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Rousseau's Political Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Fred H. Willhoite Jr
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Extract

THE tendency among interpreters of Rousseau's political ideas has been to give, at most, cursory attention to the role played by religion in his thought. Although it is impossible to overlook the long penultimate chapter on civil religion in the Social Contract, analysts have generally viewed it as, at best, a Machiavelli-like attempt to provide emotional “cement” for the state or, at worst, as a lamentable and eccentric departure from Rousseau's main emphasis on the realization of freedom through democracy.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 27 , Issue 4 , October 1965 , pp. 501 - 515
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1965

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References

1 As, in a strikingly similar sense, did Karl Marx, as interpreted by Tucker, Robert C. in his profound and enlightening study, Philosophy and Myth in Karl Marx (Cambridge, 1961Google Scholar).

2 Discussed, with varying conclusions, in, for example, Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago, 1953), p. 255Google Scholar; Vaughan, C. E., The Political Writings of Jean Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge, 1915), II, 141–142Google Scholar; Watkins, Frederick, “Introduction” to Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Political Writings (New York, 1953), pp. xii–xiiiGoogle Scholar; Wilkins, Burleigh, “The Nature of Rousseau,” The Journal of Politics, XXI (11, 1959), 668–669Google Scholar; Cassirer, Ernst, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, tr. Gay, Peter (New York, 1954), passimGoogle Scholar.

3 The articles of this creed are set forth most fully in “The Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Priest,” in Emile, or Education, tr. Foxley, Barbara (New York, 1911), pp. 228–278Google Scholar. “In the Vicar's words [Rousseau] meant to utter the last syllables of [his faith]. … It is his whole creed.” Wright, Ernest Hunter, The Meaning of Rousseau (London, 1929), p. 126Google Scholar.

4 Emile, p. 270.

5 “Correspondence, lettre du 18 février,” in J. J. Rousseau: Lectures choisies, ed. Rocheblave, S. (Paris, [1891]), p. 347Google Scholar.

6 Emile, p. 249.

7 Ibid., p. 232.

8 Ibid., p. 236.

9 Ibid., p. 237.

10 Ibid., p. 239.

11 Ibid., p. 248.

12 Ibid., p. 240.

13 “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, tr. Cole, G. D. H. (New York, 1913), p. 182Google Scholar.

14 Ibid.

15 Ibid., p. 169.

16 Ibid., p. 170.

17 Emile, p. 243.

18 “Discourse on Inequality,” p. 222.

19 Ibid., p. 198.

20 Emile, p. 272.

21 Ibid., p. 249.

22 Ibid., p. 252.

23 “A Discourse on the Moral Effects of the Arts and Sciences,” in The Social Contract and Discourses, p. 142.

24 “… the love of good and the hatred of evil are as natural to us as our self-love.…” (Emile, p. 253.)

25 Ibid., p. 251.

26 The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, p. 115.

27 The Social Contract, tr. Watkins, Frederick, in Rousseau: Political Writings, p. 15Google Scholar.

28 Ibid., p. 16.

29 A. D. Lindsay distinguishes, correctly I think, three possible interpretations of Rousseau's general will — the combination of all particular wills, each individual's willing for the general good, and the will of something general, that is, the community will. (The Modern Democratic State [Oxford, 1943], pp. 130–133Google Scholar.) I am emphasizing this third interpretation, because it seems to me to explain most clearly the significance of the explicit characteristics of the general will as delineated by Rousseau. I am not claiming, however, to have provided the definitive interpretation of this central concept of his political thought; no matter how diligently one studies the idea of the general will, a significant residue of ambiguity remains. See also Arendt, Hannah, On Revolution (New York, 1963), pp. 71–73Google Scholar.

30 Social Contract, p. 19.

31 Ibid., p. 58.

32 Ibid., p. 118.

33 Ibid., p. 140.

34 Cassirer, , op. cit., p. 82Google Scholar.

35 Social Contract, p. 147.

36 “Discourse on Inequality,” p. 213.

37 Emile, p. 274.

38 Social Contract, p. 148.

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid.

41 Ibid., p. 149.

42 Ibid., p. 151.

43 Ibid., p. 152.

44 Ibid., p. 152.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid., p. 154.

48 Cobban, Alfred, Rousseau and the Modern State (London, 1934), p. 79Google Scholar.

49 See Maritain, Jacques, Three Reformers (New York, 1950), p. 100Google Scholar.