“On voit, par cette formule, que l’acte d’association renferme un engangement réciproque du public avec les particuliers, et chaque individu, contractant pour ainsi dire avec lui-même, se trouve engagé sous un double rapport: savoir, comme membre du souverain, envers les particuliers, et comme membre de l’État envers le souverain.”
J.-J. Rousseau, Du Contrat Social ou Principes de droit politique, I, 7.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), republican Genevan,(1) musician, writer and philosopher, elaborated a political theory that inserted the individual and the sovereign in a certain relation of implication, preluding the Romantic efforts that forged the nation-state. A troubled mind,(2) as he described in his Confessions, the biography of a sensitive and obsessed character, he endured all sorts of struggles, -moral and social. Tortured by both his alleged friends as well as by his own sensibility, he appeared as the craftsman of the most perfect human achievement. A volonté générale composed the impossible pieces, the individual and a transcendental unity, the nation, into a coherent whole.
Being also a famed author, his literary success concurred with the end of his bonheur, of his precarious felicity that elapsed from a quest of happiness to a tumble and melancholic souvenir of a lost paradise.(3) Becoming à la mode, reclaimed at all the tables of Paris, he felt acclamation as a damnation.(4) Success became the turning point, the prospect of a new fall. This Protestant-flavoured scheme penetrated and converged with his theoretical work. Contentedness followed by downfall and exile recurred in several chapters of his life, composing the imprint of his ‘auroral’ thought, where beginnings (childhood, morning, state of nature…) became the renewed sources of happiness.
Individual, lover of his liberty, he felt an essential tension with most human beings, pointing out to his embedding in the orographic alterations suffered on which to roam and construct. This tended to accrue his fame of misanthrope.(5) And yet he aimed at the sincere hearts, at the purest natures, rather than at the corrupted magnates and intellectuals; he was inclined to the simple and authentic. Rousseau despised lie and treason above all. Sincerity was his most praised virtue; it was the wish for transparency in a being that could not surmount his opacity, -the slavery to his feelings-, the cause of both his greatest pleasures and misfortunes. His intensity, almost febrile, excessive, configures the portrait of a man unable to live with others but capable to trace the master lines of the common welfare, of unity among disparity, subduing the individual by becoming his own sovereign master.
Acquainted with the Enlightened philosophes and encyclopedists, D’Alambert, D’Holbach, Hume and Diderot, he could not foresee the falling apart of the Ancien Règime6 but stressed the terrible flaws of the actual society: “…je ne vis plus qu’erreur et folie dans la doctrine de nos sages, qu’oppression et misère dans notre ordre social.”(7) This critic stance, together with his preference for a juvenile, candid, past, influenced his analysis of a state of nature diametrically opposed to Hobbes, rearranged in relation to diverse elements.
His obsession and persecution mania debouched in isolation. Tacitly sentenced to a crime he had not the chance to defend himself of, Socrates of the opinion, -an opinion that ‘ruled the world’ according to the Enlightened adagio-, he saw himself as the martyr of an unpronounced judgment.(8) Judged without a trial, left to his deprecators and critics, he decided to escape.(9) The rest of his endeavor concentrated in opening himself barely naked in front of others to judge. Alone in his necessary banishment he was reduced due to his difference: “…je me trouvais seul au milieu de la multitude autant par mes idées que par mes sentiments.”(10) He was cast in uncertain times, into an ‘épidémie d’esprit’, an age in which self-love (amour de soi) took the shape of egoism (amour propre). Rousseau aimed at undoing this malaise presenting a new conception of nature, of man, and of society, forming a unity, not absent of contradiction, but still coherent.(11)
(1) “ De ces intéressantes lectures, des entretiens qu’elles occasionnaient entre mon père et moi, se forma cet esprit libre et républicain, cet caractère indomptable et fier, impatient de joug et de servitude qui m’a tourmenté tout le temps de ma vie dans les situations les moins propres à lui donner l’essor.” Confessions I, 3 [Seuil I, p. 123].
(2) In his early work he already recognized three obstacles in his personality to achieve the proper education of his pupil, his melancholy, timidity and indifference. Memoire présenté a M. de Mably sur l’éducation de M. son fils. In his latter work “…je naquis infirme et malade; je coûtai la vie a ma mère, et ma naissance fut le premier de mes malheurs, ” Confessions I, 3 in fine [Seuil I, p. 122].
(3) J. Starobinski, la Transparence et l’obstacle, Paris, 1978.
(4) “ Je sentis alors qu’il n’est pas toujours aussi aisé qu’on se l’imagine d’être pauvre et indépendant. Je voulais vivre de mon métier : le public ne le voulait pas. ” Confessions VIII [Seuil I, p. 262].
(5) “On verra plus d’une fois dans la suite les bizarres de cette disposition si misanthrope et si sombre en apparence, mais qui vient d’un cœur trop affectueux, ” Confessions I [Seuil I, p. 135].
(6) Nevertheless, speaking about Voltaire, he referred to him as a man that would ‘make revolution’ Confessions VIII [Seuil I, p. 274].
(7) Confessions IX, 7 [Seuil I, p. 282].
(8) “…une génération entière liguée contre un seul home… ” Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques I [Seuil III, p. 414].
(9) “J’ai préferé l’exil perpetual de ma patrie; j’ai renounce à tout, même à l’espérance, plutôt que d’exposer la tranquilité publique : j’ai mérité d’être cru sincère, lorsque je parle en sa faveur.” Lettres écrites de la Montagne VIII [Seuil III, p. 471].
(10) Rousseau juge de Jean Jacques I [Seuil I, p. 400].
(11) “J’ai écrit sur divers sujets, mais toujours dans le même principes ; toujours la même morale, la même croyance, les mêmes maximes et, si l’on veut, les mêmes opinions.” Lettre à Monseigneur de Beaumont, [Seuil I, p. 337]. Cf. R. Derathé, “L’unité de la pensée de Rousseau ” VV.AA., Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Neuchâtel, 1962, pp. 203-218.
