Political Science

Rethinking the

Western Tradition

The volumes in this series

seek to address the present debate

over the Western tradition

by reprinting key works of

that tradition along with essays

that evaluate each text from

di!erent perspectives.

EDITORIAL

COMMITTEE FOR

Rethinking the

Western Tradition

David Bromwich Yale University

Gerald Graff University of Illinois at Chicago

Geoffrey Hartman Yale University

Samuel Lipman (deceased)

The New Criterion

Gary Saul Morson Northwestern University

Jaroslav Pelikan Yale University

Marjorie Perloff Stanford University

Richard Rorty Stanford University

Alan Ryan New College, Oxford

Ian Shapiro Yale University

Frank M. Turner Yale University

Allen W. Wood Stanford University

The Social Contract and The First and

Second Discourses

J E A N - J A C Q U E S R O U S S E A U

Edited and with an Introduction by Susan Dunn

with essays by

Gita May

Robert N. Bellah

David Bromwich

Conor Cruise O’Brien

Yale University Press

New Haven and London

Copyright ! 2002 by Yale University.

Translations of The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts and

The Social Contract copyright ! 2002 by Susan Dunn.

All rights reserved.

This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part,

including illustrations, in any form (beyond that

copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S.

Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public

press), without written permission from the publishers.

Printed in the United States of America by Vail-Ballou Press, Binghamton, New York.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778.

[Selections. English. 2002]

The social contract ; and, The first and second discourses / Jean-Jacques Rousseau ;

edited and with an introduction by Susan Dunn ; with essays by Gita May . . . [et al.].

p. cm. — (Rethinking the Western tradition)

Includes bibliographical references.

isbn 0-300-09140-0 (cloth : alk. paper) — isbn 0-300-09141-9 (pbk. : alk. paper)

1. Political science—Early works to 1800. 2. Social contract—Early works to 1800.

3. Civilization—Early works to 1800. I. Dunn, Susan. II. May, Gita. III. Title. IV. Series.

jc179 .r7 2002

320%.01—dc21 2001046557

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

The paper in this book meets the guidelines

for permanence and durability of the Committee on

Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the

Council on Library Resources.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Contributors

Robert N. Bellah is Elliott Professor of Sociology Emeritus at the Univer-

sity of California at Berkeley. He is the author of numerous books, includ-

ing Beyond Belief and The Broken Covenant, and is co-author of Habits of

the Heart and The Good Society.

David Bromwich is Housum Professor of English at Yale University. He is

the author of several books, including Politics by Other Means: Higher

Education and Group Thinking, Skeptical Music: Essays on Modern Po-

etry, and A Choice of Inheritance: Self and Community from Edmund Burke

to Robert Frost.

Susan Dunn is professor of French literature and the history of ideas at

Williams College. She is the author of The Deaths of Louis XVI: Regicide

and the French Political Imagination and Sister Revolutions: French Light-

ning, American Light, and is co-author with James MacGregor Burns of

The Three Roosevelts.

Gita May is professor of French literature at Columbia University. She is

the author of De Jean-Jacques Rousseau à Madame Roland: Essai sur la

sensibilité préromantique et révolutionnaire, Diderot et Baudelaire, cri-

tiques d’art, Madame Roland and the Age of Revolution, and Stendhal and

the Age of Napoleon.

Conor Cruise O’Brien is a statesman, diplomat, and political commentator

who lives in Dublin, Ireland. He is the author of many books including God

Land: Reflections on Religion and Nationalism, The Great Melody: A The-

matic Biography and Commented Anthology of Edmund Burke, and The

Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785–1800.

Contents

Susan Dunn: Introduction: Rousseau’s Political Triptych 1

Chronology of Rousseau’s Life 36

The First Discourse: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts 43

The Second Discourse: Discourse on the Origin and Foundations

of Inequality Among Mankind 69

The Social Contract 149

Rethinking The First and Second Discourses and The Social Contract

Gita May: Rousseau, Cultural Critic 257

Robert N. Bellah: Rousseau on Society and the Individual 266

David Bromwich: Rousseau and the Self without Property 288

Conor Cruise O’Brien: Rousseau, Robespierre, Burke, Jefferson,

and the French Revolution 301

Introduction: Rousseau’s Political Triptych

S U S A N D U N N

Is there any deed more shocking, more hateful, more infamous than the

willful burning of a library? Is there any blow more devastating to the core

of human civilization? In the mid-eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rous-

seau startled—and excited—his readers by praising Caliph Omar, who in

the year 650 ordered the incineration of the glorious library in Alexandria.!

In his first important work, The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts

(1750), also known as the First Discourse, Rousseau held that the search for

knowledge was so socially and morally destructive that book burning and

the subsequent return to ignorance, innocence, and poverty would be a step

forward rather than a step backward in the history of civilization. He was

convinced that only cultural and material regression could accompany the

movement of society toward morality. The entire rational enterprise of the

Enlightenment found itself unexpectedly under fierce and principled attack.

When Rousseau burst upon the intellectual scene, the philosophers and

writers of eighteenth-century France had for decades been passionately

engaged in an audacious, innovative project: the questioning and disman-

tling of all the traditional underpinnings of their society. Their daring

charge entailed exposing to the light of reason all preconceived ideas,

supernatural dogmas and superstitious beliefs, all political and social as-

sumptions. Intellectuals were challenging the theological foundation of

monarchy, the privileges of the aristocracy, the doctrines of Catholicism.

Having wiped their intellectual slate as clean as they could, men of letters in

France embarked upon the bold plan of using human reason to address

people’s needs: how they should live, govern themselves, organize society,

and conceive morality. Their goal was a rational society dedicated to equal-

ity, freedom, and happiness. Life had become an intellectual adventure, and

people were optimistic that they could shape their own destinies.

Rousseau had once participated in this luminous and probing culture. He

too had wanted to embrace all knowledge; he too had known the joy of

intellectual curiosity, the bliss of creativity. Mingling and collaborating

with artists, musicians, philosophers, and writers—the great philosophe

2 Susan Dunn

Voltaire, the composer Rameau, the versatile man of letters Diderot, the

witty playwright Marivaux, the philosophe Fontenelle—he had reveled in

the aristocratic world of brilliant salons, where luxury, elegance, and genius

combined to make life a joy for the mind and the senses.!

But his fascination with the sophisticated world of the Enlightenment

was also colored by bitterness and resentment, the result of his humiliating

experience in 1743 working as the secretary for the French Ambassador in

Venice; by his disappointments in life, especially his dismay in 1745 at not

having received more recognition for his part in a musical collaboration

with Voltaire and Rameau; and by his own deep insecurities and demons,

his paranoid feeling that he was the target of various cabals conspiring to

undermine and discredit him. Suddenly his eyes bored into the heart of this

dazzling culture. He judged. He condemned. Behind the splendid façade, he

concluded, lay a world that was superficial, corrupt, and cruel.

Astonishingly, Rousseau turned against the entire Enlightenment proj-

ect. He branded the daring intellectual, scientific, and artistic culture of

eighteenth-century France a lie, a vast devolution, a symptom of alarming

moral decline. Nothing more than a fake veneer, the century’s worldly

accomplishments were all the more perfidious because they masked so

effectively the deep corruption of a decadent, unequal society. The quest for

knowledge and intellectual advancement was a superficial luxury that, in-

stead of serving society, reinforced its self-indulgence and decay. ‘‘We have

physicists, geometers, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, painters,’’

he remarked, adding tellingly that ‘‘we no longer have citizens.’’

People, Rousseau was convinced, had been deceived, seduced, and cor-

rupted by the radiance of the Enlightenment. And what was worse, they

cherished their corruption, for it seemed to mark the summit of progress and

civilization. Everywhere Rousseau saw educated individuals who resem-

bled ‘‘happy slaves,’’ preferring the glitter of high culture to true freedom

and happiness." The search for knowledge had merely taken on a life of its

own, divorced from the real needs of society and citizens.

Skepticism and vain inquiry attracted people more than a search for a

meaningful life. People believed that they knew everything, Rousseau re-

marked, but they did not know the meaning of the words magnanimity,

equity, temperance, humanity, courage, fatherland, and God. Overwhelmed

by pretension, affectation, and deceit, the values that create robust citi-

zens and a healthy society—self-sacrifice, sincere friendships, love of

country—had disappeared.

The principles of science and philosophy and the decadent values im-

plicit in the arts on the one hand and the requirements of a healthy society

Introduction 3

on the other, Rousseau insisted, are irremediably at odds with one another.

Whereas science searches for the truth by fostering doubt and undermining

faith and virtue, a vigorous, patriotic society, Rousseau contended, requires

assent to the principles of its foundation.

What then is the mission of the intellectual in society? The proper,

socially useful role of philosophers and men of letters, according to Rous-

seau, was not to spread mistrust, not to make piecemeal proposals for

incremental reform, not to seek fame and glory for themselves through their

intellectual acrobatics, but rather to offer, as he himself would, a radical

prescription for the complete social and political overhaul of the nation and

for the moral regeneration of its citizens."

In his mind’s eye, he saw, in the place of a decadent culture that valued

superficial luxury, prosperity, and free though vain inquiry, a muscular,

Spartan society that imposed rules and discipline and asked its citizens for

sacrifice. In such a polity, virtuous citizens would have no need for futile

intellectual pursuits. Indeed, Spartan virtue itself is anti-intellectual. De-

rived from the Latin word for ‘‘man,’’ vir, virtue implied not just moral

goodness, but rather strength, courage, and, above all, self-sacrifice and

self-discipline.

Even so, Rousseau was not suggesting that French men and women rush

out and torch the libraries of France—or copies of his own book. On the

contrary, in an already unhealthy, decadent society, science and philosophy

might, to some extent, be useful. Certain great individuals—such as Bacon,

Descartes, Newton—might serve as guides for humanity, and a few others

might be permitted to follow in their footsteps and even outdistance them.

In an already corrupt society, the arts and sciences, harmful for ‘‘average’’

people, could, in the hands of a few people of genius, perhaps bring some

true enlightenment to all.#

The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts won first prize in the Dijon

Academy’s intellectual competition, a contest that had asked writers and

philosophers to respond to the question, ‘‘Has the revival of sciences and

arts contributed to improving morality?’’ With Rousseau’s friend Diderot

having arranged for the essay’s publication, the Discourse took Paris by

storm, becoming a best-seller. Were people merely captivated by Rous-

seau’s contrarian viewpoint and fascinated by harsh criticism of their radi-

ant and celebrated culture? Or were they intrigued by his surprising, anach-

ronistic resurrection of Spartan concepts of virtue, self-sacrifice, and duty?

Already in the seventeenth century, the shrewd aristocratic writer of

maxims, the duke de La Rochefoucauld, had criticized the high culture of

France, noting that ‘‘luxury and excessive politesse in states are a sure sign of

4 Susan Dunn

increasing decadence, because as all individuals become attached to their

private interests, they turn away from the public good.’’! And in 1748, the

great political philosopher Montesquieu had also faulted the ‘‘manufactures,

commerce, finances, wealth, and luxury’’ of the modern world for displacing

civic and political virtue." But Rousseau’s attack on modernity was far more

consistent and ambitious—and more psychologically acute—than that of

the other philosophes, and it is he alone who can be credited with composing

the jolting introduction to one of the most original, provocative, and far-

reaching challenges to Western society ever undertaken.

The first seeds of a powerful, world-historical Revolution had been

planted. The ‘‘paradoxes’’ of the First Discourse exploded ‘‘like a bomb-

shell,’’ wrote the English economist and philosopher John Stuart Mill.#

‘‘Rousseau produced more effect with his pen,’’ Lord Acton said, ‘‘than

Aristotle, or Cicero, or St. Augustine, or St. Thomas Aquinas, or any other

man who ever lived.’’$ Of all the great philosophes of the French Enlight-

enment—Montesquieu, Diderot, Voltaire—it was Rousseau who would

have the most profound and enduring impact on history, not only on the

Revolution in France but on almost all modern, democratic movements for

political liberation. He was the most radical political theorist of his times,

the most utopian. But it was also Rousseau who unwittingly set the stage for

the totalitarian states of the twentieth century, for ‘‘one-party democracy,’’

and for communitarianism gone haywire.

How can this paradox be explained?

r o u s s e a u ’ s d i s c o u r s e o n i n e q u a l i t y

Three years after composing his First Discourse, Rousseau leaped at the

chance to add a further dimension to his political philosophy. The Dijon

Academy was proposing another intellectual competition. This time the

subject concerned the origins of inequality. Rousseau’s entry, his Discourse

on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind (1753), also

known as the Second Discourse, occupies a pivotal place in his thought. On

the one hand, it looks back to the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, giving

a historical and theoretical explanation for the decadence and corruption he

diagnosed in eighteenth-century French society. On the other hand, it looks

forward to his next great work, The Social Contract, by suggesting the

necessity of finding an alternate, healthier path along which society and

citizens can evolve.

Why had inequality become so rooted in society, Rousseau asked him-

Introduction 5

self. How had such a wide variety of people, poor as well as rich, come to

accept or profit from outrageous social and economic disparities? How did

we arrive at our present condition?

In order to fathom the different causes of inequality and analyze the

successive stages in its development, Rousseau decided to play the role of

theoretical anthropologist, hypothesizing about the lives that people might

have led in the ‘‘state of nature,’’ before social relations and organized

society molded and corrupted human behavior. Rousseau admitted that the

‘‘state of nature’’ he imagined might never have existed. Still, such theoret-

ical conjecturing was necessary, he insisted, to ‘‘judge properly of our

present state.’’!$

Rousseau tried to let his imagination go back in time as far as he could to

envision human beings stripped of even the most primitive social relations,

stripped even of language itself. In an act of impressive intellectual orig-

inality, he pared off all accretions, all the wants, needs, habits, skills, beliefs,

emotions, and values that one develops in society, revealing the ‘‘bare

bones’’ of the human being.

A century earlier, the English political theorist Thomas Hobbes had also

hypothesized about the ‘‘state of nature.’’ In one of the most famous sen-

tences of his classic text Leviathan (1651), Hobbes had maintained that

human life in the state of nature was ‘‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and

short.’’ Though people were free and equal, they were engaged in perpetual

warfare with one another.

Now it was Rousseau’s turn to sketch a portrait of life in the state of

nature, and he would present a very different picture of primitive human

beings. He envisioned the state of nature as a kind of dormancy period.

People were free and equal, he theorized, but they lived mostly solitary

lives, feeling little need for others. Though they had sexual relations with

one another, they formed no lasting bonds. There existed among them

neither cooperation nor conflict.

They lived entirely in the present, experiencing only spontaneous drives.

Still, they felt a harmony with the world because their desires never ex-

ceeded their needs and because they were able to satisfy both needs and

desires immediately. They were independent and devoid of aggression to-

ward one another. Were they happy? Perhaps. But their moral and rational

faculties remained largely asleep. Though they did have an ‘‘instinct’’ for

pity for the suffering of others along with a ‘‘survival instinct’’ of their own,

they were for the most part untouched by morality. Neither love nor friend-

ship nor family nor thought nor speech impinged upon their primitive soli-

tude. These early humans were all potential and virtuality.

6 Susan Dunn

The notion of a state of nature was a useful fiction. It furnished Rousseau

with theoretical ‘‘evidence’’ for claiming a radical dichotomy between our

present demeaning condition and the Eden we left behind. Here was an

original standard against which all future human dislocation could be

measured.

This vision of the state of nature, moreover, provided Rousseau with a

basis for his belief in human ‘‘perfectibility.’’ Now he could argue that if

modern individuals appeared corrupt, unequal, and enslaved, it is society—

not human nature—that is to blame. Thus a remedy to the situation might

be found. Because of people’s vast rational and ethical potential, it was pos-

sible and reasonable to propose an alternate route for their social, political,

and moral development. This was the challenge Rousseau accepted: he was

convinced that it was his mission to chart that course, not backward to the

state of nature, but forward toward a more rational, social, and moral Eden.

Given our equality and freedom in the state of nature, why did inequality

come to define the human condition in most societies? How would Rous-

seau explain entire civilizations under the spell of servitude and the yoke of

despotism?

Very early in human history, according to Rousseau’s hypothetical sce-

nario, people began to work and collaborate occasionally with one another.

This was the beginning of a long golden age that saw the appearance of

family units and patriarchal authority but not yet of private property. Hus-

bands and wives, parents and children dwelled together under one roof,

experiencing the ‘‘sweetest sentiments’’ known to human beings, ‘‘conjugal

and paternal love.’’ Each family resembled a ‘‘little society’’ in which mem-

bers were united by mutual affection and liberty. There was commerce

among the different families; human faculties, social rituals, and a sense of

morality evolved somewhat, all contributing to ‘‘the happiest and most

durable epoch’’ in human history, an interim period ‘‘between the indolence

of the primitive state and the petulant activity of egoism.’’

But then came the fall from tranquillity and the downward spiral into

history and corruption. This period began when people realized that, with

rational effort and work, they could transform the natural world. A new

intellectual energy was unleashed, destroying the simplicity and harmony

that had reigned in the state of nature between one’s needs and one’s de-

sires. The novel concept of the division of labor also took hold, robbing

people of their self-sufficiency. Now new technological advances, such as

agriculture and metallurgy, were introduced, accompanied by the notion of

‘‘private property.’’ People competed for property, increasing their wealth at

Introduction 7

the expense of others. Production started to surpass people’s needs, feeding

a new hunger for superfluous, ‘‘luxury’’ goods. Equality was vanquished by

ambition and greed.

Exacerbating economic inequality was a new insidious form of psycho-

logical inequality. As people started to acquire wealth and property, they

began to compare themselves to their neighbors, seeking to distinguish

themselves and assert their own superiority. Rousseau perceived that this

quest for esteem is, at bottom, a desire for inequality. In 1899 the Amer-

ican economic theorist Thorstein Veblen would label this syndrome ‘‘con-

spicuous consumption.’’!! Rousseau incisively remarked that the cost to

individuals of these new desires for prestige ( proestigium in Latin means

‘‘illusion’’) was alienation from themselves. For they viewed their accom-

plishments, their worth, and themselves through the appraising eyes of their

rivals, experiencing their lives through their judgmental gaze, belonging

less to themselves than to others. To earn the regard of others, it became

more important to appear than to be. One tried to satisfy one’s ego while

robbing oneself of authenticity and equality—as well as of the compassion

one had felt for others in the state of nature.

The disappearance of equality, social divisions resulting from the divi-

sion of labor, the unequal distribution of property, the isolation of the rich

from the poor, Rousseau contends, were followed by exploitation, violence,

and frightening disorder. ‘‘The usurpations of the rich, the pillagings of the

poor, the unbridled passions of all, by stifling the cries of natural compas-

sion, and the still feeble voice of justice,’’ concluded Rousseau, ‘‘rendered

men avaricious, wicked and ambitious.’’!% At this point, Rousseau and

Hobbes merge. Human society has degenerated into a state of war of all

against all.

Now a rich and powerful individual, for whom violence and war are as

pernicious as they are for the weak members of society, makes the people an

offer they cannot refuse. He proposes that they all unite, enter into a ‘‘social

contract’’ and form a polity. The people would be assured order, security,

peace, and justice in exchange for their freedom. The rich man too desires

law and order, so that he may enjoy his possessions in tranquillity, un-

threatened by social unrest. Thus the weak assent to inequality and acquire

chains as the rich consolidate and institutionalize their power. Economic

expropriation has expanded to encompass political expropriation. The basis

of this social contract is deception and exploitation. Might makes right.

People are fully enslaved—by their promise of obedience to their ruler, by

their own ambition and vanity, their inauthentic desires for luxury as well as

their need for the admiration of others.

8 Susan Dunn

Finally, in a rapidly sketched nightmarish vision of the accelerated col-

lapse of society into chaos, Rousseau envisaged political intrigue, factions,

and civil strife leading to the complete disintegration of legitimate govern-

ment. Chosen leaders become hereditary leaders. The social fabric disinte-

grates, people’s natural pity for the suffering of others is extinguished. The

last degree of inequality has been reached. Now despotism raises its hid-

eous head. The political relationship is no longer merely between the

powerful and the weak but between master and slave. The vertiginous

descent into human degradation and corruption is complete.

Once again, people find themselves solitary and atomized, as they were

in the state of nature. Ironically, they are also once again equal. The differ-

ence, Rousseau noted, is that now they are equal because they are all noth-

ing. The only law is the arbitrary will of the master. Life is now indeed nasty

and brutish. But whereas Hobbes had located such degradation in the ‘‘state

of nature,’’ Rousseau discovers it at the end of human social development.

Rousseau has taken us to the edge of the abyss. The Second Discourse

ends with a sanguinary vision of revolution. ‘‘The insurrection, which ends

in the death or deposition of a sultan,’’ concludes Rousseau, ‘‘is as juridical

an act as any by which the day before he disposed of the lives and fortunes

of his subjects. Force alone upheld him, force alone overturns him.’’ Per-

haps there is hope for radical change—through revolution.!&

But change will be meaningless unless there is a profound rethinking of

the social contract, society, and social relations. Rousseau always believed

in the Enlightenment notion of human perfectibility. Human nature, he

suggested, is malleable; our moral and rational faculties can be nurtured,

educated, and guided so that our full humanity can blossom. Even if society

has made us unequal and unfree, even if it has made us the deluded toys of

our own psychological alienation from ourselves, the victims of our limit-

less desires for superficial pleasures and superfluous knowledge, even if it

has reduced us to the abject slaves of powerful rulers, it is possible to

reconceive and restructure social relations and political institutions on a

radically different basis. Rousseau’s next work, The Social Contract, leads

us away from the catastrophic vision with which he concluded his Second

Discourse and toward a new utopian future.

In a sense, Rousseau’s whole project follows traditional Christian think-

ing. Like Christian theologians, Rousseau sees human development in

terms of three stages: Eden, the Fall, Redemption. For him, the Fall sig-

nifies, not a separation from God or an accusation against human beings,

but rather a ‘‘fall’’ from the benign state of nature into a long, devastating,

and totally negative period of corruption and degradation.!"

Introduction 9

Redemption will occur, not through faith and grace, not through any-

thing supernatural or mystical, but on the contrary through a purely rational

and human prescription for political and social happiness: his revolu-

tionary—and troubling—Social Contract, his attempt to conceive a moral,

consensual polity that assures freedom and equality while nourishing sim-

ple Spartan virtue.

a n e w k i n d o f s o c i a l c o n t r a c t

A startling break with all traditional notions of government and society,

Rousseau’s Social Contract (1762) comprised the final part of his political

triptych. In this work, he presents a radical political vision, yet one that is

perfectly consistent with his attacks on corruption and inequality in his two

Discourses.

The ideal society he proposes in The Social Contract is, more than

anything else, a communitarian society in which the responsibilities and

duties of citizenship outweigh individual rights and freedoms. Selflessly,

citizens bind and commit themselves to the common good of all, willing to

make sacrifices for their political community. Their virtue is richly re-

warded. Through their devotion to their community, their self-discipline,

and patriotism, they thrive as human beings, thus realizing their full rational

and moral potential.

The citizens of this cohesive community have entered into a stunningly

original social pact, different from all previous notions of a social contract.

Other political thinkers, such as Hobbes, had also surmised that at the bases

of societies lay founding contracts. But for these theorists, the social pact

was always an act of submission. Hobbes, for example, contended that in

order to escape from the state of perpetual warfare that existed in the brutish

‘‘state of nature,’’ people entered into a pact, a contract, in which they

signed away their freedom and all their rights to a sovereign who would rule

over them, guaranteeing them life, security, and order. The ruler’s power

over them was absolute.

Rousseau brands these kinds of contracts null and void. Even though the

people may have voluntarily consented to the pact, he considered such

consent invalid.!# If one of the parties to a contract is degraded or harmed in

any way, the contract, he judged, is void. People may give up property, he

reasoned, but they may not consent to give up life or freedom, the essential

elements of their humanity. Consent is not sufficient to create legitimate

authority.

10 Susan Dunn

More crucial than consent is the nature of the contract itself. For a

contract to be valid, all parties must profit equally from its terms. Rous-

seau’s idea of a social contract is therefore not a pact between rulers and

ruled, powerful and weak, masters and slaves. On the contrary, the only

parties to the contract are the people themselves who consent only to rule

over themselves. (The opening words of the American constitutional con-

tract, written twenty-five years after Rousseau’s Social Contract, are ‘‘We

the People,’’ words more Rousseauian in spirit than Jefferson’s mention of

the ‘‘consent of the governed’’ in the Declaration of Independence.)

This kind of pact could hardly be more revolutionary. The only legiti-

mate social contract, according to Rousseau, is one in which the people

themselves are sovereign. Their sovereignty, like their freedom, is unalien-

able, and they may not transfer their sovereignty to anyone else or submit to

the will of any others.!' The originality of Rousseau’s social contract is that

the people bind themselves to a contract but do not subject themselves to

any authority except that of their own collective will—their ‘‘General

Will.’’ Indeed, towering above them, revered by all, looms the strange

concept of the people’s ‘‘General Will.’’

The General Will. This unusual notion is the key to Rousseau’s commu-

nitarian vision. What did he mean by the General Will?

Rousseau held that a democratic society possesses a General Will. This

‘‘will’’ reflects what enlightened people would want if they were able to

make decisions solely as social beings and citizens and not as private indi-

viduals. Individuals may possess private wills that express their particular

interests, but citizens must recognize and concur with the General Will that

mirrors the good of all. The General Will is not tantamount to the will of all

citizens. Nor is it the sum of all individual wills or the expression of a

compromise or consensus among them. Nor is it the equivalent of the will

of the majority, for even the majority can be corrupt or misguided. In other

words, it is a theoretical construct. The General Will is general, not because

a broad number of people subscribe to it but because its object is always the

common good of all.

Thus, hovering strangely above and beyond the wills of all, the General

Will is ‘‘always constant, unalterable, and pure,’’!( always mirroring per-

fectly the common good of all members of the community. The ultimate

authority—and ultimate sovereignty—thus reside not really in the people,

who may err in their estimation of the General Will, unable to transcend

their private wills, but rather in the infallible General Will itself—the

power of Reason, the enlightened collective moral conscience.!)

Introduction 11

True freedom, Rousseau maintains, consists in choosing to obey the

General Will. But how can freedom be equated with obedience?

Rousseau recognized two different types of freedom. The first, enjoyed

by people in the state of nature, denoted their freedom to act as they wished,

in a variety of diverse ways. This was a negative form of freedom, freedom

from constraints. But there is another, higher form of freedom, according to

Rousseau, a positive freedom. This is not freedom from constraint, but

rather freedom for some higher good, for the enjoyment of the good, moral

life.!* This kind of freedom, more heroic and ambitious than negative free-

dom, can belong to the citizen who is able to suppress his private will and

consciously choose the common good over his own desires and personal

benefit. This individual has mastered himself, becoming a moral and hence

a truly free being. The originality of Rousseau’s vision resides in his con-

cept of freedom, not as the province of the autonomous individual but rather

as that of the self-sacrificing citizen.

Indeed, the more that people identify with the community, the ‘‘freer’’

they are. Whereas primitive individuals in the state of nature were thor-

oughly indifferent and unattached to one another, in Rousseau’s utopia,

citizens are unreservedly involved with one another. The solitary indepen-

dence that people may have enjoyed in the state of nature is not something

that Rousseau aspired to recover. On the contrary, he wishes to see it trans-

formed into its opposite—voluntary dependence and interdependence,

happy obedience to the General Will.

We cannot recapture our original autonomy, but we can instead secure a

higher freedom, the freedom to govern ourselves as we collectively wish.%$

Still, the primitive being and the socialized citizen have something in com-

mon, for both are innocent, genuine, unaffected—both are the polar op-

posite of the corrupt, decadent inhabitants of eighteenth-century Enlighten-

ment France.

Rousseau has taken us on a fantastic voyage—from radical indepen-

dence in the state of nature, to abject servitude in society, to complete social

involvement in his utopia. We have journeyed from animal freedom to

moral freedom.%!

Does personal ‘‘happiness’’ fit into Rousseau’s plan? In truth, he does

not promise happiness. People may have been happier, he admits, in their

solitary lives in the state of nature, knowing neither good nor evil, their

existences revolving around the immediate satisfaction of their physical

needs. But Rousseau was convinced that individuals, through their identi-

fication with the community, could attain something higher than private

12 Susan Dunn

happiness: meaningful lives. No longer drowning in infernal rat-races,

competing and striving to impress others, pursuing elusive, inauthentic

goals that never lead to real satisfaction, people by choosing to live as parts

of a whole and to share in the common happiness of all have a chance at real

fulfillment and peace of mind.

Here is Rousseau’s vision of a good society. Citizens are free and equal,

not because they own equal property or possess equal talents, but rather

because they share an equal measure of civic rights and responsibilities. By

renouncing their autonomy and participating in and obeying the General

Will, they assure that they will all be treated fairly and with equal consider-

ation and respect. The political community represents the one and only

channel through which human beings can live and act as fully aware moral

agents, accepting and carrying out the duties assigned to them by their own

human dignity.

Still, Rousseau’s utopian vision is oddly apolitical. He displayed no

interest in political struggles for power; he devoted no time to conceiving

political or parliamentary institutions. Nor was he concerned with eco-

nomic justice, advising only that the rich exercise moderation and that the

poor restrain their envy.%% Rather than reflect on parliamentary rules or an

economic bill of rights, he imagined instead a relatively small community

of citizens, living in ‘‘peace, union, and equality’’ without complex laws.

He rejected the idea of a representative democracy, for representatives

would rob citizens not only of their sovereignty but also of their civic

responsibilities.

Periodically all citizens simply and harmoniously come together to

ratify, not to debate, the General Will and the laws that emanate from it. In

these periodic acts of ‘‘direct democracy,’’ citizens attempt to discover the

General Will. They must deliberate alone and by themselves, never in

concert with others—for any kind of associations would lead them to iden-

tify with the ‘‘partial’’ interests of a faction, not the general interest of all.%&

When citizens vote, their act of voting is conceived, not as a way for them to

express their individual wills or to forge a compromise among opposing

factions, but purely as a mechanism for ‘‘discovering’’ the General Will.

These assemblies, while engaging citizens in a referendum on the Gen-

eral Will, do not engage them in a participatory democracy. These are not

‘‘town-meetings,’’ for citizens neither govern nor make policies. Nor are

citizens free to assemble en masse when they wish; only assemblies con-

voked by the magistrates are lawful and valid.%" Rousseau’s goal was cohe-

sion, harmony, and peace, not self-government.

Politics, Rousseau taught, was a simple affair; the General Will was

Introduction 13

obvious; collective deliberation was not necessary; and decisions required

nothing more than common sense.%# The people obey only their own Gen-

eral Will which never imposes arbitrary or unnecessary obligations on them.

The laws that citizens ratify reflect their collective sense of the General

Will. When they obey their society’s laws, they ‘‘obey no one, but simply

their own will.’’%' While people must agree unanimously to the original

social contract, all other legislative decisions are made by a simple major-

ity.%( Though these laws are supposed to affect all subjects collectively,

Rousseau, in a strange and disappointing retreat, oddly contradicts himself

by opening up the possibility that certain citizens may be denied rights or

privileges that are accorded to others.%) The law, Rousseau allows, ‘‘may

indeed decree that there shall be privileges, but cannot confer them on any

person by name.’’%*

The people possess the body of laws handed down to them by their

Founder, Rousseau’s mythical ‘‘Legislator,’’ a clairvoyant wise man who,

like Lycurgus in Sparta, Numa in Rome, and Moses for the Jewish nation,

has formulated laws tailored to his particular people, laws that give a

‘‘soul’’ to the nation and that conciliate pure justice and the particular

circumstances of the polity. After having established the legal code, which

is endowed with ‘‘divine authority’’ and the ‘‘prestige of the gods,’’ the

Legislator can withdraw, his task accomplished.&$ A small group of men, or

still better, one man, a monarch, constitutes the people’s ‘‘executive,’’ exist-

ing only as the servant of the people’s will, but nevertheless constituting the

polity’s active government.

Rousseau has conceived a radically original society, geared not to indi-

viduals obsessed with maximizing their own private interests,&! but instead

to citizens who possess a strong moral sense of their responsibilities and

duties toward one another and toward the community. The polity fosters

their equality and enhances their freedom to lead meaningful lives and

realize their most profound human aspirations. The blossoming of their

humanity is inseparable from their citizenship and their conformity to the

State’s prescription for the ‘‘good life.’’ Rousseau has restored to us, one

scholar wrote, the ‘‘fundamental sweetness of life.’’&%

d e m o c r a c y w i t h o u t p l u r a l i s m

Do you hear the piercing wail of sirens, warning of danger?

The General Will—arbitrary, coercive, and ultimately illusory—has

come to dominate all of society and its laws. Every citizen must submit to

its infallible, unlimited authority. What king ever ruled so absolutely?

14 Susan Dunn

It must now be clear that Rousseau has conceived a utopian, ethical,

democratic polity that includes no channels for the expression of dissent or

opposition. Having defined the General Will as infallible and sovereign,

Rousseau could not logically imagine any legitimate opposition to it. Politi-

cal ‘‘freedom’’ in such a solidary, unified society requires submission and

obedience to the General Will.

And yet, at the dawn of the twenty-first century, we know that the

determining features of democracy are the legitimacy of opposition and

political parties. How can there be political freedom without the right to

oppose those who govern?&&

But in Rousseau’s utopia, those who disagree with the General Will are

simply in error, expressing selfish, ‘‘particular’’ interests that perversely

thwart the common good of all. Even the majority of citizens can be in

error, for Rousseau explicitly wrote that often there can be a great differ-

ence between the will of all and the General Will&" (though, wanting it both

ways, he also stated that ‘‘all the characteristics of the General Will’’ are

found in the will of the plurality).&# In any case, there can be no role for

minority opinion. Neither dissenting individuals nor groups, political par-

ties, or factions can be tolerated by the cohesive whole. To persist in ques-

tioning or opposing the General Will is to abdicate one’s membership in the

polity, to give up one’s political rights, and ultimately to be executed, ‘‘less

as a citizen than as an enemy.’’&' But before putting ‘‘rebels’’ and ‘‘traitors’’

to death, the sovereign people must attempt to make those who have diffi-

culty recognizing the General Will see the light. ‘‘Whoever refuses to obey

the general will,’’ Rousseau decreed, ‘‘shall be constrained to do so by

the whole body: which means nothing else than that he shall be forced to

be free.’’&(

Forced to be free? These paradoxical words shock us, and rightly so, for

they cast their dark shadow on some of the grimmest periods of the twen-

tieth century. Yet Rousseau’s goal was freedom, community, and morality,

not mass repression. Rousseau would contend that if society constrains

people to be free, socializes them to suppress their animal instincts and

selfish desires, and educates them to choose the General Will over their

private wills, it is in the name of their own human dignity.

Socialization and education or mind-control? The health of the society

and the willingness of citizens to obey the General Will, Rousseau ac-

knowledges, depend on citizens’ belief in a civil religion that binds their

hearts to the State and makes them delight in their civic duties.&)

So essential is this religion to the well-being of the polity that non-

believers must be banished—not because they are impious, Rousseau ex-

Introduction 15

plains, but rather because they are ‘‘unsociable.’’ And if heretics must be put

to death, it is in the name of the sanctity of the law. ‘‘If any one, after publicly

acknowledging these dogmas [of the civil religion],’’ Rousseau wrote, ‘‘be-

haves like an unbeliever in them, he should be punished with death; he has

committed the greatest of crimes, he has lied before the laws.’’&*

Buttressing the civil religion, a ‘‘board of censors’’ guides and molds

people’s judgment and then ‘‘declares’’ the nature of public opinion."$

Though Rousseau asserts that this censorial tribunal merely preserves mo-

rality by preventing the corruption of public opinion, he admits that this

board will ‘‘fix’’ opinions when they are not yet determined. This seems to

mean that instead of a continuous and open national debate on the common

good, the government would control the equivalent of editorial and op-ed

pages and shape public attitudes. One of Rousseau’s critics contends that

the ‘‘Censorship’’ would inevitably come to supervise not only the press but

also art, theater, and all other means of communication."!

Individual wills shattered by the power of the General Will. Self-interest

supplanted by sacrifice and sharing. Conflict and opposition banned in the

name of unity and consensus. Public opinion shaped by a censorial Big

Brother. Rousseau’s ideal political community, through the sheer force of

its coercive and unitary communitarian spirit, comes to dominate every

aspect of human life—intellectual life, social life, moral life. This is the

very definition of modern totalitarianism—as well as of the militaristic

Spartan society that Rousseau first lauded in his Discourse on the Sciences

and Arts, a society in which man’s entire being is absorbed by his role as

citizen."%

Ironically though not surprisingly, Rousseau admitted toward the end of

his life that he himself would never have chosen or been able to be part of

such a solidary community. ‘‘I was never really suited to civil society, with

all its burdens, obligations and duties,’’ he confessed. His ‘‘independent

nature’’ refused the submissions and compromises necessary in communal

life. ‘‘As soon as I sense a yoke, . . . I become rebellious . . . . When I am

supposed to do the opposite of what I want to do, I refuse to do it, no matter

what happens.’’"&

What then motivated Rousseau to conceive a society in which dissent

and conflict are outlawed and submission to the General Will the only

legitimate form of political behavior? Why was the notion of a dynamic,

competitive political arena, one that tolerates conflict and rewards self-

confident individuals and vociferous interest groups, alien to his imagina-

tion? Was it his own anti-social personality and need for solitude, his fear

16 Susan Dunn

that others were always trying to injure him, his long pattern of living under

the paternalistic or maternalistic protection of wealthy patrons?

In Rousseau’s ideal society, every person, he wrote, is ‘‘perfectly inde-

pendent of all the rest, and in absolute dependence on the State.’’"" This, in

fact, corresponds perfectly to the penetrating definition of ‘‘democratic

despotism’’ that the great political sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville offered

in 1856. Tocqueville described a society in which isolated, atomized indi-

viduals—though equal—are barred from group action and cooperation as

well as from meaningful political participation on a variety of levels—

local, county, state, national—spread throughout society. Instead of par-

ticipating in self-government and receiving this kind of hands-on education

in citizenship, they are ruled over by a central government, the sole locus of

political power."# But for his part, Rousseau was more disposed to the

notion of obedience to the General Will than to the notion of a participatory

government; he was more comfortable with the idea of the atomization of

citizens than with the idea of citizens joining and working together to make

demands and claims upon the state.

Did Rousseau articulate the principles of a revolutionary democratic,

moral community, tapping deep human yearnings for belonging, solidarity,

and sharing? Or did he unwittingly create the enduring blueprint for horrific

totalitarian regimes that repress their people in the name of ‘‘one-party

democracy’’? Does his Social Contract offer redemption and salvation after

the Fall—or a disguised inferno?

Is his legacy the kibbutz or the Gulag?

r o u s s e a u i n t h e a g e o f r e v o l u t i o n

Rousseau admired Niccolò Machiavelli. He called the early sixteenth-

century political theorist a ‘‘profound politician’’ and lover of liberty."'

Machiavelli would not have returned the compliment.

Machiavelli’s most gleaming political insight was that a republic is

energized by conflict: without conflict there are no politics and no freedom.

Tumult, he wrote in 1513, was ‘‘the guardian of Roman liberties’’ and

‘‘deserved the highest praise.’’ When tumult is absent, when everyone in a

state is tranquil, he noted, ‘‘we can be sure that it is not a republic.’’ The

Florentine perceived that conflict is the foundation of freedom and politics.

When the Roman people demonstrated and clamored for their rights, he

remarked, their demands, far from being harmful, eventually produced ‘‘all

laws favorable to liberty.’’ Machiavelli understood that the very nature of

Introduction 17

politics is conflictual and that only tolerance for opposition and conflict can

guarantee the survival of political freedom."(

Nearly three hundred years later, James Madison not only revived Ma-

chiavelli’s ideas but acted upon them, making the people’s right to form

factions and engage in non-violent political conflict the foundation of his

plan for republican government. Thomas Jefferson went even further, es-

tablishing the crucial principle of the legitimacy of opposition by fostering

and exploiting a system of political parties that enabled Americans to orga-

nize and oppose the politicians in power.

The American Revolution had proceeded from stage to stage, accom-

plishing its goals: the war of the 1770s had brought independence. The

Philadelphia Convention of 1787 created stable democratic institutions and

a venerated Constitution, to which the founders added a Bill of Rights in

1791, and the watershed election of 1800 established the precedent of a

defeated incumbent party peacefully turning over power to the opposition.

But while Madison and Jefferson emphasized tumult, factions, and par-

ties, on the other side of the Atlantic the leaders of the French Revolution—

Sieyès, Robespierre, Saint-Just, and others—were mesmerized by Rous-

seau’s dream of harmony and unanimity. Their Revolution that began with

the storming of the Bastille and the idealistic ‘‘Declaration of the Rights of

Man and Citizen’’ plunged into a downward spiral, descending into Terror

and the hideous reign of the guillotine, devouring its adversaries and its

followers as well as its leaders. Finally, ten years later, in a plebiscite in

1799, an exhausted people voted for the Constitution that guaranteed the

autocracy of Napoleon. The vote was 3,011,007 to 1,562. In the nineteenth

century, the word ‘‘republic’’ had become a smear-word; France would not

know republican government until 1871. ‘‘He was a madman, your Rous-

seau,’’ commented Napoleon. ‘‘It was he who led us into our present

predicament.’’")

t h e f r e n c h r e v o l u t i o n

When Rousseau’s remains were installed in the Pantheon in Paris in 1794,

Joseph Lakanal, who had been one of the members of the revolutionary leg-

islative Convention, remarked, ‘‘It is not the Social Contract that brought

about the Revolution. Rather, it is the Revolution that explained to us the

Social Contract.’’"*

Indeed, revolutionaries in France had not always heeded Rousseau’s

advice as they designed their blueprint for the new institutions of France.

18 Susan Dunn

They created, for example, a representative democracy—not the ‘‘direct

democracy’’ that Rousseau had advocated. But if the Revolution’s institu-

tions were not inspired by his work, if they were, on the contrary, influenced

in some respects more by centuries of monarchical absolutism, the Revolu-

tion’s spirit certainly belonged to Rousseau.#$ Or, as one scholar recently

observed, Rousseau may not have ‘‘caused’’ the French Revolution, but ‘‘he

provided the terms in which the logic of events could be interpreted.’’#!

A harmonious, communitarian society à la Rousseau would be the Rev-

olution’s antidote to centuries of injustice and class stratification. Just as

Rousseau saw his utopian society as a form of redemption after the degra-

dation of the fall, the leaders of 1789 similarly believed, as the historian

François Furet notes, that a unitary, unanimous polity, committed to the

General Will, would ‘‘regenerate’’ humanity after the degradation of the

ancien régime.#%

On the eve of the French Revolution, one of Rousseau’s most influential

disciples, Emmanuel Sieyès, authored the incendiary political pamphlet,

‘‘What Is the Third Estate?’’#& During that winter of 1788–1789, as France

stood at the brink of financial collapse, King Louis XVI decided to convene

the Estates General, hoping that they could resolve the crisis. Following the

centuries-old formula, representatives of the three orders— the nobility, the

clergy, and the Third Estate—would meet, each order deliberating sepa-

rately. The nobility and the clergy together consisted of about 200,000

members; the Third Estate, that is, the rest of the population, 25 million.

Even before the meeting took place, spokesmen for the Third Estate were

objecting to this antiquated structure and demanding that the Third Estate

be accorded representation equal to the two other orders combined.

But in his pamphlet Sieyès went even further, making a far more radical

demand. Bitterly denouncing the entire anachronistic institution of the Es-

tates General, he declared that there should be a single National Assembly

comprised solely of representatives of the Third Estate. The nation and the

Third Estate, he argued, were one and the same.#"

‘‘What is the Third Estate?’’ Sieyès demanded in his lapidary style.

‘‘Everything. What has it been in the political order up to now? Nothing.

What is it asking for? To become something.’’ Instantaneously Sieyès ex-

cluded the two privileged orders from membership in the nation. Without

them, France would be more, not less. Separate, privileged orders were like

malignant fluids attacking a sick body and had to be ‘‘neutralized.’’##

‘‘There cannot be one will as long as we permit three orders,’’ he patiently

explained, as if echoing Rousseau. ‘‘At best, the three orders might agree.

Introduction 19

But they will never constitute one nation, one representation and one com-

mon will.’’#'

When the Estates General convened in the spring of 1789, Sieyès au-

daciously proposed that the Third Estate declare itself the National Assem-

bly. His profoundly revolutionary motion passed by an overwhelming ma-

jority. The ‘‘Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen,’’ composed in

August 1789, decreed that the nation—the Third Estate—was sovereign.

Just eight months after the publication of his ideas, Sieyès’s theoretical

blueprint for France had become the new reality.

The key to Sieyès’s vision of a new France—and the concept that

shaped the Revolution’s politics and became its mantra—was unity. The

salvation of France and the success of the Revolution appeared to hinge on

the unanimity and indivisibility of the nation. Sieyès conceived the Third

Estate not as a diverse population of heterogeneous individuals each acting

in his own self-interest, but rather as a homogeneous mass. Following

Rousseau, he envisioned members of the nation not only as equal but also as

like-minded, sharing the same opinions, ideals, and revolutionary goals.

Individuals might differ from one another in their private lives, Sieyès

allowed, but those differences occur ‘‘beyond the sphere of citizenship.’’#(

Citizens’ rights and freedoms derived from their status as equal and concur-

ring members of society, from their submission to the General Will. Any

individual who ‘‘exits from the common quality of citizen’’ cannot ‘‘partici-

pate in political rights.’’#)

For Sieyès, as for Rousseau before him, there could be no legitimate role

for dissenting individuals or minority factions to play in self-government.#*

Sieyès contended that all citizens, by virtue of having accepted and entered

into their society’s social contract, agree to be bound by the will of the

majority. A citizen is obliged to ‘‘view the common will as his own.’’

Should he refuse to yield to the majority, his only alternative is to leave the

polity. Thus the sole solution envisaged by Sieyès to the problem of possi-

ble political conflict between an individual and the group was expatriation.

Similarly, a minority faction has no right to oppose the majority, since the

majority could be assumed to speak for the General Will.'$

Freedom meant the Rousseauian ‘‘freedom’’ to obey the General Will,

not the freedom to pursue one’s own private interests and happiness. ‘‘Ev-

eryone must forget his own interest and pride,’’ instructed the twenty-six

year old Louis-Antoine de Saint-Just, the Revolution’s most radical ide-

ologue. ‘‘Private happiness and interest are a violence against the social

order. . . . Your interest demands that you forget your interest; the only

salvation is through the public good.’’'!

20 Susan Dunn

Factions and parties were anathema. What justification could there be

for bodies that represent ‘‘partial’’ and private interests in a nation of equal

and self-sacrificing citizens, all committed to the ‘‘common good’’? Danton

expressed the party line: ‘‘You must absorb this truth: factions cannot exist

in a republic.’’'% Making no attempt to disguise the Jacobins’ refusal to

tolerate opposition, Saint-Just proclaimed in February 1794 that ‘‘what

constitutes a republic is the total destruction of everything that stands in

opposition to it.’’'&

And yet the radical Jacobins, who would ultimately control the Revolu-

tion and govern France during the reign of Terror, were themselves a dis-

tinct minority. They prevailed in their quest to dominate the Convention by

successfully presenting their radical party ideology as the General Will.

The people, the Jacobins announced, wanted what the Jacobins wanted, and

the Jacobins knew and expressed the General Will, capitalizing on this most

falsifiable of concepts. Their strategy was to denounce and remove duly

elected representatives for nothing more than their minority views and to

eliminate all dissent in the name of unanimity and unity.

But unity divides. Unity excludes. Unity polarizes. The corollary of the

nation’s unity is the elimination of any individuals or groups that disrupt

that unity. People who do not concur with the nation’s interests and goals,

who persist in voicing their own private interests, who threaten the nation’s

unanimity are considered enemies to be banished or punished. Thus, the

Rousseauian yearning for cohesion, solidarity, and oneness imposes the

psychology of the purge.'"

Indeed, during the Terror of 1793–1794, the revolutionary Convention

in France would mandate the death penalty for any attempt to threaten the

unity of the Republic. A revolutionary Tribunal was established in March

1793 to ferret out domestic enemies, all the ‘‘traitors’’ and ‘‘conspirators’’

who threatened the nation’s unity. Just as Rousseau had recommended, if

citizens could not be ‘‘forced to be free,’’ those who persisted in betraying

the civil religion of harmony and sociability could be put to death.

Of course, unity never reigned in France. During the tumultuous years of

the French Revolution, the mesmerizing cult of unity was a veil behind

which seethed dissension and discord. Politicians, journalists, philosophers,

and economists disagreed on all the major issues of the day, as rational

people in any country would.

Numerous factions—monarchiens, Brissotins, Feuillantistes, Montag-

nards, Girondins, Jacobins, sansculottes, chouans, enragés, Dantonistes,

Hébertistes, Robespierristes, Thermidoreans—dotted the political land-

scape, not only making the study of the French Revolution extremely com-

Introduction 21

plicated but also making the simple schism in America between Federalists

and Republicans seem, in comparison, downright unimaginative. But so

enchanted were the French with the rhetoric of unity and so cynical were

political leaders who used the Rousseauian myth of unity to isolate and

defeat their adversaries and consolidate their own power, that even when

people disagreed passionately with one another, they continued to condemn

factions and parties as well as the very idea of organized opposition. Even

when it was apparent that nothing existed but dissension and conflict, revo-

lutionary leaders in France were self-destructively blind and intellectually

opposed to the idea of an inclusive polity in which a variety of political

visions could be tolerated.

Ironically, the revolutionary cult of unity that rejected dissent, factions,

and non-violent political conflict led the French Revolution to the most

extreme form of conflict: violence and murder. And this catastrophic failure

of democracy can be traced directly to Rousseau’s dream of harmony and

consensus, to his vision of a fraternal people bound together in political

unity, all happily acknowledging and obeying the truth of the sovereign,

infallible General Will, and to his exclusion of dissent and opposition. ‘‘The

contradiction inherent in the abstract attempt to constrain modern man to

subordinate everything to the public good,’’ judges the historian Furet cate-

gorically, ‘‘led to the Terror.’’'#

Before it all began, in 1778, Maximilien Robespierre, who would be-

come the mastermind of the Terror, met the legendary philosopher Jean-

Jacques Rousseau. ‘‘I saw you in your last days,’’ he recalled, ‘‘and this

memory is a source of proud joy for me.’’ According to Robespierre, Rous-

seau commented that he had prepared the field and sowed the seeds for the

immense change that was about to take place in France, but, like Moses, he

would not live to see the promised land. The young lawyer pledged to his

master that he would be ‘‘constantly faithful to the inspiration’’ that he had

drawn from Rousseau’s writings.''

Decades later, Alexis de Tocqueville, shortly before his death, was

working on a sequel to his study of the French Revolution, The Old Regime

and the Revolution. In his notes he prophetically discussed the violence that

can be produced by abstract ideas such as the General Will. The leaders of

the French Revolution, Tocqueville contended, formed a new international

‘‘turbulent and destructive race, always ready to strike down and incapable

of setting up, that stipulates that there are no individual rights, indeed that

there are no individuals, but only a mass which may stop at nothing to attain

its ends.’’ Their revolutionary religion was ‘‘one of the most singular, the

most active and the most contagious diseases of the human mind.’’'(

22 Susan Dunn

t h e m a d i s o n i a n v i s i o n

Just twenty-five years after Rousseau wrote his Social Contract—and two

years before revolutionary leaders in France decided on their plan for

the new government of France—James Madison composed Federalist No.

10. His brilliant political formula for constitutional government turns Rous-

seau’s vision of a political community upside down.')

Underlying Madison’s political thought is his modest, commonsensical

conviction that citizens are all individuals and that as individuals, they are

all different. People simply will never agree unanimously on anything. A

vast variety of ‘‘unavoidable’’ factors—wealth and property, social class,

religion, geography, political ideas, etc.—would always divide people into

different interest groups and factions. Indeed, the principle of diversity

seemed embedded in human nature, that is, in human rationality. Madison

argued that rational people view issues in different ways because reason is

essentially imperfect. ‘‘As long as the reason of man continues fallible,’’ he

maintained, ‘‘and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will

be formed.’’'*

Could differences and factions be removed from society, Madison asked.

Could conflict be eliminated so that the kind of consensus Rousseau had

emphasized could be achieved? Well, unity and unanimity could certainly

be achieved by summarily outlawing factions, Madison allowed, but such

an option was completely unsatisfactory and unacceptable, because its cost

would be freedom itself, that is, people’s freedom to act without constraint

and express their own interests. People would be forced to sacrifice the very

liberty that was ‘‘essential to political life.’’ Thus the remedy would be

worse than the disease. ‘‘Liberty is to faction,’’ Madison wrote in a superb

simile, ‘‘what air is to fire. . . . But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty,

which is essential to political life, because it nourishes faction, than it would

be to wish the annihilation of air.’’

Was there any other way to achieve unity? No. The dream of unity, he

noted with disdain, was a theoretical fantasy. In the ‘‘civilized commu-

nities’’ of real life, no such ‘‘perfect homogeneousness of interests, opin-

ions & feelings’’ would ever be found.($ Whereas Rousseau was convinced

that human beings could be guided and enlightened if not forced to prefer

the common good to their own private interests, Madison believed that self-

interest would always dominate human affairs. Significantly, he had already

criticized in 1787 the leap that Sieyès—following Rousseau—made in

1789, that is, the leap from the idea of citizens’ equality before the law to

the idea of citizens’ similarity in everything else. ‘‘Theoretic politicians,’’

Introduction 23

he wrote in Federalist No. 10, ‘‘have erroneously supposed that by reducing

mankind to a perfect equality in their political rights, they would at the same

time be perfectly equalized and assimilated in their possessions, their opin-

ions, and their passions.’’(! And he was thoroughly uninterested in ‘‘re-

generating’’ human beings to suit utopian political blueprints. ‘‘What is

government itself,’’ he wrote, ‘‘but the greatest of all reflections on human

nature. If men were angels, no government would be necessary.’’(%

Did Madison believe in such a thing as the public or common good?

Though he does refer in passing to ‘‘the permanent and aggregate interests

of the community,’’(& he nevertheless does not posit the existence of a single

common good or General Will in society (that is, other than ‘‘life, liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness’’). Although Alexander Hamilton always

stressed his belief in the existence of ‘‘the public interest’’ and has even

been called the ‘‘Rousseau of the Right’’(" by some American historians,

Madison’s concept of government recognizes the multiple interests and

wills of diverse citizens and factions, all competing for influence and

power.

Indeed, the Virginian explicitly rejected the idea that there could be a

‘‘neutral’’ agency in government that voiced the public good. Madison was

convinced that every participant in government represented some interest

or faction. ‘‘What are the different classes of legislators,’’ he asked, ‘‘but

advocates and parties to the causes which they determine?’’(# He confessed

that it would be highly desirable to have some kind of ‘‘dispassionate

umpire in disputes between different passions & interests in the State,’’ but

he knew that hopes for such a neutral referee were vain.(' ‘‘Enlightened

statesmen,’’ who subordinate clashing interests to the public good, could

not be expected to ‘‘be at the helm.’’(( Factions did not exist in opposition to

government: they constitute government. Conflict among different factions

was not merely tolerated by government: conflict was government.

Madison’s vision of the ‘‘good society’’ could hardly have been more

different from Rousseau’s. In contrast to Rousseau’s vision of a harmonious

community, Madison sought to balance conflicting private interest groups,

all feverishly pursuing a host of competing notions of the private and

public good.

Ultimately, Madison counted on factions to perform a task of paramount

importance: resistance to any concentration of power. More than anything

else Madison feared the power of an ‘‘overbearing’’ majority. Therefore, the

more diverse the society, the more it was broken down into ‘‘so many parts,

interests and classes,’’ the more likely it would be that any majority would

become broad and hence moderate in its goals. And the less likely it would

24 Susan Dunn

be that the rights of individuals would be threatened by ‘‘the combinations

of the majority.’’()

This notion of division also underlay Madison’s plan for checks and

balances. The government would be divided against itself, institutionally

split ‘‘between different bodies of men, who might watch and check each

other.’’(* Madison purposefully designed the government so that people and

interest groups would collide rather than concur. Adding to institutional

division and collision, moreover, were the ideological divisions of the polit-

ical parties—Federalists and Republicans—that crystallized in the 1790s.

Henceforth two rival parties would compete for power and alternately gov-

ern, strengthening the young nation by according legitimacy to opposition.

If there was ‘‘oneness’’ in America, it was the fundamental constitu-

tional consensus: a commitment to a government dedicated to the values of

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness and, as for everything else, an

agreement to disagree.

But in France, Rousseau’s revolutionary disciples were insisting that the

republic be ‘‘one and indivisible,’’ that it possess one roaring voice and one

indomitable will. Although in retrospect one can imagine that revolution-

aries in France, scarred if not traumatized by centuries of monarchical

absolutism, might also have sought to divide and fragment power, in fact

the opposite was the case. The French were demanding, above all, change,

impact, action—they clamored for energetic, majoritarian government,

not the stability, inertia, or deadlock that results from the fragmentation

of power.

Is there a political model that can wed the potent, populist leadership and

majoritarian government that French revolutionaries craved with an adver-

sarial two-party system, while also protecting individual rights and avoid-

ing governmental gridlock?

Yes. The wedding has already taken place. In Great Britain.

m a j o r i t y r u l e w i t h o u t c h e c k s a n d b a l a n c e s

‘‘Whether we speak of differences in opinion or differences in interest,’’

remarked Daniel Defoe, the author of Robinson Crusoe, in 1701, ‘‘we must

own we are the most divided, quarrelsome nation under the sun.’’)$ Great

Britain’s affinity for political quarrels has produced the longest-lasting and

arguably most vital democracy on the planet.)!

While Rousseau was theorizing about political unity and harmony, the

British were engaged in developing a theory of political parties. Edmund

Introduction 25

Burke, a leader of the opposition Whig party, found it inconceivable that

representative government could exist without political parties. Why, he

wondered in 1770, would like-minded politicians, who want to see their

ideas and principles translated into practice, not associate and cooperate

with one another? The thought that men would choose not to act in concert

with others struck Burke as ‘‘utterly incomprehensible.’’ ‘‘Of what sort

of materials must that man be made,’’ he mused in disbelief, ‘‘who can

sit whole years in Parliament, with five hundred and fifty of his fellow-

citizens, . . . in the agitation of such mighty questions . . . without seeing any

one sort of men, whose character, conduct, or disposition, would lead him

to associate himself with them?’’)%

The dominant features of the modern British model of parliamentary

democracy are, as Burke had advocated, two distinct, competitive parties

that alternate in power, a strong elected executive, and—as far as the ex-

ecutive and legislature are concerned—no marked constitutional separa-

tion of powers. After a political party in Great Britain wins a national

election, the party leader becomes the country’s Prime Minister. There are

no formal limits to the power of the Prime Minister’s government, as long

as it retains its parliamentary majority. The party is free to enact all of its

policies and programs, thus assuring clear majoritarian rule.

Still, the losing party does not disappear from the scene, for the opposi-

tion constitutes an integral, essential part of the constitutional system. ‘‘Her

Majesty’s Opposition’’ has the duty to criticize the party in power and is as

much a part of the polity as the administration itself. Its prime responsibility

is not to fell the government in power but rather to offer an alternative

government and to present positive—not just oppositional—policies. In

addition to these responsibilities, the opposition has rights too—for exam-

ple, it selects topics of parliamentary debate. A forceful and effective op-

position constantly reminds leaders and citizens of a clear alternative to the

majority government’s policies, yet the majority may continue to enact its

policies unimpeded.)& Together ‘‘Her Majesty’s Government’’ and ‘‘Her

Majesty’s Opposition’’ make up the two halves of the constitutional system.

Paradoxically, adversarial party politics requires consensus— some-

times a high level of consensus, sometimes a minimal level. First of all,

there must exist a fundamental consensus in the nation as to the constitu-

tional system itself as well as to citizens’ rights and freedoms. Second,

though the system depends on ideological conflict, there must not be too

much conflict—or too little. If criticism of government is too severe, if the

different parties are too polarized, and if conflict is so intense as to eliminate

the ‘‘mediating center,’’ the social fabric of the society may suffer.)" Still,

26 Susan Dunn

too little conflict means that the government is immune from healthy crit-

icism and that significant alternative policies are not being offered. A deli-

cate balancing act is required to produce, in the words of political scientist

Robert Dahl, ‘‘a society where dissent is low enough to encourage a rela-

tively calm and objective appraisal of alternatives, and yet sufficient to

make sure that radical alternatives will not be ignored or suppressed.’’)#

For the past two centuries, British and American democracies have

accepted the principle of conflict and learned to exploit it. They have inte-

grated conflict into their institutions; they have normalized it and ritualized

it and thus tamed it; and they have created rules and procedures for defang-

ing and resolving it. And not only have both political systems thrived on

conflict, they have also been remarkably able to weather a variety of other

storms—from horrific world wars to violent social upheaval.

Indeed, the United States and England (and her Canadian and Australian

offspring) are virtually alone among nations in having been able to with-

stand all the catastrophes of the twentieth century—two world wars, fas-

cism, Stalinism, a devastating economic depression. Those governments

remained stable and intact throughout the century, persevering in their care-

ful, orderly ways while the rest of the world reeled. Is that resilience due—

at least in part—to their ability to tolerate, defang, and absorb conflict?

c o n f l i c t a n d c o m m u n i t y

Yet, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, some American sociolo-

gists, political scientists, and philosophers, troubled by a society they see as

ever more fractured and disunited, voice a longing for a greater sense of

social cohesion. Not content with a rational commitment to pluralism and

diversity, feeling an emotional yearning for solidarity and belonging, they

accuse James Madison of having effectively thwarted the dream of oneness.

They feel that Madison’s undeviating emphasis on factions, conflict, and

individual rights forever undermines a sense of national community. One

historian describes Madison’s view of society as an ‘‘agglomeration of

hostile individuals coming together for their mutual benefit.’’)'

But are conflict and community really irreconcilable? This question is

a crucial one. For if the American (and British) models of government

do indeed preclude the possibility of community, then it would be under-

standable that revolutionary leaders in France dismissed the American ex-

perience and attempted to follow Rousseau’s formula for fraternity and

community.

Introduction 27

In defense of Madisonian government, one can argue, first of all, that

there exists in America an unusually rich, diversified, and inclusive politi-

cal community. Especially since the vote was extended to non-property

holders, to African-Americans, and to women, the political arena has been

able to encompass new interest groups and accommodate a vast number of

voluntary associations, assuring most citizens and most emerging groups

membership and representation in the national community.)(

Second, in the 1950s, the brilliant political theorist Louis Hartz argued

that in America there indeed exists ‘‘a peculiar sense of community,’’))

something more than atomized and self-interested individuals. What holds

people together, Hartz maintained, is not the sense that they were different

parts of a corporate whole, but rather ‘‘the knowledge that they were similar

participants in a uniform way of life.’’ At the core of American society

stands a glacier resting on ‘‘miles of submerged conviction.’’ This shared

conviction is the American creed of individualism and freedom—so pow-

erful and self-evident that people do not even realize that they are con-

forming to an ideology at all. This powerful ‘‘common standard,’’ Hartz

believed, produces a very real kind of social cohesion among citizens com-

mitted to the same common good: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

That fundamental democratic consensus, in England and America, is the

glue that binds people together.

When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States in 1831, he en-

countered an active, kinetic society. Coming from lethargic Restoration

France, he was astonished by the frenetic activity taking place at all levels

of society. ‘‘As soon as you step onto American soil,’’ he wrote, ‘‘you find

yourself in the middle of a kind of tumult.’’ Wherever he looked, people

were attending meetings! One group was debating whether to build a new

church; another wondering whom to elect as representative; still another

considering what kinds of improvements to make in their township.)* In-

volvement in the nation’s public life had become people’s entertainment

and pleasure. Meetings seemed to have taken the place of theater!

When citizens join with others to promote their private interests,

Tocqueville noted, they discover that their own interests are inseparable

from those of other citizens. Through their involvement in civic associa-

tions, self-government, and the jury system, these Americans rise above

their own narrow self-interest and identify more deeply with the commu-

nity. Tocqueville termed this ‘‘self-interest rightly understood’’ or enlight-

ened self-interest.

Though such people would be puzzled if one congratulated them on

28 Susan Dunn

their commitment to a life of ‘‘virtue,’’ they nevertheless find fulfillment

in helping others and in making sacrifices of their time and wealth for

the community. These Americans, Tocqueville observed, tolerate no con-

straints on their self-interest or their autonomy and would dismiss any lofty

moral interpretations of their conduct, yet they seemed to have mastered

themselves, to have chosen to lead disciplined, moderate, and consider-

ate lives.

Virtue, if not their calling or their goal, nevertheless colors the habits of

their everyday lives. Few Americans, Tocqueville noted, will attain the

heady sphere of absolute virtue, but the vast majority of citizens will have

made reasonable progress in living decent lives. The key to the vital demo-

cratic and moral community they have created? Not a commitment to obey

the General Will. But rather a commitment to exercise freedom and partici-

pate in self-government and act out of an expansive, enlightened notion of

self-interest.

As if nodding simultaneously to both Madison and Rousseau, Tocque-

ville suggested a modern marriage of self-interest and devotion to the com-

mon good, a synthesis of individual freedom and community, an awareness

of self as well as a moral and spiritual desire to transcend the self.

Madisonian individualism or Rousseauian community? Maximization

of self-interest or sacrifice for the common good? Political conflict or a

quest for consensus? Rights conceived as protection for individuals and

minorities or rights conceived for the community as a whole? Education as

individual self-enhancement or education as the inculcation of civic re-

sponsibility and public spirit? These are not just abstract choices—on the

contrary, they color our everyday lives as well as the front pages of our

newspapers.

When we decry ‘‘politics as usual’’ and wish that Democrats and Re-

publicans would sit down and work out their differences and act only for the

‘‘common good’’ of the country, we are echoing Rousseau; and like him, we

believe that we are uttering noble, selfless, ‘‘holistic’’ ideas. When we wish

that politics was based not on the struggle among competing interest groups

but rather on a shared moral vision of all citizens’ interdependence, or when

we assert that the rights of the community should precede the rights of a few

‘‘selfish’’ individuals, we are voicing themes that Rousseau articulated

more profoundly than any other thinker.

At key moments in American history, the mantra of ‘‘rugged individual-

ism’’ and free competition was interrupted by powerful, welcome re-

minders of Rousseau’s moral, communitarian vision. When the reform-

Introduction 29

minded President Theodore Roosevelt settled the great anthracite coal

strike in 1902, announcing that the interests of both the coal operators and

the workers must be ‘‘subordinated to the fundamental permanent interests

of the whole community,’’*$ and a few years later, when, advocating a

steeply graduated tax on estates, he declared, ‘‘If ever our people become so

sordid as to feel that all that counts is moneyed prosperity, ignoble well-

being, effortless ease and comfort, then this nation shall perish, as it will

deserve to perish, from the earth,’’*! he was enunciating key Rousseauian

themes. And when John F. Kennedy electrified a generation by declaring in

his inaugural address in 1961, ‘‘Ask not what your country can do for you,

ask what you can do for your country,’’ Rousseau was speaking to us

again— with a Boston accent.

Though some of Rousseau’s ideas—about the General Will, unanimity,

and dissent—have proven disruptive and counterproductive in established

democracies and disastrous in developing democracies, his other ideas—

his concept of positive freedom, ‘‘freedom for,’’ and his notion of a commu-

nity dedicated to the common good of all—still inspire and galvanize peo-

ple who seek a deeper, richer, shared communal life in which self-interest is

exchanged for interdependence and in which full participation permits an

ethical life as well as personal happiness.*%

As we continue our ongoing experiments in democracy, Rousseau’s

writings, along with those of Niccolò Machiavelli, James Madison, Thomas

Jefferson, Edmund Burke, Alexis de Tocqueville, and others, inspire, puz-

zle, and energize us, nourishing our imaginations, sharpening our critical

faculties, helping to strengthen our commitment to self-government, plural-

ism, community, and freedom.

n o t e s

1. See Rousseau’s last footnote in his Discourse on the Sciences and

Arts. I wish to thank James MacGregor Burns, Francis C. Oakley, and

Richard Miller for reviewing this essay and generously giving me their

constructive suggestions.

2. See Jean Guéhenno, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. John and Doreen

Weightman, 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 1:128ff.

3. On the subject of glittering high culture, Thomas Jefferson might

have agreed with Rousseau. ‘‘I view great cities as pestilential to the mor-

als, the health and the liberties of man,’’ Jefferson wrote in 1800. ‘‘True,

they nourish some of the elegant arts, but the useful ones can thrive else-

where, and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue & free-

30 Susan Dunn

dom, would be my choice.’’ Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 23 September

1800, in The Writings of Thomas Jefferson, ed. Paul Leicester Ford (New

York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1896), 7:459.

4. At the end of Rousseau’s Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, he

specifically counsels the marriage of philosophy and political power, advis-

ing kings to welcome into their courts philosophes who might help make

policies that contribute to human happiness.

5. See Leo Strauss, ‘‘On the Intention of Rousseau,’’ in Hobbes and

Rousseau: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Maurice Cranston and

Richard Peters (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1972), 261–265 and

281–282.

6. François Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Maximes, suivies des Réflexions

diverses (Paris: Garnier, 1967), Maxim 629, my translation.

7. Montesquieu, De l’Esprit des lois, Bk. 3, ch. 3 in Oeuvres complètes,

ed. Roger Caillois (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), 2:252, my translation.

8. John Stuart Mill, On Liberty [1859], ed. Currin V. Shields (New York:

Macmillan, 1985), 57.

9. Lord Acton, Letters to Mary Gladstone (New York: Macmillan,

1904), quotation spoken to Herbert Paul, quoted in Henri Peyre, ‘‘The

Influence of Eighteenth-Century Ideas on the French Revolution,’’ in The

Making of Modern Europe, ed. Herman Ausubel, 2 vols. (New York: Dry-

den Press, 1951), vol. 1.

10. Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, Preface.

11. See Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of the Leisure Class (New York:

Modern Library, 1934).

12. Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, Second Part.

13. Rousseau’s feelings about violent revolution are ambivalent, for he

also writes, in the Dedication to the Discourse on Inequality: ‘‘A people

once accustomed to masters are not able to live without them. If they

attempt at any time to shake off their yoke, they lose still more freedom . . .

they generally become greater slaves to some impostor, who loads them

with fresh chains.’’

14. Paul Bénichou, ‘‘L’idée de nature chez Rousseau,’’ in Pensée de

Rousseau, ed. P. Bénichou, E. Cassirer, et al. (Paris: Seuil, 1984), 128–129.

15. See Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 1, ch. 4.

16. See Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 1, ch. 6.

17. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 4, ch. 1.

18. See The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 1–4.

19. See Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (Oxford: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 1969).

Introduction 31

20. See Bénichou, ‘‘L’Idée de nature chez Rousseau,’’ 133.

21. See Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk 1, ch. 8.

22. The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 11.

23. The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 3. Although ‘‘associations’’ may not

share in the making of the General Will, Rousseau does not totally exclude

them from society, admitting that ‘‘if there are partial associations, it is

necessary to multiply their number and prevent inequality, as Solon, Numa,

and Servius did.’’ See The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 3. Still, political

philosophers such as Edmund Burke, who recognize the inevitability of

ideological conflict and struggles for political power, take a far more posi-

tive view of political parties. Burke, a leader of the opposition Whig party,

found it inconceivable that representative government could exist without

political parties. Why would like-minded politicians, who want to see their

ideas and principles translated into practice, not associate and cooperate

with one another? He was convinced that ‘‘no men could act with effect,

who did not act in concert . . . who were not bound together by com-

mon opinions, common affections and common interests.’’ See Burke,

‘‘Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents’’ in The Writings and

Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke (Boston: Little Brown,

Beaconsfield Edition, 1901), 1:529.

24. The Social Contract, Bk. 3, ch. 13.

25. See Bernard Manin, ‘‘La délibération politique,’’ Le Débat, January

1985, 80.

26. The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 4.

27. The Social Contract, Bk. 4, ch. 2.

28. Charles Eisenmann, ‘‘La Cité de Rousseau,’’ in Bénichou et al., eds.,

La Pensée de Rousseau, 106.

29. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 6.

30. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 7.

31. François Furet, ‘‘Rousseau and the French Revolution,’’ in The

Legacy of Rousseau, ed. Clifford Orwin and Nathan Tarcov (Chicago: Uni-

versity of Chicago Press, 1997), 181.

32. Allan Bloom, ‘‘Rousseau’s Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism,’’

in The Legacy of Rousseau, ed. Orwin and Tarcov, 166.

33. See Robert A. Dahl, ed., ‘‘Preface,’’ Political Oppositions in West-

ern Democracies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966), xviii.

34. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 3.

35. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 4. ch. 2. In 1794, John Adams

attacked Rousseau’s notion of the General Will writing, ‘‘If the majority is

51 and the minority is 49, is it certainly the voice of God? If tomorrow one

32 Susan Dunn

should change to 50 vs. 50, where is the voice of God? If two and the

minority should become the majority, is the voice of God changed?’’ See

Zoltan Hasaszti, John Adams and the Prophets of Progress (Cambridge:

Harvard University Press, 1952), 93.

36. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 5.

37. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 1, ch. 7, emphasis added.

38. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 4, ch. 8.

39. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 4, ch. 8, emphasis added.

40. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 4, ch. 7.

41. Lester Crocker, Introduction, in Rousseau, The Social Contract and

Discourse on Inequality, ed. and trans. Lester Crocker (New York: Wash-

ington Square Press, 1967), xxi.

42. See Judith N. Shklar, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s

Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), 12ff.

43. Rousseau, Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (Paris: Garnier,

1960), 6th Promenade, my translation.

44. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 2, ch. 12.

45. See Alexis de Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, ed.

J.-P. Mayer (Paris: Gallimard, 1952) Book 3, chapter 8, my translation.

46. Rousseau, The Social Contract, Bk. 3, ch. 6, text and note. Also, in

Bk. 3, ch. 9 of The Social Contract, in Rousseau’s second note to that

chapter, he paraphrases Machiavelli, writing that ‘‘a little agitation gives

energy to men’s minds, and what makes the race truly prosperous is not so

much peace as liberty.’’

47. See Niccolò Machiavelli, Discorsi sopra la prima deca di Tito Livio,

ed. Piero Gallardo (Milano: Club del Libro, 1966), Bk. I, ch. 4, 5, 6, my

translation.

48. Quotation of Napoleon, 1800, in Bernard Manin, ‘‘Rousseau,’’ in A

Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution, ed. François Furet and Mona

Ozouf, transl. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press, 1989), 830.

49. François Furet, ‘‘Rousseau and the French Revolution,’’ in The

Legacy of Rousseau, ed. Orwin and Tarcov, 181.

50. Furet, ‘‘Rousseau and the French Revolution,’’ 178.

51. James Swenson, On Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Considered as One of

the First Authors of the Revolution (Stanford: Stanford University Press,

2000), x.

52. Furet, ‘‘Rousseau and the French Revolution,’’ 179.

53. On Sieyès, see Susan Dunn, Sister Revolutions: French Lightning,

American Light (New York: Faber & Faber, 1999), 58ff.

Introduction 33

54. Sieyès, speech of 20–21 July 1789 in Orateurs de la Révolution

française, ed. François Furet and Ran Halévi (Paris: Gallimard, 1989),

1:1015.

55. Emmanuel Sieyès, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, ed. Roberto Zapperi

(Geneva: Droz, 1950), ch. 6, 194; ch. 1, 124; ch. 6, 217–218.

56. Sieyès, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, ed. Zapperi, ch. 6, 198–199, my

translation.

57. Sieyès, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, ed. Zapperi, ch. 6, 208.

58. Sieyès, Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, ed. Zapperi, ch. 6, 211.

59. Sieyès, Vues sur les moyens d’exécution dont les représentans de la

France pourront disposer, quoted in Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, ed. Zap-

peri, 76.

60. See Introduction, in Qu’est-ce que le tiers état?, ed. Zapperi, 75.

61. Saint-Just, Speech of 28 January 1793, in Oeuvres complètes, ed.

Michèle Duval (Paris: Lebovici, 1984), 408.

62. Danton, Speech of 29 October 1792 in H. Morse Stephens, Orators

of the French Revolution, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), 2:180.

63. Saint-Just, Rapport du comité de salut public, 8 ventôse Year II, in

Saint-Just, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Michèle Duval (Paris: Lebovici, 1984),

700.

64. R. R. Palmer, Twelve Who Ruled (Princeton: Princeton University

Press, 1973), 324.

65. Furet, ‘‘Rousseau and the French Revolution,’’ 181.

66. Maximilien de Robespierre, Mémoires, 2 vols. (Paris: Moreau-

Rosier, 1830), 1:166–167 and 209–210. One recent French historian ob-

jects strongly to American critics, such as Jacob Talmon, Lester Crocker,

and Carol Blum, who trace the totalitarian mentality back to Rousseau. He

argues that the subordination of one’s private interests to the General Will is

simply a patriotic mode of behavior. See Jean-Louis Lecercle, ‘‘Jean-

Jacques terroriste,’’ in Rousseau and the Eighteenth Century: Essays in

Memory of R. A. Leigh, ed. Marian Hobson, J. T. A. Leigh, and Robert

Wokler (Oxford: The Voltaire Foundation, 1992), 429.

67. Tocqueville, L’Ancien Régime et la Révolution, Fragments et Notes

inédites sur la Revolution, ed. André Jardin, vol. 2, pt. 2, of Tocqueville,

Oeuvres complètes, ed. J.-P. Mayer (Paris: Gallimard, 1953), 2:255, 337,

228.

68. On Madison and Federalist No. 10, see Susan Dunn, Sister Revolu-

tions: French Lightning, American Light, 55ff.

69. Madison, Federalist No. 10 (New York: Modern Library, n.d.), 55,

emphasis added.

34 Susan Dunn

70. Madison, 1833, draft of a letter on majority governments, in The

Mind of the Founder: Sources of the Political Thought of James Madison,

ed. Marvin Meyers (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1981),

415.

71. Madison, Federalist No. 10, 58–59.

72. Madison, Federalist No. 51, 337.

73. Madison, Federalist No. 10, 54.

74. Cecelia Kenyon, ‘‘Alexander Hamilton: Rousseau of the Right,’’

Political Science Quarterly, June 1958, vol. 72. Although Hamilton be-

lieved in the ‘‘public good,’’ he felt that it would best be defined by the

Federalist ruling elite and not by the people at large. Like Rousseau, Hamil-

ton believed that unity in government and society should prevail. Although

he allowed for differences of opinion in the legislature, ultimately all repre-

sentatives would have to agree. ‘‘When a resolution is once taken, the oppo-

sition must be at an end,’’ he wrote in Federalist 70, adding with a Rous-

seauian flourish, ‘‘that resolution is a law, and resistance to it punishable.’’

75. Madison, Federalist No. 10, 56.

76. Madison, Letter of 16 April 1787, in Robert A. Rutland et al., eds.,

The Papers of James Madison (Charlottesville: University Press of Vir-

ginia, 1983), 9:384.

77. Madison, Federalist No. 10, 57.

78. Madison, Federalist No. 51, 339.

79. Jonathan Elliot, ed., The Debates in the Several State Conventions

on the Adoption of the Federalist Constitution (Philadelphia: Lippincott,

1937), 5:242.

80. Daniel Defoe, quoted by Lawrence Stone, ‘‘The Results of the En-

glish Revolutions of the Seventeenth Century,’’ in J. G. A. Pocock, ed.,

Three British Revolutions: 1641, 1688, 1776 (Princeton: Princeton Univer-

sity Press, 1980), 75.

81. On English parliamentary democracy, see Susan Dunn, Sister Revo-

lutions: French Lightning, American Light, 203ff.

82. Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents

[1770] in The Writings and Speeches of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke

(Boston: Little Brown, Beaconsfield Edition, 1901), 1:529 and 533–34.

83. On English parliamentary democracy, see Allen Potter, ‘‘Great Brit-

ain: Opposition with a Capital ‘O’,’’ in Dahl, ed., Political Oppositions in

Western Democracies, 6–8.

84. Robert Alan Dahl, ‘‘The American Oppositions,’’ in Dahl, ed., Polit-

ical Oppositions in Western Democracies, 65.

Introduction 35

85. Dahl, ‘‘Epilogue,’’ in Dahl, ed., Political Oppositions in Western

Democracies, 392.

86. Gordon Wood, The Creation of the American Republic (Chapel Hill:

University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American

History and Culture, 1969), 607.

87. James MacGregor Burns, The Deadlock of Democracy (Englewood

Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 22.

88. Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of

American Political Thought Since the Revolution (New York: Harcourt,

Brace & World, 1955), 55.

89. Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, ed. J.-P.

Mayer (Paris: Gallimard, 1951), Vol. 1, Part 2, ch. 6, my translation.

90. Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan,

1913), 513.

91. Theodore Roosevelt, Speech of 21 October 1907, in The Roosevelt

Policy: Speeches, Letters and State Papers, ed. William Griffith (New

York: Current Literature Publishing Company, 1919), 2: 634.

92. See Robert N. Bellah et al., The Good Society (New York: Knopf,

1991).

Chronology of Rousseau’s Life

1712 Rousseau is born in Geneva in a Protestant family of French

origin. His mother dies in childbirth. As a child, Rousseau

loves to read serious books.

1722 Rousseau’s father is forced to leave Geneva, and the young

Jean-Jacques is raised by a Protestant minister, Lambercier.

He spends two happy years with Lambercier.

1727 Rousseau begins work as an apprentice to an engraver.

1728 Rousseau flees Geneva. In Annecy, France, he meets

twenty-nine-year old Madame de Warens, a new convert to

Catholicism. She takes in the sixteen-year old young man.

Years later he credits her with changing his life. With her

encouragement, he converts from Protestantism to

Catholicism. He works as a servant for Madame de

Vercellis and for the Count de Gouvon. Guilty of a petty

theft, Rousseau accuses an innocent maid of the crime, an

experience that will haunt him with shame.

1729 He returns to Madame de Warens, whom he calls from then

on his ‘‘Mommy.’’ He spends several months at a Catholic

seminary in Annecy but discovers in himself no vocation

for religion.

1730–1732 He spends a year hiking from place to place in Switzerland;

during the winter months, he lives in Neufchatel, where

he gives music lessons and composes. He goes to Paris for

the first time. Though he wants to find work as a tutor,

the only position he is offered is that of a servant. In

Lyon in 1731, he earns money by transcribing musical

scores, work he will perform and enjoy for the rest of his

life.

1732 Rousseau returns to Madame de Warens, first in Chambéry,

then at her estate outside of Chambéry, Les Charmettes.

Chronology 37

1732–1736 These are happy years for Rousseau; he writes, composes,

gives music lessons, and studies. In 1734, he and Madame

de Warens become lovers.

1737 Rousseau goes to Geneva to claim his maternal inheritance,

then travels to Montpellier. When he returns to Madame de

Warens, he finds himself displaced by another young man,

Wintzenried. Rousseau remains at Les Charmettes.

1740 He finds work in Lyon as the tutor for the children of

Monsieur de Mably. Unhappy, he returns a final time to

Madame de Warens at Les Charmettes.

1742 Up to this point, Rousseau’s life has been relatively carefree

and haphazard. The next part of his life will be marked by

ambition to succeed in a competitive, elite society and by

the prodigious output of masterpieces in a variety of

different fields, from opera to political theory. Rousseau

goes to Paris. He presents a proposal for a new method of

musical notation, for which he receives encouragement

rather than the financial success he had hoped for. He

becomes acquainted with many of the famous men of letters

of Paris, such as Marivaux, Fontenelle, Diderot, and others;

he frequents fashionable, aristocratic salons.

1743 Looking for other upper-class women to protect and help

him, he finds work as tutor in the family of Madame Dupin.

He tries his hand at writing plays and an opera. Another

woman, Madame de Broglie, finds him a position in Venice.

1743–44 Rousseau works in Venice as secretary to Monsieur de

Montaigu, the French Ambassador. He is treated more as a

servant than as a gentleman. He insults Monsieur de

Montaigu, who forces him to leave Venice. From his

experience in Italy he gains a love of Italian music and a

bitter loathing for social inequality.

1744–1745 Rousseau returns to Paris; he moves among some of the

fashionable salons of the day, but feels ill at ease and

insecure. He begins his lifelong relationship with Thérèse

Lavasseur, an indigent, uneducated servant. In 1745 he

sends their first child off to a foundling home. He and

Thérèse will send their next four children too to the

Foundling Home. His excuse: his poverty, the customs of

the times, the ability of the State to teach the children a

38 Chronology

trade. Also in 1745, Rousseau is asked to work on revising

Voltaire’s and Rameau’s comedy-ballet, ‘‘Les Fêtes de

Ramire’’; the opera is a success but Rousseau receives no

credit for his work. He feels persecuted. Once again he

works for Madame Dupin as her secretary. A friend of

Diderot since 1742, Rousseau contributes essays on music

to Diderot’s great project of the Encyclopedia.

1746–1748 Rousseau accompanies the Dupin family, as their secretary,

to their château of Chenonceaux in the Loire Valley, where

he enjoys the aristocratic life. He composes music and

writes poems and plays. Dupin writes a book about

Montesquieu’s De l’Esprit des lois, which had just been

published. Rousseau thus becomes steeped in political

theory. He is asked to be mentor to the Dupins’ nineteen-

year-old son, an experience that will resonate in his work on

education, Emile.

1749 One day, while meditating on the question of a new

intellectual competition, ‘‘Has the revival of the sciences

and the arts contributed to improving morality?’’ Rousseau

decides to answer the question by attacking the

Enlightenment. The course of his life and his ideas is

forever changed.

1750 Rousseau wins the competition for his Discourse on the

Sciences and Arts and becomes a celebrity in Paris. He ends

his work for the Dupin family and earns his living by

copying music and other material.

1751 The first volume of the Encyclopedia is published.

1752 Rousseau composes Le Devin du village (The Village

Soothsayer), a comic opera. The opera is very well

received, and Rousseau is informed that the king, Louis XV,

would like to meet him and might even offer him a pension.

But paralyzed by insecurity and fear, he declines.

1753 The success of Le Devin du village provides Rousseau with

an income and with fame. He publishes ‘‘Letter on French

Music’’ in which he praises Italian music and disparages

French music.

1754 Rousseau writes his Discourse on the Origins of Inequality.

He then returns to Geneva, converts back to Calvinism and

reclaims the status of ‘‘Citizen of the free state of Geneva.’’

1755 Rousseau publishes his Second Discourse, The Discourse

Chronology 39

on the Origins of Inequality, which Voltaire attacks in a

letter to Rousseau. Rousseau’s article, Discourse on

Political Economy, is published in the Encyclopedia. He

returns to France. His moody temperament propels him to

break up with most of his friends.

1756–1757 At the invitation of Madame d’Epinay, Rousseau moves to

her estate, the Hermitage, north of Paris, where he delights

in the beautiful surroundings. This is a very creative period

for him, during which he works on his Dictionary of Music.

In response to Voltaire’s pessimistic ‘‘Poem about the

Disaster in Lisbon’’ (an earthquake that killed thousands)

Rousseau writes his Letter to Voltaire on Providence

(1756), expressing his belief in benevolent Providence. He

works on Emile, his reflections on an ideal education.

Rousseau also begins writing The Social Contract. The

other Encyclopedists attack him for his withdrawal from

society.

1757 Rousseau falls in love with a countess, Madame

d’Houdetot, the sister-in-law of Madame d’Epinay, though

boasting of their chasteness. She becomes a model for the

heroine of his epistolary novel, Julie, or the New Héloïse.

Rousseau breaks off with Madame d’Epinay. He moves to

the estate of the Maréchal of Luxembourg in Montmorency.

He breaks ties with his friends Grimm and Diderot. He

quarrels also with the philosophe and Encyclopedist

d’Alembert.

1758–1762 This is a relatively calm period in Rousseau’s life, during

which he lives in Montmorency. In 1758 he publishes his

‘‘Letter to d’Alembert on the Theatre’’ (‘‘Lettre sur les

spectacles’’) in which he condemns the ‘‘immorality’’ of

theater. The ‘‘Lettre’’ provokes a huge outcry. In 1760,

Rousseau breaks off definitively with Voltaire, writing to

him, ‘‘I hate you.’’

1759 Voltaire publishes Candide, or Optimism, a darkly

pessimistic work, contradicting Rousseau’s faith in a

beneficent Providence.

1761 Rousseau publishes his ‘‘pre-Romantic’’ novel about

sublimated passion, Julie, or The New Héloïse. The novel

also depicts Rousseau’s ideal society, a small, self-sufficient

community.

40 Chronology

1762 Rousseau publishes The Social Contract and Emile: or, On

Education. He publishes his Profession of Faith of a

Savoyard Vicar, in which he discusses Deism. This book, as

well as Emile, disturb both the Parliament and the Church in

France, an order for his arrest is issued, and he flees to

Switzerland.

1762–1770 Rousseau travels from place to place, hoping to find

asylum, still preoccupied with grievances against his

friends. The city of Geneva refuses him asylum because of

his political and religious ideas. In 1762 he moves to

Môtiers near Neufchatel, territory of the King of Prussia.

For a year and a half his life is relatively calm. The order for

his arrest is almost rescinded when Voltaire intervenes

against him.

1764 He publishes Letters Written from the Mountain, attacking

Voltaire.

1765 Voltaire calls for Rousseau’s death. Rousseau’s house in

Môtiers is stoned, and he flees. He spends a few happy

weeks on the island of Saint-Pierre in the Bienne Lake. He

goes to Strasbourg, then to Paris. He suffers from a variety

of psychological ailments. Rousseau writes his Project for a

Constitution for Corsica.

1766 Rousseau accepts the invitation of the English political

philosopher David Hume to stay in England. Voltaire

continues to denounce Rousseau in the English press.

Rousseau breaks off with Hume. He moves to the estate of

Richard Davenport in Derbyshire where he spends a year.

He enjoys studying botany while completing the first part of

his Confessions.

1767–1769 Rousseau returns to France; he wanders clandestinely from

place to place, finally spending a year in the village of

Monquin. He publishes his Musical Dictionary; he works

on his Confessions, and he studies botany.

1770–1771 After eight years of wandering, Rousseau moves to Paris,

where he lives in poverty. He finishes writing his

groundbreaking Confessions. He composes his Letters on

Botany and writes his Considerations on Government in

Poland.

1772 Dissatisfied with his Confessions and preoccupied with

justifying and explaining himself, he begins writing

Chronology 41

Dialogues: Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques. He devotes

himself to music and botany. Rousseau is saddened in 1774

by news of the death of Louis XV. The hatred of mankind,

he explains, had been divided between Louis XV and

himself; now he would have to bear the entire burden

himself.

1776–1778 He works on his Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Rêveries

du promeneur solitaire), a poignant, introspective work. In

1777 Rousseau tends the ill Thérèse. He makes a public

plea for financial help.

1778 At the invitation of the Marquis de Girardin, Rousseau

moves to Ermenonville, outside of Paris. He is shaken by

news of the death of Voltaire. ‘‘My existence was bound up

with his,’’ he says. He dies on 2 July 1778, five days after

his sixty-sixth birthday.

1794 Rousseau’s ashes are moved to the Pantheon in Paris.

A Note on the Translations

The translation of The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts is a new transla-

tion by Susan Dunn. The translation of The Discourse on the Origin and

Foundations of Inequality Among Mankind is Lester Crocker’s reworking

of an anonymous translation from 1761. The translation of The Social

Contract is Susan Dunn’s reworking of an 1895 translation by Henry J.

Tozer.

The First Discourse: Discourse on the Sciences

and Arts

A DISCOURSE

That won First Prize

at the Academy of Dijon.

In the Year 1750.

On the following question proposed by the Academy:

Has the revival of the Sciences and Arts

contributed to improving morality?

By a Citizen of Geneva

Barbarus hic ego sum qui non intelligor illis.

(People consider me a barbarian because they do not

understand me.)—Ovid.

Preface

Here is one of the greatest and grandest questions ever debated. This

Discourse is not concerned with those metaphysical subtleties that have

come to dominate all aspects of literature and from which the Announce-

ments of Academic Competitions are not always exempt; rather it is con-

cerned with those truths that pertain to human happiness.

I foresee that I shall not readily be forgiven for the position I have dared

to take. Setting myself up against all that is most admired today, I expect no

less than a universal outcry against me; nor is the approval of a few wise

men enough to let me count on that of the public. But I have taken my stand,

and I do not care about pleasing cultured or fashionable people. There will

always be people enslaved by the opinions of their times, their country,

their society. A man who today plays the freethinker and the philosopher

would, for the same reason, have been only a fanatic during the time of the

League.% No author, who wishes to live on beyond his own epoch, should

write for such readers.

One more word, and I am done. Not expecting the honor conferred on me,

I have, since submitting my Discourse, so altered and expanded it as to make

it almost a new work; but today I felt bound to publish it just as it was when it

received the prize. I have only added a few notes and left two easily recog-

nizable additions, of which the Academy might not have approved. Equity,

respect, and gratitude seemed to me to demand this acknowledgment.

Discourse

Decipimur specie recti.

We are deceived by the appearance of good.

—Horace.

‘‘Has the revival of the sciences and the arts contributed to improving or

corrupting morality?’’ This is the issue to be examined. Which side should I

take in this question? The one, Gentlemen, that becomes a respectable man,

who knows nothing and thinks himself none the worse for it.

I sense that it will be difficult to adapt what I have to say for this

Tribunal. How can I presume to criticize the sciences before one of the most

learned assemblies in Europe, to praise ignorance before a famous Acad-

emy and reconcile my contempt for study with the respect due to truly

learned scholars? I was aware of these inconsistencies, but not discouraged

by them. It is not science, I said to myself, that I am attacking; it is virtue

that I am defending before virtuous men. Integrity is even more precious to

good people than erudition is to scholars. What then do I have to fear? The

enlightenment of the assembly that listens to me? That, I acknowledge, is to

be feared, but in relation to the construction of the discourse, not to the

views I hold. Equitable sovereigns have never hesitated to decide against

themselves in doubtful cases; and indeed the most advantageous situation

in which a just claim can be made is that of being defended before a fair and

enlightened arbitrator, who is judge in his own case.

This reasoning, which reassures me, merges with another inducement

that helped me make up my mind: that is, after championing the cause of

truth, as I intuitively see it, whatever success I have, there is one reward that

cannot fail me; I shall find it within my own heart.

48 The First Discourse

part one

It is a great and beautiful spectacle to see man emerge from nothingness

through his own efforts, dissipating, by the light of his reason, the dark-

ness in which nature had enveloped him; rising above himself, soaring

intellectually to celestial heights, striding like the sun across the vastness of

the universe, and, what is grander still and more difficult, retreating back

into himself, there to study man and come to know his nature, his duties,

and his destiny. All these marvels we have seen revived within the past few

generations.

Europe had relapsed into the barbarism of the earliest ages. The inhabi-

tants of this part of the world, which is at present so enlightened, were living,

a few centuries ago, in a state worse than ignorance. A kind of scientific

jargon, more contemptible than mere ignorance, had usurped the name of

knowledge, setting up an almost invincible obstacle to its return. A revolu-

tion was needed to bring people back to common sense; it came at last from

the place from which it was least expected. It was the stupid Moslem, the

eternal scourge of Letters, who was responsible for their rebirth. The fall of

the throne of Constantine% brought to Italy the debris of ancient Greece.

With these precious spoils, France in turn was enriched. The sciences soon

followed literature; the art of writing was joined by the art of thinking, an

order that might seem strange, but is perhaps only too natural. People began

to perceive the principal advantage of communication with the Muses, that

of making people more sociable by inspiring them with the desire to please

one another with works worthy of their mutual regard.

The mind has its needs, as does the body. The needs of the body con-

stitute the foundation of society, those of the mind its ornamentation. While

government and law provide for the security and well-being of people in

their collective life, the sciences, letters, and arts—less despotic though

perhaps more powerful—wrap garlands of flowers around the chains that

weigh people down. They stifle the sense of freedom that people once had

and for which they sensed that they were born, making them love their own

servitude, and turning them into what is called a civilized people. Need

erected thrones; the sciences and arts consolidated them. Let the Powers

that rule the earth cherish all talents and protect those who practice them!*

*Princes always like to see among their subjects the proliferation of an appreciation

for enjoyable arts and luxury that do not result in the exporting of wealth. For they very

well know that, in addition to nourishing the pettiness of soul that lends itself to servitude,