me personally to

participate in the communion of believers, I desire it, I assure you, more for the edification of those

believers and for the honour of the Church than for my own advantage, for it would not be right for

people to think that a man of good faith who reasons cannot be a member of Jesus Christ.” From: CC

XII.2108, as translated in Cranston, The Solitary Self , p. 32. For the displeasure this declaration

elicited amongst the Parisian philosophes (particularly d’Alembert), see p. 33.

848 Despite this cynical view held even amongst his friends, Rousseau insisted that his Protestant faith

was sincere and passionate. In support, Cranston argues that Jean-Jacques’ conversion back to

Protestantism was not simply guided by practical or strategic concerns, and in fact was wholly

consistent with Jean-Jacques’ increasing commitment to “lead a thoroughly virtuous life.” As

Cranston continues, “Rousseau saw himself as having become a true believer in the Reformed religion,

at least as he understood it.” Cranston, The Noble Savage , p. 1.

849 The Oxford English Dictionary defines a Biblical calling as either a “summons, invitation, or

impulse of God to salvation or to his service,” or “the inward feeling or conviction of a divine call.”

850 Rousseau wrote four letters in this series to Malesherbes, dating from January 4 to January 28,

1762. See: CW V.572-583; OC I.1130-1147.

851 As John M. S. Allison describes, Malesherbe’s relationship to Rousseau was “friendly but always

frank.” Their interactions nonetheless were strained following the publication of Emile and The Social

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began these Letters much as he would his later Confessions : with a bold claim that

they contained “the true picture of my character and the true motives for all my

behavior.” 852 The “true picture” depicted Rousseau as a defeated, disillusioned

wanderer who possessed a “natural love of solitude which has done nothing but

increase in proportion as I have gotten to know men better.” 853 He attributed this

propensity to both temperament and circumstance: men had caused him to “take

fright” and withdraw, while his nature predisposed him to passivity. “The active life

has nothing that tempts me,” he asserted. “I would a hundred times rather consent to

never doing anything than to doing something in spite of myself; and I have thought a

hundred times that I would not have lived too unhappily at the Bastille, since I would

not be restricted to anything at all except to staying there.” 854

This manifesto of inactivity was nonetheless incomplete, for Rousseau also

admitted to harboring ambition as a youth. 855 He attributed his taste for achievement

to the Pagan writings of Plutarch, heroic tales which he encountered at age six and

memorized by age eight. 856 These epic stories moved his heart and (much as the

Contract . In a letter to Rousseau dated November 13, 1762, Malesherbes praised “that spirit of truth

so strong, courageous, and passionately virtuous which pervades all your writing,” but regretted that he

“found myself at odds… in regard to the most important principles which you have discussed in your

more recent works.” See: Allison, Lamoignon de Malesherbes: Defender and Reformer of the French

Monarchy, 1721-1794 , (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), p. 32.

852 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.572; OC I.1130.

853 According to Rousseau, the cause of his reclusiveness “is nothing other than that indomitable spirit

of freedom which… comes to me less from pride than from laziness; but this laziness is unbelievable;

everything makes it take fright; the slightest duties of civil life are unbearable to it.” Letters to

Malesherbes . CW V.572-573; OC I.1131-1132.

854 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.573; OC I.1132.

855 “Nevertheless,” Rousseau confides, “in my youth I made several efforts to succeed.” Letters to

Malesherbes . CW V.573; OC I.1132-1133.

856 From these readings, Rousseau writes, “was formed in my heart that heroic and romantic taste

which has done nothing but increase up to the present, and which ended by disgusting me with

everything.” Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.574; OC I.1134.

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Bible had affected Augustine) 857 caused him to “shed buckets of tears.” 858 They also

caused him significant grief, planting dreams of glory that were soon “soured by the

injustices I had suffered, and by those I had been the witness of.” 859

At the time of his writing, only two things assuaged Rousseau’s regret:

daydreams and faith. Dismayed with the “society of men,” he retreated (as in the

Reveries ) into his “imagination which charmed me all the more since I could cultivate

it without effort, without risk, and always find it reliable and as I needed it to be.” 860

And (as in The Confessions ) he insisted that the Lord would ultimately affirm his

goodness: “I do not fear at all being seen as I am. I know my great flaws, and I feel

all my vices keenly. With all that I will die full of hope in the Supreme God, and

very persuaded that of all the men I have known in my life, none was better than I.” 861

These therapeutic asides notwithstanding, Rousseau struggled mightily.

“Forty years of my life [passed] this way,” he bemoaned.

862 “[D]issatisfied with

myself and with others, I fruitlessly sought to break the bonds that were keeping me

attached to that society which I esteemed so little, and which chained me to

occupations that were least to my taste through needs that I considered to be those of

nature and which were only those of opinion.” 863 In short, he would have been far

happier left to his own devices and free to pursue an unfettered existence. The bonds

that “attached” him to society—social relations generally, and employment

857 See: Augustine, Confessions , VIII.xii.29, pp. 152-153.

858 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.574; OC I.1134.

859 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575; OC I.1134.

860 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575; OC I.1135.

861 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.574; OC I.1133. Readers should compare this passage with: The

Confessions . CW V.5; OC I.5.

862 In fact, only thirty-seven years of Rousseau’s life had passed. His epiphany on the road to

Vincennes occurred in October of 1749. His first visit to Diderot was in August of the same year.

Trousson and Eigeldinger, Rousseau au jour le jour , p. 53.

863 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575; OC I.1135.

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specifically—nonetheless proved difficult to break. Rousseau was lost in the world,

disgusted with denatured society yet unsure of how to liberate himself, when a stroke

of fate delivered him from his monotonous stalemate: “Suddenly a fortunate chance

happened to enlighten me about what I had to do for myself, and to think about my

fellows about whom my heart was ceaselessly in contradiction with my mind, and

whom I still felt myself brought to love along with so many reasons to hate them.” 864

This “singularly epoch-making moment in my life” occurred on the road to

Vincennes. 865 The catalyst to his revelation was a small advertisement in le Mercure

de France for the Dijon Academy’s essay contest. Although Rousseau later

responded to the question posed ( has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended

to purify morals ?) 866 with his prize-winning First Discourse , it’s reading produced a

far more immediate effect.

If anything has ever resembled a sudden inspiration, it is the motion

that was caused in me by that reading; suddenly I felt my mind dazzled

by a thousand lights; crowds of lively ideas presented themselves at

the same time with a strength and a confusion that threw me into an

inexpressible perturbation; I feel my head seized by a dizziness similar

to drunkenness. A violent palpitation oppresses me, makes me sick to

my stomach; not being able to breath any more while walking, I let

myself fall under one of the trees of the avenue, and I pass a half-hour

there in such an agitation that when I got up again I noticed the whole

front of my coat soaked with my tears without having felt that I shed

them. 867

The Oxford English Dictionary defines “inspiration” as the “special immediate action

or influence of the Spirit of God (or of some divinity or supernatural being) upon the

864 The passivity of Rousseau’s language is noteworthy. While he was paralyzed (by a strong

ambivalence towards his “fellows”), chance intruded “to enlighten me about what I had to do for

myself.” Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575; OC I.1135.

865 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575; OC I.1135.

866 First Discourse . CW II.1; OC III.1. The announcement appeared in the October, 1749 edition of le

Mercure de France . OC III.1237.

867 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575; OC I.1134.

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human mind or soul.” 868 Rousseau’s “sudden inspiration” bore precisely these marks

of divine intervention. His eyes “dazzled by a thousand lights,” his mind crowded by

a host of “lively ideas,” his head “seized” in a dizzying state, a “violent” force

overwhelmed him. Nauseous, overcome, and robbed of breath, he collapsed in a

puddle of his own tears.

Rousseau was certainly not the first to be floored by a supernatural revelation.

As Augustine’s Confessions detail, a similarly agonizing state of conflict preceded the

Saint’s conversion to Christianity. His soul became a battlefield “between different

wills” characterized by their “mutual incompatibility.” 869 He was “torn apart in a

painful condition,” bound by the chains of earthly desires and initially unable to make

a whole-hearted leap of faith to Christ. 870 “Twisting and turning in my chain”—

namely, attachment to physical desire—“until it would break completely,” Augustine

confided that “the nearer approached the moment of time when I would become

different [converted] the greater the horror of it struck me.” 871 Paralyzed in a “state

of suspense,” caught between deeply conflicting urges (earthly habit and divine

inspiration), his “painful” transformation finally coalesced in a moment of clarity:

wholly dedicating himself to God, he concluded that life was a trial “to be endured,

not loved.” 872

868 More specifically, the term “inspiration” is used to describe “that divine influence under which the

books of Scripture are held to have been written.”

869 Augustine, Confessions , pp. 146 & 150.

870 Ibid., p. 150.

871 Ibid., pp. 150-151.

872 Ibid., p. 202.

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Likewise, Rousseau’s illumination physically overpowered him, imbued him

with faith, and culminated in revelation. 873 However, these similarities

notwithstanding, one significant distinction separates the two conversions:

Augustine’s followed a protracted, self-conscious struggle to convert 874 whereas

Rousseau was quite literally struck out of the blue. As the Letters to Malesherbes

make clear, he had dreamt far more of retreat (from society) than (individual) reform.

Only a series of fortuitous coincidences led him to Vincennes with le Mercure in

hand, where he read a brief question from Dijon that abruptly, intensely, and without

rational explanation, 875 coalesced all the contradictory thoughts in his brain and sent

him reeling to the ground.

Rousseau provides little evidence that he had sought, much less anticipated,

such a dramatic transformation. Yet unlike his formal conversions to Catholicism

and Protestantism, this moment marked a deep and permanent change. The sense of

duty that he actively eschewed for so long had suddenly become manifest. Touched

by otherworldly inspiration, Rousseau was reborn as a proselyte compelled to convey

that single brief illumination. He had finally found his calling or, more precisely, his

calling had finally found him.

873 In addition, the fortuitous appearance of a text (Athanasius’ The Life of Antony and le Mercure de

France ) provided the catalyst for the conversions of both Augustine and Rousseau.

874 As Augustine writes, “I supposed that the reason for my postponing ‘from day to day’ the moment

when I would despise worldly ambition and follow you was that I had not seen any certainty by which

to direct my course.” It was only after encountering the story of Saint Antony’s life that Augustine

recognized “the day had now come when I stood naked to myself, and my conscience complained

against me,” pushing him to wholly embrace God. Ibid., p. 145.

875 This absence of reasoning further distinguishes the conversions of Rousseau and Augustine. The

Saint’s leap of faith to God was predicated upon a sophisticated metaphysical analysis of the dangers

of a divided soul, an affliction whose only possible, rational cure was the whole-hearted embrace of

God. See: Augustine, Confessions , pp. 137-141. For Augustine’s comparably reasoned argument on

time, see: 221-245.

257

In this regard, Rousseau’s epiphany more closely resembles Saint Paul’s

storied conversion on the road to Damascus. Paul was a Roman citizen and

Hellenized Jew, “a Hebrew born of Hebrews” in approximately 10 AD. 876 In 36 AD

he was sent north by the high priest of Jerusalem to arrest the followers of Jesus and

destroy their burgeoning heresy. As Acts 9 describes, Paul was initially no Saint:

“breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord,” he left in active

pursuit of “any belonging to the Way, men or women, [so] he might bring them

bound to Jerusalem.” 877 While crossing the Jordan Valley en route to Damascus, he

was struck by a vision that forever transformed him. Outside the city’s borders,

“suddenly a light from heaven flashed about him. And he fell to the ground and

heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’” 878

Overwhelmed by the voice of God, Paul collapsed. When he arose “and when his

eyes were opened, he could see nothing.” 879 The would-be scourge of Christianity

was rendered helpless, led to Damascus by his company.

As the Bible tells, “for three days he was without sight, and neither ate nor

drank.” 880 On the final day Paul exhibited the first sign of faith (prayer) and was

subsequently healed by the Christian disciple Ananias. Ananias had already “heard

from many about this man [Paul], how much evil he has done to thy saints at

Jerusalem” acting under the “authority from the chief priests to bind all who call upon

thy name.” 881 He relayed this to God in a vision, yet the Lord was undeterred: “Go

876 Paul was born in Tarsus, a provincial capital of the Roman Empire.

877 Acts 9:1-2.

878 Acts 9:3-4.

879 Acts 9:8.

880 Acts 9:9.

881 Acts 9:13-14.

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[to cure him], for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the

Gentiles and kings and the sons of Israel; for I will show him how much he must

suffer for the sake of my name.” 882

It was under these conditions—a solemn mixture of divine mercy and

imposed suffering—that Ananias visited Paul with the gift of redemption. After

receiving the disciple’s touch, scales fell from Paul’s eyes, his blindness was cured,

and he rose to be baptized, dedicating his life to spreading the gospel that Jesus was

the son of God. As Ronald Brownrigg observes, “Paul’s conversion was remarkable

for the total reversal that it involved in his thinking, and the complete redirection of

his whole life.” 883 He was reborn as an Apostle in the very act of persecuting those to

whom he was now entrusted to serve.

Parallels between the conversions of Paul and Rousseau range from the

superficial (both were on a road) to the substantive. In each, supernatural epiphany

inspired radical redirection in the form of an individual calling. For both men, faith

was the gift bestowed upon them after physical trials, and the catalyst to their

redemption. Furthermore, neither appeared to have much choice in the matter;

illumination was the result of divine intervention rather than an autonomous act of

will. 884 And finally, both felt compelled to spread their newfound truths no matter the

consequences. 885

882 Acts 9:15-16.

- 883 Ronald Brownrigg, Who’s Who in the New Testament . (London: Routledge, 1995), p. 193.

884 Readers should recall that passivity—specifically, abandoning oneself to God—is a definitive

element of Christian conversion. For the prominence of passivity within Rousseau’s life and works,

readers should consult Starobinski’s Transparency and Obstruction .

885 Paul enraged his former allies in preaching Christianity, just as Rousseau alienated the philosophes

in praising religiosity. See, for example, Voltaire’s quip (following the Letter to d’Alembert ) that

Rousseau had perhaps “become a priest of the Church” in Besterman, Voltaire's Correspondence .

XIX.D7864.

259

This latter point proved particularly significant to Rousseau’s life. As with

Paul on the road to Damascus, he emerged from the road to Vincennes determined to

share his revelation. As he confides,

if I had ever been able to write a quarter of what I saw and felt under

that tree, how clearly I would have made all the contradictions of the

social system seem, with what simplicity I would have demonstrated

that man is naturally good and that it is from these institutions alone

that men become wicked. Everything that I was able to retain of these

crowds of great truths which illuminated me under that tree in a

quarter of an hour has been weakly scattered about in my three

principal writings. 886

Here, finally, is the source of Rousseau’s manifold claims of consistency and

coherence. Every discourse, treatise, novel and letter to escape his pen was an

attempt to articulate these compelling “truths.” More specifically, the most powerful

truth of all—the source of human suffering—had suddenly become clear: man was

“naturally good,” a victim of society’s perverting influence. Buoyed by its simplicity,

Jean-Jacques dedicated his remaining years to articulating this illumination,

struggling to convince his peers that they should heed his insights and reform their

religious, social and political institutions accordingly.

“That is how when I was thinking about it least,” Rousseau confides, “I

became an author almost in spite of myself.” 887 After all, his epiphany offered

rapturous clarity, but it also pressed him to pursue a life not of his making. From that

point forward Jean-Jacques “wanted to be consistent and shake the heavy yoke of

opinion from my shoulders once and for all” by relating his message of natural

886 Rousseau is here referring to the two Discourses and Emile , works which “are inseparable and

together form the same whole.” Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575; OC I.1135-1136. (My emphasis,

to again underscore the distinction between man and men central to Rousseau’s concept of innocence.)

887 Although Rousseau cherishes freedom and liberty, he implies that he is prone to inactivity in the

absence of exogenous pressure. In addition, he confides that “I have always written in a cowardly

manner and badly when I was not strongly persuaded.” Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.575-576; OC

I.1136.

260

innocence and artificial corruption. 888 Yet this duty was, at best, a mixed blessing. 889

The individual sacrifice required to spread these contentious truths caused him

significant regret, and left him once again longing for solitude. Convinced that “great

tests” and “experience” demonstrated “the state in which I have put myself 890 is the

only one in which man can live as good and happy, since it is the most independent of

all, and the only one in which one never finds oneself in the necessity of harming

someone else for one’s own advantage,” he still dreamt of an “isolated and

independent” life free of social constraints. 891

When the real world failed him, Rousseau did what devout Christians often

do: he looked beyond the material world. He stole moments of ecstasy in fits of

reverie. Only then could he enjoy “the whole universe, everything that is, everything

that can be, everything that is beautiful in the perceptible world, and that is

imaginable in the intellectual world.” 892 Retreating within his imagination, Rousseau

took delight in a rapturous embrace of everything , in communion with a magnificent

divine order free of society’s flaws. Although this “golden age” crafted in his mind

left him “tender to the point of tears,” he was still saddened by “the nothingness of

my chimeras” and, more deeply, the “inexplicable void in myself that nothing could

888 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.576; OC I.1136.

889 As Rousseau laments, soon after his revelation Diderot “exhorted me to give vent to my ideas and

to compete for the prize. I did so, and from that instant I was lost. All the rest of my life and

misfortunes was the inevitable effect of that instant aberration.” Jean-Jacques’ complaint (and

deflection of accountability) is, however, somewhat misleading. It was the force and clarity of his

illumination— not the cajoling of his friend—that, by his own description, compelled him to embark on

his career as an author and public intellectual. The Confessions . CW V.294-295; OC I.351.

890 Readers should note that Rousseau’s language here takes the possessive form (“the state in which I

have put myself”), implying an autonomy at odds with his more frequent descriptions of duty as an

exogenously-imposed burden.

891 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.576; OC I.1137.

892 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.577; OC I.1138-1139.

261

fill; a certain yearning of the heart toward another sort of enjoyment the idea of which

I did not have and the need for which I felt nonetheless.” 893

In seeking to fill this void Rousseau moved closer to God.

Soon I raised my ideas from the surface of the earth to all the beings of

nature, to the universal system of things, to the incomprehensible

being who embraces everything. Then with my mind lost in that

immensity, I did not think, I did not reason, I did not philosophize;

with a sort of sensual pleasure I felt myself weighed down with the

weight of that universe, with rapture I abandoned myself to the

confusion of these great ideas, I loved to lose myself in imagination in

space; confined within the limits of beings my heart found itself too

constrained, I was smothered in the universe, I would have wanted to

throw myself into the infinite. I believe that if I had unveiled all the

mysteries of nature, I would have felt myself to be in a less delightful

situation than that stupefying ecstasy to which my mind abandoned

itself without reserve, and which sometimes made me cry out in the

agitation of my raptures, “Oh great being! Oh great being,” without

being able to say or think anything more. 894

As in the later Reveries , Rousseau discovered “continuous delirium” in total and utter

abandonment: “abandoning myself to the impression of the objects but without

thinking, without imagining, without doing anything else but feeling the calm and the

happiness of my situation.” 895 Raising himself to “the incomprehensible being who

embraces everything,” he savored the experience of floating amidst an unfathomable

divine order while losing his faculties of speech and reasoning. As he admits, the all-

too-human limitations of his mind only enhanced his sense of thrill: had he “unveiled

all the mysteries of nature,” he would not have achieved the “stupefying ecstasy”

borne of abandonment “without reserve.”

These moments of spiritual bliss were nonetheless fleeting. Rousseau’s

rapture could not quell his real-world misgivings; they rather made him long for a

893 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V.578-579; OC I.1140.

894 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V. 579; OC I.1141.

895 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V. 579; OC I.1141.

262

more immediate salvation. “[T]he trial I have made of these sweet enjoyments no

longer serves for anything but making me wait with less fright for the moment of

tasting them without distraction,” he lamented. 896 Compelled to serve the society of

men, Rousseau increasingly dreamt of an afterlife when, freed from the chains of

society, he might finally delight in the heavens.

Still, if Jean-Jacques’ faith in a beneficent Creator drew him closer to God it

also ushered his involvement in the world of men. After all, the means (and

correlative obligation) to enact corporeal salvation suddenly became clear on the road

to Vincennes. This combination of insight and prerogative reunited our self-

described misanthrope with a world he was now determined to change. Indeed,

Rousseau confides, on that day “I saw another universe and I became another man.”

More than simply affirm the existence of a divine order, his illumination gave him

new life , one defined by faith in humankind’s potential for virtuous redemption, and

the duty to encourage this promise in practice. The society of men might never exude

divine calm, but man could struggle to legitimize our interdependent chains, to

reawaken our conscience, hone our judgment, shun divisive, oppressive opinion and

align (as closely as possible) our associations with God’s harmonious order. 897

To save ourselves we might—indeed must —follow our Creator’s lead. After

Vincennes, Rousseau felt compelled to teach this lesson by example, to present

himself as a natural, uncorrupted man, a beacon of hope in a denatured world. 898 His

896 Letters to Malesherbes . CW V. 580; OC I.1142.

897 Rousseau’s argument that man should embrace divine order (even though we can never replicate it

in society) parallels his claim that we should evoke natural goodness as a basis for reform (even though

we cannot return to our natural state). See: Letter from Rousseau to Voltaire , September 10, 1755.

CW III.105; OC III.226.

898 Although Rousseau was deeply discomforted by his newfound role, he struggled onwards. He

attributed his sense of duty to his secular attachments. “I have a very loving heart,” he confided. “I

263

illumination lighted the path to future redemption, one guided by a clear conviction

that humankind had disserved its God-given potential. But divine inspiration also

instilled within him a broad sense of civic duty, a desire to correct society’s failings

for the good of his species. It was thus on the road to Vincennes that Rousseau the

pious (felled by a revelation) and Rousseau the profane (champion of secular welfare)

became one. The dialectic between secular and spiritual themes that mingles so

awkwardly throughout his works was, during his shining epiphany, made painfully,

blissfully, harmoniously clear to him. It was that unprecedented moment of

coherence that Rousseau spent his remaining years struggling to relate, a flash of

divine inspiration that pressed him into corporeal service.

* * * * *

Following Vincennes, religious conviction imbued Rousseau with hope for his

species and a passion to better his world. Still, in others the very same sentiment

gave him serious pause. Religion may have been necessary, both to his own work

and the prosperity of his species, but religious practice often undermined the

requisites of civic virtue. Rather than encourage civil harmony, fanatical creeds bred

divisiveness and intolerance. Men were beholden to a single deity and shared a

common welfare, yet dogmatists obscured this truth by imposing artificial sectarian

differences. Far from justifying the need to reconcile religious and political

love men too much… I love them all, and it is because I love them that I hate injustice; it is because I

love them that I flee them, I suffer less from their evils when I do not see them.” Letters to

Malesherbes . CW V. 581; OC I.1144.

264

institutions, Rousseau’s assessment implied that such a relationship was nothing short

of fatal.

Machiavelli expressed a similar ambivalence in his Discourses on Livy . In an

aptly-named chapter, How Important It Is to Take Account of Religion, and How

Italy, Lacking in Religion Thanks to the Roman Church, Has Been Ruined , he

described Catholicism as a threat to civic republicanism: “the church has kept and

still keeps this land divided.” 899 Yet moments prior he argued that “there can be no

greater indication of the ruin of a state than to see a disregard for its divine

worship.” 900 And in the preceding section, On the Religion of the Romans , he insisted

that “[j]ust as the observance of divine worship is the cause of the greatness of

republics, so the disregard of divine worship is the cause of their ruin.” Although

“divine worship” was crucial to a polity’s prosperity, the most powerful house of

worship—the Catholic church—had “divided” Italy.

Like Rousseau in On Civil Religion , Machiavelli here seemed to lead readers

towards conflicting conclusions. Yet if both thinkers agreed upon the virtues of

religious piety and maintained the dangers of religious practice (in both cases, Roman

Catholicism), what are we to make of religion’s practical value? Does religiosity

threaten—rather than cultivate—political virtue and civic republicanism? Is it more

divisive than unifying? Given such compelling evidence to the contrary, do religious

associations serve any positive function in the composition and preservation of a

prosperous civil society?

899 Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy , I.12, p. 55.

900 Ibid., I.12, p. 53.

265

Perhaps more emphatically than Machiavelli, 901 Rousseau insisted that despite

the crimes of clerics, religion was necessary to strong democratic reform.

Furthermore, he claimed that his religious model was different from the dogmatic

creeds he so loathed, because it both facilitated civic virtue and safeguarded citizens

against sectarianism’s dangers. Simply put, where Catholicism failed so miserably—

where it divided and conquered rather than united and supported—his Civil Religion

would prosper. Yet what made Rousseau’s creed any different? Given the historical

failings of formal religions, why was his compatible with civic republicanism?

Conversely, if Rousseau was truly reborn following his conversion on the road to

Vincennes, why was he concerned at all? Why did he not simply abandon himself to

the overwhelming pleasure of reverie? Why not take solace in a dream of divine

redemption, while letting the world stay its own sel- destructive course?

In the end, Rousseau was unable to abandon his faith in either man or God;

the failings of dogmatic associations only pressed him to present an alternative, an

inclusive model of religious practice that adhered to both core Christian beliefs and

civic standards of tolerance and equality under law. In so doing, Civil Religion

affirmed what Rousseau had argued elsewhere, both before and after The Social

Contract : namely, that a truly civic religion engendered democratic virtue. As he

eulogized in To the Republic of Geneva , the prefatory dedication to the Second

Discourse , his birthplace was such an “edifying example of… a perfect union

between a Society of Theologians and of Men of Letters.” 902 He attributed the city’s

901 Although Machiavelli’s Discourses lauded religion’s role in facilitating civic republican virtue,

many read his Prince quite differently: as a cynical realpolitik manifesto in which successful

leadership requires machination, self-interest and savvy, rather than humbling, unifying faith.

902 Second Discourse . CW III.9-10; OC III.119.

266

“saintliness of morals, severity of oneself and gentleness to others” to “the spirit of

Christianity” embodied by its pastors. In the Letter to d’Alembert , Genevan virtue

was credited to a mélange of religious piety, patriotic love, and culturally reified

morals. 903 In Emile , Christianity quelled revolutions and solidified the authority of

“modern governments,” while the Islamic “Turks, who have innumerable pious

institutions” were deemed “hospitable from religious principle.” 904 And in Letters

Written From the Mountain , idyllic Swiss communities were characterized not only

by striking landscapes, common heritage and familial arrangements, but also the

fortitude born of religious practice. 905 Religion offered a crucial foundation for civic

prosperity because it bound us to our fellow citizens, and urged us to work together

(no matter our particular differences) for the general welfare of all.

Still, Rousseau’s recourse to divine redemption—particularly in his later

works—smacked of personal neediness. His religiosity increasingly bore the marks

of a man obsessed with his own, rather than society’s, redemption. As the Reveries

made plain, his time on earth was beset by turmoil and misunderstanding. When men

had failed to appreciate (or even accurately grasp) his position, he found himself

looking towards the heavens, insisting that God saw what his peers did not: the utility

of his thought, his innocence as an author and individual, and the pious lessons he

presented to a world increasingly ruled by amour-propre and perverse opinion. Yet

ultimately, religiosity united Rousseau with his fellows as much as with God. As he

admitted in a 1762 letter to the minister Frédéric-Guillaume de Montmollin,

903 Letter to d’Alembert . CW X.322; OC V.88-89.

904 Emile . E 313n.

905 Letters Written From the Mountain (Second Letter). CW IX.154-155; OC III.712. See also: The

Social Contract . CW IV.222; OC III.468.

267

membership in the Christian 906 community gave him unabashed joy: “It is consoling

and sweet for me to be counted among its members, to participate in the public

worship they offer to the divinity, and to say to myself in their midst: I am with my

brothers.” 907

Fellowship, communion, harmony, connectedness in this world : as much as

anything, this was the indisputable promise of religion, to unite denatured creatures,

not in some distant postmortem realm, but during this lifetime and on this earth. That

is why, on no uncertain terms, religiosity was necessary to Rousseau’s thought. Only

religion could serve the greatest of all political needs—cultivating civic virtue—

because only religion reminded us that we were all creatures beholden to the same

Creator and the same divine order, no matter our denominational, national, ethnic,

and philosophical differences.

Writing about a “universal and all-pervading [divine] Spirit of Truth” in his

autobiography, Gandhi argued that “a man who aspires after that cannot afford to

keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the

field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility,

that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what

religion means.” 908 Rousseau could not have agreed more. In the final analysis, his

peculiar faith in man and God alike imbued with him the same stubborn conviction.

906 Again, we must emphasize the fact that by “Christian” Rousseau clearly means “Protestant,” and

not “Catholic.” He was, he explained to Beaumont, “fortunate to be born into the most reasonable and

holy Religion on earth, I remain inviolably attached to the worship of my Fathers. Like them, I take

Scripture and reason for the unique rules of my belief. Like them, I challenge the authority of men and

agree to submit to their formulas only to the extent I perceive their truth. Like them, I join in my heart

with the true servants of Jesus Christ and the true adorers of God, to offer him the homages of his

Church in the communion of the faithful.” Letter to Beaumont . CW IX.47; OC IV.960.

907 CC XII.2108.

908 Mohandas K. Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments With Truth , Mahadev

Desai, tr. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1957 & 1993), p. 504.

268

The relationship between spirituality and secularism that others dismissed as

paradoxical, inconsistent, heretical, or even incoherent, Rousseau believed was true

and necessary to send us down a more virtuous path. The urgent necessity with

which he wrote, with which he engaged a world that so discomforted him, with which

he proclaimed his species’ innocence despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,

suggests nothing less.

269

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