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Émile, ou De l’éducation/Édition 1852/Livre IV

Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody. In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide. Rousseau criticized Hobbes for asserting that since man in the "state of nature On the contrary, Rousseau holds that "uncorrupted morals" prevail in the "state of nature" and he especially praised the admirable moderation of the Caribbeans in expressing the sexual urge [94] despite the fact that they live in a hot climate, which "always seems to inflame the passions".

Rousseau asserted that the stage of human development associated with what he called "savages" was the best or optimal in human development, between the less-than-optimal extreme of brute animals on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilization on the other. Hence although men had become less forbearing, and although natural pity had already undergone some alteration, this period of the development of human faculties, maintaining a middle position between the indolence of our primitive state and the petulant activity of our egocentrism, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch.

The more one reflects on it, the more one finds that this state was the least subject to upheavals and the best for man, and that he must have left it only by virtue of some fatal chance happening that, for the common good, ought never to have happened. The example of savages, almost all of whom have been found in this state, seems to confirm that the human race had been made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable youth of the world; and that all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species.

The perspective of many of today's environmentalists can be traced back to Rousseau who believed that the more men deviated from the state of nature, the worse off they would be. Espousing the belief that all degenerates in men's hands, Rousseau taught that men would be free, wise, and good in the state of nature and that instinct and emotion, when not distorted by the unnatural limitations of civilization, are nature's voices and instructions to the good life. Rousseau's "noble savage" stands in direct opposition to the man of culture. Rousseau believed that the savage stage was not the first stage of human development, but the third stage.

Rousseau held that this third savage stage of human societal development was an optimum, between the extreme of the state of brute animals and animal-like "ape-men" on the one hand and the extreme of decadent civilized life on the other. This has led some critics to attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage , [99] [g] which Arthur Lovejoy conclusively showed misrepresents Rousseau's thought.

It could be seen as an outgrowth from man's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise emotions of compassion or empathy. These are sentiments shared with animals, and whose existence even Hobbes acknowledged. Contrary to what many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally; in fact, terms such as "justice" or "wickedness" are inapplicable to prepolitical society as Rousseau understands it.

Morality proper, self-restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Humans "in a state of Nature" may act with all of the ferocity of an animal. They are good only in a negative sense, insofar as they are self-sufficient and thus not subject to the vices of political society. In fact, Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape , such as the orangutan as described by Buffon ; and the "natural" goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Rousseau, a deteriorationist, proposed that, except perhaps for brief moments of balance, at or near its inception, when a relative equality among men prevailed, human civilization has always been artificial, creating inequality, envy, and unnatural desires. Rousseau's ideas of human development were highly interconnected with forms of mediation, or the processes that individual humans use to interact with themselves and others while using an alternate perspective or thought process.

According to Rousseau, these were developed through the innate perfectibility of humanity. These include a sense of self, morality, pity, and imagination. Rousseau's writings are purposely ambiguous concerning the formation of these processes to the point that mediation is always intrinsically part of humanity's development. An example of this is the notion that as an individual, one needs an alternative perspective to come to the realization that they are a 'self'.

In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi , a positive self-love, into amour-propre , or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation , combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others.

It had been invoked by Vauvenargues , among others. In the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual liberty ; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy , fear , and suspicion.

In contrast to the optimistic view of other Enlightenment figures, for Rousseau, progress has been inimical to the well-being of humanity, that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in civil society can man be ennobled—through the use of reason:. The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations.

Although in this state he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it for ever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man.

Society corrupts men only insofar as the Social Contract has not de facto succeeded, as we see in contemporary society as described in the Discourse on Inequality In this essay, which elaborates on the ideas introduced in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences , Rousseau traces man's social evolution from a primitive state of nature to modern society. The earliest solitary humans possessed a basic drive for self-preservation and a natural disposition to compassion or pity. They differed from animals, however, in their capacity for free will and their potential perfectibility.

As they began to live in groups and form clans they also began to experience family love, which Rousseau saw as the source of the greatest happiness known to humanity. As long as differences in wealth and status among families were minimal, the first coming together in groups was accompanied by a fleeting golden age of human flourishing. The development of agriculture, metallurgy, private property, and the division of labour and resulting dependency on one another, however, led to economic inequality and conflict.

Émile, ou De l’éducation/Édition 1852/Livre IV

As population pressures forced them to associate more and more closely, they underwent a psychological transformation: Rousseau posits that the original, deeply flawed Social Contract i. Rousseau's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. At the end of the Discourse on Inequality , Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence, and hierarchy.

In the last chapter of the Social Contract , Rousseau would ask 'What is to be done? To his readers, however, the inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed. Like other Enlightenment philosophers, Rousseau was critical of the Atlantic slave trade. The Social Contract outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. Published in , it became one of the most influential works of political philosophy in the Western tradition. The treatise begins with the dramatic opening lines, "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.

Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they.

Rousseau claimed that the state of nature was a primitive condition without law or morality, which human beings left for the benefits and necessity of cooperation. As society developed, the division of labor and private property required the human race to adopt institutions of law. In the degenerate phase of society, man is prone to be in frequent competition with his fellow men while also becoming increasingly dependent on them. This double pressure threatens both his survival and his freedom.

According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right , individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. This is because submission to the authority of the general will of the people as a whole guarantees individuals against being subordinated to the wills of others and also ensures that they obey themselves because they are, collectively, the authors of the law.

Although Rousseau argues that sovereignty or the power to make the laws should be in the hands of the people, he also makes a sharp distinction between the sovereign and the government. The government is composed of magistrates, charged with implementing and enforcing the general will. The "sovereign" is the rule of law, ideally decided on by direct democracy in an assembly. He approved the kind of republican government of the city-state, for which Geneva provided a model—or would have done if renewed on Rousseau's principles.

France could not meet Rousseau's criterion of an ideal state because it was too big. Much subsequent controversy about Rousseau's work has hinged on disagreements concerning his claims that citizens constrained to obey the general will are thereby rendered free:. The notion of the general will is wholly central to Rousseau's theory of political legitimacy.

Some commentators see it as no more than the dictatorship of the proletariat or the tyranny of the urban poor such as may perhaps be seen in the French Revolution. Such was not Rousseau's meaning. This is clear from the Discourse on Political Economy , where Rousseau emphasizes that the general will exists to protect individuals against the mass, not to require them to be sacrificed to it. He is, of course, sharply aware that men have selfish and sectional interests which will lead them to try to oppress others.

It is for this reason that loyalty to the good of all alike must be a supreme although not exclusive commitment by everyone, not only if a truly general will is to be heeded but also if it is to be formulated successfully in the first place". The noblest work in education is to make a reasoning man, and we expect to train a young child by making him reason!

This is beginning at the end; this is making an instrument of a result. If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated. Rousseau's philosophy of education concerns itself not with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil's character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. Today we would call this the disciplinary method of "natural consequences". Rousseau felt that children learn right and wrong through experiencing the consequences of their acts rather than through physical punishment.

Rousseau became an early advocate of developmentally appropriate education; his description of the stages of child development mirrors his conception of the evolution of culture. He divides childhood into stages:. Rousseau recommends that the young adult learn a manual skill such as carpentry, which requires creativity and thought, will keep him out of trouble, and will supply a fallback means of making a living in the event of a change of fortune the most illustrious aristocratic youth to have been educated this way may have been Louis XVI , whose parents had him learn the skill of locksmithing [].

The sixteen-year-old is also ready to have a companion of the opposite sex.

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Although his ideas foreshadowed modern ones in many ways, in one way they do not: Rousseau was a believer in the moral superiority of the patriarchal family on the antique Roman model. This is not an accidental feature of Rousseau's educational and political philosophy; it is essential to his account of the distinction between private, personal relations and the public world of political relations.

The private sphere as Rousseau imagines it depends on the subordination of women, in order for both it and the public political sphere upon which it depends to function as Rousseau imagines it could and should. Rousseau anticipated the modern idea of the bourgeois nuclear family , with the mother at home taking responsibility for the household and for childcare and early education. Feminists, beginning in the late 18th century with Mary Wollstonecraft in , [] have criticized Rousseau for his confinement of women to the domestic sphere —unless women were domesticated and constrained by modesty and shame, he feared [] "men would be tyrannized by women… For, given the ease with which women arouse men's senses— men would finally be their victims…" [] His contemporaries saw it differently because Rousseau thought that mothers should breastfeed their children.

Rousseau's ideas have influenced progressive "child-centered" education. Good or bad, the theories of educators such as Rousseau's near contemporaries Pestalozzi , Mme. Having converted to Roman Catholicism early in life and returned to the austere Calvinism of his native Geneva as part of his period of moral reform, Rousseau maintained a profession of that religious philosophy and of John Calvin as a modern lawgiver throughout the remainder of his life. His views on religion presented in his works of philosophy, however, may strike some as discordant with the doctrines of both Catholicism and Calvinism.

Although he praised the Bible, he was disgusted by the Christianity of his day. He also repudiated the doctrine of original sin , which plays a large part in Calvinism. In his "Letter to Beaumont", Rousseau wrote, "there is no original perversity in the human heart. In the 18th century, many deists viewed God merely as an abstract and impersonal creator of the universe, likened to a giant machine.

Rousseau's deism differed from the usual kind in its emotionality. He saw the presence of God in the creation as good, and separate from the harmful influence of society. Rousseau's attribution of a spiritual value to the beauty of nature anticipates the attitudes of 19th-century Romanticism towards nature and religion.

Rousseau was upset that his deism was so forcefully condemned, while those of the more atheistic philosophers were ignored. He defended himself against critics of his religious views in his "Letter to Mgr de Beaumont , the Archbishop of Paris", "in which he insists that freedom of discussion in religious matters is essentially more religious than the attempt to impose belief by force.

The phrase was used by Diderot and also by Montesquieu and by his teacher, the Oratorian friar Nicolas Malebranche. It served to designate the common interest embodied in legal tradition, as distinct from and transcending people's private and particular interests at any particular time. It displayed a rather democratic ideology, as it declared that the citizens of a given nation should carry out whatever actions they deem necessary in their own sovereign assembly.

The concept was also an important aspect of the more radical 17th-century republican tradition of Spinoza , from whom Rousseau differed in important respects, but not in his insistence on the importance of equality:. Without the supreme criterion of equality, the general will would indeed be meaningless.

Robespierre and Saint-Just , during the Reign of Terror , regarded themselves to be principled egalitarian republicans, obliged to do away with superfluities and corruption; in this they were inspired most prominently by Rousseau. According to Robespierre, the deficiencies in individuals were rectified by upholding the 'common good' which he conceptualized as the collective will of the people; this idea was derived from Rousseau's General Will.

The revolutionaries were also inspired by Rousseau to introduce Deism as the new official civil religion of France:. Ceremonial and symbolic occurrences of the more radical phases of the Revolution invoked Rousseau and his core ideas. According to some scholars, Rousseau exercised minimal influence on the Founding Fathers of the United States , despite similarities between their ideas.

They shared beliefs regarding the self-evidence that "all men are created equal," and the conviction that citizens of a republic be educated at public expense. A parallel can be drawn between the United States Constitution 's concept of the " general welfare " and Rousseau's concept of the " general will ". Further commonalities exist between Jeffersonian democracy and Rousseau's praise of Switzerland and Corsica's economies of isolated and independent homesteads, and his endorsement of a well-regulated militia, such as those of the Swiss cantons.

However, Will and Ariel Durant have opined that Rousseau had a definite political influence on America. The first sign of [Rousseau's] political influence was in the wave of public sympathy that supported active French aid to the American Revolution. Jefferson derived the Declaration of Independence from Rousseau as well as from Locke and Montesquieu.

As ambassador to France —89 he absorbed much from both Voltaire and Rousseau The success of the American Revolution raised the prestige of Rousseau's philosophy. One of Rousseau's most important American followers was textbook writer Noah Webster — , who was influenced by Rousseau's ideas on pedagogy in Emile Webster structured his Speller in accord with Rousseau's ideas about the stages of a child's intellectual development.

Rousseau's writings perhaps had an indirect influence on American literature through the writings of Wordsworth and Kant , whose works were important to the New England transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson , as well as on Unitarians such as theologian William Ellery Channing. The Last of the Mohicans and other American novels reflect republican and egalitarian ideals present alike in Thomas Paine and in English Romantic primitivism.

The first to criticize Rousseau were his fellow Philosophes , above all, Voltaire. According to Jacques Barzun, Voltaire was annoyed by the first discourse , and outraged by the second. Voltaire's reading of the second discourse was that Rousseau would like the reader to "walk on all fours" befitting a savage. Samuel Johnson told Boswell, "I think him one of the worst of men; a rascal, who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been".

Jean-Baptiste Blanchard was his leading Catholic opponent. Blanchard rejects Rousseau's negative education, in which one must wait until a child has grown to develop reason. The child would find more benefit from learning in his earliest years. He also disagreed with his ideas about female education, declaring that women are a dependent lot. So removing them from their motherly path is unnatural, as it would lead to the unhappiness of both men and women.

Barzun states that, contrary to myth, Rousseau was no primitivist; for him:. The model man is the independent farmer, free of superiors and self-governing.

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This was cause enough for the philosophes' hatred of their former friend. Rousseau's unforgivable crime was his rejection of the graces and luxuries of civilized existence. Voltaire had sung "The superfluous, that most necessary thing. It was the country versus the city—an exasperating idea for them, as was the amazing fact that every new work of Rousseau's was a huge success, whether the subject was politics, theater, education, religion, or a novel about love.

Frederic Bastiat severely criticized Rousseau in several of his works, most notably in "The Law", in which, after analyzing Rousseau's own passages, he stated that:. And what part do persons play in all this? They are merely the machine that is set in motion. In fact, are they not merely considered to be the raw material of which the machine is made? Thus the same relationship exists between the legislator and the prince as exists between the agricultural expert and the farmer; and the relationship between the prince and his subjects is the same as that between the farmer and his land.

How high above mankind, then, has this writer on public affairs been placed? Bastiat believed that Rousseau wished to ignore forms of social order created by the people—viewing them as a thoughtless mass to be shaped by philosophers. Bastiat, who is considered by thinkers associated with the Austrian School of Economics to be one of the precursors of the "spontaneous order", [] presented his own vision of what he considered to be the "Natural Order" in a simple economic chain in which multiple parties might interact without necessarily even knowing each other, cooperating and fulfilling each other's needs in accordance with basic economic laws such as supply and demand.

In such a chain, in order to produce clothing, multiple parties have to act independently— e. Those persons engage in economic exchange by nature, and don't need to be ordered to, nor do their efforts need to be centrally coordinated. Such chains are present in every branch of human activity, in which individuals produce or exchange goods and services, and together, naturally create a complex social order that does not require external inspiration, central coordination of efforts, or bureaucratic control to benefit society as a whole.

This, according to Bastiat, is a proof that humanity itself is capable of creating a complex socioeconomic order that might be superior to an arbitrary vision of a philosopher. Bastiat also believed that Rousseau contradicted himself when presenting his views concerning human nature; if nature is "sufficiently invincible to regain its empire", why then would it need philosophers to direct it back to a natural state?

Conversely, he believed that humanity would choose what it would have without philosophers to guide it, in accordance with the laws of economy and human nature itself. The Marquis de Sade 's Justine, or the Misfortunes of Virtue partially parodied and used as inspiration Rousseau's sociological and political concepts in the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract. Concepts such as the state of nature, civilization being the catalyst for corruption and evil, and humans "signing" a contract to mutually give up freedoms for the protection of rights, particularly referenced.

The necessity mutually to render one another happy cannot legitimately exist save between two persons equally furnished with the capacity to do one another hurt and, consequently, between two persons of commensurate strength: Edmund Burke formed an unfavorable impression of Rousseau when the latter visited England with Hume and later drew a connection between Rousseau's egoistic philosophy and his personal vanity, saying Rousseau "entertained no principle With this vice he was possessed to a degree little short of madness".

In , Irving Babbitt , founder of a movement called the " New Humanism ", wrote a critique of what he called "sentimental humanitarianism", for which he blamed Rousseau. During the Cold War, Rousseau was criticized for his association with nationalism and its attendant abuses, for example in Talmon, Jacob Leib , The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy. Maloy states that "the twentieth century added Nazism and Stalinism to Jacobinism on the list of horrors for which Rousseau could be blamed. Melzer also believes that in admitting that people's talents are unequal, Rousseau therefore tacitly condones the tyranny of the few over the many.

Engel, on the other hand, Rousseau's nationalism anticipated modern theories of "imagined communities" that transcend social and religious divisions within states. On similar grounds, one of Rousseau's strongest critics during the second half of the 20th century was political philosopher Hannah Arendt. Using Rousseau's thought as an example, Arendt identified the notion of sovereignty with that of the general will. According to her, it was this desire to establish a single, unified will based on the stifling of opinion in favor of public passion that contributed to the excesses of the French Revolution.

The German writers Goethe , Schiller , and Herder have stated that Rousseau's writings inspired them. Il voulait se tuer. Mal, Polonia, recibes a un extranjero, pues con sangre escribes su entrada en tus arenas Lo mejor que ha escrito. Un diario de esperanzas y tribulaciones. Tuvo el final de un rey de tragedia: Sur les autres projets Wikimedia: Espaces de noms Article Discussion. Comment se font les enfants? Pourquoi les riches sont-ils si durs pour les pauvres? Devant celui qui pense, toutes les distinctions civiles disparaissent: Que chacun reste comme il est: Je ne le nie pas: Mais pourquoi le rappeler?

Nous jugeons trop du bonheur sur les apparences: Avec quel transport il lui dit: Mon tour est venu! Les pires historiens pour un jeune homme sont ceux qui jugent. Un sauvage nous juge plus sainement que ne fait un philosophe. Il a raison, car nul ne fait le mal pour le mal. Que faudrait-il donc pour bien observer les hommes? Encore un pas et nous touchons au but. Je suis sage, et les hommes sont fous. Plus ils ont, plus ils connaissent tout ce qui leur manque. Faites-le lui sentir, ou jamais il ne le saura. Je ne connais rien de plus inepte que ce mot: Tout au contraire, quand vous le verrez honteux de ne vous avoir pas cru, effacez doucement cette humiliation par de bonnes paroles.

Le temps des fautes est celui des fables. Les lois ne permettent pas aux jeunes gens de faire leurs propres affaires, et de disposer de leur propre bien: Je ne sais rien de tout cela. Je ne me lasse point de le redire: Ceux qui ne traitent jamais que leurs propres affaires se passionnent trop pour juger sainement des choses. Si donc on venait me dire: Au lieu de vous dire ici de mon chef ce que je pense, je vous dirai ce que pensait un homme qui valait mieux que moi.

La sienne avait encore tout son ressort. Mon enfant, reprit-il, je vous le dirai volontiers. Il fallut expier le scandale: Je pris donc un autre guide et je me dis: Ai-je un sentiment propre de mon existence, ou ne la sens-je que par mes sensations? Comment cet homme a-t-il pu vouloir faire un livre des merveilles de la nature, qui montent la sagesse de son auteur? Y a-t-il un principe unique des choses? Y en a-t-il deux ou plusieurs? Et quelle est leur nature? Je vois le mal sur la terre.

On a beau me disputer cela, je le sens, et ce sentiment qui me parle est plus fort que la raison qui le combat. Nos chagrins, nos soucis, nos peines, nous viennent de nous. Qui est-ce qui voudrait toujours vivre? Celui qui peut tout ne peut vouloir que ce qui est bien [22].