Rousseau

1. Rousseau Political Philosophy and Human Nature: Discourse on Inequality

2. JEAN JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778) • 1751 Publishes Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts. • Wasawarded the prize by the Academy of Dijon inn the year 1750 onn this question, which the Academy itself proposed:Has the restoration of the sciences and the arts contributed to refining moral practices?

3. Holds onto the idea that the liberal arts and sciences are agents and facilitate corruption but argues that we must understand human nature if we are to understand corruption. • Finding its cause in idleness did not go far enough. • In order to discover the origin of inequality we must first discover ourselves. We must separate the natural from the social or artificial man. Distinction between the two. Analogy of layers of dirt. • We can only get back to natural man conceptually since we cannot forget society. Concedes that natural man probably never existed.

4. Carry out a “cleansing” of present day man. This will provide a standard from which we can judge our present situation. • Two traits prior to reason and society: self love and compassion from these all-natural rights and their rules are derived. Ground man’s obligation to self and others. • In original man these impulses were in harmony but in present society they are in opposition. • Distinction between natural and social inequality. Natural is physical. Social depends upon convention. Product of deliberate human choice. Privileges. • Central task of the discourse is to show that inequality is not right and cannot be supported by appeals to nature.

5. He must show that natural man is a compassionate/ gentle creature. • Natural inequalities are of no great significance. • Must identify the capacities that allow natural man to become social man and create social inequality. • Must show how men develop out of a state of nature. • Must identify the origin of social inequality. • How it turns men from compassionate to cruel creatures. • How this inequality is consented to and perpetuated. • The natural man lives in a starkly populated world, which gives sustenance to all. Characteristics: • Coarse and unrefined senses. • Fit and healthy. • Immediate self- preservation and satisfaction chief concerns. • No real passions or desires except for sustenance. • He only fears pain and hunger.

6. Not afraid of future death. • Solitary being. No language. • General ideas cannot be formed in the mind without language- savage not capable of abstract thought. • Since he is solitary he has no morality. But has natural goodness no virtue but has compassion • Against Hobbes, Rousseau argues that vanity, or Hobbes’s notion of wanting to be better than others occurs in society not in the natural state. Natural self-love does not exclude compassion. • Physical vs. moral aspects of love. Bare sexual desire the moral is what fixes this desire exclusively on one subject. Based upon societal norms. • Having nothing much to lose or gain there is no need for war. • What then allows man to develop out of this state? Two more faculties: Freedom and perfectibility. —Gives us history but also a capacity for corruption.

7. The first man who claimed a bit of ground as his own and was believed was the founder of civil society. • As the human race grows in numbers so do worries and cares. • Man discovered that some activities are easier in numbers—dear hunting. • Begin to learn skills. • Cooperation means men group together more and more- develop languages-beginning of society. Began making houses—private property. Beginning of enduring relationships. Adoption of roles. Become softer as they become more efficient.

8. Community made people compare. Notice distinguishing qualities—gave rise to ideas of beauty and merit. - Natural differences turn into moral differences. —Envy and resentment and self-love/ desire to be better than others. - Elementary civility and courtesy. • Less compassionate but satisfied. Meant to stay in this state. • Next—private property introduced discovery of agriculture and metallurgy. Iron and corn. Men laid claims on areas worked on. Some men cultivated more than others which led to inequality—subjugation and slavery • It became possible to deceive others, superiority

9. Inheritance and land growth. Man could acquire only at the expense of another. If poor, one could only gain by stealing from or working for the rich. Both groups were corrupted; socially produced feelings of jealousy and resentment smothered natural feelings of compassion. • This new state gave rise to a state of war. —Private property is the root of war. • The rich had the most to lose. Decided to harness forces against him suggested the joining together of a society to protect the weak. Restrain ambitious and protect private property. Invest powers to the sovereign. The poor accepted their chains. —Origin of civil society and law.

10. Societies at war with each other over territory and trade. —Organized warfare—the idea of killing as a duty—first effect of dividing men into different communities. • In every government the powers of the rich and the obligation of the poor grew conversion of strength into mastery and weakness into slavery. • Objection to Hobbes: force does not create right. • We cannot alienate our liberty. To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man. • Political authority and society must be based on a treaty or a compact. • The problem is to voluntarily assume bonds without losing our liberty.

11. The necessity for collective control and at the same time the necessity for individual freedom. • The individual gives over all his rights to the whole community. Everyone does this so the conditions are the same for all. We do not give up/ surrender our liberty but rather transfer it to an artificial body—the sovereign, the state. Made up of the people. Everyone is both a subject and a citizen. • The sovereign must be indivisible. • No independent master. No independent interest. • It is rational.

12. The myth of Prometheus. Fire representing arts/sciences. • We lose ourselves. The lie/mask becomes truth and reality. At this point one becomes incapable of morality. Internalized the façade. • The arts and sciences are the results of our corruption. Owing their birth to our vices. Useful arts/sciences born of greed, superstition and curiosity. Once born give rise to greater evils. • Relieve some of the need to work-gives rise to two vices: luxury and singularity. Luxury makes selfish and soft. This makes people easy to control.

13. Pursuit of singularity- need to show off appear better than others intellectual/aristocratic snobbery. Learning and expertise are not pursued for goodness but for recognition. • The wish for praise makes the artist conform to the fashion of the day and produce mediocre work. Lower his genius to the age. • Simple beliefs are looked down upon. The destruction of the simple values- religion/ patriotism. Offered instead in cynicism and skepticism. • We should not reject the arts and sciences totally. The useful arts and sciences are not evil in themselves. Pose no problem in the hands of worthy practitioners. Only great men should be trusted with them.

14. The arts and sciences are born from greed, superstition: “In fact, whether we leaf through the annals of the world or supplement uncertain chronicles with philosophical research, we will not find an origin for human learning which corresponds to the idea we like to create for it.  Astronomy was born from superstition, eloquence from ambition, hate, flattery, and lies, geometry from avarice, physics from a vain curiosity—everything, even morality itself, from human pride.  The sciences and the arts thus owe their birth to our vices; we would have fewer doubts about their advantages if they owed their birth to our virtues.”

15. Born of the vice of idleness, they perpetuate it: • “If our sciences are vain in the objects they set for themselves, they are even more dangerous in the effects they produce.  Born in idleness, they nourish it in their turn.  And the irreparable loss of time is the first damage they necessarily inflict on society.” • The arts and sciences do not produce anything of substance for society: • “So go back over the importance of what you have produced, and if the work of our most enlightened scholars and of our best citizens brings us so little of any use, tell us what we should think of that crowd of obscure writers and idle men of letters who are uselessly eating up the substance of the state.”

16. They undermine faith: • “Did I say idle?  Would to God they really were!  Our morality would be healthier and society more peaceful.  But these vain and futile declaimers move around in all directions armed with their fatal paradoxes, undermining the foundations of faith, and annihilating virtue.  They smile with disdain at those old words fatherland and religion and dedicate their talents and their philosophy to the destruction and degradation of everything which is sacred among men.” • It is fashionable to argue the held belief: “Not that they basically hate either virtue or our dogmas.  It's public opinion they are opposed to, and to bring them back to the foot of the altar, all one would have to do is make them live among atheists.  O this rage to make oneself stand out, what are you not capable of?”

17. Luxury: “To misuse one's time is a great evil.  But other even worse evils come with arts and letters.  Luxury is such an evil, born, like them, from the idleness and vanity of men.  Luxury rarely comes along without the arts and sciences, and they never develop without it.” • Man reduced to commodity: “Ancient politicians talked incessantly about morality and virtue; our politicians talk only about business and money.  One will tell you that in a particular country a man is worth the sum he could be sold for in Algiers; another, by following this calculation, will find countries where a man is worth nothing, and others where he is worth less than nothing.  They assess men like herds of livestock.  According to them, a man has no value to the State apart from what he consumes in it.”

18. “With money one has everything except morals and citizens.” • “What, then, is precisely the issue in this question of luxury?  To know which of the following is more important to empires: to be brilliant and momentary or virtuous and lasting.” • “ A taste for ostentation is rarely associated in the same souls with a taste for honesty.  No, it is not possible that minds degraded by a multitude of futile concerns would ever raise themselves to anything great.  Even when they had the strength for that, the courage would be missing.” • Art suffers: “Every artist wishes to be applauded.  The praises of his contemporaries are the most precious part of his reward.  What will he do to obtain that praise if he has the misfortune of being born among a people and in a time when learned men have come into fashion and have seen to it that frivolous young people set the tone, where men have sacrificed their taste to those who tyrannize over their liberty”

19. Luxury does away with morals: • “In this way, the dissolution of morals, a necessary consequence of luxury, brings with it, in its turn, the corruption of taste.” • The arts make men grow soft and weak: “While the commodities of life multiply, while the arts perfect themselves, and while luxury spreads, true courage grows enervated, and military virtues vanish—once again the work of the sciences and all those arts which are practiced in the shadows of the study.  When the Goths ravaged Greece, all the libraries were rescued from the flames only by the opinion spread by one of them that they should let their enemies have properties so suitable for turning them away from military exercise and for keeping them amused with sedentary and idle occupations.”

20. Man forgets how to cope with the elements: “e ancient republics of Greece, with that wisdom which shone out from most of their institutions, prohibited their citizens all tranquil and sedentary occupations which, by weakening and corrupting the body, quickly enervate vigor in the soul.  In fact, how can men whom the smallest need overwhelms and the least trouble repels look on hunger, thirst, exhaustion, dangers, and death?  With what courage will soldiers endure excessive work with which they are quite unfamiliar?  With what enthusiasm will they make forced marches under officers who do not have the strength to make the journey even on horseback?” • “It requires only a little sun or snow, only the lack of a few superfluities, to melt down and destroy in a few days the best of our armies.”

21. The wrong values emerge: “From where do all these abuses arise if it is not the fatal inequality introduced among men by distinctions among their talents and by the degradation of their virtues?  There you have the most obvious effect of all our studies, and the most dangerous of all their consequences.  We no longer ask if a man has integrity, but if he has talent, nor whether a book is useful but if it is well written.  The rewards for a witty man are enormous, while virtue remains without honor.  There are a thousand prizes for fine discourses, none for fine actions.” • Destroys citizens: “We have physicians, mathematicians, chemists, astronomers, poets, musicians, painters, but we no longer have citizens.  Or if we still have some scattered in our abandoned countryside, they are dying there in poverty and disgrace.  Such is the condition to which those who give us bread and who provide milk for our children are reduced, and those are the feelings we have for them.”

22. Breeds Mediocrity: “A man who all his life will be a bad versifier or a minor geometer could perhaps have become a great manufacturer of textiles.  Those whom nature destined to make her disciples have no need of teachers.  Bacon, Descartes, Newton—these tutors of the human race had no need of tutors themselves, and what guides could have led them to those places where their vast genius carried them?”