DID ROUSSEAU REMAIN TRUE TO THE ENLIGHTENMENT MOVEMENT’S VALUES?
Rousseau was an influential member of the Enlightenment Movement and for many years had a close, productive relationship with other members. For example, he wrote almost all the entries on music in Encyclopaedia of Diderot. In fact Rousseau wrote at one time that Diderot was his closest friend and they spent time together almost every day.1 About 1750, unfortunately, a difficult break was made between the others in the movement and Rousseau. He was accused of disagreeing with the basic philosophical tenets of the movement and in effect muddying the waters. Writing in The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, author Peter Gay explains that the quarrel with Rousseau and other members of the Enlightenment Movement was very serious because of the sincerity with which the parties made their arguments.2 Gay also points out that the philosophers were passionate in their relationships. They were constantly arguing with each other, insulting each and then reconciling. Until finally Rousseau became an outcast.3
The German philosopher, Ernst Cassirer, states that “Rousseau differs from his century far less in his political ideals than in his deduction of his ideals, in their derivation and justification.”4 Cassirer goes on to explain that Rousseau pushes himself further to ask more philosophical questions even when others think the subject has been resolved and closed.5 So while the dissatisfaction with the political system was criticized “its criticism
1. L’Alembert, Jean. Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia of Diderot. Translated by Richard N. Schwab. (Indianapolis, Bobbs Merrill, 1963) xiii
2. Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The rise of modern paganism. (New York, W.W. Norton, 1977) 195-197.
3. Ibid., 6
4. Cassirer, Ernst. The Philosophy of the Enlightenment. (Princeton University Press. 2009) p. 266.
5. Ibid., 267
never went so far as to weigh the value of social existence as such. To this age such existence is looked upon rather as an end in itself, as a self-evident goal.”6
So while others in the Enlightenment Movement felt that they had reached many of their goals in philosophical understanding, Rousseau was still questioning. For instance the others all accepted that a man may decide to live without “fellowship and sociability” but Cassirer points out that Rousseau still questioned if that was a correct understanding of man.7 Cassirer explains that the main difference from the others in the movement is Rousseau’s “real originality (which) consists in the fact that he even assails this premise.”8 Rousseau continued to debate what others accepted on the basis of decisions that had been made on past assumptions and accepted as real or natural.
Rousseau was not convinced that his contemporary society was necessarily a community; that the cultural goals of society were separated from the idea of community, or that society and community were very similar at all.9 It is this continual analysis, Rousseau’s continuing reasoning out of themes by using rational deduction that was at the core of the break with the others in the Enlightenment movement.10
6. Cassirer, Philosophy of Enlightenment, p. 266
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid. 267
10. Ibid. 268
Gay notes that Rousseau’s way of explaining his philosophical beliefs created the break with the Enlightenment Movement; the problem was not a difference in fundamental beliefs.11 He suggests that because Rousseau kept bringing up Plato’s complex notions to review them again the others would quarrel with him.
Richard Schwab, translator of Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia of Diderot discusses the disagreements and the increasing distance between Rousseau and his colleagues working on the encyclopaedia. Rousseau was not comfortable with the pursuit of sciences to the point that the “the human heart and morality” were not given much consideration.12
He considered morality to be a more important concern than the progress of the mind. Schwab explains that Rousseau “moved into an examination of the world of emotional experience and sentiment that laid the foundations of the Romantic Movement.”13 The quarrels had been building over the years and the final disagreement was on the subject of the relationship of morality with religion; although Rousseau’s “own mental stability . . .imagining conspiracies surrounding him” must have magnified the meaning of the quarrels to Rousseau.14
In the Appendix Chapter ii The General Society of the Human Race in to the Social Contract Rousseau addresses the paradox of being alone to being in society. “Our sense of our own weakness derives not so much from our nature as from our cupidity; our needs bring
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11. Gay, Enlightenment: An Interpretation, 195-197
12. L’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse, Trans. Schwab, 103
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid.
us together at the same time as our passions divide us, and the more we become enemies to our fellow-men, the more we need them.”15 Yet he believes that before a person can take a political or a social action to work towards progress, they must spend time in peace and contemplation.
Finally it may be that Rousseau’s mental weakness which exhibited itself as suspicious and paranoid may have been the reason for the break with the Enlightenment movement. It seems more likely that it happened because the personal relationships within the movement never developed into mature relationships. The philosophers continued to be not only argumentative over philosophical themes, one would expect to have those debated, but they also continued to be petty and quarrelsome among themselves. For someone observing the group dynamics it would not have been too much of a surprise that finally Rousseau became the outsider. His opinions were different from the beginning on democracy for example which the others would not even consider.16
Rousseau was criticized for abandoning the movement because he did not want to stay in society and see to the progress of the culture and politics of the time. His colleagues did not understand that he had not given up on the same ideals of the Enlightenment Movement; but he needed time for contemplation and to think before he could take action.
15. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract. Appendix Chapter ii. The General Society of the Human Race. Translated by Christopher Betts. (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1994) 169
16. L’Alembert, Preliminary Discourse, Trans. Schwab, xlvii
Gay, Peter. The Enlightenment: An Interpretation: The rise of modern paganism. New York, NY: W.W. Norton. 1977.
L’Alembert, Jean. Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopaedia of Diderot. Translated by Richard N. Schwab. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs Merrill. 1963.
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract. Appendix Chapter ii. The General Society of the Human Race. Translated by Christopher Betts. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. 1994.
