Contents
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, as a conductor of new social and political ideals, especially in his three main works: in the New Eloise, Emile and the Social Contract.
In «Letter to d’Alembert» Rousseau calls «Clarissa Garlo» the best of the novels. His «New Eloise» was written under the obvious influence of Richardson. Rousseau not only adopted a similar plot — the tragic fate of a heroine who perishes in the struggle between chastity and love or temptation — but also adopted the very style of a sensitive novel.
The New Eloise was an incredible success; they read it everywhere, shed tears over it, idolized its author.
The form of the novel is epistolary; it consists of 163 letters and an epilogue. At present, this form greatly detracts from the interest of reading, but readers of the XNUMXth century liked it, since letters provided the best occasion for endless reasoning and outpourings in the taste of that time. All this happened to Richardson.
Rousseau’s personality
The fate of Rousseau, which largely depended on his personal qualities, in turn throws light on his personality, temperament and tastes, reflected in his writings. The biographer has to note, first of all, the complete absence of correct teaching, which was made up late and somehow by reading.
Hume even denied Rousseau this, finding that he read little, saw little, and was deprived of any desire to see and observe. Rousseau did not escape the reproach of «amateurism» even in those subjects in which he specially studied — in botany and in music.
In everything that Rousseau touched, he is undoubtedly a brilliant stylist, but not a researcher of truth. Nervous mobility, which in old age turned into painful wandering, was due to Rousseau’s love for nature. He was cramped in the city; he longed for solitude, to give free rein to the dreams of his imagination and to heal the wounds of an easily offended pride. This child of nature did not get along with people and was especially alienated from «cultural» society.
Timid by nature and clumsy in the absence of upbringing, with a past that made him blush in the “salon” or declare the customs and concepts of his contemporaries “prejudices”, Rousseau at the same time knew his own worth, longed for fame as a writer and philosopher, and therefore at the same time and suffered in society and cursed him for these sufferings.
The break with society was all the more inevitable for him because, under the influence of deep, innate suspicion and quick-tempered pride, he easily broke with the closest people; the gap turned out to be irreparable due to the amazing «ungratefulness» of Rousseau, who was very vindictive, but inclined to forget the good deeds done to him.
The last two shortcomings of Rousseau to a large extent found their nourishment in the outstanding property of him as a man and a writer: in his imagination. Thanks to this beneficent fairy, he is not burdened by loneliness, for he is always surrounded by the cute creatures of his dreams: passing by an unfamiliar house, he senses a friend among its inhabitants; walking in the park, he expects a pleasant meeting.
The imagination is especially inflamed when the very situation in which Rousseau finds himself is unfavorable. “If I need to draw spring,” Rousseau wrote, “it is necessary that there be winter around me; if I want to draw a good landscape, then I need to have walls around me. If they put me in the Bastille, I will paint a great picture of freedom.” Fantasy reconciles Rousseau with reality, consoles him; it gives him stronger pleasures than the real world. With her help, this love-hungry man, who fell in love with every woman he knew, could live to the end with Teresa, despite constant quarrels with her.
But the same fairy torments him, disturbs him with fears of future or possible troubles, exaggerates all minor clashes and makes him see evil intent and insidious intention in them. She presents reality to him in the light that suits his momentary mood; today he praises a portrait painted from him in England, and after a quarrel with Hume, finds the portrait terrible, suspecting that Hume prompted the artist to present him as a disgusting cyclops. Instead of the hated reality, the imagination draws before him the ghostly world of the natural state and the image of a blissful man in the bosom of nature.
An egoist coming out of the ranks, Rousseau was distinguished by extraordinary vanity and pride. His opinions about his own talent, about the dignity of his writings, about his worldwide fame pale before his ability to admire his personality. “I am created differently,” he says, “than all the people I have seen, and not at all in their likeness.” Having created it, nature «destroyed the form in which it was cast.» And this egoist in love with himself became an eloquent preacher and an abundant source of love for man and for humanity!
The age of rationalism, that is, the dominance of reason, which replaced the age of theology, begins with Descartes’ formula: I think, therefore I am; in reflection, in the consciousness of oneself through thought, the philosopher saw the basis of life, the proof of its reality, its meaning. Rousseau begins the age of feeling: to exist, for us — is to feel, he exclaims: in feeling lies the essence and meaning of life. «I felt before I thought; such is the common destiny of mankind; I experienced it more than others».
Feeling not only precedes reason, it also prevails over it: “if reason is the main property of a person, feeling guides him …»
«If the first glimpse of reason blinds us and distorts objects before our eyes, then later, in the light of reason, they appear to us as nature showed them to us from the very beginning; so let’s be satisfied with the first feelings…» With the change in the meaning of life, the assessment of the world and man changes. The rationalist sees in the world and nature only the operation of rational laws, a great mechanism worthy of study; feeling teaches to admire nature, to admire it, to worship it.
The rationalist places the power of reason above all else in man, and favors those who possess this power; Rousseau proclaims that he is «the best person who feels better and stronger than others.»
The rationalist derives virtue from reason; Rousseau exclaims that he has attained moral perfection who is overcome by rapturous astonishment before virtue.
Rationalism sees the main goal of society in the development of reason, in its enlightenment; feeling seeks happiness, but soon becomes convinced that happiness is scarce and difficult to find.
The rationalist, reverent before the rational laws discovered by him, recognizes the world as the best of the worlds; Rousseau discovers suffering in the world. Suffering again, as in the Middle Ages, becomes the main note of human life. Suffering is the first lesson of life that a child learns; suffering is the content of the whole history of mankind. Such sensitivity to suffering, such painful responsiveness to it, is compassion. This word is the key to the power of Rousseau and its historical significance.
As the new Buddha, he made suffering and compassion a global issue and became a turning point in the movement of culture. Here even the abnormalities and weaknesses of his nature, the vicissitudes of his fate caused by him, acquire historical significance; suffering, he learned compassion. Compassion, in the eyes of Rousseau — a natural feeling inherent in human nature; it is so natural that even animals feel it.
In Rousseau, it, moreover, develops under the influence of another property that prevails in it — imagination; «The pity we feel for the suffering of others is measured not by the amount of that suffering, but by the feeling we attribute to those who suffer.» Compassion becomes for Rousseau the source of all noble impulses and all social virtues. “What is generosity, mercy, humanity, if not compassion applied to the guilty or to the human race in general?
Even the locationkindness) and friendship, in fact — the result of constant compassion, focused on a well-known subject; to wish someone not to suffer is not to wish him to be happy?” Rousseau spoke from experience: his affection for Teresa began with pity, which he was inspired by the jokes and ridicule of his cohabitants. Moderating selfishness, pity protects against bad deeds: «until a person resists the inner voice of pity, he will not harm anyone.»
According to his general view, Rousseau antagonizes pity with reason. Compassion not only «precedes reason» and all reflection, but the development of reason weakens compassion and can destroy it. “Compassion is based on the ability of a person to identify himself with a suffering person; but this ability, extremely strong in the state of nature, narrows as the ability to think develops in man and humanity enters a period of rational development (reasoning state). Reason breeds self-love, reflection strengthens it; it separates a person from everything that disturbs and upsets him. Philosophy isolates man; under her influence, he whispers, at the sight of a suffering person: perish, as you know — I’m safe. Feeling, elevated to the highest rule of life, estranged from reflection, becomes for Rousseau an object of self-worship, tenderness before oneself and degenerates into sensitivity — sentimentality. A person full of tender feelings, or a person with a «beautiful soul» (belle âme — beautiful soul) is elevated to the highest ethical and social type. Everything is forgiven him, nothing is exacted from him, he is better and higher than others, for «actions are nothing, it’s all about feelings, and in feelings he is great.»
That is why Rousseau’s personality and behavior are so full of contradictions: the best characterization of him, made by Shuke, consists of nothing but antitheses. «Timid and arrogant, timid and cynical, not easy to rise and hard to restrain, capable of impulses and quickly falling into apathy, challenging his age and flattering it, cursing his literary fame and at the same time only thinking about how to defend it and increase, seeking solitude and thirsting for world fame, fleeing from the attention paid to him and annoyed at his absence, disgracing the nobles and living in their society, glorifying the charm of an independent existence and never ceasing to enjoy hospitality, which is paid for by witty conversation, dreaming only of huts and dwelling in castles, having contacted a maid and falling in love only with high-society ladies, preaching the joys of family life and renouncing his father’s duty, caressing other people’s children and sending his own to an orphanage, ardently praising the heavenly feeling of friendship and not feeling it for anyone, easily self-giving and immediately retreating, at first expansive and cordial, then suspicious and angry — such is Rousseau.».
No less contradictions in opinions and in the public preaching of Rousseau. Recognizing the harmful influence of the sciences and arts, he sought in them spiritual rest and a source of glory. Acting as an accuser of the theatre, he wrote for it. After glorifying the «state of nature» and stigmatizing society and the state as based on deceit and violence, he proclaimed «social order a sacred right that serves as the basis for all others.» Constantly fighting against reason and reflection, he sought the foundations of a «regular» state in the most abstract rationalism. Standing up for freedom, he recognized the only free country of his time as not free. Giving the people unconditional supreme power, he declared pure democracy an impossible dream. Avoiding all violence and trembling at the thought of persecution, he hoisted the banner of the revolution in France. All this is partly explained by the fact that Rousseau was a great «stylist», that is, an artist of the pen. Ratouyu against the prejudices and vices of a cultural society, glorifying the primitive «simplicity», Rousseau remained the son of his artificial age.
In order to touch the «beautiful souls», a beautiful speech was needed, that is, pathos and recitation in the taste of the age. From here flowed Rousseau’s favorite technique — a paradox. The source of Rousseau’s paradoxes was a deeply disturbed feeling; but at the same time, this is also a well-calculated literary device for him.
Bork quotes, according to Hume, the following interesting admission of Rousseau: in order to impress and interest the public, an element of the miraculous is needed; but mythology has long lost its showiness; giants, magicians, fairies and heroes of novels, who appeared after the pagan gods, also no longer find faith; under such circumstances the modern writer has only to resort to paradox in order to achieve an impression. According to one of Rousseau’s critics, he started with a paradox to attract the crowd, he used it as a signal to announce the truth. Rousseau’s calculation was not wrong.
Thanks to the combination of passion with art, none of the writers of the XVIII century. did not have such influence on France and Europe as Rousseau. He transformed the minds and hearts of the people of his age to what he was, and even more to what he seemed.
For Germany, he became a bold sage from the first words (“world sage”), as Lessing called it: all the luminaries of the then flourishing literature and philosophy of Germany — Goethe and Schiller, Kant and Fichte — were under his direct influence. The tradition that arose then is still preserved there, and the phrase about “Rousseau’s boundless love for humanity” even went into encyclopedic dictionaries. Rousseau’s biographer is obliged to expose the whole truth — but for a cultural historian, a legend that has received creative power is also important.
Rousseau’s writings
Leaving aside specialized treatises on botany, music, languages, as well as Rousseau’s literary works — poems, comedies and letters, one can divide the rest of Rousseau’s writings into three groups (chronologically they follow one after another in this order):
1. convicting age,
2. instructions,
3. self-defense (this group was discussed above).
The denunciation of the age
The first group includes bothReasoning» Rousseau and his «Letter to d’Alembert on theatrical performances».
«Discourse on the influence of sciences and arts» aims to prove their harm. Although the theme itself is purely historical, Rousseau’s references to history are insignificant: gu.e.i Sparta defeated educated Athens; the stern Romans, after they began to study science under Augustus, were defeated by the Germanic barbarians.
Rousseau’s argument is predominantly rhetorical and consists of exclamations and questions. History and legal sciences corrupt man, unfolding before him the spectacle of human disasters, violence and crimes. Turning to the enlightened minds that have revealed to man the secrets of the world’s laws, Rousseau asks them whether it would be worse for humanity to live without them? Harmful in themselves, the sciences are also harmful because of the motives that induce people to indulge in them, for the main of these motives is vanity. The arts, moreover, require for their flourishing the development of luxury, which corrupts man. This is the main idea of the Reasoning.
However, in «reasoning«A technique is very noticeably manifested, which can be traced in other works of Rousseau and compared, in view of its musicality, with a change of mood in a musical play, where for allegro followed by an invariable andante.
Instructions
In the second part «Reasoning» Rousseau from a detractor of science becomes their lawyer. The most enlightened of the Romans, Cicero, saved Rome; Bacon was Chancellor of England. Too seldom do princes resort to the advice of scholars. As long as the power is in one hand, and enlightenment in another, scientists will not be distinguished by lofty thoughts, sovereigns by great deeds, and the peoples will remain in corruption and misery. But that’s not the only moral.»Reasoning».
Rousseau’s thought about the opposite of virtue and enlightenment and about the fact that not enlightenment, but virtue is the source of human bliss, cut even deeper into the minds of contemporaries. This thought is clothed in a prayer that Rousseau puts into the mouth of his descendants:O Almighty Lord, deliver us from the enlightenment of our fathers and bring us back to simplicity, innocence and poverty, the only blessings that condition our happiness and please You.«. The same idea resounds in the second part, through an apology for the sciences: without envying the geniuses who have become famous in science, Rousseau contrasts them with those who, not being able to speak eloquently, know how to do good.
More boldly Rousseau in the next «Reasoning about the origin of inequality between people«. If the first «Discourse», directed against the sciences and arts, which no one hated, was an academic idyll, then in the second Rousseau passionately touched on the topic of the day and in his speeches the revolutionary string of the century sounded for the first time.
Nowhere was there so much inequality, sanctified by custom and law, as in the then system of France, based on privileges; nowhere was there such displeasure against inequality as among the privileged themselves against the other privileged. The third estate, equal in education and wealth with the nobility, envied the nobles in general, the provincial nobility envied the courtier, the judicial nobility envied the military nobility, etc. Rousseau not only connected individual voices into a common choir: he gave the desire for equality a philosophical basis and poetically attractive shape.
Theorists of state law have long toyed with the idea of the state of nature in order to explain the origin of the state with its help; Rouss made this performance public and popular. The British have long been interested in savages: Defoe, in his «Robinson», created an eternally young, charming image of a cultured person, put face to face with virgin nature, and Mrs. Ben, in her novel «Urunoko», presented the savages of South America as the best of people. Already in 1721, Delisle brought out in a comedy the savage Harlequin, who arrived from somewhere in France and in his naivety mocked at her civilization.
Rousseau introduced the savage into the Parisian salons as an object of emotion; but at the same time he stirred up in the depths of the human heart his inherent sorrow for the lost paradise and for the vanished golden age, supported in every person by sweet memories of the days of childhood and youth.
In Rousseau’s first Discourse, historical data are very scarce; the second is not so much a reasoning as a historical tale. The starting scene of this tale is a picture of the life of primitive man. The colors for this painting are not borrowed from travels in Australia or South America, but from fantasy.
Voltaire’s well-known witticism that Rousseau’s description of the savages makes one want to walk on all fours, however, gives a wrong idea of primitive man, as Rousseau portrayed him. His task required him to prove that equality had existed from time immemorial — and the image corresponded to the task. His savages are hefty and self-sufficient males, living alone, «without care and work»; women, children, old people are not taken into account. All that savages need is provided by good mother nature; their equality is based on the denial of everything that can serve as a pretext for inequality. Rousseau’s primitive people are happy because, not knowing artificial needs, they lack nothing. They are blameless, because they do not experience passions and desires, do not need each other and do not interfere with each other. So, virtue and happiness are inextricably linked with equality and disappear with its disappearance.
This picture of primitive bliss is contrasted with modern society, full of senseless prejudices, vices and disasters. How did one come about from the other?
Out of this question developed Rousseau’s philosophy of history, which is the history of human progress turned inside out.
Philosophy of history according to Rousseau
The philosophy of history, that is, a meaningful synthesis of historical facts, became possible only with the help of people of progress and progressive development. Rousseau sees this progressive development and even considers it inevitable; he indicates its cause, which is the innate ability of man to improve (perfectibility); but since Rousseau laments the result of this improvement, he also laments the very cause of it. And he not only mourns her, but condemns her in the strongest way, in the notorious expression that “thinking is an unnatural state, a thinking person is a depraved animalis »(depraved animal).
In accordance with this, the history of mankind presents in Rousseau a series of stages of successive deviation from the natural blissful and immaculate state. Rousseau completely forgets that, in opposing Voltaire, he attacked pessimism and defended Providence and its manifestation in the world; there is no Providence for him in the destinies of mankind, and his philosophy of history is reduced to the most hopeless pessimism. The initial happy state of people only more strongly emphasizes the mournful history experienced by mankind. In this state, people lived independently of each other; everyone worked only for himself and did everything he needed; if they united, then temporarily, like a flock of ravens attracted by some common interest, for example, a freshly plowed field.
The first misfortune came when people deviated from the wise rule of living and working especially, when they entered the hostel and the division of labor began. The hostel leads to inequality and serves as the last justification; and since Rousseau votes for equality, he condemns the community.
Another fatal step of man was the establishment of landed property. «The first one who fenced off a piece of land, saying that this land canI”, in the eyes of Rousseau, is a deceiver who has brought countless troubles to humanity; the benefactor of people would be the one who at that fateful moment would have pulled out the stakes and exclaimed: “You are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to everyone, and the earth to no one.” The emergence of landed property led, according to Rousseau, to inequality between the rich and the poor (as if there were no such inequality between nomads); the rich, interested in preserving their property, began to persuade the poor to establish social order and laws.
The laws created by cunning have turned accidental violence into inviolable rights, become fetters for the poor, a means of new enrichment for the rich, and, in the interests of a few selfish ones, doomed the human race to eternal labor, servility and disaster. Since it was necessary for someone to supervise the execution of laws, people put the government over themselves; a new inequality appeared — the strong and the weak. Government was designed to serve as the security of liberty; but in fact the rulers began to be guided by arbitrariness and appropriated hereditary power. Then the last degree of inequality appeared — the difference between masters and slaves. «Having discovered and traced the forgotten paths that led man from the state of nature to the social”, Rousseau, in his opinion, showed, “how in the midst of every kind of philosophy, humanity, civility and sublimity of rules, we have only a deceptive and vain appearance, honor without virtue, reason without wisdom and pleasure without happiness«. Such is the rhetorical allegro the second «Reasoning»; andante this time followed not directly after him, but in an article on Political Economy and other writings.
In an article aboutpolitical economy«we read that»the right to property is the most sacred of all the rights of a citizen«, what «property is the true foundation of civil society”, and in a letter to Bonn, Rousseau says that he only wanted to point out to people the danger posed by too rapid movement towards progress and the disastrous aspects of the state that is identified with the improvement of mankind.
About theatrical performances
Both «manners» of Rousseau — stormy and prudent — follow one another in «Theatrical spectacles«. Rousseau was outraged by d’Alembert’s advice to the Genevans to start a theater: the old Huguenot spirit, hostile to spectacles, awakened in Rousseau, and he wanted to save his fatherland from imitating corrupted Paris and from Voltaire’s unpleasant influence.
Hardly any of the preachers of the first centuries of Christianity castigated with such vigor as Rousseau the corrupting influence of theatrical spectacles. The theater introduces vice and temptation into life by the fact that it puts them on display; he is completely powerless when, with a satire of vice or an image of the tragic fate of a villain, he wants to come to the aid of a virtue that he has offended. In this part of the epistle, Rousseau’s pathos is full of content and breathes with sincerity. Following this, however, he recognizes the theater as necessary to amuse the people and distract them from disasters; embodying vice in immortal types, the theater has an educational value; it is inconsistent to glorify writers and despise those who perform their works.
Rousseau was the first to think about the need for popular festivals and amusements; under his influence, the first, unsuccessful and artificial attempts in this direction were made in the era of the revolution.