MEDDLING WITH GOD'S WORK

This is not the first time that I am reminded of Pushkin’s “Genius and evil, two things incompatible.” What, then is our judgment on Rousseau? Perhaps he was just mad and not evil after all?… Perhaps his sins ought to be forgiven to him, for reasons of insanity?..

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Rousseau-the-philosopher cannot be properly understood without taking a glimpse of Rousseau-the-person (which is exactly the reason why we needed a separate personal entry, the previous one, to lead us into his twisted inner world which, I may venture to say, we most probably have not been able to either understand or penetrate anyway). But having done that part, we now suddenly find, that at least according to our good old friend Bertrand Russell, Rousseau may not have been a bona fide philosopher in the first place. On the other hand, he is a philosopher all right in at least three senses, namely in the way any Russian Intelligent would recognize him; in the way the French use the word philosophe; and, judging by the interest our dear friend Nietzsche had in him, who else could he be, but a philosopher?!

So, here is Russell’s peculiar introductory summary, which contains some familiar names of later times that he either connects directly to Rousseau, or, via Locke, contra Rousseau:

Jean Jacque Rousseau, 1712-19778, though a philosophe in the eighteenth-century French sense (not only, as we have previously observed), was not what would now be called a “philosopher.” Nevertheless, he had a powerful influence on philosophy, as on literature, and taste, and manners, and politics. Whatever may be our opinion of his merits as a thinker, we must recognize his immense importance as a social force. This importance came mainly from his appeal to the heart, and to what, in his day, was called “sensibility.” He is the father of the romantic movement, the initiator of systems of thought which infer non-human facts from human emotions, and the inventor of the political philosophy of pseudo-democratic dictatorships, as opposed to traditional absolute monarchies. Ever since his time, those considering themselves reformers have been divided into two groups, of those who followed him, and those who followed Locke. Sometimes they cooperated, and many individuals saw no incompatibility. But, gradually, the incompatibility became increasingly evident. At the present time (at the time of Russell’s writing in the early 1940’s), Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill of Locke. (Russell is prudently cautious in not venturing to place Stalin with either group. Stalin was a product of the peculiarly Russian strain, much-much closer to Rousseau than to Locke, but in many ways eclectic, while in many other ways uniquely Russian.)

Rousseau’s morality is blended with theology, and it constitutes an unbeatable theory, the only reason for it to be unbeatable being that he elevates it above reason and rationality, making it a “matter of the heart”--- ergo, non-negotiable. It is in just this sense that I agree with Russell that Rousseau is not a philosopher: he uses the authority of God to push his ethical doctrine of man’s pristine natural state being corrupted by the evils of civilization. At this point, I find it best to follow Russell’s narrative (after all, many of these entries have been stock entries, at least in some parts, awaiting radical revision in a later phase of work):

His first literary success came to him rather late in life. The Academy of Dijon offered a prize for the best essay on the question have the arts and sciences conferred benefits on mankind? Rousseau maintained the negative, and won the prize (1750). He contended that science, letters, and the arts are the worst enemies of morals, and, by creating wants, are the sources of slavery; for how can chains be imposed on those who go naked, like the American savages? As might be expected, he is for Sparta and against Athens. He had read Plutarch’s Lives at the age of seven, and been much influenced by them; he admired particularly the life of Lycurgus. Science and virtue he held are incompatible, and all sciences have an ignoble origin. Astronomy comes from the superstition of astrology, eloquence, from ambition; geometry, from avarice, physics, from vain curiosity, and even ethics has its source in human pride. Education and the art of printing ought to be deplored; everything that distinguishes civilized man from the untutored barbarian is evil. Having won the prize and achieved sudden fame by this essay, Rousseau took to living according to its maxims. He adopted the simple life, and sold his watch, saying that he would no longer need to know the time.

Thus, the starting point of his ethics, as well as of his political thinking as a whole, is contained in one short sentence from his Émile: “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.” The original state of man is God’s state, and it is good, which makes him sound a lot like John Locke, but only on this initial encounter. He associates human civilization with the original sin of man meddling with God’s work (man’s vainglorious reason being the culprit), which as we know has little connection with the lengths to which Locke had been prepared to go.

The full summary of his ethics boils down to the recognition that “our natural feelings lead us to serve the common interest, while our reason urges selfishness. We have therefore only to follow feeling, rather than reason, in order to be virtuous.”