by Christopher Kelly and Roger D. Masters
Most students of Rousseau’s political thought have tended to ignore his autobiographical writings, or at most to cite passages in which he explains the circumstances in which his obviously theoretical works were written. Those who make greater use of the autobiographical works usually do so in order to interpret Rousseau’s thought in the light of his personality. As a rule this approach entails discrediting the theoretical works by exposing Rousseau’s personal derangement. Such students follow Burke, who denounced Rousseau’s “mad confessions of his mad faults” as part of an attack on the principles of the French Revolution.1 Only a few scholars have attempted any systematic treatment of the theoretical significance of the autobiographical works.2
If this characterization is true for the autobiographical works in general, it is all the more true of Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques (more familiarly known as the Dialogues). This book has surely been the least read of Rousseau’s important works; until recently, most of those who read it seemed primarily interested in the Dialogues as evidence of the depth of Rousseau’s paranoia. Even a critic who attempts to be sympathetic describes the work by saying, “The terrible paranoid nightmare is frequently illuminated by flashes of extraordinary lucidity and insight.”3 Virtually all of Rousseau’s other major works were translated almost immediately upon their publication in French. The present translation of the Dialogues is the first to appear in English.
One of the reasons for this long period of neglect is very easy to see. At first or at any subsequent glance, the Dialogues is a very peculiar book. It consists of three dialogues between a character named “Rousseau” and an interlocutor identified only as a “Frenchman.” The two discuss the bad reputation of a famous author, his true character, a virtually universal conspiracy being conducted against him, and the substance of his books. The “Rousseau” of the Dialogues both is and is not Rousseau himself; that is, he is Rousseau as he would be if he had read but not written his books and had only recently arrived in France. The author of the books is “Jean-Jacques,” the character to be judged by “Rousseau” and the “Frenchman.” This preliminary splitting of Rousseau into two is complicated by further divisions that take place within the discussion. The major additional division is between the author, “Jean-Jacques” as he really is, and his public image as a “monster.” This disproportion leads to the suggestion that there are two different people: one of them, “Jean-Jacques,” is a monster; the other, the real author of the books, is not. The dizzying quality of these divisions reaches its height when “Rousseau” reports after a visit to “Jean-Jacques” that the latter is composing a series of dialogues about his false public reputation. In effect, the character meets his author at the very moment the author is writing about him (p. 136–137).
Both Rousseau’s claim about the existence of a universal conspiracy against him and the procedure of splitting himself into numerous characters, images, and counterimages are cited as major pieces of evidence by those who wish to assert Rousseau’s insanity. Nevertheless, it should be recognized that such a procedure is not entirely unique to Rousseau or to presumed madmen. The trilogy of Platonic dialogues formed by the Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman consists of conversations among a cast of characters including Socrates; a boy named Theaetetus, who looks exactly like Socrates; a young friend of Theaetetus who is named Socrates; and a somewhat mysterious Eleatic stranger who questions his interlocutors in a manner that partially (though not completely) resembles that of Socrates himself. One of the major themes of the trilogy is the question of the relationship between images and their originals. Furthermore, the trilogy is partially framed by another dialogue about how Socratic dialogues came to be written and preserved. Thus, Plato apparently thought that a sort of splitting of characters would be dramatically appropriate in the illustration of an important philosophic issue as well as a demonstration of the problematic relationship between a written text and the people or subject matter about which it is written.
The issues involved in the communication or transmission of written philosophic doctrines, which are of immense importance throughout the Platonic corpus, are Rousseau’s overriding concern in the Dialogues. This work is not overtly concerned with the general issue of the relationship between original and image. It is, however, concerned with a narrow version of this issue: the relationships among Rousseau as he is, as he appears in his books, and as he is perceived by others. It is, above all, the work in which Rousseau undertakes his most comprehensive reflection on the relationships among himself as an author, his books, and his audience. Rousseau’s reflections on the misjudgments of his books and the proper way to judge them links the theme of the Dialogues to another Platonic dialogue, the Apology, in which Socrates both judges and is judged by an audience that does not understand him.
The parallels between the Apology and the Dialogues are worth noting. In both cases, a philosopher is accused of violating society’s legal, ethical, and religious standards; in both, the defense entails presenting the thinker’s life and works in a manner that addresses the difference between popular and philosophic judgment; in both, the claim of the philosopher’s moral concern for the city is combined with an implicit condemnation of the political life. Despite the autobiographical nature of the Dialogues, it—like the Apology—is written by an author who is absent from the action of the dialogue. As these parallels suggest, the treatment of these issues within the Dialogues makes it worthy of the attention of anyone who hopes to understand the most serious themes within Rousseau’s thought.
The Place of the Dialogues within Rousseau’s “System”
The Dialogues has an important place within what Rousseau calls his “system” in part because it is one of the most important contexts in which he claims that he has a system. Rousseau first announced the existence of a system in the Preface to Narcisse, a defense of the First Discourse, which was written in 1753–54 (Pléiade, II, 964).* In the Dialogues, he has the “Frenchman” declare that the content of Jean-Jacques’s books “were things that were profoundly thought out, forming a coherent system which might not be true, but which offered nothing contradictory” (p. 209). This insight could almost be said to be the culminating moment of the Dialogues. Thus, at the end of his literary career, Rousseau reaffirms what he had asserted at the beginning, that his thought is consistent and has been explained consistently in all of his works.
That the Dialogues is meant to bring Rousseau’s literary enterprise to a sort of completion by stressing the connection of his first and last works is also indicated by Rousseau’s choice of epigraph, “Barbarus hic ego sum quia non intelligor illis” (Here I am the barbarian because no one understands me). This line from Ovid is also the epigraph of the First Discourse. Some reflection on the significance of the shared epigraph can indicate the similarities and differences between the two works. In fact, in the Dialogues “Rousseau” insists on the importance of epigraphs for indicating the character of a book (p. 218).
Some scholars have noted that in the Discourse the epigraph points to certain complications in the argument that are not immediately apparent.4 In the first place, it indicates that Rousseau anticipates that his argument will be misunderstood. Second, the epigraph identifies Rousseau himself with one of the very poets he condemns in the text of the Discourse. As Rousseau was obliged to point out to his critics time and again, his attack on the arts and sciences is not a blanket condemnation. As he announces in the same title page that contains the epigraph, Rousseau most openly adopts the perspective of the “Citizen of Geneva” when writing the Discourse. His epigraph calls attention to his exile from Geneva (and his loss of citizenship) and his less open adoption of the perspective of the poet. Along with its attack on the effect of the arts on healthy communities, the Discourse contains a complaint against the degradation of contemporary taste that compels an artist like Voltaire to “lower his genius to the level of his time” (Pléiade, III, 21). In sum, even in his first work, Rousseau was capable of splitting himself into a number of personae in his effort to present the complexities of an argument. He can be both the citizen who objects to the “crowd of obscene authors,” including Ovid, and also a spokesman for Ovid himself. He can address himself to citizens, common people, and philosophers in the same work.
The first of these implications of the epigraph is also reflected in the Dialogues; although rather than simply predicting a lack of understanding, the citation of Ovid now complains about an existing one. In spite of his efforts to expound his system, Rousseau’s thought continues to be misunderstood. This theme of misunderstanding predominates over all others in the Dialogues. Here the focus on Rousseau’s position as a writer is not subordinated to his position as a citizen. He no longer identifies himself as the “Citizen of Geneva.” Rousseau’s analysis of Geneva in the Letters Written from the Mountain indicates that he came to believe that the Genevans shared the corruption of the French. Accordingly, in the Dialogues, his two personae are “Jean-Jacques” the writer and “Rousseau” the reader. “Rousseau” is Genevan, but he only very occasionally shows ardor for his homeland (cf. p. 84).
If the epigraph of the Dialogues is not entirely novel for Rousseau, neither is its form. Aside from the dialogue contained in his plays and operas, Rousseau wrote one other dialogue with himself as a character—the second preface to Julie. To his interlocutor, who is a man of letters, Rousseau explains why he does not identify himself as a citizen on the title page of this work. Once again he is concerned with misinterpretation of his intentions. Also, some of his responses to the critics of the First Discourse resort to a sort of dialogue form as Rousseau quotes individual objections and his responses. He adopts a similar procedure in the Letter to Beaumont. Thus, he regularly uses something approaching a dialogue form when he seeks to answer critics or to prevent misunderstanding.
The themes of misunderstanding and self-explanation clearly link the Dialogues to its immediate predecessor, the Confessions. In his introduction to the Dialogues, “On the Subject and Form of This Writing,” Rousseau explains the relationship between these two works quite clearly.5 He indicates that he wrote the Dialogues in recognition of a failure of the Confessions. He warns:
As for those who want only some agreeable rapid reading, who sought and found only that in my Confessions, and who cannot tolerate a little fatigue or maintain their attention in the interest of justice and truth, they will do well to spare themselves the boredom of reading this. It is not to them I wished to speak, and far from seeking to please them, I will at least avoid the ultimate indignity of seeing that the picture of the miseries of my life is an object of amusement for anyone. (p. 7).
This statement points to the great difference in form between these two autobiographical works and provides some justification for Michel Foucault’s characterization of the Dialogues as the “anti-Confessions.”6 It should be kept in mind, however, that Rousseau’s statement is less a criticism of the substance of the Confessions than it is a description of the failure of some of that work’s readers.
Rousseau claims that those who read the Confessions only for pleasure have missed its point. To the extent that this is a criticism of the Confessions itself, it implies only that Rousseau made it too easy for his readers to seek pleasure rather than understanding. The Dialogues, then, is based on an acknowledgment of the unreliable character of readers. The change in focus from the title Confessions to Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques indicates this acknowledgment. By confessing to his readers, Rousseau made them his judges as well as his confessors. In the Dialogues he has removed the readers from their office: not they but he himself will be the judge of Jean-Jacques.
This acknowledgment of a failure of the Confessions and its audience is not a criticism of the substance of the Confessions. By showing the proper way to judge Jean-Jacques, the Dialogues can be regarded as a sort of training manual for readers of the Confessions or indeed for any of Rousseau’s other works. Once they have learned from Rousseau how to judge, they can then turn back to the other works and read them properly. Rather than being simply the anti-Confessions, the Dialogues is the cure for its defects. Whatever defect the Confessions may have by being too agreeable a book can be overcome by the more fatiguing Dialogues. It is not until his Reveries of the Solitary Walker, if even then, that Rousseau decides that his audience is simply uneducable.
This brief sketch of the relationship between the Dialogues and several of Rousseau’s other works has revealed two different aspects of this baffling work. First, the Dialogues brings Rousseau’s philosophic system to a sort of completion. Rousseau’s reuse of his first epigraph and his device of splitting himself into different characters affirm that his entire body of work is internally consistent and guided by a single purpose. Second, the Dialogues focuses special attention on judgments made about Jean-Jacques himself. Rousseau insists on the goodness of his own character and on its being misunderstood. Perhaps the key to understanding the Dialogues is to see why these two themes, one theoretical and the other personal, should be contained in the same work. What is the relationship between Rousseau’s system and the character of Jean-Jacques?
A preliminary description of the relationship between Rousseau’s system and the character of Jean-Jacques can come from a rephrasing of the question. Whereas the central part of the Dialogues is a description of “Jean-Jacques”’s character, the necessity for this description is provided by the false descriptions of “Jean-Jacques” circulating in public opinion. From the beginning of the work, the “real Jean-Jacques” is placed in opposition to his reputation as “an abominable man” or even a “monster” (pp. 8, 12). Furthermore, the character of the monster is opposed to the character of the books, such as Julie and Emile. “Rousseau” has read the books but as a recent arrival from abroad is unacquainted with the bad reputation of the supposed author. The “Frenchman” knows the reputation, but because of it he has not read the books. The mystery to be solved by these interlocutors is the mystery of the disproportion between the books and the reputation of the author. Are the books exemplars of virtue or of hypocrisy? Are they filled with a subtle and corrupting poison, or have their influential interpreters injected them with venom where there was none before? If the books are filled with virtue, how could they have been written by “soul of mire” (p. 8)? Is the monster “Jean-Jacques” a plagiarist, and if so, who is the real author of these books?
Contained in this series of questions is a Rousseauian account of the importance of the relationships among an author, his books, and his readers. Unlike some of today’s critics, he insists that books do or can contain intelligible teachings about matters such as virtue or nature that are in the world outside the texts. On such matters, in principle, the books need no support beyond the force of their arguments and their correspondence to experiences accessible to the readers. In spite of his insistence on the truth of his reasoning, or perhaps because of it, Rousseau is also acutely aware of the difficulties involved in the accurate interpretation of his books. The character “Rousseau” read these books without any prejudices about their author. His position as a recently arrived foreigner gives him a privileged status as a reader.7 This was a necessary, although not a sufficient, condition for his ability to detect the meaning of the books.
“Rousseau” explains the need to approach the books with an open mind: “Don’t even think of the Author as you read, and without any bias either in favor or against, let your soul experience the impressions it will receive. You will thus assure yourself of the intention behind the writing of these books” (p. 31). For readers not in “Rousseau’s” fortunate position of ignorance, successful understanding is a profound problem. For this unlucky majority, Rousseau presents the interpretation of the books as dependent in decisive ways on a prior interpretation of the author. Within the Dialogues, the first dialogue sets out the issues to be discussed, and the second investigates “Jean-Jacques”’s true character. It is only after this investigation that the third dialogue can describe the content of the books and the proper method for reading them. Thus, at first, the Dialogues is less concerned with the status of the author’s system than it is with the way that system will be approached by readers. Far from being concerned with a matter of purely personal interest to Rousseau (or of professional interest to students of abnormal psychology), the Dialogues is concerned with the effective communication of a philosophic teaching and its dependence on the author’s name or reputation.
The issue at the center of the Dialogues has both a narrow scholarly importance and a broader political significance. This introduction began by referring to a tradition of Rousseau scholarship that focuses on Rousseau’s personality and regards his books purely as expressions of that personality. In effect, the Dialogues predicts and attempts to preempt such a critical response. To be sure, modern scholars are more likely to characterize Rousseau as a madman (or as someone suffering from mental illness) than as a monster. As a result, they adopt a condescending tone rather than outright hostility to his works. Like the “Frenchman” of the Dialogues, these critics are distracted from the substance of Rousseau’s writings because their view of the author’s personality makes it inconceivable to them that his works could be profound or true. In Rousseau’s account, his works and their system can be rescued from such interpretations only by a defense of his character (unless there are other interpreters who, like the “Rousseau” of the Dialogues, come to the works in ignorance of the claims made about Jean-Jacques’s character or at least with openness to alternative claims). The Dialogues is Rousseau’s attempt to avoid depending on such an occurrence.
One explanation of the political aspect of Rousseau’s project of forcing his readers to focus on his personality can be seen in his account of the importance of nonrational persuasion in politics. Although one can debate Rousseau’s revolutionary intentions and his prudential conservatism, it cannot be denied that Rousseau wished his books to have an influence outside the academy or scholarly conference. From the beginning of his career Rousseau distinguished between what is necessary to win “the approval of a few wise men” and “the approval of the public” (First Discourse, Pléiade, III, 3). Although he expresses a preference for the former, he is by no means indifferent to the latter. The importance of this distinction led Rousseau to write in popular forms, such as novels, plays, and autobiography, normally shunned by philosophers and to adopt a decidedly unacademic tone even in his most philosophic works. Although the Dialogues must be understood in part as an attempt to defend Rousseau’s character before the public, his choice of a less popular form indicates that his true audience is “good minds” rather than seekers of pleasure (p. 7). In sum, the Dialogues is a philosophic or unpopular dramatization of the need to influence unphilosophic readers.
In the Dialogues the distinction between the philosophic audience and the popular audience is embodied in two characters, “Rousseau” and the “Frenchman,” as they begin the discussion. From the beginning “Rousseau” declares: “About things I can judge by myself, I will never take the public’s judgments as rule for my own” (p. 19). He resolves to be guided neither by “the secret desires” of his heart nor by “the interpretations of others.” In short he insists on being an independent “judge” of “Jean-Jacques” (p. 85). The “Frenchman,” on the contrary, is completely dependent on public opinion. His knowledge of “Jean-Jacques” and his books is the product of hearsay. He consistently responds to “Rousseau’s” arguments by making appeals to the number of people who are on the other side and to the good character of their authorities. In the end, the “Frenchman” reads and understands the books, but he does so only after he hears the defense of “Jean-Jacques”’s character given in the second dialogue. He may end as a philosophic reader, but he begins as an unphilosophic one. Unlike “Rousseau,” his openness to the book is dependent on his opinion of the character of the author. He is the picture of someone enslaved to public opinion because of his trust in the authority of those who direct it.
This connection between trust in the character of the author of a teaching and acceptance of the teaching has an important place in Rousseau’s understanding of political life. Frequently he emphasizes the near impotence of reason alone to have an effect on more than a few people (see, for example, Pléiade, IV, 1142–1144 and III, 955). Others can be influenced only by a variety of nonrational methods of persuasion. One might even say that, for Rousseau, the very possibility of social life is constituted by the susceptibility of humans to this nonrational persuasion, a susceptibility that they lack in the isolation of the pure state of nature. Perhaps Rousseau’s clearest example of the importance of the authority given by character (although far from his only one) appears in the Letters Written from the Mountain, in which he defends The Social Contract. In the course of this defense, he explains the success of Christianity. There he distinguishes three different “proofs” of Christian doctrine. The least significant are miracles, which can inspire only those people who are “incapable of coherent reasoning, of slow and sure observation, and slave of the senses in everything” (Pléiade, III, 729). Most certain is the doctrine itself, but this “proof” is understood only by a few. The most important “proof” for the widespread acceptance of the doctrine is the character of those who preach it. Rousseau says that “their sanctity, their veracity, their justice, their morals pure and without stain, their virtues inaccessible to human passions are, along with the qualities of understanding, reason, mind, knowledge, prudence, as many respectable indices, the combination of which, if nothing belies them, form a complete proof in their favor, and say that they are more than men” (Pléiade, III, 728). As this passage makes clear, Rousseau was convinced that the truth of a teaching was insufficient to give it a practical efficacy in the public arena, even, or especially, among good and just people. Thus, the defense of “Jean-Jacques”’s character is indispensable if his system is to have any practical effect. Even fundamentally just people will simply not give a hearing to those who have a bad reputation.8
Some who have opposed Rousseau’s popular influence have agreed with his analysis of the connection between opinions about his character and that influence. Burke’s treatment of Rousseau in his “Letter to a Member of the National Assembly” was mentioned above. There Burke attacks Rousseau on personal grounds much more than on the basis of an analysis of his thought. He justifies this approach by saying, “Your assembly, knowing how much more powerful example is found than precept, has chosen this man (by his own account without a single virtue) for a model.”9 Burke’s remark is in complete accord with Rousseau’s analysis.
The Place of Rousseau’s System within the Dialogues
To this point the Dialogues can appear as a necessary prelude to Rousseau’s system that, if it is successful, predisposes the reader to approach the system with an open mind. As such the Dialogues is external to the system; as the precondition of—or even advertisement for—the system, it would not be not a part of the system itself. There are, however, two respects in which the Dialogues represents the system. First, there is the description of the system that is given in the third dialogue; second, there is what could be called the drama of the Dialogues, which embodies or portrays crucial aspects of the system.
The description of the system given in the third dialogue is a very simple one. Having been convinced of the necessity of reading “Jean-Jacques”’s books by “Rousseau’s” account of the author’s character in the second dialogue, the “Frenchman” has undertaken the task of deciphering the system. He claims that, among the books of this age, “Jean-Jacques”’s are uniquely difficult to read. They are filled with very paradoxical ideas and maxims (p. 211) as well as apparent contradictions. These real paradoxes and apparent contradictions can be clarified only by a sustained effort of study. At the end of this effort, however, one will discover a clear system, which is based on one main principle and a number of secondary principles, of which the “Frenchman” mentions only one.
The main principle of the system could be called a revolutionary theodicy. The “Frenchman” says, “I saw throughout [the books] the development of his great principle that nature made man happy and good, but that society depraves him and makes him miserable” (p. 213). In its insistence on natural happiness, this principle is a rejection of the Hobbesian, or liberal, understanding of human life outside society as miserable. In its insistence on untainted natural goodness and the social origin of depravity, it is a rejection of the Christian understanding of original sin.10 The second principle cited by the “Frenchman” limits the revolutionary consequences that might be drawn from the first principle. “But human nature does not go backward, and it is never possible to return to the time of innocence and equality once they have been left behind” (p. 213). It is this secondary principle that accounts for “Jean-Jacques”’s prudential conservatism. Because he has no hopes for the reinstitution of natural goodness, he restricts himself to recommending measures that will mitigate or retard the inevitable corruption. In a work devoted to his public reputation, Rousseau is silent about the possibility of a radical change of society that would cure corruption without a return to nature.
The account of the basic principles of the author’s system is useful, but it by no means claims to be a complete exposition. One would like to see a list of the other secondary principles, for example. One should also keep in mind that this characterization of the system is given by the “Frenchman.” “Rousseau” warns earlier that one should be careful about attributing to “Jean-Jacques” opinions expressed by characters in his works (pp. 69–70).
The “Frenchman’s” account of his reading is an extremely important one, and so is Rousseau’s presentation of the results of this reading. The “Frenchman” does not experience the immediate communication of the ideal world portrayed in the first dialogue. He understands “Jean-Jacques”’s books only after he has read them numerous times with particular care. Furthermore, he grasps the basic principles of the writings more obviously than he does their implications and details. Finally, even when he transcribes texts, he makes many small errors, some of which could be attributed to carelessness and others to rewriting passages. He appears to be unable to see exactly what is before his eyes when he reads. Thus, Rousseau reveals or suggests the practical impossibility of a perfect reading even from the most sympathetic and painstaking reader. Even though suggesting that both immediate transparent communication and the lesser goal of a perfect reading of a text are impossible, Rousseau indicates that the “Frenchman” does achieve an essentially correct understanding of both the books and their author. Perfect transparency is impossible, but genuine understanding is merely difficult. Nevertheless, this account can orient the potential reader, who can begin to judge any one of Rousseau’s books by seeing how the work in question applies these principles to a particular problem, such as an education that can preserve natural goodness or the options available within particular corrupt societies.
Within the Dialogues, the account of the system has an additional function, that of explaining “Jean-Jacques” himself and his relationships with the conspirators. After all, if this system is a true account of human nature, it should be able to explain those most unusual individuals, the discoverer of the system and those who conspire to make him miserable. In fact, the “Frenchman” admits that “his system may be false” (p. 212) but insists that the one thing it unquestionably describes accurately is “Jean-Jacques.” “Jean-Jacques”’s account of natural human goodness and happiness depends on his ability to reject the social distortions of human nature. To some extent, or in some sense, he must have moved backward so that he could rediscover nature. “A man had to portray himself to show us primitive man like this” (p. 214). This assertion of “Jean-Jacques”’s own naturalness is only the echo of what “Rousseau” has already asserted about him: “He is what nature made him. Education changed him only a little” (p. 107; see also p. 159). In making this claim of an intimate relationship between the author’s personality and his system, “Rousseau” and the “Frenchman” seem to be defending the personality at the expense of the system. The claim that the system is simply a reflection of its author’s character is a claim that one would be likely to make to attack any author of a systematic explanation of nature. “Rousseau” and the “Frenchman” are not attacking the system, however. Instead, they are pointing out that “Jean-Jacques” was able to discover the true principles of human nature only because he is the virtually unique example of someone who has “removed the rust” (p. 214) from his own nature. “Jean-Jacques”’s discovery of his system depends on his having acquired some access to primitive nature. For his books to be true, he must be, in some sense, the man of his books.
If “Jean-Jacques” is the incarnation of the great principle of his system, he appears to be the refutation of the second principle; that is, if he is a natural man, he seems to demonstrate that nature can go backward at least in some individuals. To some extent, this is precisely what Rousseau intends to teach. Emile’s education, for example, is meant to show how it might be possible for some individual to escape the corruption of a social upbringing.
Although all of this is true, it must also be said that the “Jean-Jacques” of the Dialogues bears only a very limited resemblance to the natural humans described in the first part of the Second Discourse or to the young Emile. Like these natural humans, he is good, but not virtuous (p. 127), and like them he is free from the distinctive social passion of amour propre. Unlike them, however, he is a knower, a discoverer of a philosophic system that is beyond their comprehension. In addition, he possesses the most important natural attribute only in a very qualified sense. Purely natural humans live completely in themselves (Pléiade, IV, 249). Especially, they lack imagination that could take their thoughts from themselves (Pléiade, III, 144). As for “Jean-Jacques,” it is true that “he can truly say, in contrast to those people in the Gospel and those in our day, that where his heart is, there too is his treasure” (p. 122),11 but this means only that he is free from the torment of foresight that plagues the Christian who hopes for salvation or the bourgeois who hopes for wealth. “Jean-Jacques”’s “heart” exercises itself in constantly renewed flights of the imagination; one such flight allowed him to rediscover nature, but others led him to purely imaginary worlds. In the latter flights, even his perception of nature, his “physical sensitivity,” is radically altered by his imaginative “moral sensitivity” (pp. 113–130). He sees nature very differently from those natural humans who seek only food and rest. Thus, rather than being a natural human, “Jean-Jacques” is a civilized human who has preserved some natural characteristics along with some radically civilized ones. The manner of being represented by “Jean-Jacques” is one of developed civilized imagination liberated from the corruption of amour propre and foresight. Instead of being a natural human, he is an example of what social humans could be. Even in “Jean-Jacques,” nature has not quite gone backward; the irreversible departure from nature has been given a direction that is both salutary and somewhat consistent with nature.
This picture of a quasi-natural civilized human must be understood in contrast to the opposite picture of the conspirators. However implausible one might find Rousseau’s presentation of the plot (as as we shall see, the plan is complicated), one must also acknowledge that the conspirators are extreme versions of the corruption Rousseau attributes to social humans in his theoretical works. Whereas “Jean-Jacques” represents civilized imagination liberated from foresight and amour–propre, the conspirators represent civilized imagination enslaved to foresight and amour–propre. The conspirators are the victims of the most extreme departure from nature just as much as they are the vicious perpetrators of a crime against an innocent man. They are immensely powerful, exercising complete control over the government of France and the public opinion of Europe (pp. 76–77). Nevertheless, the direction of this power into a conspiracy against “Jean-Jacques” is a sign of their enslavement. They are obsessed with the future when they take endless precautions to control “Jean-Jacques”’s present and future reputation. Furthermore, they live outside themselves in a much more radical sense than “Jean-Jacques” does, even though they exercise power in the real world and he flees to imaginary worlds. “While he is occupied with himself, they are occupied with him too. He loves himself and they hate him. That is the occupation of both. He is everything to himself; his is also everything to them. As for them, they mean nothing either to him or to themselves” (p. 154–155). Thus, the Dialogues presents two different pictures of the extreme possibilities open to civilized humans: seeking one’s happiness in flights of imaginative reverie and withdrawal from public life or seeking one’s happiness in the distant future and the exercise of power over one’s fellows. These are the opposing poles around which civilized humans, unable to go back to the forest and live with the bears and unfortunate not to live in the healthy communities of antiquity, must orient their lives.
The Dialogues reveals much about Rousseau’s obsession with a conspiracy directed against him by his former friends Diderot and Grimm with the active complicity of both philosophes like Voltaire and d’Alembert and the French government. Surely, a part of this obsession must be attributed (and is attributed by Rousseau himself) to his peculiar personality. For two reasons, however, it would be a mistake to connect the conspiracy solely to Jean-Jacques’s psychological condition. First, Rousseau did in fact experience persecution from the French government, the Genevan government (which apparently acted against Rousseau because of pressure from the French government), and other governments. Public demonstrations were, in fact, stirred up against him. Finally, his former friends and his associates actually did make concerted efforts to damage his reputation and financial position. Examples abound to illustrate the ill will of many of Rousseau’s contemporaries and of their efforts to act on that ill will.12
The second reason for paying attention to Rousseau’s discussion of the conspiracy has less to do with Jean-Jacques’s personality or mental state. In the Dialogues, he claims that he is only incidentally the object of the conspiracy. Its true object is to destroy the current foundation of society and to provide a new one that would solidify the influence of a faction or sect of intellectuals sharing the opinions of Grimm, Diderot, and the others. This charge warrants serious attention because it so precisely mirrors these men’s understanding of themselves. Who would want to deny that around the project of Diderot’s Encyclopedia was united a party or sect linked by both generally shared opinions and interests, that these men and women hoped to modify the traditional basis of public opinion, which they regarded as infamous prejudices; that they hoped to gain influence over the public; and that to do so, they had to act in a more or less conspiratorial way.13 Rousseau’s claim is that the Enlightenment’s “party of humanity” is in fact essentially indistinguishable from other parties and that its effects will be pernicious. Thus, the Dialogues present in a more radical form arguments against the Enlightenment project that Rousseau had already made in the First Discourse, the Letter to d’Alembert, and elsewhere. He claims that it is his opposition to this project that causes him to be treated as a traitor.
Conclusion
One would hardly wish to deny that the Dialogues contains expressions of Rousseau’s mental anguish at the time of its composition. Nevertheless, to be read properly, this work must also be seen as a dramatization of the fundamental principles of Rousseau’s systematic thought and his deepest reflections on the problem of making this systematic thought accessible to an audience. By attempting to teach his reader how to judge Jean-Jacques, Rousseau hopes not only to secure his own reputation but also to open the way to an accurate understanding of his thought.
The conclusion of the Dialogues and, still more, the postscript called “History of the Preceding Writing” indicate that Rousseau was not optimistic about prospects for the success of his work. In the latter, Rousseau seems to abandon hope of finding the sort of readers who can understand his work. Even in the Dialogues itself, the converted “Frenchman” and “Rousseau” conclude only that they will offer consolation to “Jean-Jacques” and work unobtrusively to preserve his works for the day they can be appreciated as they deserve. Rousseau’s principle that nature never goes backward and that, at best, corruption can only be retarded implies that proper judgments about Jean-Jacques and his system will be rare indeed: his readers will all be more or less denatured and corrupt. If it is true that the denaturing undergone by civilized humans removes them so far from primitive nature that they cannot recognize it (p. 147), it is hard to see how Rousseau could expect any readers to understand either him or his system. In fact, near the conclusion of the Dialogues, “Rousseau” suggests that people will recover “those innate feelings that nature has engraved on all hearts” only after the depth of corruption has been reached (p. 242). It will only be at this point that a general appreciation of “Jean-Jacques” and his system could occur. In other words, the complete, popular success of the Dialogues depends on changes in human nature that Rousseau considers himself powerless to bring about. If the principles of Rousseau’s system are true, he is constantly faced with the paradoxical relationship between the author and his readers that is the theme of the Dialogues.
The Dialogues itself can overcome that paradox for only a few readers who have avoided the general corruption. Only these few can join “Rousseau” in judging “Jean-Jacques.”
Note
* All references to the definitive French edition of Rousseau’s Oeuvres complètes (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade) cite volume and page in this form.