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Do You See What I See? The Education of the Reader in Rousseau's Emile

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 July 2012

John T. Scott
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Abstract

Rousseau first glimpsed the principle of the natural goodness of man in the so-called “Illumination of Vincennes,” and he made it his mission as an author to persuade his readers of the truth of that vision. Rousseau must persuade his readers that they are deceived by what they see before their own eyes and that they must learn to see anew—through his eyes. In order to educate his reader, Rousseau consistently uses rhetorical and literary techniques that are meant to change the reader's perspective. His use of these techniques is particularly pervasive in Emile. The present analysis examines Rousseau's education of the reader of his pedagogical treatise, especially through comparisons he draws between his imaginary pupil, Emile, and actual children that are meant to persuade the reader of the truth of what first appears to be imaginary and the falsity of what the reader previously believed was real.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , Summer 2012 , pp. 443 - 464
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2012

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References

1 Rousseau, J.-J., Confessions, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, ed. Masters, Roger D. et al. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990–), 5:294Google Scholar.

2 Rousseau to Guillaume-Chrétien de Lamoignon de Malesherbes, January 12, 1762, in Collected Writings, 5:575. For Rousseau's most important statements concerning the “natural goodness” of man, see Letter to Beaumont, in Collected Writings, 9:31; Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, in Collected Writings, 1:212–14. For an analysis of Rousseau's thought that focuses on this principle, see Melzer, Arthur M., The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990)Google Scholar.

3 See esp. Heidegger, Martin, The Essence of Truth, trans. Sadler, Ted (New York: Continuum, 2002)Google Scholar.

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6 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 91. For an excellent analysis of Rousseau's complex use of the image of the statue of Glaucus, see Velkley, Richard, Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 36–39Google Scholar.

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13 Rousseau, Emile, or On Education, ed. and trans. Bloom, Allan (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 33–34Google Scholar. Subsequent references to Emile will be parenthetical in the text.

14 For another interpretation of Emile that notes the device of comparing examples of other children to the exemplary case of Emile, see Mall, Laurence, Emile, ou les figures de la fiction (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2002)Google Scholar.

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16 Rousseau to Philibert Cramer, October 13, 1764, quoted in Harari, Josué V., “Therapeutic Pedagogy: Rousseau's Emile,” MLN 97, no. 4 (1982): 788CrossRefGoogle Scholar; my translation.

17 Specifically, Emile is introduced at p. 110 in the Collected Writings edition of the Favre version (Favre Manuscript of “Emile,” trans. Christopher Kelly, in Collected Writings, 13:1–154), which is equivalent to p. 180 in the Bloom translation of Emile.

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20 Rousseau, Favre Manuscript of “Emile,” in Collected Writings, 13:14–16. For other instances in the original version of comparing pupils or other similar devices, all of them rather incidental, see 37–38, 57, 94, 101.

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23 Close examination of the allegory reveals that it is not, in fact, what it seems to be. Two considerations immediately suggest the complexity, nay deceitfulness, of Rousseau's use of the allegory. First, he introduces Thetis dipping Achilles into the Styx immediately after complaining of mothers keeping their offspring away from threats to their mortality, a lesson exactly opposite to the allegory. Second, note that he sets off “according to the fable” as a kind of parenthetical set off by commas, suggesting that his own version of the story is different from the original. This line of interpretation would be supported by what he later in the work says about fables (112–16). For an extended analysis of the engravings for Emile, see John T. Scott, “Re-Presenting Achilles in Rousseau's Emile,” presented at UCLA Clark Memorial Library, October 4–5, 2002.

24 Seneca, De ira II.13.

25 Echoing Allan Bloom's apt characterization of Emile as “a Phenomenology of the Mind posing as Dr. Spock” (introduction to Emile, 3).

26 For Rousseau on pity, see Discourse on Inequality, 130–33; Essay on the Origin of Languages, in Collected Writings, 7:305–6; Emile, 221–23.

27 Fish, Surprised by Sin, 4.

28 Ibid., 14.

29 Iser, Implied Reader, 30.

30 Iser, Implied Reader, 29.

31 See especially the preface and the second preface (“Conversation about Novels”) in Julie, or the New Heloise, in Collected Writings, 6:3–22.

32 Elizabeth Rose Wingrove notices the difference between the two Sophies, although she offers a very different interpretation. See Rousseau's Republican Romance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000), 77–84Google Scholar.

33 It is interesting to note in this regard that the title Emile evokes the Latin aemulare, to imitate or emulate.

34 See Dewey, John, Democracy and Education: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Education (New York: Macmillan, 1916)Google Scholar.

35 Rousseau's reputation among philosophers nonetheless seems to be on the rise. In addition to Rawls's sustained attention to Rousseau in his Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy (cited above), see Cohen, Joshua, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Gauthier, David, Rousseau: The Sentiment of Existence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Neuhouser, Frederick, Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Sterne, Laurence, Tristram Shandy (London: Cochrane, 1832)Google Scholar, 1:98, quoted by Iser, Implied Reader, 31; see also Iser, 275.