In his Confessions, Rousseau professes to expose frankly and openly all the experiences of his life.But his biographers have since pointed out how much he forgot, neglected, or distorted, especially about the seamier side of his life.In his love affairs, and in his treatment of his own children, he sometimes behaved irresponsibly.But as an account of his search for identity in the recollection of his personal experiences, his autobiography provided his readers with a model for their own soul-searching.He showed them his own efforts to understand and come to terms with his emotions.His novels were intended to produce the same effect.In empathizing with the emotions of the main characters, readers were prompted to reflect on their own.(Compare with Aristotle's notion of "catharsis")
With Rousseau was born a new interest in "sensitivity" as a human quality.In the self-image that he fashions in his autobiography, he idealizes the person sensitive to the prompting of his own soul.It was an image much appreciated by the Romantics of the early 19th century, and by readers of the modern novel long thereafter.It helps us to understand why he was so widely read by contemporaries.It also expresses a perspective on the human condition that would stimulate the study of psychology in the modern era.There are connections between Rousseau's autobiographical musings and Sigmund Freud's psychoanalytical method.Both were inspired by the need to cultivate memory, particularly those memories that are formative of character in childhood.Rousseau's preoccupation with sensitivity also helps us to understand his motivation in writing his great work on political philosophy, The Social Contract (1762), which is an effort to reconceive the social ideal in terms of mutual trust and understanding.
2) a biographical profile
Rousseau was born in Switzerland to indigent parents in 1712.His mother died when he was a young child.He was intellectually precocious. He was all his life, whatever his circumstances, an avid reader.His father tried to raise him for a time, but found the task too heavy a burden.Therefore the young Rousseau, like many unwanted children in that era, was apprenticed at an early age.He entered the atelier of an engraver.It was a small shop in which the apprentices lived with the family of the master craftsman who ran the business.
Rousseau suffered for want of love in this constraining setting. He was often treated meanly, and his intellectual interests were discouraged.In his autobiography, he recalls one poignant incident in this unhappy education.The wife of the master craftsman had a favorite comb.One day, one of his fellow apprentices borrowed the comb and broke some of its bristles.He left the comb among Rousseau's effects, so that he would be blamed for this misdeed.Accordingly, Rousseau was wrongly accused and unjustly punished.Though this was a trivial affair, it represented for him his "fall" from innocence.As a result of this and like treatment, he claimed, he too soon learned to cheat and lie when necessary in order to protect himself. Naturally ingenuous and trusting, he became shrewd and worldly.
Rousseau's point is that an evil disposition is a character we acquire, not an innate one with which we are born (the concupiscence to which Augustine alluded when he explained the effects of Original sin).Evil, he concluded, is socially conditioned.It is not inherent in human nature.By nature children are innocent and pure at heart.It is the conditions in which they are raised that corrupt their innate goodness.
The problem with which Rousseau wrestled all his life, therefore, was to understand the conditions under which that innate human goodness might be enhanced.It we can create a good society, he believed, it will be inhabited by good people.Rousseau understood that goodness in terms of sincerity.To be good is to be open, honest, and trusting of other human beings. The task, then, is to create a society in which that behavior is nurtured and expected.
Rousseau soon ran away from the engraver's atelier.He took to the road as a vagabond. That was a dangerous choice in 18th-century Europe, in which survival for most people depended upon finding a niche in some close-knit social group.But Rousseau as a young man was talented and charming; comparatively he fared very well.
Rousseau had a particular talent for ingratiating himself with wealthy women, many of whom took him in. His fondest reminiscence is of the time he spent as an adolescent with Mme de Warens, a wealthy widow.He describes his time with her as one of "perfect indolence."They lived in her country house, and shared long walks in the surrounding countryside.Together they explored literature and the arts.In her presence, Rousseau grew intellectually and emotionally.Indolence for him meant a setting in which he was free to turn his energies to the endeavor that interested him the most in the company of people he loved and trusted.It became the key to his notion of the good life --- one in which one's work is also one's vocation; one in which one feels intimacy in his relations with others.
But as a vagabond, not all of his experiences were so idyllic.To survive, he sometimes turned to the church, feigning a desire for conversion to obtain food and shelter.At different times, he converted to both Catholicism and the Reformed faith.He found these experiences abhorrent, for he had no use for the constraints and dogmas of institutionalized religion.At the same time, he conceived of himself as being religious in a personal way.For him, religious feelings were associated with his quest.Much like Socrates, he understood religion as a calling to discover the truth contained in his own soul.
As an adult, Rousseau became a diplomat and a writer, and in his lifetime he won considerable fame.He nonetheless retained his emotional attachments to the humble circumstances of his youth.All his life, he preferred the company of simple people, among whom he felt warmth and honesty.He describes himself as feeling awkward in the high society of the literary circles and philosophical salons that he later frequented.He characterized that feeling as one of shame, by which he meant the psychological sense of being socially inferior.The personal anguish he identified with such shame is a key to the social philosophy that he devised.His vision of the good society was one in which no one was beholden to anyone else, one in which people could encounter one another as social, and perhaps more importantly, psychological equals.
He explored this problem in one of his most famous essays, The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1749).He wrote the essay for a prize competition sponsored by the Academy of Dijon on the topic: "Has the progress of the arts and sciences contributed more to the corruption or purification of morals?"Rousseau took the general line of argument that these accomplishments had made humankind no better.The good society was not one that was more technologically advanced, but one in which its participants displayed social virtue.The good society was founded on the civic faith of its participants, not on material well-being or particular forms of government.In other words, the inner feelings that motivate us are more important than the outward forms that structure our dealings with one another.
The philosophical foundations of that civic faith became the focus of his Social Contract (1762).He worked with three propositions about what such a society might be: 1) one in which the quest for self-fulfillment would be permitted to everyone; 2) one in which social relations would be based on an equality that insured openness, honesty, and mutual trust; 3) faith in the social covenant by which these values could be made real.
3) Essential elements in Rousseau's conception of the "social contract"
a) As an orphan and a vagabond, Rousseau was always looking for social settings in which he felt at ease.That sentiment informs his social ideal of transparency in human relationships.The social contract should permit the realization of this ideal. This is what he believes the ideal of democracy to be.
b) The mid-18th century society in which Rousseau lived predates the French Revolution.It was a society defined by a hierarchy of social orders (clergy, nobility, commoners).Rights were understood as the legal privileges of particular groups.Almost everyone was beholden to some patron.Rousseau envisioned a community in which people were free of such dependency and in which such social distinctions were eliminated.
c) Most 18th-century reformers stressed the importance of individual rights.Rousseau, by contrast, emphasized the primacy of our social identity.If we are born into the natural world as individuals, we are reborn in civil society as citizens. In the process, we take on a social nature.Paradoxically, in being reborn as citizens, our individualism is enhanced.Rousseau's notion of the egalitarianism implicit in this civic sense of identity became the driving moral force behind the democratic movements of the 19th and 20th centuries.
d) Rousseau restated the classification of the forms of government (monarchy, republic, and mixed) as they had been defined by Cicero in antiquity.Any of these forms might work well.The choice of the form for a given community depended upon its size and historical circumstances.His main point, however, is that the outward form of government is less important than the inner commitment of citizens to their community.For Rousseau, popular sovereignty is a more important achievement than any particular governmental form.
e) Rousseau's contrast between civic identity and governmental form lies at the basis of his distinction between the general will and the will of all.The general will concerns the common commitments of citizens to their community.Herein there can be no dissent.The will of all concerns particular policies, over which citizens may disagree. But the general will is indivisible and demands universal accord.
f) Because the general will depends upon the common commitment of the citizens of a community, it is a civic faith, analogous to the commitment of religious faith.Therefore Rousseau became interested in the rituals of a civic religion as a testament to that faith.Civic faith by its nature entails civic virtue.