Instinct and Intimacy: Political Philosophy and Autobiography in Rousseau 9781442676213

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations to Rousseau’s Works
1. The Modern Self in Rousseau
2. Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche
3. Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society
4. Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations
5. Independence and the General Will
6. Compassion, Innocence, and the State
7. Private and Public Realms
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

I N S T I N C T AND INTIMACY

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MARGARET OGRODNICK

Instinct and Intimacy: Political Philosophy and Autobiography in Rousseau

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London

www.utppublishing.com © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 1999 Toronto Buffalo London Printed in Canada ISBN O-80200612-4

Printed on acid-free paper

Canadian Cataloguing in Publication Data

Ogrodnick, Margaret, 1956Instinct and intimacy : political philosophy and autobiography in Rousseau Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8020-0612-4

1. Rousseavi, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 - Contributions in political science. 2. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778 Psychology. 3. Autobiography. I. Title. JC179.R9037 1999

320'.092

C99-930205-1

This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council to its publishing program.

To the memory of my mother, Katherine, and to my father, Nicholas

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS IX ABBREVIATIONS TO ROUSSEAU's WORKS

1 The Modern Self in Rousseau

XI

3

2 Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 3 Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society

47

4 Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 5 Independence and the General Will 6 Compassion, Innocence, and the State 7 Private and Public Realms

NOTES

195

BIBLIOGRAPHY 217INDEX

INDEX

227

162

21

113 130

85

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Acknowledgments

For their helpful comments and encouragement at various stages in my creation of this book, I am grateful to Asher Horowitz, Steve Newman, David Shugarman, the late Christian Bay, Alkis Kontos, Shadia Drury, and John Bender. I would like to thank anonymous reviewers for the University of Toronto Press and the Humanities and Social Sciences Federation of Canada for critical remarks. I have appreciated working with Virgil Duff, my editor at the University of Toronto Press. For their skill in copyediting, I have reason to thank Terry Teskey and John St James. The debt I owe my parents is acknowledged in my dedicating my book to them. My mother died before my book came out, but no one understood more than she what I put into it. I also want to thank my lifelong friends, my brothers Don and Rob, for their support in the years I worked on this project.

Abbreviations to Rousseau's Works

A Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. dAlembert on the Theatre AA Abstract of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace C The Confessions D Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues DAS A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences DI A Discourse on the Origin of Inequality DPE Discourse on Political Economy E Emile GP The Government of Poland LAP An Expostulary Letter to the Archbishop of Paris from J.J. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva to Christopher de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris LWM Letters Written from the Mountains N Narcissus; or the Self-Admirer; A Comedy NH La Nouvelle Heloise OC Oeuvres completes, vols. 1-3 OL Essay on the Origin of Language R The Reveries of the Solitary Walker SC The Social Contract SL Citizen of Geneva: Selections from the Letters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

INSTINCT AND INTIMACY

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1 The Modern Self in Rousseau

The personality of Jean-Jacques Rousseau infuses his philosophy. This is a recurring observation already seen in the declaration of one of his contemporaries that his 'soul is imprinted on every page."1 His recent commentator, Jean Starobinski, remarks: 'Rightly or wrongly, Rousseau was unwilling to separate his thought from his person, his theories from his personal destiny.'2 Rousseau's philosophical works subtly elicit a feeling of familiarity with their author. As Hannah Arendt notes, he 'is the only great author still frequently cited by his first name alone.'3 Rousseau condones this familiarity, claiming that his person and the character of his books are inseparable; both author and works can be studied, for each sheds light on the other (D 211). His personal sentiments and ethics, then, almost seem to penetrate even' philosophical line. This inquiry proceeds from my conviction that a systematic study of his psyche and life, as revealed in his autobiographies, can assist in illuminating his political thought. Whatever the sense of Rousseau's personal presence in his philosophical writings, his autobiographies, as an apparent turn away from the political, may seem disconnected from his philosophy. Between the philosophical and autobiographical works, however, there is a unifying concept in his expression of the modern self. Convinced that his psychological analysis of humanity is the primary determinant of his moral and political thought, in understanding that thought I draw upon the added revelation of the modern self in his autobiographies. This chapter identifies the features of the modern self in Rousseau as a prelude to outlining how I attend especially to its psychoanalytical and private dimensions in tracing out the correspondence between his autobiographical and philosophical works. The Rousseau yielded by this analysis is characterized by a strong associational and democratic engagement.

4 Instinct and Intimacy 1 Rousseau and the Modern Identity

Through the history of political thought an evolution in the conception of the self can be discerned. Beginning with classical antiquity, Charles Taylor most extensively and systematically traces this evolution in his philosophical epic, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.4

Through the medium not of philosophy but of autobiography, Karl Joachim Weintraub also traces the history of the self in The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography.5 Through both philo-

sophical and autobiographical expression, Rousseau establishes his place as a key inaugurator of the modern self. In his historical exegesis of the modern identity, Taylor recognizes both the political and personal sides of Rousseau's innovation: 'Rousseau is at the origin point of a great deal of contemporary culture, of the philosophies of self-exploration, as well as of the creeds which make self-determining freedom the key to virtue. He is the starting point of a transformation in modern culture towards a deeper inwardness and a radical autonomy. The strands all lead from him.'6 Drawing upon both his autobiographical and philosophical works, we can identify the following features of the modern self in Rousseau: hidden inner depth, self-creation, uniqueness, authenticity, the affirmation of intimate life, self-determining freedom, and moral inwardness. The main contours of his political philosophy can be adumbrated through these categories of the modern self. (1) Hidden Inner Depth: The preface to the Discourse on the Origin of

Inequality begins with the inscription of the Temple of Delphi, 'Know thyself (DI 43). Despite this Socratic injunction, the self that must be known eludes understanding through the unambiguously discernible dichotomy between reason and the passions in the Platonic soul. For Rousseau the primary psychological datum is a less accessible selfdivision, the split between a repressed primordial residue and the civilized personality that overlays it. Self-knowledge is just as important to the philosophical quest for Rousseau as for Socrates, but in Rousseau's configuration the Delphic inscription requires us to search within for our hidden primitive constitution. In being a depth-psychological thinker, Rousseau distinguishes himself from his philosophical predecessors even in social contract theory. In their hypothetical states of nature Hobbes and Locke assume civilized individuals. Humanity is characterized by the same qualities both in and out of the natural condition; all that has changed is the absence or pres-

The Modern Self in Rousseau

5

ence of government. In direct criticism of Hobbes in the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau does not transport civilized persons into his state of nature (DI 71-2). He hypothesizes a savage who is distinguished from the civilized individual in unreflectively obeying instinctual impulse. The two instincts he postulates are amour de soi and compassion: by the former the individual is led to care for him- or herself, and by the latter he or she is prompted to feel distressed by the suffering of other sentient beings (DI 47, 73). Rousseau argues that these instincts have been suppressed in civilized humanity but still exist in the hidden depth of our being. Modern psychoanalysis hypothesizes a universal instinctual repression as well as the particularities of individual repression. Consistently, Rousseau also concerns himself in his autobiographies with uncovering the secret nature of his personal motives, character, and behaviour. Such a sense of personal inscrutability does not trouble the classical philosophers, who instruct rational mastery over self-evident passions. While Hobbes demotes reason to an instrument of the passions, the individual is still self-transparent; one is fully disclosed by the desires and aversions one consciously seeks to attain and avoid. Glimpsing a psychoanalytical dimension, Rousseau experiences self-knowledge as problematic; his autobiographies represent an unprecedented attempt to painstakingly retrieve and reveal the hidden self. He apprehends self-understanding as a travail to accommodate contradictory character traits and actions inconsistent with what he believes of himself. (2) Self-Creation: In the context of the hidden inner depth that leaves us as something of a puzzle to ourselves, the individual must construct a coherent self. While Rousseau claims to display a portrait true to nature inTheConfessions,hisautobiographiesarereallyachronicleofhisstrug-gletodecipherthisnature.Theybecomeretrospectiveexercisesin

gle to decipher this nature. They become retrospective exercises in self-

construction as he strives to create a unitary self out of the contradictions he sees in himself. Thus, as Nietzsche observes, in modernity the individual becomes both creator and creation: 'First, peoples were creators; and only in later times, individuals. Verily, the individual himself is still the most recent creation.'7 This modern self-constructed identity contrasts with antiquity's conception of the individual as the embodiment of a cosmological order. Werner Jaeger characterizes the classical view: '[T]he Greek spirit, trained to think of the external cosmos as governed by fixed laws, searches for the inner laws that govern the soul, and at last discovers an objective view of the internal cosmos.'8 For Taylor a crucial demarcation between the classical and modern self is this axis of an internalized cosmic order versus a self-created order: the individual in antiquity was

6 Instinct and Intimacy defined in relation to a cosmic order, whereas the modern individual turns inward to impart some order or meaning to his or her life. Establishing this order includes determining one's own self-identity, for the assumption behind modern self-exploration is that we are not already certain of who we are.9 Taylor understands the modern literary genre of autobiography as a manifestation of the quest to construct an identity. For this mode of life narration assumes that identity is not transparent or given, but must be established. He recognizes Rousseau's Confessions as one of the first great works in this genre.10 Rousseau's three autobiographies are a record of his struggle to create a coherent self. More than a tale of outer events, his memoirs are a chronicle of his thoughts and feelings. This introspective turn to retrieve the hidden, elusive self reflects the metamorphosis in literature that Michel Foucault describes, from 'the heroic or marvelous narration of "trials" of bravery or sainthood, to a literature ordered according to the infinite task of extracting from the depths of oneself... a truth which the very form of the confession holds out like a shimmering mirage."1 Weintraub corroborates this observation in his historical exegesis of autobiography. He notes the absence in classical antiquity of the self-searching quest that is characteristic of modern autobiography. Some ancients recorded their performance of great deeds, their witnessing of memorable public events, or their conformity to the admired typical model of philosopher. But none was driven by the modern quandary of self-identity and the concomitant compulsion to create a self. This search for the ineffable self fully emerged only in the eighteenth century, and the concept of self-creation is reflectively a stock-in-trade of literary criticism on autobiography from that time onward.12 (3) Uniqueness: Set in the context of the Discourse on Inequality, the Del-

phic injunction commands the internal search for a universal instinctual nature. However, there is also in Rousseau the imperative to reveal the self in its unrepeatable difference. The self represented in autobiography is thoroughly unique. Rousseau announces on the first page of his Confessions that nature broke the mould in making him, that he is 'like no one in the whole world' (C 17). In his second autobiography, Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, he asserts that since he is like no other, he 'requires a separate analysis, made uniquely for him' (D 88). The modern notion of the self as unique contrasts with the ancient, in which the object of selfexamination was to reveal one universal human nature. Taylor distinguishes the two views as follows: 'We seek self-knowledge, but this can no longer mean just impersonal lore about human nature, as it could for

The Modern Self in Rousseau

7

Plato. Each of us has to discover his or her own form. We are not looking for the universal nature; we each look for our own being ... There is a 3 question about ourselves - which we roughly gesture at with the term "identity" - which cannot be sufficiently answered with any general doctrine of human nature.15 Taylor sees the simultaneous mordern quest for the universal and the particular in our nature as an enduring tension in modern individuality.'4 In Rousseau this tension is most poignant in his claim to be the natural human in the Dialogues. He bases the credibility of his depiction of humanity's primitive constitution - the universal psychological substratum of our being - on his own capacity to find this primordial model in his heart. He cannot claim this universal constitution, however, without simultaneously advancing his singularity in retrieving it. If others follow in seeking out this original nature in themselves, it is only by his unpr dented example. Thus, he cannot resist the modern impulse to assert his singularity even in claiming a universal disposition: 'In short, a man had to portray himself to show us primitive man like this, and if the Author hadn't been as unique as his books, he would never have written them (D214). (4) Authenticity: The presumption of singularity naturally combines with the imperative to be authentic or true to one's own particular nature. Rousseau is acknowledged as an originating theorist of authenticity.15 The classical philosophers equated human excellence with the attainment of universal virtues, but Rousseau found a new measure of character in fidelity to individual uniqueness. His first philosophical publication, the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, initiates this new standard of personality to criticize the refined civilizations of both classical antiquity and our own age (DAS 5, 6). He observes how the art of pleasing others has moulded manners and behaviour into a deceptive conformity, submerging people's true dispositions and promptings: Before art had moulded our behaviour, and taught our passions to speak an artificial language, our morals were rude but natural, and the different ways in which we behaved proclaimed at the first glance the differences of our dispositions ... In our day, now that more subtle study and a more refined taste have reduced the art of pleasing to a system, there prevails in modern manners a servile and deceptive conformity; so that one would think every mind cast in the same mould. Politeness requires this thing; decorum that; ceremony has its forms, and fashion its laws, and these we must always follow, never the promptings of our own nature. (DAS 6)

8 Instinct and Intimacy Thus, by the imperative to be faithful to one's own disposition and inclinations, Rousseau condemns the uniformity of people in society. This personal command for authenticity is required not only in interpersonal relations but also in writing. In the preface to his comedy Narcissus, Rousseau expresses disappointment at the disjunction between the characters of authors and what appears in their books (N 128). In contrast, he steadfastly proclaims the continuity between his own person and his works. The Dialogues record a conversation between Rousseau and an imaginary Frenchman, in which Rousseau examines and judges his own character under the persona of a separate but kindred person referred to as the author 'Jean-Jacques.' In assessing 'Jean-Jacques' he asserts that '[h]is system may be false, but in developing it, he portrayed himself truthfully in a manner so characteristic and so sure that it's impossible for me to mistake it' (D 212). Thus, in his estimation, personal authenticity takes precedence even over philosophical truth. (5) Affirmation of Intimate Life: By the measure of authenticity, Rousseau also places higher value on private life as the more faithful indicator of true character. In Emile, his treatise on education, he insists that to study the human heart one must begin by reading private lives, and not the actions of individuals dressed to be seen in public. If we are to truly reveal human character, reliance on the uniformity and artificiality of public life must give way to the scrutiny of individuals in private life, where it is impossible for them to conceal themselves (E 240-1). In the context of his own self-revelation in the Dialogues, he reaffirms his position that our private lives reveal what we are. Thus, Rousseau's judgment of 'JeanJacques' is based on observing him in private life: Since my initial research had thrown me into the details of his domestic life, I applied myself particularly to it, persuaded that for my object I would derive more certain enlightenment from that than from all he might have said or done in public ... It is in the familiarity of intimate commerce in the continuity of private life that a man eventually lets himself be seen as he really is, when the incentive for self-awareness relaxes, and forgetting the rest of the world, one yields to the impulse of the moment. (D 103)

Rousseau's sense of self-revelation in private life contrasts with the judgment of classical antiquity that true self-disclosure occurs in the public sphere. This contrast is evident in Arendt's revival of the public values of classical antiquity and the concomitant understanding that the distinct identity of the agent is disclosed through action in the public realm.16

The Modern Self in Rousseau 9 Rousseau's valuation of the authenticity of private life is part of the characteristically modern allure he finds in private life, an allure inconsistent with the classical ascendance of the public over the private realm.17 This modern attraction to private life is evidenced in his autobiographies, where 'intimate society' appears as the most highly valued form of human relation. His first autobiography spotlights intimacy through detailing his actual relationships, and his second does so by expressing his preferences and ideals. Even in his last, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, in one mood he remarks upon the desolation of his solitude in later life {R 1, 14, 39). For one of the greatest contributors to the history of political thought, in his autobiographies he provides astonishingly few references to political or public affairs. Perhaps because he personally understood so well the modern preoccupation with private life, the task of engaging people's hearts in public life emerges as a problem for his political philosophy. Being aware both in himself and in society of the modern inversion of the public and private realms, he invokes in mythical proportions the civicmindedness of the ancients as a spur to the public commitments of his contemporaries. (6) Self-Determining Freedom: Although Rousseau recalls the ancients in seeking to inspire civic virtue, his theory of patriotic attachment is still steeped in the modern conception of self-determining freedom. The presumption of natural inequality by Plato and Aristotle excludes freedom as a political value, since the inferior many are thereby justifiably subject to the direction of the superior few. Rejecting the classical presumption of natural inequality, Rousseau is preceded by Hobbes in ascribing natural liberty to all human beings. Hobbes's contractual theory of the state is based in natural liberty, but his fear of anarchy leads him to maintain that the individual's absolute authorization of a sovereign power is compatible with this natural right. Rousseau takes the modern notion of freedom a radical step further than any other social contract theorist in arguing that even representative democracy is inconsistent with natural liberty. He endorses primary democracy: the only legitimate political authority is a legislative Sovereign in which every citizen equally participates in framing the laws that will govern them all. Only laws that one has collaboratively prescribed for oneself through this legislative procedure can justifiably restrict the natural liberty of the individual in civil society. (7) Moral Inwardness: For Rousseau, a correlate to the right of every individual to participate in democratic self-rule is the capacity of each to turn within to consult the voice of nature in determining the general will. The natural inequality that Plato and Aristotle presvime restricts the true

io Instinct and Intimacy art of statecraft to the superior few, and on their models, access to the knowledge required to rule is through the rational vision of a cosmic order. For Rousseau, by contrast, the moral sources are internalized in every individual; the good is defined through an inner voice that speaks through natural sentiment or instinct.18 To synopsize the modern self in Rousseau's philosophical and autobiographical writings, it is first of all characterized by a depth that eludes easy penetration. On a species level, this psychic depth calls for the retrieval of our repressed instinctual constitution; on a personal level, there is an imperative to create a unitary self out of the contradictory elements of one's life and character. The self that thus emerges is a unique self-construction and not the reflection of a universal human pattern. Our individual uniqueness inspires a new personal imperative for authenticity. As the sphere of greater authenticity, private life acquires a heightened value that is part of Rousseau's reflection of the modern ascendance of private over public life. This emphasis creates a problem for his political philosophy, since the self-determining freedom required by natural liberty entails the burden of participation in primary democracy. Finally, correlative with self-determining freedom is the equal capacity of each person to engage in public life through the voice of nature. This voice is the internalized mode of access to knowledge of the general will. All these features of the modern self will be elaborated in subsequent chapters in elucidating both the interchange between Rousseau's autobiographical and philosophical works and the nature of his ideal democratic citizen and polity. 2 Instinct and Intimacy in Civic Life

With its conception of the hidden imprint of our psychic origins, the psychoanalytical dimension of the modern self appears in Rousseau as an atavism that rebels against the civilized repression of instinct. Rousseau's primitive return is not through the wholesale rejection of civilization, but through the internal recovery of the instincts and their establishment as the basis of civic association. He condemns civilization as a renunciation of instinctual life and strives to reinstate the primitive passions in his transformation of the state. At the core of the personal change Rousseau deems necessary to transfiguring political life is a person's feelings toward him- or herself: love of self is needed in the body politic. There is an instinctual basis for this sentiment in amourdesoi. The savage experiences amourdesoias an impulse to

The Modern Self in Rousseau 11 engage in self-care. It is accompanied and tempered by compassion, another instinct that prompts a sympathetic distress for the suffering of others. In the civilized retrieval and transformation of these instincts, Rousseau sees the psychological basis of support for his democratic polity. Amour de soi is the psychological principle of self-extension: it is a natural emanation of self-love to seek to reinforce, rather than constrict, the feeling of one's existence by extending it to include the being of others. With this principle acting in combination with compassion, the love and care of the self becomes fused with the love and care of the other. In this extension of and attendant connection outside the self, Rousseau finds a psychological mechanism for the transcendence of narrow selfinterest in an empathetic identification with the civic whole. This would motivate the public effort required for equal participatory self-rule, and foster the civic-mindedness needed to secure commitment to the general will. The self-extension emotionally fundamental to Rousseau's democratic polity, then, is founded in instinct. This immediately confronts him with the difficulty that instinct has been suppressed, though not obliterated, in civilized humanity. Amour de soi is involved in self-extension, but it is also distorted into amour-propre, a debased form of self-love that is contingent upon a person feeling superior to others. Rousseau contends that amourproprevizs, not experienced by the asocial savage; it arose with social relations and the comparisons enabled by reason. The unreflective savage did not engage in interpersonal comparisons and thus spontaneously experienced an absolute self-love. Amour-propre, by contrast, is a tenuous form of self-love because it requires a sense of superiority to be felt. It also demands that one's superiority be recognized; this produces a psychological dependency that is foreign to the savage, who does not dwell in the opinions of others. By creating competition for recognition, and dislike for whatever exceeds one, amour-propre suppresses compassion and acts to constrict rather than to extend the self. While amour de soi is the source of all the loving and gentle passions,' amour-propre gives rise to 'all the hateful and cruel passions' (D 112). Thus, amour-propre is a psychological impediment to the self-extension Rousseau envisioned in the body politic as a means of motivating commitment to the common good. Political transformation depends on self-transformation: the seemingly personal aim of absolute self-love becomes a civic imperative in his democratic polity. Rousseau sees in amour de soi and compassion an instinctual basis for civic attachment and advocates their reascendancy in the human psyche.

12 Instinct and Intimacy Recognizing humanity's long history of instinctual repression, he facilitates such self-metamorphosis for civic purposes by trying to mirror in the political sphere the area of private life that is least instinctually repressed. He observes that self-extension, and the fusion between self-care and other-care, are most readily evoked in intimate relations. Thus, so far as possible he seeks to replicate in the public realm the emotional attachments of the intimate realm. What appears as a political problem arising out of the modern ascendancy of private over public life also emerges as a solution in what may be termed his 'politically intimate state.' He specifies that his political recommendations are intended only for small states in which the citizens know each other well enough to develop a mutual affection. Contrary to interpretations of Rousseau as a collectivist who submerges the individual in the state, on my reading he insists upon a small state precisely so individuals can come to know each other in their uniqueness. That intimate society should become the emotional model for political society is reinforced by the philosophical anthropology of the Discourse on Inequality. In what is otherwise a historical reconstruction of humanity's political, economic, and psychological demise, Rousseau finds one unequivocally redeeming development in the advance of civilization: the intensification of the first human associations into intimate relations and the attendant expansion of the human heart. The Discourses historical association between intimacy and happiness is confirmed by Rousseau's other philosophical, autobiographical, and literary writings, which all echo and amplify the feeling of enjoyment and nourishment in the intimate sphere. As we saw, that Rousseau should draw so much fulfilment for humanity from intimate society reflects his modern inversion of the classical elevation of the public over the private sphere. This modern affirmation of intimate life, however, does not entail an escape from politics or an irretrievable schism between the private and public worlds; for the habit of affection engendered by intimate relations lays the emotional foundation for attachment to fellow citizens and through them to the state. Moreover, as opposed to the instrumentality, divisiveness, and oppression of the economic and political spheres, the realm of intimacy provides the only human experience with the self-extension associated with human union, mutual caring, and trust. Thus, Rousseau seeks to transpose the sentiments of private existence to our collective existence through his small, politically intimate body politic. Through these two categories of 'instinct' and 'intimacy,' I elucidate the translation of Rousseau's primordial insight into his political ideals,

The Modern Self in Rousseau 13 and I fix an unwavering light on his deep democratic commitments. His autobiographies facilitate his philosophical interpretation through these two themes. In the first place, the autobiographies identify the problems and describe the struggle in self-metamorphosis that corresponds to his primordially inspired, political vision. A parallelism between the autobiographies and the political philosophy can be seen: the same problems that inspire remedial personal change appear in his social and political philosophy both as the subject of his societal critique and as the determinant of his psychological and political recommendations. Second, the autobiographies help to illuminate Rousseau's new value of intimacy that inverts the classical ordering of the private and public spheres, and inspires a reconfiguration of public sentiments in his democratic polity. Finally, the autobiographies reveal the latent sources of Rousseau's philosophy. While my primary purpose is political interpretation, psychoanalysis facilitates this effort by attending to the unconscious sources of not only his obstruction, but also his philosophical power and breadth. Such a psychoanalytical approach sustains the vision of his primordial insight in his societal critique, and in his radically and strongly democratic ideals. The retrieval of instinct that Rousseau sees as emotionally fundamental to his democratic polity, and that he strives to facilitate through his politically intimate state, underscores the importance of psychological transformation to the realization of his political ideals. Finding in the peaceful primitive passions the source for this psychological transformation, he rejects the turbulence of revolution. For in the entwined phenomena of oppression and revolutionary reaction he sees a psychological formula not for liberation but for further enslavement. His disavowal of revolution as a means to his legitimate state is reflected in his self-description in the Dialogues as 'the one man in the world ... who has the greatest aversion to revolutions and conspirators of every kind' (D 213). He explains his position in the Discourse on Inequality, arguing that the psychological terms of oppression are such that revolutionary attempts at liberation only wind up increasing peoples' servitude: 'Peoples once accustomed to masters are not in a condition to do without them. If they attempt to shake off the yoke they still more estrange themselves from freedom, as, by mistaking for it an unbridled licence to which it is diametrically opposed, they nearly always manage, by their revolutions, to hand themselves over to seducers, who only make their chains heavier than before' (D/33-4). His observations underscore the futility of attempting to throw off and reform oppressive political regimes without the psychological

14 Instinct and Intimacy transformation of subjects into citizens that would sustain a liberated political society. And in the experience of revolution itself he clearly did not see a mechanism for this psychological change. In identifying the agency of the required individual metamorphosis, commentators typically have turned to the Legislator of The Social Contract and the tutor of Emile. There are compelling reasons for exploring the less-travelled route of the autobiographies. Whatever the allure of the Legislator's magnificent figure, his godlike stature makes him a less than real possibility. And though I do not wish to diminish the importance of Emile's tutor and the critical attention this more plausible character has received, a study of the autobiographies is still needed. Rousseau describes the civilized ills from which Emile?, sequestered education will protect. But Emile's perfected development and cloistered circumstances do not convey the same acute sense of the psychological problems to be remedied in society as do Rousseau's own personal and struggling engagement with them in his autobiographies. If the autobiographies add an experiential dimension to the psychological diagnosis of Emile, they also shift the agency of change. The relative exclusion, in the secondary literature, of the autobiographies from Rousseau's theoretical system has placed an inordinate weight on externally induced as opposed to self-realized change. As a guide to the ^^-transformation called for by his social and political vision, the analysis of the autobiographies redresses this interpretive overemphasis. Rousseau is a political visionary: like a poet, he received the inspiring vision for his work from the muses, or the unconscious in psychoanalytical terms. From this vantage point his life was a perpetual striving to bring his emotions and conduct into harmony with that vision. As the record of this personal effort, self-portrait becomes another form of philosophical expression. He did not disassociate his life from the principles he enunciated in his philosophical writings. The autobiographies show his points of hypocrisy and failing, but are thereby no less valuable as guides to the self-transformation called for by his political vision. On one level, the autobiographies reflect a Rousseau aware in himself of society's ills, and anxious to press his emotions and his conduct into the form called for by his primordial vision. On another level, there is a psychoanalytical depth to the autobiographies that bypasses his consciousness. He reproduces the totality of his psyche in both his autobiographical and philosophical writings. As the most immediate and 'outspoken' expression of the unconscious, his autobiographies are a medium of access to the psychoanalytical explication of his philosophy.

The Modern Self in Rousseau 15 His unconscious contents are most clearly given an image in his autobiographies, being reflected through the prism of philosophy in his theoretical works. They are significant not as personal idiosyncrasy, but because they embody the psychocultural dichotomies of the modern Western epoch. This study examines how Rousseau both reflects and tries to transcend three such dichotomies: between masculine and feminine, separation and oneness (or autonomy and dependence), and good and evil. The unconscious is perpetually Janus-faced, appearing both as the conveyor of Rousseau's insight into our primitive nature and as the obstructing limit to his capacity to translate this insight into his philosophical works. Both these faces appear as he consciously and unconsciously works through these psychocultural dichotomies. An interpretation that attends faithfully to the line of primordial insight in his philosophical writings, despite occasional points of stoppage or diversion, reinforces Rousseau's democratic commitments and his irrepressible social and political engagement. To indicate briefly this pattern through the three psychocultural dichotomies, in the splitting of masculine and feminine human nature divides into two variants, a male and a female form. Rousseau transcends this dualism through the illuminating vision of the undifferentiated psychological and situational condition of male and female in the state of nature. As revealed in his autobiographies, unconscious impediments prevent him from fully transcribing the force of this image into his political philosophy. Particularly in Emile, he falls back into stereotypical depictions of subjugation and rule in gender relations. Nevertheless, Rousseau is psychically unable to deny the force of the originally undifferentiated condition: in The Social Contract, the programmatic sequel to the Discourse on Inequality, he provides no basis for excluding women from democratic enfranchisement. Moreover, looking past his occupational confinement of women to domestic duties, he sees in the intimate sphere an emotional model for his democratic political community. His autobiographies reinforce this philosophical judgment in expressing his love of intimate society (seen particularly with woman). Thus, in Rousseau's ambivalent views on women there is more sustenance for his egalitarian and democratic commitments than is suggested by his typically stark portrayal as an antifeminist. The second psychocultural dichotomy consists in the Western value placed on absolute self-sufficiency versus a psychoanalytically analogous yearning for total union. Rousseau reflects the first pole in his theoretical starting point, the complete independence of the savage. The second

16 Instinct and Intimacy pole is most clearly seen in The Confessions in his desire for total union with a woman, but it also appears philosophically as an occasional fascination with patriotic absorption. This tangential metaphor of absorption is discarded for the predominant metaphor of self-extension, casting doubt on interpretations that find in Rousseau an all-absorbing collectivism. The idea of self-extension simultaneously retains the particular self and extends it in the politically intimate state to include fellow citizens in a positive sensitivity and attachment. Notwithstanding his conception of civic attachment, Rousseau never abandons his theoretical moorings in the natural liberty of the individual. The total independence of the savage may be an emotional exaggeration mirroring an excessive psychocultural value placed on autonomy. But Rousseau's political realism, his acute view of the oppression and violence that historically mark the political world, exonerates this radical autonomy as a starting point and establishes a liberal sphere of protection around the individual. Contrary to interpretations that see a disregard for individual right in his communitarian ethos, there is thus an irrevocable individualist foundation to his political thought. His theory of civic attachment is based on the extension of the autonomous self. Finally, Rousseau's democratic commitments are contingent upon a willingness to be immersed in the political sphere. This willingness is attenuated by the third psychocultural dichotomy, between good and evil. He is impelled to flee from social and political life by an absolute need for innocence, which cannot countenance the inevitable moral ambiguity of the intersubjective world. Turning again to the autobiographies for psychoanalytical understanding, we find that Rousseau's driving need for innocence has an unconscious analogue in guilt. He sometimes reproduces this psychic polarity in his political terminology and expectations, as respectively exemplified by the 'natural goodness' of humanity and the 'always upright' general will. Nevertheless, he transcends the dichotomy through his postulate of a compassionate instinct, a main theoretical determinate that serves as a primitive base of his politically intimate state. This compassionate instinct sustains his immersion in the political world even in his reflections on international relations. In civilization the creation of the state secures individuals from a condition of war amongst themselves; however, the division of the world into political bodies results in an international state of nature, since states are then in a similar condition of insecurity in relation to each other. The contradiction between the civil state and the international state of nature precludes an absolutely innocent position given the need for military

The Modern Self in Rousseau 17 readiness and possible violence. Still, Rousseau does not reject political association, but steeps his observations on international relations in an analysis of their inevitable moral ambiguity. This brief indication of Rousseau's simultaneous reflection and transcendence of these three psychocultural dichotomies demonstrates how he reproduces the diversity of his emotions in his philosophical writings. This emotional diversity helps to account for the widely different 'Rousseaus' depicted in the secondary literature. He variously appears as primitivist and denaturer, individualist and collectivist, classical yearner and Romantic seeker, solitary walker and democratic citizen. Rather than suppressing these contradictory images, my psychoanalytical approach seeks to elucidate the psychological elements that give rise to this interpretive complexity. Rousseau himself insisted on the unity of his books, holding firmly that they formed 'a coherent system ... which offered nothing contradictory' (D 209). He identified the unifying force in the 'lively effervescence' of soul that was precipitated in him by his primordial vision, and that sustained his intensive contemplation of humanity's primitive origins (D 131). True to his own understanding of that effervescence as the source of the 'sparks of genius that have glittered in his writings' (D 131), this study faithfully attends to the unifying imprint of his primordial vision. Reserving a distinct discursive place for the interpreter, I also seek to elucidate where the literary translation is obstructed by unconscious impediments. Revealing the universal significance of personal obstructions, Rousseau unconsciously embodies modern psychocultural dichotomies as he struggles to transcribe his primordial truths into philosophical and literary works. Thus, to observe where he falters is not only to criticize his particular theoretical expression, but to further open up the psychocultural critique he himself powerfully glimpsed in his illuminating vision. If my psychoanalytical approach sometimes points to the unrealized critical potential of Rousseau's primordial insight, this is to underscore its presence and power in his social and political philosophy. An awareness of his unconscious limits facilitates the elucidation of the primordial base of his political philosophy, the source of his strong associational and democratic engagement. While there are a few precedents in systematic study of the autobiographies as a continuation of Rousseau's philosophy, this approach is not a conventional one in political philosophy.19 Thus, chapter 2, 'Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche,' is devoted to an exposition of my methodology in its conjoined literary, psychoanalytical, and philosophi-

18 Instinct and Intimacy cal terms. Rousseau's principle of authenticity sets his standard for selfrevelation at the same time that the uncertainty of his self-identity, and his hidden inner depth, make self-knowledge problematic. Although the unconscious obstructs perfect self-clarity, it also appears as the atavistic source of his insight into the origins of the psyche. Attending to both faces of the unconscious, a prospective psychoanalytical approach analyses the mutually illuminating parallel movement between his life and his philosophy. A methodology open to both faces of the unconscious in his work is immediately applied in chapter 3, 'Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society.' This is the area in which Rousseau was perhaps both most obstructed and most prescient; he denies the modern subject in woman in Emile and, at the same time, protests against the splitting of masculine and feminine from an original psychic unity in the Discourse on Inequality and his novel, La Nouvelle Hilotse. Consistent with his primordial insight, he tacitly includes women in The Social Contract. Furthermore, if intimate association is disentangled from his confinement of women to domestic duties, his views on women first lead us to intimate society as the model for his ideal polity. His autobiographies are indispensable in this analysis for they reveal both his unconscious blocks around women and his desires for an intimacy of equals; they also reinforce the valuing of intimate society evident in his philosophical works. Chapter 4, 'Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations,' continues the exegesis of Rousseau's politically intimate state. It emerges through considering his simultaneous reflection and transcendence of the psychocultural dichotomy between separation and oneness. Though he posits an original position of complete autonomy, in his historical reconstruction instinctual life is renounced through the mutual dependencies of civilization. While the polarity of absolute autonomy establishes the liberal foundation of Rousseau's political philosophy, it also has a psychological correlate in an emotional need for total union. This yearning for absorption can be discerned in both his autobiographical and philosophical writings; however, it is ultimately eclipsed by a conception of civic attachment based on the extension of the autonomous self in the politically intimate state. This self-extension is realized through the reascendancy of the primitive instinct that is suppressed through civilization. Chapter 5, 'Independence and the General Will,' further considers the issue of autonomy. The continuity between Rousseau's personal and theoretical struggles is again revealed. Through his own difficulty with autonomy, he identifies as a political problem the capacity of citizens to

The Modern Self in Rousseau 19 maintain their independent judgment in determining the general will. This evinces the political significance of the modern ideal of personal authenticity. Amour-propre is the greatest psychological impediment to autonomy of judgment; this passion makes fidelity to one's own judgments conditional upon winning approval in the eyes of others. Rousseau understands amour-propre to be the inescapable correlate of social relations. Even in Rousseau's autobiographies, however, solitude does not become the inevitable terminus of his psychological theory; for he suggests a primitively based attitudinal mechanism to diminish amourpropre while maintaining social relations. Chapter 6, 'Compassion, Innocence, and the State,' further explores the theme of solitariness in connection with Rousseau's reflection and transcendence of the third and final psychocultural dichotomy, between good and evil. His way past this dualism is through a compassionate instinct that is prior to moral categories. He draws upon this instinct for the emotional foundation of his politically intimate polity, but in his reflections on international relations he is still engaged by a universal compassion. While he does not thereby theoretically refuse political association, in his autobiographies a personal need for absolute innocence, and a corresponding unconscious guilt, sometimes lead him to adopt a principle of moral solitude. One may accordingly question conscience and its associated guilt as a moral and civic guide, reinforcing the strain of Rousseau's thought that relies on the reascendancy of primitive inclination. Whatever the progression of Rousseau's personal life into increasing isolation, chapter 7, 'Private and Public Realms,' rejects any bifurcation of his thought into the two irreconcilable paths of the solitary walker and the democratic citizen; for a social significance emerges even in his solitude. Moreover, his personal valuation of, and theoretical investment in, a political intimacy of equals tells against any isolationist ideal. In finding political significance in the experiences and sentiments of intimate society, Rousseau blurs the usual division between the private and public realms. His distinctive view on their relation and relative value is further elucidated by comparing him to other thinkers. This endeavour also clarifies the strength of his commitment to equality, freedom, democracy, and republicanism. Aristotle and Arendt offer a contrary perspective by sharply dividing the two realms and more highly valuing the public. Although Rousseau shares their ideal of participatory citizenship, he differs in sustaining it by drawing from the intimate sphere and in infusing it with egalitarian concerns. Rousseau is positioned next within the debate between contemporary liberals and communitarians: such comparison

20 Instinct and Intimacy reveals his affinity both to liberalism with its valuing and protectiveness of the individual and the private sphere, and to communitarianism with its postulation and advocacy of constitutive social and political identities. In suggesting that the 'goods' of private life are pertinent to patriotic identity and civic life, Rousseau resembles some contemporary feminists and their challenge to the traditional separation between private and public. The protective individualism of liberalism has a parallel in Rousseau's postulate of natural freedom and his condemnation of arbitrary coercive governments. There is also a consonance between Rousseau's insistence on authenticity and the Romantic individuality of liberalism first expressed in John Stuart Mill's On Liberty: the individual is regarded as a unique centre of self-development and is encouraged to live unfettered by social conventions. The autonomy and Romantic individuality that are now precepts of modernity have as their natural outcome the requirement for self-creation in the absence of a universal or societally determined self-identity. Although Rousseau is engaged in the modern task of self-construction in his autobiographies, there is a limit to self-creation in his postulate of a universal instinctual core. This instinctual core is the basis for self-extension, as most readily experienced in intimate relations. Thus, Rousseau's initial premise of the asocial savage may replicate the atomism of liberalism, but he soon transcends it in his historical exegesis of intimacy. In intimate relations he finds the most deeply fulfilling human realm. He draws upon our intimate experience and nature to leave behind the rational individualism of liberal social contract theory in a philosophy of republicanism characterized by civic attachment and an active commitment to the common good.

2

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche

Gradually it has become clear to me what every great philosophy so far has been: namely, the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Before drawing on Rousseau's autobiographies to explicate his philosophical writings, we must first establish an interpretive approach to autobiography. This approach can be forged through considering three features of the modern self. 'Authenticity' raises the issue of truth in autobiography. 'Self-creation' points to the problematic of the elusive self and the need for self-construction. A 'hidden inner depth' introduces a psychoanalytical dimension to the understanding of the autobiographical enterprise. These features of the modern self simultaneously direct us to two levels of analysis in the autobiographies. The first level is Rousseau's conscious intentions: his philosophic endorsement of authenticity is replicated autobiographically in his explicit resolve to truthfully reveal himself. The second level, which is not entirely beyond Rousseau's awareness, concerns the tenuous nature of self-knowledge and self-identity, and the arduous autobiographical effort needed to 'create' a self. The unconscious is the mysterious component to this continuing puzzle of the self, establishing a psychoanalytical dimension to the autobiographies as projects in self-creation. Whatever insights Rousseau may occasionally glimpse about his unconscious self, the psychoanalysis of his autobiographies is an interpretive perspective that largely bypasses his awareness. In Rousseau's autobiographies the unconscious appears as an opaque

22 Instinct and Intimacy interloper on the clarity of his self-perception. Through a primordial vision, however, it also surfaces as the source of his philosophical inspiration and transformation of his conscious life aims. In both these ways there is a psychoanalytical depth to the autobiographies that also can be observed in his philosophy, for the same unconscious contents imprint themselves into all his writings. While psychoanalysis is not a conventional approach to philosophical commentary, the unconscious depth to Rousseau's corpus and the parallel movement between his autobiographical and philosophical writings recommends applying the art of psychoanalysis to interpret his political philosophy. The possibilities that some (but not all) Rousseau scholars see in a psychological interpretation may be realized through a psychoanalytical approach that incorporates both faces of the unconscious, is more prospective than retrospective, is sensitive to the theoretical complexity of the psyche, sees in personal difficulties universal problems, and throughout preserves a recognition of the nobility and profundity of Rousseau's philosophy. l Authenticity and Autobiography

In his philosophical writings Rousseau protests against the division in individual? between their true being and their outward appearance. He charges that we do not dare to be who we really are, and thus it is impossible to truly know one another. He finds the cause of inauthenticity in various corruptions of modern society: in the requirements for decorum that pressure us to stifle our true impulses, in the rankings and judgments that compel us to feign virtues we do not truly possess, and in the competitiveness and conflicting interests built into societal structures that result in secret jealousies and masked hostilities (DAS 5-7; D/95-6, 116). Thus, in Rousseau's philosophical treatment of inauthenticity, the primary focus is on societal criticism and reform. His later autobiographies are in spirit with this philosophical critique of inauthenticity, but the level of analysis shifts to the protesting individual who has the mettle for selfexposure. When Rousseau turned his energy to autobiographical writing, he vowed to make his self-portrait unprecedented in its truthfulness (C1, 65, 372-3, 478-9). His insistence on being totally frank in The Confessions, leaving nothing hidden or obscure, appears as a personal indictment of the whole history of inauthenticity: 'For I decided to make it a work unique and unparalleled in its truthfulness, so that for once at least the world might behold a man as he was within' (C478). He emboldened

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 23 himself to faithfully expose his behaviour and character, surpassing all other autobiographers in the honesty with which he would confess even his points of shame and fault. He announces on the first page of The Confessions that he has bared his 'secret soul.' Irrespective of whether his behaviour shows him to be 'vile and despicable' or 'good, generous and noble,' he claims to have displayed himself as he was (C 17). Rousseau's Confessions have sometimes been interpreted by philosophical commentators as a consciously created fiction. In The Modern Self in Rousseau's 'Confessions, 'Ann Hartle interprets this book not as an autobiography but as a fiction that serves a philosophical intention.1 While she does not relate The Confessions to Rousseau's political writings, she still finds a philosophical purpose in its imaginative construction of a modern self. In Rousseau's Exemplary Life: The 'Confessions' as Political Philosophy,

Christopher Kelly argues that truthfulness gives way in The Confessions to the telling of a moral fable.2 Thus, they both consider spurious Rousseau's stated commitment to truth in this writing. It contravenes the spirit of Rousseau's thought, however, to suppose a philosophical or moral intention ensconced in a dissimulated self-portrayal. If there is any carryover in intent from his philosophical texts to his autobiographies, it is to present an authentic self-portrait. This intention is reflected in the epigraph to The Confessions - Intus, et in cute ('inside and under the skin') which is taken from Persius's Satires (OC 1:5). Even from the perspective of any pedagogical purposes, Rousseau insisted on the necessity of authenticity. In writing of his intended memoirs to a minister, M. Moultou, he anticipated that 'the history of a man who will have the courage to show himself intus et in cute may be something of a lesson to his fellows' (SL 256).3 Thus, he considered that only his true and full self-exposure would have a pedagogical effect. That Rousseau intended his autobiographies to be models of authenticity in a world of dissimulation is consistent with Marshall Berman's interpretation in The Politics of Authenticity. While Berman makes relatively little use of Rousseau's autobiographies, The Confessions are important at the outset in delineating the problem he explores. He interprets this work not as a fiction but as a painstaking enterprise to unveil the interior self. The personal becomes political through Rousseau's critique of a society that drives the true self underground, creating a split between outward appearances and the inner self.4 In the Dialogues Rousseau's declaration of authenticity continues, embedding itself right into the structure of the book. In the first dialogue neither 'Rousseau' nor the Frenchman have met the author, 'Jean-

24 Instinct and Intimacy Jacques,' but the former has read his books and the latter is acquainted with his reputation. This reputation is blackened with the charge of the most vile inauthenticity. The Frenchman alleges that 'Jean-Jacques' is 'a clever imposter, full of bad feelings masked by a hypocritical exterior' (D 30; see also D 33, 36, 39, 50, 63, 74, 80). 'Rousseau' disbelieves that the author of the good and useful books he has read could be a hypocrite and dissimulator. Thus, as recounted in the second dialogue, he meets and studies Jean-Jacques' with the determination to himself ascertain his true character. Contending that private life is the most self-revelatory, 'Rousseau' studies Jean-Jacques' in his home (D96, 103). In The Confessions Rousseau undertakes to present an authentic portrait of himself. In the Dialogues, by contrast, 'Rousseau' presents an authentic depiction of 'Jean-Jacques' in opposition to an inaccurate public image. At the core of this corrective is the repudiation of his reputation as an artful dissimulator. Instead, 'Jean-Jacques' is portrayed as being open and frank and even incapable of concealing his emotions: 'His heart, transparent as crystal, can hide nothing of what happens within it. Every mood it feels is transmitted to his eyes and face' (D 155; see also D 90, 100, 11516, 118, 176, 186, 190, 197). By the third dialogue the Frenchman has read 'Jean-Jacques's' books and attests to feeling in them the sincerity of a soul 'which shows itself without precaution, without fear; which censures openly, praises without reticence, and has no feeling to hide' (D 218). The authenticity in Jean-Jacques's' person is thus asserted to be replicated in his books. As autobiography merges once more with societal critique, the authenticity of Jean-Jacques' is affirmed in contradistinction to the usual false appearances of people in contemporary society (D 52-3, 102, 122-3, 158). In the 'Fourth Walk' on lying in The Reveries, Rousseau reconfirms his commitment to authenticity in his autobiographical writing. Leaving unqualified injunctions against lying to the austere morality of impractical books, he inquires into the circumstances in which it is morally inadmissible or innocent to lie (R 45, 47). He judges that lying does not contravene morality when the truth affects no one's interest; an untruth, if it is not to the advantage or detriment of either ourselves or others, is not a lie but a fiction (R 48-51). This distinction between lies and fictions is important to matters of personal reputation. Lying is morally wrong if it either enhances or detracts from our own or anyone else's reputation: ' [T]o attribute falsely to ourselves or to another an act from which praise or blame, inculpation or exoneration, might result is to do an unjust thing' (#49).

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 25 Since Rousseau was explicitly preoccupied with the public judgment of his character in both The Confessions and the Dialogues, he saw himself as morally bound to be totally honest in revealing his character and experiences (C460, 479; D 136, 188, 211). From the retrospective judgment of The Reveries, he still insists that in his Confessions he is unsurpassed in his good faith, veracity, and frankness' (R 54). He admits, however, that sometimes his memory failed him and he embroidered on details in his desire to dwell on the happy remembrances of his life. But on his understanding, he did not lie, for these supplements to his recollection were indifferent to either his prejudice or advantage. As he explains, 'I sometimes lent foreign charms to the truth, but I never replaced it with a lie so as to palliate my vices or ascribe virtues to myself (-R55). Nevertheless, he still reproaches himself for these embellishments, given the motto he had chosen even prior to his autobiographical writing (R58): vitam impendere vero ('to consecrate one's life to truth') (A 132). Although he first took this motto to guide his philosophical work, he applies it with equal force to his autobiographical writing. Thus, he admonishes himself that he should never have let his pleasure in writing steer a pen that had been consecrated to the truth (R 58). True to his intention to be authentic in his autobiographies, he retrospectively spots lapses in the impeccability of his life accounts and recommits his will to total authenticity. By his own sense of risk Rousseau felt himself to be exceeding the limits of comfortable self-exposure. He relates being emboldened to write his Confessions by the stipulation that it would appear only posthumously. This brings the relief that he 'should never have to blush before anyone' (C 479). The Dialogues repeat his sentiment on the fortifying effects of posthumous publication: 'The hope that these Confessions would not be seen until after his death gave him the courage to say everything' (D 188). This sentiment is expressed amidst his discomfort that his own readings of The Confessions to people had 'initiated the public into all his weaknesses, all his most secret faults' (D 188). From the first chapter of The Confessions, in describing his masochistic sexual cravings, he remarks upon the difficulty of such open self-display (C28). And in The Reveries he is still emphasizing how humiliating and painful his admissions in The Confessions were to make (i?57). Certainly in considering his most damning disclosure - the abandonment at birth of each of his five illegitimate children to a foundling hospital - we see no evidence that Rousseau was burdened by an oversensitive or idiosyncratic sense of shame. Rousseau's philosophical innovation in positing a split between our true being and our outward appearance has an autobiographical counter-

26 Instinct and Intimacy part in the setting of his own will to authentically reveal himself. His personal desire for authenticity led him to publicize his intimate experiences and feelings through his autobiographies. While we have become accustomed to fascination with and revelation of the intimate, Rousseau's contemporaries - detractors and admirers alike - were typically scandalized and disappointed by his Confessions. As P.N. Furbank describes: 'They had expected all sorts of revelations, hoped to be told the secret history of his quarrels and persecutions and be treated to lurid disclosures about the famous and the great; and here, instead, was this rambling and pettifogging tale of an obscure private life, full of the most puerile details, and some of them (though the editors had bowdlerized the text) very sordid into the bargain.'5 His eighteenth-century readers expected a tale with public significance; he chose instead to immortalize his intimate life to attain complete self-revelation. Turning to the judgment of modern commentators, in addition to being acknowledged as a philosophical originator of the ideal of authenticity,6 he is credited for contributing to literature and psychology through his bold self-exposure. His candour about his sexuality, for instance, prompts Maurice Cranston to recognize in his biography of Rousseau that '[b]oth literature and psychology owe much to his courage in writing so frankly and directly about such

matters.'7 In his historical analysis of autobiography, Roy Pascal also

acknowledges Rousseau's impact. In the history of psychology he notes Rousseau's transformative influence on the conception of the psyche and its complexity, and in literature his contribution to the trend towards inwardness and self-discovery.8 If authenticity is identified with the revelation of an inner self that is normally unseen, then autobiographical 'truth' necessarily becomes subjective. For to spotlight the inner self and not the public persona is to find ultimate interest in a level of experience and feeling that is accessible only to the person who reveals it. This understanding of authenticity in autobiography is evident in Rousseau's insistence in The Confessions that his feelings are the chief subjects of his life history, and the medium of access is entry into his 'inner self (C 262). Having worked mostly without materials or notes to help him in his recollections, he admits that he may have sometimes confused dates and places (C 128, 262). He dismisses any such mistakes as immaterial to the integrity of his autobiography, which he conceives as a faithful account of 'the succession of feelings which have marked the development of my being' (C 262). From his first autobiography he establishes his true object as the chronicling of his feelings and the revelation of his inner thoughts through all the circumstances of

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 27 his life. Thus, the accuracy of his depiction of outer events cedes significance to the authentic presentation of his inner experiences. Through the span of Rousseau's three autobiographies, the detailing of external events increasingly drops away in favour of more exclusive attention to his inner thoughts and feelings. While he presents The Confessions as a faithful guide to his succession of feelings (C262), there he also applies himself to reconstructing the chronology of his life's movements, relationships, amusements, and work. In The Dialogues he is troubled by a plot he feels directed against him. This preoccupation is precipitated by the perceived treachery of former friends and his persecution by several European governments for his writings.9 Even in this context he becomes absorbed not in detailing happenings, but in describing his disposition and daily manner of being. Finally, in The Reveries, what little description there is of outward events is only instrumental to measuring the modifications of his soul and reflecting on his inner dispositions (R 6, 7). This intensification in interiority of self-portrait accords with a theory of authenticity that locates the true self in our inner being. Consistent with the increasing shift from the outer to the inner through the autobiographies, by the time Rousseau writes The Reveries he finds meaning in the dark mysteries that elude him in the second part of The Confessions. This is attained not by finally understanding the 'incomprehensible chaos' of his situation (R 1), but by appreciating its effect on his internal life. His heart, he says, was 'purified in the forge of adversity' (R6); and were he not forced by the external circumstances of his life to turn inward, he would never have learned of all the treasures he carried within (R 13). Thus, his preoccupation with his inner life leads him to find solace in the truer and deeper self-understanding that emerges from his sense of external chaos. If authenticity in autobiography inheres in the revelation of an interior self, then there is no possibility of validation from an external point of view. Certain biographical facts may be verifiable, but there is no way to disconfirm the autobiographer's internal sense of his feelings and dispositions. To the reader this subjective vision provides an otherwise unattainable look into the intricacies of the autobiographer's being as he interacts with the world. In presenting his autobiographies as a record of his feelings, then, Rousseau implicitly presents a subjective understanding of 'truth' in autobiography. This interpretive perspective has been systematically argued by some literary critics in a literature that has developed as much in response to Rousseau as to any other autobiographer. For Pascal the biog-

28 Instinct and Intimacy rapher's concern with the historical accuracy of actions and events is misplaced; truth in autobiography pertains to the revelation of personality from the inside view. Since this inside case is inaccessible to public view, its truth finally cannot be judged by any tribunal.10 To Georges Gusdorf factual truth is subordinate to a more profound sense of truth, for autobiography shows us 'the person in his inner privacy.'11 The ascendance of feeling over fact in Rousseau's assessment of his autobiographical authenticity also allies him with another intense form of interiority, namely, psychoanalysis. For in psychotherapy 'objective reality' cedes primary significance to the person's internal, emotional experience. Even if his or her perceptions can be disconfirmed, they are importantly still self-revelatory. Certainly one may speak of self-deception in regard to feelings, with the possibility of the surface layers being inconsistent with the hidden emotional charge; but from a psychoanalytical orientation it is misplaced to speak of 'true' and 'false.' For an analysis that seeks out the subjective experience of the person in his or her world, it is precisely his or her version of the tale that is sought. Even while featuring his feelings, Rousseau does not always recognize his subjective immersion in his life accounts (especially where he is driven by self-vindication). This is particularly so in the Dialogues, where he splits himself into 'Rousseau' and 'Jean-Jacques' to provide an 'external' point of view on his disposition and behaviour. No matter how acute the autobiographer's awareness, it is impossible to stand outside of one's experience to present or assess it objectively. Rather than dismissing autobiography as a biased account, however, the interpreter can regard it as a unique perspective on the autobiographer's subjective experience of outer events. Befitting biography's task of trying to establish historical accuracy, Rousseau's biographers have compared the chronology and claims of his autobiographies against other evidence. The most recent effort is Cranston's thorough and meticulous three-volume biography.12 Not surprisingly, given Rousseau's own expectation that he had confused some dates and places, Cranston uncovers a few such inaccuracies.13 These mistakes, however, seem trifling in what appears to be a concerted and largely accurate endeavour to reproduce the chronology of his life. Moving beyond the bare historical facts to Rousseau's feelings and perceptions underscores the inapplicability of verifiable truth to autobiography. The occasional countervailing testimony of his acquaintances or friends simply substitutes one subjective perspective for another and still leaves the task of understanding Rousseau's own perceptions of his character or behaviour.14

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 29 More often Cranston identifies discrepancies between Rousseau's contemporaneous letters and the memories or feelings he later attests to in his autobiographies.15 Aside from the problem that any given letter may or may not have been a true expression of his sentiments, identifying these discrepancies only fulfils the object of biography, which is to try to reconstruct a life as it was experienced at the time. The terrain of autobiography, by contrast, is a retrospective vision that could not possibly entirely coincide with contemporaneous writing. The backward gaze of autobiographical writing necessarily infuses the emotions and perceptions of the past with those of the present. And as the autobiographer's life story takes shape, earlier memories may shift to accommodate the narrative. As Rousseau's life devolved into increasing isolation, for example, he occasionally attributed to his past a greater desire for solitude than is indicated by contemporaneous letters.16 2 Self-Creation and the Elusive Self

For the student of autobiography, biographical aims are superseded by the study of the autobiographer's retrospective attempt to forge a coherent life narrative and unified self-portrait out of the often disparate and contradictory elements of his or her life. If authentic self-portrait is the telling of a subjective truth, to arrive at it the autobiographer still must struggle. The 'self depicted is not just given, but must be created from his or her fluctuating circumstances, behaviours, and emotions. As Gusdorf observes: 'The truth is not a hidden treasure, already there, that one can bring out by simply reproducing it as it is. Confession of the past realizes itself as a work in the present; it effects a true creation of the self by the self."7 This autobiographical enterprise of self-creation is evident in Jean Starobinski's analysis of Rousseau: 'A self-portrait is not a more or less faithful copy of a subject called "the self." It is a vital record of a search to discover the self ... The law of authenticity tolerates, even requires, that the writer give up looking for a "true self" in an unvarying past and seek instead to create a self through writing.'18 As Starobinski explains, the identity of the "self" is problematic; Rousseau experiences his as 'nothing more than a fleeting image.'19 Out of the extreme variability he observes in his nature, he must strive to find the underlying unity. Everything is laid bare in his confessions so that a person may emerge from the chaos.20 While Starobinski does not put Rousseau into a literary context, these observations affirm his autobiographies as an originating expression of

30 Instinct and Intimacy the modern perplexity with self-identity and the compensatory struggle to create a self through autobiographical writing. Rousseau may set his will to authentically reveal himself, but there is a tenuous quality to the results; through his life events and the fluctuating evidence of his character he struggles to create a personal identity. The arduous demand of this endeavour is revealed by the care and meticulous effort that must be invested. Feeling wary of superficial glances at his temperament, he declares in the Dialogues that sustained attention is required to unravel his singularities (D 108). All told, this task of unravelling himself carries him through over a thousand pages of autobiographical writings. In both The Confessions and the Dialogues self-portrait is signalled as precarious; he feels even the smallest omission could jeopardize the accuracy of his account (C65, 169; D 103). By the time he finally writes The Reveries, he is still seeking a 'new understanding of my natural temperament and disposition' (R6). Rousseau refers repeatedly in his autobiographies to his 'natural disposition.' Certainly based on his own self-characterization one can point to a number of personal qualities, including an affectionate heart, a love of solitude, and a natural indolence and shyness. But even these qualities do not seem to yield a unitary identity, for he still must engage in selfexplanation. He feels compelled, for example, to reconcile his solitariness with his avowed love of humanity.21 Furthermore, his attempts to establish his 'true nature' always seem to be collapsing. This can be illustrated from The Confessions, where he describes how the deep reflections precipitated by a vision finally transform his shy disposition: I was truly transformed; my friends and acquaintances no longer recognized me. I had ceased to be that shy creature, who was shame-faced rather than modest and who had not the courage to show himself or even to speak. I had ceased to be a man who was put out by a joking word and blushed at a woman's glance. Bold, proud, and fearless, I now carried with me wherever I went a self-assurance which owed its firmness to its simplicity and which dwelt in my soul rather than in my outward bearing. (C388)

He goes on to assess this new 'state of being' as totally contrary to his 'true nature': 'No state of being could be found on earth more contrary to my true nature than this one. If ever there was a moment in my life in which I became another man and ceased to be myself, it was at the time I am speaking of' (C388).' By the time he writes the Dialogues he has had more time to assess his character and has achieved more distance. Rather than

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 31 opposing 'contrary' to 'true' states of being, he speaks of an 'opposition between the primary elements of his constitution' (D 117). This opposition makes itself felt 'in his inclinations, his morals, and his conduct': He is active, ardent, laborious, indefatigable; he is indolent, lazy, without vigour. He is proud, audacious, foolhardy; he is fearful, timid, awkward. He is cold, disdainful, rejecting to the point of harshness; he is gentle, affectionate, easygoing to the point of weakness, and doesn't know how to guard against doing or enduring what he likes least. In short, he shifts from one extreme to the other with incredible speed without even being aware of it or recalling what he was the moment before. (D 122)

Thus unable to fix his true character, Rousseau finally portrays it in terms of shifting opposing characteristics. If there is any consistency, it is in an ongoing principle of inconsistency. Alongside the shifting and tenuous quality of his self-identity in The Confessions and the Dialogues are Rousseau's apparently contradictory claims to perfect self-knowledge. His proclaimed candour in The Confessions is accompanied by confidence in his ability to know himself. He declares at the outset that 'I know my own heart' (C 17). Promising to recount 'the history of my soul,' he is sure that 'to write it faithfully ... it is enough if I enter again into my inner self (C262). Thus, he believes that introspection will yield access to the history of his feelings. The Dialogues similarly reflect an unbounded confidence in his capacity for self-knowledge. 'Rousseau' details his attentiveness in observing 'Jean-Jacques' in all his moods, passions, and tastes. He is positive in the end that he has seen clearly into the latter's interior being (D95, 102). This confidence in self-knowledge is expressed in Starobinski's book under the theme of Rousseau's preoccupation with transparency. Rousseau is certain that his heart is transparent to himself; the purpose of autobiography is to make it transparent to others. Starobinski does not directly address the apparent contradiction between immediate transparency and laborious self-construction. In accordance with his master theme, however, the significance of Rousseau's project to construct his self is overwhelmed by Rousseau's claims of total transparency. Starobinski judges that Rousseau avoids responsibility: perfectly transparent, he is absolved of the effort to achieve genuine communication with others.22 If our problem is to apprehend Rousseau's expression of the modern self, however, his longing for transparency can be understood as a reaction to the trials of modern self-creation. Even on Starobinski's analysis,

32 Instinct and Intimacy what is remarkable about Rousseau's claims of transparency is how easily they collapse. His personal reform is propelled by a sense of his own incoherence and the need to stabilize his identity.23 Authenticity itself 'is nothing other than sincerity without distance or reflection; it is spontaneity in the absence of a previously constituted object capable of commanding obedience.'24 By exposing his longing to escape the modern project of constructing the self, Rousseau's claims of transparency only confirm his engagement in that project. Whatever the psychic burden Rousseau shares with other moderns facing the task of self-construction, his personal need for transparency perhaps most acutely stems from his desire for self-vindication. In both The Confessions and the Dialogues he is concerned with public redemption of his honour. Believing his image to be distorted among his public to the point of monstrosity, he vows to unreservedly reveal himself, certain that even his worst faults would not show him to be as bad as his enemies had tried to portray him (C373, 479; D 188). Contending that he has already written down all his ideas in previous books, he states in the Dialogues that defence of his honour is the only reason left for him to pick up his pen (D 139). This preoccupation with self-vindication does not permit him any hesitancy over the accuracy of his self-knowledge. How can he expect to overturn external judgments of his character and actions unless he is able to tell the truth about himself? How can he vouch for the purity of his heart if he does not know it? His sense of being unfairly judged among his fellows thus leaves no room for any doubt in his self-knowledge. To conclude The Confessions, he emphatically declares this certitude and the accompanying judgment that he is an honourable man: I have told the truth. If anyone knows anything contrary to what I have here recorded, though he prove it a thousand times, his knowledge is a lie and an imposture; and if he refuses to investigate and inquire into it during my lifetime he is no lover of justice or of truth. For my part, I publicly and fearlessly declare that anyone, even if he has not read my writings, who will examine my nature, my character, my morals, my likings, my pleasures, and my habits with his own eyes and can still believe me a dishonourable man, is a man who deserves to be stifled. (C 605-6)

In contrast to The Confessions and the Dialogues, by the time he writes The Reveries Rousseau claims that he no longer cares about being better understood by people (R 7). This indifference stems from his increasing pessimism that he will ever be judged fairly. He is confident in The Confes-

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 33 sions that his readers will be fair-minded (C479), but this sense of assuranceislackingintheDialogues.HisreadingsofTheConfessionstoselectedpeopleleavehimfeelingthatfewwerecapableofjudginghis People leave him feeling that few were capable of judging his memoirs, and even fewer were worthy (D 188). In the Dialogues he forsakes his contemporaries and stakes his hopes for justification on future generations (D 288; R4). In The Reveries he relinquishes even this resort to posterity as mistaken (R4). He observes that public opinion is sometimes equitable but not reliably so, being drawn from either people's passions or their prejudices(R113).Inanycase,hedecidesthathehadbeensettingtooprejudices(R113).Inanycase,hedecidesthathehadbeensettingtoo much store in the judgments of others (R36). With his desire for vindication avowedly extinguished, Rousseau is more circumspect in The Reveries about the attainability of self-knowledge. He comments that 'the "know thyself" of the temple of Delphi was not as easy a maxim to follow as I had believed in my Confessions' (i?43). Thus, he reiterates in respect to his own person his understanding in the Discourse on Inequality of the difficulty of applying to humanity the Delphic injunction to 'know thyself (.D/43). As he discovers through his selfobservations, knowledge of not only the human species but the individual self is elusive. In considering his resistance to his fate, for example, he relates the difficulty of distinguishing one's 'petty self-pride' from the 'pure love of justice' (R 115). He also retrospectively judges the accuracy of his self-knowledge in The Confessions. While still insisting on his honesty {R 54), he realizes that 'by an involuntary movement I sometimes hid my deformed side and depicted my good side' (R 55). He weighs that this unconscious tendency was more than compensated for by his reticence in displaying his positive qualities and deeds lest his Confessions appear to be his eulogy (R 55); nevertheless, constructing an accurate portrait of the self is signalled as fraught with pitfalls. 3 Self-Knowledge and Hidden Inner Depth Modern psychoanalysis has made us too aware of the subterranean portion of the psyche to preserve any naive faith about the possibility, however sincere and concerted the attempt, of perfect self-knowledge. Belying the confidence he sometimes expresses in his transparency, Rousseau also evidences a pre-psychoanalytical intuitive grasp of his hidden inner depth. Autobiography thus implicitly becomes a struggle in selfcomprehension impeded by the unconscious. The unconscious is the tenuous background to the autobiographer's striving for self-comprehension; because consciousness never has a view

34 Instinct and Intimacy of the whole psyche, self-understanding always eludes its total grasp.25 Thus, we are left deciphering fragments, still puzzling over the meaning of our internal processes even in retrospect. For the existentialist, meaning always threatens to collapse in the disorder of the world; for the psychoanalyst, the inscrutability and apparent chaos of the unconscious is the mysterious background to the search for meaning. Jung comments that' [t]he pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.'26 Via introspection, self-acceptance, and vigilance in observing one's internal reactions to external events, an expanding self-awareness is possible, but this never becomes absolute. The fundamental life issues through which we work out the limits to our own self-consciousness are never fully resolved.27 As with the fragility of meaning the existentialists find in the external world, in the subjective inner world there is neither the comfort of total sense nor the futility of total nonsense. This reality is seen in Rousseau's autobiographical writing - a process of self-analysis that evidences certain developments in his selfunderstanding but that never loses the sense of being an ongoing travail. Writing before the advent of twentieth-century psychoanalytical theory, Rousseau did not have a systematic conception of the unconscious. Yet he implicitly conveys a psychoanalytical awareness, as Starobinski observes in commenting that 'it took Freud to "think" Rousseau's feelings.'28 Rousseau occasionally refers to 'the secret wishes of his heart' (see, for example, R 33). And in writing of his motto to consecrate his pen to truth in his Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theatre, he warns his readers not of any bad

faith in willingly deceiving them, but of the possibility of his own selfdeception (A 132). Moreover, his adoption of the Delphic injunction to know thyself implicitly involves a process of integrating his unconscious into the conscious understanding of his life. To undertake this injunction was to commit himself to vigilant self-observation, to discover all that was hidden about his motives, character, and behaviour. Without expressing it in psychoanalytical terms, Rousseau is mindful of his unconscious as a limit to his self-comprehension. Observing that most people in the course of their lives are frequently 'quite unlike themselves' (C 380), he is mystified by the times his behaviour is so inconsistent he seems to be a totally different person (C 126, 144, 146, 239, 388). ' [T]here are times,' he relates, 'when I am so unlike myself that I might be taken for someone else of an entirely opposite character' (C 126). This 'other self behaves in ways unacceptable to his conscious moral intentions. As one of his most telling illustrations, he cites an incident during the period he was residing in the household of Mme de Warens. Charged by

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 35 her to accompany the choirmaster, M. le Maitre, on a journey, he abandoned him on the street in the midst of an epileptic seizure (C 126-8). Other such incidents, experienced as inconsistent with his natural disposition, confound Rousseau's self-comprehension (C 144, 146). The intrusion of a foreign personality that subverts his moral will may be explained as an autonomous complex, 'a split-off portion of the psyche' that remains subliminal until its energy charge is sufficient to carry it over the threshold into consciousness.29 It originally is thrust out from consciousness owing to its incompatibility with conscious intentions. Having to do with duties, fears, or wishes one has not been able to fully grapple with, the autonomous complex is always ready to break through conscious control, overturning one's normal self-conception.:V) Thus, although Rousseau does not express it in psychoanalytical terms, he is alert to the distress and incomprehensibility of behaving in ways that seem incongruous with his normal character and moral sense. Sometimes Rousseau is not simply puzzled by the intrusion of his unconscious (his 'entirely opposite character'), he is totally unaware of it. This is illustrated in regard to the five illegitimate children he deposited at birth at a foundling hospital. Although remorse occasionally broke through (C 333, 549), he protected himself against the guilt through defensive rationalization (C 333-4, 387; R 124). He tried to persuade himself of his rectitude, for instance, by arguing that the risks of their upbringing were considerably less at the Foundling Hospital than in entrusting them to the ever-present and badly brought up family of his mistress, Therese Le Vasseur (C387). At other times unable to own up to his guilt, he projected it onto others. In projection one attributes to others the evil and inferior qualities one wishes to avoid acknowledging in oneself.31 As Jung depicts it, 'projections change the world into the replica of one's unknown face.'"52 Hence, the friends who betrayed the secret of his children's disposal were self-righteously reproached by Rousseau, charged with "utter baseness and infamy' (C335). To use Jung's terminology, the unconscious thus appears as the 'shadow' of the psyche in Rousseau's self-accounts. Whether it manifests itself in his awareness as a perplexing foreign personality or is entirely self-unbeknown, as the shadow the unconscious is the antagonist to his chosen will and moral aims. It is the site of repressed impulses and emotions that by obstructing our conscious will and moral vision can take possession of us, limiting our freedom. Unconscious desires and impulses, and inexplicable anxieties, become 'an Olympus full of deities' demanding to be served.i;i Just as our free will comes up against impediments in

36 Instinct and Intimacy the external world, so it is impeded by unconscious factors in the inner world:34 'The unconscious is always the fly in the ointment, the skeleton in the cupboard of perfection, the painful lie given to all idealistic pronouncements, the earthliness that clings to our human nature and sadly clouds the crystal clarity we long for.'35 4 Primordial Political Vision

As the shadow, the unconscious is the thwarter of Rousseau's moral aspirations and the projector of an illusory perception of the world. The unconscious also appears with another face, however, as the 'archaic' other, in Jungian terms. This archaic face appeared to Rousseau in the spontaneous effusion that revealed to him humanity's primal beginnings. Although originally unsolicited, this primordial vision became the source for his writings and the conscious redirection of his personal life. Alluding to this archaic face, Nietzsche considers philosophizing as a return to the primordial 'household of the soul.' He writes of philosophers: 'Their thinking is, in fact, far less a discovery than a recognition, a remembering, a return and a homecoming to a remote, primordial, and inclusive household of the soul, out of which these concepts grew originally: philosophizing is to this extent a kind of atavism of the highest order.'36 In Rousseau's case this atavistic return occurred forcefully through his vision. On the road to Vincennes to visit his then-imprisoned friend Diderot, he read the Dijon Academy's essay question on whether the arts and sciences have corrupted or improved morality (C327). Upon reading this question he was overtaken by an inspiration, a plethora of ideas forceful enough to induce vertigo: If anything was ever like a sudden inspiration it was the impulse that svirged up in me as I read that. Suddenly I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights; crowds of lively ideas presented themselves at once, with a force and confusion that threw me into an inexpressible vertigo; I felt my head seized with a vertigo like that of intoxication. A violent palpitation oppressed me, made me gasp for breath, and being unable to breathe as I walked, I let myself drop under one of the trees of the wayside, and there I spent half an hour in such a state of agitation that when I got up I perceived the whole front of my vest moistened with my own tears which I had shed unawares. (SL 208)37

Catapulted into a whirlwind of primordial ideas and feelings rising out of the unconscious, Rousseau relates that he 'beheld another universe'

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 37 (C327) A He saw the natural goodness of humankind and the way it is stifled by our institutions: 'Oh, Sir, if ever I could have written even the quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, with what clarity should I have revealed all the contradictions of the social system, with what force would I have exposed all the abuses of our institutions, in what simple terms would I have demonstrated that man is naturally good, and that it is through these institutions alone that men become bad' (SL 208).39 Transfixed for half an hour by this primordial vision, Rousseau spent the next several years transcribing it into literary works. He relates that the little he retained of those illuminating truths was 'scattered quite feebly in my three principal writings' (the first and second Discourses and Emile) (SL 208).40 Percy Shelley describes the similar experience of the poet: 'When composition begins, inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conception of the poet.'4' To the artist the expression always falls short of the vision's richness, whatever the magnificent results to the external eye.42 As evidenced by such experiences as visions, the line between conscious and unconscious is permeable in those distinguished by creative gifts. While this permeability manifests itself most dramatically in Rousseau's Vincennes vision, it also is seen in the weight he places on his fantasy life as the source of his philosophy. Fantasies are recognized by the psychoanalyst as emanations of the unconscious.43 Rousseau directs us to this subterranean level in accounting for his discovery of humanity's primitive traits through his 'active taste for reverie' (D 214). Through his vision and reveries, Rousseau experienced a widening of consciousness that put him in touch with the archaic residue embedded in our deepest psyche. The significance of Rousseau's savage, then, is not as a historically extinct mode of human life but as a way of feeling that endures in our inmost hidden being. At the outset of his anthropological treatise on human origins in the Discourse on Inequality, he affirms that the primitive qualities in us have been depraved and suppressed but not obliterated by our education and habits (D/51). As previously mentioned, Rousseau anticipates psychoanalysis in this conception of a repressed imprint of humanity's psychic origins. The parallel is seen, for instance, in Jung's analysis that 'every civilized human being, however high his conscious development, is still an archaic man at the deeper levels of his psyche.'44 If Rousseau anticipates psychoanalytical insight into the psychological mismatch between the archaic self and civilization, he first experienced

38 Instinct and Intimacy the deficit in himself. His primordial vision was a response to the unsatisfied yearnings of his life. He says he had spent the previous forty years discontented with himself and others, and yet was unable to break the societal bonds that held him (SL 208).45 Through his primordial vision the cause of his personal dissatisfaction receives a species formulation. The Discourse on Inequality explains modern psychological distress in terms of an estrangement from our primitive self and existence. Rousseau's primordial vision, as well as inspiring his philosophical critique of society, gave him the direction for a complete personal reform. He relates that the 'happy accident' on the road to Vincennes finally showed him what he had to do for himself and what opinion he should have of others (SL 208).46 His reformed manner of being was modelled on his vision of natural humanity, even if he was simultaneously driven by a 'civilized' engagement with philosophy. He sought to replicate the way of the savage - his or her independence, solitude, material simplicity, absorption in the moment, and freedom from opinion. Thus, repudiating all personal ambition, he vowed to live in independence by leaving his cashier's post to make his living as a music copyist (C337-8; i?3i). He sold his watch and reformed his dress by renouncing all finery (C339; R 31). Not limiting his reform to external things, he also determined to make fundamental internal changes. He set his orientation to live from day to day without concerning himself with the future (R30). He resolved to break the 'fetters of prejudice,' doing what he felt right without worrying what others might think (C337). To keep him firm in this resolution and in his external reforms, he strove to free his heart from all inclination to be affected by the judgments of others (C340). Finally, he undertook to reform his opinions and principles, submitting them to a rigorous examination (R31, 33). As this task required 'long and peaceful meditations,' it was from here that he dated his 'complete renunciation of the world' and his 'intense desire for solitude' (R31). Thus, the spontaneous effusion of his unconscious through a primordial vision became the source for the redirection of his conscious, intentional life. If Rousseau could not disentangle his personal discontent from the civilized condition of humanity, neither could he rest with a simply personal reform. A frenzy of philosophical writing followed his primordial vision twelve volumes in ten years by his count (D 217-18). Propelled by his glimpse into 'a secret opposition' between our constitution and our societies (D 130), he extended his reform to all of humanity in the theoretical realm. He determined how to harmonize social and political institutions and relations with his primordial findings.

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche

39

The significance of Rousseau's personal discontent is more than idiosyncratic. The personal is the inroad to the collective, for individual difficulties are inseparable from the problems of the epoch.47 The primordial images that arose in response to his unsatisfied yearnings address the unspoken psychic needs of the modern age. Rousseau forced these problems into the light and aspired to transcend them through synthesizing primordial insight with contemporary concepts and values like authenticity and self-determining freedom. Thus, the personal terms of his life were the spark to a conceptual critique and reordering of social and political relations. Recognizing the personal as the emotive and experiential background to Rousseau's philosophy opens the possibility of studying his autobiographies to shed light on the larger social and political understanding of his philosophical writings. Attention to the creative process of Rousseau's work, as described in his autobiographical writings, draws attention to the archaic face of the unconscious as a source for the revitalization of personal and species life. When the conscious mind is unable to shake the individual from the grip of dissatisfying or oppressive personal and collective patterns, the unconscious may take the lead. Through the gifted individual the primordial images that illuminate these problems are brought into conscious and critical relation with modern life.48 As my subsequent chapters will show, Rousseau's access to this archaic psychic residue directs his critique of civilization and his theoretical attempt to transform the state through the reascendancy of the primitive instincts. 5 Psychoanalytical Art and Philosophy Since the posthumous publication of Rousseau's Confessions, his personality has been an issue in the interpretation of his philosophical works.4'1 An approach that explores the unconscious sources of his philosophy obviously reinforces the suggested link between his psyche and his philosophy. Perhaps owing to the tendency of some commentators to reduce Rousseau's work to a personal neurosis, others have expressed reservations about psychological and autobiographical readings. Roger D. Masters asserts that even if Rousseau's 'psychological problems and defects' can be revealed as the cause of his thought, this adds nothing to the explanation and judgment of his philosophical writings.5" He urges interpreters to read the major works 'without the presumption that they are merely the result of personal eccentricity.'5' Peter Gay identifies the fascination with Rousseau's life as one of the sources of misconceptions about

40 Instinct and Intimacy his work: 'Many of Rousseau's commentators gave into the temptation of reducing the philosophy of the "apostle of affliction" to a mere reflection of his experiences - or rather to a mere reflection of the twisted interpretations which he gave to these experiences.'52 Certainly some of the secondary literature substantiates these concerns. There has been a tendency to explain away Rousseau's philosophy as a personal affliction. On J.L. Talmon's interpretation, for instance, Rousseau's submersion of the individual in the collectivity is the dream of a 'tormented paranoid.'53 For Lester G. Crocker, Rousseau is an 'authoritarian personality' and his philosophy is a symptom of this syndrome, as evidenced by the voluntary submissiveness of citizens in his state.54 The use of autobiography to explain and dismiss a great philosophy as its author's psychopathologyjustifiably has drawn criticism. Nevertheless, this misuse does not negate the interpretative possibilities of an autobiographical and psychological reading. Notwithstanding his censure of the ill use of genetic explanation, Gay sees the psychological approach as the most promising area for the continued study of Rousseau.55 He praises Ernst Cassirer's commentary in The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau as an

example of the 'sophisticated use of biography.'5() Cassirer sees an elucidation of Rousseau's personal nature as indispensable to understanding his philosophical thought: 'With a thinker of this sort the content and meaning of the work cannot be separated from the foundation of personal life; each can be comprehended only with the other and in the other, in repeated reflection and mutual illumination.'57 The possibilities of the use of autobiography are no better illustrated than in Starobinski's masterful book Jeanjacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction. The complexities of Rousseau's thought are elucidated through a unifying theme, his striving for 'transparency' and his struggle against 'obstruction.' Starobinski shows how Rousseau locates transparency in the primordial past, in the ahistorical Utopia of The Social Contract, and in the nature of his own soul. The fall from the state of nature spells the end of transparency, as social and cultural obstacles come to intervene in the immediate experience of human beings. Conceiving himself as a modern exemplar of the natural human being, Rousseau exempts himself from this historical progression in obstructed transparency. From the vantage point of his primordial personality he authorizes his societal critique.58 Robert Darnton remarks, in his 1988 review of the English translation of Transparency and Obstruction, that by unifying all the divergent threads of Rousseau's writing into this one master theme, Starobinski's interpre-

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 41 tation seemed so definitive that it eclipsed future debate.59 Discounting reductionist dismissals of Rousseau's philosophy, in the decades following the publication of Starobinski's book hardly any studies have appeared that systematically employ the autobiographies. This lacuna exists notwithstanding the enormous and unprecedented interest in autobiography among literary critics during the same period.60 There is thus in Rousseau's autobiographies an unrealized potential to elucidate his philosophical texts. If the history of ideas is not to dissolve into pure case history, as Cassirer criticizes is often the result in the literature, " then the wider social and political significance must be seen in the apparently personal terms of Rousseau's autobiographies. In this way autobiography becomes the biography of everyone. Both great novels and autobiographies fascinate us with idiosyncrasies of character, but somehow through this particularity they tell us about the human predicament. If Rousseau's personality has been a factor in his philosophical interpretation, only by linking his self-portrait to the wider social and political spectrum does his philosophy escape the contagion of purely personal psychological afflictions. Jung comments that 'a state of inner discord always has something humiliating and degrading about it'; but once a personal problem is translated into a general question of society, it acquires a dignity it formerly lacked.*'2 In my study of Rousseau this translation occurs through analysis of the three psychoctiltural dichotomies between masculine and feminine, union and self-sufficiency, and good and evil. The use of psychoanalytical theory to understand Rousseau becomes instrumental to my chief end, which is to illuminate further his political philosophy as he both reflects and attempts to transcend these psychocultural dichotomies in the theoretical realm. There is, of course, something philosophically fraudulent about a psychoanalytical approach that would deflect attention away from the complexities of a philosophy by simplifying everything to the operation of unconscious infantile processes. Such reductionism always seeks to point out the flaw in the crystal, reducing philosophy to 'nothing but' repressions of infantile instincts.63 The philosophy is then treated as an epiphenomenon of an individual neurosis.*'4 In defending psychoanalytical explanations at their best, however, Starobinski asserts that they 'are not reductions of the complex to the elementary, the noble to the ignoble: they lay bare numerous and complex intentions, relations, and aims.65 Deflation of the nobility of the philosophy is forestalled by incorporating not just the shadow but also the archaic face of the unconscious - the

42 Instinct and Intimacy source of primordial philosophical illumination. Beyond this, in analysing the relation between philosopher and philosophy, reductionist causality can be avoided by adopting a phenomenological orientation to psychoanalysis. Here the aim is not to reduce the thought to its personal antecedents, but to reveal the parallel struggle that plays itself out in both the life and the philosophy. In elucidating this parallel personal and theoretical engagement, a phenomenological approach is both retrospective and prospective. This approach is explained by Maurice Merleau-Ponty in an inspiring piece on Cezanne that sanctions a phenomenologically informed psychoanalysis of the connection between artist and work. In developing the link Merleau-Ponty eschews a purely causational psychology; the basic dimensions of our birth, our temperament, and our past are what we have to work with, leaving how we are to work with it undetermined. When he addresses the 'pressing conditions' for Cezanne, it is to see how 'they figure in the web of projects which he was.'66 Thus, extrapolating to Rousseau, certain 'hereditary traits' and 'influences' may be the 'text' that nature, history, and chance gave him, but how he deciphers them and aims at a new synthesis of life in his person and his writing is left open.67 While the antecedent text of 'givens' is present in every act, it does not impose any particular one.68 Merleau-Ponty considers that this is 'the way freedom dawns in us without breaking our bonds with the world.'69 He elaborates that '[pjsychoanalysis does not make freedom impossible; it teaches us to think of this freedom concretely, as a creative repetition of ourselves, always, in retrospect, faithful to ourselves.' This understanding of the creative 'exchange between past and future'7" also guides Jung's psychoanalytical theory: 'Again, no psychological fact can ever be exhaustively explained in terms of causality alone; as a living phenomenon, it is always indissolubly bound up with the continuity of the vital process, so that it is not only something evolved but also continually evolving and creative. Anything psychic is Janus-faced: it looks both backwards and forwards.'7' Starobinski also prefers a 'prospective interpretation' that follows Merleau-Ponty in seeing phenomenology and psychoanalysis as a convergent operation.72 He provides very few remarks on his method in Transparency and Obstruction. Without specifically commenting on Rousseau, he provides a fuller statement in another book, The Living Eye, in a chapter titled 'Psychoanalysis and Literary Understanding.'73 He warns against a psychoanalysis that would show only the antecedents of the work in the writer's past, as if the literary expression 'were a mask to be torn

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche

43

away.'74 But neither does he 'join those who regard the work of literature as an absolute without a history, a product of immaculate conception.' 75 Instead, 'the work is dependent on both a past destiny and an imagined future.'7*' This perspective includes the writer's personal history in the meaning of the work, at the same time that it captures the 'intentional axis.' For the work is a 'transcended history'; it is itself an attempt to throw off the shackles of the past and invent a new future.77 Assuming there is a link between the life and work that can be deciphered through psychoanalysis, it remains to consider the exegetical technique of the psychoanalytical art. Here we find penetrating commentators like Starobinski and Merleau-Ponty respectively referring to nothing more precise than 'free-floating attentiveness' and 'psychoanalytical intuition.'78 This lack of precision is consistent with Charles Taylor's observation that psychoanalytical exploration is less akin to science than to art and literature. 70 Precise exegetical techniques are circumvented by the complexity and elusiveness of the psyche. For Jung the multitudinous nature of the psyche defies encapsulation in simple formulas. It is so variegated that it is impossible to reflect it in any one theoretical mirror.8" The psyche evades easy explanation because it comprises both the conscious and the unconscious, the latter of which is a directly unknowable entity of unspecified extent. The unconscious is a 'hypothetical "as if" that can only imperfectly be inferred from observational material 81 - in this case, from the subject's self-description in his autobiographies. One could be dissuaded by the lack of definitive evidence for one psychoanalytical interpretation rather than another. One could also point to logical flaws, such as the alleged circularity of psychoanalytical explanations, whereby behaviours are related to childhood feelings that are in turn inferred from those behaviours. As Merleau-Ponty responds, however, 'This is how one triumphs over psychoanalysis, but only on paper.' If psychoanalytical explanations cannot be directly confirmed, neither can they be discounted. How can we deny,' he asks, 'that psychoanalysis has taught us to notice echoes, allusions, repetitions from one moment of life to another ...?'82 How could we possibly credit chance with these similarities, themes, and patterns? As for the circularity of psychoanalytical reasoning, he finds a symmetry with the circular motion of our lives: 'The psychoanalyst's hermeneutic musing, which multiplies the communications between us and ourselves ... and which looks in the past for the meaning of the future and in the future for the meaning of the past, is better suited than rigorous induction to the circular movement of our

44 Instinct and Intimacy lives, where the future rests on the past, the past on the future, and where everything symbolizes everything else.' Finding this circular repetition in the correspondence between the creative artist and his work, MerleauPonty concludes: 'Thus it is true both that the life of an author can teach us nothing and that - if we know how to interpret it - we can find everything in it, since it opens onto his work.'83 Whether we know how to interpret the life of an author can be gauged by whether the psychoanalysis deepens our understanding of his or her literary works. In psychotherapy, whether the unconscious has been integrated into awareness can be gauged by whether that person's life is set in motion again.84 There can be no such validation, of course, with an author who is confronted only through his books. Nevertheless, a philosopher's writings are the living corpus through which the 'believability' and 'worth' of any psychoanalytical explanations can be assessed. Their credibility depends on whether they help to resolve textual complexities and interpretative controversies. The resulting interpretation may appear to stand independently of the psychoanalysis, but it would have been difficult to see and configure without this psychological understanding. As Starobinski asserts, psychoanalysis directs us to what is implicit in the work, 'but which we were unable to decipher at first glance.'85 If Rousseau is engaged in a parallel struggle in his life and in his philosophy, it is consistent with a phenomenological approach to suggest that he may not be aware of all the implications and imprints of this struggle in his theoretical writings. There may be more layers of meaning in a political philosophy than what is consciously written in by its author. This observation is amplified when we consider that unconscious contents are part of the basic 'text' to which the thinker responds in his life and works. The vantage of the interpreter, therefore, provides the critical perspective of distance unavailable to the thinker, who is immersed in his or her personal and theoretical drama. The proposition that Rousseau wrote his emotional life into his philosophy, and the further supposition that he may not have been aware of the psychoanalytical sources and implications of what he wrote, raises methodological questions for the interpretation of texts in political philosophy. To Leo Strauss it misrepresents a doctrine to attribute to it ideas or meanings of which its author was unaware. The task of the interpreter 'is to understand the thinkers of the past exactly as they understood themselves.'86 Without disputing whether any interpretation is inevitably architectonic, Straussian commentary aims to recover the philosopher's own understanding of his work. Exemplifying such an approach to the philo-

Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 45 sophical interpretation of Rousseau's Confessions, Kelly analyses this autobiography as a moral fable consistently with how he believes Rousseau conceived it himself. Strauss considers a study of the historical situation of a thinker to be extraneous to the interpretation of the text.87 This contrasts with the historicist method of Quentin Skinner, who advocates recovering the intentions of the theorist by reconstructing the conventions of his times.88 While these two approaches may seem like polar opposites, from my perspective they both aim at recovering the meaning of the writer exactly as he knowingly intended it. To seek the latent meaning of Rousseau's writings is to presuppose that there may be more written into a philosophical treatise than its author consciously intended. It may be useful to draw a parallel with literary criticism, where this is an accepted supposition. Northrop Frye takes it as axiomatic that the critic is a better judge of the value and meaning of a poem than its creator. The paradoxical comment that poetry is 'wordless' conveys the idea that poetry, like music and painting, does not come with its own self-explication. And reserving an independent place for the critic, the artist is not in a privileged interpretive position. The poet's invocation to the muses signifies his or her surrender to a creative transport that is involuntary.8(> In Frye's view, to regard the poet and not the critic as the definitive judge of a poem is to fall prey to 'an inability to distinguish literature from the descriptive or assertive writing which derives from the active will and the conscious mind, and which is primarily concerned to "say" something.90 Philosophy is certainly less 'mute' than poetry. But it is an exaggeration of the autonomy of the rational will to regard great philosophy as the simple production of the conscious mind. This understanding of the unconscious as creative source has not received a systematized defence in political philosophy, as it has for poetry in literary criticism. Nevertheless, it derives some legitimacy from at least being consistent with Nietzsche's view. In Beyond Good and Evil he calls every great philosophy 'the personal confession of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.'9' In his consideration great philosophy bears the imprint of deep personal drives. Contrasting the philosopher with the scientist, he asserts that the philosopher's work cannot be separated from 'who he is,' from the personal constellation of 'the innermost drives of his nature.'02 Philosophers, unlike mystics, justify their conclusions on the basis of an impersonal ratiocination; but what poses for abstract reason is in truth the camouflaged, secret desires of the heart.93 Nietzsche's judgment of individual philosophers bears out his under-

46 Instinct and Intimacy standing of great philosophy as personal confession. Whatever his points of disagreement with Rousseau, he acclaims his predecessor's philosophical power and breadth, and ranks him among the great philosophers on the grounds that his thoughts constitute 'an involuntary biography of a soul.'94 Conceiving philosophy as in part an 'unconscious memoir' leaves a place for the interpreter to decipher the latent meaning of the text. Philosophy seems more discursive than art. But one might still say of the philosopher, as John Stuart Mill says of the artist, that he 'is not heard but overheard.'95 There is more to grasp in a text than what its author consciously intended. This does not mean that the elucidation need be inconsistent with the thinker's intent, but it does add another layer of meaning, and a further need to systematize what is present but implicit in the text. The conjoined autobiographical and philosophical approach described in this chapter guides my subsequent study. Rousseau's value of authenticity sets the standard for his autobiographical writing and establishes a point of continuity with his philosophical judgment. This willed selfdisclosure is impeded by the lack of a stable 'self and by the psyche's hidden depth. As the shadow the unconscious is an obstacle to self-clarity, but in its archaic face it is a creative source of societal critique and renewal. As we shall see, my analysis of Rousseau's autobiographies reveals both faces of the unconscious and their imprint in his philosophy. The parallel movement between his philosophy and his autobiographical telling of his life and psyche is addressed first in respect to women, sexuality, and private life. Here the psychoanalytical depth to his writing is evident both in his return to an original undifferentiated condition of the sexes, and in the unconscious impediments that obstruct him from fully translating this primordial insight into his theoretical understandings even in respect to the value of authenticity.

3

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society

Wonder, awe, fear, astonishment, Petrify the eternal myriads; At the first female form now separate They call'd her Pity, and fled Eternity shuddered when they saw, Man hegetting his likeness, On his own divided self-image. Blake, The Book of Urizen

The diversity of interpretation that attends the reading of Rousseau is absent from his views on women: there seems to be no doubt about his antifeminism. He is criticized for restricting woman to the domestic sphere and for excluding her from civic participation. In much of his explicit philosophical discourse on women Rousseau certainly did not support mutuality between the sexes. Nevertheless, the case for him as women's 'philosophical enemy'1 is not as clear as might seem. Uncon scious obstacles sometimes mire him in the cultural antinomy between subjugation and rule in gender relations; but his psychological and political theory remains grounded in his atavistic insight into the undifferentiated condition of male and female in the state of nature. Repressing the implications of this primordial insight in his treatment of civilized woman, particularly in Emile, Rousseau appears to bifurcate the sexes. But if he denies woman the authenticity and self-determining freedom of the modern subject, he nevertheless finds more artifice than nature in her dissimulation and subjugation. Since Rousseau is an impas-

48 Instinct and Intimacy sioned critic of inauthenticity and inequality in other contexts, his appropriation of cultural stereotypes on woman's 'natural' subjugation and her artifice in covert rule bears further scrutiny; it can be traced to its psychological origins through his autobiographies. Though unconscious obstacles block consistent expression in his overt philosophical treatment of civilized woman, Rousseau's thought is fundamentally based on his insight into the psychic unity of male and female in the state of nature. The primordially inspired Discourse on Inequality can be read as his protest against the splitting of masculine and feminine in civilization. This protest also finds its way into La Nouvelle Heloise, against the civilized division between masculine reason and feminine compassion. The imprint of Rousseau's apprehension of the original, undifferentiated condition of the sexes can be traced in his political philosophy. While cultural stereotypes dominate his discussion of civilized woman in Emile, sexist comments are conspicuously absent from The Social Contract. The political principles enunciated in this work tacitly include women in the social contract. This interpretation is reinforced by the Discourse on Inequality, the primordial antecedent that attributes an equal liberty to the natural male and female. If Rousseau's account of intimate life is disentangled from his philosophical restriction of women to domestic duties, his views on women lead us to his high valuation of private life. The historical judgment of the Discourse on Inequality positively links intimate relations to the expansion of the human heart. All his other philosophical, autobiographical, and literary writings re-create a sense of deeply fulfilling attachment to the intimate sphere. While his autobiographies reveal his points of unconscious obstruction, they also reveal his experience and desire for an intimacy of equals with woman as a requisite to this intimate satisfaction. It is in this context that Rousseau draws upon the emotions of intimacy, and particularly upon romantic love, for the affective base of the body politic. l Denial of the Modern Subject in Woman

In his explicit philosophical discourse on woman, Rousseau appears to exclude her from the imperatives of the modern self in a way that reinforces existing gender stereotypes. This is particularly evident in Emile, which contains his most extensive philosophical treatment of women and gender relations. In the last book, in finding a suitable wife for Emile in a young woman called Sophie, Rousseau takes up the question of

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 49 woman's nature and education. He refuses woman authenticity and selfdetermining freedom, yet this denial of the modern subject in woman is grounded more in artifice than in alleged nature. Her 'natural' qualities gradually emerge as the artifice she must use both to covertly govern man and to habituate herself to his overt rule. Some implicit support for women might be adduced from Rousseau's suggestions on means to covert rule, but this still is accompanied by his acceptance of her overt subjugation to man.2 Given his defence of self-determining freedom in other philosophical contexts, his failure to break out of the antinomy between subjugation and rule in gender relations can be explained in terms of unconscious origins. By the standard of the modern imperative for authenticity, in the first two Discourses Rousseau condemns the division between the true being and the appearance of his contemporaries. He criticizes them as dissimulators who are disposed to forfeit their true nature and feelings to win the approval of others (DAS 6; DI 95). As narrated in The Confessions, this social commentary is transformed into a personal injunction: as part of a total reform he vows to free himself from the yoke of opinion (C 337, 340). When he takes up the subject of women in the fifth book of Emile, however, he makes subservience to opinion their peculiar virtue. 'Opinion,' he says, 'is the grave of virtue among men and its throne among women' (£365). By nature and not by artifice, he argues, women are subject to men's opinions and judgments (£364, 370, 387). The source of woman's natural subjugation to man's opinions and judgments, and her natural disposition to please, is initially identified as man's greater strength: In the union of the sexes each contributes equally to the common aim, but not in the same way. From this diversity arises the first assignable difference in the moral relations of the two sexes. One ought to be active and strong, the other passive and weak. One must necessarily will and be able; it suffices that the other put up little resistance. Once this principle is established, it follows that woman is made specially to please man. If man ought to please her in turn, it is due to a less direct necessity. His merit is in his power; he pleases by the sole fact of his strength. This is not the law of love, I agree. But it is that of nature, prior to love itself. (£358)

A subsequent elaboration, however, identifies an unequal dependence between the sexes without specifying any natural origin. Rousseau provides only the following indefinite commentary: 'Woman and man are

50 Instinct and Intimacy made for one another, but their mutual dependence is not equal. Men depend on women because of their desires; women depend on men because of both their desires and their needs. We would survive more easily without them than they would without us. For them to have what is necessary to their station, they depend on us to give it to them, to want to give it to them, to esteem them worthy of it' (E 364). Given the equal independence of male and female in Rousseau's state of nature, this inequality in mutual dependence must be societally induced. Yet Rousseau concludes from it that '[b]y the very law of nature women are at the mercy of men's judgments' (£364). As a result, for woman he forfeits the modern imperative for authenticity. Rather than drawing her outward sentiments and conduct from her true inner being, woman must be ever conscious of how she is judged by man. Supporting this subjection to man's opinions and natural disposition to please is an accompanying set of 'female' characteristics. In his modern self-perception Rousseau is unique, but he attributes a common disposition to woman: she is naturally docile, vain, coquettish, modest, and dissimulative (E 358-9, 368; see also A 86 and NH 108). At the beginning of Emile, Book 5, he prepares the ground for this specifically female constitution by asserting that there are differences between men and women. Nonetheless, he admits to the difficulty of knowing what qualities are linked to sex (£357-8). His immediate elaboration is limited to the following tautology: 'The only thing we know with certainty is that everything man and woman have in common belongs to the species, and that everything which distinguishes them belongs to the sex' (E 358). Although he goes on to identify what is natural to females, even by his own portrayal there seems to be more of artifice than of nature in these qualities. What finally emerges is not woman's 'natural' qualities, but an exposition of the features Rousseau observes and advises she must cultivate to covertly rule man even while submitting to his obedience.3 He denies any contradiction between advancing both woman's natural subjugation to man and her exercise of covert rule. As the prototype of his thinking on the qualities woman should cultivate to secure this rule, he explains: 'There is quite a difference between arrogating to oneself the right to command and governing him who commands. Woman's empire is an empire of gentleness, skill, and obligingness; her orders are caresses, her threats are tears. She ought to reign in the home as a minister does in a state - by getting herself commanded to do what she wants to do' (£408). The psychological correlate to woman's subjugation to men is her 'natural' docility. This natural trait, however, is soon revealed to be incul-

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51

cated through early and habitual constraint. Consistent with the liberty Rousseau attributes to natural humanity in the Discourse on Inequality, even in Emile docility in woman is associated with self-combat (£369-70). In submitting to man's will she must submerge her reactions of anger and complaint. Rousseau explains that woman needs the docility produced by habitual constraint to adapt to her lifelong subjugation to either a man or the judgments of men: 'As she is made to obey a being who is so imperfect, often so full of vices, and always so full of defects as a man, she ought to learn early to endure even injustice and to bear a husband's wrongs without complaining.' Chastising 'shrewish' women as ineffectual, he adds that the gentleness he associates with this docility finally allows women to triumph over their husbands (£370). The other 'natural' qualities of women are less circuitously connected to Rousseau's instructions to women on how to govern men. In the Discourse on Inequality Rousseau finds a natural simplicity in the inhabitants of the state of nature, a quality he tries to emulate in his own renunciation of finery in his personal reform (C339; R$\). Emile is consistent in suggesting that women's seemingly natural qualities of vanity, coquettishness, and preoccupation with adornment are actually cultivated traits. He does not replicate for women his own personal injunction for simplicity, however, arguing that women would thereby lose their covert empire over men. In attributing a greater strength to man in Emile, he immediately counters for woman that '[h]er own violence is in her charms.' He contends: 'It is by these that she ought to constrain him to find his strength and make use of it' (£358). True to the idea of a cultivated art, he observes that it is by their mothers' example and instruction that girls learn how to dress and behave to please and attract men. He warns that if girls were raised to resemble men, the less would women govern them: Is it our fault that they please us when they are pretty, that their mincing ways seduce us, that the art which they learn from you attracts and pleases us, that we like to see them tastefully dressed, that we let them sharpen at their leisure the weapons with which they subjugate us? So, decide to raise them like men. The men will gladly consent to it! The more women want to resemble them, the less women will govern them, and then men will truly be the masters. (£363)

In The Confessions Rousseau admits to his own susceptibility to women who cultivate their attractiveness. His occasional salutation elsewhere to coarse and simple women (NH 208) is no camouflage for his self-avowedly 'absurd' taste for fine ladies, which he finds irresistibly alluring:

52

Instinct and Intimacy

Besides, seamstresses, chambermaids, and shop girls hardly tempted me; I needed young ladies. Everyone has his fancies, and that has always been mine ... However it is certainly not pride of rank or position that attracts me. It is a better preserved complexion, lovelier hands, greater elegance in jewellery, an air of cleanliness and refinement about a woman's whole person, better taste in her way of dressing and expressing herself, a finer and better made gown, a neater pair of shoes, ribbons, lace, better done hair. I should always prefer the less pretty woman of two if she had more of all that. I find this prejudice most absurd myself; but my heart dictates it, in spite of myself. (C132)

Upon closer inspection in Emile, modesty also is revealed not as a natural quality (E 358), but as woman's device to secure her dominion over man. The stronger of the two sexes thus only 'appears to be master.' For by arousing more desire than her modest demeanour promises to satisfy, she makes man feel himself dependent on her wish (E 360). This supposed modesty does not truly indicate a lesser sexual drive, however, for Rousseau observes that women artfully circumvent it to obtain what they desire: 'Does not woman have the same needs as man without having the same right to express them? ... Must her modesty make her unhappy? Must she not have an art of communicating her inclinations without laying them bare? What skill she needs to get stolen from her what she is burning to give!' (£385). The disguise of her sexual desire is only part of the dissimulation Rousseau sees in women. While he presents guile in general as a natural female talent (E 370), it becomes apparent that this is actually a painstakingly acquired trait. The art of dissimulation would seem to follow from the necessity he sees for woman to be docile, pleasing, and modest in order to secretly govern man. To this end she must disguise or submerge her true sentiments and inclinations (E 369-70). Thus, in woman Rousseau sanctions the precise antithesis of the personal imperative for authenticity that emerges out of his critique of modern civilization in the first and second Discourses. In short, while Rousseau presents woman as subjugated to man in Emile, he also approves her cultivating various traits to facilitate her covert rule. About this covert rule, however, he is ambivalent, for she alternately appears to him as an inspirer of virtue and as a manipulative seductress. To encourage the former, he advances in Emile that the education of young girls should inspire them to lead men to virtue, by making them feel that the advantages of the female sex are proffered conditionally on the basis of a man's morality and good conduct. This would rekindle the

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 53 Spartan woman's ambition of reigning over great and noble men (£3923). In the sentimental 'Dedication to the Republic of Geneva' that precedes the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau pays tribute to the 'virtuous daughters of Geneva' for governing the Republic's men. By invoking the images of chasteness, innocence, and modest graces, he alludes to their sexual power. Conforming his ideal to the model of Sparta, he judges their command amiable so long as it is 'solely exercised within the limits of conjugal union' (D/41). Hence, it is not in any public function but in their covert influence on men that he finds, and acclaims, the civic contribution of Genevan women. While Rousseau sometimes eulogizes the chaste favours of the female sex as a means of inspiring virtue in men, at other times he castigates the empire woman has established. She appears as the artful seductress who arouses more desire than she is prepared to satisfy, and thus enslaves man to dependence on her wish (£358-60). In the order of nature, Rousseau contends, resistance belongs to women and men conquer it only at the cost of their freedom (A 47). He bases the greater resistance of women on their higher risk in sexual union (£ 358). While such risk is indisputable for women of child-bearing age, this still leaves at issue the manipulative power and false seductiveness he finds in women's refusals. If he calls love the realm of women in the Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theatre (A 47), he

already set the precedent for that claim in the Discourse on Inequality. There he distinguishes between the physical and moral parts of love. The physical part is a general sexual desire that is satisfied indiscriminately in the state of nature. The moral part of love attaches itself exclusively or more strongly to one particular individual, and thus can arise only once humanity has left the original condition and learned to make comparisons. He warns that this moral feeling of love is skilfully used by women to illegitimately procure their ascendance over men: 'It is easy to see that the moral part of love is a factitious feeling, born of social usage, and enhanced by the women with much care and cleverness, to establish their empire, and put in power the sex which ought to obey' (D/77). Consistent with this castigation of woman's rule, in the two faces of Eve woman as the inspiration to man's virtue and noble deeds is displaced by woman as the instigation of his effeminacy and weakness. Not surprisingly, it is in the classically flavoured Letter to M. d'Alembert that Rousseau presents his most extended dirge on the effemination of men by women. In tandem with his approval of the retired lives of ancient women, he presents a 'sedentary and homebound life' as natural to woman (A 101-2). He is then only a step away from arguing that by drawing men into their

54 Instinct and Intimacy sedentary life, women make them effeminate and weak. As validation he lauds the greater strength of the men of antiquity, who did not lose their vigour through the dependence on women that lures modern men into their 'indolent and soft life' (A 100-3). Whether Rousseau praises or disdains the covert rule of women, that he invokes the language of obedience and mastery in gender relations seems incongruous with his principles of civic equality and self-determining freedom. As we have seen, the only natural basis he finds for woman's subjugation in Emile is the greater strength of man (E 358). While he sometimes claims that their intellectual capacities are directed towards different ends, he never asserts that woman is man's intellectual inferior. In fact, as an equitable compensation for her lesser strength, he credits woman with an extra measure of cleverness to be able to govern man while obeying him (£371). To accordingly base woman's natural obedience on a difference in strength is inconsistent with the analysis of the Discourse on Inequality. Here he draws a distinction between natural and political equality, with the former being established by nature and the latter by convention. Only by the privileges established by conventional inequality is anyone able to exact obedience from another. Along with differences in age and health, and the qualities of soul and mind, he lists strength as a form of natural inequality. But he considers it disrespectful to freedom to even pose the question of whether there is a connection between any natural inequality and political inequality (D/49).4 Thus, he contravenes his argument in the Discourse when he disavows in Emile the self-determining freedom of all human beings. Furthermore, if the Discourse denies any natural connection between strength and obedience, The Social Contract disclaims any moral one. There he dismisses the socalled right of the strongest as 'inexplicable nonsense,' for if right depends on force, the moral effect would end with any possibility of disobeying with impunity (SC 184). Moreover, for natural inequalities in strength, or intelligence for that matter, the legitimate compact substitutes a moral equality established by convention and legal right (SC 184, 199)While the gender stereotypes of his day supported the natural subordination Rousseau ascribes to women, we might still wonder why this passionate critic of inequality did not extend his accusatory lens to the position of women. He might have used his discussion of women and gender relations in Emile to further his censure of civilization in the first two Discourses. His alternating praise and distaste for the hidden rule of women might have formed a critique of a society that, by denying women

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 55 participation in public life, forces them to find covert domestic means of influence. Instead of sanctioning inauthenticity as a means to covert rule, he could have opposed the subjugation that causes women to revert to this behaviour. Nature becomes a subterfuge for civilization as he presents women's 'natural' docility as the product of habitual constraint (E 370); despite the opportunity, he does not replicate in respect to gender his rebuke of Aristotle for taking 'the effect for the cause' in arguing there are natural slaves (SC 183). Preoccupied in Emile with the power of women's charms, Rousseau does not extend his condemnation of institutionalized political inequality to criticize the lack of self-determining freedom for women as a 'class.' In short, that this rebel against inequality should configure gender relations in terms of mastery and obedience, without any critical distance, leads one to suspect psychological explanations. That equality between the sexes is subverted by issues of submission and control can be understood in terms of Rousseau's propensity toward masochism. In the masochistic fantasy the pleasure may be the eroticization of pain, but the interpersonal dynamic is the total renunciation of the self to the other.5 Rousseau's first masochistic tendencies emerged in childhood with the sexual arousal he experienced in being spanked by Mile Lambercier. She was the sister of the pastor with whom his uncle Bernard had sent his cousin, Abraham, and himself to board: But when in the end I was beaten I found the experience less dreadful in fact than in anticipation; and the very strange thing was that this punishment increased my affection for the inflicter. It required all the strength of my devotion and all my natural gentleness to prevent my deliberately earning another beating: I had discovered in the shame and pain of the punishment an admixtvire of sensviality which had left me rather eager than otherwise for a repetition by the same hand. No dovibt, there being some degree of precociovis sexuality in all this, the same punishment at the hands of her brother would not have seemed pleasant at all. (C25-6)

Rousseau goes on to remark how his adult tastes and imagination, and the very nature of his self, never broke free of the strange desires aroused by this childhood spanking: Who could have supposed that this childhood punishment, received at the age of eight at the hands of a woman of thirty, would determine my tastes and desires, my passions, my very self for the rest of my life and that in a sense diametrically

56

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opposed to the one in which they should normally have developed ... Tormented for a long while by I knew not what, I feasted feverish eyes on lovely women, recalling them ceaselessly to my imagination, but only to make use of them in my own fashion as so many Mile Lamberciers. (C26)

Masochism emerges in those who have experienced a deep sense of early loss and abandonment. The physical pain erotically desired serves to protect the self from the psychic pain of this early trauma.6 Rousseau's mother died a few days after he was born, leading him to see his birth as his first misfortune (C 19). After an altercation with a captain in the French army, his father fled Geneva, abandoning the ten-year-old JeanJacques to be raised by his Uncle Bernard (C 23). Stained with an original guilt over causing his mother's death, Rousseau yearned for atonement through redemptive submission to women: 'To fall on my knees before a masterful mistress, to obey her commands, to have to beg for her forgiveness, have been to me the most delicate of pleasures' (C28). His pleasure in submission psychologically entailed resort to his imagination, for he was unable to declare to any woman his masochistic sexual tastes. He explains that it was not the kind of enjoyment that either could be appropriated by he who wants it or guessed by her who could bestow it (C 27). As a measure of the difficulty of his autobiographical confession, he emphasizes his inability to reveal his desires even to the women with whom he was most intimate: How much it has cost me to make such revelations can be judged when I say that though sometimes labouring under passions that have robbed me of sight, of hearing, and of my senses, though sometimes trembling convulsively in my whole body in the presence of the woman I loved, I have never, during the whole course of my life, been able to force myself, even in moments of extreme intimacy, to confess my peculiarities and implore her to grant the one favour which was lacking. (C 28)

The pleasure he experienced in being spanked by Mile Lambercier was repeated again only in his childhood with a girl of his own age, Mile Goton, and then at her initiative (C 28). To his embarrassment she let out their secret and other girls teased him, whispering that 'Goton tic-tac Rousseau' (OC 1:27). Still longing in his late adolescence for even fifteen minutes with another Mile Goton, he resorted to exposing his bottom in 'dark alleys and lonely spots' in the hope that some passing woman would take it upon herself to afford him the desired treatment (C90-1). Recalling the strange turn his passions took as a result of being aroused

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by his spanking by Mile Lambercier, he remarks how he remained 'pure1 long after even the most backward natures mature (C 26). Always yearning to be in a submissive position toward women, he could not initiate sexual encounters. By this submissiveness the masochist becomes false to 'the desires and agency that come from within.'7 Rousseau testified throughout his life to unrevealed sexual longings and to never having made a lascivious proposal except when pressed into it by the woman's advances (C90, 141, 187-8, 239, 254). Rousseau first experienced sex at the invitation of Mme de Warens, a woman he called 'Mamma.' She was a Swiss Catholic convert who had managed to obtain pensions from the King of Sardinia and two bishops after leaving her husband, her religion, and her country. Rousseau lived in her household in Savoy from his late adolescence into his mid-twenties. He met her at the age of fifteen after he had run away from Geneva and his apprenticeship as an engraver, and found this childless woman of twenty-nine filled his need for a maternal attachment. For the adolescent Jean-Jacques there was an admixture of physical attraction in this filial connection: 'I was intoxicated with delight at having a young and pretty mamma whom I loved to caress' (C106-7; see also C108). When he was twenty-one, in order to safeguard him from other women, she proposed to grant him her sexual favours. That proposition filled him with more dread than desire; while his affection for her had strengthened, through the long habit of treating her with the familiarity of a son, he had lost his initial sensual rapture. Any mutuality in sexual relations was extinguished by his feeling of an incestuous relationship between mother and son (C187-90). Possessing a 'tender mother' but still burning for a mistress, he could derive physical pleasure only by imagining other women in her place (C210). His other enduring relationship was with Therese Le Vasseur, whom he called his 'Aunt.' He met her when he was thirty-three and they remained together until the end of his life. She again appears to be a substitute for maternal affection. He confides that he did not desire to possess Therese any more than he had desired Mme de Warens - neither one aroused in him sensual love (C385, 414). Thus, through his lack of agency and his unconscious yearning for maternal love, Rousseau's story with women was one of unsatisfied passion. For Rousseau to leave the initiative up to women is at odds with Emile, where it is women who are at least overtly sexually modest. This contradiction reinforces how he uncritically reflects gender stereotypes in his treatment of women and sexuality, rather than bringing up from the primordial depth the critique he so powerfully directs against other

58 Instinct and Intimacy aspects of modern society. A condemnation of sexuality in civilization only emerges once, in the primordially inspired Discourse on Inequality. He explains that unlike some animals, the human species does not have seasonal periods of heat. In humanity's original state, even if such periods of 'universal passion [and] tumult' did exist, they would be less harmful than the morals and passions connected with civilized love and marriage: It is indeed clear that they would do still less mischief than is the case in a state of society; especially in those countries in which, morals being still held in some repute, the jealousy of lovers and the vengeance of husbands are the daily cause of duels, murders, and even worse crimes; where the obligation of eternal fidelity only occasions adultery, and the very laws of honour and continence necessarily increase debauchery and lead to the multiplication of abortions. (Dl'jg)

Rousseau thus finds that the restrictive sexual mores of civilization have a psychological and societal consequence in jealousy, debauchery, and abortion. However he configures the results, he momentarily anticipates Freudian analysis, which also finds a price in the repression of sexuality in civilization.8 Transfixed with submissiveness to women in his masochistic imagination, Rousseau in his philosophical writing on gender relations tends to be preoccupied with sexual stereotypes and the polar opposition of mastery and subjugation. His own yearning for submission emerges in his portrayal of woman's covert rule; this unconscious desire for submission to women is then suppressed by the unreflective appropriation of cultural stereotypes on woman's natural obedience. Thus, the timeless quality of so much of Rousseau's writing does not characterize the last book of Emile on Sophie, which seems dated and stilted to the twentieth-century reader. As a measure of its anachronism, this section was so popular in eighteenth-century England, by contrast, that Sophie's name was included in the title of the English translation.9 2 Splitting of Masculine and Feminine

Although unconscious obstacles block the condemnation of civilized gender relations from the primordial position in Emile, the basis for such a critique is present in the Discourse on Inequality. This work can be read as Rousseau's protest against the splitting of masculine and feminine in civilization. Hypothesizing an undifferendated condition of male and female in the state of nature, he defends the original unity of masculine and fern-

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 59 inine. With the development of reason this original psychic wholeness was divided and natural compassion was suppressed. In La Nouvelle Heloise, we see further that the natural compassion stifled in men is projected onto women, who then become the embodiment of tenderness for the whole human species. Thus understood, Rousseau the antifeminist becomes the rebel against the suppression of'feminine' values in civilization.10 The conception of an original state of psychic wholeness implies there are no feminine and masculine traits as such, but only those that have been projected onto each gender of the species. Thus, Rousseau does not in any way differentiate the male from the female in the state of nature. Both are characterized by innate compassion, seen in a painful sensitivity to the suffering of other sentient beings; amour de soi, the love of self that leads to self-care; perfectibility, the almost unlimited capacity for the development of the human faculties; simplicity, with desires never going beyond the satisfaction of physical wants; asociality, the absence of sustained interaction with others; and an immersion in one's own existence, independent of the regard of others. For male and female these qualities are present in the absence of both reason and imagination. Undifferentiated in their primordial traits, the sexes are correspondingly not distinguished in their manner of life. Even the mother's care for her offspring does not alter this by comparatively burdening her; Rousseau emphasizes the ease with which she is able to carry her young (DI 55, 58). Nor does her maternal care alter her natural independence: her children leave of their own accord once they can forage for themselves, and mother and child soon no longer recognize each other (DI 65). In contrast, therefore, to the 'natural' qualities that Rousseau ambivalently attributes to woman in Emile, in the Discourse on Inequality there is no basis for differentiating an original and determining masculine and feminine nature. Aside from perfectibility, which draws humanity out of the natural state, the development of civilization is the story of humanity's fall from these gender-neutral, original traits. While Rousseau does not state it in these terms, his tale of the fall is one of gender differentiation, with the attendant suppression of the feminine and ascendance of the masculine. By a long-standing dualism in Western civilization, reason is conceived as masculine and dissociated from compassion, which is considered feminine. In the original unity of the natural condition, prior to reason,11 compassion for the suffering of other sentient creatures was felt by all human beings (DI 47, 73-5). The development of reason successively stifled this fellow-feeling: ' [I]t is reason which turns man's mind back upon itself, and divides him from everything that could disturb or afflict him ...

60 Instinct and Intimacy Uncivilized man has not this admirable talent; and for want of reason and wisdom, is always foolishly ready to obey the first promptings of humanity' (DI 75). As the most highly cultivated reasoners, Rousseau particularly condemns philosophers for their capacity to insulate themselves from the suffering of others (D/75). La Nouvelle Heloise picks up from the Discourse on Inequality, showing

how the self-division engendered by reason is begotten with the splitting of masculine and feminine.12 In this novel the heroine, Julie, embodies compassion and her husband, Monsieur de Wolmar, personifies reason. The story begins with Julie's affair with her tutor, Saint-Preux. While he is the love her heart never relinquishes, her father prohibits their marriage, committing her instead to the titled and older Wolmar. Although secretly aware of Julie's love for Saint-Preux, at the risk of plunging both himself and her into misfortune Wolmar persists in marrying her (NH 319). As the 'masculine' embodiment of reason, Wolmar is out of touch with the compassionate, 'feminine' side of his nature. He yearns for reunion with it through marriage to Julie, a woman who corresponds to his own unconscious femininity.'3 When Julie evoked the first tender feelings Wolmar had ever experienced, her cousin Claire observed that it was not by reason of her beauty or wit but because of her tender heart. What makes her loved by Wolmar is her talent for loving and her possession of a heart that 'asks only to give itself (NH 171-2). Julie confirms in a letter to Saint-Preux that the only emotion she ever has been able to find in Wolmar is what he feels for her (NH 260). Wolmar's attachment to Julie is compelling, for without it he feels nothing at all (NH 319). Dominated by a judicious but cold reason, only through his love choice can he make any contact with the natural compassion suppressed in him. For his usual orientation to the world is that of observing, and not the empathetic assumption of the other's position that is instinctive to the natural human (D/75): 'Little susceptible of pleasure and of grief, I even experience only very faintly that sentiment of self-interest and of humanitarianism which makes the affections of others our own'(AW317).Though not as sharply divided from his compassionate, 'feminine' nature as Wolmar, SaintPreux also experiences reconnection with it through his relationship to Julie. He declares that '[d] ispassionate reason would have enlightened me, perhaps [but only] as a cool admirer of virtue.' She inspired in him, by contrast, a zealous desire to practise virtue (NH 194). The sympathy of readers most obviously has been drawn to the fate of the two young lovers who are denied a marital life together, and especially to the fate of the heroine. She apparently dies of a broken heart in

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 61 failing to recover after rescuing her son from a water accident.14 Reading La Nouvelle Heloise as an extension of the Discourse on Inequality, the other

tragedy is that of Wolmar. The Discourse tells of humanity's fall from an original psychic unity, and La Nouvelle Heloise shows how this self-division embodies itself in the split between masculine and feminine in modern civilization. Cut off from any fellow-feeling by his 'masculine' reason, Wolmar finds in Julie the feminine imago of his unconscious yearning for empathetic identification with others. As his only link to the feelings of humanity, the dying Julie anticipates that it will not be Saint-Preux but Wolmar who 'will soon be the most unfortunate of mortals' (NH 406). After Julie's death Claire implores Saint-Preux to come and tutor Julie's children; for as predicted by Julie, Wolmar is 'uneasy and disturbed.' Claire writes that '[i]n vain he strives, but he cannot believe her annihilated. His heart, in spite of himself, rebels against his empty reason' (NM 408). Always ambivalent, even as he tragically casts the modern splitting of masculine and feminine in La Nouvelle Heloise, Rousseau sometimes participates in it by opposing maternal solicitude (E 38, 45) to paternal authority (SC 182, 186; DPE 164). Psychologically, this parental dichotomy stems from Rousseau's refusal or inability to acknowledge his childhood loss of paternal nurturing. He consciously experienced his mother's death as his first misfortune (C 19), but the pain of being abandoned by his father never becomes conscious. He does not speak of any sense of loss and he continues to paint his childhood in idyllic terms. Ironically, in comparing his father to the uncle who took over raising him, it is the uncle he faults for not being sufficiently attentive in his paternal duties (C 34). Providing not even a hint of his father's neglect, Rousseau describes him as 'scrupulously upright' (C 66) and eulogizes him in his 'Dedication to the Republic of Geneva' (D/39). After running away from Geneva and his apprenticeship, Rousseau somehow had to account for his father's unwillingness to keep him. He rationalized it as his father's advancing age and lack of means, which unconsciously turned that man's thoughts to the property he would inherit in the absence of Jean-Jacques and his elder brother, who had preceded him in being a runaway. Even so, Rousseau remained convinced of his father's goodness and paternal affection for him (C 61). The retrospective interpretation of The Confessions cannot even countenance an adult rift. Rousseau recounts visiting his father shortly after his teenage conversion to Catholicism - a visit that is allegedly memorable for their tearful embrace and his father's overflowing paternal feelings (C 141-2).

62 Instinct and Intimacy In fact, Rousseau's correspondence with his father a few months later shows that on this occasion his father had more or less renounced him.15 Rousseau cannot claim the paternal nurturing due to him, for he felt himself at fault for depriving his father of his beloved wife. This is a sin for which he believed his father held him responsible as a child: 'He seemed to see her again in me, but could never forget that I had robbed him of her; he never kissed me that I did not know by his sighs and his convulsive embrace that there was a bitter grief mingled with his affection' (C 19). That he never felt forgiven by his father and expiated for his mother's death is reflected by Claire in La Nouvelle Heloise: she looks with horror upon the son whose unwitting accident eventually results in Julie's death (NH 401-2). The original psychic unity of the Discourse on Inequality, and the tragic splitting of masculine and feminine in La Nouvelle Heloise, do not support the cultural dichotomy Rousseau sometimes accepts between paternal authority and maternal solicitude. But, needing to suppress his own pain over being abandoned by his father, he is unable to consciously and consistently oppose the splitting of masculine and feminine in its parental manifestation. Instead, he invokes a strict division between the respective duties of the two sexes in Emile, making women responsible for the care of children (E 361). And in the legalistic, public tones of The Social Contract, it is to fathers that children owe their obedience (SC 182, 186). As a telling example of philosophical study stifling compassion, in his worst excess of defensive rationalization, Rousseau remarks, in The Confessions, that in his own acts of abandonment he imagined himself to be a member of Plato's Republic turning his children over to the state to be raised (C333). The strongest evidence for Rousseau's repressed pain over his childhood loss of paternal nurturing is the abandoned child's abandonment of his own children. For whatever remains unconscious is bound to be repeated. The psychological correlate to not assuming his own paternal responsibilities was his refusal to recognize his father's neglect of his. Thus suppressed, his unconscious yearning for paternal affection could not break through to consistently oppose the cultural bias towards paternal authority rather than paternal nurturing. Rousseau's personal experience of being abandoned undoubtedly led to an extra measure of denial of his need for paternal affection. As another instance of the universal significance of personal problems, this denial reflects a general societal tendency to submerge the need for paternal nurturing. And as Rousseau's life and writings reveal, until this need is acknowledged through the widening of personal consciousness,

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the dualism between masculine and feminine in its parental manifestation will not be opposed consistently in social practices and political institutions. 3 Women and the Social Contract The question next arises of whether Rousseau extends into The Social Contract the implications of his insight into the splitting of masculine and feminine. This text cannot settle the issue alone, for in it he is silent on woman. Whether he includes her in the social contract thus must be interpreted in the context of other works. The interpretative orthodoxy has been to read this treatise in reference to Emile, where he accepts the stereotypical bifurcation of the genders and restricts women to the domestic sphere.16l It is arguable, however, that the Discourse on Inequalit is the compelling antecedent to The Social Contract, in which case the natural liberty of all human beings implicitly entails the inclusion of women. Psychological obstructions sometimes do impede the consistent translation of Rousseau's primordial insight into his philosophical writings. As we have seen in Emile, his discussion of women in civilization tends to be determined by unconscious neurotic processes and gender stereotypes. Nonetheless, where overt reference to women does not activate these responses, the logic of his political thinking does not exclude women from his principles of political right. It is conceivable that, alongside the antifeminist statements of other works, he tacitly includes women in participator)7 self-rule. This inclusion is nowhere contradicted in The Social Contract, even if the substratum of Rousseau's psyche did not allow more than inference. Moreover, as we shall see, even reading this text in conjunction with Emile, woman has the capacity to participate in the legislative Sovereign. While Rousseau sometimes states that husbands naturally command (E 382; DPE 164), in gender relations he is, as previously shown, ambivalent about whether it is man or woman who does or ought to rule. Without actually broaching the topic of gender, Rousseau comes closest to it in The Social Contract in discussing the family. In this legalistic work he opts for a patriarchal model, but ultimately rejects any parallel between the natural family and the conventional state. Children's dependence on the father for their preservation constitutes a natural bond that leads him to present the family as the only natural society. Despite their dependence, Rousseau argues that because children are all 'born free and equal,' they can be understood to alienate their liberty to be ruled in the family only

64 Instinct and Intimacy for their own preservation and advantage. In virtue of this exchange of natural liberty for care, he calls the family 'the first model of political societies.' He sees the father corresponding to the ruler and the children to the people, excluding any mention whatsoever of the mother (SC 182). It rightly draws feminist criticism to present as natural a patriarchal family that accords no formal significance to woman. But in the end it is by being natural that Rousseau distinguishes the family from the state, and thus rejects patriarchy as the model of political rule. Rousseau would have forestalled feminist criticism by substituting 'parent' for 'father' in presenting children's dependence on the father as the family's natural bond. However, this does not alter the lack of parallel with the state. The state is conventional: it consists of mutually independent members who dissolve and form it at will. The family only becomes conventional if it remains united once the children are independent (SC 182). Furthermore, he argues that the patriarchal family has no bearing on membership in the state. The rights of paternity do not extend to alienating the liberty of the children; at the age of discretion it is theirs to accept or reject the government based on their own assessments of their well-being (SC 186). If we seek to settle whose consent legitimizes the state, scouring The Social Contract for gender-neutral or -specific language does not establish the inclusion of women, but neither does it exclude them. Rousseau refers throughout to 'the people' as constituting the Sovereign — a seemingly neutral term that nonetheless is not always inclusive in the history of political thought. While frequently using the words 'person(s)' and 'individuals),' he also employs 'man' and 'men' (see, for example, SC 190-3). This is arguably a matter of Rousseau's contemporary literary practice; it is only in the past decade that some writers have striven to use genderneutral language to refer to men and women.'7 The ambiguity is all the more compelling since Rousseau uses the term 'original man' in the Discourse on Inequality, where he essentially does not differentiate male from female. This lack of consistent and clear gender-specificity again reinforces the need to interpret The Social Contract with reference to its political principles and the analysis of human nature, male and female, in other works. Taking Emile for granted as the appropriate interpretative context ignores the alternative implications of the Discourse on Inequality, which otherwise is understood as the theoretical precedent to The Social Contract. If we grant this sequential relationship, it is not by any gender-specific, civilized features but by reference to the sexually undifferentiated

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traits of natural humanity that Rousseau derives the political principles of The Social Contract. Motivating his exploration of humanity's beginnings in the second Discourse is Rousseau's conviction that only the study of original humanity can illuminate the true foundations of the body politic and its members' reciprocal rights (DI 4.7-8). As described above, it is only in civilization that masculine and feminine are split from an undifferentiated condition. The liberty of the natural human, male and female, is the primordial principle from which Rousseau most directly derives the consensual and democratic terms of The Social Contract. That work postulates the natural liberty that is understood in the second Discourse as the adjunct to the relative equality of original humanity. While there are natural differences in age, health, bodily strength, and mental attributes, Rousseau insists that the influence of this inequality is insignificant in the state of nature (DI 49, 82); for none is able to exact servitude from any other, permitting the original liberty of humanity (DI &1). This natural liberty is transported into The Social Contract as the fundamental premise requiring the consent of the people to the social contract and their legislative self-rule through the direct participation of each in the Sovereign. Because of this natural liberty Rousseau argues that paternal authority cannot substitute for the consent of the offspring. Referring to another sexually undivided feature, natural liberty can be alienated only if in that individual's judgment the contract is consistent with amour de soi. Rousseau advances, as the only contractual terms faithful to this first pledge of self-care, a system of collective self-rule. Hence, the only legitimate substitute for natural liberty is moral liberty, the self-mastery of obedience to self-prescribed laws. If these terms are subsequently altered, the contract is nullified and all resume their natural liberty (SC 186, 191, 196). The natural liberty from which Rousseau derives the principle of equal participator)- self-rule is ascribed to both male and female in the state of nature. Thus, there is no basis for excluding women from civic participation and, in fact, he nowhere denies civic membership to women in The Social Contract. Ever mindful of his foil to civilized humanity - the equally independent male and female of the natural condition - he conceivably presumes the self-determining freedom consistent with this natural liberty for all human beings in his ideal polity. Even if The Social Contract is read in conjunction with Entile, the capacity of women to participate in the Sovereign is not disaffirmed. First, civic participation requires a moral inwardness capable of discerning the general will independently of others' opinions and public prejudices. In

66 Instinct and Intimacy Emile Rousseau affirms this moral inwardness in woman. Describing her empirical subjection to man's opinions, he counters that she must weigh these opinions against her conscience before accepting or rejecting them (E 383). Referring to the rule of inner sentiment through which conscience speaks, he insists that '[a] rule prior to opinion exists for the whole human species' (£382, my emphasis). Woman, too, must cultivate her reason to work with her conscience in correcting the errors of prejudice. Second, though Rousseau has drawn feminist criticism in Emile for restricting women to domestic duties, occupation has no bearing on civic membership. He censures Plato for the 'civil promiscuity which throughout confounds the two sexes in the same employments' (E 363). But for Rousseau sovereign rule is not an occupation, but a function of citizenship. In any case, he advocates artisanship and farming as the most independent and therefore the best occupations (E 197, 456-7). Though traditionally male occupations, these are extensions of the household - a factor that obviously does not affect eligibility to participate in sovereign rule. While housewifery might be considered just as irrelevant, some commentators argue that Rousseau's confinement of woman to the domestic realm immerses her in particular interests that are incompatible with being able to see and follow the general will.18 But as we shall see below, for Rousseau intimate relations are not the subversion but the foundation of emotional civic affiliation. Finally, it also has been inferred that Rousseau excludes women from political participation because men defend the state through being soldiers.19 There is no reason, however, why bearing arms is a greater civic contribution than bearing soldiers. In Emile Rousseau emphasizes the importance of women's being robust in order to produce males who will be able to withstand the fatigue of war (£366). If the logic of The Social Contract does not exclude women from democratic citizenship, neither does it take up women's cause. This response to women's subordination contrasts with that of class domination, which Rousseau condemns in the Discourse on Inequality and seeks to rectify in The Social Contract. Here again, while the principles of The Social Contract

could warrant a similar castigation of women's sexual exploitation, this course is not supported by the substratum of Rousseau's psyche. On economic class there is an emotional consistency between the autobiographies and the political texts. In his memoirs Rousseau sympathetically describes his contact with the exploited peasantry of France, on one occasion describing how he felt after buying a meal from a peasant on one of his journeys: 'I came out of his cottage equally touched and indignant,

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deploring the fate of those lovely lands on which Nature has only lavished her gifts to make them the prey of barbarous tax-farmers' (C 160). The indignation the peasants' plight aroused in him makes its way into the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract. In the former he censures the political domination of the poor by the rich, and in the latter he specifies limitations on the acquisition of wealth. He requires that 'no citizen shall ever be wealthy enough to buy another, and none poor enough to be forced to sell himself (SC 225). While this statement cries out to be applied to women's oppression, on this subject he is silent. On prostitution, an obvious form of sexual exploitation, The Confessions reveal that emotionally he cannot follow through. The sympathetic indignation he feels on behalf of the peasantry is not replicated in respect to prostitutes (C 27, 296). He relates: 'I had a horror of prostitutes which has never left me, and I could not look on a debauchee without contempt and even fear' (C 27). This personal aversion also surfaces in the moral tones of Emile, where he describes his ideally raised young man as having an abhorrence of prostitutes: 'You will find in him contempt for vice and horror of debauchery. At the very mention of a prostitute you will see scandalized innocence in his eyes' (£330). About his own sexuality Rousseau was ambivalent: his masochistic desires inhibited and embarrassed him; he viewed his masturbation as an addictive vice; and he was troubled by a lack of sensuality, and at worst by overtly incestuous feelings, in the two major relationships of his life (C 26-8, 90, 108-9, 161, 187-90, 210, 385, 414, 549). This ambivalence was projected onto prostitutes, whom he consequently could not see as economically exploited. In spite of his express disgust for prostitutes, he had several encounters with them. One occurred when he was thirty-one, while he was the secretary to the French ambassador at Venice. In return for a service to the captain of a merchant ship, he was introduced to a prostitute, Giulictta, whom he found immediately intoxicating. On a rendezvous the next day, despite his amorous attraction, Rousseau suddenly became transfixed with the question of how this masterpiece of nature and love could be a street-walker: 'This thing which is at my disposal,' I said to myself, 'is Nature's masterpiece and love's. Its mind, its body, every part is perfect. She is not only charming and beautiful, but good also and generous. Great men and princes should be her slaves. Sceptres should lie at her feet. Yet here she is, a wretched street-walker, on sale to the world. The captain of a merchant ship can dispose of her ... There is something incomprehensible about this.' (C 300-1)

68 Instinct and Intimacy He surmised that either his senses were deluding him or she must possess some 'secret flaw.' Finally finding her 'flaw' in a malformed nipple, he reacted by thinking of her as 'some kind of monster, rejected by Nature, men, and love' (C301). (His reaction is all the more ironic since Rousseau believed his penis to be abnormally formed [C 298].) When he spoke of her nipple she initially took it as a joke, but his continuing uneasiness insulted her (C 301-2). She dressed and coldly dismissed him, scornfully suggesting that he '[g]ive up the ladies, and study mathematics' (C302). Guilty about his own sexuality, Rousseau could not see past a starkly polarized sin and innocence in sexual relations. This explains his compulsion to find the secret flaw in a lovely prostitute. Even afterwards, when he was consumed with regret over his blundered opportunity, he did not see the socio-economic context for her prostitution. Waiting for a further appointment that she understandably did not keep, he still uneasily wondered how he could 'reconcile the perfections of this adorable girl with the unworthiness of her trade' (C 302). The implications for The Social Contract are that, while its principles may support the rectification of women's sexual exploitation, Rousseau's own personal blocks prevented him from drawing out for gender the analysis he consciously developed for class. Whether the principles of The Social Contract support such an analysis, then, cannot be settled simply by its absence. 4 Ascendance of Private Life

Unable to see beyond the cultural dichotomy between maternal solicitude and paternal authority, Rousseau presents woman's purpose in Emile as that of producing and caring for children (£361-2). While the bearing of children obviously follows from biology, their care by mothers stems from his denial of paternal nurturing. There is no direct bond of affection between father and children, for the mother provides the connection: 'She serves as the link between them and their father; she alone makes him love them' (£361). Having already assumed woman's purpose to be bearing and caring for children, Rousseau expends little theoretical energy on discounting woman's capacities for other work. Occasional references unsystematically exclude her from the trades because of her size and strength (£ 200), from the physical sciences because of her passivity (E 387), and from the profession of author owing to her lack of genius and talent (£409; A 103). The resultant confinement of women to the domestic sphere understandably has evoked feminist criticism; but without agreeing

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with this restriction, it is still important to examine its context. This consists in the ascendance of private life in relation to work and politics. As earlier argued, 'occupational' status is irrelevant to membership in the Sovereign. Thus, Rousseau is not obviously denying women participation in democratic self-rule, but is excluding them from the public sphere of work. While this rightly offends our modern sense of gender equality, evaluating it in Rousseau's terms leads to his critique of labour in civilization. He has been interpreted as a forerunner of Marx,2() and this is substantiated by his analysis of class exploitation. Yet Rousseau also differs from Marx in not finding in work the potential for the creative realization of our individual or species being. Regardless of class relations, civilized labour alienates us from our original nature. Taking as his measure the savage's freedom from work, he condemns the toilsome life of the civilized human: 'The [savage] breathes only peace and liberty; he desires only to live and be free from labour ... Civilized man, on the other hand, is always moving, sweating, toiling and racking his brains to find still more laborious occupations' (Z)/ii5). Thus, Rousseau anticipates Freud in seeing the labours of civilized life as an unhappy renunciation of our instinctual life.21 While always looking regretfully back to this lost past, Rousseau also searches for ways to reintegrate what he can of the primitive state into civilization. Guided by the relative equality of the original state, he stipulates that if work is an ineluctable part of civilization, it must be required of everyone (A 114; DPE 179). This justifies The Social Contract's limitations on wealth such that no one may be rich enough to buy the labour of another (SC 225) and thus secure their own idleness. He also advocates manual labour as the occupation that, by being 'the most independent of Fortune and men/ bears the closest resemblance to the natural state (E 1 95)22 Furthermore, the more the work engages 'creativity,' the greate is the alienation from our primitive life. Thus, Emile is to have a trade and not be a poet, musician, actor, or writer (E 196-97). Rousseau saw his own writing as alienating him from nature. He believed that nature never intended him for the profession of writing (LAP 236); he saw it as being 'as fatal for his constitution as it was contrary to his taste' (D 159). He enunciates the incompatibility he experienced as a rule of nature: 'A taste for letters, for philosophy and the fine arts, enervates both body and soul ... Study wears out the human machine, wastes the spirits, destroys its force, and enervates its courage; which sufficiently shows nature never intended it for us' (N 135). As verification, Rousseau contends that only when he forsook reasoning for the pleasure of reverie

70 Instinct and Intimacy did he lose the 'chronic pains,' the 'pallor,' and the 'moribund look' he had during the ten years he was writing (D 159). Thus, while he is intolerably sexist in contending that women do not have the capacity to be authors (E 409; A 103), reserving literary achievement for men does not alter his disenchantment with a creative career as a subversion of nature for anyone. Set against the alienation of work, domestic life is all the more fulfilling. Always on the brink of renouncing his literary career, Rousseau, in seeking intimacy with Therese, explains that he needed as compensation '[t]he charms of private and domestic life' (C310). Hence, though unpalatable, Rousseau's restriction of women to domestic duties still must be set in the context of his negative valuation of publicly engaged work, and his consequent view of domestic life not as a confinement but as a desired retreat from civilized work. Conjoining work with the satisfaction of domestic life, for his happiness Emile asks only for 'Sophie and my field' (-£457). In lauding farming and the trades as the most independent occupations (E 197, 456-7), Rousseau seeks to protect the household unit as much as possible from dependent engagement with the outside world. Through Emile's desire to secure his home, his tutor is able to impress upon him the importance of the state: though Emile's life desires are modest, the peace he seeks is precariously dependent on the country in which he lives. Who knows where one can live independent and free, without need to harm anyone and without fear of being harmed? ... I agree that if there is any legitimate and sure means of subsisting without intrigue, without involvements, and without dependence, it is to live by cultivating one's own land with the labour of one's own hands. But where is the state where a man can say to himself, 'The land I tread is mine'? Before choosing this happy land, be well assured that you will find there the peace you seek. Be careful that a violent government, a persecuting religion, or perverse morals do not come to disturb you there. (£457)

Thus, it is through Emile's desire to protect his private life that the tutor introduces him to the abuses of government and the legitimate principles of political right (£458-66). In this affirmation of private life, Rousseau establishes his allegiance with modernity and its inversion of the ancient Greek order, which rested upon a sharp division between the polis and the household. As typified by Aristotle, the 'good life' is that of the citizen and the contemplator; the life of the household is subordinated in status to these higher activities.

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 71 In the modern repudiation of this supposedly higher realm, personal meaning is drawn from everyday life - from the production and reproduction of work and family.23 Rousseau expresses this modern affirmation of private life in the value he places on intimate relations. The historical anthropology of the Discourse on Inequality presents intimate relations as the only absolutely positive development in the advent of civilization. Rousseau's reconstruction begins with the depiction of human beings as solitary wanderers of the forest, where contact was sporadic and there was neither the means nor the inclination for communication. Strangers to social ties, these primitive humans were probably even indistinguishable to each other. The sexes united simply from physical impulse and parted with equal indifference. Mothers nurtured their offspring as long as they were dependent and then no longer recognized them (D/64, 66, 76, 79, 80, 84, 86). For Rousseau the first revolution in human affairs occurred when human beings began living in huts, thus establishing families (D/87). The union of husbands, wives, and children under one roof gave rise to the first expansions of the human heart. Deemed by Rousseau to be 'the finest feelings known to humanity,' conjugal love and paternal affection arose from the habit of living together (Z)/88). Furthermore, as they came to know each other better, the casual sexual unions between young people of neighbouring huts soon led to the more sustained interest of romantic love. An intensity of feeling developed, and a need for continued contact. As Rousseau remarks, 'In consequence of seeing each other often, they could not do without seeing each other constantly' (D/89). This new feeling of romantic attachment depended on the acquisition of a capacity and inclination for comparison. For Rousseau considers these preferential feelings to arise out of comparing different desired others on their beauty and merit (DI 89). Thus, romantic love is associated with the comparative impulses of amour-propre and its characteristic emotions of jealousy, shame, vanity, and envy (jD/90). Once differential personal values came to be assessed, individuals punished others for any signs of contempt; such punishments were meted out in proportion to their respective opinions of themselves (D/90-1). Despite this first emergence of amour-propre, Rousseau describes not the preceding solitary stage, but tribal society with its intimate relations, as 'the happiest and most stable of epochs' {D 91). Contributing centrally to this happiness were the reciprocal attachments of intimate life, the tender feelings of familial and romantic love. As reconstructed by Rousseau, then, from an originally asocial state,

72 Instinct and Intimacy humanity's entry into the first primitive society was characterized by the correlative expansion of human emotions and intensification of association into intimate relations: 'As ideas and feelings succeeded one another, and heart and head were brought into play, men continued to lay aside their original wildness; their private connections became every day more intimate as their limits extended' (DIgo). Although one of the emotions evoked was amour-propre, it is not outweighed in Rousseau's historical judgment by the heartful feelings of intimacy also elicited by closer association. He presents the rest of human history, devolving from this tribal society, as a deterioration into misery marked by the advent and heightening of economic and political inequalities and dependencies. While he subsequently devotes his attention to this economic and political devolution, he never recants his positive valuation of the intimate sphere. The Discourse on Inequality historicizes intimacy, linking it from the origin of social relations to the happiness of the human heart. While the Discourse provides the only historical exegesis of intimacy, Rousseau's other philosophical, autobiographical, and literary writings re-create the sentiment of fulfilment and attachment in the intimate sphere. While this is expressed in Emile through the traditional marital unit, the less standardized forms of other works also invoke as a recurring motif the allure of intimacy. In his personal experience in The Confessions and in his fictional imagination in La Nouvelle Heloise, Rousseau's attraction to the retreat of intimate society noticeably appears in triangular relationships. Despite his obligatory nods to marital fidelity (C405; E 267), he could not stop reproducing his childhood menage a trois of Mile Lambercier, his cousin Abraham, and himself. He regretfully reported finally being treated as a big boy when Mile Lambercier no longer allowed Abraham and him to share her bed. (This happened after she noticed her spankings were not having the desired effect [C26].) Rousseau entered into his first sexual relationship knowing that it would be a menage a trois. Mme de Warens already had another lover living in her household who was employed as part of her domestic staff. With his knowledge of drugs and botany, Claude Anet assisted her in compounding medicaments (C 175, 194). When Mme de Warens confided in Rousseau that she and Anet were lovers, he found it painful to learn that someone lived in greater intimacy with her than he did (C 173). And when she eventually offered him the same sexual favours, the prospect of this sharing also caused him pain (C 188). But neither this

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 73 painfulness nor jealousy were the predominating emotions Rousseau remembers. As proof of her excellent character, he proffers that her lovers could not love her without also loving each other (C 173, 193-4). And he also credits the older man with being a sort of guardian to him (C 172). So they formed an intimate alliance that he describes idyllically: Thus between the three of us was established a bond perhaps unique on this earth. Our every wish and care and affection was held in common, none of them extending outside our own little circle. Our habit of living together, to the exclusion of the outer world, became so strong that if one of the three was missing from a meal or a fourth person joined us, everything was spoiled; and in spite of our private relationships even our tete-d-tetes were less delightful than our being all three together. All constraint between us was banished by our complete mutual confidence. (C194)

Notwithstanding his fond remembrance of their intimate threesome, Rousseau seemed more jealous of Anet than he was willing to acknowledge. When Anet died of a pleurisy, Rousseau was struck by the contemptible thought, which he immediately communicated to 'Mamma,' of inheriting his clothes and particularly a fine black coat (C 197). That Rousseau should deny the expected negative emotions speaks to his overwhelming need to create and belong to an intimate society. There is suppression and literal revelation in his lament that, with Anet's death, T lost the staunchest friend I had had in all my life' (C 197). In his fictional imagination in his mid-forties, Rousseau reproduced the intimate society of his young adulthood at Clarens between Julie, Wolmar, and Saint-Preux. After several years of marriage, Julie confessed to Wolmar the premarital affair about which he secretly knew (A7//283). In order to cure Saint-Preux of his passion for her and to instil in Julie selfconfidence in her virtue, Wolmar invited Saint-Preux to come and live with them (NH 283-4, 320). In offering his house, he assured Saint-Preux that the latter would find there 'friendship, hospitality, esteem, and confidence' (AW 283). Whatever the suppressed passion in the two former lovers, true to Wolmar's promise, Saint-Preux is impressed by the openness and friendship he experiences (NH 290, 301). He enthuses that 'here I find a society agreeable to my heart' (NH 301). Rousseau was not content to have his enchanting Julie dwell only in fiction; she became fused in his mind with a real woman, Mme d'Houdetot. Since La Nouvelle Helo'ise was already well under way when he became romantically infatuated with Mme d'Houdetot, he conceived this novel in

74 Instinct and Intimacy a state of amorous intoxication that lacked an object (C400, 402, 410). Mme d'Houdetot was less the model for Julie than the projected recipient of his fictional ideal, an identification that Rousseau himself attributes to his intoxicated vision (C410, 506). Acting to seal his romantic fate was the irresistible appeal of another triangular relationship. While Mme d'Houdetot had a husband who never figured in the scenario, she also had a lover, M. de Saint-Lambert, who was beginning to be on close terms with Rousseau (C402, 410). Her passion for Saint-Lambert seemed to be infectious, for her talking of it afflicted Rousseau with an equal passion for her (C410). He singles out this passion as 'the first and only love in all my life' (C 408); for while Mme de Warens and Therese left his senses undisturbed, they were aroused and agitated by Mme d'Houdetot. His passion, however, was unrequited: Mme d'Houdetot reproached him for his romantic folly, and he swears they did nothing that would make her unfaithful to her lover (C 411-13). Whatever her reproaches, he affirms they were accompanied by friendship, kindness, and an intimacy of confidences (C409, 412-13). They extended this intimate society in their plans to include Saint-Lambert, who had been away for several months on military duty (C411, 415): 'We made a charming plan for an intimate society of three, and we had reason to hope that, once formed, it would be lasting. For it would have been based on all those feelings that unite sensitive and honest people, and we had amongst the three of us sufficient talents and sufficient knowledge to stand in need of no help from outside' (C445). '[S]o charming a life,' however, was not in store for Rousseau (C 445). Alarmed that Saint-Lambert had learned of Rousseau's passion, Mme d'Houdetot began to withdraw, finally bringing an end to their personal relations (C 417, 431, 440, 445-6). Turning momentarily to the biographer's task, based on the inconclusive evidence of scant remaining love letters that he combines with psychological analysis, Maurice Cranston suggests that Mme d'Houdetot may have been more flirtatious than Rousseau lets on.24 She may also have allowed him sensual caresses even though Cranston believes Rousseau's avowal that she was not unfaithful to Saint-Lambert 'in the strict sense of that word.'25 That Rousseau slightly downplayed what transpired Cranston attributes to Mme de d'Houdetot's still being alive when he wrote his Confessions.26 If so, this again attests to how autobiography irrepressibly reveals its author's subjective vision. For Rousseau carries into posthumous publication his concern for the confident and harmonious attachment between the two lovers. Whatever curious impulses compelled him into these triangular situations, he took pleasure in the amorous and ami-

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 75 able connection between the other two, and was upset when it seemed threatened by two people who allegedly conveyed his romantic infatuation to Saint-Lambert (Mme d'Houdetot's sister-in-law, Mme d'Epinay, and her lover, Friedrich-Melchior Grimm). In seeking an intimate trio, he had hoped to further his connection with this man and not to dislodge him (C410, 413, 429). Such was the allure of intimate society for Rousseau that he tried to create it in his personal life and his fictional imagination even in menages a trois, where the most virulent and uncontrollable emotions militate against it. Whatever particular form intimacy assumes, by drawing so much satisfaction for humanity from intimate society Rousseau inverts the classical valuation of the public over the private realm. Further establishing his modern orientation, he contradicts the classical presumption of a rise into the common world of politics from the opposed and narrower private sphere.27 For, as we shall see, he ultimately views the intimate connections of private life as the foundation of political association. Such a link between private and public may seem incongruous, as suggested in the response Rousseau anticipated to his mid-life infatuation with Mme d'Houdetot: he expected some acquaintances to be amused and gratified by the sight of '"the citizen" in love' (C416). Rousseau himself fleetingly expresses an opposition between civic and intimate life in his classically inspired Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theatre. It was written in three weeks at a time of disillusionment, just after his personal relations with Mme d'Houdetot had broken off (C445, 459). In The Confessions he sees in this work a lesson to greybeards, a caution against romantic love (C 502). He recalls that he unconsciously described his situation of the moment, portraying Mme d'Houdetot, Saint-Lambert, Mme d'Epinay, Grimm, and himself; he mingled with his theoretical subject his personal feelings of suffering and injustice (C 459-60). The personal disappointment and intrigue Rousseau presents in The Confessions as the emotional determinants of the Letter to M. d'Alembert are not explicit there. The Letter is a treatise against the introduction of the theatre to Geneva that invokes Platonic arguments against the incitement of the passions through the arts. Rousseau particularly faults contemporary writers for being unable to sustain their works without a love interest (A 28, 47). By inflaming the audience's passion for love, such works, he warns, divert people from political concerns and their civic duties (A 515). This censure follows up the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences and its invective against the arts in general as a source of civic diversion and effeminacy.

76 Instinct and Intimacy Rousseau's indictment of love in the arts in the Letter to M. dAlembertwas written, oddly, while he was in the midst of composing his own romantic novel. In submitting to his impulse to write La Nouvelle Heloise, he had felt himself to be in an embarrassing contradiction given his public censure of effeminate books. But despite his conscious inconsistency and his selfreproaches, he relates that he was unable to bring himself back to reason (C 404-5). As a modern, he was irremediably smitten with the allure of romantic love, and so he had to work out his inner tussle between love and citizenship. The civic virtue that he wanted to protect from love in the Letter to M. d'Alembert he later sought to secure through love in Emile. In Emile Rousseau softens the warning of the Letter to M. d'Alembert against love as an inevitable diversion from civic duty. In what seems to be a reference to war, the tutor only reminds Emile not to let the pleasant life of retreat with Sophie make distasteful to him any painful civic duties (£474-5). Moreover, rather than being a diversion from civic life, private life is viewed as its foundation. For without the experience of natural love in intimate relations, there could be no basis for engendering an emotional attachment to the conventional state. Thus, Rousseau criticizes Plato's abolition of conjugal feeling: 'I speak of that subversion of the sweetest sentiments of nature, sacrificed to an artificial sentiment which can only be maintained by them - as though there were no need for a natural base on which to form conventional ties; as though the love of one's nearest were not the principle of the love one owes the state' (E 363). Not only is intimate love the basis for the love of country, it is the source of all other fellow-feeling: 'As soon as man has need of a companion, he is no longer an isolated being. His heart is no longer alone. All his relations with his species, all the affections of his soul are born with this one. His first passion soon makes the others ferment' (E 214). Though Rousseau is attracted to apolitical, intimate retreat, he does not allow a schism to develop between the private and the political realm. For the emotions of intimacy are the foundation for all attachment in the public sphere. Conscious of the vulnerability of intimate society to the intrusion of a violent or unjust government, he cannot abandon the political world. Still not a liberal, however, he is intent not just on protecting private life from the state but on securing civic virtue. For the civicmindedness necessary to see and obey the general will is required for the participatory self-rule that in his view is the only legitimate form of government. Moreover, as we shall see in coming chapters, Rousseau seeks to foster this civic virtue by reproducing in citizens the sense of emotional attachment that has its origins in intimate relations.28

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 77 To return to the question of women, Rousseau's restriction of them to domestic duties has been thought to earn him membership in a long line of antifeminist political thinkers. If the question of the ascendance of private life is disentangled from Rousseau's stereotypical views on women and domestic life, however, a modern currency can be found in the relationship of intimate life to the political community. Here the autobiographies are instructive in showing the same longing for intimate retreat, but not in the stultifying context of traditional marriages that restrict women to domestic duties. As we have seen, Rousseau's own life and emotions provide the psychoanalytical background to his failure to fully break out of the civilized dichotomy between masculine and feminine. But the autobiographies are also the multifarious foil to the stereotypical images of woman and gender relations set out in the fifth book oiEmile. They reveal a Rousseau engaged by the experience of, and the continuing desire for, deep and enriching relationships with women. In intimate relations the Discourse on Inequality finds the one jewel of civilization. If there is any personal and emotional antecedent to this historical and philosophical judgment, it is in Rousseau's relationship with Mme de Warens. In The Confessions he recollects both the strength of their intimate attachment and his respect for her mind and talents. In this unconventional woman he found a surrogate mother, a mentor, and a kindred spirit. In a reversal of the usual pattern of a mistress being kept by an older, wealthy man, Mme de Warens more or less supported the younger Rousseau, giving him the leisure and the means to develop his intellectual abilities. He was occupied initially only with odd jobs around her household, like copying accounts and picking herbs; she provided him with books to read and facilitated his taste for learning music (C 109— 10, 120). Not until he was nineteen did she find him steady employment as a clerk in the Survey Office of the King of Sardinia (C 168-9). He resigned after only eight months to pursue his passion for music by teaching it, an occupation that he did not stick to very long (C 180-2, 199). (While the records in the Survey Office indicate he worked there only eight months, Rousseau remembers having been there two years [C 181] ,29 This is one of the errors in dates he expected to sometimes make. The lengthening of this period in his memory is perhaps due to the 'unendurable torture' of the work [C180].) In the early period of their relationship, Rousseau observed that Mme de Warens was unobtrusively studying him and making plans for his future (C m ) . If nothing materialized in the time he spent with her, it was due to her indulgence of his disinclination and the unfavourable

78 Instinct and Intimacy opinions others held of his intellectual capacities (C 111-12, 115). The discomfort and ineptitude in conversation that led to such misjudgments were never present with Mme de Warens; from the beginning he felt confident and at ease in her company (C58, 112-15). He relates that '[s]he is the only person with whom I never suffered from that inability to find words that makes the maintenance of conversation such a penance to me' (C 107). Thus, she gained a more favourable impression of him, which only intensified with their sexual intimacy. She resolved that, despite his awkward manner, he deserved to be trained for the world, and she applied herself to forming his mind, his appearance, and his manners (C192). If Rousseau's praises are any measure, Mme de Warens was aptly suited to guide him. He describes her as having a 'cultivated mind' and as being 'born for affairs of state' (C57, 111). She had a good knowledge of literature and, intriguingly, had designed a religious system that destroyed the doctrine of original sin. She was his intellectual partner in discussions of literature, theology, and morality ( C m , 192, 218-19). Not simply an academician, she is credited with being 'highly skilled in the art of dealing with men' (C 192). He observes that '[s]he had some experience of the world, and the capacity for reflection that makes such experience profitable.' This was just the sort of instruction that Rousseau retrospectively considered himself to have needed most (C 111). That she squandered her money on misbegotten business enterprises he attributes to her illdirected education in experimental medicine and alchemy. Also, her talents were misplaced: she always thought on a large and theoretical scale out of proportion to her situation, but in a different place she could have governed the state (C56-7). Even in The Reveries, which is not concerned with amorous relationships, Rousseau is still honouring her as a positive and decisive influence on his development: ' [T] hrough the use I made of my leisure, aided by her lessons and example, I was able to give to my still simple and new soul the form which better suited it and which it has always kept' (R 141). All this instruction and intellectual discussion was ensconced within an intimacy that Rousseau found deeply satisfying. If he theorizes that man's affections are born through his relationship to woman, he personally experienced this transformation with Mme de Warens: Although the emotional sensibility that givesriseto real joy is a work of Nature, and perhaps innate in our constitutions, it stands in need of situations in which it can develop. Lacking the right circumstances, a man born with acute sensibility

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 79 would feel nothing, and would die without ever having known his true nature. I had been more or less in that condition till then, and should have been so always perhaps had I never met Mme de Warens, or even, having known her, if I had not lived close to her for long enough to contract the sweet habit of affection with which she inspired me. (C104-5)

Retracing his personal history with her, to those who would deny the affinity of souls he asks how he immediately could have experienced emotions so contrary to his usual embarrassment and timidity (C58). He reminisces that '[fjrom the first day the sweetest intimacy was established between us' (C 106). The strongest affection for her was combined with confidence, security, and peace of heart. He thus assumed from the beginning an easy manner, an affectionate language, and a familiar tone (C 58). While the odd jobs he was given and the hordes of visitors he helped entertain did not suit his taste, he attests that everything pleased his heart (C 109-10). The sense of well-being he felt in Mme de Warens's presence expanded to bring him enjoyment in everything connected to her household. Such was the pleasure he took in his daily life that he figured he could have extended it to eternity without boredom (C 106-7). The disquiet he felt when she was away left him with a burning desire to spend his whole life beside her (C 107, 109). Although Rousseau was sometimes attracted to other women, his feelings were totally dependent on their physical charms. Of Mme de Warens, by contrast, he writes, 'My heart had fully transferred to her person the homage it had at first paid to her beauty' (C 147). The sensual pleasure of their eventual sexual relationship may have been marred by his sense of a filial attachment, but he still delighted in the heightened intimacy of the conversation that followed their union (C 189-90, 192). And he drew even more moral profit from her confidences about herself than he had from her instructions. He extols the moral benefits for a man of an open-hearted, affectionate interchange with a woman: 'When we really feel that a heart is speaking, ours opens to receive its confidences; and all the moralizing of a pedagogue will never be as good as the affectionate and tender chatter of an intelligent woman for whom we feel an affection' (C 192). Writing The Confessions from the perspective of his fifties, Rousseau remembers the time he spent with Mme de Warens at their country residence, Les Charmettes, as the happiest of his life. They already had lived several years together in the towns of Annecy and Chambery - years that paved the way for the peak of his happiness at Les Charmettes (C 106,

80 Instinct and Intimacy 215). There he combined the rustic pleasures, with which his name was to be ever associated, with the intimate pleasures of his life with Mme de Warens. He commemorates this episode of his life: 'Here begins the short period of my life's happiness; here I come to those peaceful but transient moments that have given me the right to say I have lived' (C215). On his own he busied himself with rural pursuits, like caring for the pigeonhouse, and with the reading and studying that by then had developed from an intermittent passion into a mania (C 222-7, 229-30). But it was by his attempt to foster Mme de Warens's taste for the country that he insists he grew so fond of it himself (C 220). They shared and enjoyed together the activities of the country - the grape harvest, the stripping of hemp, and so on - all of which felt like so many festivals. Even more satisfying were their solitary walks, which allowed the greatest scope for the outpouring of their hearts (C 232). That year's idyll at Les Charmettes with Mme de Warens was never repeated. It was followed by his travels to Geneva to secure his inheritance and to Montpelier for reasons of his health (C 234-6). While Rousseau was being distracted on the latter by an affair, his place at Les Charmettes was being taken by another man (C238-42, 246-8, 251). Perhaps this simultaneous sexual engagement outside their relationship indicated difficulties between them; Rousseau's liaison was nevertheless cut short by worries, including self-reproach about his disgraceful deceit of 'Mamma' (C 246). Firmly entrenched at Les Charmettes, however, was the newcomer, M. Witzenried. Mme de Warens assured Rousseau that he would lose nothing and that they would continue to be intimate in every way. But this time he refused a sexual trio, tumultuously telling her that '[pjossession of you is too dear to be shared.' He adhered to this privation, intending to look upon her only with the eyes of a true son (C250). He believes she secretly disapproved of this indifference to her favours, and he noticed a growing coolness on her part. He sadly relates, 'From that moment I ceased to find that intimacy in her heart which had afforded such deep delight to mine' (C252). He lingered intermittently in her household, feeling superfluous and dejected (C256). His life with her finally ended with him 'regretfully setting out for Paris, but leaving my heart at Les Charmettes' (C 263). His intimate connection with Mme de Warens forever severed, he later sought to fill the void through his relationship with Therese (C 310-11, 385). Contrary to his usual taste for refined women, she was a young linen maid he met after four years in Paris, at the hotel where he was then lodging. He was initially out only for amusement, but their sexual intimacy

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 81 soon led him to reflect that in catering to his pleasures he had contributed greatly to his happiness (C310). Although he concedes to fate the loss of the heart for whom Nature formed him, in Therese he felt he had found the substitute he needed (C 310-11). Notwithstanding her troublesome mother, Rousseau relates that during the first six or seven years of their residence together, 'I enjoyed the most perfect domestic happiness human frailty permits. Therese had the heart of an angel; our affection grew with our intimacy, and we felt more strongly every day that we were made for one another.' He hesitated to detail their enjoyments, anticipating that taking such pleasure in walks or simple meals would seem tame or ludicrous to his readers. Trying to convey the charm of suppers consisting only of coarse bread, cheese, and wine, he exclaims that they were deliciously seasoned by '[friendship, confidence, intimacy, [and] peace of mind' (C330). Judging from the whole course of his relationship with Therese, however, she never became the intimate that Mme de Warens had been. Reflecting upon this disappointment, he attributes it to her intellectual limitations, which he had always been aware of but did not immediately find so detracting (C311, 392). In the beginning, love compensated him for the absence of intellectual stimulation: 'In the company of those one loves, one's feelings nourish one's head as well as one's heart, and one has little need to look for ideas elsewhere. I lived as pleasantly with my Therese as with the finest genius in the world' (C 311). After nine years together, they moved to a country residence dubbed the Hermitage. In this more solitary setting, he eventually expressed disappointment with their time together and regret that he had not done more to foster her knowledge and talents in their early relationship: It was then that I felt acutely how wrong I had been, during our early intimacy, not to profit by the pliability which her love had inspired in her, to bring out her talents and give her knowledge which would have drawn us closer together in our retreat, pleasantly filled up her time and mine, and prevented the moments when we were alone together from ever hanging heavy on ovir hands ... It is particularly in solitude that one feels the advantage of living with someone who can think. (C392)

Rousseau's infatuation with Mme d'Houdetot followed on the heels of this dissatisfaction, and Therese was insensitively enlisted as a letter courier (C402, 418). Whatever Rousseau's disappointment with Therese, she provided him with the domestic tranquillity to support his voluminous writing in the

82 Instinct and Intimacy last half of his life, and his marriage to her after twenty-five years together testifies to his attachment (C 311-12, 385-6). Despite her more academic limitations, he acknowledges her sound opinions, good sense, and excellent advice in difficult situations (C311). She stayed by him in the trying period of his persecution for his writing and his wanderings to seek amnesty (C 537-8, 548-9). The depth of their attachment was evident to him in their reunion after a brief separation early in his troubles. In their embrace he felt 'concentrated so many days of happiness, tenderness, and peace spent together.' He eulogizes the moment with the words, 'O friendship, union of hearts and habits, dearest intimacy!' (C538). 5 Unity of Writings on Women

Rousseau's views on women in his autobiographies have not been addressed by other commentators as a foil to Emile, but they raise the question of the unity of his writings, and serve to counterbalance the stereotypical images and expectations of women in Emile. As we have seen, while The Confessions reveal the psychological substratum that subverts mutuality in gender relations in Emile, this autobiography also evidences Rousseau's enjoyment and longing for an intimacy of equals with his female companions. His intimacy with Mme de Warens was severed not long after its peak at Les Charmettes. One can only wonder if his attachment had blinded him to trouble brewing in their relationship, or if the turbulence of his later life had exaggerated his happy remembrances. Be that as it may, his affectionate and intellectual (though not sensual) engagement with her never ceased to be his ideal. Notwithstanding his acknowledgment of Therese's practical sense and loyalty, the absence of stimulating intellectual discourse detracted from their relationship. Even in Emile, where mutuality is not the main thrust, his concern for the possibility of agreeable society with woman is glimpsed. In speaking of her education, he warns man against turning his companion into his servant (£364). In the Dialogues Rousseau conveys sentiments similar to those of The Confessions in respect to female companionship, but does not express them through the detailing of actual relationships. He ironically is loathe to endure the tedium of his own authorization in Emile of inauthenticity in women, and the expectation that they should seek to please men. He is averse to the art of drawing compliments to oneself in gatherings, an art that women particularly cherish and use. He complains that 'whatever his natural taste for women, he can't bear ordinary contact with them in

Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 83 which he must furnish a perpetual tribute of sweet nothings' (D 124). He rejects the inauthenticity of such gatherings in favour of 'the society of hearts and intimacy' (D 124). By his own need for intimate society, then, he must renounce culturally required inauthenticity in women. Turning to the issue of civic membership, the suggestion that The Social Contract, as the sequel to the Discourse on Inequality, tacitly includes women also raises the question of the unity of Rousseau's writings, given his tendency in Emile to relapse into the language of subjugation and rule in gender relations. Such philosophical unity is a matter of contention among commentators, and one that Rousseau endeavoured to preempt by insisting on the coherence and lack of contradiction in his books (D 209). Attention to the shadow of Rousseau's psyche leads the interpreter to place less confidence than Rousseau in his philosophical consistency. The treatment of civilized woman in Emile does not seem to cohere with the undifferentiated natural condition of male and female in the Discourse on Inequality, or with its ahistorical sequel in the implicitly inclusive membership terms of The Social Contract. Mindful of the archaic face of the unconscious as the ultimate determinant of Rousseau's philosophy, however, we can discern a kind of consistency if we accept less stringent requirements. Rousseau repeatedly points to his primordial insight into humanity's condition as the inspiration for his writings; this is the thread of continuity in his long sequence of works (-D23, 131; C327-8). Its philosophical expression sometimes confronts, though is never wholly suppressed by, the force of unconscious obstacles. Thus, as we have seen, even in his stereotypical enunciation of woman's 'natural' features in Emile, he reveals more of artifice than of nature. As the most direct and forceful expression of his primordial insight, the Discourse on Inequality elucidates the undivided condition of the sexes. Rousseau was too bound by unconscious processes to see his way through to a consistent critical assessment of the civilized splitting of masculine and feminine. Nevertheless, a critique is latent in this depiction of the original psychic unity of male and female. And in civilization the troubling consequences of humanity's divided self-image can be found in La Nouvelle Heloise. Moreover, by the yearning he expressed in his autobiographies for an intimate society of equals with woman, he endorsed mutuality between the sexes. For all these reasons, where he is silent on woman - in The Social Contract - her inclusion in participatory self-rule may be inferred. In my subsequent chapters, then, I presume both men and women to be included in Rousseau's politically intimate, democratic state. Rousseau's feminist critics, in seeking to establish that he does not

84 Instinct and Intimacy enfranchise women in The Social Contract, inadvertently legitimize the continued exclusion of women from the philosophical discourse on him. Modern commentators on Rousseau typically use gender-biased language in their renditions of his political philosophy, even in respect to the state of nature, where he clearly does not differentiate male and female.30 For the purposes of textual exegesis, and the disclosure of women's secondary status in the history of political thought, it was important for feminist scholars to expose the sexist elements of philosophical texts. However, just as important to the rectification of women's subordinate place is an explication of where the texts support women's equality, either by their overt analysis, as in the Discourse on Inequality, or by their implicit consistency with it, as in The Social Contract. Accordingly, for the simple reason of textual fidelity, the continued exclusion of women from philosophical discourse on the political could not be substantiated in the secondary literature. Rousseau's autobiographies provide an important context for interpreting his philosophy of gender, both in revealing the unconscious impediments to equality and in evidencing his deep desire for an intimacy of hearts and minds with woman. Whatever disappointment he experienced in his own life, he carried over this longing into his imaginative life. In the Dialogues he constructs an imaginary society of men and women living in 'an intercourse of confidence, attachment, and familiarity.' There he finds not only faithful mistresses but 'tender and solid female friends who are perhaps more valuable still' (D 119). Rousseau directed us to examine his personal life and character to illuminate his philosophy: on this ground alone, the desire for mutuality between the sexes that he recurringly expresses in his autobiographies cannot be overlooked as part of the emotional and programmatic background to his philosophical thought. Whatever the ambivalence in Rousseau's corpus towards the 'nature' and political status of woman, the high value he places on intimate society with either sex is an absolute in all his writings. This enchantment with intimacy does not undermine the political world, for in his rendering the intimate sphere is the emotional source of public attachment. In the next chapter I elaborate the foundation of Rousseau's democratic state in intimate sentiment by analysing a second psychocultural dichotomy between separation and oneness.

4

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations

As he does with the masculine/feminine dichotomy, Rousseau both reflects and strives to transcend the dualism between separation and oneness. In hypothesizing independence in the natural condition, he expresses and endorses self-sufficiency, a modern ideal that has liberal and psychoanalytical significance. In liberal terms, natural autonomy establishes the individualist foundation of his social contract theory. Psychoanalytically, it speaks to the inadaptability of humanity to civilization and the unhappiness of renouncing instinctual life. His response is to advocate equal participatory self-rule as the only form of political association compatible with our original independence and instinct for self-care. Rousseau's premise of natural aloneness has a further psychoanalytical significance, in precipitating a longing for total absorption as the other polarity of this emotional extreme. Autobiographically, his yearning for union is seen in his relationships with women, and it has a philosophical reflection in his awe of personal submersion in the patriotism of classical antiquity. His emotional attraction to civic absorption, however, is theoretically limited by his modern principle of self-determining freedom. Furthermore, Rousseau seeks to transcend the extreme polarities of autonomy and submersion by overlaying his liberal foundation with a theory of civic attachment that extends, rather than absorbs, the self in the politically intimate state. He is aware of the modern allure of intimate life, both as a distraction from civic life and as a source of deeply fulfilling experiences and emotions. To motivate commitment to participatory self-rule and the public good, he seeks to re-create in the civic context sentiments normally associated with private life. Amour de soi secures his theory's individualist core in each person's first pledge of self-care in entering the social contract, a pledge that is only consistent with an equal

86 Instinct and Intimacy legislative role. This instinct is also the psychological basis of self-extension as individuals reinforce the positive sense of their own existence by extending it to include fellow citizens. l Renunciation of Instinctual Life

Into his historical anthropology Rousseau incorporates the liberal notion of the individual as separate from society. Hobbes typically is associated with early theoretical atomism,1 but Rousseau's primitivist version of the natural condition also entails methodological individualism. Hobbes conceives our separateness through the hypothetical construct of a state of nature in which human beings, with all their civilized capacities intact, are imagined outside of political society. Politically, the violent anarchy he deduces from human nature is intended to demonstrate the necessity of a common power; methodologically, his analysis of human beings independently of civic bonds assumes that human nature is not fundamentally determined by societal relations. Rousseau's theory is distinguished by his insistence on a primitivist state of nature, but through this medium he also presents humanity as originally disconnected from social bonds. He speculates that for millennia human beings lived without any sustained intercourse: they had no speech and they provided for their subsistence autonomously. He details the difficulties of the origin of language and is confounded by how language could have become either necessary or established. For primitive humans had no need to communicate and the complexities of language apparently exceeded their capacities (DI64-70). Innocent of the knowledge and ideas that would expand their desires and fears, they were prompted only by natural impulses. The physical wants of food and sleep were satisfied without assistance, and even sex did not lead to sustained ties (DI 61, 70, 84). From the little that nature contributed to facilitate language and to unite humanity through mutual wants, Rousseau concludes that we are not naturally sociable (DIjo). If to Hobbes human beings seem sprung out of the earth like mushrooms,2 to Rousseau they owe nothing more of their original impulses to social bonds. He derives his rules of natural right from two instincts that are prior to sociability- amourdesoiand compassion (D/47). Amourdesoi is directly linked to humanity's natural independence: the care taken for one's own existence does not depend on any contributions from others, either materially or in terms of self-esteem. By his embrace of this instinct, Rousseau epitomizes even more than Hobbes the liberal notion of the individual as prior to society. Both thinkers begin with an individualistic,

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 87 liberal premise of self-preservation, which Hobbes conceptualizes as a right.3 Unlike Rousseau's amour de soi, Hobbes's Right of Nature leads to conflicts in the state of nature. He imagines more contact between human beings, and he introduces into the natural condition what Rousseau sees as societal features. Hobbes presupposes civilized desires for wealth and at least enough motive for cooperation among some to dispossess another.4 Furthermore, he sees in human nature a pride that leads to dependency on others for signs of honour. Even though this only leads to quarrelsome competitions, Hobbes's individuals stand in need of each other, unlike Rousseau's savages, who have no need for acknowledgment. Hobbes's conflictual state of nature led Rousseau to criticize his predecessor's depiction of human beings as naturally vicious and combative (DI 54). This difference itself stems, however, from the greater extent to which Rousseau conceives human nature independently of social relations. At the outset of the Discourse on Inequality, he advises that inquiry into humanity's origins is conjectural: 'The investigations we may enter into, in treating this subject, must not be considered as historical truths, but only as mere conditional and hypothetical reasonings, rather calculated to explain the nature of things, than to ascertain their actual origin' (D/501). Consistent with this caveat, we can understand his depiction of the selfsufficient savage, whatever its anthropological accuracy, as explaining the psychological condition of civilized humanity. No matter what Rousseau shares with earlier social contract theorists in his concept of the separate individual, he is distinguished by the psychoanalytical depth he brings to his speculations on the natural condition. From his perspective, there is a core of inadaptability in human nature to civilization whatever its advances, and there is bound to be unhappiness associated with the renunciation of instinctual life. Thus, as earlier remarked, Rousseau anticipates Freud's understanding that civilization is built upon the renunciation of instinct. While Freud differs in emphasizing the repression of sexual and aggressive instincts as the greatest source of cultural frustration, they both see the price of civilization as a loss of human liberty and happiness.5 In his version of the fall from instinctual life, Rousseau begins with the self-sufficient savage and shows how the advance of civilization successively entangled human beings in economic, psychological, and political dependency. The loss of independence is associated with a loss of freedom. One can apply to Rousseau Herbert Marcuse's comment on the link between independence and freedom in Descartes and Kant: 'Self-sufficiency and independence of all that is other and alien is the sole guarantee of the subject's freedom. What is not dependent on any other person or thing,

88 Instinct and Intimacy what possesses itself is free.'6 Rousseau establishes his philosophical connection between independence and freedom by postulating a primitive state of liberty in which human beings were self-sufficient. He speculates that subsistence needs motivated the first simple and transitory efforts at mutual assistance (D/86-7). Passing through whole epochs in paragraphs, he retraces how these first advances set in motion others, which occurred with increasing rapidity (D/87). At die stage of tribal society human enlightenment, industry, and wants had already progressed, but rustic huts, animal-skin clothes, body paints, and simple tools did not require the labour of many hands (D/87-8, 91-2). Thus, tribal people were able to enjoy the pleasures of both independence and mutual intercourse. Rousseau insists that so long as human beings confined themselves to what a single person could accomplish, they lived in freedom and happiness (D/92). The independence of tribal society was finally lost with the continued expansion of wants and the advent of metallurgy, agriculture, and property (D/92-4): 'But from the moment one man began to stand in need of the help of another; from the moment it appeared advantageous to any one man to have enough provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work became indispensable, and vast forests became smiling fields, which man had to water with the sweat of his brow, and where slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow up with the crops' (DI 92). In the economic polarization attendant upon the introduction of property, Rousseau's sympathies are most immediately with the poor, whose labour is exploited. But by their need of services even the wealthy are ensnared in dependency, and the effort to get others to work for their advantage does not spare even them the labours of civilized life (jD/95). Fuelling all this activity is amour-propre, which manifests as an economic ambition concerned less with real want than with surpassing others (D/96). The destruction of equality resulted in terrible conflicts between rich and poor, as either might or misery was used to suppress natural compassion and justify usurpations and robberies (D/96-7). Having feelings not only in their persons but extending to every part of their possessions, die rich were the most motivated to seek an end to this anarchical state of war (D/97, 101). Besides, however speciously they disguised their usurpations by false titles, they knew that what they had was gained by force and could be taken by force with no reason for complaint (D/97). They therefore conceived the profoundest ruse of history in devising a supreme power and civil obligation (DI 98). Through the inauguration of government

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 89 and law, economic inequalities were institutionalized, natural liberty was lost, and there could be nothing in store for humanity but perpetual labour, political servitude, and wretchedness (DIgg). Rousseau denies, as a negation of natural liberty, the legitimacy of all existing governments. The people were easily seduced, for they recognized they had too many disputes to do without arbitrators and too much ambition to do without political leaders (D/98-9). Although Rousseau reasons that the rich instigated government, he insists that '[a] 11 ran headlong to their chains, in hopes of securing their liberty; for they had just wit enough to perceive the advantages of political institutions, without experience enough to enable them to foresee the dangers' (DI99). Given that the worst prospect in human relations is to find oneself at the mercy of another, he dismisses the possibility that tyranny could be established voluntarily (DI 102, 104). Describing a devolution toward ever greater servitude, he provides two reasons why people submit to illegitimate political power despite their original intention to secure their liberty. The first is a Hobbesian rationale: in the early stages of government, to avoid relapsing into a state of war, the people agreed to an increase in their servitude in order to secure their tranquillity and conveniences (DI 109). The second reason is a political version of amour-propre: leaders could not maintain their power without sharing it, and ambitious individuals submit to illegitimate power in the hope of exercising it on others. Thus, they 'come to love authority more than independence.' On Rousseau's analysis, 'It is no easy matter to reduce to obedience a man who has no ambition to command; nor would the most adroit politician find it possible to enslave a people whose only desire was to be independent' (DI 110). Rousseau's observations on why people submit to illegitimate command reinforce his belief in the psychological basis of political power. He nowhere calls for armed combat in instituting his ideal primary democracy; for he sees individual psychological transformation as the foundation for the exercise of legitimate political rule. Prompted only by romantic love and by signs of personal contempt, amour-propre had barely arisen in the golden age of tribes, and thus a balance was maintained between primitive indolence and the intense activity excited by this factitious emotion (DI 91). The balance is completely lost in civilization as amour de soi is further deflected by new manifestations of amour-propre. Rousseau focuses on economic and political ambition in the Discourse on Inequality, but he also refers to the scholastic ambition to attain status through the cultivation of letters and the sciences that is emphasized in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (DI 112). In whatever

go Instinct and Intimacy forms it manifests, amour-propre makes self-love dependent on external assessments, it necessitates the wearying labours of civilized life, and it fuels rivalry, enmity, and conflict in human relations (DI112, 116). In a classic psychoanalytical move, Rousseau contends that we owe to this psychological factor in the suppression of instinct both the virtues and the vices of civilization (DI 112). He acknowledges the psychological role of amour-propre in motivating cultural, scholastic, and economic advances. Still, in weighing the accomplishments of civilization, he emphasizes our precarious self-esteem, our unending labours, and our anxieties of mind. He suggests we suspend our civilized prejudices and seriously consider whether humanity 'would not be, on the whole, in a much happier condition if they had nothing to fear or to hope from anyone, than as they are, subjected to universal dependence' (DI71). 2 Individualism and the Social Contract

Consistent with the liberal notion of the individual as prior to society, Rousseau derives the principles of his social contract from the independence and liberty of the natural condition. In the Discourse on Inequality he views government as the most coercive institution in civilization. His original motive was to safeguard the individual from the state, thus prompting his first theoretical concern in drawing an impenetrable sphere around the individual. With the mutual dependencies of civilization no longer allowing humanity to do without the state, he chooses the form of political association most compatible with natural liberty and amour de soi. In insisting on democracy, he distinguishes himself from earlier social contract philosophers and anticipates the later union of liberal and democratic thought. But he sets himself off from even contemporary liberals by rejecting representative in favour of primary democracy. Rousseau opens the first chapter to The Social Contract with his impassioned declaration 'Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains' (SC 181). With human beings now irretrievably enmeshed in society, he cannot hope to replicate the independence of the savage; his overriding objective is to at least protect them from personal dependence on political authorities. By instituting a democracy in which everyone is a member of the legislative body, Rousseau ensures that each citizen, though dependent on the whole, is secured from personal dependence on any particular other. He reasons that each individual 'in giving himself to all, gives himself to nobody' (SC192).

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations

91

In The Social Contract Rousseau derives humanity's liberty from amour de soi. The first law of nature is to provide for one's own preservation, and the first cares are those that are owed to oneself (SC 182). The problem of political association is then how one can pledge oneself to a political body and yet retain the liberty and power to take care of oneself: ' [A]s the force and liberty of each man are the chief instruments of his self-preservation, how can he pledge them without harming his own interests, and neglecting the care he owes to himself?' (SC 191). He defines the political problem of amour de soi as that of finding a form of political association in which each retains his or her own self-mastery while being united to all: T h e problem is to find a form of association which will defend and protect with the whole common force the person and goods of each associate, and in which each, while uniting himself with all, may still obey himself alone, and remain as free as before' (SC 191). If individuals cannot maintain liberty for the whole of their self-care, he stipulates that each retain a part of it through equal participation in determining the laws that will bind them all. They are deemed citizens by sharing in the sovereign authority and subjects in being under the laws they make (SC 193). Rousseau thereby legitimizes civil obligation, but he never subsequently loses track of the natural liberty that originally required equal participation of all in the legislative Sovereign. Thus, there can be no law categorically binding on the people - not even the social contract itself (SC 193-4). Nor can the liberty of children be alienated by their forebears; at the age of discretion their consent is necessary to the continued legitimacy of the state (SC 186). As for the conditions entailed by the social contract, it is true that each participant must completely transfer his or her rights to the community. For if individuals retained their own right of judgment, the state of nature would continue and the political association would be rendered ineffectual or tyrannical: Moreover, the alienation being without reserve, the union is as perfect as it can be, and no associate has anything more to demand: for, if the individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge, would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical. (SC 191-2) Even with the absolute alienation of right to the community, participants are protected by the provision that this renunciation be equally required

92 Instinct and Intimacy of them all. Thus, it is in no one's interest to make the conditions burdensome for the rest: ' [The clauses of this contract], properly understood, may be reduced to one - the total alienation of each associate, together with all his rights, to the whole community; for, in the first place, as each gives himself absolutely, the conditions are the same for all; and, this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others' (SC 191). In a classic liberal manoeuvre, the 'I will if you will' stipulation is invoked to protect citizens against unilateral incursions on their rights. In a condition of mutual alienation of rights, no one would agree to burdensome restrictions since these would also apply to oneself. (Hobbes evidences a liberal precedent in requiring an equal restriction for each person in the alienation of natural liberty that establishes the social contract.7 Whatever liberal aspects Hobbes shares with Rousseau, however, the absolutist terms of his social contract sharply divide them. He argues that the social contract is irrevocable and can be instituted by either voluntary or forced 'consent' Furthermore, he conceives of subjects but not active citizens, and even in this context he places the Sovereign Power above the law.) The liberty from personal dependence that Rousseau seeks in his democratic body politic entails that all members put themselves under the direction of the general will (SC 192, 195). The aim of the general will is the common good as opposed to personal interest, which is the object of the particular will. It is only by every person's agreeing to act in the common interest that each can be secured from personal dependence; for those who are driven by the particular will would employ others for their own narrow self-interest, and in the process would deprive them of their liberties. Thus, Rousseau admonishes that obedience to the general will is compulsory and shall be enforced by the whole body: 'In order then that the social compact may not be an empty formula, it tacitly includes the undertaking, which alone can give force to the rest, that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body. This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free; for this is the condition which, by giving each citizen to his country, secures him against all personal dependence' (SC 195). In stating that whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be 'forced to be free,' Rousseau opened himself up to misinterpretation and was perhaps irresponsible in using such inflammatory language. But the quiet truth behind these extreme words is not destructive of freedom; it is simply that if I do not want to submit myself to personal dependence on others in the service of their particular interests, I cannot reserve to myself the privilege to do the same.

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 93 There is a base of liberalism in Rousseau's political thought: his initial premise is humanity's natural liberty, and an individual concern for selfcare motivates entry into the social contract. Although he begins with liberal premises his theory of the general will introduces a communitarian overlay. Civil obligation in liberalism is both initiated and sustained by individual self-interest; but Rousseau envisions a transformation of selfinterest into a concern for the common good. This transformation is supported by an instinct for self-preservation that is not conflictual, and it is required by the need to ensure that the particular will does not encroach on the liberty and well-being of any members. As we shall see, commitment to the general will, and the accompanying sense of union and dedication to public participation, is created by the extension of the self to encompass a concern for the well-being of fellow citizens. However overlaid by communitarianism, Rousseau's liberal base still must be remembered as the original motivation for his civic extension of the self. Moreover, in a theory that conceives a common good it may be all the more important to emphasize liberal rights, which draw a protective circle around the individual. For visions of the public good, just as easily as overt private interest, may lead to the violation of human rights. For natural liberty, Rousseau's social contract substitutes a civil liberty that is bounded by the general will and a moral liberty that consists in obedience to laws that members prescribe for themselves (SC 196). While humanity pays a price in a certain inadaptability to civilization, there is a compensation in the substitution of morality for instinct. Operating on unreflective instinct in the state of nature, human beings had no moral relations or determinate obligations to one another, and thus could be neither good nor bad (SC 71). The expansion of the human heart through intimate relations is one advantage to society, and so too is the ennoblement and stimulation of human ideas and feelings through the introduction of justice and moral duty into human conduct in the civil state (SC 195-6). 3 Personal and Political Absorption

To suggest a liberal base in Rousseau's social contract theory, and a notion of civic self-extension, runs counter to interpretations that see the individual as being absorbed into his state. While there is a tendency in Rousseau toward absorption in both personal and theoretical terms, this is the psychoanalytical correlate to an ideal of self-sufficiency, and it is not the primary current of his political thought. Here the autobiographies

94 Instinct and Intimacy provide insight into the emotional longings that filter into Rousseau's political philosophy. The ideal of self-sufficiency appears not only in his theory of the state of nature, but also in his educational theory in Emik. The other extreme, psychoanalytically, is a longing for absorption. Autobiographically, this appears in his yearning for total union in his relationships with women; philosophically, it emerges in his eulogies to the allencompassing patriotism of classical antiquity. Nevertheless, consistent with the individualistic foundation of his political philosophy, Rousseau makes Sparta and Rome the curious models for his modern ideal of selfdetermining freedom. Thus, the metaphor of absorption in regard to the citizen and the state is not the dominating language of The Social Contract. In Rousseau's hypothesis of primitive independence, psychoanalytical significance was found in the inadaptability of humanity to civilization. This assumption of self-sufficient aloneness also expresses a psychoanalytical dichotomy in Western civilization between 'masculine' differentiation and 'feminine' oneness. In this dualism, as theorized in Jessica Benjamin's feminist psychoanalysis, a paternal ideal of differentiation is opposed to a maternal principle of oneness. The paternal principle of separation is elevated to protect against a hidden longing for oceanic oneness with the mother.8 The psychocultural ascendance of masculine separation is reflected in the structure of individualism that pervades Western culture: the self-sufficient individual becomes the ideal, with the attendant denial of dependency.9 This is a mystification, since both perfect self-sufficiency and perfect oneness are a fantasy.10 Without an intersubjective perspective that acknowledges both our difference from and our interconnectedness with others, a balance between dependence and independence cannot be attained; for in a vision of balance neither extreme of pure symbiosis or pure self-sufficiency would predominate.11 Whether or not the dichotomy between separation and absorption is based on a cultural mystification, it has real psychological consequences. For with the ascendance of masculine self-sufficiency, individuation becomes centred on the denial of dependency and thus on detachment from others. This ideal of independence becomes enlarged in a cultural context that does not foster 'maternal' nurture - taken as symbolic of all forms of positive validation and caring responsiveness toward others. (The term 'maternal' is, of course, used advisedly in the context of the splitting of masculine and feminine in Western civilization by which women come to embody compassion on behalf of the whole human species.) As confidence in external support diminishes, it must be countered by a still greater idealization of self-sufficiency.12 As in any psychological

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 95 polarization, one extreme tends to alternate with the other rather than a balance being struck. A psychocultural bias toward separation has its analogue in a conscious or unconscious yearning for total union. Both ends of this polarization characterize the psychic experience of Rousseau. His being deprived of his mother in infancy might lead us to expect an extra measure of yearning for maternal union, accompanied by a corresponding idealization of autonomy. Whether or not this dichotomy was exaggerated by his particular experience, the personal origins are significant for their continuity with a cultural tension between separation and oneness. That he so clearly reflects this tension and so persistently strives to transcend it, though, is perhaps due to his having experienced it so acutely in his own life. Understood in terms of the dualism between separation and oneness, then, Rousseau's ideal of independence emerges as a theoretical correlate to a cultural bias that favours self-sufficiency over dependence. Autobiographically, this ideal is seen in his personal reform, in which he aims at complete independence in his opinions, livelihood, and manner of being (C 337-40, 352, 374-5; R 31). In Emile there is a philosophical reflection: Emile is to be the savage raised for civilization (E 205), transposing primitive autonomy into the heart of Rousseau's educational theory. Emile's education is intended to prepare him finally to live in society, but Rousseau conceives self-sufficiency and removal from societal relations in his childhood as the best means toward this end. Thus, Emile becomes a classic expression of the theories of development that Benjamin criticizes for emphasizing 'the goal of autonomy more than relatedness to others."H Emile has no sustained contact with anyone other than his tutor; there are no references to immediate or extended family, to other teachers, or to friends. To replicate the natural state, even at the price of sometimes manipulating appearances, his learning is instilled through confrontations with dependence on things rather than on persons (E 85, 120). As Rousseau specifies, 'He gets his lessons from nature and not from men' (E 119). Thus, consistent with the psychocultural emphasis on independence, in his educational theory Rousseau cannot conceive sustained interrelation with the other as a real condition of positive development.14 Reflecting the psychocultural ideal of autonomy, the result of this education is an adolescent Emile who is self-sufficient and alone: 'He considers himself without regard to others and finds it good that others do not think of him. He demands nothing of anyone and believes he owes nothing to anyone. He is alone in human society; he counts on himself alone' (£208; see also E 119, 244).

96 Instinct and Intimacy Although independence and detachment from others is the goal of childhood education, Rousseau nevertheless says of his adolescent pupil that 'Emile is not made to remain always solitary' (£327). An education that emulates the self-sufficiency and isolation of the primitive has, Rousseau considers, ideally prepared Emile to live in society, to which he is introduced only in young adulthood. Implicitly reflecting the total union Rousseau yearned for with women, an unconscious compensation for his ideal of self-sufficiency, Emile is first introduced into society for the purpose of finding a female companion: '"Your heart," I say to the young man, "needs a companion. Let us go seek her who suits you" ... With a project that is so appealing to him, I introduce him into society' (E 328). Thus, it is not until Emile finally meets Sophie that Rousseau presents him in a sustained relationship with anyone other than his tutor. As with any other man, Emile's isolation ends through woman, for all the affections of his heart are born with his need for a female companion (£214). For the emphasis on masculine differentiation in his education there is a psychological compensation in his introduction to Sophie - the human connection that ends his independence and binds him to the species through his romantic love: 'So long as he loved nothing, he depended only on himself and his needs. As soon as he loves, he depends on his attachments. Thus are formed the first bonds linking him to his species' (E 233). The union Rousseau sought through woman is implicit in Emile by his presentation of Sophie as ending Emile's self-sufficiency. This longing for oneness is explicit in the autobiographies in Rousseau's own relationships with women. Moved by both his personal loss of maternal nurturing and the absence of maternal forms of validation and responsiveness in the culture, he sought the experience of total union in his relationship with Mme de Warens and later with Therese. As the polar analogue to a psychic ideal of self-sufficiency and detachment, there was in this desire for union a confusion between dependence and the total loss of the self.15 Thus, Rousseau's longing for absorption threatened the separate reality of both himself and the other. Moreover, as an impossible fantasy it resulted in denial in one relationship and open disappointment in the other. Rousseau's response upon first meeting Mme de Warens was a state of rapture that filled his whole being (C59). This initial sense of absorption set the tone for all his subsequent feelings. Early comments indicate that she became the only person in the world for him (C 103) and that his attachment to her was his sole passion. This single feeling was so absorb-

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 97 ing that for a time it distracted him from his studies, rendering him incapable of learning anything (C 122). He regained his concentration, but continued to relate that he 'did not think, feel, or breathe except through her' (C 194). His desire to give his life entirely over to making her happy (C 193) was accompanied by the sense of finding his whole existence dependent upon her: '"My whole being is in your hands," I said to her; "act so that it may be happy"' (C212). Before their sexual union he recounts that he was chaste because he loved her; she was the only woman in the world for him, and the sweet feelings she inspired left no room for his senses to be aroused by others (C 109). He deviates at one point in his discourse on absorption by admitting that sometimes he was distracted by love for other women. But even then he insists that while he thought of Mme de Warens less often, it was still with the same pleasure (C 147). In contemplating her sexual proposal, he realizes that because he wanted her as his exclusive focus, his lack of sensual passion for her did not result in sexual desires for other women: 'Without desiring to possess her, I was glad that she robbed me of any desire to possess other women. For I viewed anything that might distract my attention from her as a misfortune' (C 189). He may overtly express pleasure in their triangular intimate society (C 194), but Rousseau's exclusive desire for absorption in Mme de Warens implicitly reveals that he found Anet's presence intrusive. For it is only after Anet's death that he presents his sense of absorption as a mutual experience. He describes how he and Mme de Warens came to share their entire existence with each other: 'We began imperceptibly to become inseparable and, in a sense, to share our whole existence in common. Feeling that we were not only necessary but sufficient to one another, we grew accustomed to thinking of nothing outside ourselves, completely to confine our happiness and our desires to our possession of one another, which was perhaps unique among human kind' (C213). To sustain a feeling of absorption in Mme de Warens, Rousseau had to deny the impact of his lack of sensual arousal, his physical attraction to other women, and his pain over her relationship with Anet. Moreover, while one cannot underestimate the attachment that kept them together for nearly a decade, his eventual claim of an exclusively shared existence seems less a reflection of fact than an expression of his yearning for union. He remembers their experiencing this mutual absorption just before they went to Les Charmettes, their last summer together before the arrival of Wintzenried. Rousseau reports that his displacement by this man was an entirely unexpected blow: he despaired that '[s]uddenly my

98 Instinct and Intimacy whole being was thrown completely upside down' (C 249). That he apparently saw no hint of this coming indicates a state of denial that could permit no distance between them. Maurice Cranston describes several reproachful letters written to Mme de Warens from Montpelier before Rousseau's arrival back at Les Charmettes, protesting, among other things, her failure to acknowledge his letters.16 Whether Rousseau could not recognize these warning signs, repressed the memory of them, or simply refused to include them, the lacuna is indicative of his need to remember his relationship with her as totally absorbing until the moment of its break. Rather than distancing him, the fear of losing her accelerated his desire to completely submerge himself in her to the point of almost forgetting himself: 'Reduced to seeking an existence independent of her and not being able even to imagine one, I soon moved to the opposite extreme, and sought it entirely in her, so entirely in fact that I almost succeeded in forgetting myself (C 250). Since his childhood, he lamented, he had not contemplated an existence apart from her (C 149). So it is no wonder that it took several lonely and melancholy years before he was able to completely release himself from his desire for absolute union with her and make his way to a new life in Paris. Denial allowed Rousseau to feel absorption with Mme de Warens, but with Therese his yearning for union is consciously disappointed. Although he needed her to be the substitute for Mme de Warens (C310, 385), he never felt the same sense of submersion in her being. The closest he momentarily came was in the first blush of their sexual relationship, when he felt that' [t]his attachment made all other amusements superfluous and insipid' (C 311). But he soon found that a new friendship with Grimm, a man of letters, distracted him and caused him to neglect Therese, although he affirms that his affection for her did not diminish and he still relished the intimacy they shared (C329, 330). This admitted neglect must be seen in the context of his expectation that an attachment to a woman should be all-consuming. His affection for Therese and his need for the satisfactions of private and domestic life led him to set up a household with her nonetheless (C329). It was after they had been living at the Hermitage for a time that Rousseau remembers being disappointed with their degree of intimacy. His disappointment seemed precipitated by the relative solitude of this country retreat, a situation that made Therese's intellectual limitations weigh heavily upon their time together (C392). Whatever her shortcomings, his expressed need for intimacy was so intense as to be impossible to fulfil. He identified intimate companionship as his greatest need, and expected

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 99 to find the closest intimacy with a woman, but even a sexual relationship would not suffice: The first, the greatest, the strongest, the most inextinguishable of all my needs was entirely one of the heart. It was the need for intimate companionship, for a companionship as intimate as possible, which was the chief reason why I needed a woman rather than a man, a woman friend rather than a man friend. This singular need was such that the most intimate physical union could not fulfil it; only two souls in the same body would have sufficed. Failing that, I always felt a void. (C386)

In erotic union 'both partners lose themselves in each other without loss of self."7 This is not enough for Rousseau: he wanted to obliterate his separate existence and that of his partner - thus the need for 'two souls in the same body.' Of Therese his hope had been that she 'would have absorbed my whole existence within herself if I could have absorbed hers in me' (C 386). What ostensibly prevented this was the controlling interference of her family, and particularly her mother. He found her family so different in character from Therese that he could not adopt them as his own. He complained that it was impossible to unite all their interests, and that Therese, under the sway of her family, was more theirs than his (C386). This left him disappointed that '[o]ur relationship was intimate but we did not live in intimacy' (C392). Whatever the basis for his complaints about her family, his failure to feel absorbed in her resulted in the first instance from the impossibility of the wish. He laments that 'never mind what efforts I made to overcome it, we always remained separate people' (£-387). In such a desire for total union the separate reality of the other is vitiated.18 Whether or not he was in her company, Rousseau confides that he always had a secret heartache: 'When I possessed her I felt that she was still not mine; and the single idea that I was not everything to her caused her to be almost nothing to me' (C 395). Thus, the need for absolute union engenders the expectation that the other should live only through oneself Unable to fully taste with Therese the intimate companionship he desired, he resorted to cultivating friendships with Grimm and the philosophers Diderot and Condillac. He explains that he needed these other intimate relations to make him less conscious of the void he felt in [l]acking a single friend who could be entirely mine' (C387). Rousseau introduced Therese into his Confessions with the pronouncement that for him 'there has never been an intermediate stage between all and nothing' (C310). Disposed to such polarities in his romantic emo-

ioo

Instinct and Intimacy

tions he would inevitably be let down by what felt to him like half measures. He explains: 'What I lacked prevented my enjoying what I had' (C 392-3). And he repeats, but this time with disappointment: 'Where happiness and enjoyment were concerned, I needed all or nothing' (C393)His discontent with Therese was symptomatic of the melancholy he felt at never having truly experienced romantic love. He despaired about the intense passion he was forced to keep in reserve and the inflammable feelings that had never burned even once for a definite object: I believed that I was approaching the end of my days almost without having tasted to the full any of the pleasures for which my heart thirsted, without having given vent to the strong emotions which I felt it had in reserve, without having even tasted that intoxicating passion, the power of which I felt in my soul - a passion which, through lack of an object, was always suppressed and could express itself in no other way but through my sighs. ... How could it be that with such inflammable feelings, with a heart entirely moulded for love, I had not at least once burned with love for a definite object? Devoured by a need to love that I had never been able to satisfy, I saw myself coming to the gates of old age, and dying without having lived. (C396-7) These accolades to the promise of romantic love speak to the powerful hold of romance in the modern sensibility. Rousseau's actual experiences, like many people's, never lived up to his expectations. His particular disappointment stemmed from an impossible desire for absorption that could not permit the separate existence of either the other or the self. Rousseau attempted to escape the burden of the cultural expectation of self-sufficiency through absolute romantic union. Since such total union is one of two impossible extremes, the wish for it must be accompanied inevitably by tension. As we have seen, Rousseau either had to unconsciously deny the absence of absorption or he had to consciously express his disappointment. His psychological confessions are, then, a complex testimony to the impossibility of satisfying the desire for absorption as the unconscious correlate to the conscious, cultural ideal of selfsufficiency. The complexity that arose from the denial and despondency in his own seeking for absorption is lost when this desire is transposed to La Nouvelle Helo'ise as a romantic ideal. The two young lovers, Julie and Saint-Preux, supposedly achieve the union Rousseau longed for. But as the alleged

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 101 realization of an impossible ideal, the terms in which they express their love appear exaggerated and unreal. Amidst the repeated affirmations of the union of their hearts and souls is the secret of its impossibility (see, for example, NH 118, 122, 125, 146, 197, 252); for it rests upon the loss of the self and the complete obliteration of their separate existence. Thus, Saint-Preux declares to Julie: 'I am no longer master of myself, I confess; my estranged soul is wholly absorbed in yours' (NH 83). Julie goes so far as to suggest that by the totality of their intimate union, they should be able to communicate extrasensorially: 'Spirits are invisible, I believe, but would not two souls so intimately united be able to have an immediate communication between them, independent of the body and of the senses?' (NH 246) With such exaggerated expectations of love, it is inevitable that Rousseau would be disappointed. The disappointment does not surface in La Nouvelle Heloise, where he never quite comes to ground in his romantic imagination. Julie feels that, at the pain of death, a love such as theirs must 'extinguish or absorb every other passion' (NHgo). True to her prediction, she apparently dies of a broken heart in not being able to marry Saint-Preux. La Nouvelle Heloise, however, was written as a compensation for what Rousseau experienced as missing from his own life (C 398). Thus, it is not this romantic fiction, but his Confessions that express the impossibility of the absolute union he was seeking. His disappointment with romantic love also is glimpsed briefly in Emile, where he describes true love as a 'chimera, lie, and illusion' (£329). To view the love between Julie and Saint-Preux as reflecting Rousseau's unattainable desire for absolute absorption is not to deny that the reader's sympathies may be engaged by Julie's plight in being forced into an arranged marriage with Wolmar. If Julie's respective relationships with Saint-Preux and Wolmar are compared, however, a more contemporary significance emerges in the language of absorption that dominates the one and the language of complementarity that characterizes the other. Julie describes her relationship with Wolmar as a complementary union of different personal qualities: 'If he had a heart as tender as mine, it would be impossible for so much sensitivity on both sides not to come sometimes into collision and for quarrels not to result. If I were as calm as he, too much coldness would reign between us and would make our union less agreeable and less sweet' (NH 262). Here Rousseau drops the fantasy of absolute union in favour of the feasible relation of complementarity. Thus, it is where he did not intend it in this novel that he brings to bear the most realistic observations and expectations of intimate relations.

102 Instinct and Intimacy In addition to absolute romantic union, Rousseau is fascinated with patriotism as a means of compensating for the modern expectation of self-sufficiency, by total absorption of the individual in the political collectivity. This appears most clearly in his political philosophy as an awe at the patriotism he associates with classical antiquity. In The Confessions and the Dialogues he relates his feeling, from his earliest years, a contradictory pull between his romantic sentiments and his classical longings. This contradiction, he considers, was set in motion by his respective reading of novels and of Plutarch begun at the age of five or six (C 20; D 123). The alleged contradiction, however, is actually between two orientations that stem from the same emotional tendency: a longing for union that is expressed through both romantic notions and classical nostalgia. There is, as we have noted, an indissoluble individualistic core in Rousseau's political philosophy in his postulate of natural autonomy. While this is the logic of The Social Contract, psychoanalytically his hypothesis of a self-sufficient savage has an emotional correlate in the other polarity of individual absorption in the state. This polarity between individualism and political absorption has spawned a dichotomy of interpretation: some see him as an individualist, others, more commonly, as a collectivist.19 In depicting Rousseau as a so-called collectivist, absolutist, or 'democratic totalitarian,'20 commentators have argued that he abandons the individual to the state. Ernst Cassirer, for example, contends that '[t]he Contrat social proclaims and glorifies a completely unbounded absolutism of the state ... Man does not give himself to the state and to society without giving himself completely to both. We may speak of a real "unity" of the state only if the individuals are merged in this unity and disappear in it.'21 There is undeniably an emotional need in Rousseau that would fuel the individual's absorption in the body politic, the political analogue to his personal desire for total union. That this emotional tendency determines his political philosophy, however, can be substantiated only through a distortion, that of ignoring the opposing polarity of absolute differentiation, which sets the limit to his fascination with absorption. As Alfred Cobban suggests, 'To the end a hard and insoluble core of individualism remains in Rousseau's thought and refuses to be dissolved away by the rising tide of communal values.'22 Tracking both the logic of Rousseau's political thought and the psychoanalytical polarities that filter into it lends substance to this interpretation. The fantasy of political absorption is expressed by Rousseau in his periodic eulogies to the lost past of antiquity. In the Romans and Spartans he

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103

finds a strength of patriotism that dissolves the particular self in the common identity of the political association. He extols the patriotism of these ancients vis-a-vis modern people: in Emile he proclaims that, by contrast, ' [t] hese two words, fatherland and citizen, should be effaced from modern languages' (£40, emphasis in original). If it is paradoxical by logical standards, it is entirely consistent by psychoanalytical ones that Emile contains the strongest declaration of Rousseau's admiration for Roman and Spartan absorption in the state. For Emile also contains the extreme ideal of isolation in developmental psychology and political education. Introduced into society in his late adolescence, and even later to knowledge of the state, Emile is patriotically dispassionate. Feeling no primary political affiliation, he is able to choose a state (E 471-3). This patriotic dispassion is an extreme contrast to the Roman and Spartan civic identity that for Rousseau exemplifies the total incorporation of the individual into the common unity. He begins with the contrast between the natural and civil human. The natural human is an absolute whole and is entirely for him- or herself. The civil human is only a fractional unity whose value is determined by his or her relation to the social whole (E40). All of this follows from Rousseau's understanding of the autonomy of the natural condition and the interdependence of society. From here, however, the transfer of the individual into the common unity is stated in the hyperbolic terms of denaturing social institutions, as he prepares to introduce the Roman and Spartan as the exemplar of the civil human. The separate existence and feelings of these ancients was obliterated by their membership in the political whole: 'Good social institutions are those that best know how to denature man, to take his absolute existence from him in order to give him a relative one and transport the I into the common unity, with the result that each individual believes himself no longer one but part of the unity and no longer feels except within the whole. A citizen of Rome was neither Caius nor Lucius; he was a Roman' (E 40). Thus, Roman citizens did not choose their political affiliation; it was given to them as a totally encompassing self-definition. Rousseau goes on to declare that this union of self and whole obliterated even familial feelings, providing as an example a Spartan woman whom he celebrates as the epitome of the female citizen: 'A Spartan woman had five sons in the army and was awaiting news of the battle. A Helot arrives; trembling, she asks him for news. "Your five sons were killed." "Base slave, did I ask you that?" "We won the victory." The mother runs to the temple and gives thanks to the gods. This is the female citizen" (E 40). Thus, the Spartan scarcely notices sacrificing for

104 Instinct and Intimacy the state the domestic happiness that Emile cherishes and comes to realize is only securable through the state (£457). Rousseau's longing for total union in his personal life wound up in either denial or open disappointment; in his political analogue he is never under the illusion that the political absorption of the Spartan and Roman is a possible ideal for modern people. Always unfavourably comparing modern people to the ancients, he never suggests their patriotism could wholly be emulated (SC286; £321; GP5; LWM 315-16). This disclaiming of the ancients as an emulative ideal is already implicit in the patriotic dispassion of his ideally raised citizen, Emile. An explicit statement is found in the Letters Written from the Mountains, which, written in defence of his views in Emile and The Social Contract, appeared two years after their publication. There he openly states that '[t]he people of antiquity are not proper models of modern policy.' For moderns are too preoccupied with their private interests and concerns to even think about elevating themselves to the public-spirited heroism of the ancients (LWM315). In his endorsement of political liberty in the 'Dedication' to the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau praises the Roman people as 'a model for all free peoples' (DI34). Later on he uses a Spartan example to make his point that only those who possess liberty can value it (DI 102). This admiration for the liberty of Spartans and Romans should not be confused with the patriotism he extols. Their patriotism reflects a desire for political absorption, which he admits is impossible in modern times. The alleged liberty of the Spartans and Romans, in contrast, allows him to invoke the prestige of classical origins in justifying his modern ideal of liberty. For the curious transposition of liberty onto the rigidly militaristic city-state of Sparta 23 is a Rousseauian mythologization Rousseau's holding up of the Romans as a 'model for all free peoples' in the second Discourse (DI 34) is followed up in The Social Contract by an extensive elaboration of their political system (see especially Book IV, chapter 7, 'The Roman Comitia'). The Romans are the only people he ever describes as being both de jure and de facto sovereign (SC286). Lawfully assembled in the comitia, the people passed the laws and elected the magistrates (SC262, 286). In Rousseau's accolade to the Roman people's legislative sovereignty, the logistics of primary democracy for four million citizens achieves almost mythical proportions (SC262, 267). He acknowledges the difficulty created by the large numbers, remarking how, in the time of the Gracchi, some citizens had to cast their votes from rooftops (SC267). The existence of slaves in Rome and Sparta, however, prohibits transposing the modern use of the word 'freedom' to the classical con-

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 105 ception of the self. For the notion of all individuals being free, as a determining feature of human identity, is certainly not held by the ancient Greeks and Romans. This freedom, of course, is formulated and defended by Rousseau. On his analysis, '[t]he words slave and right contradict each other,' rendering the 'right of slavery' illegitimate, absurd, and meaningless (SC189, emphasis in original). Yet despite his awareness of slavery in Rome and Sparta (SC 262, 268), he extols the liberty of these regimes. This contradiction can be explained by his use of ancestral myth as a rhetorical device. In his chapter 'The Roman Comitia' he forewarns that the historical records of early Rome are not well certified and most of the stories told about it are probably myths (SC 281). He invokes this mythological past to legitimize his modern ideal of liberty. He introduces the Roman people's sovereignty by proclaiming, 'Let us judge of what can be done by what has been done' (SC261). Judith Shklar divides Rousseau's thought into two opposite models: besides the tranquil household of the Golden Age, ' [t]he only other soulsatisfying choice is to lose oneself in a collectivity, in a Spartan order.'24 This exclusive attention to the element of absorption overlooks the selfdetermining freedom through democratic self-rule that Rousseau mythologically inserts even into his Spartan ideal. This is not to deny that the Spartans and Romans also become the medium for him to express his emotional need for absorption. But to thereby epitomize Rousseau's political philosophy as submerging the individual in the collectivity is to ignore the liberal foundation in autonomy that underwrites his ideal democratic state. 4 Civic Extension of the Self As remarked, to characterize Rousseau's philosophy as a collectivist attempt to absorb the individual in the state ignores the other polarity of self-determining freedom, which is based in the independence of natural humanity. Furthermore, the collectivist interpretation does not attend to the ways in which he strives to transcend the extremes of absolute civic union and total individual autonomy. If he begins with a liberal foundation, it is overlaid by a theory of civic attachment. In this civic transformation the appropriate metaphor is not the absorption but the extension of the self. The individualist foundation of his social contract is amour de soi, an instinct that is only compatible with equal participation in democratic self-rule. The allure of private life in modernity, however, distracts people from public affairs. This appeal prompts Rousseau to motivate civic par-

106 Instinct and Intimacy ticipation, not by absorbing the individual in the state, but by extending the feelings of intimate life to public life in the small, politically intimate state. While amour de soi is the basis of Rousseau's individualism, it is also the emotional principle for the extension of the self in both private and public 'intimate association.' This self-extension allows the transcendence of narrow self-interest needed to legislate the common good. For, undeflected by amour-propre, amour de soi extends the self through a positive sensitivity towards others, and thus in respect to fellow citizens. In his chapter 'The Limits of the Sovereign Power' in The Social Contract, Rousseau is explicitly careful not to absorb individuals in their public role: 'But, besides the public person, we have to consider the private persons composing it, whose life and liberty are naturally independent of it.' Bearing in mind their dual status and rights as both private persons and Sovereign members, he adds the qualification that each person alienates 'by the social compact, only such part of his power, goods, and liberty as it is important for the community to control.' While the Sovereign admittedly judges what is important, Rousseau still stipulates that the Sovereign 'cannot impose upon its subjects any fetters that are useless to the community' (SC 205). Rousseau obviously differs from Hobbes in insisting upon a democratic sovereign, but has a liberal precedent in that theorist's attempt to leave the people free from unnecessary laws. In a useful liberal metaphor, Hobbes likens laws to hedges, which are designed not to stop travellers but to keep them from getting in each others' way.25 Although he also advocates illiberal measures at other points, this metaphor captures the liberal understanding of necessary laws as ones that prevent individuals from harming each other, otherwise leaving them at liberty. The classic expression of liberal freedom is found in Mill's On Liberty, in which he places supreme value on maximum individual liberty and justifies restrictions only in the case of direct harm to others.2'' In judging what are useless legal fetters, Rousseau's preoccupation is not the liberal one of defining the largest possible sphere of non-interference around the individual. For him the transfer of liberty to the community is bound up with the democratic self-rule that makes restrictions on natural liberty legitimate. It is by the extent that limitations on liberty enable citizens to participate in the legislative Sovereign that they are justified, including illiberal measures. While Rousseau considers democratic self-rule to be the only form of legitimate political association, he does not believe modern people are automatically fit for it. He invokes the patriotism of the ancients to inspire greater public-mindededness in moderns. Rousseau must work

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 107 with the inversion of the classical order in modernity's affirmation of ordinary life,27 whereby people's preoccupation with their personal affairs diverts them from the public effort required for participatory self-rule. In The Social Contract he warns that domestic cares can become all-absorbing, suggesting to people the expedient of having representatives in the national assembly instead of the direct participation of every citizen (SC265-6). In terms of specific personal interests, private market pursuits and the desire for material comforts divert people from public affairs. This preoccupation tempts citizens to give up their legislative sovereignty and thus their liberty; they adopt the expedient of appointing representatives, and thus substitute for public service the payment of taxes: 'It is through the hustle of commerce and the arts, through the greedy self-interest of profit, and through softness and love of amenities that personal services are replaced by money payments ... Make gifts of money, and you will not be long without chains' (SC 265). The concern to protect citizens from the frenzied pursuit of profit, and the concomitant forfeiture of their political liberty, prompts Rousseau to take the illiberal measure of restricting property ownership in his ideal republic (SC 225). Although Rousseau personally felt no affinity for the pursuit of wealth, he was attracted by the allure of intimate society. Aware of this as a modern proclivity, he attempts not to subordinate the private to the public realm, but to extend the feelings of the one to the other. The instrumentality, self-interest, and greed of the economic realm could not offer an appropriate emotional model for the citizenry in the enterprise of participatory self-rule; this leads him to truncate the overly acquisitive economic self. The intimate sphere, by contrast, provides a worthy model, prompting him to extend the intimate self into the public realm. The mechanisms for such a politically intimate state are laid out in the small primary democracy of The Social Contract. The motivation for this political reform stems from the jarring contrast Rousseau finds between the intimate sphere and the de facto political world, a contrast first seen in the Discourse on Inequality. This text advances as a historical constant the deeply fulfilling nature of intimate life, the realm that historically is associated with the expansion of the human heart. Rousseau's other writings may vary on the form of intimate society, but they all affirm its value in allowing an intercourse of openness, affection, caring, and trust. In the history of humanity this stands in opposition to the heart-constricting political world, with its competition, deception, violence, and oppression. If Rousseau's political enterprise transposes the sentiments of private

io8 Instinct and Intimacy existence to the public realm, it is because the intimate sphere historically has provided our only experience with emotions conducive to human harmony and union. Only once, in On the Origin of Language, does Rousseau address the contradictory historical juxtaposition of the heart's expansion in the intimate sphere and its constriction in the political realm. He contends that fathers of nations, by concentrating their emotions on those nearest to them and rendering the rest of the universe inconsequential, combined familial tenderness and antipathy toward outsiders (OL 33). That familial love can be combined with political animosity in the same breast does not deter Rousseau from seeking to extend the gende feelings of intimate relations to political connections. It would be unreasonable to expect the same intensity of emotion in political relations as in private ones, which are based on a greater exclusivity through either familial membership or the unique attraction to a given personality. That there are degrees of intensity, however, does not imply that relationships further from the core of the self, but nonetheless attached to it, do not provide emotional sustenance and forms of closeness. While Rousseau reserves for a woman his personal sense of the most intimate companionship, throughout The Confessions he suggests a very real need for diversity in human contact by applying the term 'intimacy' to friendships (C 136, 203, 308, 323, 330, 344, 363, 386-7, 435, 491, 508, 567, 569, 570). Only once does his frustrated yearning for absorption in a woman lead him to present such intimate relations as a diversion from what he cannot obtain (C387). He more commonly associates them with the wholly positive ambience of friendship, esteem, confidence, and affection. When the sense of private, intimate relations is extended to the public realm, the feelings may be more attenuated but they are in many respects identical in kind. Rousseau's ideal polity calls for emotional capacities characteristic of the intimate sphere: trustworthiness, affectionate regard for fellow citizens, and transcendence of narrow self-interest through the expansion of the self to encompass the whole. Adding the guiding critical backdrop of the Discourse on Inequality, he condemns de facto governments for negating these qualities in the people. For magistrates strengthen their power over the state by inspiring 'the different ranks of people with mutual hatred and distrust' (D/113). By contrast, the 'Dedication' to this text contains his wish to belong to a political society with a positive valence created by amiable social connections between citizens. Exhibiting feelings and behaviour normally associated not with the political but with the private realm, citizens in such a body politic know each other

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations

log

well enough to feel mutual affection and to practise the duties of friendship (D/32, 36). The love of country thus becomes not an abstract patriotism, but a love of one's particular fellow citizens: 'If I had had to make choice of the place of my birth, I should have preferred ... a State ... in which the pleasant custom of seeing and knowing one another should make the love of country rather a love of the citizens than of its soil' (DI 32-3). 28 Against the background of the allure of private life, a problem in The Social Contract is to find a way to make 'public affairs encroach on private in the minds of the citizens.' The importance of public life will increase relative to private life if'the aggregate of the common happiness furnishes a greater proportion of that of each individual, so that he has less need to seek it in private interests' (SC 266). Rousseau's aim in thus elevating public life, again, is not to subordinate private life to the collectivity. Instead, in envisioning close relations and friendship between the citizens of his ideal democracy, he expects to import into political relations something of the feelings of intimate existence. This would augment the satisfactions of civic life, encouraging public participation and intensifying commitment to the common good. Reinforcing the harmony between this public concern and private aims, the dependency of intimate societies on the body politic particularly spurs Rousseau's extension of heartfelt attachments and commitments to the political sphere; the heightening of 'common happiness' thereby attained is necessary to the assurance of private life. The need to foster closeness and love between citizens leads to Rousseau's insistence in The Social Contract that his recommendations on democratic sovereignty are intended for small states, a caveat he reconfirms in the Dialogues (D 213). Only in the political intimacy of the small state can citizens come to know each other and thus develop a patriotic attachment, not to their country per se, but to their fellow citizens (SC220, 2234). For, as he observes, ' [e]very extension of the social tie means its relaxation' (SC 219). He partially attributes the lesser vigour of large states to the lack of affection between fellow citizens, most of whom are unknown to each other (SC 220). If each citizen is able to know the rest of the citizenry, their motivation to participate in the legislative function stems from the affection and interest they thereby develop in one another. By the criterion of intimacy, even with the technological innovations of the twentieth century, primary democracy would be impossible for large states. John Charvet argues that '[t]he absurdity and incoherence of Rousseau's theory lies precisely in the elaboration of a social ideal

no

Instinct and Intimacy

founded on a rejection of the right of individuals to live and value each other in their particularity.'29 Yet by the emphasis he places on citizens knowing each other and developing a sense of affection based on this familiarity, Rousseau more accurately sought to augment the value that individuals place on each other's particularity, by extending it from its usual place in personal relations to political association. Seen in light of Rousseau's extension of intimacy to the public realm, the requirement to follow the general will does not subordinate the individual to the collectivity. This is no more the case than that transcendence of self-centredness leads to the vitiation of the self in the intimate societies of private life. Individuals who are connected to the whole through an affectionate attachment to their fellow citizens are emotionally motivated to discern and express the general will in their legislative capacity. Only when the social bond is broken in every heart does the general will become mute and narrow self-interest attempt to disguise itself as the public good (SC275). If citizens are to be able to see and obey the general will, Rousseau contends, 'a partial and moral existence' must be substituted for 'the physical and independent existence' of the natural condition (SC214). This partial and moral existence is relational, owing to the interdependence of society and the determinate obligations to others intrinsic to the concept of morality. Set in the context of this interrelatedness, a partial existence does not imply a truncated self, but an extended one; for it is created by lifting the citizen out of submersion in narrow self-interest to an empathetic identification with the social whole. Thus, as Emile presents, an education for civic life must develop the psychological and moral capacity to relate things to the whole and not just to oneself alone (£41, 292). The heart expands through this emotional and moral connection outside the self. The transcendence beyond narrow self-interest needed to enact the general will is confronted by the problem that the renunciation of instinct through civilization has constricted the human heart. To see and obey the general will requires being able to set aside self-interest and remain untainted by the opinions of others, which may be equally selfserving. The psychological history of civilization, however, is one of emotional entrapment by amour-propre. The political result is that selfinterest, in being pre-eminent, overrides commitment to the common good. Thus, the functioning of Rousseau's general will depends on the displacement of amour-propre by the civic heart, a process that requires the reascendancy of amour de soi.

Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 111 While warning against the subversion of the general will, The Social Contract does not address the psychological process by which the self is extended beyond the constricting self-interest of the particular will. For this understanding one may turn to the discussion in the Dialogues of the compressing effect of amour-propre and the extending effect of amour de soi. Beginning with sensitivity as the principle of all action, Rousseau states that in addition to the purely organic and passive sensitivity to pleasure and pain, there is a sensitivity that is moral and active. Conceiving an ethics that goes beyond the dispassionate discharge of duties, he understands moral sensitivity as 'the faculty of attaching our affections to beings who are foreign to us.' Depending on how we feel towards another, the sensitivity can be either positive, through attraction, or negative, through repulsion. The attracting action 'seeks to extend and reinforce the feeling of our being,' while the negative action 'compresses and diminishes the being of another.' He goes on to say that positive sensitivity is directly derived from amour de soi and is the work of nature: 'It is very natural that a person who loves himself should seek to extend his being and his enjoyments' (D 112). In The Reveries, amour de soi is also the basis for the extension of the self, as he describes by his own feelings: 'I love myself too much to be able to hate anyone whatever. That would be to constrict or repress my existence, and I would rather extend it over the whole universe' (R 81). Negative sensitivity, by contrast, is associated with amourpropre: it is produced by the reflective capacity to make comparisons, a proclivity that is combined with an emotional aversion to being outdone. The absolute and extended amour de soi thus degenerates into a comparative self-love that constricts the self by producing 'an aversion for everything that surpasses us, everything that lowers our standing, everything that diminishes us, everything that by being something prevents us from being everything' (D 112). All the loving and gentle passions Rousseau considers to arise from positive sensitivity and amour de soi; all the hateful and cruel passions arise from negative sensitivity and amour-propre (D 112). Amour-propre obviously has adverse consequences for interpersonal relations; but it also has unfortunate results for a person's own self-regard. Those who feel amourpropre are dependent on comparisons with others for their feelings about themselves; they have no absolute internal support for self-love. Thus, Rousseau emphasizes that those who are dominated by amour-j>ropre 'don't even know how to love themselves; they only know how to hate what is not themselves' (D 157). On his understanding, it is ultimately impossible to separate out one's own self-love and self-care from the love

112 Instinct and Intimacy and care of others. Correspondingly, the psychological premise behind the injunction to follow the general will is the capacity to extend one's being and self-love through a positive sensitivity to fellow citizens. Leo Strauss argues that Rousseau 'presents to his readers the confusing spectacle of a man who perpetually shifts back and forth between two diametrically opposed positions.' These two positions are the 'return to the city and the return to the state of nature.'3" Strauss insists there is a 'decisive objection' to the claim that Rousseau found a solution to the tension between individual and society in a certain kind of society. In his words, 'Rousseau believed to the end that even the right kind of society is a form of bondage.'31 If Strauss sees this 'confusing spectacle' of a perpetual vacillation between nature and civilization, it is because he insufficiently attends to the possibility Rousseau holds for the reascendancy of instinct within his democratic polity. When he wants to condemn the mutual dependencies of existing society, Rousseau invokes the image of primitive humanity's autonomy. But to focus exclusively on the issue of autonomy and bondage is to entirely miss his positive appraisal of humanity's entry into the intimate sphere. The expansion of the human heart through intimate relations precludes an isolationist retreat. And the emotions of our intimate existence inspire a transformative vision for civic association that finds in political society not the restriction, but the expression, of an extended self that is instinctually based. In the context of our original autonomy, Rousseau's fundamental problem is to establish a theory of civic attachment. As we have seen, this he achieves by extending the autonomous self to others in his politically intimate state. While the determination of the general will necessitates civic cohesion, it also requires independence of judgment. The next chapter continues the discussion of separation and oneness by addressing Rousseau's conceptualization of and response to the problem of retaining autonomous judgment.

5 Independence and the General Will

Rousseau does not rest content with specifying the democratic political mechanisms consistent with natural liberty; he also seeks to ensure people's psychological capacity to support them. The general will requires an independence of judgment that Rousseau's own personal struggle with autonomy immediately signals as problematic. His awareness of this trouble is reflected in his recommendation of a solitary deliberative procedure to determine the general will and in his concern with public opinion as a possible source of contagion. Although he apparently suggests a Legislator to help people discern the general will, the suprahuman proportions of this figure reinforce the necessity for citizens to develop the personal authenticity to remain true to their own judgments. On Rousseau's understanding, the greatest psychological impediment to developing the requisite autonomy is amour-propre, which draws persons outside of themselves into a preoccupation with the opinions of others. He sees amour-propre as the inevitable correlate of social relations, an impasse that by the end of his life has given rise to two radically different responses. Through a conception of civic amour-propre, The Government of Poland dispenses with the imperative for personal autonomy. In The Reveries Rousseau takes a solitary course, diminishing his amour-propre through the extinguishing of every hope for human connection. Although solitude seems the inevitable endpoint of his psychological theory, The Reveries still suggest a personal strategy for diminishing amour-propre in social relations. It also points us to a conflation in his thought between the need for external affirmation and the desire for superiority. In elucidating the political significance of autonomous judgment and amour-propre, the three autobiographies are all indispensable. The Confessions and the Dialogues establish Rousseau's struggle with autonomy as a

114 Instinct and Intimacy personal theme, the Dialogues add to his philosophical discussion of public opinion and amour-propre, and The Reveries shed light on the possibilities for resolving amour-propre in society. l Struggle for Autonomy

In Rousseau's premise of an independent savage two elements of psychoanalytical significance have already been found: first, his insight into humanity's inadaptability to civilization; and second, the emotional extremism that also manifests itself in a desire for total union. Like an allegorical tale that can be read on different levels, this natural autonomy has a third psychological meaning. By not only hypothesizing but eulogizing the independent savage, Rousseau leads one to suspect that he was troubled by the issue of independence in his intimate and social relations. His autobiographies reveal the weakness he felt in retaining his autonomy, his Herculean attempts to overcome this weakness, as well as his flights from the struggle to solitude. His tussle with autonomy emerged in his mid-life; it did not appear to be an issue in the years he spent with Mme de Warens. In the beginning he simply complied with her wishes, even when they contradicted his own. As mentioned earlier, he uneasily observed that she was secretly studying him to lay plans for his future occupation. While he would gladly have dispensed with such plans, she solicited the assistance of a male relative in this scrutiny (C 111-12). Rousseau's usual conversational blundering led this relative to conclude that he could aspire to nothing higher than the post of village priest (C 112-16). Mme de Warens thus decided to have him taught at a seminary, and he obediently went off to study, feeling like he was going to the scaffold (C116). Unsurprisingly, he made little progress in his studies, though he puts this down to his stubbornly autodidactic learning style (C118). Returned to Mme de Warens, he soon found that her own compliancy and generosity allowed him to pursue his interests in music, reading, and short-term travels while largely eschewing paid employment (C 120-1, 180, 205-6, 209-10, 221-30, 235). He was not the only one to benefit from her openhandedness; she received scores of beggars, travellers, and other visitors (C 105, 109). Her income should have been adequate, but her addiction to schemes and enterprises left her prey to 'quacks, manufacturers, alchemists, and promoters of all kinds, who dealt in fortunes by the million but ended in need of a crown apiece' (C195). Anet managed to restrain her financial extravagance, but after his death her affairs began to deteriorate. It then fell to Rousseau to

Independence and the General Will 115 be the overseer, but he lacked Anet's personal authority; he soon gave up and himself abused her generosity, since he was convinced that whatever he denied himself would fall into the pockets of rogues (C 198, 206). Although he worried about her financial decay (C 198, 206, 212), her squandering did not affect his own sense of autonomy, perhaps because he contributed only sporadically to her finances. Toward mid-life Rousseau recurringly complained of difficulty with autonomy in his household as well as with friends and acquaintances. While he found a compliant partner in Therese, he felt frustrated and burdened by her subservience to her family, and particularly to her mother. As soon as Mme Le Vasseur found herself better off financially owing to Rousseau, she sent for her whole family to come to Paris, a pattern that was repeated at the Hermitage despite his protests (C318, 391). He complained: 'Everything that I did for Therese was deflected by her mother for the benefit of their hungry mouths.' He noticed the parallel between Mme de Warens and Therese: one was a prey to swindlers and the other to her family, and he could do nothing to profit the person he intended in either case (C 318). The situation with Therese was distinguished, however, by his sense that her mother was detracting from their intimacy (C 392). From the beginning of their relationship, he was annoyed by her interferences and efforts to influence her daughter contrarily and alienate her from him (C311, 343, 391, 399). He remembers her mother's influence being of use to him in only one circumstance: he had 'the greatest difficulty in the world' in persuading Therese to give up her newborn baby to the Foundling Hospital, but her mother came to his aid, wanting to avoid 'a fresh embarrassment in the form of a brat.' The other babies were given up with no more willingness on Therese's part, but 'she obeyed with a sigh' (C322). More typically, however, Therese's compliant disposition in combination with her dominating mother activated Rousseau's sense of not being in control. An episode in the early period of his literary fame illustrates his difficulty in maintaining his own course. As part of his personal reform, he had decided to be poor and independent, a resolution that was constantly being thwarted by gifts from the public (C 337, 342). His remedy was to refuse all gifts without exception, a resolution that was not to the liking of Mme Le Vasseur. Her daughter followed her instructions, and he was tortured not so much by their connivance in surreptitiously accepting gifts as by the cruel thought that I could never be master of my own establishment, or even of myself (C343). It would be unreasonable to expect complete autonomy in setting one's own course while sharing a

116 Instinct and Intimacy household, but what is significant is Rousseau's internal sense of not having the firmness of character to properly assert himself: I begged and implored and grew angry, but all to no effect. The mamma made me out an eternal grumbler, an absolute boor. There were continual whisperings with my friends; everything was a secret and a mystery to me in my own house, and in order to protect myself from ceaseless storms I no longer dared to inquire what went on. To deliver myself from all these vexations, I should have needed a firmness of which I was incapable. I knew how to complain but not to act; theTy let me talk and went their own way. (C343) During this period his self-avowed difficulty in setting his own direction was also evident in his friendships, which were primarily with men of letters and members of the upper class. To these friends of both sexes he declared himself 'attached by the purest of friendship and the most perfect of respect' (C395). He also complained that they pressured him to act against his own preferences on matters regarding only himself: 'These friendships, however, were more of a pain than a pleasure to me owing to my friends' obstinate, or even perverse, habit of opposing all my tastes, my inclinations, and my way of life to such an extent that I had only to appear to want something affecting myself alone, and in no way depending on them, for me to find them all immediately banded together to compel me to renounce it' (C 395). Being unable to easily dismiss their attempts to control him, he found their interferences emotionally burdensome (C 395). In attempting to cut an independent path in his personal reform, he reported success in throwing off the yoke of opinion but failure in freeing himself from the yoke of friendship. He ironically conceded that 'whilst I was trampling underfoot the senseless opinions of the vulgar herd of so-called great and so-called wise, I allowed myself to be enslaved and led like a child by so-called friends' (C338). Thus, in his friendships Rousseau felt obstructed in following his inclinations and chosen ways, for he was either emotionally burdened by objections or pressed into going in an opposite direction. Added to the interference of his friends were the incursions by people who wanted to meet him because of the success of his early writings. As he complained in Paris: 'My room was never empty of people who came on various excuses to take up my time' (C 342). He felt pestered by dinner invitations and was cranky at being dragged hither and thither by acquaintances (C 342-3). An invitee to the houses of the upper class during his literary fame, he could not even escape feeling at the mercy of house servants (C 476-7).

Independence and the General Will 117 Rousseau's frustration at feeling controlled by friends and acquaintances was understandably accompanied by his self-perception that he was tempermentally suited to an independent and retired life. Country retreat at the Hermitage, though it seemed appealing, did not measure up to his expectations or his memories of Les Charmettes (C 374, 384, 396). He explains that his liberty was precarious, for he had 'duties which were pleasant to fulfil but which could not be ignored.' He found himself unable to spend a single day exactly as he pleased (C 396). In the first place, he was in this dwelling place courtesy of its owner, a wealthy patron, Mme d'Epinay. He thus was dependent on her arrangements and had to resign himself to a certain servitude in providing company (C384, 396). This social duty, however, was punctuated by her frequent absences from her neighbouring home, at which time he could enjoy his solitude with Therese and her mother (C 384). Second, he still felt tiresomely plagued by the public and by chance visitors: 'My distance from Paris did not prevent crowds of idle people who had no idea what to do with their time from coming every day to waste mine quite unscrupulously' (C396). As well as a bothersome incursion on his time, socializing was difficult for Rousseau because of his sense of social ineptness. Here again he felt a lack of self-mastery, as he was either tongue-tied or gabbling in an effort to hide his unease (C 114-15). Always on the verge of losing his poise, he felt acutely unnerved by the opinions of others. His confidence in his capability depended entirely on how others were inclined toward him; a single ill-disposed spectator was enough to disturb him (D 165). Although he was convinced of his capability, he was easily intimidated by doubters, and consequently would wind up displaying himself badly: 'The greatest harm that comes from this is that feeling his own capability, he surrenders without fear to occasions to show it in order to convince those who are in doubt about it, always planning that this time he will remain in control of himself; and always intimidated no matter what he does, he always shows only his ineptness' (D 165). The extent of Rousseau's sense of being subjugated by others and by their opinions can be measured by the vehemence with which he declared a new independence in his personal reform. Some of his reforms seem either called for by his philosophical principles or protective of them. For instance, he vowed to breach the fetters of prejudice and do what he believed right without caring what others might think (C 337); and he elected to rely on music copying for his livelihood instead of revenue from book sales, in order to safeguard his pen from sacrificing the truth to please the buying public (C 374-5). But other changes seem

118 Instinct and Intimacy like an irrational though emotionally satisfying reaction to his lack of confidence and self-mastery in social relations. Thus, he adopted his own, more slovenly, manner of dressing (C 352); and feeling unable to win approval in the social world through mastery of its manners, he scornfully affected contrary manners of his own. Long suppressed by a fear of making social blunders, he elected to give himself courage by purposely trampling all courtesies underfoot: 'I became cynical and sarcastic out of awkwardness, and affected to despise the manners I did not know how to practice' (C 343). Only someone who felt very precarious in the face of external opinions would have to rebel so strenuously and ostentatiously. While Rousseau did not yet in The Confessions have the insight to see it fully, by the time he wrote the Dialogues he understood that his struggle with autonomy was due to his need for affectionate social connections, a need that led him to be overly obliging to his friends: 'His heart, made for attachments, was given without reservation. Obliging toward his friends to the point of weakness, he allowed himself to be subjugated by them in such a way that he could no longer remove that yoke with impunity' (D 15). Not yet aware in The Confessions of the link between his need for affection and his trouble with autonomy, he nevertheless emphasized his desire to be loved and his fear of displeasing (C55). Describing himself as 'enslaved by the least mark of affection,' he proclaimed, 'I can resist anything except affection' (C484, 493). Even during his personal reform, Rousseau, though he fortified himself against the disdain of others, was less able to resist their kindness. This is illustrated by the succession of emotions he experienced while attending the performance before the King of France of his opera The Village Soothsayer. At first uncomfortable with his unkempt appearance in the midst of this well-dressed crowd, he reassured himself about his manner of dressing and fended off the impulse to pander to ill opinions: I am dressed in my ordinary way, neither better nor worse. If I begin to pander to opinion over one matter, I shall pretty soon be doing so over everything. To be consistent with myself, I must not blush, wherever I may be, at being dressed according to the position in life I have chosen ... I shall be considered ridiculous, offensive. Well, what is that to me? I must know how to bear ridicule and censure, provided they are undeserved. (C352) Fortified by this little soliloquy, he was prepared for the crowd's curiosity towards him. What disarmed him, however, was not any incivility but their unexpected attitude of kindness, which instantaneously prompted con-

Independence and the General Will 119 cerns that his play might disappoint them: 'This so affected me that I began to be uneasy once more about myself and the reception of my play. 1 was afraid that I might disappoint these people who seemed so predisposed in my favour and so anxious to applaud. I was armed against jeering; but their unexpected attitude of kindness so disarmed me that I trembled like a child when the thing began' (C 352-3). His opera was well received, and he describes how ' [t]he pleasure of affecting so many pleasant people moved even me to tears, which I could not restrain during the first duet, when I noticed that I was not the only one who wept' (C353). As his equivalent to amour-propre, Hobbes presents vainglory as one of the three principal causes of quarrel in human nature. It is prompted by any sign of undervaluing.1 Rousseau makes a similar observation on pride and conflict: amour-propre incites revenge since injured parties perceive a contempt for their respective persons in any affront (D/73, 90). But as this example of the opera reveals, for Rousseau the psychological terms of amour-propre are more subtle. We can fortify ourselves against negative opinions, but it is the positive ones, characterized by kindness and a favourable predisposition, that intensely sensitize us and draw us outside of ourselves. 2 Opinion and the General Will In The Social Contract, perhaps his most philosophically abstract work, Rousseau does not extensively provide the psychological rationale for his political recommendations. The psychological subtext can be read in, however, from the problems that engage him in his personal life. As Jean Starobinski comments, 'Rousseau's personality and passion are present even in his most rigorously constructed pieces, implicit influences on what he explicitly says.'2 The personal difficulty Rousseau experienced in maintaining his self-direction in intimate and social relations is reflected in the solitary procedure he recommends for citizens in determining the general will. His concern with the force of public opinion also emanates from the issue of individual autonomy. The determination of the general will depends on the disinterested and empathetic capacity of citizens to see and desire the good of the whole. It is curious that with such an emphasis on collective identification in legislative decisions, Rousseau does not advocate a collective deliberating process. He believes the right decision on the general will would always be made if citizens deliberated in solitude: 'If, when the people, being furnished with adequate information, held its deliberations, the cit-

120 Instinct and Intimacy izens had no communication one with another, the grand total of the small differences would always give the general will, and the decision would always be good' (SC203). In Rousseau's vision, then, the legislative body would be called for citizens to vote and not to deliberate in assembly. Only by remaining incommunicado, he believes, would they retain die autonomous judgment required to determine the general will. For if there was common deliberation, he anticipates that individuals would be swayed by others' opinions, intrigues and factions would ensue, and citizens would no longer act upon the general will (SC 203-4). Rousseau's concerns are not entirely unsubstantiated; those who are not strongly enough rooted in themselves can easily be influenced by others. In the Republic Plato certainly distrusts the capacity of common people to withstand the influence of powerful orators. Nevertheless, a solitary deliberative process is still a strange position for a democrat to adopt, especially one of Rousseau's genre. In the first place, a common deliberative procedure would presumably foster the political intimacy, and thus the civic attachment, necessary to ensure empathetic identification with the whole. Any flagging civic spirit could be strengthened by hearing verbal affirmations of commitment to the common good. And public deliberation before the vote would provide individuals with assurance that others are also sincerely setting aside their particular interests to weigh the good of the whole. Second, the adequate information citizens need to determine the general will (SC 203) surely must include the perspectives of fellow citizens. Carefully considered, these are a possible corrective to their own views. Even Aristotle, while hardly a democrat, sees a kind of wisdom in collective judgments; he argues that gathered together the people make judgments that are just as good or even better than those of the experts.3 Rousseau's insistence on an isolated deliberative process, notwithstanding the possible objections, can be attributed to his concern to forestall the influence of external opinion on the citizen's judgment. By the measure of his self-avowed 'enslavement' to others, and by the vigour of his rebellion to escape it, Rousseau may have had more than his share of trouble with autonomy. If it was exaggerated, however, it allowed him to see more clearly the contemporary problem of the herd: the tendency to conform so thoroughly to opinion that one's own self is emptied out.4 A herd mentality contaminates the individual's deliberations on the general will, a proclivity that, given the dependency engendered by heartfelt bonds, is no less of a concern between citizens who are tied by civic affection. It is generally considered that, toward the end of his life, Rousseau was

Independence and the General Will 121 suffering from paranoia.5 In the Dialogues he describes feeling the force of conformity of opinion in league against him. Revealing the trenchant philosophical voice with which he expresses even his paranoia, he describes infatuations with public opinion as 'epidemics of the mind, which conquer men one after another like a kind of contagion' (D 170). He adds that '[t]his tendency to be led around' extends not only to people's opinions, but to their inclinations, tastes, and passions (D 171). His belief in a universal plot against him gives his remarks a personal urgency in the Dialogues, but his concern with public opinion was already present in The Social Contract. There he presents morality, custom, and above all public opinion as the most important kind of 'law.' Though unwritten they have a powerful influence on citizens, determining the efficacy of the constitution and the laws (SC228). He presupposes the universal contagion of the Dialogues: while public opinion can either support or subvert the constitution and laws, it is epidemic in its reach. The psychological process behind the force of public opinion is not elaborated in The Social Contract, but it is addressed in the Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theatre. The

tendency of people in society to live outside of themselves and in others is connected to their reliance on public opinion to validate what is good or desirable: 'If our habits in retirement are born of our own sentiments, in society they are born of others' opinions. When we do not live in ourselves but in others, it is their judgments which guide everything. Nothing appears good or desirable to individuals which the public has not judged to be such, and the only happiness which most men know is to be esteemed happy' (A 67). Concerned that public opinion could erode the autonomous judgment of citizens in determining the general will, Rousseau presents one apparent solution in the form of the Legislator. Given the difficulty of eliminating the impact of public opinion, through this office and personage he attempts to at least control the content of public opinion for the common interest (SC 212-13). The Legislator is not intended to be a permanent fixture and does not enter into the constitution, but rather draws up the founding legislation for the democratic state (SC 214-15). In daring to undertake the making of civic institutions, the Legislator must be up to the genius of transforming the complete and solitary natural existence of each individual into the partial and moral civil existence that is the condition for adherence to the general will (SC 214). Rousseau's inclusion of this great leader in his theory has sometimes been interpreted as diminishing his democratic engagement. Citizen committees to draw up the founding legislation might seem more in keeping with collective self-rule.

122 Instinct and Intimacy But Rousseau does not forfeit his democratic commitment, for he stipulates that the Legislator's laws must be submitted to the vote of the people for ratification. By the terms of the social contract, even if they wish the people cannot divest themselves of this right of legislation. Rousseau is not blind to the possibility of the particular will intruding into the Legislator's laws, which is why he insists that ultimate discernment of the general will resides with the people and must be put to their free vote (SC215). What seems more inconsistent with participatory self-rule is the Legislator's task of secretly manipulating public opinion (SC 228). The inconsistency is especially pronounced given Rousseau's understanding of public opinion as a powerful force in determining individual judgment; democratic sympathies presumably would not wish to give public opinion up to hierarchical control. This democratic concern is attenuated, however, by Rousseau's depiction of the Legislator as more of a longed-for chimera than as a real possibility. The qualities he requires of the Legislator are so exalted that only a god could satisfy them: this personage must have 'a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them' and 'would have to be wholly unrelated to our nature, while knowing it through and through' (SC 213). While Plato's philosopher-rulers are rare, Rousseau exclaims that much more so are great legislators (SC 213-14). In this context we might recall his contempt in the Discourse on Inequality for constitutions that cannot support themselves 'without the aid of so many splendid characters, much oftener wished for than found' (DI126). In The Social Contract he eulogizes the great legislators of antiquity, particularly Lycurgus of Sparta, but takes this occasion to superimpose the modern ideal of self-determining freedom on the achievements of the ancient legislator. In advancing the need for solitude in the deliberative process determining the general will, he contends that Lycurgus established a system whereby there were no partial societies and each citizen expressed only his own opinion (SC 204). This presumption of a democratic deliberative process again reflects Rousseau's mythological rendering of antiquity to support his recommendations on collective self-determining freedom. Jung observes that the figure of the 'Wise Old Man, the helper and redeemer' is a recurring image in literature and human history.6 Rousseau sometimes succumbs to the appeal of such a personage in the form of a Legislator who would devise institutions transformative of human nature so as to support adherence to the general will. The impossibility of finding such a suprahuman figure, however, only reinforces the responsibility for self-transformation that stands behind his ideal of collective

Independence and the General Will 123 self-rule.7 The social critic and the political idealist merge in Rousseau in the aim of personal authenticity. The same steadfastness to one's own promptings, the same resistance to conformity that he advocates in social relations (DAS 6), must also be present in political relations if citizens are to hold true to their own judgments on the general will and not bend to public opinion. That this authenticity requires the reascendancy of primitive inclination is evident in the distinction between the savage who 'lives within himself and the social human who 'lives constantly outside himself, and only knows how to live in the opinion of others' (D/116). As the emotional proclivity that makes people's self-esteem dependent on external opinions, amour-propre is an impediment to authenticity. For it makes people satisfied with themselves and their judgments only given the approval of others; this condition suppresses the enactment of their true inclinations and even more deeply erodes the autonomy of their preferences and decisions. Thus, the personal imperative for authenticity and an absolute self-love becomes a political imperative in Rousseau's radically democratic state. 3 Amour-Propre and Social Relations

The autonomous judgment required for the general will calls for overcoming amour-propre. A problem immediately arises, since Rousseau conceives amour-propre as the inevitable correlate of social relations. This is seen first in the Discourse on Inequality, in the absence of amour-propre in

asocial, primitive humanity. The savage does not seek validation from others and thus is not led to what is concomitant for Rousseau, namely, the making of comparisons: '[I]n the true state of nature, amour-propre did not exist; for as each man regarded himself as the only observer of his actions, the only being in the universe who took any interest in him, and the sole judge of his deserts, no feeling arising from comparisons he could not be led to make could take root in his soul' (D/73). Consistent with the Discourse on Inequality, the education Rousseau proposes in Emile to forestall the emergence of amour-propre is premised upon the child's independence from others. In attempting to replicate the asocial natural condition by having Emile respond only to nature and not to other persons, Rousseau believes he can hold off the emergence of amour-propre (E 92-3). As a result of this method of child-rearing, the adolescent Emile becomes self-sufficient and impervious to what people think of him (E 244, 336, 338): 'Amour-propre,' Rousseau claims, 'is still hardly aroused in him' (£208). Emile is introduced into society only after

124 Instinct and Intimacy he is prepared for it by a childhood that does not generally foster attachments to others and thus the arousal of amour-propre (E 233, 327). In the Dialogues Rousseau reaffirms withdrawal from social relations as the only solution to amour-propre. In his analysis, when the loving and gentle passions that proceed from amour de soi are deflected by amour-propre they change nature and become hateful. Since one is bombarded by such irascible passions emanating both from others and from within oneself, the only way to prevent the deflection of the primitive passions is to withdraw from society (D 9-10). This philosophical analysis is prompted by Rousseau's wish to vindicate himself against the accusation of being personally consumed by amour-propre (D 74, 106, 109). He defends himself by the measure of his withdrawal from social relations and by his preoccupation with himself; for engrossment with others leads to the jealous comparisons of amour-propre (D 144, 154). Since, on his philosophical position, amour-propre is the psychological correlate of social relations, he can cite his solitude in his self-defence: 'Amour-propre, the principle of all wickedness, is revived and thrives in society, which caused it to be born and where one is forced to compare oneself at each instant. It languishes and dies for want of nourishment in solitude' (D 100). By the end of his life this inescapable link between amour-propre and social relations led Rousseau to the 8 final apparent impasse of The Reveries and The Government of Poland. (He composed the former between 1776 and 1778, and his 1769 commission to address Poland's constitutional problems resulted in the latter.) In The Government of Poland he relinquishes the imperative for autonomy to harness amour-propre in the service of civic union. In The Reveries he claims to escape his own amour-propre by severing his social relations, although he still suggests how amour-propre might be diminished while one remains in society. The polarity between complete self-sufficiency and total absorption in others is seen in Rousseau's earlier writings, but it does not dichotomize so as to dominate any one philosophical or autobiographical work. The path of the solitary walker in The Reveries, however, is psychologically bound to have a reverse image in the unremitting civic absorption of The Government of Poland. As Rousseau writes of the true republican, '[Love of the fatherland] makes up his entire existence: he has eyes only for the fatherland, lives only for his fatherland; the moment he is alone, he is a mere cipher; the moment he has no fatherland, he is no more; if not dead, he is worse-off than if he were dead' (GP19). There is no precedent for such a statement in The Social Contract, which is premised on extension as the civic metaphor of the self, and not any absorption that would

Independence and the General Will 125 reduce the individual to a 'mere cipher.' As part of the absorption in The Government of Poland, Rousseau forfeits individual autonomy in the service of a system of civic amour-propre in which patriotism is promoted by rewarding citizens with different ranks and honours (GP 13, 15, 22, 52, 71-2, 87, 89, 95, 102). The emotional basis of patriotism in affectionate ties between citizens in the Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract is

thus displaced by competition for ranks and honours. Out of either expediency or disillusionment with the prospect of eliminating amour-propre, Rousseau goes to the opposite extreme of harnessing it for the state, and in the process overturns the principles of earlier works. In The Government of Poland psychological receptivity to a patriotism based in ranks and honours is prepared in childhood. Rousseau does not allow children to play by themselves just for the fun of it,' instead advocating public competitions for prizes that are intended to instil 'the spirit of competition and emulation' (GP 21). In Emile, by contrast, he expressly rules out competitions and comparisons with other children on the grounds that the development of'emulation, jealousy, envy, [and] vanity' in children should not be used as an instrument for their guidance: 'Moreover, let there never be any comparisons with other children, no rivals, no competitors, not even in running, once he has begun to be able to reason. I prefer a hundred times over that he not learn what he would only learn out of jealousy or vanity' (E 184). Hence, in The Government of Poland Rousseau encourages the development of the very feelings of amour-propre he had previously condemned in Emile. The preoccupation with public rankings inculcated in childhood in The Government of Poland continues in the adult citizen. The autonomous judgment required in The Social Contract to determine the general will is forfeited: instead of emphasizing independence from external opinions, Rousseau now encourages in individuals a hypersensitivity to how others are watching and evaluating them (GP87-8). Given these incompatibilities, the civic amour-propre of The Government of Poland cannot be the final

resolution of the problem of the individual and civil association as enunciated in his earlier major works. The Government of Poland, then, is a disappointing finale to the resolution of amour-propre; a more intriguing alternative is the apparently unpolitical Reveries.9 Known for its image of Rousseau as the solitary walker, this autobiography also is renowned as a precursor to Romanticism.10 For in it Rousseau describes his experiences of a Romantic fusion with nature. In one passage, for example, he describes how the sensitive contemplator is affected by the natural spectacle and harmony of water, sky, and earth: 'A

126 Instinct and Intimacy sweet and deep reverie takes possession of his senses then, and through a delicious intoxication he loses himself in the immensity of this beautiful system with which he feels himself one' (R 91-2). It is understandable that having lost all hope for human connection, he would compensate for his aloneness by reveries that absorb him in nature. Even with its solitary bent, however, The Reveries has political significance in its prescriptive implications for the self-transformation necessary to support Rousseau's idealdemocraticstateR . atherthanmakingtheameliorationofamour-proprecontingentuponwithdrawalR , ousseaub,ysuggestingevenonetypeofresolutioni,ndicatesthatimaybediminishe ropre contingent upon withdrawal, Rousseau, by suggesting even onep type of resolution, indicates that it may be diminished while maintaining social relations. In The Reveries Rousseau provides a manner of handling offences, slights, and insults from others, and thus presumes that amour-propre can be diminished by the individual in society. He suggests an attitudinal response that finds no affront to the self: viewing these blows as works of fortune that have nothing personally to do with oneself prevents one from being drawn into the insult through the activation of one's amourpropre. Such a tactic, though contingent upon a solid base of self-esteem, allows one to shrug off insults as the random emanations of the other person's amour-propre without any special direction to oneself. 'Offenses, acts of revenge, slights, insults, injustices are nothing for the person who, in the bad things he endures, sees only the bad itself and not any intention, for the person whose rank in his own esteem does not depend on the one others are willing to accord him' (R 116). Rousseau again relies on the primordial model: the precedent for this attitudinal mechanism was set in the Discourse on Inequality by primitive humanity. To savages, through an automatic and not a cultivated response, any injury from others is a natural occurrence; they feel only the hurt and not any contempt for their person (DI 73, 90). Civilized humans cannot hope to replicate this effortlessness in perceiving no personal affront. As Rousseau illustrates by his own experience, however, there is a way of riding with the first wave of shock caused by the injury and then permitting the subsiding that naturally must come: 'Now, at each blow I let my blood boil. I let anger and indignation take possession of my senses. I yield this first explosion, that all my strength could neither stop nor delay, to nature ... But after having let our natural temperament have its first explosion, we can become our own master again as we regain our senses bit by bit' (R 119-20). Once the emotional response has subsided, there is a choice of whether to reactivate it by mentally re-enacting the offence. By ceasing to be preoccupied with the offence, one is certain

Independence and the General Will 127 of avoiding its most poignant blow (R 116, 120). To draw out the implications for civic association of this primordially based attitudinal mechanism, the citizen's autonomy of judgment need not be deflected by preoccupation with slights and insults in an escalating exchange of amourpropre. More significant than the actual strategy of resolution, though, is that here we have at least the suggestion that amour-propre may be managed and diminished while retaining societal association. On the development of self-esteem, which is needed to pass off insults as not personally intended, Rousseau points to a means of returning to amour de soi through an inwardness that discovers the resources and treasures hidden within (R 13). This inward seeking is an important counterbalance to the Western overemphasis on the externalization of one's powers. In another way, however, it reflects the Western ideal of self-sufficiency. Throughout his works Rousseau seems to conceptualize amour de soi as a primitive internal fund that receives no external contributions (though it may be deflected by outside sources). This view emerges obliquely in The Reveries; his love of self seems to appear with his total independence (R 113). In associating self-sufficiency with amour de soi, he does not acknowledge that affirmation from the outside may be internalized not as dependency but as a source of one's own self-support. As part of a society that does not know how to affirm people without distinguishing between them, Rousseau tends to conflate the need for external validation with the comparisons that establish superiority. In his historical anthropology, the first human relations coincided with the emergence of the comparisons of amour-propre. As described in the Discourse on Inequality, the way was paved for amour-propre by the savage's sense of superiority over animals, and that sentiment was immediately evident in tribal society (DI86, 89). The initiation of interpersonal rankings occurred in relations between the sexes: the generalized sexual desire of the asocial savage was displaced by preferential feelings based on ideas of beauty and merit (D/89). Public esteem was then entangled with judgments on who was pre-eminent in some way: 'Whoever sang or danced best, whoever was the handsomest, the strongest, the most dexterous, or the most eloquent, came to be of most consideration' (D/90). Thus, on Rousseau's understanding, from the first human association the acknowledgment of the other was mired in comparisons that establish superiority and inferiority. Such invidious comparison may have arisen with human relations, as Rousseau suggests. Nevertheless, affirmation of the other in a non-comparative sense also can and does exist - a reality that is obscured in Rousseau's thinking by his preoccupation with interpersonal rankings.

128 Instinct and Intimacy In personal terms, Rousseau's conflation of external affirmation and invidious comparison is seen in how Rousseau looks at himself as an author. He vehemently defends himself against the accusation of amourpropre in the Dialogues. His lesser defensiveness in The Reveries results in more critical self-scrutiny and his consequent judgment that this factitious feeling became magnified in him when he was an author. Conscious of this fault, he relates that through isolation he was able to reduce his amourpropre to its former levels and return it to amour de soi, thereby gaining release from the force of opinion: 'By withdrawing into my soul and severing the external relations which make [amour-propre] demanding, by renouncing comparisons and preferences, it was satisfied with my being good in my own eyes. Then, again becoming love of myself, it returned to the natural order and delivered me from the yoke of opinion' (R 116). As he admits, he undoubtedly had an element of literary vanity. But for him to conceive his literary enterprises first as the expression of a desire for pre-eminence, and then as entirely unconnected to their reception by others, is to deny his need for external validation. In the Dialogues he declares that it is not the truth of his philosophical system that he ultimately avows, but the truth, in developing it, of his own self-portrayal (D 212). That he was presenting himself in his writings is implicitly reinforced in The Letter to the Archbishop of Paris, Christopher de Beaumont. He responds

to criticisms of his Emile by asserting his resolve to defend, not his book, but his honour as a duty he owes to his character (LAP 249). Even on his own insistence his writings express his person and thus cannot be dissociated from the human need to have oneself affirmed by others. Starobinski addresses with complexity and insight Rousseau's continuing to write despite his repeated proclamations that he will quit his pen.11 While it seems hypocritical on Starobinski's analysis, in Rousseau's inability to keep silent there is fundamentally an unacknowledged need for affirmation from others through his self-portrayal in his writings. Unable to distinguish between the desire for superiority and the need for external affirmation, he views any pursuit of validation through his writings as living in the opinions of others. If the two are separated, however, amourpropre seems less inevitable in social relations; for while the compulsion for superiority may be lessened, the affirmation of the self by others is an emotional imperative. In our consideration of the struggle for autonomy in this chapter, Rousseau's solitary inclinations became evident. His personal retreats into solitude to escape from social pressures and amour-propre still were accompanied by political and social theorizing. Thus, as we saw, authen-

Independence and the General Will 129 ticity and a solitary deliberative procedure are instrumental to the citizen's autonomy of judgment on the general will, and even the most isolationist autobiography, The Reveries, suggests an attitudinal mechanism for defusing amour-propre in social relations. The next chapter continues the discussion of solitariness and its theoretical transcendence in Rousseau by addressing a third psychocultural dichotomy - that between good and evil.

6 Compassion, Innocence, and the State

To the psychocultural dichotomies between masculine and feminine, and separation and union, this chapter adds the analysis of a final one, between good and evil. Rousseau reflects this dualism where he insists on absolute innocence and transcends it through a compassionate instinct that is prior to moral categories.1 In his state of nature theory, Rousseau contrasts primitive humanity with civilized humanity and condemns the latter as wicked. Yet though he appears to reproduce the terminology of this dualism in calling primitive humanity naturally good, his actual analysis reveals the state of nature to be prior to good and evil. Its peacefulness does not flow from moral categories, but from a compassionate instinct that is sensitive to suffering. The indiscriminate compassion of primitive humanity is all but lost in civilized humanity, but Rousseau recognizes that compassion finds a more ready expression in particular relations. Through his small democratic state, he therefore seeks to transpose to the political sphere the typically private sentiments of mutual caring. An engagement with universal compassion, however, still manifests itself in his ambivalence towards the state viewed in the international context. This does not lead him to refuse political association, but it does distance him from military ardour and patriotic absorption. Moreover, it commits his theoretical will to the internal transformation of states as a prophylactic against offensive war. As evidenced in his analysis of the state in the international state of nature, Rousseau rejects the dualism of innocence and evil where he acknowledges the moral ambiguity of human agency in the intersubjective context. He becomes mired in this dualism in his autobiographies, on the other hand, in his progressive espousal of a moral solitude that refuses intersubjectivity and its inevitable clash between interest and duty.

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 131 While the autobiographies help to elucidate the problem, Rousseau resisted incorporating their moral isolationism in his political philosophy by attempting to reconcile interest and duty. Rousseau's increasing moral solitude in his autobiographies can be traced to a personal need for absolute innocence and a consequent preoccupation with defending himself against guilt. In its extreme form, the need for innocence dictates removal from the intersubjective context and its moral ambiguity. As a more muted injunction, this need still has implications for social and political association through its effect on the internal determination of morality. In his philosphical works, Rousseau often endorses conscience as humanity's source of moral judgment. However, because conscience invokes the antinomy between innocence and evil, one may criticize that conscience leads to guilt and self-defensiveness rather than to enlightened moral sensitivity. This difficulty with conscience as the guiding voice of the individual and the citizen heightens the appeal of another strain of Rousseau's thought, that which advocates primitive inclination, rather than the virtue connected with conscience, as the basis for morality and civic life. To provide a prefatory comment on terminology, in opposing 'natural goodness' to 'original sin,' Rousseau uses the words 'goodness' and 'innocence' interchangeably. While each word has various connotations, in one understanding 'goodness' has a moral signification absent in 'innocence,' which refers to being without knowledge of good and evil. 'Innocence' also is sometimes used by Rousseau to mean being free of wrong-doing. Both 'goodness' and 'innocence' are used in my analysis in accordance with these specified meanings, as will be evident from their context. 1 Goodness and Compassion in the State of Nature

Rousseau reproduces the terminology of the dualism between good and evil in calling humanity naturally good, but whatever his terms, his actual analysis reveals primitive humanity to be prior to good and evil. Like Adam and Eve before they eat the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, Rousseau's savages have no idea of morality, and thus 'could not be either good or bad' (.D/71). The operation of instinct in them, and not moral understanding, prohibits any attribution of moral categories to them. Humanity's designation as naturally good, despite this primitive amorality, allows Rousseau to conveniently oppose the Christian doctrine of

132 Instinct and Intimacy original sin by asserting the exact converse. He opposes original goodness to original sinfulness, although he does not take issue with the biblical understanding of a state of human innocence prior to knowledge of good and evil. His anthropological history is a secular version of Genesis, for it is also the tale of humanity's fall from original innocence. He does not locate the reasons for the fall, however, in any natural proclivity toward vice. The Discourse on Inequality does not explicitly refer to original sin. In the later Letter to Christopher de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris, what was

implicit is overtly established in a reply to the Church's interpretation of Genesis and the fall. This L^terwas prompted by the Church's censure of Emile, which adheres to the Discourse in advancing humanity's natural goodness. The Archbishop of Paris's mandate condemning Emile states that in consequence of the 'deplorable disobedience of our first parents,' man finds himself 'drawn by a fatal tendency to vice.'2 Rousseau repudiates this idea of original sinfulness, contending that all our natural inclinations are good and that any evil must have been introduced by a foreign cause (LAP249, 257, 263). Although he opposes the church in arguing that we have a natural propensity toward goodness, he precisely reproduces the church's dualism between good and evil in judging that civilized humanity is wicked. While claiming in the Discourse on Inequality that he has shown humankind to be naturally good, he asserts, ' [tjhat men are actually wicked, a sad and continual experience of them proves beyond doubt' (D/118). And commenting on Adam's sin in the Letter to the Archbishop of Paris, he declares his accord with the Church's view of humankind's present moral status: 'We both are agreed, I imagine, that man was created originally good; but you say he is wicked because he is wicked; and I endeavour to show how he became so' (LAP 256-7). That Rousseau rejects the dualism between good and evil in regard to natural humanity and perpetuates it in respect to civilized humanity is also seen in his critique of Hobbes. Taking issue with Hobbes's confiictual state of nature, he asserts, 'Above all, let us not conclude, with Hobbes, that because man has no idea of goodness, he must be naturally wicked' (D/71). Rousseau had earlier censured modern philosophers for supposing natural law, with its complexity, to have been a guide to natural humanity (DI46); thus, he undoubtedly is aware that Hobbes assumes moral knowledge in his state of nature in the form of natural law. Skipping over whatever is inessential to his present critical purposes, he asserts the absence of moral knowledge in the state of nature in order to affirm the peaceful results of our natural passions.

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 133 Continuing to contest Hobbes (or at least his version of Hobbes), he objects that 'savages are not bad merely because they do not know what it is to be good' (DI 72). For it is not moral understanding that restrains them from doing ill to others, but the peacefulness of their natural inclinations. The peacefulness of the natural condition is not conceived by Hobbes, Rousseau argues, because he depicts not primitive but civilized humanity. He assumes qualities in the natural condition, like pride and viciousness, which are acquired only in society (DI 50, 71-2). (Rousseau does not precisely replicate Hobbes's major terms, as the latter attributes his conflictual state of nature to three main features of human nature: competitiveness, diffidence, and glory.)3 In then accusing Hobbes of depicting humanity as naturally wicked (DI 71), Rousseau himself imposes onto his predecessor the dualism between good and evil. For Hobbes denies that the human passions are sinful, although his hypothetical state of nature is designed to demonstrate that these passions lead to conflict between individuals in association. It is in criticizing Hobbes that Rousseau also develops the other theme of compassion and suffering that lifts him out of the dichotomy between good and evil. What eludes Hobbes, he advances, is the instinct of compassion: this innate aversion to witnessing the suffering of fellowcreatures moderates the pursuit of self-preservation in the savage and the activity of amour-propre in the civilized human: There is another principle which has escaped Hobbes; which, having been bestowed on mankind, to moderate, on certain occasions, the impetuosity of amour-propre, or, before its birth, the desire of self-preservation, tempers the ardour with which he pursues his own welfare, by an innate repugnance at seeing a fellow-creature suffer. I think I need not fear contradiction in holding man to be possessed of the only natural virtue, which could not be denied him by the most violent detractor of human virtue. I am speaking of compassion ... (/)/73)

As an instinct, compassion is prior to reason and therefore prior to knowledge of good and evil (D/47). Nietzsche is conscious of the Western dualism between good and evil in contrasting it with the Buddhist struggle beyond good and evil, which is not against sin but against suffering: 'Buddhism ... no longer speaks of "the struggle against sin' but, quite in accordance with actuality, "the struggle against suffering." It already has - and this distinguishes it profoundly from Christianity - the selfdeception of moral concepts behind it - it stands, in my language, beyond good and evil.'4 An analogue to the Buddhist focus on suffering is seen in

134 Instinct and Intimacy the Discourse on Inequality s affirmation of a compassionate instinct consisting in 'a natural repugnance at seeing any other sentient being, and particularly any of our own species, suffer pain or death' (D/47, my emphasis).5 Emile also reflects a Buddhist understanding of the human condition as one of suffering in considering that '[t]he fate of man is to suffer at all times. The very care of his preservation is connected with pain.' Even more painful than the physical difficulties connected with our existence are those of the soul, which produce despair (£48). With this common human condition of suffering, Rousseau later suggests that 'we are attached to our fellows less by the sentiment of their pleasures than by the sentiment of their pains, for we see far better in the latter the identity of our natures with theirs and the guarantees of their attachment to us' (E 22i). In fact, the sight of another's happiness may have the opposite effect, activating amour-propre: 'The sight of a happy man inspires in others less love than envy ... But who does not pity the unhappy man whom he sees suffering?' (E 221). To turn the heart of a young person toward beneficence, Rousseau advises the educator that pride and envy should not be incited 'by the deceptive image of the happiness of men' (E 221). For in reality the common human condition of suffering overwhelms any appearances to the contrary: 'Men are not naturally kings, or lords, or courtiers, or rich men. All are born naked and poor; all are subject to the miseries of life, to sorrows, ills, needs, and pains of every kind. Finally, all are condemned to death. This is what truly belongs to man. This is what no mortal is exempt from' (E 222). Although Rousseau possesses insight into the suffering of the human condition, he does not consistently use it to move beyond good and evil. Rather than invoking this dualism in castigating humankind as actually wicked though naturally good (DI118), he might have regarded our physical wants and fears, our sorrows and psychic despair, as prompting compassion. For even our unlimited desires and our amour-propre could be viewed as forms of suffering. While the 'wickedness' of civilized humanity could be reconstrued as suffering, a closer consideration of the state of nature fails to establish primitive humanity as absolutely 'good.' Unlike the drive for self-preservation that leads to war in Hobbes's natural condition, care for one's preservation, Rousseau contends, is less prejudicial to others in the natural than in the civilized state (DI 72). But even if the instinct for self-preservation does not lead to the Hobbesian state of war, neither does it permit absolute innocence; for this is conditional upon total solitude, something that Rousseau does not posit in the state of nature. He assumes minimal and

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 135 unsustained contact, and in even this barely intersubjective context he recognizes the moral ambiguity of human agency. The compassionate instinct moderates the activity of amour de soi, and thus contributes to the preservation of "he species. But there is no primitive condition or principle of absolute avoidance of harm to others: compassion prompts the savage not to completely set aside his or her well-being, but to seek if possible to preserve it without harming others: 'It is this compassion ... which will always prevent a sturdy savage from robbing a weak child or a feeble old man of the sustenance they may have with pain and difficulty acquired, if he sees a possibility of providing for himself by other means' (DI76). Natural compassion, then, inspires only the qualified maxim to 'Do good to yourself with as little evil as possible to others (DI76, emphasis in original). Rousseau may

laud the goodness of the natural state, as against the wickedness of civilization, but his actual analysis of intersubjective contact does not support a postulate of absolute innocence. 2 Compassion, Intimacy, and the State

As the heirs of Freudian psychoanalysis, we are more accustomed to thinking of instinctual repression in terms of aggressive or hostile impulses. Freud considers that 'men are not gentle creatures who want to be loved, and who at the most can defend themselves if they are attacked; they are, on the contrary, creatures among whose instinctual endowments is to be reckoned a powerful share of aggressiveness.'6 Rousseau, by contrast, postulates a compassionate instinct that tempers our zeal in pursuing our own welfare; it is successively suppressed in civilization by the development of reason, amour-propre, and economic and political inequalities. As an indiscriminate impulse that prompts identification with any suffering animal, compassion was stronger in primitive humanity (/)/75). It still finds expression in civilization as the basis of social virtues like humanity, generosity, clemency, benevolence, and friendship. In criticizing his contemporary Mandeville, Rousseau argues in the Discourse on Inequality that possessing these social virtues depends on a sense of compassion to aid the faculty of reason. (This point also distinguishes Rousseau from Hobbes, who understands natural laws to be simply precepts of reason.)7 Social virtues are distinguished by being directed to all of humankind (like the virtue of humanity) or to particular persons (like friendship); irrespectively, they are all primitively based in an inclination to wish others to be happy and free of suffering:

136 Instinct and Intimacy Mandeville well knew that, in spite of all their morality, men would have never been better than monsters, had not nature bestowed on them a sense of compassion, to aid their reason: but he did not see that from this quality alone flow all those social virtues, of which he denied man the possession. But what is generosity, clemency, or humanity but compassion applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to mankind in general? Even benevolence and friendship are, if we judge rightly, only the effects of compassion, constantly set upon a particular object: for how is it different to wish that another person may not suffer pain and uneasiness and to wish him happy? (D/74-5) To add Entiles, analysis of the psychological mechanism of selfextension, it is in order to avoid suffering oneself that one does not want another to suffer. An identification occurs: one feels one's own existence in that person, and concern for his or her well-being is incorporated in amour de soi: 'But when the strength of an expansive soul makes me identify myself with my fellow, and I feel that I am, so to speak, in him, it is in order not to suffer that I do not want him to suffer. I am interested in him for love of myself, and the reason for the precept is in nature itself, which inspires in me the desire of my well-being in whatever place I feel my existence' (E 235). However appealing Rousseau's theory of the compassionate instinct and self-extension, it may be objected that there is far more evidence in human behaviour to substantiate an egocentric impulse. Rousseau would not have to concede the point; he himself uses it to substantiate his view thatunhappiness is bound up with instinctual renunciation. Anyone who suppresses the sentiments of friendship and humanity in narrow self-centredness will pay a psychic price in a barren emotional life: 'He whose vile passions have stifled these delicious sentiments in his narrow soul, and who, by dint of self-centeredness, succeeds in loving only himself, has no more transports ... This unfortunate man no longer feels, no longer lives. He is already dead' (E 287). Health of spirit depends on being in contact with the compassionate instinct as it manifests itself in the social virtues. Rousseau sees in compassion the realization that Nietzsche attributes to Buddha: 'He understands benevolence, being kind, as health-promoting.'8 Compassion has a political as well as a personal significance for Rousseau, providing an instinctual basis for his state. He argues that natural right is derived from compassion in agreement and combination with amour de soi (DI47). As we saw earlier, amour de soi is imported into The Social Contract as the individual's first liberal pledge of s45elf-care (SC 182, 191). A purely self-regarding amour de soi corresponds to the state's

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 137 function in liberalism of harmoniously regulating relations between members. As seen in the liberal renditions of Hobbes and Locke, individualistic concern for self-preservation under conditions of violent anarchy leads to a social contract to secure peace. Rousseau shares such observations on the necessity of government for peace, given his speculations on the class war that prompted humanity's entry into government (.D/96-7). Nevertheless, he does not stop at being a liberal: through his civic self-extension amour de soi becomes connected to compassion, selfcare becomes enmeshed in the care of others, and the body politic becomes more than a regulatory mechanism in being another forum for human attachment. With the exception of the tenderness of mothers for their dependent offspring, in primitive humanity the compassionate instinct is completely indiscriminate (D/73). Not until the first revolution that establishes the intimate connections of tribal society do compassionate feelings towards discriminate others develop. And even in tribal society the expansion of the human heart in the intimate sphere is accompanied by the attenuation of the indiscriminate compassionate instinct (DIQi). The repression of universal compassion is a major reason why Rousseau condemns civilization, but this instinct still finds a ready, though more exclusive, expression in relation to particular others. With those we are close to, the self is most easily extended. Admirably, though rarely, a universal humanity manages to survive (D/99). For most people, however, only intimate relations consistently evoke the feelings of compassion that underlie the social virtues. That compassion most readily flows in intimate relations seems uncontroversial, but that it is possible to extend this compassion to all of humanity does not equally find adherents. Freud, for example, denies universal love as an impossible and unreasonable expectation.9 On Rousseau's terms, however, the capacity to love another is a deepening of one's emotional being: the more love can be extended, then the greater is one's own emotional life. Although he does not see universal compassion as impossible, Rousseau is still aware of its rarity. In the Discourse on Inequality he acclaims the survival of natural compassion 'in some great cosmopolitan spirits, who, breaking down the imaginary barriers that separate different peoples, follow the example of our Sovereign Creator, and include the whole human race in their benevolence' (D/99). The rarity of such cosmopolitan spirits precludes universal compassion as the basis of his democratic state; that is why he relies on an intimately based political attachment to foster unity and commitment to the public good. With the

138 Instinct and Intimacy sphere of intimacy extended to political association, the feelings that more readily flow in personal relations are prompted in regard to fellow citizens. The Discourse on Political Economy was published in the same year as the

Discourse on Inequality, and in many ways foreshadows The Social Contract. It

translates into political terms Rousseau's psychological observations on the more ready expression of compassion in particular as opposed to universal forms. He observes that 'the sentiment of humanity evaporates and weakens in being extended over the entire world.' Contending that commiseration must be limited to be active, he advances that 'it is a good thing that the humanity concentrated among fellow citizens takes on a new force through the habit of seeing each other' (DPE 173). Having recognized that citizens become attached to each other through sustained contact, Rousseau translates into a political ideal the mutual identification and caring characteristically associated with the intimate sphere. Individuals identify themselves with the civic whole and, affirming their self-extension, they love it 'with that exquisite sentiment that every isolated man feels only for himself (DPE 177). In this selfextension there is a fusion between self-care and other-care that turns harm to a fellow citizen into a self-infliction, and so deters other-directed aggression. From the standpoint of the general will, to harm or destroy another citizen would amount to using one's fingers to put out one's own eyes (DPE 174). The state is personified as a common mother, and every citizen becomes committed through the Sovereign body to the care of all the other members (DPE 174-5, 177). If Rousseau's theoretical position that collective self-rule requires the psychological transformation of individuals did not already preclude civil war, his personal aversion to it would rule it out as a means to his democratic state. In respect to the domestic politics of Geneva, he adopted a personal policy to never involve himself in any civil dissension (C 207, 562). His lifelong vow was prompted by the strong impression made upon him by one upsetting incident. In 1737 in Geneva he witnessed a father and son, both armed, emerging from the same house. Having taken dissenting positions, each was headed to a separate post, with the possibility that they would soon be killing one another. This 'frightful spectacle' had such an impact on him that he resolved 'never to take part in any civil war, and never to uphold domestic liberty by force of arms either in my own person or by proxy' (C 207). Read in light of his aspiration for the civic self-extension of citizens and the merging of self-care with other-care, Rousseau's abhorrence of violent civil conflict as a means to political liberty becomes emotionally comprehensible.

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 139 3 Compassion and International Relations

Although compassion is the primitive basis for civic attachment, it is also the source of Rousseau's ambivalence toward the state. For the creation of the international system is accompanied by international conflict and xenophobic patriotism. Military duty sets human beings in conflict with their natural aversion to harming others, and patriotism is a limit on the extended love of oneself through others. Nonetheless, drawing on the principle of compassion rather than the need for absolute innocence, Rousseau does not refuse political association. The tack adopted is not solitary escape, but distance from any patriotic absorption. At the same time, he affirms his theoretical investment in the internal reform of states as a means of reducing international conflict. Considering the state in the context of the international state of nature thus further reveals the character of his ideal democratic state. Rousseau's continued immersion in the political is possible because he does not in the end dichotomize good and evil, recognizing instead the moral ambiguity of human agency in the intersubjective context. The impossibility of absolute moral standards in intersubjective relations is seen with greatest clarity in international relations. There is a contradiction in attempting to achieve individual security through the state, since the creation of the interstate system results in violent confrontations between states. For the individual the aim of the social contract is peace, but in the international context the state requires preparedness for war. The impossibility of innocence for the individual qua soldier makes the moral ambiguity of international relations particularly acute. But as we saw above, moral ambiguity is present even in the minimally intersubjective condition of the state of nature. While Rousseau did not write a comprehensive theory of international relations, the importance he attached to this subject is evidenced by his frequent references to it throughout his philosophical writings. It is further attested by the conclusion of The Social Contract: having established the principles of political right, he sets as his next task consideration of the state's external relations (SC309). He never took up this project, however, as his attention was engaged in the latter part of his life primarily by autobiographical writings and by letters written in defence of his existing theories. Despite his frequent references to external relations, in the secondary literature in political philosophy his theory of the state tends to be studied in isolation from the international context to which he accorded so much importance. Thus, it has fallen largely to scholars of interna-

140 Instinct and Intimacy tional relations to consider Rousseau's reflections on interstate relations and war. Rousseau's international theory is initiated by his observation of the same lack of a common power as in the intersubjective state of nature. He retraces the history of the international system in the Discourse on Inequality. Bodies politic were created to escape the state of war that the state of nature devolved into through the mutual dependencies and class conflicts of civilization. But this division into different political bodies only led, in the service of honour and civic duty, to more violence and death in single days of international conflict than was committed over entire ages in the natural state: But bodies politic, remaining thus in a state of nature among themselves, presently experienced the inconveniences which had obliged individuals to forsake it; for this state became still more fatal to these great bodies than it had been to the individuals of whom they were composed. Hence arose national wars, battles, murders, and reprisals, which shock nature and outrage reason; together with all those horrible prejudices which class among the virtues the honour of shedding human blood. The most distinguished men hence learned to consider cutting each other's throats a duty; at length men massacred their fellow-creatures by thousands without so much as knowing why, and committed more murders in a single day's fighting, and more violent outrages in the sack of a single town, than were committed in the state of nature during whole ages over the whole earth. Such were the first effects which we can see to have followed the division of mankind into different communities. (DI99-100)

The violence required of men in carrying out their military duties is seen by Rousseau as a shock to the nature dwelling within us. The incompatibility of war with human nature is emphasized in his Abstract of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace. This work provides his most exten-

sive, though fragmentary, commentary on international relations. Maintaining that natural law is inscribed in the human heart, he states that it proscribes killing others except for self-preservation. Being a pronouncement of the heart, natural law is experienced in the individual as 'a horror of killing in cold blood, even when he is obliged to do so' (AA 168). Spurning the dichotomy between good and evil, Rousseau's reflections on the state in the international context show, above all, the moral ambiguity of politics. Once humanity is divided into these conflicting artificial bodies there can be no absolutely innocent position for the individual, even in the ideal state. The Discourse on Inequality presents the formation of

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 141 the state system as irretrievable: once one political body is established, the others must follow to secure their position against these united forces (DI

99). The Abstract of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's Project makes the same point

from the perspective of the individual who has no choice but to join a political society: 'As soon as the first society is formed the formation of all the others necessarily follows. One has either to join it or to unite to resist it; to imitate it or let oneself be swallowed up by it' (AA 169). Once natural independence is removed from individuals through civic association, they are subjected to, and must participate in, the terrible collisions occurring between these political bodies (AA 169). The moral ambiguity of political life is contained in the contradiction that we live in a civil state domestically and in a state of nature internationally: as individuals we are subject to laws, and as peoples we enjoy a natural liberty. Whatever the inevitability of the interstate system, Rousseau argues this contradiction has the result that 'we are subjected to the inconveniences of both [the civil state and the state of nature], without finding security in either' (AA 175). With the division of the world's people into different states, universal natural compassion was suppressed and survived only in those few cosmopolitan persons capable of a supranational benevolence (DI 99). In the context of explaining the incongruity between 'human being' and 'citizen' at the beginning oiEmile, Rousseau comments on the patriot's harsh treatment of foreigners and on the unified state's alienation from the larger international community: 'Every particular society, when it is narrow and unified, is estranged from the all-encompassing society. Every patriot is harsh to foreigners. They are only men. They are nothing in his eyes' (E 39). He is fascinated in this section of Emile with the denaturing that produces the patriotism of the Romans and Spartans. In extolling this patriotism, he warns his readers to distrust philosophers who neglect their neighbours in the name of cosmopolitan duties and love. But his contempt for self-centredness disguised as cosmopolitanism does not deny the conflict between our natural inclinations and our civic duties. By requiring us to restrict or suppress our compassion, the duties of citizenry set us in opposition to our natural inclinations and to our extended selflove. Notwithstanding his initial enthusiasm for the civic denaturing of classical antiquity, Rousseau later affirms that the goal of Emile's education is the extension of his compassion to all of humankind (E 252-3): ' [F]or the sake of love of ourselves, we must have pity for our species still more than for our neighbour' (E 253). In his politically intimate state, Rousseau relies upon the more easily evoked, particularistic feelings of attachment between citizens to foster civic unity and a commitment to

142

Instinct and Intimacy

the general will. A universal compassion nevertheless stands as the ultimate aim for his optimally educated citizen and also draws a limit to the military ardour and patriotism of his ideal state. The antipathy toward political violence that arises in conjunction with his reflections on international relations counterweighs the awe he sometimes displays towards military virtue and patriotic absorption. Rousseau's aversion to political violence, even when it is required by civic duty, seems at odds with the admiration he occasionally expresses for the military virtue of the Spartans and Romans. In Emile the allabsorbing patriotism of the ancients is expressed in a military ardour by which they would unhesitatingly sacrifice their lives or their sons for the state (£40). In The Social Contract he berates in Christian republics the lack of passion for victory in battle, wagering that the patriotically ardent Spartans and Romans could easily crush any Christian republic (SC3056). Rousseau does not expect that this ancient military vigour could be reproduced, though his paeans to the ancients undoubtedly are intended to boost the commitment of his ideal citizens to self-defence. For regardless of the greater interest of moderns in private life, the international state of nature still demands a military willingness. Whatever the necessity for miliary readiness, by the pronouncement of Rousseau's own feelings and by his hopes and designs for international peace, it is clear that he is repelled by military activity and virtue. His personal aversion is lightheartedly illustrated in The Confessions, where he describes his fantasies of becoming a soldier while on a solitary journey at the age of twenty. Enraptured by the glory he imagines for himself in a military role, he soon abandons these fantasies forever as unsuited to his heart: I became so excited by this nonsense that I saw nothing but troops, ramparts, gabions, batteries, and myself, in the midst of fire and smoke, quietly giving my orders, with my field-glasses in my hand. However, when I passed through pleasant country, when I looked on groves and streams, the moving sight made me sigh regretfully. In the midst of my glory I felt that my heart was not made for such a noise; and soon, without knowing how, I found myself once more amidst my beloved sheepfolds, renouncing the works of Mars for ever. (C 154-5) Mme de Warens later provided him with a fencing-master as part of her program to improve his outward appearance and manners. He relates that his natural ineptitude was accompanied by a mortal aversion to an exercise that prides itself in the art of killing (C193).

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 143 To return to Rousseau's theoretical works, while he bases love of country on an affection for fellow citizens (DI 32-3; SC 220, 223-4), he implicitly rejects any sense of civic comradeship through arms. He does sometimes express admiration for the military strength of individual soldiers, but he never refers to bonds developed between citizens in arms as one means of creating civic attachment. His refusal of military comradeship reinforces the primitive passions of compassion and amour de soi as the foundation of his politically intimate state; for he does not envisage bonds founded on the negation of compassion and extended self-love. Comradeship through arms would at any rate be a tenuous base for civic attachment, since Rousseau's hope is for international peace. In the 'Dedication' to the Discourse on Inequality, his wish to live in a politically intimate state is coupled with the hope that this republic would be free from the threat of international conflict. Such fortune would depend upon two factors: first, on the republic's own disinclination toward 'the brutal love of conquest'; and second, on its situation between states whose interests lie, not only in peaceful relations with it, but in deterring the others from attack. If the citizens of such a republic trained in the use of arms, it would not be from the necessity of actual application in defence but only to keep alive the courageous spirit suited to free people (DI 34). Thus, whatever awe he may express for the military strength of antiquity as part of their absorbing patriotism, he draws back from it in hoping that military virtue need not actually be practised by the citizens of his ideal state. Even dissociated from military virtue, Rousseau's endorsement of patriotism is conditional. This is seen in how easily, in reflecting upon war, he reverts to a liberal conception of the state and civic attachment. In the chapter on slavery in The Social Contract, he is careful to stipulate that war is a relation between states and not between individuals. For individuals are enemies only accidentally, and even then not as citizens, but as soldiers (SC 187). From their incidental status as soldiers he derives the right of property and life for the individuals of defeated states who have laid down their arms. He then adds a comment that is incompatible with a committed and all-absorbing patriotism: 'Sometimes it is possible to kill the State without killing a single one of its members; and war gives no right which is not necessary to the gaining of its object' (SC 188). In his classic work in international moral theory, Michael Walzer objects to Rousseau's standpoint: 'But this is still too permissive a view, for the rights of individuals include the right of political association, and if the citizen is killed or the state destroyed, something of the man dies too.'10 Such a dis-

144 Instinct and Intimacy engagement from patriotism testifies again to Rousseau's theoretical core in the natural liberty and self-determining freedom of the individual. His main objective in this chapter on slavery is to establish that military conquest does not legitimate the alienation of natural liberty. His ultimate allegiance is not to the particular state, but to his aim of participatory selfrule through the state as the civic realization of natural liberty. In the end, the particular patriotic guise of the citizen is not intrinsic to his or her being. Thus, natural liberty underwrites his views on military conquest, but not in a way that considers or emphasizes patriotism and the right to a specific national membership.11 In the personal terms of The Confessions, the criterion of participatory self-rule also emerges as the sole basis for patriotic alignment. In regard to the international conflicts of Rousseau's time, the only partisanship he ever admitted to was on the side of France, and this was in spite of himself (C 176-7). He attributed his partiality to his love of French literature and the blind passion it invoked in him for the country of its authors (C 177). Given his anti-despotic and republican principles, he openly acknowledged this partiality as inconsistent, but also as emotionally invincible. Living at the time in Chambery, which was under dispute between France and Sardinia, he thus ironically commented: 'So I was an ardent Frenchman, and that made me a collector of news. I stood with a crowd of gapers waiting in the square for the arrival of the couriers; and, even stupider than the ass in the fable, I was greatly concerned to know what master's saddle I should have the honour of wearing' (C178). Natural compassion limits the military ardour and patriotism of Rousseau's ideal state; it also commits his theoretical will to the internal transformation of the state, in support of primary democracy as a preventive to offensive war. Forging the link between participatory self-rule and international relations, in The Social Contract Rousseau associates the politically legitimate state with a disinclination to be embroiled in international conflict (SC 255-6). He is pessimistic about the possibility of reforming international relations through international agreements or federations. For as he states in the Abstract, princes speak to 'citizens under the name of law and to foreigners under the name of raison d'Etat (AA 175). Where he places his hope is in the internal reform of states; he anticipates that the politically legitimate state would not engage in offensive wars. In distinguishing the subject from the citizen in The Social Contract, he contends that 'the one wants the State to be feared by his neighbours, the other prefers that it should be ignored' (SC 255-6). Given the impossibility of Rousseau's participatory self-rule in large

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 145 states, in the present international context there is not much hope for the internal reform of states as a means to international peace. It is not without reason that Rousseau is known as a pessimist in international relations theory.12 Nevertheless, a pessimistic position need not be politically isolationist and a reformative vision need not be global. Rousseau retrospectively confirms the object of his philosophical writings in the Dialogues: while he had seen large states as beyond the reach of his political recommendations, '[h]e had worked for his homeland and for little States constituted like it' (D 213). Rousseau's recognition of the moral ambiguity of the state in the international context informs his political vision rather than leading him to refuse political association. A longing for innocence may lead him, however, to refuse international relations. As a means to peace he advocates the autarkic state, arguing that interdependence gives rise to war (SC 222). Stanley Hoffman judges Rousseau's ideal of self-sufficiency to be 'an evasion of politics';13 correspondingly, this ideal might appear as an escape to innocence through national isolation. But keeping Rousseau theoretically immersed in the political are his reflections on the inevitability of civic membership, and the need for internal state reform as a means to international peace. Repelled by both civil and international war, he is engaged by the possibility of domestic reform through individual psychological transformation, thus affirming the merging of the personal and the political. 4 Refusing the Intersubjective Context

As we have seen, both the minimally interactive state of nature and the conflictual interstate system preclude a position of absolute innocence. In his philosophical and autobiographical works, Rousseau's awareness of moral ambiguity also emerges in another way, in his consideration of the inevitable clash between interest and duty for individuals living in society. While he attempts to reconcile this conflict in his political philosophy, he feels some temptation to escape it by refusing the intersubjective context. This is evidenced in the moral isolationism of the Dialogues and The Reveries. Underscoring again the connection between isolationism and innocence, we can explain this pull to moral solitude by an emotional need for absolute innocence that could permit no personal moral ambiguity. Understanding The Social Contract as the programmatic sequel to the Discourse on Inequality directs our attention first to this latter work, and its protest against the conflict between interest and duty in society in politi-

146 Instinct and Intimacy cal, economic, and psychological terms. Politically, the separation of people into governors and governed leads to the fomentation of dissension among the people. For magistrates seek to strengthen their position, ultimately to the point of despotism, by setting the rights and interests of different ranks of people against each other and thus disuniting them (DI 113). Economically, society puts us at odds with each other in making one person's advantage the community's or another person's loss. Rousseau condemns this situation, in which private economic interests profit from circumstances detrimental to particular individuals or the general public: 'What can be thought of a relation, in which the interest of every individual dictates rules directly opposite to those the public reason dictates to the community in general - in which every man finds his profit in the misfortunes of his neighbour?' (DI 118-19). He goes on to cite examples, from greedy heirs secretly wishing for the death that will bring them their inheritance to those who hope for public calamities that will turn them a profit (DI 119). Psychologically, amour-propre impels competitiveness and a rush for personal advancement rather than concern for the public good. Reflecting the Discourses analysis of the conflict between interest and morality in society, Rousseau begins Book I of The Social Contract with the intention 'to unite what right sanctions with what is prescribed by interest, in order that justice and utility may in no case be divided' (SC 181). It is clear through even a brief consideration of the political recommendations of The Social Contract, and the psychological transformation elaborated elsewhere to support them, that the union of justice and interest is to be realized through the alteration of interest. Politically, the democratic legislative procedures of The Social Contract aim to rectify the opposition of interests in society. The stipulation that each shall obey the general will strives to secure the common interest against subordination to the particular interests of one or a few. Economically, property restrictions limit wealth to what a person can procure through his or her own labour, prohibiting the superfluities that allow and require the purchase of others' labour (SC 225). To refer again to the Discourse on Inequality, this will stop the succession in which 'first necessaries have to be provided, and then superfluities; delicacies follow next, then immense wealth, then subjects, and then slaves' (DI 120). The greatest psychological impediment to support for these legislative procedures and property restrictions is amour-propre. Although the struggle with this competitive urge is difficult and ongoing, Rousseau sought to diminish it in political association. As earlier described, through a civic self-

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 147 extension in the politically intimate state, the care and interests of the self become inseparable from that of the other; this leads to a sense of union with fellow citizens and a commitment to the general will, rather than a compulsion to establish individual superiority. Even a brief review of Rousseau's political philosophy evidences the investment he makes in seeking to diminish the opposition between interest and duty in society, an opposition in the Dialogues and The Reveries that presses him toward moral isolationism. In its incipient incarnation in The Confessions, avoidance of clashes between interest and duty does not preclude but rather limits intersubjectivity. Like all his autobiographies, The Confessions reconfirm the problematic and programmatic thrust of his political philosophy in drawing attention to these clashes. As the ethical countermeasure, Rousseau relates that he incorporated in different ways 'one great maxim of morality' in his writings: this is 'to avoid situations which place our duties in opposition to our interests, and show us where another man's loss spells profit to us' (C61-2). He presents this maxim as 'the only one perhaps which is of practical use' (C61). However sincere our motives, he elaborates, it is better not to place ourselves in situations where we might sooner or later unconsciously weaken, and thus become wicked' in practice though remaining 'good' in our hearts (C62). The Confessions merely recommend discriminating between situations to avoid those that oppose our interest to our duty. Given the societal interdependence that stands as the backdrop, the injunction to extract oneself from such situations successively propels Rousseau through his autobiographies into a 'moral' escape into solitude. This escape is evidenced in the Dialogues, where the same principle is espoused, but this time with an injunction on the necessity of isolation. The principle again consists in a person's 'never getting into a situation that makes him find his own advantage in someone else's detriment' {D 151). Adhering more absolutely to the implications of this principle, Rousseau presents it as 'that great precept of morality' which is nonetheless 'destructive to the entire social order.' For rigorous adherence to it requires complete withdrawal from society (D 127). Similar to this moral isolationism is a second principle in the Dialogues: 'a morality of abstinence' (D 150-1). It also is rooted in an awareness of the moral ambiguity of intersubjectivity. Rousseau observes that 'often the good one does from one viewpoint becomes an evil from another.' He goes on to refuse this ambiguity: 'Often there is no other way to abstain from harming than to abstain altogether from acting; and according to this, the best regime both morally and physically is a purely nega-

148 Instinct and Intimacy tive regime' (D 151). In The Reveries, where he has disconnected himself from society, he cites such abstinence as his sole duty (R6).H Rousseau's morality of abstinence, though it refuses intersubjectivity, is still rooted in a perceptive understanding of the moral ambiguity of human life. Maintaining absolute innocence is impossible, since we are faced with responding to situations that do not always permit choices free of moral wrong. Rousseau attests to this fact even in the enchanted world he imagines in the Dialogues. Owing to the press of difficult circumstances, the inhabitants of this world, the initiates, 'are not exempt from either faults or vices. Even crime is not foreign to them, for there are deplorable situations in which the highest virtue is scarcely enough to guard against it and which force a weak man to do evil despite his heart' (D 11). Putting it in terms of the factual situation we are born into, Maurice Merleau-Ponty also describes the impossibility of absolute innocence and guilt: There is no absolute innocence and - for the same reason - no absolute guilt. All action is a response to a factual situation which we have not completely chosen and for which, in this sense, we are not absolutely responsible ... All personal guilt is conditioned and overwhelmed by the general and original culpability with which fate burdens us by causing us to be born at a certain time, in a certain environment, and with a certain face.15 Despite Rousseau's sustained immersion in the moral ambiguity of intersubjectivity throughout his political philosophy, his autobiographies are marked by a progressive flight into moral solitude. This flight can be explained by an inner need for absolute innocence that has, as its unconscious analogue, a deep feeling of guilt. Emotionally, this psychic antinomy cannot countenance the moral ambiguity of either the inner world of the self or the intersubjective world of interpersonal relations. The psychological origins of his need for innocence do not seem obscure: the death of his mother shortly after his birth apparently left him with a stain of guilt over his existence, which he spent a lifetime denying by affirming his innocence. This personal need to absolve himself, to proclaim his innocence, impelled him to provoke the wrath of church and state authorities by philosophically opposing the doctrine of original sin. By opposing original sin and natural wickedness to personal innocence and natural goodness, however, he did not transcend but remained immersed in the dichotomy between good and evil. While all three autobiographies attest to Rousseau's preoccupation

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 149 with innocence, the Dialogues are devoted to his defence. Already splitting himself into the judge 'Rousseau' and the author 'Jean-Jacques,' Rousseau further splits the latter into a monstrous and an innocent version. The monstrous 'Jean-Jacques' is his public image, which he alleges was created by the originators of the plot against him. Keeping in mind that even the worst projections may be 'hung on a hook,'16 there was some substance to Rousseau's perception of a conspiracy. He did break with the influential philosophes and his books were burned by the French and Genevan governments. His interpretation of this plot as an attack upon his innocence, though, and his exaggeration of the conspirators to encompass every person in Europe (D 71) suggest the mediation of psychological processes.17 The monstrous 'Jean-Jacques' is a projection of his own repressed self-assessment. This personality is the psychoanalytical analogue to the innocent 'Jean-Jacques'; for any avowal of one extreme can be expected to have a repressed opposite. The monstrous 'Jean-Jacques' is absolutely guilty of the worst human vices - misanthropy, amour-propre, and debauchery. He hates the human race, is consumed by the most intolerant amour-propre, and throws himself into debauchery at taverns and houses of ill-repute (D 15, 74, 106). The innocent 'Jean-Jacques' is just the opposite: he is 'humane to excess'; 'he loves himself without making comparisons' (D 106); and his heart is chaste and tender (D 23). (The chasteness of the innocent Jean-Jacques in the Dialogues attests again to the guilt Rousseau has bound up with his sexuality. An association between innocence and asexuality is also evident in The Confessions in his remembrance of going into Mme de Warens's room in the morning to kiss her in bed: ' [T]hat kiss, as pure as it was tender, derived a charm from its very innocence that is never present in the delights of the senses' [C225]). To turn to the corresponding image in a philosophical work, in Emile Rousseau discusses the advantages for young people of 'prolonged innocence,' meaning delayed sexual feelings and experience (E 220). Given the products of his sexual unions - the five children he abandoned - it is no wonder that asexuality corresponds to innocence in his consideration.) In his innocent incarnation, Rousseau can admit none of the negative qualities that, as a psychoanalytical result, appear with full force in his dark alter ego. If there are traces of both versions in his character, the truth of the 'real' Jean-Jacques is in neither one of these extremes. But owing to his need for innocence, he must protect himself against any hint of the monstrous 'Jean-Jacques.' While Rousseau sometimes seems to develop through the course of his autobiographies, on his personal

150 Instinct and Intimacy avowal of innocence there seems to be no movement. Since he is preoccupied with proving his innocence in the Dialogues, this autobiography turns most centrally upon innocence and guilt. But even in his last autobiography he is firm in testifying to his innocence: The Reveries are more circumspect about the difficulty of self-knowledge, but they continue to assert the innocence of their author (Ry, 8, 14, 21, 35, 38, 89, 115). The repeated affirmation of his innocence in itself gives away how hard Rousseau strives to protect himself from his guilt. In the Dialogues he makes no reference to any guilty feelings, but their unconscious force can be inferred from the criminal image he constructs of the monstrous 'Jean-Jacques.' Whatever the origins of his guilt - whether the abandonment of his children or, even farther back, the death of his mother as a result of his birth - this guilt is the source of his sense of persecuted isolation. The connection between his guilt and his paranoia unconsciously slips into his interpretation of his life. In The Confessions he recounts a youthful 'crime' committed while he was employed as a valet before living with Mme de Warens. Caught with a ribbon he had stolen, he lied that it had been given to him by another young servant named Marion. On his false accusation, she was dismissed, and he felt increasingly disturbed by his conscience over the years: 'I took away with me lasting memories of a crime and the unbearable weight of a remorse which, even after forty years, still burdens my conscience. In fact the bitter memory of it, far from fading, grows more painful with the years' (C 86). Even in The Reveries he is still writing of how this crime troubles him and saddens his heart (-R43-4). His last words on this incident in The Confessions indicate a connection between his guilt and the persecution he felt levelled against him in his later life. Psychically, this persecution emerges as the punishment that expiates his crime: 'Poor Marion finds so many avengers in this world that, however great my offence against her may have been, I have little fear of carrying the sin on my conscience at death' (C 89). The lie that falsely incriminated this girl may seem insignificant in comparison to the infants he deposited at the Foundling Hospital. There appears to be an emotional reversal in the pained, versus the apparently indifferent, terms in which he typically describes, respectively, the incriminating lie and the abandoned children. As the far lesser offence, the stolen-ribbon incident appears to be a guilt from which he could consciously protect himself. Regardless of the severity of the offence, what is significant is the mechanism of guilt: as a punitive internal voice, it separates Rousseau from others through an ubiquitous persecution plot that

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appears to be outside of him but in fact is the projection of the guilt that must have its penance. 5 Conscience and Instinct Rousseau's guilt was entangled with paranoia, but even without this complication there is cause to question, as the internal arbiter of guilt, the moral voice of conscience. Rousseau extols it, however, converting the voice of compassion in the Discourse on Inequality into the voice of conscience in Entile. One might object that as a psychological mechanism that activates the antinomy between innocence and evil, conscience does not permit the self-awareness and self-extension that moral sensitivity turns upon. Nietzsche sees conscience as 'contracted' when humankind became enclosed within the walls of society. 18 And Freud takes the origin of conscience within civilization to be one of the central tenets of psychoanalysis.1'1 Rousseau also understands conscience to be the product of society, for he never attributes it to primitive humanity. The only time he refers to the voice of conscience in the Discourse on Inequality is in the 'Dedication,' where it pertains only to citizens (DI$3). While he shows a psychoanalytical awareness in associating conscience with civilization, he does not always go the further step in seeing the development of this internal agency as part of the loss of instinctual life. For Freud the loss is unequivocal: 'Every renunciation of instinct now becomes a dynamic source of conscience and every fresh renunciation increases the latter's severity and intolerance.'2" He understands the resultant severity of conscience as 'the most important problem in the development of civilization.' For the loss of happiness through guilt is a price we pay for the advances of civilization.21 As we shall see below, Rousseau, especially in the Dialogues, associates unhappiness with virtue reinforced by conscience. But some of his philosophical writing supposes harmony between nature and conscience. In Emile he contends that conscience 'speaks to us in nature's language' (E 291). Written in 'the depths of souls,' conscience is 'an innate principle of justice and virtue according to which ... we judge our actions and those of others as good or bad' (£289). Though discussed in Emile, conscience is not addressed in the Discourse on Inequality. In this work compassion occupies the place of morals and virtues in the state of nature, and continues to be their emotional source in civilization (D/74, 75, 79). In Emile compassion is converted into conscience: morality is still 'an ordered

152 Instinct and Intimacy development of our primitive affections,' but this time the voice of access is conscience (£235). Conscience becomes the internal arbiter of justice and virtue through the natural sentiment of 'love of the good and hatred of the bad' (E 290). And as the psyche's internal punitive agency, this 'divine instinct' enforces moral arbitration through the punishing effects of remorse (£288, 290).22 In the Letter to the Archbishop of Paris Rousseau reconfirms the connection between conscience and instinct in presenting conscience as a principle of amour de soi. While conscience develops from a primitive passion, here again it only appears in civilization. For it requires the civilized faculty of reason with its capacity to compare and know the relations between things (LAP 250). The complex relationship between conscience and reason is more extensively addressed in Emile. To briefly recapitulate, conscience is a sentiment that both relies upon and corrects reason. Through reason we learn to know good and evil. Our moral conclusions are uncertain, however, unless these rational maxims are confirmed by conscience, the faculty that provides access to the natural sentiments of the heart (£67, 235, 290, 294). Reason can deceive us but, based on the emotion of nature, conscience is always a true guide (£286-7). Rousseau calls upon conscience in Emile as a moral guide that in civilization is converted from instinct (E 290). As an internal agency that invokes the antinomy between innocence and guilt, however, conscience might be thought an unreliable source of moral clarity. For it may become mired in the self-defensiveness entailed by the need for innocence as a protection against guilt. Furthermore, it is arguable that conscience, rather than being the civilized conversion of compassion and amour de soi, results in the renunciation of these two instincts.23 The weakness of conscience as a moral guide can be illustrated from Rousseau's own psychological and moral processes as revealed in his autobiographies. He writes in the Dialogues of building 'a rampart of honor and innocence around one's heart.' This he ostensibly built to guard himself against insults (D 66), but the true threat is not external antagonists but internal guilt. He especially erected this rampart of innocence in relation to his children. While he sporadically admitted to being troubled by leaving them at the Foundling Hospital, his guilt only occasionally surfaced in what is otherwise a continuous stream of defensive rationalization. Embarrassed by Therese's first pregnancy, in The Confessions he relates that he found his solution from some regular dinner companions. They not only approved of this measure, but applauded the man who best contributed to stocking the Foundling Hospital (C320, 322). Taking his principles from 'these very pleasant and fundamentally very

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 153 decent people,' he glibly justified his decision as the customary practice and reported having only the scruples of Therese to overcome. The following year the same 'inconvenience' was disposed of in the same manner with no more serious reflection on his part (C322). By the time Therese was pregnant for the third time he had won the prize at Dijon for his Discourse on Inequality. His philosophizing led him to reflect more carefully on the fate of his children in light of 'the laws of nature, justice, and reason' (C 332). Bespeaking his philosophical observations on the suppression of compassion by reason, this reflection had no remedial effect on his moral judgment, but it did heighten his defensiveness. Insisting that he could not be 'deaf to the gentle voice of Nature,' he denies being an unnatural father devoid of feelings and compassion (C 332-3). Taking his rationalization this time not from dinner companions but from philosophy, he likened himself to a member of Plato's Republic. In handing the third baby and the next two over to the state to educate for lack of means to raise them himself, he thought he was acting justifiably as a citizen and a father. Unable later to fully suppress his guilt, he relates that '[m]ore than once since then the regret in my heart has told me that I was wrong' (C 333). Feeling guilty, however, did not lead to a true reassessment of his moral duties. For as soon as his guilt surfaces he immediately reacts with other rationalizations. Expecting that he eventually would have been compelled to abandon his children, he blesses Heaven for safeguarding them from their father's fate. Obviously wishing to have nothing to do with his offspring despite his guilt, he also rationalizes his choice not to leave them to wealthy friends (Mme d'Epinay or Mme de Luxembourg). Anticipating 'they would have been led to hate, and perhaps to betray, their parents,' he concludes that '[i]t is a hundred times better that they have never known them' (C333). In the last book of The Confessions he confides that while he was working on Emile, he was disturbed by remorse over the neglect of his paternal duties. His remorse was so strong that it nearly drew from him a public confession of his fault at the beginning of Emile (C549). He is presumably referring to a suggestive remark contained in a footnote to the first book: 'Fathers' ambition, avarice, tyranny, and false foresight, their negligence, their harsh insensitivity are a hundred times more disastrous for children than is the blind tenderness of mothers' (E 38). With his typical defensiveness, however, Rousseau brings up the remorse alluded to in Emile only to re-erect his rampart of innocence. As if public confession could be absolving, he complains that '[t]he allusion, indeed, is so clear that after such a passage it is surprising that anyone had the courage to reproach

154 Instinct and Intimacy me' (C 549). That guilt did not remedy his defective moral judgment is still being reinforced in The Reveries. He repeats his previous rationalization that his children were better off at the Foundling Hospital (C333, 387). He argues their fate otherwise would have been a thousand times worse: '[S]ince I was incapable of raising them myself, in my situation, I would have had to let them be raised by their mother, who would have spoiled them, and by her family, who would have made monsters of them' (#124). Rousseau's disposal of his children coincides with the period immediately leading up to and following his vision on the road to Vincennes. This vision, he recounts, was followed by 'ten years of delirium and fever' (D 131); it was during this time that he did his major philosophical writing. The coincidence between his refusal of his parental responsibilities and his period of literary delirium is consistent with Jung's analysis of the creative personality. Jung explains that the fires of creation consume all the energy of the artist, leaving little for the ordinary satisfactions of life or for that person's humanity: A person must pay dearly for the divine gift of creative fire. It is as though each of us was born with a limited store of energy. In the artist, the strongest force in his make-up, that is, his creativeness, will seize and all but monopolize this energy ... The creative impulse can drain him of his humanity to such a degree that the personal ego can exist only on a primitive or inferior level and is driven to develop all sorts of defects - ruthlessness, selfishness ('autoeroticism'), vanity, and other infantile traits.24

Thus, Rousseau's abandonment of his children, and his failure to deal with any personal blocks that may have led him to refuse his parental duties, can be related to his consumption in the 'delirium and fever' of writing. The creative force emanating from the unconscious has 'its own inherent tendencies, independently of the conscious will.'25 Rousseau correspondingly experienced the surge of his own unconscious during his Vincennes vision as the alien force of fate. He viewed the literary delirium that consumed him for the next ten years as an alienation of his true nature (C 232; D 207). He was unable to admit to the hardness of heart that marks the unnatural father. Thus, he had to protect himself against the guilt he felt over his abandoned children, who were born during this period of alienated nature (C 332-3). But as noted above, the defensive rationalization that sought to protect him against his guilt did not lead

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him to redress his moral judgment, even when he reconsidered his duties. A harsh judge does not easily permit admission of moral wrong. To permit access to what is suppressed, therefore, in psychoanalysis it is fundamental never to judge the person undergoing psychotherapy. A similar principle guides the meditation practices of Buddhism - the religion that in Nietzsche's view is beyond good and evil.2*' These practices cultivate not conscience, but a witness consciousness that observes without judging. This acceptance permits the awareness and release of suppressed and constricting emotions. By contrast, conscience is a punishing faculty based in the dichotomy of innocence and evil, and so calls forth a defensive reaction. It is the correlate of suppression, and is therefore incompatible with the true self-awareness essential to moral sensitivity. The self-defensive stance taken against conscience, as the internal arbiter of innocence and guilt, also appears in interpersonal relations. As Nietzsche's Zarathustra states, 'Believe me, my friends: the bite of conscience teaches men to bite.'27 The rampart of innocence built against the internal judge also must defend against the censure of any real or projected external judges. The adversarial position thus entailed is incompatible with compassion: to the extent that conscience evokes a protective shield of innocence around the self, it results in a renunciation of the compassionate instinct and its empathetic identification with the other. Conscience also erodes the amour de soi that is the basis for the compassionate extension of the self. Associated with conscience is reproachful self-hatred, or what Nietzsche calls 'this species of gnawing worm.'28 The psychological force of guilt is in the self-rejection it threatens and impels. The bite of conscience through guilt may control behaviour. It cannot be the foundation for the self-extension that, arising out of a person's own self-love, transforms human relations in Rousseau's social and political philosophy.2() These difficulties with conscience as the mode of access to natural sentiment, and thus to clear moral understanding, have implications for the determination of the general will. Correlative to the right of every individual to participate in democratic self-rule is the responsibility of each to turn within in order to correctly determine the general will. This inward way to justice is underlined by Rousseau's recommendation that each citizen solitarily deliberate on what is consistent with the common good. He does not address the psychological process of this moral inwardness in The Social Contract. The mechanism of conscience could be imported

156 Instinct and Intimacy from Emile, but the same drawbacks manifest themselves in the political as in the personal realm. Whether in individual or in citizen, conscience, through the punishing effects of guilt, presses its demand for absolute moral rectitude. As previously emphasized, however, the moral ambiguity of intersubjective experience does not permit absolute standards of innocence and evil. For we cannot always foresee the consequences of our moral actions, and we are forced to respond to situations that do not offer us untroubled ethical choices. We have seen that where Rousseau rejects the antinomy between innocence and evil - in the natural state and in international relations his analysis is steeped in an awareness of this moral ambiguity. The position of the state in the international state of nature can be drawn upon further in exploring the moral inwardness of the citizen. Through their own compassionate feelings, citizens experience the opposition between human nature and war. Through compassion they also can sense the constricting effects of patriotism on the extension of the self. This awareness would foster reflective distance from the decisions taken on external affairs. Conscience and its antinomy between innocence and evil, by contrast, invokes the demand for total moral rectitude; it is thus more likely to lead to rigid faith and adherence to one's determinations than to a continuous and neutral questioning. This tendency is especially of concern in war, where the degree of human misery leads to the most unremitting collective denial and self-justification. The psychological process of conscience, with its immersion in the absolute antinomy between innocence and evil, is suggested in Rousseau's judgment that 'the general will is always upright' (SC203). Given the moral ambiguity of human agency that he sometimes so trenchantly grasps, it would be better to dispense with language that evokes expectations of total moral rectitude. Collapse into such expectations is more than merely theoretical: consider Rousseau's endorsement of the death penalty in The Social Contract, despite its contradiction with the individualist foundation of his political philosophy. He writes that while the condemnation of a criminal is a particular act, the legislation that sanctions the death penalty is a declaration of the general will by the Sovereign. The Sovereign also has the right of pardon for any penalty imposed by law. Rousseau justifies the death penalty as an implicit agreement of the social contract: '[I]t is in order that we may not fall victims to an assassin that we consent to die if we ourselves turn assassins.' Again enticed by the thought of absolute rectitude, he claims infallibility for the judicial process of his ideal state: 'The trial and

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the judgment are the proofs that [the accused] has broken the social treaty, and is in consequence no longer a member of the State' (SC209). The credulity of this claim testifies to Rousseau's yearning for an indubitably verifiable innocence and guilt. At the end of his chapter 'The Right of Life and Death,' he nevertheless hesitates after considering the Sovereign's authority to pardon. He refers 'these questions to the just man who has never offended, and has never himself stood in need of pardon' (SC 210). This self-reflection momentarily lifts him out of the absolute antinomy between innocence and guilt. Yet he still does not reverse his endorsement in this political tract of the death penalty. Rousseau attributes to the ideal republic of The Social Contract the infallible arbitration of innocence and guilt, but his personal experience of self-defence in a hostile and misjudging world finally causes him to dismiss this possibility in the Dialogues. From the perspective of the wrongfully accused, he categorically opposes the death penalty on the grounds that even adherence to all the correct judicial procedures may lead to the putting to death of innocents: 'I ask you who is the man, who is the judge bold enough to dare condemn to death an accused man convicted in accordance with all the judicial forms, after so many disastrous examples of innocents who were well interrogated, well heard, well confronted, well judged in accordance with all the forms, and on the basis of alleged evidence put to death with the greatest confidence for crimes they never committed' (1) 58-9). While it is more reliable to transcend the dichotomy between innocence and guilt, in this case, Rousseau's sense of persecuted innocence has a remedial effect on his political philosophy by initiating his opposition to the death penalty. We have seen that conscience, by invoking the antinomy between innocence and evil, becomes questionable as a moral guide and as a civilized transformation of primitive instinct. Although Rousseau praises conscience in Entile, he also has an incipiently psychoanalytical awareness of the unhappiness involved, not in following natural inclination, but in adhering to the virtue connected to conscience. Virtue is associated with struggle, for it involves conquering one's inclinations in order to follow one's conscience and do one's duty (£444-5). The resulting unhappiness is evident in Rousseau's comment that 'the virtuous man learns to despise his life and to sacrifice it to his duty.' On the contrary, 'Happy are the peoples among whom one can be good without effort and just without virtue!' (E 193). In the Dialogues Rousseau presents himself as an admirer of virtue, and he defends his previous books as speaking the language of virtue (/) 22,

158 Instinct and Intimacy 24-5, 29, 74, 127). The disenchantment with virtue that is barely glimpsed in Emile, however, more fully emerges in this autobiography. He endorses nature's inclinations, rather than virtue, as the preferred source of moral conduct. Feeling alienated from the real world, he begins with a description of the initiates, his imaginary kindred spirits. They are not virtuous since they are rarely capable of such moral combat. They are still good, however, for they have preserved in themselves the gentle passions of nature (D 10-11). Recognizing himself in the initiates, he claims that the innocent 'Jean-Jacques' is not virtuous either: no one could be more infused with love for virtue, but 'Jeanjacques' is too weak and subjugated by his inclinations to practise it. Like the initiates, 'Jeanjacques' always has his heart for a guide, never his duty or reason; his soul, if weak, is healthy for he has no ignoble inclinations, only loving and tender ones (Z) 13, 87, 126-7, 150, 184). Rousseau considers his imaginary initiates and his innocent 'Jean-Jacques' to epitomize the realization of natural inclination rather than virtue. In lamenting the paucity of virtue in his contemporaries, he also generally affirms as more consistent with the character of humanity being moved by the expansive, gentle, and loving inclinations of nature: A person who knows how to govern his own heart, keep all his passions under control, over whom personal interest and sensual desires have no power, and who both in public and in private with no witness does only what is just and honest on every occasion, without regard for the secret wishes of his heart, he alone is a virtuous man. If he exists, I rejoice for the honor of the human race ... But what is a little closer to ourselves, what is at least much more in the order of nature, is a well born mortal who has received from Heaven only expansive and gentle passions, loving and lovable inclinations, a heart that desires ardently but that is sensitive and affectionate in its desires. (D 157-8)

While Rousseau seems to oppose virtue to instinct by emphasizing the process of struggle in the former, the results for moral conduct are still the same. As he describes the person who follows not virtue, but natural inclination: 'This man will not be virtuous, because he will not conquer his inclinations, but in following them, he will do nothing contrary to what would be done by a person who heeds only virtue by overcoming his' (D 158). This is true of even the most difficult of virtues - the pardon of wrongs and the love of enemies. Though these require the most strength of soul, the same results flow from a loving nature, but without the moral combat (D 148, 154). Not only does the instinct of nature pro-

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vide the same moral results, Rousseau claims that it is 'certainly more securethanthelawofvirtue'(D1whicheventhestrongestmaysuccumb(D150-1).Hefindsasolutionto58).Theinstabilityofvirtueisdueto the temptation inherent in setting personal interest against duty, to which even the strongest may succumb (D 150-1). He finds a solution to the opposition between interest and duty in their coincidence through the reascendancy of natural inclination. This resolution clinches instinct as the more reliable source of moral conduct. Since civilization is the history of instinctual renunciation, the natural inclination that Rousseau endorses as more reliable than virtue is not achieved easily. Although re-establishing contact with instinct also requires the effort of self-metamorphosis, it draws on a psychological process different from that of developing conscience. What is required is selflove, as opposed to the self-reproach of conscience. Such amour de soi characterizes the initiates: '[I]f they are not more virtuous than people are here, they are at least less ill-disposed toward others if only because they know better how to love themselves.' In this passage he associates amour de soi with a disinclination to hatred, envy, betrayal, and the will to harm (D 11). Positively expressed later on, amour de soi is said to be the source of the elevated social qualities, like commiseration and generosity, which are thus not experienced as 'austere duties': 'Goodness, commiseration, generosity, these first inclinations of nature which are only emanations of love of oneself, will not set themselves up in his mind as austere duties. But they will be his heart's needs, which he will satisfy more for his own happiness than by a principle of humanity that he will scarcely dream of reducing to rules' (D 158). For such a person moral sensitivity is not willed through the struggle for virtue and enforced by the reproach of conscience; through an extended self-love it becomes a need of the heart. James Miller criticizes Rousseau for expecting to experience doing good not as a duty and effort, but simply as the effusion of his innate temperament.'1" Sometimes Rousseau's autobiographies do leave the impression that goodness could be simply and effortlessly innate. He suggests in the Dialogues, for instance, that 'Jean-Jacques's' victory over amour-propre and his pardon of enemies are merely the product of his constitution (D 148). In this case, Rousseau may be driven by self-defensiveness to split his character into a perfectly innocent and static version. His usual philosophical and autobiographical stance, however, evidences a continuing concern with the arduous self-development that recovers the natural passions. Whether or not one agrees with the methods of Emile, its aim is to devise an innovative and thorough educational program that will not

160 Instinct and Intimacy teach virtue, but will secure the heart from vice (E 93). As the tutor explains to his young man, Emile: 'Raising you in all the simplicity of nature, I have not preached painful duties to you but instead have protected you from the vices that make these duties painful' (E 444). In this way the tutor prepares the way for Emile's extended self-love, and his entry into the moral and political order when he is introduced to woman and society (E 220, 235, 253). But the tutor is aware that the goodness based on nature remains only so long as it gives pleasure. He correspondingly instructs Emile at this point to learn to be virtuous by following his conscience and commanding his heart (£444-5, 473). This advice is proffered despite its price in unhappiness (E 193). Feeling himself to be personally incapable of virtue, autobiographically Rousseau presents a self-metamorphosis that is based on the recovery of instinct. An absolute urge for innocence in the Dialogues sometimes prompts him to present 'Jean-Jacques's' goodness as the effortless product of his constitution. Equally evident is his description of the process of self-discovery, through solitude, reverie, and the quiescence of the passions, by which he claims to have recovered the primitive traits: 'A retired and solitary life, an active taste for reverie and contemplation, the habit of looking within oneself and seeking, in the calm of the passions, those original traits that have disappeared in the multitude, could alone enable him to rediscover them' (.D214). That, this primordial self-metamorphosis is anything but effortless can be seen by considering even just the requirement for calmness of the passions, which is only possible given the quiescence of amour-propre.

Rousseau was aware of the sacrifice involved in civic duty, and in its extreme could never reconcile military duty with our primordial selves. To the extent it is possible, however, he strives to reconcile interest and duty in his politically intimate state by extending the self through the recovery and combination of an instinctual compassion and self-love. Having paved the way back to knowledge of the original traits, he affirms that others can follow in validating this primordial discovery deep in their own hearts (D 214). The moral isolationism progressively espoused in his autobiographies is theoretically eclipsed by his construction of an ideal republic founded on such a recovery of the instincts. Even in his idea of moral isolationism we saw a social and political significance as he grapples with and attempts to ameliorate in his instinctually based state the moral ambiguities associated with any intersubjectivity. The next chapter begins by further considering Rousseau's solitary penchant, as a means of personal escape, primordial return, and societal

Compassion, Innocence, and the State 161 critique. However his solitude manifests itself, I again argue that he uses it to fuel his social and political theorizing. Moreover, without denying the image of the solitary walker in Rousseau, there is another image that looms much larger in personal and political terms: the philosopher of intimacy. Most of this next concluding chapter is devoted to explicating how Rousseau reconceptualizes the relationship between the private and public spheres through his new value of intimacy. His distinctive position is brought into relief through comparison to other thinkers notable for their theorizing on the private and public.

7 Private and Public Realms

The solitary penchant Rousseau sometimes displays in his autobiographies is eclipsed by his personal and theoretical enchantment with intimacy. Through intimate association, which is based in the retrieval and metamorphosis of primitive instinct, he sees redemption from the opposition between our suppressed instinctual nature and our civilized life. In analysing and endorsing intimate sentiments, values, and experiences as facilitating intermediaries between the autonomous individual and the political -vhole, Rousseau calls into question the usual distinction between the private and public realms. Other political philosophers proceed on the basis of a sharp theoretical division between these two realms, although they diverge on whether they value more highly the private or the public. In my view Rousseau cuts a unique position by drawing upon the intimate sphere in his political vision. He is the only philosopher who then sustains a demanding participatory ideal without demoting the worth of the private. As I have previously discussed, Rousseau inverts the classical ordering of the public over the private. Aristotle best expresses the classical view. An affinity between the two thinkers must be added, however, for Aristotle advocates the importance of civic friendship. Rousseau revives the Aristotelian ideal of friendship in the body politic, but he articulates a distinctly modern version. Aristotle's elevation of the public over the private is rejected by Rousseau because he infuses his conception of civic friendship with the affective experiences of intimate life. Rousseau also has egalitarian expectations and principles with respect to private and civic friendship that further evidence his modern predilections. For inverting the classical ordering of the public and private, Rousseau meets his greatest contemporary critic in Hannah Arendt. She regards

Private and Public Realms 163 him contemptuously as a 'theorist of intimacy.' In her consideration the primacy of the public over the private is the cornerstone of the classical world and the source of the superior public commitment of the ancients. In accounting for the diminished public domain in modernity her gaze falls upon Rousseau and his shared discovery of the intimate sphere. She reasserts the classical judgment of the private as involving privation: in her configuration the hiddenness of private life makes it inferior to the performative and self-revelatory art of politics. The authenticity and compassion that Rousseau most closely associates with the intimate sphere are either incomprehensible or vehemently excluded in her agonal politics. Her performance-driven vision of the political world, however, is arguably less compatible with an egalitarian democratic ideal than is Rousseau's intimately inspired state. In placing the private above the public liberals are more in step than Arendt with the modern world. The liberal preoccupation with protecting private life contributes in great measure to its enormous political influence. Rousseau shares the liberal attraction to private life and he values the liberal notion of the autonomous self as a way of theoretically safeguarding personal freedom and inviolability. He does not, however, stop at being a liberal, but is a republican whose view of freedom requires a highly participatory regime. Such a demanding participatory ideal calls for a self capable of a constitutive civic identity, thus also aligning Rousseau with communitarian critics of liberalism. In my view Rousseau speaks to the concerns of the contemporary world by accommodating both the autonomy of the rights-bearing individual and the attachment of the communitarian self. He also anticipates some contemporary feminist theory by relaxing the traditional distinction between private and public: by developing civic attachment, the goods of private life are not only protected by but transferred to the political realm. The notion of the autonomous individual lends itself to the modern autobiographical enterprise of self-construction: the individual is regarded as a self-creative being who is not defined by social roles or universal essences. Contrary to postmodern or anti-essentialist assumptions, however, Rousseau posits a universal instinctual nature that sets limits to self-construction and ties us to our fellow human beings through intimate, social, and political bonds. 1 Solitude and Intimate Association

There has been a tendency to interpret Rousseau's solution to modern

164 Instinct and Intimacy civilization as torn between the irreconcilable paths of the solitary walker and the democratic citizen. In the following, I will argue that such a bifurcation overlooks both the ties between Rousseau's solitude and his political philosophy and his own self-understanding as unalterably sociable. He withdraws into solitude as a means of personal escape, primordial return, and societal critique. In every version he directs his solitude to devising social and political values that would satisfy his unyielding need for companionship and community. Arthur Melzer exemplifies the view that Rousseau's thought divides into two antithetical ideals: he contends that Rousseau theoretically envisions 'extreme individualism and extreme collectivism,' and his character itself divides into the 'solitary, self-absorbed, unique individual' and the 'selfless patriot and courageous publicist.'1 Such a perceived bifurcation in Rousseau's thought may also be inferred from the interpretive schism between his autobiographical and philosophical works: since Rousseau's autobiographies tend to be read as the expression of the solitary path, they have not been systematically explored as part of his political corpus. Although Christopher Kelly promises to rectify this exclusion through a treatment of The Confessions as political philosophy, he reinforces the understanding of the autobiographies as a retreat from politics. The solitary path becomes a new exemplary life intended for corrupt modern individuals who cannot be turned into citizens; he believes that Rousseau advocates a solitary life directed to harmless pleasures.2 By contrast, Jean Starobinski is exceptional in finding a unity of individual existence and societal life in Rousseau's autobiographical and philosophical writings. He ties Rousseau's political philosophy to his self-assertion as the solitary natural man.3 Yet Rousseau's philosophy of intimacy, his strongest bridge between self and society, remains obscured in Starobinski's analysis. Rousseau's progressive flight into isolation, as depicted in his autobiographies, might well seem to foster the view of solitude and community as two separate options. It may further seem to justify the interpretation that he ultimately opted for solitude, abandoning as irresolvable the reconciliation of our original nature with society. Rousseau had seen his life devolve into a sense of total aloneness by the time he wrote The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. But to take this alienation from human relations as a sign of an irremediable opposition between society and our natural core is to oversimplify Rousseau's self-understanding and how it interacts with his theoretical writings. Reflecting the modern uncertainty with self-identity, through his life events and the fluctuating evidence of his character Rousseau endeav-

Private and Public Realms 165 oured to decipher his nature. Although he repeatedly refers to a solitary penchant (D 99, 117; R 28, 31), he still affirms having a heart made for attachment (Dg8, 106, 123-4, 196; R 1). Even in The Reveries he begins by calling himself '[t]he most sociable and the most loving of humans' (R 1), delaying another observation that he was not made to live in the world or to find happiness in the presence of others (R28). Such apparent contradictions reveal the alternation between solitude and attachment as a fundamental issue in his life. Through it Rousseau works out the nature of his character and, by implication, the basic premises and problems of his psychological and political theory. Of course, only protracted periods of solitude could have produced his voluminous writings. But there is an emotional and philosophical significance to solitude that belies it as being a simple matter of creativity or lifestyle. For Rousseau solitude is a personal escape, a primordial return, and a societal critique. These versions of solitude all exclude any simple bifurcation between the solitary and the communitarian paths. Even as personal escape, solitude stands in some relation to political association, for the factors that propel isolation also engage Rousseau theoretically. As we have seen, the difficulty with autonomy, which prompted his solitary escapes, led him to the modern value of authenticity. This fidelity to one's own disposition and judgment is not only a personal requirement, but a political imperative, necessary to the citizen's determination of the general will. Similarly, another emotional source of his solitary escape, an inner need for absolute innocence, sometimes leads him in his autobiographies to refuse the moral ambiguity of the intersubjective context. Yet his sensitivity to this moral ambiguity also motivates his reflections on compassion, a theme that bypasses absolute moral categories, permitting continued political immersion. Whether it resulted from his temperament, his past, or his changing circumstances, ease in social relations was not given to Rousseau. This prompts his escapes to solitude, but it also motivates a theoretical effort to locate and understand the sources of his discomfort in the civilized renunciation of instinctual life. Solitude is a means of uncovering the buried natural traits; it facilitates a return to nature. He attributes his philosophical inspiration to a sudden primordial vision (SL 208);4 through his inwardness he sought continued access to the primitive psyche. Presenting himself as the 'historian of nature,' he contends that his solitary and meditative life enabled him to rediscover the original traits. He had to withdraw from social relations to retrieve those traits, but he still finds a link to society through his motivating and guiding influ-

166 Instinct and Intimacy ence. For the results of his own inner search prompted and facilitated in people a quest for the natural traits: 'These traits so novel for us and so true once they are traced could still find, deep in people's hearts, the attestation of their correctness, but they would never have sought them out themselves if the historian of nature hadn't started by removing the rust that hid them' (D 214). In basing the redemption of civilized life on the rediscovery of primitive instinct, Rousseau makes this sort of secular monasticism essential to the transformation of our individual and collective life. As we saw, the inward method of this atavism reveals the independence of the savage and the passion of amour de soi, both of which provide the individualist foundation of Rousseau's political philosophy. The individual's pledge of self-care first draws a protective sphere around him or her; but the reascendancy of amour de soi, in combination with compassion, also leads to self-extension in the politically intimate state. The civic transformation of amour de soi disavows an extreme split between individualism and collectivism in Rousseau; for both self-protective autonomy and political community are yielded by his atavism. Rousseau experienced the modern civil condition as deficient compared to the authenticity of the intimate association he longed for. In his renunciation of false relations, then, solitude emerges as societal critique. The Dialogues unify self-portrait and psychological theory. Rousseau contends that the 'truly sociable man' is suited only to the society 'of the heart' He prefers to live away from others, rather than be engaged in false relationships (D 100). Moreover, Rousseau claims that 'Jean-Jacques' is unable to hide his feelings and is thus at a disadvantage vis-a-vis others who are capable of self-serving disguise. Consequently, '[o]nly a perfect intimacy could reestablish equality between them and him' (D 118). In A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, he identifies as a general societal problem his personal difficulty with the inauthenticity of others. Before human beings had learned to dissimulate, 'men found their security in the ease with which they could see through one another' {DAS 6). By rejecting the dissimulated presence of others in existing society, Rousseau is not denying the attraction of authentic relations in a society of open hearts. Whatever the social significance of Rousseau's solitude - as personal escape, as primordial return, or as societal critique - by the end of his life he felt sequestered from society, censured by 'unanimous agreement' (R 1). Sometimes, in a self-defensive reaction, he spurned the society that spurned him by declaring himself happier in solitude (R4). But even in The Reveries his stated need for human connection does not disappear; he

Private and Public Realms 167 confides that such a complete solitude cannot but sometimes produce despondency (R 39). And resorting to his imagination to fill the void by creating imaginary beings, he still tries to nourish his heart with the sentiments for which he felt he was born (R 117). Earlier, in the Dialogues, where Rousseau had not yet given up on being 'readmitted' into society, the need for intimate association is an even stronger theme, further undercutting any suggestion that solitude is opposed to or chosen over community. Emphasizing 'Jean-Jacques's' social nature even in discussing his solitary hobby of botany, Rousseau protests that 'he did not confine himself to talking with plants until his efforts to talk to humans proved vain. I will gladly leave the society of plants, he told me, for that of men at the first hope of finding it again' (D 103). While acknowledging Jean-Jacques's' love of solitude and his need to withdraw, Rousseau presents this author as a man whose heart is made for the 'sweetness of intimacy' (D 98). '[H]e liked seclusion,' Rousseau states, 'not in order to live alone, but to bring together the sweetness of study and the charms of intimacy' (D 14). Whatever our asocial origins in the distant primordial past, Rousseau's personal disposition and desires resonate with the expanded social sentiments of the second Discourses tribal society. His own feelings attest to the historical endurance of the emotional sustenance drawn in tribal society from the newborn intimate sphere. While human nature was originally asocial, through the history of intimacy a second, socially connected nature evolved; our 'true self now extends to others, and only sadness can result from total solitude: But I also know that absolute solitude is a state that is sad and contrary to nature: affectionate feelings nourish the soul, communication of ideas enlivens the mind. Our sweetest existence is relative and collective, and our true self is not entirely within us. Finally, such is man's constitution in this life that one never is able to enjoy oneself well without the cooperation of another. Solitary JJ. therefore ought to be somber, taciturn, and always discontent with life. (D 118, emphasis in original)

Always merging self-portrait with social philosophy, Rousseau understands his personal need for intimacy in terms of the social nature that developed through history and is now unalterable. Historically, in his view, there has been a schism between the intimate realm and the larger social and political sphere. Yet humanity carries into all situations the expansive social nature realized through intimate rela-

168 Instinct and Intimacy tions. Rousseau is aware, of course, that the most intense intimacy can develop only in private situations: he observes that 'there is no true effusiveness except in private conversations, and ... the delectable intimacy which is the true enjoyment of friendship can scarcely form and be nurtured elsewhere than in seclusion' (D 118). Although the intensity is attenuated in the societal realm, he still longs for and theoretically embraces the same substantive standards as in the intimate realm. Against the measure of how much he feels is given in authentic, intimate association with men and women, he rejects the false familiarity and appearances of the larger society (D 100, 118). He also transposes from the intimate sphere expectations of warmth in societal relations: for '[s]ociety is not created by the crowd, and bodies come together in vain when hearts reject each other' (D 100). Moving from critique to political program, as this study has shown, Rousseau seeks to replicate the feelings associated with private life in his ideal democratic polity. He aspires, in short, to produce in citizens a political version of the closeness, mutual engagement, and empathetic identification normally associated with intimate relations. 2, Aristotle and Rousseau on Friendship

In sealing the social contract with bonds of affection, Rousseau distinguishes himself from earlier social contract theorists. Fear is the civic adhesive in the Hobbesian state - fear of the public sword and of relapse into violent anarchy. For Locke humanity's rational capacities enable a peaceful state of nature through knowledge of natural law. Yet owing to self-interested transgressions of natural law the threat of war persists. The remedy is a political power that enforces natural law and facilitates individualistic ends, especially the right to property. Rousseau, by contrast, adopts the social contract formula but attempts to transcend the individualism, instrumentalism, and fear-driven rationalism of his predecessors through a theory of affectionate civic attachment. For his civic bonds must not only sustain a duty to obey but also an onerous duty to participate, a commitment bolstered through friendly civic ties. He thus introduces into early modern thought an amiable basis for the state that is reminiscent of the Aristotelian ideal of civic friendship. Rousseau never evokes classical antiquity, however, without a modern configuration. In his Romantic conception of private and civic friendship, the spotlight shifts from reason and justice to feeling and affection. Rousseau is the first Romantic philosopher: he modulates the life of reason in classical philosophy by theorizing the moral and political significance of

Private and Public Realms 169 the life of the heart. This alteration of reason and sentiment is attached to and facilitated by his radically different understanding and evaluation of the private and public spheres. His new affirmation of private life also infuses his theory of civic friendship with greater egalitarianism. Aristotle believes that friendship is the bond that holds political communities together. In perverted constitutions, the worst being tyranny, the spirit of friendship is lacking.5 Friendly feeling results in concord between citizens on the common good, a harmonious union that is suggestive of Rousseau's general will: 'There is said to be concord in a state when the citizens agree about their interests, adopt the same policy, and put their common resolves into effect.6 Yet Aristotle also differs from Rousseau in excluding affection to focus exclusively on justice in his conception of civic friendship. Aristotle's focus on justice in civic friendship is characteristic of his entire theory of friendship. He distinguishes different degrees of friendship by their respective duties. Our usual sense of the word 'friend' is expanded to include not only fellow citizens but also brothers, parents, children, and spouses. That friendship could characterize all these relations is possible because justice varies according to the degree of closeness.7 That these distinctions turn on justice follows from Aristotle's understanding of friendship as a virtue and his equation of friendliness with justice toward others. He also associates friendship with affection, but this is secondary to its moral status.8 Although Rousseau presents friendship as a social virtue (D/75), his Romantic sensibility precludes analysis of friendship in terms of moral duties. Over reason and the judgment of moral obligations, he elevates the intensity of feelings and affections. He further displaces a focus on moral duties by his preoccupation with the modern value of authenticity. Going beyond Aristotle's classical virtues, he posits a split between true being and false appearance, and the consequent possibility of infidelity to the inner self. By the same token, he identifies and values the closest relations by the openness and effusion of hearts. Another qualified parallel to Rousseau is seen in Aristotle's understanding of friendship as an extended self-love: 'all friendly feelings for others are extensions of a man's feelings for himself.'9 Affirming a similar merging of self and other, he goes on to state that' [t]he good man feels towards his friend as he feels towards himself, because his friend is a second self to him."° In contrast to Rousseau's amour de soi, which is a primitive sentiment, Aristotle has a rational and moral conception of self-love. While Rousseau equates the core of the self with primitive feelings, Aristo-

170 Instinct and Intimacy tie believes that 'the thinking part is, or most nearly is, the individual self.'11 Accordingly, the one who loves the rational part of his soul and gratifies it through virtue is in the true sense a self-lover. The life of reason is judged superior to the life of feeling, which is equated with the irrational and unvirtuous gratification of desires.12 For Rousseau, by contrast, amour de soi acts in combination with compassion, a primitive feeling that continues in civilization as the affective source of friendship and all the other social virtues (D/75). While reason is needed for moral judgment, it is an ambivalent faculty, for it can also suppress compassion and it enables the comparisons that fuel amour-propre. The political result of Aristotle's rational and moral understanding of friendship is that civic friendship can be connected to justice without requiring affection. The mutual affection that Aristotle attributes to other kinds of friendship does not characterize friendly relations between citizens. Civic friendship is marked by a lack of enmity and faction and a familiarity in greeting everyone;13 beyond that it is understood as concord between citizens on their interests and living conditions. The crucial factor here is not affection but justice, for Aristotle argues that concord is possible only for those who constantly 'wish for what is just and advantageous, and also pursue these objects in common.'14 Like Rousseau, Aristotle recommends a state small enough for the citizens to know each other personally, but this is intended to ensure justice rather than to foster affectionate ties: 'Both in order to give decisions in matters of disputed rights, and to distribute the offices of government according to the merit of candidates, the citizens of a state must know one another's characters.'15 Rousseau's Romantic sensibility will not allow him to conceive friendship in dispassionate terms even in the civic context. Moreover, his emphasis on affectionate civic bonds reflects the need he sees to import a private value to shore up citizens' commitment to the body politic - a commitment that he eulogizes as so much stronger in classical antiquity, with its higher valuation of the political sphere. Such a private sentiment is available to Rousseau for public purposes through his new understanding of the private and public spheres, although the effect of this configuration also paradoxically is to elevate the relative worth of the private. For both Rousseau and Aristotle, the household chronologically precedes the state. Aristotle insists, however, that the polis is still prior to the family in the order of nature.16 In contrasting it with the polis, he presents the household as the realm of physical necessity. It is the first form of association instituted for the satisfaction of daily practical needs, leading him to cite Charondas in calling household members 'associates of

Private and Public Realms 171 the breadchest.'17 The union of several households into a village naturally follows in order to satisfy more than daily needs, and several households then unite into a polis, which achieves the greatest degree of self-sufficiency.18 While the polis initially developed from these earlier associations 'for the sake of mere life,' it continues to exist 'for the sake of a good life."9 Notwithstanding the chronological reversal, Aristotle considers the polis to be naturally prior to the household because it transcends practical necessity to complete and fulfil the nature of man. It is the forum for the highest exercise of virtue, and thus is the crown of human association.20 The public realm calls for the most highly esteemed faculties, for example, 'the arts of war, of property management, and of public speaking.' Moreover, 'while it is desirable to secure what is good in the case of an individual, to do so in the case of a people or a state is something finer and more sublime.'21 Because it most highly realizes virtue, in Aristotle's teleology the polis is natural and man is a political animal. The organicity of self and society in classical philosophy is evident in Aristotle's attribution of the greatest degree of self-sufficiency not to the individual, but to the polis.22 Rousseau, instead, establishes his allegiance with the individualism of modern social contract theory through his solitary, self-sufficient savage. In presuming original self-sufficiency, Rousseau can concomitantly assert, contrary to Aristotle, that we are not naturally social creatures (D/70).23 But even with this presumption of original asociality, Rousseau finds a supreme value in the private intimate realm. While Aristotle associates the household with the provision of physical necessities, Rousseau's historical anthropology links the family to the expansion of the human heart. Aristotle's increasing self-sufficiency from household to polis appears in Rousseau's theory as an accelerating descent into constricting mutual dependency. Rousseau's individualism and his valuation of the intimate sphere lead to a liberal protectiveness of the private realm as the initial motivation for and condition of entry into the contractual state. He attempts to transcend this instrumentalism through an ideal of civic friendship, but he still does not embed it in the Aristotelian notion of the natural state or a quintessentially political human nature. While solitude is a precept of Rousseau's historical anthropology, his own loneliness prompts him in the Dialogues to acutely feel and stress that in humanity a second social nature has evolved (D 118). He never characterizes us as having a distinctively political nature, however, and in The Reveries he asserts that he personally has 'never been truly suited for civil society' (R 83). Whether we consider the de facto or the dejure state, since

172 Instinct and Intimacy we are unpolitical animals it follows for Rousseau that the body politic is established by contract, and is not natural but conventional. Because there is no basis for the state in human nature, he must derive civic attachment from the development of private sentiment. Reflecting his enchantment with the intimate sphere, as we have seen, Rousseau finds the natural base for conventional ties in the love of one's nearest. His obsession with romantic love, as reflected particularly in La Nouvelle Helo'ise and The Confessions, was not lost philosophically. Though his notoriety as a romantic novelist has subsided, romantic love endures in his political philosophy. In the absence of natural political inclinations, he finds the emotional catalyst for all other affections and relations to the species in a man's romantic feelings for a woman (see especially £214,363)The intimate sphere has no such catalytic effect for Aristotle. He understands man as a naturally pairing creature, and the household as a natural association for both the reproduction of the species and the provision of the necessities of life.24 In all cases of compounds, he regards as a natural principle the existence of a superior and ruling element and an inferior and ruled one. The relation of the rational to the affective part of the soul has a domestic analogue in the relation between husband and wife as one of ruling to ruled.25 Their friendship has a political counterpart in aristocracy, for the man rules by merit. Aristotle does not share the modern expectation of equality in friendship; for him unequals, including husband and wife, can be friends. He presents three different kinds of friendship, based on either utility, pleasure, or goodness. While he believes utility and pleasure have a place in conjugal relations, the best friendship is based on goodness, wherein both husband and wife are virtuous and each appreciates the virtue of the other. Yet excellence is not all of a kind for Aristotle and the virtue of the male is superior to that of the female. 'Equality' is restored between people of different standing when the better person is loved more than he loves, and thus the wife must return more affection to her husband than she receives.26 This combination of man's unequivocal rule and superiority, and the limits on his love for woman set by a principle of proportionate affection, forecloses any possibility of the intimate sphere and woman being a guiding and inspiring source for the political sphere. Since Rousseau has modern romantic expectations, his feelings can be ignited only by an intense love for a woman that may or may not be requited. In chapter 3 we saw that he is ambivalent about whether man or woman rules in their personal relations. While he sometimes baulks at

Private and Public Realms 173 her rule, he also sees in it the possibility for directing and motivating men to civic virtue. Sensitive to the modern appeal of romantic love, in the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences he comments on 'the ascendancy which women have obtained over men.' Far from judging women's governance negatively in itself, he proposes only that it be made more effective by better educating women: 'Men will always be what women choose to make them. If you wish then that they should be noble and virtuous, let women be taught what greatness of soul and virtue are' (DAS 19). Though Rousseau credits Plato as his precedent in these reflections on women's education, the intent of this classical philosopher is not to inspire men to virtue through romantic love. Rousseau is enthralled by this prospect, however, and seeks to reverse the decline of public engagement by shifting from the private realm the passionate charge of romantic love. The suggestion that Rousseau went the further step of including women in participatory self-rule is controversial, but the prerequisites for this inclusion are undeniably found in his association of intimacy with equality and in his affirmation of ordinary life. Aristotle, like Rousseau, has a participatory ideal in his theory of citizenship: he defines the true citizen as one who alternates in ruling and being ruled by sharing in deliberative or judicial office.27 Unlike the benevolence of a king towards his subjects, the friendship between citizens is that of equals.28 Aristotle truncates the participatory possibilities and the equality of his ideal of citizenship, however, by excluding the majority of the adult population women, slaves, labourers, and mechanics - as lacking in the virtue that qualifies one to participate in rule.29 Rousseau's explicit inclusion of women in the social contract may have been stymied by unconscious obstacles, but his theoretical and emotional proclivities facilitate it in a way that is inconceivable in Aristotle. As mentioned above, Rousseau is ambivalent about who rules in gender relations, and in one of his theoretical moods finds in woman a guiding source for man's civic virtue. In his own personal life, moreover, he desired with woman an intimacy of equals. And even in Emiles delineation of woman's education, he warns man against turning 'his companion into his servant' by limiting her to knowledge of household functions (E 364) - a prospect that does not bother Aristotle. While Rousseau did not see his way through to explicitly endorsing women's civic participation, he unequivocally includes all male adults. His postulate of natural freedom disallows slavery, and his affirmation of ordinary life is incompatible with the exclusion of farmers and craftsmen (as it might well be with housewives). Aristotle, in contrast, judges manual

174 Instinct and Intimacy work to be suited to the naturally inferior and to be incongruent with the demands of philosophy and statecraft. While some commentators have questioned Rousseau's egalitarianism,30 it has deep theoretical roots: it is embedded not just in the institutional mechanism of the legislative Sovereign, but in his affirmation of ordinary life as formative of the appropriate moral character. Thus, as earlier described, his future ideal citizen, Emile, is to have an occupation in the trades (E 196-7). Eschewing the intellectual elitism of the classical philosophers, Rousseau condemns reason and philosophy for repressing compassion, and endorses universal natural sentiments as the psychological foundation of political rule. For Aristotle philosophy competes with statecraft for the attention of the virtuous soul, but there is no such tension with the private realm. Rousseau's attempt to resurrect something of the civic virtue of classical philosophy, on the other hand, is embedded in and mitigated by his attraction to intimate life. He aligns himself with Aristotle rather than his liberal social contract predecessors by conceiving and requiring commitment to a common good. But this common good is realized through the contractual state, which presupposes a prior and valued private life. Having thus theoretically deflated the public in relation to the private, his only alternative is to buttress the public sphere with values and sentiments normally considered private. This transposition is not fully satisfying even to Rousseau: he finds the most exquisite pleasure in private intimacy, but he recognizes in a relatively attenuated 'public intimacy' a possibility of politically engaging his fellow moderns. Rousseau's theoretical deflation of the public sphere also finds expression in his relative confinement of the political art. The political capacities Aristotle views as the highest realization of human nature fail to engage Rousseau.31 Aristotle provides a medium for his political virtue of property management, for instance, by advocating a mixed system of private and public ownership of land in order to fund common tables and religious ceremonies.32 Rousseau retains property entirely in private hands, precluding state property management other than to impose restrictions on the extent of individual wealth. This accounts for his reputation as the petty bourgeois philosopher, since his dissatisfaction with merely abstract equality leads him to advocate the narrowing of material inequalities through property limitations. Perhaps what is even more indicative, is Rousseau's preference for private education as opposed to Aristotle's state education. The central role that Aristotle accords the state in fashioning moral and civic character through educating children and youth is left by Rousseau to parents or private tutors. One cannot read Rousseau as a the-

Private and Public Realms 175 orist who sacrifices individuality to a collective identity without ignoring the fact that in advocating private education, he deprives the state of the most important mechanism for shaping personality. Rousseau is known for combining classical and modern elements in his philosophy. We have seen that he incorporates the Aristotelian ideal of concord and familiarity between citizens. But he also transfigures Aristotle's theory of civic friendship through Romantic expectations and a modern reordering of private and public. His political philosophy is correspondingly characterized by civic reliance upon private sentiment, a more egalitarian ethos, and a more limited state. 3 Arendt and Rousseau: Intimacy and the Political

Rousseau's commentators typically have overlooked intimacy as a mediating realm between the solitary self and the citizen. Hannah Arendt is exceptional in both observing and opposing Rousseau's revolution in inverting the classical ordering of private and public to suffuse politics with private sentiments. Arendt shares Rousseau's concern with the decline of the public world and the modern withdrawal into privacy. She, too, is a republican who sees freedom as contingent upon political participation. She condemns her predecessor, however, for undermining the public commitment he ostensibly sought to bolster: for he was a major contributor to the eighteenth-century discovery of and enchantment with the intimate sphere. Rousseau's political philosophy does not redeem him, for Arendt cannot countenance a republicanism based on private sentiments that she judges distracting or, worse, dangerous where politics is concerned. Instead, she retains the classical judgment of the private as inferior and attempts to reignite political commitment through distinctly public passions such as the desire for glory. She endorses agonal politics in which performance-conscious individuals compete for distinction on the political stage. Her competitive vision of politics is at odds with Rousseau's intimately inspired state and is less compatible with an egalitarian, democratic ideal. In my view, analysing Arendt's opposition to Rousseau reinforces his stature as a seminal contributor to democratic theory through his innovation of new, privately inspired, public sentiments. Rousseau and Arendt base their respective visions of politics on their differential evaluations of the private sphere. Arendt's classical revivalism takes as axiomatic the schism in ancient Greek thought between the public and private.33 Basic to her own political theory is Aristotle's insistence that man's definition as a political animal is 'unrelated and even opposed

176 Instinct and Intimacy to the natural association experienced in household life.'34 Arendt reproduces the Aristotelian distinction between the household, as the realm of activities related to the maintenance of life, and the polis, which in being free of necessity aims not at life but at the good life. She further observes that everything in the polis was decided through words and persuasion, while the mastering of necessity in the household of family and slaves required command, force, and violence.35 She thus disregards Aristotle's moral justification through the designation of inferior and superior elements to focus on the power relations in the ancient Greek household, which eliminated the biological burden of life for the paterfamilias. In her understanding, then, the polis was distinguished from the household in being free from necessity and in being composed of equals who neither command nor are subject to command. Although the polis constituted an advance beyond the private realm for the Greeks, Arendt also considers they recognized that participation in the common world is conditional upon having a private place of one's own; a free public realm is impossible without the proper establishment and protection of private property and privacy.36 But to live entirely in the idion, the sphere of what is one's own outside of the common world, was a life of 'idiocy' by definition.37 Writing in the contemporary age that finds so much emotional sustenance in the private, Arendt is compelled to justify her concurrence with the Greek judgment of the private as privative. As we shall see, her understanding of the distinctive and superior character of the public leads to her vision of agonal politics. 'Private' to Arendt literally means being deprived of the highest and most human capacities. Most fundamentally, to have an entirely private existence entails that one is not seen and heard by others, something which is essential to a truly human life. She concedes that privacy has a non-privative aspect in offering a needed respite from the glare of publicity.38 The qualities of the heart need a hidden place to grow, and not only children but all human beings require the security and concealment of private walls to thrive.39 Whatever the necessity of private life, it nevertheless lacks reality. For only appearance in the presence of others, who see and hear what we say, guarantees the reality of ourselves and the world. Private life has a shadowy existence, except when it draws to itself the light of the public realm through storytelling and other artistic depictions of personal experiences.40 While private experience requires artistic transformation to appear to others, the political world is automatically higher, for political action is by definition seen by others and in public space: 'Truly political activities ... cannot be performed at all without the

Private and Public Realms 177 presence of others, without the public, without a space constituted by the many.'4' Arendt's elevation of the public over the private is further reinforced by her view that there is a performative aspect to excellence: it requires the audience of one's peers in the formal sphere of the public, a context that cannot be replicated in the casual familiar presence of the private. Without a public space to exercise it, then, no activity can become excellent.42 Arendt argues that public visibility and performance as a spur to excellence were distinctively evident in the polis: the ancient Greeks understood the political realm as 'a man-made space of appearances'43 and experienced politics as a performative art.44 Performances are intended to draw audience applause, and the polis was permeated by an intensely agonal spirit.45 Human actions and words were exhibited to a public of peers who judged their worthiness.46 Through their desire for distinction, men were inspired to great deeds, and could aspire to overcoming the hiddenness and impermanence of the private realm through activities that were worth being publicly seen, heard, and remembered. 4 Thus, Arendt considers that the polis, in providing a space for men to display and distinguish themselves, established the conditions for the emergence of individuality in the public realm. She regrets the attrition of the public sphere in modernity, and the corresponding demotion of interpersonal difference and distinction to private matters of the individual. In an implicit rejection of liberalism and its emphasis on private selfdevelopment and uniqueness, she praises the Greek body politic for its unparalleled individualism. Men were willing to share in civic duties for the chance to leave their private hiding places and distinguish themselves from their peers, and thus to disclose their individuality and establish their self-identity.48 Arendt is a republican who endorses vigorous citizen action, but she is not a communitarian; for in motivating public action she relies, not upon a self-transcending civic identity, but upon the desire for individuality, self-distinction, and immortalization. Through the opportunity for public visibility, emergence of individuality, and enactment of excellent and even immortal deeds, Arendt considers the political world to provide a form of happiness unavailable in the private sphere. She acknowledges that freedom is now generally conceived as the right to be protected by and from government in the pursuit of private happiness; but she sees another form of freedom in 'the citizen's right of access to the public realm,' and connects this right to the distinctively public happiness that comes from political participation.49 Arendt emphasizes public happiness in awareness of the preoccupation

178 Instinct and Intimacy in modernity with private happiness. Although she goes back to classical antiquity for her sharp distinction between public and private, she finds in the eighteenth-century discovery of the intimate sphere the source of the modern fascination with the private. The intimate sphere is characterized by the intensification of subjective feelings and private emotions; it constitutes an enriched realm of private experience that acquired new value and prompted new concerns for its protection. She attributes to Rousseau and the Romanticists the discovery of intimacy and sees in Rousseau its first theoretician.50 Whatever the enhancement of private life, Arendt regrets the consequences for public life; in her view the public realm has declined concomitant with the establishment of the intimate sphere: 'As the public realm has shrunk in the modern age, the private realm has been very much extended, and the word that indicates that extension is intimacy.'51 Her response is to try to reverse modernity's enthusiasm for the intimate sphere by reviving the agonal spirit she sees in the Greek polis and the superior satisfaction found in political life. Rousseau's philosophy of intimacy does not admit Arendt's judgment on the private as privative, a presupposition she deems necessary to reinstating the classical valuation of the political. To Arendt the crux of the private sphere's deficiency is its hiddenness; the political realm is superior in providing the opportunity to be seen and heard and thus to disclose oneself. For Rousseau, by contrast, self-disclosure most truly occurs in the intimate sphere, and he warns of the artificiality of people when they appear in public (£240-1; D 103). He did not transpose his intimate life into public autobiography because he thought it would otherwise lack reality; he did so because his public persona did not provide sufficient personal visibility and his desire for authenticity required such selfexposure. While performative ability is one aspect of character, as Rousseau insists, public performance does not reveal the full range of emotion uniquely experienced and expressed in the intimate realm. Rousseau was an originator of the intimate self as the most indicative of true character. It is undeniable that the deepened sense of personal reality and satisfaction, which came to be associated with the intimate sphere, deflates the political realm. Rousseau's fascination with intimate life was nonetheless irrevocable, as reflected in hundreds of pages of his autobiographical writing. Despite his praise of the greater public-mindedness of classical antiquity, by the testimony and pull of his own feelings he was unable to reverse the trend of the modern ascendancy of private life, and was led instead to contribute significantly to its momentum. Before chastising him for the decline of the political world, however, it must be

Private and Public Realms 179 remembered that his part in inaugurating the intimate sphere was accompanied by a corresponding political innovation in his transposition of private sentiments to support the body politic. But the blame Arendt attributes to Rousseau for fostering private withdrawal is not tempered in her view by his political philosophy. This points to the incompatibility of her political vision with one based on the sentiments and values of intimate life. Arendt's agonal politics is incongruent with the characteristically intimate categories of affection, compassion, and friendship that guide Rousseau's political thinking. She is extremely critical of Rousseau, but his political philosophy can be defended by appeal to modern democratic and egalitarian values. Arendt's portrayal of politics as a performative art has no place in Rousseau's political philosophy: to motivate civic participation through the possibility of individual distinction on the political stage could only inflame the negative emotions of amour-propre. Arendt's agonal spirit 'the passionate drive to show one's self in measuring up against others'52 - is no more advocated by Rousseau for the political than for the intimate sphere. For amour-propre is a divisive passion in whatever realm it is manifest. Thus, Rousseau parts company with theorists like Arendt who rely upon ambition and glory to fuel greatness in the political arena. Rousseau rejects such political passions, for performance politics and the desire for distinction drives a wedge between human beings and the natural sentiments that are the basis for morality. Through morality, individuals transcend self-interest and identify with the good of the whole; but the competition for honour pits one citizen against the next. Whatever Arendt's affinities to classical antiquity, Rousseau comes closer to Plato and Aristotle by not endorsing honour as a motive in politics. For Plato, the preoccupation with honour results in the degeneration of the city-state.53 Aristotle regards honour as an external good, but he does not consider it the goal of political life;54 the polis is the crown of human existence because it offers the highest realization of virtue. His stipulation that honour only be accorded to the good man does not make it the raison d'etre of the polis.55 Like Rousseau, Plato and Aristotle conceive a common good, the realization of which is incompatible with an honour-driven politics. For these classical philosophers, however, rule in accordance with the common good is contingent upon possession of exclusive intellectual and moral virtues. Rousseau rejects their elitist politics in favour of a democratic grounding of the common good in humanity's universal instincts and experience in the intimate sphere. In relying upon affection and compassion to motivate civic participa-

180 Instinct and Intimacy tion and commitment to the common good, Rousseau is drawing upon the private sentiments that Arendt wishes to exclude from the political realm. Given her preoccupation with competitive agonal politics, civic friendship could only be a peripheral concept in her political philosophy. To the extent that she addresses it, she suggests a notion of civic friendship that is devoid of closeness; it is cool rather than sentimental and can be equated with respect.56 This is the most one could expect from fellow competitors. She identifies Rousseau with forms of friendship that result in estrangement or disaster in the political world. On one hand, she considers him the leading exponent of the modern attitude that fastens upon intimate friendship and thus alienates individuals from the world; he sees 'friendship solely as a phenomenon of intimacy, in which the friends open their hearts to each other unmolested by the world and its demands.'57 On the other hand, she regards him as the most effective advocate for the idea of fraternite, a form of political solidarity that is based on compassion.58 She maintains that this is a destructive notion that fuelled the rage of the French Revolution, and introduced 'mischief into modern revolutions thereafter, by fostering identification with the suffering of the poor.59 Arendt is hostile to Rousseau for promoting political withdrawal as well as political fervour. However, if equality and democracy are taken as fundamental political values, the intimate sentiments that Rousseau cherishes and transposes to the political realm are defensible for being more suited than Arendt's agonal politics to an egalitarian democratic vision. Despite his vehement opposition to revolutionary politics, Rousseau has been associated by some commentators, including Arendt, with the French Revolution. Setting aside the question of his influence on the French Revolutionaries, which is itself controversial,60 what concerns us here is how Arendt's rejection of fraternite undermines egalitarian and democratic values that are fundamental to Rousseau's philosophy and to modern politics. Arendt emphasizes, but does not suggest how to redress, the exclusionary politics of the classical world. In the compassion of fraternite she recognizes and rejects an egalitarian sentiment that contrasts with her own preferred notion of friendship as selective.61 In seeking to exclude compassion, she also excludes questions of economic justice from politics; she relies on the classical distinction between household and polis to establish the maxim that care for life's necessities should be confined to the private realm.62 Her concept of justice does not include distributive justice (which allows her to spuriously oppose compassion to justice as a

Private and Public Realms 181 revolutionary motive)/'3 By conceiving compassion as a sentiment that should permeate both the private and public realms, Rousseau recommends the redress of economic inequities - a precondition necessary to democratic politics. Though he advocates property restrictions rather than a state welfare system, he is the republican equivalent of a reform liberal in understanding that political freedom and public happiness depend upon economic justice. He recognizes the importance of economic justice, not only for personal well-being, but for equitable democratic participation. Further democratic defence of Rousseau lies in the stronger base for political participation afforded by his intimately inspired politics than by Arendt's competitive agonal politics. The possibility of shining through great deeds may motivate the superior few to engage in politics, but for the many in an inclusive democracy a civic self-extension based on private sentiments is more effective. In an expose of the incompatibility of many of Arendt's major concepts with democratic ideas, Sheldon Wolin points to her exclusion of the democratic sentiments of fellow-feeling - of compassion, pity, and love.64 While he does not trace the history of these democratic sentiments, it is clear that they originated with Rousseau. Rousseau's ground-breaking contribution to democratic thought can also be seen in Wolin's observation that Arendt's agonistic action encourages distinction before a small audience of heroes, whereas democratic action fosters cooperation and sharing rather than standing out.65 Rousseau encapsulates the cooperation and sharing of a democratic community in his notion of the general will. Arendt is distrustful of this concept, contending that its object is to inspire and direct 'the nation as though it were no longer composed of a multitude but actually formed one person.'66 Only the perspective of an agonal politics, which conceives visibility and distinction as the defining qualities of the public world, could interpret Rousseau's general will as an attempt to efface difference. For there is no innate incompatibility between individuation and a commitment to the good of a political whole (or an intimate circle, to refer to the private model). Neither does 'the articulation of general interest' that Arendt rightly sees in the general will also inevitably result in a soul set in conflict by the demand to suppress particular interest.67 For through an instinctually based self-extension, Rousseau envisions the transformation of narrow self-interest to encompass a compassionate concern for fellow citizens and the political whole. This is an emotional and moral possibility that has a relevant precedent in intimate society - a realm characterized by both self-transcending attachment and affection for the unique other.

182 Instinct and Intimacy In my assessment of Rousseau and Arendt it is significant to note that reversion to the classical superiority of the political over the private realm is not feasible. Whatever Arendt's pronouncement on the greater reality and individuality of the public sphere, modernity shares Rousseau's enchantment with intimate society as the unparalleled realm for self-display, authentic relations, and heartfelt attachments. This heightens the appeal of Rousseau's transposition of intimate sentiments to the political sphere as a way of augmenting public happiness. Moreover, as suggested, these intimate sentiments acquire further political currency in being more conducive to an egalitarian democratic politics. 4 Liberalism and Rousseau: Private Values and Republicanism

If Arendt diminishes the private self, contemporary liberals narrow the public self. Liberalism also rests upon a distinction between the public and private realms, but it sets a higher value on the private. In their public capacity individuals are understood as equal, autonomous bearers of rights, and the state is regarded as an instrument in service of their rights. However narrowly or broadly these rights are conceived by different liberals, ranging from Robert Nozick to John Rawls,68 rights are intended to protect and 69 facilitate the private lives of individuals as they pursue their own versions of the good. The communitarian critic, Charles Taylor, objects to the atomistic conception of the self that he finds in this rightsbased ethic.69Responding particularly to Rawls's influential book A Theory of Justice, Michael Sandel similarly argues that liberalism fails to take seriously our commonality, for it individuates us in advance, excluding attachments as constitutive of self-identity.70 In this contemporary debate between liberals and communitarians, Rousseau is most instructive. His ingenuity and breadth is seen in his capacity to respond to the concerns of both sides: he posits an autonomous core to the self that is overlaid by a communitarian identity. He affirms protective liberalism, but his republicanism requires a self capable of patriotic attachment. Rawls indicates his debt to Rousseau and other social contract theorists in the first chapter of A Theory of Justice by announcing his aim 'to present a conception of justice which generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstraction the familiar theory of the social contract as found, say, in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant.'71 In his hypothetical original position Rawls replicates the freedom, equality, and separateness of human beings in Rousseau's historical state of nature. Rawls's innovation, and the source of his greater degree of abstraction, is a veil of ignorance that facilitates

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183

the impartial choice of principles of justice by excluding particular knowledge of one's self and situation.72 Although Rousseau chose to justify and motivate his principles of political right through a historical exegesis of our individual and collective condition, he is also vulnerable to the communitarian criticism that he conceives human beings independently of their constitutive attachments and commitments.7S For he incorporates the atomistic ontology of liberalism within his initial premise of an autonomous and asocial savage. Communitarians charge the unencumbered self of liberalism with ontological distortion, but there is a moral and political advantage to theoretically dispensing with the situated self. At the most basic level, the ethic of rights and its unencumbered self establishes a principle of personal freedom and inviolability. This is stressed by Judith Shklar, who understands liberalism to have one overriding aim: 'to secure the political conditions that are necessary for the exercise of personal freedom.' 74 In her 'liberalism of fear,' the greatest possible impediment to freedom is government, with its power to inflict cruelty and exercise arbitrary power. She rightly credits Locke for this understanding,75 but there is another antecedent to her liberalism of fear in Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality and its analysis of government as the most coercive and lethally arbitrary institution in human experience. In the context of the liberalism of fear, Shklar dismisses the longings of American political theorists for communal personalities as the luxury of a privileged liberal society.77 As the proliferation of autobiographies from the eighteenth century onward attests, this literary form is eminently suited to the preoccupation with deciphering the self. Personal excellence is conceived by Plato and Aristotle as the realization of universal virtues; in modernity the pursuit of individual identity generates the new value of uniqueness. Rousseau is an originator of modern self-exploration in autobiography, but for him there is a limit to the radical contingency of self-creation. Even though self-identity must be individually constructed, our common instincts provide a universal core. In typical Romantic fashion Rousseau finds an objective order in nature and to that extent sees himself as articulating something beyond his own subjectivity, with which he seeks reunification.1"8 The philosophical expression of nature is evident in his

190 Instinct and Intimacy inquiry into natural humanity as a prerequisite to determining the principles of political right. His autobiographical writing is emotionally driven by his tussle with self-identity, but even here he eventually casts himself in nature's form. Rousseau's self-absorption in being unique leads him to pronounce on the first page of The Confessions that nature broke the mould in making him (C 17). By the time he writes the Dialogues, however, his struggle with self-identity has led him to assert a universal nature in his portrait of himself as a modern incarnation of the natural human (D 158-9, 214, 216). The personal qualities he observes or forges in himself in The Confessions are in this second autobiography interpreted so as to constitute himself as the natural human in civilization (C47-8, 129, 167, 231-2, 261, 294, 33740, 368, 374, 384, 540, 595-6, 601). In support of this self-description, he cites his love of solitude, his indolent spirit, his simple tastes, his absorption in the moment, his freedom from opinion, and his possession of a heart immune to jealousy and hatred (D74, 103, 105-6, 114, 116-18, 1323, 138, 146-9, 154, 158-9, 189, 192-4, 197, 206). Always asserting a link between his person and his philosophy, Rousseau sees in his capacity to redescend to the natural state verification of his moral and political philosophy. Admittedly, he cannot resist the modern yearning to be unique, for he claims to be the only human being who is natural (D 214). But by defining himself in terms of a universal nature, he nonetheless establishes a continuity with the nature of others, even if their nature is allegedly suppressed. Furthermore, he anticipates that others will follow him in rediscovering in themselves these original traits now that he has cleared away the cultural accretions that concealed them (D 214). In The Reveries he is more circumspect about his restoration of some of the original traits, but still presents his life as devoted to their possession (R 20, 37, 91, 113-15). It is by reference to this common instinctual nature that he establishes both the civil right and the patriotic attachment of his ideal democratic state. Richard Rorty, a postmodern defender of liberalism, considers the moral and political implications of self-creation in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. While he does not address Rousseau, his book, through the contrast it affords, reinforces the relationship in Rousseau's corpus between an instinctually limited self-creation and moral and political commitment. Rorty is another theorist who sharply divides the private from the public, arguing in his postmodern rendition that self-creation and private fulfilment cannot be held in the same philosophical vision as justice and solidarity.1"9 To unite them would require us to believe in a

Private and Public Realms 191 common human nature, a metaphysical standpoint he rejects, for he is committed to an anti-essentialist and thoroughly historicist conception of the self.'1O Thus, the vocabulary of self-creation is intrinsically private and unshared, and unfettered by any idea of essence or nature. Rorty still finds a political solution to the theoretical incommensurability between the private and unshared language of self-creation and the public and shared language of justice and solidarity: to recognize the same contingency and lack of universalism in public life as in self-creation, through the position of the 'liberal ironist.' The liberal ironist is distinguished from the liberal metaphysician in facing up to his or her beliefs as historical, contingent, and unfounded in any notion of what is universally human.111 Rorty sees liberalism and the public focus it directs to freedom and equal opportunity as conducive to the process of self-creation.112 While he has an obvious interest in the individuality of Romantic liberalism, he takes protective liberalism to be definitive, borrowing from Shklar his definition of liberals as 'people who think that cruelty is the worst thing we do.'"3 He contends that even the obligation to prevent cruelty cannot be connected to a belief in a common human nature.114 Although his argument rejects the rationalist essentialism of the Enlightenment, it does not refute the emotional essentialism of Rousseau. For Rorty denies that 'reflection' will 'produce a reason to care about suffering,' but he still invokes Rousseauian emotional images of 'imaginative identification' and 'sensitivity' to others' pain.115 Such psychological capacities cannot be dismissed as historically contingent for they are as much an element of human nature and experience as vulnerability to pain. Rorty suggests novels and ethnographies in lieu of philosophy as a means of increasing our sensitivity to the pain of unfamiliar others. In my view this reveals that he has not escaped the Enlightenment rationalism he sought to renounce.116 For he thereby excludes Rousseau's anti-Enlightenment contribution in advancing an emotionally inspired philosophy and universal ethic. While Rousseau was an originator in historicizing human nature, for him there is a limit to historicity in an essentialist instinctual core. He does not rely on the vagaries of people's historically contingent beliefs in hope of finding them averse to the harm of others.117 His universal instinct of compassion entails that a sensitivity to the suffering of others is not a matter of contingent belief, but a natural affective response that is suppressed at the cost of our true nature and emotional well-being. Neither personally nor theoretically can this conscious or repressed response be compartmentalized into a private and public portion.

192 Instinct and Intimacy Although Rorty recommends liberal irony as a practicable ideal, his best assurances seem qualified, and unequal to the task of showing that irony could yield sufficient 'social glue' to support democratic institutions.118 Like all liberalisms, Rorty's liberal irony flounders on the question of civic bonds. In Rousseau's conception of an instinctually based political attachment, we find the civic cement for the body politic and overcome the lack of intrinsic social connection that characterizes liberalism. Self-creation may be the understandable terminus of liberalism, with its notion of an autonomous self unfettered by social identity. The autonomous self, as conveyed in the postmodern conceptualization, is the creator of a language that is private and unshared. However useful liberalism's atomistic notion of the individual was for the innovation of human rights, it remains a philosophical distortion that does not recognize human beings as intrinsically social and interdependent. Rousseau was aware of the moral and political advantage of incorporating the methodological individualism of protective liberalism. He also rectifies the philosophical distortion through a mix of historicism and essentialism: he affirms that through history human nature has become unalterably social and interdependent. On an individual level, Rousseau's recognition of our sociability and interdependence precludes a 'final vocabulary' on one's beliefs, actions, and life that is private and unshared.119 Rorty takes the contrary view; he is heavily influenced by Nietzsche - the philosopher and autobiographer of self-creation and of solitude. Modernity admittedly imposes a greater burden of innovation in our personal tales. But still true to our human nature and experience is Rousseau's sense of our entwinement in the emotions and fate of others. This predisposes at least some measure of universality in our personal narratives and some resonance in other minds and hearts even across centuries. For Rousseau the source of our emotional identification with others is the compassionate instinct. Though we were originally alone, through an instinctually based self-extension a second intimate and collective human nature historically evolved and is available as an emotional base for a democratic republic. In analysing our nature and our collective possibilities, Rousseau does not engage in the usual separation of the private and public realms. As we saw, this approach distinguishes him from Aristotle, Arendt, and various liberals and communitarians. Rousseau is an autobiographer of intimacy: he revelled in recalling his experience and love of intimate society. The backdrop to his intimate portrait, however, is his saga of censorship, refuge, and self-defence. His

Private and Public Realms 193 blurring of the private and public makes understandable his response to the critical storm precipitated by his philosophical writings. He defended his philosophy by defending his character and this entailed the painstaking detailing of his intimate life. Theoretically, he does not dichotomize political and private values; guiding his political thinking are the compassion, authenticity, affection, and friendship ordinarily associated with the private realm. Personally, he was unable to dissociate his philosophy from the inspiring experiences and hopes of his own intimate life. Modern fascination with self-revelation is one of his legacies. So too is a democratic theory that human experience with intimacy illuminates and supports.

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Notes

1: The Modern Self in Rousseau 1 'Letter from Moultou to Rousseau, March 27, 1763,' in Charles William Hendel, ed., Citizen of Geneva: Selections from the Letters offean-Jacques Rousseau, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), 59. 2 Jean Starobinski, fean-facques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) (originally published AS Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La Transparence et Vobstacle [Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1971]), xi. 3 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 394 Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989). 5 Karl Joachim Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978). 6 Taylor, Sources, 362-3. 7 Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufman (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1954), 171. 8 Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, 2nd ed., vol. 1, trans. Gilbert Highet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1945), 153. 9 Taylor, Sources, 124, 148, 160-1, 174, 177-8, 181, 2OO. 10 Ibid., 177-8, 289, 357, 362. 11 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage Books, 1976), 59. 12 Weintraub, Value, xiv, xv, 1, 2, 13-17. Examples of literary critics who understand modern autobiography as an enterprise in self-creation include Jerome Hamilton Buckley, The Turning Key: Autobiography and the Subjective Impulse since

196 Notes to pages 6-17 1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), vii, 19, 39, 52, 97;John Paul Eakin, Fictions in Autobiography: Studies in the Art of Self-Invention (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 3, 8, 26, 39; Susanna Egan, Patterns of Experience in Autobiography (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1984), 11, 20, ill; Patricia Spacks, Imagining a Self: Autobiography and Novel in Eighteenth Century England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 16, 19; and Georges Gusdorf, 'Conditions and Limits of Autobiography,' in James Olney, ed. and trans., Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 29, 43-5 (originally published as 'Conditions et limites de l'autobiographie' in Gunther Reichenkron and Erich Hasse, eds, Formen der Selbstdarstellung: Analekten zu einer Geschichte des literarischen Selbstportraits [Duncker and Humblot, 1956]). While Saint Augustine's Confessions of the fourteenth century anticipate the modern self in important respects, this work is not wholly representative. Weintraub acknowledges the contribution of Augustine's self-inspection to the emergence of the modern self; however, he stops short of attributing to Augustine the conception of an autonomous self fully charged with the task of its own determination (Weintraub, Value, 46; see also 18-45). Ann Hartle concurs with this judgment in a book that establishes the modern self in Rousseau in distinction from Augustine. While Augustine's autobiography turns on the disclosure of God's providence in his life, she establishes Rousseau's distinctly modern project in The Confessions as the revelation of his inner self (Ann Hartle, The Modern Self in Rousseau's 'Confessions' [Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983], 3, 33, 75, 78, 103, 126). 13 Taylor, Sources, 181, 184. 14 Ibid., 182. 15 Marshall Berman, The Politics of Authenticity (New York: Atheneum, 1970), 73159; and Charles Taylor, The Malaise of Modernity (Concord, Ont.: House of Anansi Press, 1991), 27-9. 16 Arendt, Human Condition, 180, 186, 192-3. 17 For an exegesis of the ascendance of the public over the private realm in antiquity, see Arendt, Human Condition, 22-78, and Taylor, Sources, 13-14, 23, 211, 278. 18 For a further elaboration of the contrast between the ancient rational vision of a cosmic order and Rousseau's inauguration of the voice of nature as an internal moral source, see Taylor, Sources, esp. 168, 200, 362, 368-70. 19 The two most comprehensive and exclusively focused studies of the interpenetration of Rousseau's philosophical and autobiographical works are Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction and Christopher Kelly, Rousseau's Exemplary Life: The 'Confessions' as Political Philosophy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).

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2: Political Philosophy and the Introspective Psyche 1 Hartle, Modern Self, 13-24. 2 Kelly, Exemplary Life, 13-19. 3 'Letter from Rousseau to M. Moultou, Minister of the Gospel, January 20, 1763.' 4 Berman, Authenticity, 77-83, 86, 324. Berman's analysis of Rousseau's societal critique leads him to 'the politics of authenticity,' as the dream of a community in which individuality is fully developed and expressed (ix, xvi). With a shift in attention from critique to political recommendations, however, Berman's reading relapses into the all-too-familiar theme of Rousseau as the 'theorist of totalitarianism' (201, 300). The participatory democracy of The Social Contract is largely overlooked in favour of the so-called escapes from freedom, principally in La Nouvelle Heloise. Thus, the recommendations of Rousseau's major political writings are jettisoned in order to advance his advocacy of a community based on inequality and benevolent despotic rule (254). By so radically polarizing Rousseau as a critic of inauthenticity and also its most totalitarian advocate, Berman misses the opportunity to elucidate Rousseau's complex response to how the individuality of the moi humain can be conjoined with the collective life of the moi commun. 5 P.N. Furbank, Introduction to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Confessions, trans. P.N. Furbank (New York: Everyman's Library, 1992), xxvii. 6 Berman, Authenticity, 73-159; and Taylor, Malaise, 27-9. 7 Maurice Cranston, Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work of Jean Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1983), 39. 8 Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, i960), 41, 52-5, 164, 184. See also Marcel Raymond's introduction to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres completes, vol. 1, Les Confessions; Autres textes autobiographiques (Paris: Gallimard, 1959), xv. 9 For further elaboration see, for example, the introduction by Masters and Kelly to the English translation of the Dialogues (Z)xi-xii, xxv, xxvi); and James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), 76-86. 10 Pascal, Design, 1, 18-20, 67-8, 82-3, 98, 185, 193-5. 11 Gusdorf, 'Conditions,' 44-5; see also 40, 42-3, 48. 12 Cranston, feanjacques; Maurice Cranston, The Noble Savage: Jeanjacques Rousseau 1754-1762 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1991); and Maurice Cranston, The Solitary Self: Jeanjacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997). 13 Cranston, Jeanjacques, 32-3, 52, 103, 105, 151, 167, 212.

198 Notes to pages 28-36 14 Cranston, Jean-Jacques, 122; and Noble Savage, 2, 102. 15 Cranston, Jean Jacques, 93, 131-2, 153, 197, 216, 253, 320; Noble Savage, 24, 35, 41, 61-2, 83, 90, 121, 168, 202, 204, 287, 326, 328, 348; and Solitary Self, 13416 Cranston, Noble Savage, 35, 348; and Solitary Self, 134. 17 Gusdorf, 'Conditions,' 44. 18 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, 198. 19 Ibid., 57. 20 Ibid., 51-2, 58. 21 Much of Rousseau's defensiveness in regard to his self-avowed solitary bent and his tender being was provoked by a written remark by his one-time friend the philosopher Denis Diderot that' [0] nly the wicked person is alone' (D 99, emphasis in original). Interpreting this as an unfair insinuation against himself, Rousseau felt compelled to argue that the simultaneous possession of these two qualities is not contradictory. 22 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, 175, 181-2. 23 Ibid., 54. 24 Ibid., 199. 25 C.G.Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, ed. Aneilajaffe, and trans. Richard and Clara Winston (New York: Vintage Books, 1961), 246. 26 Ibid., 154. 27 C.G.Jung, Psychological Reflections: A New Anthology of His Writings igo^—ig6l, ed, Jolande Jacobi and R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1953), 30528 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, 115. 29 C.G.Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 75, 78. 30 C.G.Jung, Psychological Types, trans. R.F.C. Hull and H.G. Baynes (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971), 528. 31 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 223. 32 C.G.Jung, Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self, in Campbell, ed., The Portable Jung, 146. 33 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 214. 34 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 214; Aion, 142. 35 C.G.Jung, Individual Dream Symbolism in Relation to Alchemy, in Campbell, ed., The Portable Jung, 405. 36 Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage Books, 1966), 27. 37 'Letter from Rousseau to M. de Malesherbes, January 4, 1762.' This series of four letters to M. de Malesherbes was Rousseau's first attempt at his own

Notes to pages 36-9 199 character sketch. In writing of his vision on the road to Vincennes in The Confessions, he refers his readers to these letters. He explains that, while he has a 'lively recollection of the effect' this vision produced in him, once he has committed something to writing he no longer remembers the details ( c 327-8). 38 For my understanding of the unconscious as the source of primordial images, I am indebted to Jung, The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature. See especially the chapter on 'Psychology and Literature.' 39 'Letter from Rousseau to M. de Malesherbes, January 4, 1762.' 40 Ibid. 41 Cited in Paul A. Cantor, Creature and Creator: Myth-Making and English Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 92. 42 Jung, Spirit, 97. 43 C.G.Jung, The Structure and Dynamics ofthe Psyche, in Campbell, ed., The Portable Jung, 275, 284; and C.G.Jung, On the Nature of the Psyche, trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, i960), 88. 44 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 15; see also 295. The psychoanalytical significance of Rousseau's work has not been missed by commentators. In the preface to her book Judith Shklar remarks, for instance, that '[i]f Plato was his ancestor, Freud was his heir' (Judith Shklar, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969], vii). She chooses nevertheless not to subsequently explicate Rousseau in terms of either his antecedents or his successors (216, 218). This contrasts with Asher Horowitz, who draws upon Sigmund Freud and Herbert Marcuse to analyse Rousseau's philosophical texts and particularly his La Nouvelle Heloise (Asher Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature, and History [Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987]). Here I concur with Horowitz in using modern psychoanalysis to explore the psychological dimensions of Rousseau's social and political thought. Horowitz's range of texts differs from my own, however, in that he does not incorporate Rousseau's autobiographies. 45 'Letter from Rousseau to M. de Malesherbes, January 4, 1762.' 46 Ibid. 47 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 68, 150-1, 156. 48 Jung, Spirit, 82-3; and Psychological Reflections, 157. 49 For a discussion of the immediate impact of the publication of The Confessions on Rousseau's philosophical interpretation and reputation in England, see Edward Duffy, Rousseau in England: The Context for Shelley's Critique of the Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 32-53. 50 Roger D. Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I968),vii-x.

200

Notes to pages 39-41

51 Ibid., x. 52 Peter Gay, Introduction to Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989) (originally published by Columbia University Press, 1954), 14-15. 53 J.L. Talmon, The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1972), 38-954 Lester G. Crocker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Prophetic Voice (1758-1778), vol. 2 (New York: MacMillan, 1973), 191-6. 55 Gay, Introduction and Postscript to Cassirer's Question, 14-17, 137. 56 Gay, Introduction to Cassirer's Question, 22. 57 Cassirer, Question, 40. 58 Starobinski further elucidates Rousseau's self-appointed role of solitary opponent in a later article entitled 'The Accuser and the Accused,' in Harold Bloom, ed., Jean Jacques Rousseau (New York: Chelsea House Publishers, 1988) (originally published in Daedalus: Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences 3 [Summer 1978], 41-58.) While concurring with Starobinski's use of Rousseau's autobiographies and his psychoanalytical approach, my analysis does not entirely support his political interpretation. The solitary critic, Jean-Jacques, emerges powerfully from his pen. His treatment of Rousseau, the political idealist, is less compelling. The Discourse on Inequality receives much more attention than The Social Contract, and what analysis there is tends to spuriously assimilate it to La Nouvelle Helo'ise. Starobinski argues that just like Clarens of La Nouvelle Helo'ise, the society of The Social Contract is based on a simultaneous alienation of wills that makes each person open and visible to all (Transparency and Obstruction, 85). This longed-for transparency is especially evident in the harvest festival that Starobinski presents as reminiscent of the general will: 'The festival expresses, in the "existential" realm of emotion, what the Social Contract formulates in the theoretical realm of law' (96). The feudal structure of Clarens compels him to question the strength of Rousseau's commitment to the ideal of democratic equality. In Starobinski's eyes, he seems prepared to substitute for real equality the momentary, spurious equality of the harvest festival (99). To assimilate The Social Contract to La Nouvelle Helo'ise through an emotional similitude, however, is to avoid a serious consideration of the democratic and egalitarian mechanisms of The Social Contract, as well as the psychological transformation required of the individuals who participate in them. 59 Robert Darn ton, 'A Star Is Born,' New York Review ofBooks 35:16 (27 Oct. 1988), 85-6. 60 The most comprehensive post-Starobinski studies are Hartle's The Modern Self in Rousseau's 'Confessions' and Kelly's Rousseau's Exemplary Life: The 'Confessions'

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as Political Philosophy. These commentaries avoid unilluminating psychological reductionism by treating Rousseau's Confessions as a fiction that serves a philosophical intention. This is at the price, however, of disregarding the hidden dimension of the self that is intrinsic to the modern identity and to Rousseau's own philosophical and personal understanding. While Rousseau's autobiographies have been largely absent from philosophical commentaries, as part of the recent literary interest in autobiography The Confessions, primarily, have been addressed extensively by literary critics. Examining such problems as truth in autobiography and the appearance of modern subjectivity in the autobiographical genre, these pieces sometimes consider issues relevant to the elucidation of Rousseau's philosophy. There is typically no reference to his philosophical works, however, and any possible connections are left unstated. Abstracted from his standing as a philosopher, he is analysed simply as an autobiographer. Thus, the chasm between autobiography and philosophy in Rousseau remains. For literary treatments of Rousseau's autobiographical writing see, for example, Egan, Patterns of Experience in Autobiography; Peter France, Rousseau: Confessions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); and William C. Spengemann, The Forms of Autobiography: Episodes in the History of a Literary Genre (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1980). For literary treatments that provide at least some reference to Rousseau's philosophical texts, see Robert Elbaz, The Changing Nature of the Self: A Critical Study of the Autobiographic Discourse (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1987); Weintraub, The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography; and Huntington Williams, Rousseau and Romantic Autobiography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). 61 Ernst Cassirer, Rousseau - Kant - Goethe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947). 58. 62 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 156. 63 Jung, Spirit, 34, 68-70. This sort of reductionism is unfortunately evident, for example, in a psychoanalytical study of Kant that explains away his rationalistic philosophy in terms of a repressed sexual fixation on his mother: Lewis Feuer, 'Lawless Sensations and Categorical Defenses: The Unconsciovis Sources of Kant's Philosophy,' in Charles Hanly and Morris Lazerowitz, eds, Psychoanalysis and Philosophy (New York: International Universities Press, 1970). 64 Norman O. Brown, Life against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History, 2nd ed. (Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 1959), viii, 185. 65 Jean Starobinski, The Living Eye, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989) (originally published as L'Oeil vivant [Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1961] and L'Oeil vivant II: La Relation critique [Paris: Editions Gallimard, 1970]), 137.

202

Notes to pages 42-6

66 Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, trans. Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1964), 20. 67 Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, 19-21. In the language of clinical psychology, Jung similarly contends that in the banality of the fact that we all have complexes, ' [i] t is only interesting to know what people do with their complexes' (Jung, Psychological Reflections, 218 [emphasis in original]). 68 Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, 24. 69 Ibid., 21. 70 Ibid., 25. 71 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 15. 72 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, 170; and Living Eye, 145. 73 Ibid., 170-1, 240; 129-47. 74 Starobinski, Living Eye, 144. 75 Ibid., 146. 76 Ibid., 145. 77 Ibid., 144-578 Ibid., 143; and Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, 24. 79 Taylor, Sources, 446-7. 80 Jung, Spirit, 85. 81 C.G.Jung, Two Essays on Analytical Psychology, 2nd ed., trans. R.F.C. Hull (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 176-7. 82 Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, 24. 83 Ibid., 25. 84 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 74. 85 Starobinski, Living Eye, 145. 86 Leo Strauss, What Is Political Philosophy: And Other Studies (New York: Free Press, 1959), 67. 87 Ibid., 56-77. 88 Quentin Skinner, 'Social Meaning and the Explanation of Social Action,' in Peter Laslett and W.G. Runciman, eds, Philosophy, Politics and Society, 4th ser., (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), 136-57. 89 Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), 4-590 Ibid., 5. 91 Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, 13. 92 Ibid., 14 (emphasis in original). 93 Ibid., 12. 94 Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. RJ. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 198;

Notes to pages 46-58

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and Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, RJ. Hollingdale, trans. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 299. 95 Cited in Frye, Anatomy of Criticism, 5. 3: Woman, Sexuality, and Intimate Society 1 Barbara Tovey and George Tovey, 'Women's Philosophical Friends and Enemies,' Social Science Quarterly 55:1 (June 1974), 586-604. 2 Rousseau's preoccupation with subjugation and rule in gender relations has not been missed in the secondary literature. For the most extensive treatment, see Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). 3 Some commentators interpret Rousseau to mean these qualities are natural. See, for example, Lynda Lange, 'Rousseau: Women and the General Will,' in Lorenne M.G. Clark and Lynda Lange, eds, The Sexism of Social and Political Theory: Women and Reproduction from Plato to Nietzsche (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 43-4; Martha Lee Osborne, Woman in Western Political Thought (New York: Random House, 1979), 106; and Victor G. Wexler, '"Made for Man's Delight": Rousseau as Antifeminist,' American Historical Review 81 (April 1976), 273. More extensive treatments, however, argue that he regards these qualities not as natural, but as instrumental to the maintenance of domestic life. See Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973), 130-5; and Penny Weiss, 'Rousseau, Antifeminism, and Woman's Nature,' Political Theory 15:1 (February 1987), 81-98. While I concur on the inaccuracy of interpreting these qualities as natural, I focus on the utility Rousseau sees in woman's possessing them as a means to her covert rule. 4 In these passages Rousseau sometimes uses 'des Hommes,' as well as TEspece humaine' and ies individus' (003:131-2). The common literary practice of using 'man' or 'men' to refer to both men and women does not negate his intention to include both men and women in his consideration. As discussed below, he does not essentially differentiate male and female in the natural condition. 5 Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), 55, 61. 6 Ibid., 61. 7 Ibid., 72. 8 Sigmund Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, trans. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton, 1961), 51, 55-6, 62.

204 Notes to pages 58-74 9 Duffy, Rousseau in England, 17. 10 If a sympathetic interpretation of Rousseau as a rebel against the suppression of feminine values has not been attempted, the possibility is at least suggested in scornful reverse by Nietzsche, who despised Rousseau for his effeminacy (W.D. Williams, Nietzsche and the French [Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1952], 149). 11 For a discussion of femininity and the relationship between Reason and Nature in Rousseau, see Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: 'Male' and 'Female'in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984), 58-64, 75-812 Starobinski does not categorize La Nouvelle Helo'ise with the Discourse on Inequality as one of Rousseau's accusatory works, in which he identifies the evils of society (Starobinski, 'Accuser,' 175). On my reading this novel conforms to this category, since it expresses Rousseau's protest against the splitting of masculine and feminine in civilization. 13 Jung, Analytical Psychology, 189. 14 For readings that focus on Julie's misfortune, see Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature, and History, 135-65; and Okin, Women, 167-94. 15 The discrepancy is pointed out byJ.M. Cohen in his English translation of The Confessions (C141). 16 Lange, 'Rousseau,' 48-51; Okin, Women, 180; and Carole Pateman, The Sexual Contract (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 98-101. 17 Even the twentieth-century social contract theorist, John Rawls, did not use gender-neutral language in his first book (John Rawls, A Theory offustice [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971]). His sequel book rectifies this linguistic gender bias (John Rawls, Political Liberalism [New York: Columbia University Press, 1993]). 18 Lange, 'Rousseau,' 49, 51; Okin, Women, 192; and Schwartz, Sexual Politics, 93. 19 Schwartz, Sexual Politics, 41-2. 20 See Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature, and History; and Lucio Colletti, From Rousseau to Lenin: Studies in Ideology and Society (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972). 21 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents. 22 Rousseau's advocacy of working independently of others also distinguishes him from Marx's positive valuation of workers' association. For the contrast see, for example, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, in Robert C. Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd ed. (New York: W.W. Norton, 1978), 99-100. 23 Taylor, Sources, 13, 23, 46, 70, 81, 104, 211, 213, 278; and Arendt, Human Condition, 28, 36-7. 24 Cranston, Noble Savage, 57, 59. 25 Ibid., 65.

Notes to pages 74-87 205 26 Ibid., 60. 27 Arendt, Condition, 28, 33. 28 Allan Bloom's analysis of Emile leads him to the traditional family as the basis of a healthy political order (Bloom, Introduction to Emile [New York: Basic Books, 1979], 22, 24-5, 27, and 'Rousseau on the Equality of the Sexes,' in Frank S. Lucash, ed., Justice and Equality Here and Now [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986], 69, 72, 77, 83, 86). While my interpretation is similar in finding a private foundation for Rousseau's state, my all-inclusive textual and autobiographical analysis leads to the umbrella category of 'intimate society.' Bloom mentions The Confessions along with Emile and La Nouvelle Heloise as novelistic works that depict the private sentiments of democratic men (Bloom, 'Equality of the Sexes,' 72-4). His actual analysis, however, excludes The Confessions, which do not square with the traditional family but do evince an equal attachment to the private sphere. When Bloom attributes to Rousseau an 'essential differentiation of function between man and woman both naturally and socially,' one also feels uneasily that something more should be said about the Discourse on Inequality (ibid., 71). 29 Cranston, Jean-Jacques, 103. 30 Gender-biased language is starkly evident in the title of Arthur Melzer's book, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). The question of women's inclusion in The Social Contract is contentious owing to Rousseau's silence on women in this work. However, Melzer's reference to man's natural goodness illustrates the continued reproduction of the gender-biased language of the eighteenth century, even in regard to the natural condition, where Rousseau clearly makes no gender distinction. Melzer's word choice contrasts with Kelly's use of 'natural human' in Rousseau's Exemplary Life; while Kelly's term does not precisely replicate Rousseau's own language, it is more textually accurate. 4: Autonomy and Extension in Political Relations 1 See, for example, Charles Taylor, 'Atomism,' in Alkis Kontos, ed., Powers, Possessions, and Freedom (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1979), 42, 52. Taylor makes no mention of Rousseau in this piece. 2 Thomas Hobbes, 'Philosophical Rudiments Concerning Government and Society,' in Sir WTilliam Molesworth, ed., The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, vol. 2 (London: John Bohn, 1841), 109. 3 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, ed. C.B. Macpherson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), 189. 4 Ibid., 184.

206 Notes to pages 87-112 5 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 44, 51, 55-6, 58-62. 6 Herbert Marcuse, Negations: Essays in Critical Theory, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968), 138. 7 Hobbes, Leviathan, 190. 8 Benjamin, Bonds, 148. 9 Ibid., 76, 82, 171-2, 184. 10 Ibid., 140, 173. 11 Ibid., 158. 12 Ibid., 173-4. 13 Ibid., 25. 14 Ibid., 49. 15 Ibid., 173. 16 Cranston, Jean-Jacques, 128, 132. 17 Benjamin, Bonds, 29. 18 Ibid., 65. 19 For Gay's discussion of the contemporary predominance of the collectivist interpretation of Rousseau, see his introduction to Cassirer's The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 6-13. 20 Talmon, The Rise of Totalitarian Democracy. 21 Cassirer, Question, 52. 22 Alfred Cobban, Rousseau and the Modem State (London: Archon Books, 1964), 164. 23 Jaeger, Paideia, 1:83. 24 Shklar, Men and Citizens, 5. 25 Hobbes, Leviathan, 388. 26 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1978), see esp. 9. 27 Taylor, Sources, 13-14, 23, 211, 278; and Arendt, Human Condition, 22-78. 28 Rollo May comments that 'the etymological relation between knowing and loving is exceedingly close.' He explains: 'In the ancient Greek and Hebrew languages the verb to know is the same word as that which means "to have sexual intercourse"' (Rollo May, TheDiscovery of Being: Writings in Existential Psychology [New York: W.W. Norton, 1983], 93 [emphasis in original]). Thus, by its etymological roots, the mutual 'knowing' that Rousseau advocates for citizens contains the sense of intimacy. 29 John Charvet, The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 146. 30 Leo Strauss, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953). 254. 31 Ibid., 255.

Notes to pages 119-30

207

5: Idependence and the General Will 1 Hobbes, Leviathan, 185. 2 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, 271. 3 Aristotle, The Politics of Aristotle, trans. Ernest Barker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), 125-6. 4 May, Discovery of Being, 28. 5 The psychiatrist and literary critic Starobinski provides this diagnosis: 'If attention is focused on selected symptoms, documents, and eyewitness accounts, no contemporary psychiatrist will have much doubt about the correct diagnosis: paranoid delusions' (Transparency and Obstuction, 201). To emphasize again the universal significance of personal problems, if Rousseau's paranoia exaggerated his proclivity toward solitude into a feeling of forced isolation, it is still an expression of a lifelong theme of solitariness that imprints itself in various ways upon his writings. As Starobinski comments, 'Disease is just an exaggerated form of existential difficulties with which the mind has been unable to cope' (203). 6 Jung, Spirit, 103. 7 While hope in the Legislator ultimately collapses in Rousseau's political philosophy, reinforcing the self-transformation required for collective self-rule, this does not discount the political significance of this figure. The textual exegesis of Rousseau's philosophy is distinct from the historical reconstruction of its political impact, which may include the self-justificatory seizure of the Legislator's title by political actors. In her book on Rousseau and the French Revolution, Carol Blum describes Saint-Just's appropriation of the role of the great legislator (Carol Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue: The Language of Politics in the French Revolution [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986], 189). 8 Willmoore Kendal, 'Introduction: How to Read Rousseau's Government of Poland,' GPx-xi. 9 Charles E. Butterworth translates amour-propre as 'self-love' in The Reveries. Since the term 'self-love' could easily be confused with amour de soi, I therefore follow the more common practice of retaining Rousseau's original French term amour-propre in all references and quotations. 10 See, for example, Cantor, Creature and Creator, 18; and Lillian R. Furst, Romanticism (London: Methuen, 1969), 12. 11 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, see, for example, 36, 56, 141, 143, 273. 6: Compassion, Innocence, and the State 1StarobinskiaddressesRousseau'spreoccupationwithiencyandObstruction,andMelzeranalyseshisprincipleofgoodnessinTheNatu-nnocenceinTranspar-

208

Notes to pages 130-45

ency and Obstruction, and Melzer analyses his principle of goodness in The Natural Goodness of Man. Neither commentator explores the tension in Rousseau's writings between compassion and innocence or goodness. Starobinski does not address the compassionate instinct, and Melzer simply incorporates compassion as part of natural goodness without considering their different implicaoitns(MezleN r, autraG l oodness2,2MyporrtayaolcfonsceinceniEmelisidrawnprm i arylirfomhteP ' roefssoino1f60). 2 Christopher de Beaumont, 'The Mandate of the Archbishop of Paris Condemning the New Treatise on Education, entitled Emilius, byJ.J. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva,' in The Miscellaneous Works ofMr.J.J. Rousseau, vol. 3 (New York: B. Franklin, 1972), 213. 3 Hobbes, Leviathan, 185. 4 Friedrich Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ, in Twilight of the Idols and The Anti-Christ, trans. RJ. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1968), 129 (emphasis in original). 5 The contrast between Buddhism and Christianity, as pointed out by Nietzsche, is helpful to the task at hand of disentangling the two themes in Rousseau of innocence and evil on the one hand, and compassion and suffering on the other. A perfect alignment between Rousseau and Buddhism, however, is not suggested. As one major difference, Buddhism is solely occupied with a universal, unintimate compassion that does not discriminate between different others. As discussed below, Rousseau has his own idea of an instinctually based, universal compassion, but in respect to civilized humanity he moves very quickly to his main theoretical preoccupation with intimate forms of love in both their private and political versions. 6 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 58. 7 Hobbes, Leviathan, 189. 8 Nietzsche, Anti-Christ, 130. 9 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 56—7. 10 Michael Waher, Just and Unjust Wars (New York: Basic Books, 1977), 113. 11 This point is reinforced by F.M. Barnard's comparison of Rousseau with Herder: as one might expect from Rousseau's equation of state legitimacy with participatory self-rule, it is Herder who emphasizes the legitimizing significance of'cultural' or 'ethnic' nationalism (F.M. Barnard, Self-Direction and Political Legitimacy: Rousseau and Herder [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988], 17,290,306,314). 12 See, for example, Ian Clark's chapter 'Rousseau and the Tradition of Despair,' in his The Hierarchy of States: Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 67-89. 13 Stanley Hoffman, The State of War: Essays on the Theory and Practice of International Relations (New York: Praeger, 1965), 80.

Notes to pages 148-52

209

14 Rousseau certainly engaged himself in his own and future worlds through his writings. But of his 'morality of abstinence' it is appropriate to invoke Jung's rebuke of those who avoid guilt through disengagement from life: 'The guilty man is eminently suitable and is therefore chosen to become the vessel for the continuing incarnation, not the guiltless one who holds aloof from the world and refuses to pay his tribute to life, for in him the dark God would find no room' (C.G.Jung, Answer to Job, in Joseph Campbell, ed., The Portable Jung, [New York: Penguin Books, 1971], 638). 15 Merleau-Ponty, Sense and Non-Sense, 37-8. 16 Jung, Psychological Reflections, 225. 17 It is significant that Rousseau's psychopathology emerges as paranoia. Here we see the continuity between Rousseau and modernity, for paranoid delusions are an exaggeration of modern narcissism, a preoccupation with the self. In paranoia this self-focus is inflated into the sense that everyone else's interest is also engaged with oneself, though in a hostile way. Thus, Rousseau perceives a universal plot against him whose conspirators include every European. 18 Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, in On the Genealogy of Morals and Ecce Homo, trans. Walter Kaufman (New York: Vintage Books, 1969), 84. 19 Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 70-80. 20 Ibid., 75. 21 Ibid., 81. 22 My portrayal of conscience in Emile is drawn primarily from the 'Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,' for it contains Rousseau's most extensive philosophical treatment of conscience. Melzer objects to the 'Profession of Faith' as being inconsistent with other writings of Rousseau. Significant for my present discussion is Melzer's objection that 'the vicar is a stark psychological dualist, seeing man as a compound being composed not only of a bodily element but also of a spiritual element' (Melzer, Natural Goodness, 30). As part of this psychological dualism, Melzer interprets Rousseau's reference to conscience as a 'divine instinct' to mean that conscience is a disembodied faculty (£290). There is a biblical allusion to Genesis in this passage: by eating the forbidden fruit, the serpent tells Eve she 'will be like God, knowing good and evil' (Gen. 3). By parallel, Rousseau calls conscience an 'infallible judge of good and bad which makes man like unto God' (£290). However, conscience still is not established in the 'Profession of Faith' as a spiritual or disembodied faculty: Rousseau presents the pronouncements of conscience as natural sentiments. And consistent with the Discourse on Inequality, he insists on the anteriority of our sensibility to our intelligence for 'we had sentiments before ideas' (£290). 23 Taylor also notes Rousseau's conversion of compassion and amour de soi into

210

Notes to pages 152-70

conscience: 'But to the extent that human beings become social and rational in an undistorted way, both pity and self-love are transmuted into conscience, and this, far from being a harsh voice of duty opposed to feeling, ideally speaks to their hearts and moves them to benevolence' (Taylor, Sources, 411). Taylor, though noting this transmutation, does not question the consistency of these instincts with conscience. 24 Jung, Spirit, 102. 25 Ibid., 78. 26 Nietzsche, Anti-Christ, 129. 27 Nietzsche, Zarathustra, 201. 28 Nietzsche, Genealogy, 81. 29 My analysis questions Rousseau's conversion of conscience from instinct, but his praise of conscience as a certain moral guide also can be confronted by the Freudian understanding of conscience as the internalized voice of external authority (Freud, Civilization and Its Discontents, 72). Rousseau insists in Emile that conscience is not the work of societal prejudice (£267, 291). While this is the pronouncement of his philosophical writing, La Nouvelle Heloise belies it: that novel reveals a continuing confusion between the voice of nature and the guilt that Julie experiences in contravening the parental injunction against her love for Saint-Preux and her premarital liaison with him. For an extensive discussion of this issue, see 'Julie and the Pathology of Conscience,' in Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature, and History, 135-65. 30 Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy, 189-90. 7: Private and Public Realms 1 Melzer, Natural Goodness, 90; see also Cantor, Creature and Creator, 15. 2 Kelly, Exemplary Life, 30-1, 175, 250-1. 3 Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, see esp. 18-20, 36-44, 121, 183, 204, 211, 264, 275-7, 279-80, 291, 303, 322, 352, 359, 375. 4 'Letter from Rousseau to M. de Malesherbes, January 4, 1762.' 5 Aristotle, Ethics: The Nichomachean Ethics, revised ed., trans. J.A.K. Thomson (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), 258, 278. 6 Ibid., 297. 7 Ibid., 273, 281. 8 Ibid., 259, 267. 9 Ibid., 300; see also 267, 293, 295, 300-2, 306. 10 Ibid., 306. 11 Ibid., 294. 12 Ibid., 294, 302-3, 306.

Notes to pages 170-7 211 13 Ibid., 258-9, 308. 14 Ibid., 297-8.

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39

40 41 42 43

Aristotle, Politics, 292; see also 290. Ibid., 2, 5, 6. Ibid., 4. Ibid., 4, 42. Ibid., 5. Ibid., 2. Ethics, 64. Politics, 4, 42. Ethics, 303. Politics, 3; Et/w«, 380. Politics, 12-13, 35Ethics, 261-6, 269-70, 276-7, 280. Politics, 42, 93- 95Ethics, 277-8. Politics, 3, 11-15, 32-5, 107-9. Starobinski, Transparency and Obstruction, 85, 96, 99. Aristotle, Ethics, 64. Politics, 305. For a discussion of Aristotle's theory of private and public property, see Martha Nussbaum, 'Aristotelian Social Democracy,' in R. Bruce Douglas, Gerald M. Mara, and Henry S. Richardson, eds, Liberalism and the Good (New York: Routledge, 1990). Arendt, Human Condition, 24, 26-8, 37. Ibid., 27. Ibid., 26-31, 34, 36-7, 45, 119. Ibid., 29-34, 36-7, 59, 64-6, 70, 72; and Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future, enlarged ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1954), 148. Human Condition, 38; Hannah Arendt, 'Public Rights and Private Interests,' in Michael Mooney and Florian Stuber, eds, Small Comforts for Hard Times: Humanists on Public Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), 107; and Hannah Arendt, 'History and Immortality,' Partisan Review 24 (1957), 18. Human Condition, 58, 71. Hannah Arendt, On Revolution (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1963), 96; Arendt, Between Past and Future, 186-8; and Arendt, 'Public Rights and Private Interests,' 106. Human Condition, 50-1, 199. Between Past and Future, 217. Human Condition, 38, 48-9, 58, 60. On Revolution, 103; see also Between Past and Future, 154.

212 Notes to pages 177-82 44 Human Condition, 207; and Between Past and Future, 154. 45 Human Condition, 41, 194. 46 On Revolution, 103. 47 Human Condition, 41-2, 73, 85, 194, 197, 206; and 'History and Immortality,' 18-19. 48 Human Condition, 41, 43, 186, 192, 194, 197; Between Past and Future, 223; and Hannah Arendt, Men in Dark Times (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1955), viii. 49 On Revolution, 127, 132-3, 135. 50 Human Condition, 38, 39, 50; On Revolution, 88; and 'Public Rights and Private Interests,' 106. 51 'Public Rights and Private Interests,' 108 (emphasis in original); see also Human Condition, 50. 52 Human Condition, 194. 53 Plato, Republic, trans. G.M.A. Grube (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1992), 213-20. 54 Aristotle, Ethics, 68, 154. 55 Ibid., 64, 154-6; and Politics, 2. 56 Arendt, Men in Dark Times, 25; and Human Condition, 243. 57 Men in Dark Times, 24. 58 Ibid., 12. 59 Ibid., 12; and On Revolution, 110-11, 124. 60 For alternative interpretations of Rousseau and the French Revolution, see Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy; and Blum, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue. 61 Men in Dark Times, 12. 62 Arendt, Human Condition, 29, 37, 68; and Between Past and Future, 155. For an analysis of Arendt's exclusion of economic issues from the public realm, see Hanna Fenichel Pitkin, 'Justice: On Relating Private and Public,' Political Theory 9:3 (1981), 327-52. 63 Men in Dark Times, 14. 64 Sheldon Wolin, 'Hannah Arendt: Democracy and the Political,' in Lewis Hinchman and Sandra K. Hinchman, eds., Hannah Arendt: Critical Essays, (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994), 289-90. 65 Ibid., 290, 29366 Arendt, On Revolution, 156; also see 77. 67 Ibid., 78-9. 68 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Basic Books, 1968); and Rawls, Theory of Justice. 69 Taylor, 'Atomism,' in Powers, Possessions, and Freedom; Charles Taylor, 'CrossPurposes: The Liberal-Communitarian Debate,' in Nancy L. Rosenblum,

Notes to pages 182-6

213

ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); and Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 376-88. 70 Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 172, 174-5, 179. 71 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 11. 72 Ibid., 12. 73 Sandel, Liberalism, 179. 74 Judith N. Shklar, 'The Liberalism of Fear,' in Nancy L. Rosenblum, ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 21. 75 Ibid., 21, 27-30. 76 Ibid., 35. 77 Taylor, 'Cross-Purposes,' 177. 78 Ibid., 160, 164-5. 79 Ibid., 165, 178-9. 80 Ibid., 165, 169-71, 176. 81 Ibid., 166-70, 172. 82 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 61, 222-4. 83 Ibid., 227. 84 Ibid., 228. 85 Taylor, 'Cross-Purposes,' 166. 86 Arendt, On Revolution, 140. In this passage Arendt quotes Mill's On Liberty. 87 Machiavelli is a predecessor who sets great store upon liberty and trenchantly warns of the danger of despotism. Significantly, Rousseau commends The Prince as the book of republicans, and Machiavelli is the only theorist he unreservedly praises in The Social Contract (sees for example, SC 244-5). Alluding to the need Machiavelli sees for the people to be alert and active in preserving their liberty, Rousseau approves that' [h]e professed to teach kings; but it was the people he really taught' (SC244). 88 Rawls, Theory of Justice, 228. 89 Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 121-2, 131.

90 Ibid., 132-3. 91 Ibid., 162-4. 92 Ibid., 163. 93 Ibid., 164. 94 Ronald Beiner, What's the Matter with Liberalism"? (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 28-9; and Nancy L. Rosenblum, 'Pluralism and SelfDefense,' in Nancy L. Rosenblum, ed., Liberalism and the Moral Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), 215-16. Whatever the lack of evaluative standards for community allegiance in some communitarian theories,

214 Notes to pages 186-90 Taylor's advocacy of republicanism suggests that communitarianism can be conjoined with political idealism ('Cross-Purposes'). 95 Taylor, Hegel, 376. 96 Ibid., 378, 387. 97 Whether liberals base their theories on concrete or universal ethics can be controversial. Countering Rawls's communitarian critics, for instance, Richard Rorty argues that Rawls's theory of justice is historicist and antiuniversalist (Richard Rorty, 'The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy,' in Merrill D. Peterson and Robert C. Vaughan, eds, The Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom: Its Evolution and Consequences in American History [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988], 262, 264-7). 98 Sandel discusses the concept of the thickly constituted self and its incompatibility with liberalism in Liberalism, see esp. 178-82. 99 Seyla Benhabib, The Generalized Other and the Concrete Other,' in Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell, eds, Feminism as Critique (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 86. 100 Ibid., 87. 101 Ibid., 92. 102 Alison M. Jaggar, Feminist Politics and Human Nature (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983), 254. 103 Ibid., 254-5. In drawing upon women's experience in intimate relations as a model for the political, radical feminists do not, of course, have in mind their experience of domination by men, but are rather inspired by women's relations with their children and other women. In challenging the distinction between private and public another important aspect for radical feminists is that 'sexual politics, the systematic male domination of women and women's resistance to this domination, occurs in the so-called private as much as in the so-called public sphere' (255). 104 Ibid., 254. 105 Ibid., 253. 106 Peter Berger, 'On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honour,' in MichaelJ. Sandel, ed., Liberalism and Its Critics (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 153-7 (originally published in European Journal oj'Sociology 6 [1970], 339-47)107 Berger, 'Obsolescence,' 154-6; and Taylor, Sources, 177-8, 182, 184, 288-9, 362. 108 For a discussion of nature and Romanticism, see Taylor, Sources, 39, 101, 380, 384, 427, 456, 495109 Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), xiii-xv, 120, 125, 198.

Notes to pages 191-2 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118

215

Ibid., xiii, 6, 74, 189, 192. Ibid., xv, 73-4, 84, 87, 189, 196. Ibid., xiv, 84, 85. Ibid., xv. Ibid., 85, 92-4. Ibid., xvi, 93 (emphasis in original). Ibid., xvi, 192. Ibid., 85, 88, 189, 192. Rorty judges the public to be indifferent to shifts of philosophical opinion from metaphysics to irony, but later on denies the feasibility of a culture that socializes its youth through an ironist public rhetoric (ibid., 85-7). 119 Ibid., 73.

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Index

absorption, personal and political. See union Abstract of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace (Rousseau), 140-1, 144

amour-propre: and compassion, 11, 133, 135, 160; diminishment of, 19, 113-14, 124, 126-9, 134. 146, 160; as economic ambition, 88; and independence, 11, 19,90, 113, 119, 123-5, 127-8; and reason, 11, i l l , 170; and romantic love, 71, 89; in Rousseau, 128, 149; and selfconstriction, 11, l ll; and social relations, 11, 19, 113, 123-4, 126-9; and state, 11, 89, 106, HO, 113, 123. 125, 146, 160, 179; in tribal society, 71-2, 89, 127 arnour de soi: and civilized humanity, 5, 89, 124; and compassion, 133, 135, 170, 209-101123; and conscience, 152, 155, 159, 2O9-ion23; and independence, 86, 127-8; and liberty, 91; and self-extension, ll, 86, 106, i l l , 136-7, 155, 159, 169; and state, 10-11, 65, 85-6,90-1,93, 105-6, no, 123, 136, 143, 160, 166, 184, 189; and

state of nature, 5, 10-11, 87, 134. See also instinct Arendt, Hannah: on agonal politics, 163, 175, 177-81; on private and public realms, 8, 19, 162-3, 175-8, 180-2; on Rousseau, 3, 162-3, '75. 179-81 Aristotle, 120; on civic friendship, 162, 168-70, 172, 175; on inequality, 9-10, 19, 54, 162, 172-4; on private and public realms, 19, 70, 162, 170-2; on women, 172-3 arts, 75—6 asociality, 71, 86-7, 167, 171, 187 atomism. See liberalism. Augustine, Saint, ig6nl2 authenticity: and autobiography, 18, 20-9, 32, 46, 56, 74, 178, 2Oln6o; and intimacy, 8, 1O, 24, 26, 83, 166, 168, 178, 182; in modern self, 7, 8, 10, 20-1, 169; and societal critique, 7-8, 22-4, 49. 166, 168, I9?n4; in state, 19, 113, 123, 128-9, 163, 165, 178; and women, 46-50, 52, 55, 82-3 author and philosophy: and authenticity, 8, 22; commentary on Rousseau, 3> 39-41> 45~G> 119; and primordial

228

Index

model, 7,40,160,165-6,190. See also psychoanalysis, and philosophy autobiography, ig6ni2; and authenticity, 18, 20-9, 32, 46, 56, 74, 178, 2Oln6o; and philosophy, 3, 10, 13-14, 39-41, 46, 93-4, 164, I99n44, 2Oin6o; and psychoanalysis, 5, 14-15, 21-2, 28, 46, 20ln6o; and selfcreation, 5-6, 2O-1, 23, 29-32, 46, 163-5, 189-90; and self-knowledge, 5, 10, 18, 21-2, 27-36, 46, 150. See also The Confessions, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues autonomy. See independence Benhabib, Seyla, 188 Benjamin, Jessica: on independence and union, 94-6, 99; on masochism,

55-7

Berger, Peter, 189 Berlin, Isaiah, 185-6 Berman, Marshall, 23, 197n4 Beyond Good and Evil (Nietzsche), 21,

45 Bible, 132, 2Ogn22. See also Christianity biography, 28-9, 74 Blake, William, 47 Bloom, Allan, 2O5n28 Blum, Carol, 2O?n7 The Book of Urizen (Blake), 47 Buddhism, 133-4, 2o8n5 Cassirer, Ernst, 40-1, 102 Charvet,John, 109-10 children of Rousseau, 25, 62, 115; and guilt, 35, 149-50, 152-5 Christianity, 131-3, 142, 148, 2ogn22 Citizen of Geneva: Selections from the

Letters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Rousseau), 23, 36-8, 165 civic attachment. See patriotism civil war, 13-14, 138, 145, 180-1. See also French Revolution class. See economics classical antiquity: and inequality, g; and liberty, 94, 104-5, 122; patriotism in, g, 85, 94, 102-4, 106, 141-2; and private and public realms, 8-9, 70, 75, 103-5, 107, 142, 163, 175-8, 180, 182, 186-7; and self-knowledge, 5-6; and virtue, 7, 189; women in, 53-4, 103-4. See also Aristotle; Plato; Socrates Cobban, Alfred, 102 communitarianism: on civic identity, 19-20, 163, 177, 182-3, 186-7, 189; and community standards, 186, 2l3~14ng4; and liberalism, 163, 182-3, 186, 189, 2l4ng7; and private and public realms, 188 compassion, 191-2, 2o8nnl, 5; and amour-propre, ll, 133, 135, 160; and amour desoi, 133, 135, 209lon23; and conscience, 151-2, 155, 2O9-ion23; and femininity, 48, 59-61, 94; and intimacy, 130, 137-8; and reason, 48, 59-61, 133, 135-6, 153> 174; repression of, 5, 59-61, 135-7, 153, 174; and self-extension, 137; and state, 11, 16, 19,130, 136-9, 141-4,156,160, 163,165,180-1,184; in state of nature, 5, ll, 59-60, 86, 130, 133-5, 137; in tribal society, 137. See also instinct The Confessions (Rousseau), ig6n!2; on authenticity, 22-7, 32, 49, 56, 2Oln6o; on children, 35, 62, 152-4; on civil war, 138; on depth psychol-

Index ogy, 34-5; on Emilf, 153-4; on economic class, 66-7; on father, 61-2; on Geneva, 138; and guilt, 35, 150; on Houdelot, Mme d', 73-5, 8l; on independence, 38, 95, 113—19; on innocence, 149; on intimacy, 9, 72-5, 78-82, 97-9, 108, 2O5n28; on La Nouvellf Heloise, 73, 76, 101; on Letter to M. d 'Alembert oil the Theatre, 75; on Le Vasseur, Therese, 35, 57, 8()-2, 98-100, 115-17, 153; on morality, 147; on mother, 61-2; on persecution, 150; on personal reform, 38, 51,95, 115, 117-18; and philosophy, 39; on primordial vision, 30, §6—7, 198-91137; on romantic love, 73-6, l-2, 172; and self-creation, 5-6, 23, 30-1; and self-knowledge, 31-3; on sexuality, 57, 67-8, 72-4, 78-81, 97-8, 149; on solitude, 98; on state, 144; and union, 16, 96-102, 108; on uniqueness, 6, 190; on war, international, 142; on Warens, Mine de, 57, 73. 77-8o, 96-8, 114-15, 142, 149; on women, l(i, 51-2, 56, 108 (Mnfessions (Saint Augustine), 1961112 conscience: and amour de soi, 152, 155, 159, 209—101123; and compassion, 151-2, 155, 209-101123; and guilt, 131, 151-2, 2101129; and instinct, 151-2, 155, 157, 2091122, 2101129; as moral guide, 19, 131, 152, 155-6, l(x); and women, 66 Contingency, Ironf, and Solidarity (Rorty). l()() Cranston, Maurice, 26, 28-9, 74, 98 ('rocker, Lester G., 40 Darnton, Robert, 40-1 death penalty, 156-7

22Q

democracy: primary, 9-10, 104; representative, 184. See aim social contract; state depth psychology in Rousseau, I99n44; and individual repression, 5, 21, 33-5; and primordial residue, 4-5, 33-4, 37, 87, 114, 151. See also hidden inner depth; psychoanalysis; unconscious Diderot, Denis, 36, 99, ig8n2l A Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (Rousseau), 54; on amour-propre, 89; on arts, 75; on authenticity, 7, 22, 49, 52, 123, 166; and primordial vision, 37; on women, 173 A Discour.se on the Origin of Inequality, 2OOn58, 2CX)n22; on amour-propre, 71-2,88-90, 119, 123, 126-7, 133, 135; on amour de soi, 5, 86, 134-5, 137; on asociality, 86, 171, 184; on authenticity, 22, 52; and children of Rousseau, 153; on civil war, 13; on compassion, 5, 59-60, 86, 133-7, 151; on de facto states, 16, 88-90, 107-8, 146; and Discourse, on Political Economy, 138; on equality, 54, 66— 7, 88-9; on father of Rousseau, 61; on Hobbes, 87, 132-3; on independence, 88-90, 123; on instinct, 37, 90, 131; on international relations, 140-1, 143; on intimacy, 12, 48, 71-2, 77, 107, 167; on labour, 69, 90; and Legislator, 122; on liberty, 48, 51, 65, 89, 104; on male and female (natural), 48, 64-5, 71, 83-4, 203114, 2051128; and masculine and feminine, 18, 48, 58-9, 6l-2, 65; on natural goodness, 131-5; on patriotism, 125, 143; on political intimacy, 108-9, 125; and primordial vision,

230 Index 37-8; on reason, 59-60, 133, 135-6; on romantic love, 53, 58, 71, 89, 127; on self-knowledge, 4, 33; on sexuality, 53, 58, 71, 86, 127; and The Social Contract, 15, 63-4, 83, 145; on state of war, 88-9, 137; on tribal society, 71-2, 88-9, 127, 167; on women (civilized), 53 Discourse on Political Economy, 63, 69, 138 economics: class, 66-9, 137, 140, 146; distributivejustice, 67, 107, 146, 174, 180-1; independence, 66,69-70, 72, 88, 2O4n22; inequality, 72, 88-9, 135, 174 education: and amour-propre, 125, 134; and independence, 94-6, 103, 123; and psychological transformation, 14; and self-extension, 110, 141; and state, 174-5; and virtue, 159; of women, 48-9, 52, 82, 125, 173 Emile (character), 14, 174; and independence, 95-6; and intimacy, 70, 103-4; and Sophie, 48, 70, 96 Emile (Rousseau): on amour-propre, 123-5, 134; on amour de soi, 136, 141; on authenticity, 49-50, 52, 82, 178; on children of Rousseau, 153; on classical antiquity, 103, 141-2; on conscience, 66, 151-2, 155-7, 160, 2ogn22, 2lOn29; on education, 14, 48-9, 52, 82,94-6,103,110,123,125, 141. 159, 173; on independence, 49-50, 53, 70, 94-6, 103, 123-4; on intimacy, 8, 70, 72, 76, 82, 103-4, 178; Letter to the Archbishop of Paris on, 128, 132; on natural goodness, 132; on occupations, 69, 174; and primordial vision, 37; on romantic

love, 96, 101, 172; on self-extension, no, 136, 141, 160; on sexuality, 52, 67, 149; on solitude, 95-6, 103, 123-4; on state, 66, 70, 76, 103-4, no, 141-2, 172, 205n28; on state of nature, 95-6, 103; on suffering, 134; on virtue, 157-60; on women, 15,18, 47-55, 58-9, 61-8, 76-7, 82-3, 96, 160, 173 Enlightenment, 191 equality: economic, 66-9, 72, 88, 135, 174, 180; intimate, 18, 48, 82-3, 162, 166, 172-3; natural, 54, 65, 92, 186; political, 9, 15, 54-5, 72, 91-2, 135, 162, 169, 173-6, 180, 182-3, 189, 200n58 existentialism, 34 An Expostulatory Letter to the Archbishop of Paris from JJ. Rousseau, Citizen of Geneva to Christopher de Beaumont, Archbishop of Paris (Rousseau), 69, 128, 132, 152 father of Rousseau, 56, 61-2 feminine. See masculine and feminine feminism: on private and public realms, 2O, 163, 188, 214nlO3; on Rousseau, 15, 47, 64, 68-70, 83-4 Foucault, Michel, 6 friendship: civic, 162, 168-73, !75,180; private, 162, 168-70, 172 France, 144 freedom. See liberty French Revolution, 180. See also civil war Freud, Sigmund, 34, 69, 137, iggn44; on conscience, 151, 2lOn2g; on repression, 58, 87, 135, 151 Frye, Northrop, 45 Furbank, P.N., 26

Index 231 Gay, Peter, 39-40 general will, 146, 169, 2OOn58; and conscience, 155—6; and democracy, 76, 122; and independence, 18-19, 92, 112-13, 120-1, 123, 125, 127-9, 165; and individualism, 181; and instinct, 9-11, no; and political intimacy, no, 141-2; rectitude of, 16; and self-extension, 11,93, m-12, 138, 147, 185; and solitude, 113, 119-20, 122, 128-9; and women, 65-6 Geneva, 53, 6l, 138, 145 good and evil, 131; and civilized humanity, 132; and compassion, 16, 19, 130, 133-4; and innocence and guilt, 16-17, 19, 131, 148; and international relations, 16, 19, 130, 13940, 145, 156. See also conscience; guilt; innocence; morality; natural goodness Goton, Mile, 56 Government of Poland (Rousseau), 113,

124-5 guilt, 2Ogni4; and children 35, 149-50, 152—5; and conscience, 131, 15°—2, 155, 21On2g; and innocence, 16, 19, 131, 148, 150, 152-3, 155; and mother's death, 56, 148, 150; and sexuality, 68, 149 Gusdorf, Georges, 28-9 Hartle, Ann, 23, ig6nl2, 2OO-in6o Hegel, G.W.F, 186-7 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 2o8nll hidden inner depth: and autobiography, 5, 14-15, 18, 21-2, 46, 2Oin6o; in modern self, 4-5, 10, 21, 2Oln6o. See, also depth psychology; psychoanalysis; unconscious

Hobbes, Thomas, 5; and liberalism, 86, 92, 106, 137, 184; on pride, 87, H9» 133; °n social contract, 9, 86, 89, 92, 137, 168; on state of nature, 4-5, 86-7, 132-5, 168 Horowitz, Asher, I99n44 Houdetot, Mme d', 73-5, 81 independence, 93; and amour-propre, 11, 19, 90, 113, 123-5, 127-8; and amour de soi, 86, 127-8; and economics, 66, 69-70, 72, 88, 2O4n22; and education, 94-6, 103, 123; and general will, 18-19, 92, 112-13, 120-1, 123, 125, 127-9, 165; and liberalism, 16, 18, 85, 90, 105, 182-3, 187-9, 192; and liberty, 87-8, 92, 105; and morality, 147; psychoanalysis of, 16, 18, 93-6, 100, 102-3; in Rousseau's life, 18, 38, 95, 113-20; and state, 16, 64, 70, 89, 92, 140-1, 145, 163, 166, 182-3, !89; in state of nature, 15-16, 18, 38, 59, 85-8, 94-6, 102-3, i°5, 1IQ, 112, 114, 123, 163, 166, 171, 183, 187; in tribal society, 88; and women, 49-50, 54, 59-96 individualism: and atomism, 86-7, 192; and independence, 85, 87, 90, 92, 94, 1O2, 171, 189; and personal individuality, 29, 174-5, 177, 181, 191; and self-care, 16, 85-7, 90-1, 93, 105-6, 136-7, 189, 192; and social contract, 90-3, 105. See also uniqueness inequality. See equality initiates, 148, 158-9 innocence, 131, 207-8ni, 2o8n5; and death penalty, 156-7; and international relations, 16-17, 139-4°, *45;

232 Index personal need for, 16, 19, 131, 148-50, 152-3,155, 159-60,165; and state of nature, 134-5 instinct, 164; and conscience, 151-2, 155, 157, 2ogn22, 2ion29; and general will, 9-11, llO; repression of, 5, 10-12, 18, 37, 85, 87, 90, 135-6, 159, 165; retrieval of, 7, 1O, 13, 18-19, 39, 160, 162, 165-6; and self-creation, 2O, 163, 189-91; and self-knowledge, 4, 6; and state, 1O, 13, 18-19, 39, 112, 174> 179. 19O, 192; and virtue, 131, 135-6, 158-60, 170. See also amour de soi; compassion international relations: and compassion, 16, 19, 141-2, 144, 156; international state of nature, 16, 139-41; and moral ambiguity, 16-17, 130, 140-1, 145; and war, 66, 76, 130, 139-45, 156 intimacy, 161, 164, 2o8n5; and authenticity, 8, 10, 24, 26, 166, 168, 178, 182; and compassion, 130, 137-8; and happiness, 12, 20, 48, 70-3, 75-6, 78-82, 84, 98, 107-8, 112, 163, 167-8, 174, 178; in menage a trois, 725, 97; and modern self, 8-9, 162-3, 178; and self-extension, 12, 138; and state, 12-13, 15, 18-20, 48, 66, 75-7, 84-5, 105-10, 112, 120, 130, 137-8,141,147,160,162-3,168,172, 174-5, 178-82, 185-9, 192, 2O5n28, 2o6n28, 2i4niO3; in tribal society, 71-2, 137, 167; and union, 99, 101; valuation of, 8-9, 13, 48, 70-1, 75, 93, 171, 178, 192; and women, 15, 18, 48, 56, 76-84, 98-9, 108, 173, 188, 2l4nlO3 inwardness: and amour de sot, 127; and general will, 65, 156; and instinct,

165; in modern self, 9-10, 26; and autobiography, 27 Jaeger, Werner, 5 Jaggar, Alison, 188 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction (Starobinski), 40, 42, 207-8nl Julie (character), 60-1, 73, 1OO-1 Jung, 39, 41, 122; on creativity, 37, 154; on guilt, 2Ogni4; on projection, 35, 149; and psychoanalytical method, 42-3, 2O2n67; on unconscious 34-7, 43, 60, 154 Kant, Immanuel, 87, 20ln63 Kelly, Christopher, 23, 45, 164, 200in6o, 2O5n3O labour, 69-70, 90 Lambercier, Mile, 55-6, 72 Legislator: and democracy, 113, 121-2; and psychological transformation, 14, 121, 187, 2O7n? Letter to M. d'Alembert on the Theatre (Rousseau): on arts, 75-6; on depth psychology, 34; on equality, 69; on public opinion, 121; on women,

53-4 Letters Written from the Mountains, 104 Le Vasseur, Therese, 35; and independence, 115-16; and intimacy, 70, 8o-2, 98-9, 117; and sexual relations, 57, 74, 80-1, 98-9; and union, 96, 98-100 liberalism, 214ng7; atomism of, 20, 86, 90, 182-3, 187, 192; and civic attachment, 143, 163, 174, 182-9, 192; and civic participation, 90, 183-6; and economic justice, 181; and equality,

Index233 92, 183; and independence, 16, 18, 85, go, 105, 182-3, 187-9, 192; and liberty, 106, 163, 183-6, 191; and postmodernism, 190-2; and private and public realms, separation of, 20, 163, 182, 187-8, 190, 192; and protection of private, 16, 19-20, 76, 86-7,93. ^fr-V, 163,171,182-3,185, 191; and Romantic individuality, 20, 177, 191; and valuation of private, 19-20, 163, 171, 182, 185, 187. See afeoHobbes; Locke; Mill liberty: and modern self, 9-10, 21; natural liberty, 9-10, 51, 63-5, 69, 87-91,93, 106, 113, 141, 144, 173, 184, 186, 189; political liberty, 9-10, 13-14, 65, 85, 89, 91-4, 104-7, 122, 138, 163, 175, 177, 183-6, 2131187; .of women, 47-52, 54-5, 58, 65. See also independence literary criticism, 6, 27-9, 45, 2OO-ln6o The Living Eye (Starobinski), 42 Locke, John, 4, 137, 168, 183-4 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 2l3n87 Mandeville, Bernard, 135-6 Marcuse, Herbert, 87-8 Marx, Karl, 6g, 2041122 masculine and feminine: and independence and union, 94, 96; original unity of, 18, 48, 59-60,62, 65,83; and paternal and maternal, 61-3, 68, 96; psychoanalysis of, 15, 18, 46-8, 55-63, 66-8, 77, 82-4, 173; and reason and compassion, 59-60, 94, 204nl2 masochism. See sexuality Masters, Roger D., 39 maternal. See masculine and feminine May, Rollo, 2o6n28

Melzer, Arthur, 164, 2051130, 2O7-8ni, 2091122 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 42-4, 148 Mill, John Stuart, 20, 46, 106 Miller, James, 159 modern self, 3-4, 23, ig6nl2; authenticity in, 7-8, 10, 2O-1, 169; hidden inner depth in, 4-5, 1O, 21, 2Oin(k>; and intimacy, 8-9, 162-3, J 7 X ; inwardness in, 9-10, 26; liberty of, 9-10, 21; and romantic love, 100; self-creation in, 5-6, 10, 21, 23, 29-32, 163-4, 189-90; uniqueness in, 6-7, 10, 177,189-90; and women, 18, 47-52 The Modem Self in Rousseau's 'Confessions' (Hartle), 23, 2OOn6o morality: moral ambiguity, 16-17, 130, 134-5, 139-41, 145, H7-8, 156, 160, 165; moral obligation, 169, 186-7; moral solitude, 16, 19, 130-1, 145, 147-8, 160, 165, 2Ogni4. See also amour-propre', amour de soi\ compassion; good and evil; guilt; innocence; instinct; virtue mother of Rousseau, 56, 6l-2, 95-6, 148,150 Narcissus (Rousseau), 8 natural goodness: and Christianity, 131-2, 134, 148; and compassion, 16, 130, 133-5, 2O8ni; and Hobbes, 132-3; and primordial vision, 37 natural humanity. See state of nature natural law, 132, 135, 140, 168 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 5, 36, 136, 192; on author and philosophy, 21, 45-6; Beyond Good and Evil, 21, 45; on conscience, 151, 155; on good and evil,

234 Index 133, 155, 208115; on Rousseau, 46, 2041110 La Nouvelle Heloise, I99n44, 2lon29; on compassion, 48, 59—61; on intimacy, 72-3; on Julie's death, 60-2; and masculine and feminine, 18, 48, 59-62, 83, 2O4ni2; on romantic love, 100-1, 172; and state, 197n4, 2OOn58, 2O5n28; on union, 100-1; on women, 51 opinion, public, 113-14, 120-2, 125 original sin, 131-2, 148 On the Origin of Language (Rousseau), 108 paranoia, 121, 2O7n5, 2ogni7. See also persecution of Rousseau Pascal, Roy, 26-8 paternal. See masculine and feminine patriotism: and civic identity, 20, 184-7, 189; and civic affection, 125, 143,168,185; in classical antiquity, 9, 85, 94, 102-4, 106, 141-2; and compassion, 142, 144, 156, 185; and general will, 12O; and instinct, 190, 192; and international relations, 141; in modernity, 103-4, 106; and selfextension, ll, 16, 18, 105, 112, 137, 139; and union, 16, 85, 124-5, 130, 137, 139. See also intimacy, and state perfectibility, 59 persecution of Rousseau, 27, 149-51, 2Ogni7. See also paranoia personal reform, 28, 38, 51, 95, 115-17. See also psychological transformation Plato, 62, 12O, 122, 189; on inequality 9, 10; on self-knowledge 4, 6-7; on women 76, 173

The Politics of Authenticity (Berman), 23 postmodernism, 163, 190-2, 2l5nll8 primordial residue. See instinct primordial vision, 30, !98-gn37; and masculine and feminine, 18, 48, 83; and personal reform, 22, 38; and philosophy, 17, 22, 36-9, 41-2, 154, 165; and sexuality, 57-8 The Prince (Machiavelli), 213n87 private and public realms: and authenticity, 8-1O, 163, 178, 182; and political engagement, 9-10, 12-13, 19-20, 75-6, 104-10, 161-3, 168-75, 178-9, 182, 187-8, 192-3; valuation of, 8-10, 12-13, 19-20, 71, 75-6, 107-8, 162-3, 169-71, 174-5, 178, 182, 187. See also Arendt; Aristotle; classical antiquity; feminism; liberalism projection, 35, 149, 155 property, .fee economics psychoanalysis, 2O2n67; and autobiography, 5, 14-15, 21-2, 28, 46, 2Ol n6o; of independence and union, 85, 93-104, 114, 124, 127; of innocence and guilt, 149-57; °f masculine and feminine, 15, 18, 46-8, 55-63, 66-8, 77, 82-4, 173; and philosophy, 13-18, 22,41-6, I99n44, 2Oin63; on self-knowledge, 5, 21-2, 33-4. See also depth psychology in Rousseau; guilt; instinct; projection; unconscious psychocultural dichotomies. See good and evil; guilt, independence; innocence; masculine and feminine; union psychological transformation: and democracy, 10-11, 13-14, 19, 89, 113, 123, 126, 146; and Legislator,

Index 235 14, 121-2, 187, 20707. See also amour-propre; amour de soi; instinct The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Cassirer), 40 Rawls, John, 2O4ni7, 2l4ng7; on civic participation, 184-5; on social contract, 182-3; A Theory of Justice, 182 reason: and amour-propre, 11, 111, 170; and compassion, 48, 59-61, 133, 135-6, 153, 174, 191; and conscience, 152; and feeling, 158, 168-70 republicanism, 177, 2l3~14n94; and liberalism, 2O, 163, 183-6; on liberty, 163, 175, 177, 181, 183-6, 2l3n87; on patriotism, 20, 182, 184-7. See also Arendt; communitarianism reverie, 37, 69-70, 126 The Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Rousseau): on amour-propre, 113-14, 124, 126-9; on nmour de soi, 111, 127-8; on authenticity, 24-5, 27; on children, 154; on guilt, 150; on innocence, 145, 150; on morality, 145, 147-8; on natural traits, 190; on personal reform, 38; Romanticism in, 125-6; and self-creation, 30; on self-knowledge, 32-3, 150; on solitude, 9, 38, 113, 124-6, 128-9, i47-8> 164-7; on state, 171; on Warens, Mme de, 78 revolution. See civil war rights: and liberalism, 93, 182, 184-5, 189, 192; nattiral right, 9, 86-7, 91-2, 136; political right, 54, 63, 65, 70, 105, 139, 143-4, 177, 183, 186, 189-90; and self-protection, 16, 92-3, 143, 177, 182-5

romantic love: and amour-propre, 71, 89; and human attachment, 96; in modern self, 100; in Rousseau's life, 73-4, 100-2; and state, 48, 75-6, 172-3; in tribal society, 71, 89, 127; and women, 53 Romanticism: and feeling, 168-70, 175; and individuality, 20, 191; and intimacy, 178; and nature, 125-6, 189

Rorty, Richard, 190-2, 2i4n97, 2150118

Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues (Rousseau), 187; on amour-propre, i l l , 114, 124, 128, 149, 159; on amour de soi, H I , 124, 149, 159; on authenticity, 8, 23-5, 27-8, 82-3, 166, 168; on author and philosophy, 3, 7-8, 128; on civil war, 13; on conscience, 151; on death penalty, 157; on independence, 113-14, 117-18; on innocence, 145, 149-50, 152, 160; on intimacy, 8-9, 83-4, 167-8; on morality, i l l , 145, 147-8; on natural traits, 7, 37, 158-60, 165-6, 190; on opinion, public, 114, 121; on persecution, 27, 121, 149; on primordial vision, 17, 38, 83, 154; on reverie, 37, 69-70, 160; and selfcreation, 30—1; and self-knowledge, 31-3; on sexuality, 149; on sociability, 167, 184; on solitude, 124, 147-8, 160, 165-7, 171, 198021; on stale, i°9> H5; and union, 102; on uniqueness, 6-7, 30, 190; on virtue, 151. 157-9; on women, 82-4; on writing, 69-70, 83 Rousseau's Exemplary Life: The 'Confessions ' as Political Philosophy (Kelly), 23, 200-m6o, 205n30

236 Index Saint-Preux (character), 60-1, 73, 100-1 Sandel, Michael, 182, 186 savage. See state of nature self-creation: and autobiography, 5-6, 20-1, 23, 29-32, 46, 163-5, 189-90; and instinct, 2O, 189-91; in modern self, 5-6, 10, 21, 23, 29-32, 163-4, 189-90; and postmodernism, 190-2 self-extension: and amour desoi, 11, 86, 106, ill, 136-7, 155, 159, 169; and intimacy, 12, 138; in state, n-12, 16, 18, 85-6, 93, 105-6, no, 112,124,137-8,141,143,146-7,160, 166, 181, 184-5, 192 self-knowledge: and autobiography, 5, 10, 18, 21-2, 27-36, 46, 150; and primitive constitution, 4-5, 10, 33, 160, 165-6, 189-90; and psychoanalysis, 4, 5, 14-15, 18, 21-2, 28, 33-6, 46 self-sufficiency. See independence sexuality: and guilt, 68, 149; and Houdetot, Mme d', 74; and Le Vasseur, Therese, 57, 67, 74, 80, 98; and masochism, 25, 55-8, 67, 72; in natural humanity, 53, 58; and prostitution, 67-8; and union, 99; and Warens, Mme de, 57, 67, 72-4, 78-80, 97, 149; in women, 52-3 Shelley, Percy, 37 Shklar, Judith, 105, 183, 191, I99n44 Skinner, Quentin, 44 The Social Contract, I97n4: and amour de soi, 91, 136; on classical antiquity, 104-5, 122, 142; on death penalty, 156-7; and Discourse on Inequality, 15, 63-4, 83, 145; and Discourse on Political Economy, 138; on economics, 66, 69, 146; on equality, political, 54,

91-2, 186, 200n58; on family, 62-4; on general will, 92-3, uo-n, 119-20, 122, 146,155-6, 20on58; on independence, 90, 92, 102; on international relations, 139, 142-4; on Legislator, 14,121-2,187; on liberty, 65, 90-3, 104-5, 107, 122, 144, 184; on Machiavelli, 2i3n87; on opinion, public, 121-2; and patriotism, 104, 125, 143-4; on private and public realms, 106-7, 109; on state of nature, 91, 93, no, 121; and union, 94, 124-5; and women, 15, 18, 48, 54, 63-8, 83-4, 205n30 social contract: and civic attachment, 20, 168; and convention, 171-2, 189; and democracy, 9, 85-6, 90-1, 93, 106, 122, 184; and depth psychology, 4-5, 87; and individualism, 2O, 85-6,90-3, 102,105, 136-7, 171, 184, 186; and women, 48, 63-8, 83-4, 173. See also Hobbes; Locke; Rawls; state Socrates, 4 solitude, 19; and amour-propre, 19, 123-4, 126; of Emile, 95-6, 103, 123-4; and instinct, 160, 165-6; and morality, 130-1, 147, 160; in Rousseau's life, 29-30, 38, 98, 114, 117, 124-6, 128, 160-2, 164-7, 19°, ig8n21, 2O7n5; and state, 113, 11920, 122, 128-9, 163-5; in state of nature, 38, 71, 86, 171 Sophie (character), 48, 58, 96 Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Taylor), 4 Starobinski, Jean: Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction, 40, 42; The Living Eye, 42; on psychoanalysis and philosophy, 41-4; on

Index 237 Rousseau, 3, 29, 31-2, 34, 40-1, 119, 128, 164, 200058, 2O4ni2, 20705, 207-8111 state: and amour-propre, 11, 8g, 106, 11O, 113, 123, 125, 146, 160, 179; and amourdesot, 10,11,65,85-6,90-1,93, 105-6, no, 123, 136,143,160, 166, 184, 189; and authenticity, 19, 113, 123, 128-9, 163, 165, 178; and compassion, l l , 16, 19,130,136-9,141-4, 156, 160, 163, 165, 180-1, 184; de facto states, 16, 88-90, 107-8, 146; and distributive justice, 67, 107, 146, 174, 180-1; and education, 174-5; and equality, political, g, 15, 54-5,

72,91-2,135,162,169,173-6,180,

182-3, 189, 200058; and friendship, 162, 168-73, 175. 180; and independence, 16, 64, 70, 89, 92, 140-1, 145, 163, 166, 182-3, 189; and individualism, 16, 85-7, 90-4, 102, 105-6, 136-7, 189, 192; and instinct, 1O, 13, 18-19, 39, 112, 174, 179, 190, 192; and intimacy, 12, 13, 15, 18-2O, 48, 66, 75-7,84-5, 105-10, 112,120,130, 137-8, 141, 147, 160, 162-3, !68, 172, 174-5, 178-82, 185-9, 192, 2O5n28, 2o6n28, 2140103; and liberty, g-io, 13-14, 65, 85, 8g, 91-4, 104-7, 122, 138, 163, 175, 177, 183-6, 2i3n87; and psychological transformation, 10-11, 13-14, 19, 89, 113, 121-3, 126, 146, 187; and romantic love, 75-6, 172-3; and self-extension, 11-12, 16, 18,85-6,93, 105-6, HO, 112, 124, 137-8, 141, 143, 146-7, 160, 166, 181, 184-5, 192; union in, 12, 16, 40, 85, 93-4, 102-6, 124-5, 13°; aod uniqueness, 12, 109-10, 177, 181. See also civil war; international rela-

tions; general will; Legislator; patriotism; private and public realms; women, and political sphere state of nature, 182; and amour-propre, 126-7, 133; amourdesoiin, 5, 10-11, 85, 87, 133-5; asociality in, 71, 86-7, 167, 171; compassion in, 5, 59-60, 130, 133, 135, 137; equality in, 54, 65,186; independence in, 15-16,18, 38, 59, 85-8, 90, 94-6, 102-3, 105, HO, 112, 114, 123, 163, 166, 171, 183, 187; liberty in, 9-10, 51, 63-5, 69, 87-91, 93, 106, 113, 141, 144, 173, 184, 186, 189; male and female in, 15, 46-8, 50, 59, 61, 64, 83-4, 137, 20304, 2O5nn28, 30; natural goodness in, 16, 37, 93, 130-5, 139, 148, 20801; and personal reform, 38; sexuality in, 53, 58, 71, 86, 127. See also Hobbes; instinct; Locke state of war, 88, 137, 140 Strauss, Leo, 44—5, 112 suffering, 133-5 Talmon.J.L., 40 Taylor, Charles, 43, 186-7; on liberalism, 182-4; and republicanism, 183-5, 213-14094; on Rousseau, 4, 2og-ion23; on the self, 4-7; Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modem Identity, 4 A Theory of Justice (Rawls), 182 Therese. See Le Vasseur, Therese. tribal society; amour-propre in, 71-2, 8g, 127; compassioo io, 137; independence in, 88; intimacy in, 71-2, 137, 167; romantic love in, 71, 89, 127 truth in autobiography. See authenticity, and autobiography

238 Index unconscious: and autonomous complex, 35; and autobiography, 14-15, 21; complexity of, 43; and creativity, 14) 37i 45. !54; an d femininity, 61; as obstruction, 15, 17-18, 21, 35-6, 41, 46, 173; and primordial insight, 15, 17-18, 22, 36-7, 39, 41-2, 46, 63, 83; and self-knowledge, 21-2, 33-6, 46. See also depth psychology in Rousseau; guilt; instinct; projection; psychoanalysis; women, and unconscious obstruction union, 18; with nature, 125-6; psychoanalysis of, 15, 18, 85, 93-104; in state, 12, 16, 40, 85, 93-4, 102-6, 124-5, 13°; with women, 16, 85, 94, 96-102, 104, 108 uniqueness: in modern self, 6-7, 10, 177, 189-90; in state, 12, 109-10, 177, 181 The Value of the Individual: Self and Circumstance in Autobiography (Weintraub), 4 The Village Soothsayer (Rousseau), 118 virtue: and compassion, 135-6; and conscience, 157; and instinct, 158-60; and women, 173 Walzer, Michael, 143 war. See civil war; international relations, war

Warens, Mme de, 34-5, 57; and independence, 114-15; and intimacy, 73, 77-80, 82, 97; and sexual relations, 57, 67, 72, 74, 78-80, 82, 97,149; and union, 96-8 Weintraub, Karl Joachim, 4, 6, ig6nl2 Wolin, Sheldon, 181 Wolmar, M. de (character), 60-1, 73, 101 women: authenticity of, 46-50, 52, 55, 82-3; in classical antiquity, 53-4, 103-4, 172; and covert rule, 49-55, 58, 2O3n3; and domestic sphere, 15, 18, 47-8, 53, 63, 68-70, 77; education of, 48-9, 52, 82, 125, 173; and independence, 49-50, 54, 59, 96; and intimacy, 15, 18, 48, 56, 76-84, 98-9, 108, 173, 188, 2i4ni03; and liberty, 47-52, 54-5, 58, 65; and maternal affection, 57, 6l-2, 68, 94, 96; and modern self, 18, 47-52; and political sphere, 15, 18, 47-8, 53-5, 63-6, 68-g, 76, 83-4, 103, 172-3, 204017; and romantic love, 53, 96, 1OO-1, 172; and sexuality, 52-3; in state of nature, 15, 46-8, 50, 59, 2O5nn28, 30; and unconscious obstruction, 15, 18, 47-8, 55-8, 62-3, 68, 83-4; union with, 16, 85, 94, 96, 98-101, 104, 108 writing: and affirmation of self, 128; and alienation, 69-70, 154