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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 April 2020
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is well known for his love of the ancients. His use of examples from Sparta and republican Rome emphasized what he found lacking in modern times. This article attempts to establish how Rousseau's views on the ancients are related to his religious-political thought, particularly as it relates to his description of citizen religion in the last chapter of the Social Contract. While Rousseau admired many aspects of citizen religion, he rejects it for two reasons: reasons of humanity in the Geneva Manuscript and reasons of self-interest in the Social Contract. This article attempts to understand how the two can be reconciled through the view of citizen religion's contribution to patriotism and fanaticism.
For their helpful comments, I thank Matthew D. Mendham, Thomas G. West, Bruno Cortes, and three anonymous reviewers. For their generous support, I thank Hillsdale College and the Donald Rumsfeld Foundation.
1 References to Rousseau are, first, to section numbers and pages in the English translation, then to the French edition. The English translations used are those of Gourevitch, Victor, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, hereafter EPW; Gourevitch, Victor, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997)Google Scholar, hereafter LPW; and Masters, Roger and Kelly, Christopher, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, 12 vols. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990–2006)Google Scholar, hereafter CW. The French edition is Œuvres complètes, 5 vols., ed. Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (Paris: Gallimard, 1959–1995). For frequently cited works, E = Emile, or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979) / OC 4; DSA = Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, or First Discourse, in EPW / OC 3; DOI = Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality among Men, or Second Discourse, in EPW / OC 3; Mountain = Letters Written from the Mountain, in CW 9 / OC 3; Poland = Considerations on the Government of Poland, in LPW / OC 3; SC = Of the Social Contract, in LPW / OC 3; GM = Geneva Manuscript, in CW 4 / OC 3; Beaumont = Letter to Beaumont, in CW 9 / OC 4; PF = Political Fragments, in CW 4 / OC 3); DPE = Discourse on Political Economy, in LPW / OC 3; LA = Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theatre, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1960) / OC 5; Reveries = Reveries of a Solitary Walker, trans. Russell Goulbourne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) / OC 1; SW = State of War, in LPW / OC 3; Heroic Virtue = Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero, in CW 4 / OC 2; FR = “Allegorical Fragment on Revelation,” in CW 4 / OC 4.
2 SC IV.8, 146/464. The religion of the citizen should be distinguished from the civil religion presented at the end of the Social Contract, the civil profession of faith. The former describes a religion that superintends completely both religion and the laws; the latter, which is still in service to the state, allows for more religious freedom (SC IV.8 150/467–68). While Rousseau's analysis of the religion of the citizen does have consequences for how we can understand the civil profession of faith, which are touched on briefly in the conclusion, this article's primary focus is the religion of the citizen.
3 SC IV.8, 146/464. There is, of course, a third type of religion described in “On Civil Religion,” the religion of the priest which Rousseau describes as “so manifestly bad that it is a waste of time to amuse oneself demonstrating that it is” (SC IV.8, 147/464).
4 See Shklar, Judith, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985)Google Scholar, where she describes the Spartan and the Roman as citizens of Rousseau's “utopias,” rather than of a state modern man could achieve. “Sparta and Rome were, however, not merely private daydreams for Rousseau. They had social functions. Negatively they served as swords with which to smite contemporaries. Positively he drew from them an image of the perfectly socialized man, the citizen whose entire life is absorbed by his social role. In its turn, this picture of an integrated existence could not illuminate the distress of actual men, who had never known the patriotic life” (13).
5 SC IV.8, 147/464–65.
6 Ibid.
7 SC IV.8, 147/465.
8 The Geneva Manuscript is not simply a draft and was initially meant for publication, but Rousseau eventually decided the argument needed to be rewritten. See Bachofen, B., Bernardi, B., and Olivio, G., eds., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Du contract social, ou Essai sur la forme de la république (Manuscrit de Genève) (Paris: Vrin, 2012), 14–19Google Scholar.
9 GM III, 119/338.
10 The question of consistency is a serious one for Rousseau, who is frequently characterized as a paradoxical thinker. This article relies on arguments that have been made previously in defense of Rousseau's ultimate consistency. See Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), 254–55; Melzer, Arthur, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 5–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Masters, Roger D., “On Reading Rousseau,” Studies in Romanticism 10, no. 4 (1971): 247–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 DSA II, 18/19.
12 Poland II, 182/958.
13 When Rousseau encourages the “republican dances” at the end of Letter to d'Alembert, he writes that he has “never cited [Sparta] enough as the example that we ought to follow,” but that “whatever esteem I have for my fellow citizens, I know too well how far it is from them to the Lacedaemonians; and I propose for them only the Spartan institutions of which they are not yet incapable” (LA, 133–34/122).
14 DSA II, 22n/24n (emphasis added).
15 Political Fragments, 64–65/545–46. Of course, Rousseau adds that Spartan virtues horrify as well. What Rousseau criticizes in modernity is not that moderns condemn the ancients, but the basis of that condemnation. According to Rousseau, the moderns do not recoil from the ancients out of any real humanity, but out of cowardice. “As for you, modern peoples, you have no slaves, but you yourselves are slaves; you pay for their freedom with your own. Well you may boast of this preference; I find in it more cowardice than humanity” (SC III.15, 115/431).
16 O'Hagan, Timothy, Rousseau (London: Routledge, 1999), 221CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
17 Grimsley, Ronald, Rousseau and the Religious Quest (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 80Google Scholar.
18 Ward, Lee, “Civil Religion, Civic Republicanism, and Enlightenment in Rousseau,” in On Civil Republicanism: Ancient Lessons for Global Politics, ed. Kellow, Geoffrey and Leddy, Neven (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 264Google Scholar. See also Ward, Lee, Modern Democracy and the Theological-Political Problem in Spinoza, Rousseau, and Jefferson (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
19 Crocker, Lester, Rousseau's “Social Contract”: An Interpretive Essay (Cleveland: Case Western University Press, 1968), 182Google Scholar.
20 Rosenblatt, Helena, Rousseau and Geneva: From the First Discourse to the Social Contract, 1749–1762 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 261CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Rosenblatt, , “On the Intellectual Sources of Laïcité: Rousseau, Constant, and the Debates about a National Religion,” French Politics, Culture & Society 25, no. 3 (Winter 2007): 1–18CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Christopher Brooke, who argues Rousseau allows even more individual freedom towards religion than Locke, John, in “‘Locke en particulier les a traitées exactement dans les mêmes principes que moi’: Revisiting the Relationship between Locke and Rousseau,” in Locke's Political Liberty: Readings and Misreadings, ed. Miqueu, Christophe and Chamie, Mason (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2009), 69–82Google Scholar.
21 Zev Trachtenberg argues that while there are differences between the role of fanaticism in the Geneva Manuscript and the Social Contract, Rousseau ultimately shows his preference for the civic fanatic in Considerations on the Government of Poland (Trachtenberg, “Civic Fanaticism and the Dynamics of Pity,” in Rousseau and l'Infâme: Religion, Toleration, and Fanaticism in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Ourida Mostefai and John T. Scott (New York: Rodopi, 2009), 214.
22 GM III, 117/336.
23 SC II.7, 71/383. See also DOI II, 181/186.
24 SC II.7, 71/383.
25 Poland II, 181/958.
26 GM III, 117/336.
27 See SC IV.8, 150n/468n.
28 E IV, 314n/634n.
29 E IV, 282/589.
30 Mountain I, 148/705.
31 SC IV.8, 147/465.
32 Ibid.
33 SC II.7, 70–71/383.
34 SC II.7, 71/384.
35 Ibid. See also Christopher Kelly on Rousseau's legislator: “The multitude may well be the slave of its senses when the legislator finds it, but a reliance on miracles is too likely to leave it in this condition, that is, ready to be the dupe of the first impostor to appear with a talking bird. Talking birds are much more common than talking gods. The use of miracles is like the use of force in that only the most recent application is effective. The legislator requires a more enduring effect if he wishes to preserve his institutions” (Kelly, Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One's Life to Truth [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003], 65).
36 SC II.7, 71–72/384. See also Marks, Jonathan D., “Rousseau's Use of the Jewish Example,” in Review of Politics 72, no. 3 (Summer 2010): 463–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
37 DPE, 22/262. To be clear Rousseau still considered this a significant accomplishment, but mainly in that the Romans were able to last so long without public education. Rousseau marvels that “[it] is most remarkable that the Romans were able to do without it; but Rome was for five hundred years a continual miracle which the world should not hope to see again. The Romans’ virtue, born of the horror of tyranny and the crimes of tyrants, and by the innate love of the fatherland, turned all their homes into so many schools of citizens” (ibid.).
38 SC IV.8, 143–44/461.
39 SC II.11, 79/393.
40 SC IV.4, 132/449.
41 SC IV.4, 136/453.
42 In most references to superstition, Rousseau discusses it in a Christian context. It seems it is an error that goes along with religion whether pagan or Christian.
43 E II, 134/382.
44 See Plutarch, , “Superstition,” in Moralia, trans. Babbitt, Frank Cole (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956), 2:165–66Google Scholar. See also Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, ed. Curley, Edwin (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994), 64Google Scholar.
45 Mountain I, 140/695.
46 Ibid., 140–41/695.
47 See also Bayle, Pierre, Various Thoughts on the Occasion of a Comet, trans. Bartlett, Robert C. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000), 101Google Scholar. Bayle disputes the argument that superstition is in the interest of tyrants.
48 Mountain I, 140/695.
49 Ibid.
50 See SC I.6, 49–50/360.
51 Poland II, 180/956.
52 Poland III, 185/965.
53 SC IV.8, 146/464.
54 Poland III, 185–86/962.
55 Poland II, 181/958.
56 SC IV.8, 147/465.
57 Meier, Heinrich, Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion, trans. Berman, Robert (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017), 175CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 Ibid., 175n115.
59 SC IV.8, 143/460–61. Rousseau offers an unflattering view of ancient gods in his Moral Letters: “Ancient Paganism engendered abominable Gods that one would have punished here below as scoundrels and who offered as the picture of the supreme happiness only heinous crimes to commit and passions to satisfy. But vice, cloaked in sacred authority, descended in vain from the eternal abode; nature repulsed it from the heart of humans. One celebrated Jupiter's debauchery but one admired Xenocrates’ temperance, the chaste Lucretia worshipped the lewd Venus, the intrepid Roman made sacrifices to fear, the great Cato was esteemed more just than providence; the immortal voice of virtue, stronger than that of the gods themselves, made itself respected on earth, and seemed to relegate crime to Heaven along with the guilty ones” (195/1107–8).
60 Meier, Political Philosophy and the Challenge of Revealed Religion, 176n116. Rousseau refers to the Hebrews who “did … regard as naught the Gods of the Canaanites, proscribed peoples, doomed to destruction, and whose stronghold they were to occupy” (SC, IV.8, 143/461). Rousseau does write in Beaumont, “The Jews were born enemies of all other Peoples, and they began their establishment by destroying seven nations according to the express order they had received to do so,” but this characteristic does not seem to apply to the Jews alone. He writes, “I neither say nor think there is no good Religion on earth. But I do say, and it is only too true, that there is none among those that are or have been dominant that has not cruelly wounded humanity. All parties have tormented their brothers, all have offered to God sacrifices of human blood” (54–55/970).
61 Beiner, Ronald, Civil Religion: A Dialogue in the History of Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) 74–75.Google Scholar
62 Beiner later writes, “Pre-Christian theocracy is, in its pagan versions, war mongering and bloodthirsty, and in its Jewish version, intolerant and imperialistic,” granting that pagan religions were not so “benign.” However, this still does not necessarily mean that the outcomes of pagan “toleration” were much different in consequence from Jewish imperialism.
63 GM III, 119/338.
64 SC IV.8, 143–44/461.
65 SC IV.8, 144/461–62.
66 SW, 172/1901–2.
67 Rousseau's criticism of citizen religion in the Social Contract is not the only place where he suggests that the ancients could be prone to excessive violence. See also E IV, 313n/634n. He praises the humanity of Christianity, compared with ancient religion, for having “made these governments less sanguinary themselves. This is proved by actually comparing them to ancient governments.”
68 SC IV.8, 146/466.
69 E I, 39/248–49.
70 Ibid.
71 Poland III, 184/960.
72 See Poland III, 185/962: “These practices, even if they are indifferent, even if they are in some respects bad, provided they are not essentially so, will still have the advantage of making the Poles fond of their country and give them a natural revulsion to mingling with foreigners.” See also E I, 39/249: “The essential thing is to be good to the people with whom one lives. Abroad, the Spartan was ambitious, avaricious, iniquitous. But disinterestedness, equity, and concord reigned within his walls.”
73 Heroic Virtue, 8/1270–71. For an analysis of this work, see Kelly, Rousseau as Author, 82–115. He notes that “Rousseau did not submit the discourse, and it was first published (without his permission) in 1768. Even prior to this, however, he had planned to publish it in the definitive edition of his works” (83).
74 GM I.2, 81/287.
75 Ibid.
76 SC IV.8, 143/460.
77 FR, 170/1050.
78 DPE, 16/255.
79 GM III, 118/337.
80 Ibid., 119/338.
81 SC IV.8, 147/465.
82 For a more in-depth analysis of this tension see Matthew Mendham, “Cosmopolitanism versus Patriotism,” in The Rousseauian Mind, ed. Eve Grace and Christopher Kelly (London: Routledge, 2019), 319–30.
83 DOI II, 174/178–79.
84 SW, 166/601; DOI I, 152–54/154–58.
85 SW, 164/611. See SC II.11, 80/393, where Rousseau describes “nature” as ultimately “invincible.”
86 DOI II, 154/156; SW, 166/602.
87 DOI II, 174/178.
88 DSA II, 17/19.
89 E I, 39/249. Of course, in this same work, Emile tells Sophie he will always prefer the “rights of humanity” over her, showing that the tension between humanity and patriotic interest can be seen in the same work (V, 441/812–13).
90 E I, 39/249.
91 Mountain I, 149n/706n.
92 Ibid., 140/694–95.
93 Ibid.
94 DPE, 7/246. To be clear, this does not mean that Rousseau thinks there is a general will of all humanity; this is something he argues against in the Geneva Manuscript, directly against Diderot. See GM I.2, 78/283–84.
95 DPE, 7/246.
96 Ibid.
97 DPE, 8/246.
98 “Every general idea is purely intellectual; if the imagination is at all involved, the idea becomes particular. Try to outline the image of a tree in general to yourself, you will never succeed; in spite of yourself it will have to be seen as small or large, bare or leafy, light or dark, and if you could see in it only what there is in every tree, the image would no longer resemble a tree” (DOI I, 148/150). See also GM I.2, 80/286–87: “since the art of generalizing ideas in this way is one of the most difficult and belated exercises of human understanding, will the average man ever be capable of deriving his rules of conduct from this manner of reasoning?”
99 SC I.6, 49/360.
100 SC III.9, 105/420.
101 SC I. 4, 45/355–56.
102 See also SC III.9, 105n/420n: “A little agitation energizes souls, and what causes the species truly to prosper is not so much peace as freedom.”
103 Ibid. Rousseau cites history and Machiavelli in support of this argument: “When the bickerings of the Great caused turmoil in the Kingdom of France, and the cardinal Coadjutor attended Parliament with a dagger in his pocket, it did not keep the French people from living happy and numerous in honest and free well-being. Formerly Greece flourished amidst the most cruel wars; blood flowed freely, yet the entire country was full of men. It seemed, says Machiavelli, that our Republic grew all the more powerful for being in the midst of murders, proscriptions, civil wars; the virtue of its citizens, their morals their independence, did more to reinforce it, than all its dissensions had done to weaken it.” See Machiavelli, Discourses, 1.4–6, 16–23. For a differing view, see McKenzie, Lionel, “Rousseau's Debate with Machiavelli in the Social Contract,” Journal of the History of Ideas 43, no. 2 (1983): 209–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar. McKenzie argues that Rousseau rejects Machiavelli's argument about conflict (see 221–22).
104 SC IV.8, 144/461–62.
105 DPE, 28/268.
106 Ibid.
107 DPE, 28–29/268–69.
108 DPE, 35/275.
109 Ibid.
110 SC III.9, 105/420.
111 Poland XII, 233/1013.
112 SC II. 9, 75/388.
113 SW, 175/607: “Land, money, men, all the spoils one can appropriate, thus become the principal objects of mutual hostilities. As this base greed insensibly changes [men's] ideas of things, war finally degenerates into brigandage, and having begun as enemies and warriors, they gradually become tyrants and thieves.”
114 DPE, 28/268. See also DOI II, 174/179.
115 Trachtenberg, “Civic Fanaticism and the Dynamics of Pity,” 213–14.
116 See also Christopher Kelly, “Pious Cruelty: Rousseau on Voltaire's Mahomet,” in Mostefai and Scott, Rousseau and l'Infâme. Like Trachtenberg, Kelly argues that “when well directed [fanaticism] is the indispensable basis for genuine devotion to a community, just as it is destructive when it is not well directed” (184).
117 E IV, 312n/632n.
118 The Savoyard Vicar advises to stay away from both fanaticism and philosophy: “Proud philosophy leads to freethinking as blind devoutness leads to fanaticism. Avoid these extremes” (E IV, 313/633–34).
119 Voltaire, , “Fanaticism,” in Philosophical Dictionary, ed. Gay, Peter (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), 267Google Scholar.
120 Beaumont, 66/985.
121 Heroic Virtue, 10/1273.
122 Beaumont, 56/972.
123 Ibid.
124 Poland III, 183/960.
125 In French usage, zèle has been understood to denote true and false versions of zeal, which helps to explain why it is sometimes used synonymously with fanaticism. In its beneficial version, or “true zeal,” it is typically strongly religious in orientation, but also can be used in service of a person or cause. When I claim that Rousseau prefers zeal to fanaticism, I am arguing that he desires a true zeal. False zeal is usually associated with fanaticism. See Alain Rey, Dictionnaire historique de la langue française, s.v. “zèle.” This division between true and false zeal can also be seen in prominent Christian thinkers; see, e.g., Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica I-II, q. 28 art. 4.
126 Heroic Virtue, 7/1269.
127 Ibid. Rousseau also distinguishes between zeal and fanaticism in Mountain, when he describes the proselytes of the profession of faith of the Savoyard Vicar as having “zeal without fanaticism” (I, 142/697).
128 Poland XV, 258/1039. This difference between Rousseau and the ancients is striking. In the ancient world, treason was considered the worst crime. Here Rousseau only has it “punished” by renouncing his election. See Cochrane, Charles Norris, Christianity and Classical Culture: A Study of Thought and Action from Augustus to Augustine (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, 2003), 130Google Scholar.
129 Poland XV, 258/1039.
130 GM III, 119/338.
131 SC IV.8, 150/468.
132 Ibid., 150–51/468.
133 The scholarship is fairly divided on this question. For example, Beiner describes the civil profession of faith solution as a “paradox,” because it is not a return to the ancient republican citizenship Rousseau admires. See Civil Religion, 16. Hilail Gildin questions whether civil religion can exist alongside various other religions (Rousseau's “Social Contract”: The Design of the Argument [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983], 187). Others see Rousseau's solution as allowing for religious freedom and pluralism. See Rosenblatt, Rousseau and Geneva, 261: “Rousseau's argument in his chapter on civil religion was thus much more about laicizing the state than it was about coercing belief.” See also Christopher Bertram, “Toleration and Pluralism in Rousseau's Civil Religion,” in Mostefai and Scott, Rousseau and l'Infâme, 142: “Rousseau is prepared to accept religious pluralism as an unavoidable feature both of modern life and of a legitimate state. He implicitly concedes there that it is entirely normal, and in any case unalterable, for citizens to subscribe to rival and incompatible faiths, that there should be at least, Protestants and Catholics, Muslims and Jews.” I do not seek in this article to answer this question conclusively, but to provide an analysis of Rousseau on religion of the citizen, and of the place citizen religion occupies in his politico-religious thought.
134 GM III, 122/342.
135 SC I 41/351.