“I had a dismal Prospect of my Condition, for as I was not cast away upon that Island without being driven, as is said, by a violent Storm quite out of the Course of our intended Voyage, and a great Way, viz. some Hundreds of Leagues out of the ordinary Course of the Trade of Mankind, I had great Reason to consider it as a Determination of Heaven, that in this desolate Place, and in this desolate Manner I should end my Life; the Tears would run plentifully down my Face when I made these Reflections, and sometimes I would expostulate with my self, Why Providence should thus compleatly ruine its Creatures, and render them so absolutely miserable, so without Help abandon’d, so entirely depress’d, that it could hardly be rational to be thankful for such a Life.”
D. Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, VI (1719)
Robinson Crusoe described the fable of a civilized man left in a desert island, far from all commodities and tools, -away from civilization-, having to develop, in his solitude, primitive modes of subsistence and technologies to assure his survival. Daniel Defoe’s book did not only propose a self-centred individual and the fundamental traits of the homo oeconomicus, -an accounting of utilities and preferences according to a scale of profitability. He incarnated the real story of a Scottish sailor, named Alexander Selkirk, who decided toleave the company with whom he was travelling and was abandoned on an island in the coast of nowadays Chile.
His adventures served as a mental experiment on the possibilities of a man procuring his subsistence with the sole fruit of nature and his labour, without any mediation, in the absence of social institutions. An individual left to his own devices on an island, isolated. Solitude became a central aspect of Rousseau’s life and work, amplifying the classical individual, providing with the possibility of criticizing the world of appearances, of stepping back from the societal ties to obtain a wider picture of human nature.
Crusoe’s example had to serve the purpose of educating an adolescent. It was the book that Émile had to be acquainted with in order to develop his capacities, it showed him all the abilities required to subsist on his own. “Le plus sûr moyen de s’élever au-dessus des préjugés et d’ordonner ses jugements sur les vrais rapports des choses, est de se mettre à la place d’un homme isolé, et de juger de tout comme cet homme en doit juger lui-même, eu égard de sa propre utilité.”(1) Utility had to be taught as the measure of one’s actions, it provided with an appropriate guide to one’s endeavours.
Robinson’s island took the legacy of utopian thought to which Rousseau somehow adhered. Unfortunately, the outcome of his constitutional project for the Corsicans had a similar result to Plato’s renovation plans for Syracuse. Jean-Jacques’ utopian project did not adhere yo a non-existing tópos but was related to a hypothetical time, to a golden age when men were naturally good. This conjectural recession in time implied not only a phylogenesis of society but also an ontogenesis of the individual. Not only did primitive virtues excel modern morals, also the development of man made explicit the close link with his immanent origin: nature. Once more no transcendental or external time was proposed, like in Christian accounts, but a mere recoil into a hypothesised past, into pre-civilization.
(1) Émile III [Seuil III, p. 130].
RT