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JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU AND THE FOUNDATIONS OF MODERN POLITICAL THOUGHT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 May 2015

MICHAEL SONENSCHER
MICHAEL SONENSCHER*
Affiliation:
King's College, Cambridge E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This essay is about the relationship between the moral and political thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the related concepts of autonomy, social science and industrialism. Its aim is to show why these three concepts throw more light both on Rousseau's theory of the relationship between democratic sovereignty and representative government, and on his explanation of the sharply counterintuitive historical trajectory followed by democracy in its passage from ancient to modern times.

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Articles
Information
Modern Intellectual History , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , August 2017 , pp. 311 - 337
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

Thanks to Duncan Kelly and his co-editors for their patience and guidance on correcting earlier versions of this article. Final responsibility for its content is, of course, mine.

References

1 On quite how counterintuitive it has been see Dunn, John, Setting the People Free: The Story of Democracy (London, 2005)Google Scholar; and Dunn, , Breaking Democracy's Spell (New Haven, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 On interpretations of Rousseau see, recently, Spector, Céline, Au prisme de Rousseau: Usages politiques contemporains (Oxford, SVEC 2011:08)Google Scholar; Salvat, Christophe, “Rousseau et la ‘Renaissance classique’ française (1898–1933),” Astérion, 12 (2014), 1–18 Google Scholar; and, on aesthetic politics, see Ankersmit, Frank, Aesthetic Politics: Political Philosophy beyond Fact and Value (Stanford, 1997)Google Scholar.

3 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men (1755), in Rousseau, Collected Writings, ed. Masters, Roger D., Kelly, Christopher, Scott, John T., Grace, Eve and Bloom, Allan, 13 vols. (Hanover, NH and London, 1990–2010), 3: 29–30 Google Scholar. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of Rousseau's texts will be taken from this edition because they are cross-referenced to the standard, five-volume, Pléiade edition of Rousseau's Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1959–95). Henceforth references to this edition will be abbreviated CW, followed, where required, by the volume, book, chapter and page numbers.

4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile (1762), Bk. IV, CW, 13: 490.

5 Ibid.

6 On the division of labour see Salvat, Christophe, “De Division of Labour à Division du Travail. Histoire d’une notion, d’un syntagme et de sa diffusion en France,” in Marchello-Nizia, Christiane, ed., Dictionnaire des usages socio-politiques (1770–1815) (Paris, 2003), 39–66 Google Scholar.

7 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Languages, chaps. 13–16, CW, 7: 319–27.

8 Strauss, Leo, The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis (Oxford, 1936), 161 n. 2Google Scholar.

9 For ways in to the subject see, classically, Skinner, Quentin, Visions of Politics, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 2002), particularly 1: 158–74Google Scholar; and Koselleck, Reinhart, The Practice of Conceptual History (Stanford, 2002)Google Scholar. More generally see Richter, Melvin, The History of Political and Social Concepts: A Critical Introduction (Oxford, 1995)Google Scholar; Monk, Iain Hampshire, Tilmans, Karin and van Vree, Frank, eds., History of Concepts: Comparative Perspectives (Amsterdam, 1998)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sebastián, Javier Fernández, ed., Political Concepts and Time: New Approaches to Conceptual History (Santander, 2011)Google Scholar.

10 See Dent, N. J. H. and O’Hagan, T.. “Rousseau on Amour-propre ,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplement, 72 (1998), 57–74 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Force, Pierre, Self-Interest before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neuhouser, Frederick, Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality and the Drive for Recognition (Oxford, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and his earlier articles: “Freedom, Dependence and the General Will,” Philosophical Review, 102 (1993), 363–95, and “Rousseau on the Relation between Reason and Self-Love,” International Yearbook of German Idealism, 1 (2003), 221–39.

11 Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London, 1983)Google Scholar. Rousseau's thought was not, of course, part of Anderson's brief.

12 See, for example, Pocock, J. G. A., The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, 1975)Google Scholar; Rahe, Paul A, Republics Ancient and Modern: Classical Republicanism and the American Revolution (Chapel Hill, 1992)Google Scholar; Pettit, Philip, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and Government (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; Skinner, Quentin, Liberty before Liberalism (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar.

13 Neuhouser, Frederick, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Origins of Autonomy,” Inquiry, 54 (2011), 478–93, at 478CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Neuhouser, “Rousseau and the Origins of Autonomy,” 481.

15 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Social Contract (1762), Bk I, chap. 6, CW, 4: 139.

16 Neuhouser, “Rousseau and the Origins of Autonomy,” 483 (italics in original).

17 Ibid., 488–9.

18 Ibid., 489.

19 Ibid., 491–2.

20 See Schneewind, J. B., The Invention of Autonomy: A History of Modern Moral Philosophy (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar. On Kant's usage see Larmore, Charles, “Kant and the Meanings of Autonomy,” International Yearbook of German Idealism, 9 (2011), 3–21 Google Scholar.

21 Rousseau, Social Contract, Bk I, chaps. 6–7, CW, 4: 139–40 (the italics are in the original). One of the few Rousseau scholars to have noticed this difference between Rousseau's idea of a social contract and earlier versions of the same idea is Bertram, Christopher, Rousseau and The Social Contract (London, Routledge, 2004), 76 Google Scholar.

22 On the concept see Riley, Patrick, The General Will before Rousseau (Princeton, 1986)Google Scholar; and, for a helpful reassessment of its origins, which brings the phrase in Jean Barbeyrac's early eighteenth-century French translation of Pufendorf more fully into the picture, see Bernardi, Bruno, La fabrique des concepts: Recherches sur l’invention conceptuelle chez Rousseau (Paris, 2006), 393–434 Google Scholar.

23 Rousseau, Social Contract, Bk III, chap. 17, CW, 4: 195–6.

24 On the identification, made particularly by Sieyès's political ally, Pierre-Louis Roederer, see Sonenscher, Michael, Before the Deluge: Public Debt, Inequality and the Intellectual Origins of the French Revolution (Princeton, 2007), 84, 91, 96Google Scholar.

25 For an earlier overview see Sonenscher, Michael, “The Moment of Social Science: The Décade philosophique and Late Eighteenth-Century French Thought,” Modern Intellectual History, 6 (2009), 121–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Sieyès, Emmanuel Joseph, What Is the Third Estate? (1789), in Sieyès, Political Writings, ed. Sonenscher, Michael (Indianapolis, 2003), 115–16Google Scholar (the italics in the first cited passage are in the original; I have modified my own translation of the second cited passage).

27 On the broader subject see Burns, J. H., “Majorities: An Exploration,” History of Political Thought, 24 (2003), 66–85 Google Scholar.

28 On these problems see Tuck, Richard, Free Riding (Cambridge, MA, 2008)Google Scholar.

29 Sandel, Michael J., “The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self,” Political Theory, 12 (1984), 81–96 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 On social science see Baker, Keith M., “The Early History of the Term ‘Social Science’,” Annals of Science, 20 (1964), 211–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Head, Brian W., “The Origins of ‘la science sociale’ in France, 1770–1800, Australian Journal of French Studies, 19 (1982), 115–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Staum, Martin S., Minerva's Message: Stabilizing the French Revolution (Montreal, 1996), 19–32 Google Scholar; Wokler, Robert, “Saint-Simon and the Passage from Political to Social Science,” in Pagden, Anthony, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1987), 325–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Wokler, , “Ideology and the Origins of Social Science,” in Goldie, Mark and Wokler, Robert, eds., The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge, 2006), 688–710 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 Rousseau, Social Contract, Bk IV, chap. 7, CW 4: 215.

32 Rousseau, Letter to d’Alembert, in CW, 10: 300–5.

33 On the origins of the Legion of Honour see Sonenscher, Before the Deluge, 15, 78–9, 81, 84, 86–7, 91, 96.

34 Rousseau, Social Contract, Bk. III, chap. 8, CW, 4: 182. Rousseau's eighteenth-century English translators sometimes rendered bonne politie as “civilization.”

35 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, An Expostulatory Letter from J. J. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva, to Christopher de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris (London, 1763), 51 Google Scholar. For the modern version see CW, 9: 28. All the passages cited in this and the following two paragraphs can be found in Rousseau, Letter to Beaumont, 51, 52–3; and CW, 9: 28–9. For helpful insights into this aspect of Rousseau's thought see Henrich, Dieter, Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World (Stanford, 1992), 12–16 Google Scholar.

36 Rousseau, Letter to Beaumont, 53, CW, 9: 29. I have used both the modern and the eighteenth-century English translations to capture Rousseau's sense.

37 On individualism see recently Piguet, Marie-France, “Débats politiques sur la liberté individuelle et raisons langagières dans l’émergence du mot individualisme ,” in Guilhaumou, Jacques, Fournel, Jean-Louis and Potier, Jean-Pierre, eds., Libertés et libéralismes: Formation et circulation des concepts (Lyon, 2012), 165–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

38 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, or on Education (1763), Bk. V, in CW, 13: 649.

39 Rousseau, Social Contract, Bk. III, chap. 8, CW, 4: 181.

40 On industrialism see Allix, Edgar, “Jean-Baptiste Say et les origines de l’industrialisme,” Revue d’économie politique, 24 (1911), 303–13; 341–63Google Scholar; and Allix, , “La rivalité entre la propriété foncière et la fortune immobilière sous la révolution,” Revue d’histoire économique et sociale, 6 (1913), 297–348 Google Scholar; James, Michael, “Pierre-Louis Roederer, Jean-Baptiste Say and the Concept of industrie ,” History of Political Economy, 9 (1977), 455–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Liggio, Leonard P., “Charles Dunoyer and French Classical Liberalism,” Journal of Libertarian Studies, 1 (1977), 153–78Google Scholar; Whatmore, Richard, Republicanism and the French Revolution: An Intellectual History of Jean-Baptiste Say's Political Economy (Oxford, 2000), 3–16, 125–9, 136–55Google Scholar; and the bibliography in Purš, Jaroslav, Průmyslová Revoluce: Vývoj pojmu a koncepce (Prague, 1973), 649–86Google Scholar. More generally see Bezanson, Anna, “The Early Use of the Term Industrial Revolution,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 36 (1922), 343–49CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Coleman, D. C., Myth, History and the Industrial Revolution (London, 1992), 1–42, esp. 3–18Google Scholar; and Schui, Florian, Early Debates about Industry: Voltaire and His Contemporaries (Basingstoke, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Ferdinand, baron d’Eckstein, Le Catholique, 1 (1826), 6–8, italics in original. For a more recent examination of the divisions within French liberalism see Jaume, Lucien, “The Unity, Diversity, and Paradoxes of French Liberalism,” in Geenens, Raf and Rosenblatt, Helena, eds., French Liberalism from Montesquieu to the Present Day (Cambridge, 2012), 36–54 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42 Le Catholique, 5 (1827), 233.

43 Ibid., 234.

44 Le Catholique, 5 (1827), 241: “l’ordre social achevé, tel que l’industrie lui sert de base.” For the earlier citation see ibid., 236. For a helpful discussion of this aspect of Fichte's thought see Nakhimovsky, Isaac, The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, A Letter from M. Rousseau of Geneva to M. d’Alembert of Paris, Concerning the Effects of Theatrical Entertainments on the Manners of Mankind (London, 1759), 123–4Google Scholar. For the modern version see Rousseau, CW, 10: 319–20.

46 Rousseau, Letter, 123–4, CW, 10: 319–20. On Geneva in Rousseau's political thought see Rosenblatt, Helena, Rousseau and Geneva: from the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 1749–1762 (Cambridge, 1997)CrossRefGoogle Scholar and the earlier secondary literature referred to there.

47 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Lettres écrites de la montagne (1764), ed. Dufour, Alfred (Lausanne, 2007), 257 Google Scholar. I have used the translation given in Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Letters Written from the Mountains , published in The Miscellaneous Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 5 vols. (London, 1767), 4: 315–16Google Scholar. For the modern translation see CW, 9: 9th Letter, 292.

48 CW, 9: 8th Letter, 257.

49 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Considerations on the Government of Poland (1782), in Rousseau, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. Gourevitch, Victor (Cambridge, 1997), 193, CW, 11: 183–4Google Scholar.

50 Rousseau, Considerations, 238, CW, 11: 222.

51 Rousseau, Considerations, 239–42, CW, 11: 223–25

52 Rousseau, Considerations, 248, CW, 11: 230.

53 Rousseau, Considerations, 251, CW, 11: 233.

54 For a recent way into the subjects of sex and love in Rousseau's thought see Guichet, Jean-Luc, La question sexuelle: Interrogations de la sexualité dans la pensée de Rousseau (Paris, 2012)Google Scholar. For initial guidance on perfectibilité see Gouhier, Henri, “La perfectibilité selon J.-J. Rousseau,” Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 110 (1978), 321–39Google Scholar. On identification see Force, Self-Interest before Adam Smith, 25–7. On enthousiasme see Klein, Lawrence E. and La Vopa, Anthony J., eds., Enthusiasm and Enlightenment in Europe, 1650–1850 (San Marino, CA, 1998)Google Scholar; and on opinion publique see Ganochaud, Colette, L’opinion publique chez Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Lille, 1980)Google Scholar.

55 Rousseau, Emile, CW, 13: 570–71.

56 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761), CW, 2: 15–16.

57 Rousseau, Emile, CW, 13: 533.

58 Rousseau, Letter to d’Alembert, CW, 10: 313.

59 Rousseau, Letter to d’Alembert, CW, 10: 315.

60 Rousseau, Emile, CW, 13, 490.

61 Dunoyer, Charles, “Esquisse historique des doctrines auxquelles on a donné le nom d’Industrialisme, c’est-à-dire, des doctrines qui fondent la société sur l’industrie ,” Revue encyclopédique, 33 (1827), 370–71Google Scholar. The passage from Constant cited by Dunoyer can be found in Constant, Benjamin, Political Writings, ed. Fontana, Biancamaria (Cambridge, 1988), 54 Google Scholar.

62 For an initial indication of the points that, in their different ways, Eckstein and Dunoyer sought to make see Rosenblatt, Helena, “Re-evaluating Benjamin Constant's Liberalism: Industrialism, Saint-Simonianism and the Restoration Years,” History of European Ideas, 30 (2004), 23–37 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

63 Rousseau used the phrase on several occasions; for one example see his “Preface for a Second Letter to Bordes,” in Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. Gourevitch, Victor (Cambridge, 1997), 108 Google Scholar.

64 Constant to Barante, 25 Feb. 1808, in Constant, Benjamin, Oeuvres complètes: Correspondance générale, ed. Courtney, Cecil, Delbouille, Paul, Wood, Dennis and Tooke, Adrianne, 9 vols. to date (Tübingen, Max Niemeyer, 1993–), 7: 65 Google Scholar.

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66 Constant, “Réflexions,” 15–16, 136. On his and Hugo's use of the term see Kapor, Vladimir, “ Couleur locale: A Pictorial Term Gone Astray?”, Word and Image, 25 (2009), 22–32 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

67 On these resources see, helpfully, Young, Julian, The Philosophy of Tragedy: From Plato to Žižek (Cambridge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Billings, Joshua, Genealogy of the Tragic: Greek Tragedy and German Philosophy (Princeton, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Rousseau and German thought see recently James, David, Rousseau and German Idealism: Freedom, Dependence and Necessity (Cambridge, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.