Bloom
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Emile. Edited by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1979.
Collected Writings
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Collected Writings of Rousseau, Volumes I–VIII, Edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1991–.
Launay
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres completès, Vols. 1–3. Paris: Editions du Seuil [Collection L’Intrégale], 1967ff.
Pléiade (or Pl.)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, Vols. 1–5. Paris: NRF-Editions de la Pléiade, 1959ff.
Throughout the notes, references to “below” or “above” followed by numbers refer to pages in this book's print edition. These references are live links in this ebook; clicking on them will direct you to the appropriate book page’s text.
1. See Confessions, Collected Writings, V, 508 and 521.
2. Ibid., 430.
3. Ibid., 473.
4. Ibid., 503.
5. Ibid., 522.
6. The most complete account of these events, along with the best edition of the Vision, can be found in Fréderic S. Eigeldinger, “Des Pierres dans mon jardin”: Les années neuchâteloises de J.J. Rousseau et la crise de 1765 (Paris-Genève: Champion-Slatkine, 1992). We have followed Eigeldinger’s numbering of the verses.
7. These responses and the attacks to which they respond can be found in Collected Writings, II.
8. See Collected Writings, II, 84–85 and 110–129.
16. Certain objectors have complained that “this frankness is misplaced with the public” and that “not every truth is good to state.” (See p. 51 below.) In his last work, Rousseau agrees with this last objection; the “sacred” truth which he claims he has always tried to tell is that which is useful for the “moral order.” Reveries, Collected Writings, VIII, 28–34.
17. Emile, Bloom, 40.
18. Reveries, Collected Writings, VIII, 23.
19. Emile, Bloom, 313–314.
20. Cf. p. 54 below. The version of this statement cited here is from the first draft of the Letter.
21. Confessions, Collected Writings, V, 342.
26. Rousseau attacks the French policy of civil tolerance combined with theological tolerance in the Social Contract (Collected Writings, IV, 223), arguing that it is impossible to live with people whom one believes to be damned.
27. Second Discourse, Collected Writings, III, 19.
28. See p. 77 below. Throughout the Letter Rousseau seems to take the side of the “reasoner” in the Profession, whom the Archbishop qualifies as an “unbeliever”: “And who are you to dare tell me that God contradicts Himself, and whom would I prefer to believe—Him who teaches me eternal truths by reason, or you who proclaim an absurdity on His behalf?” (Emile, Bloom, 300).
30. Emile, Bloom, 280.
42. See p. 75 below. The second time Rousseau discusses only the sublimity of the Gospel’s “author.”
43. Emile, Bloom, 282.
45. Emile, Bloom, 282–283.
46. This is also one of the themes of the Letter to Voltaire, Collected Writings, III, 108–121.
49. Reveries, Collected Writings, VIII, 24.
50. See p. 4 below; Second Discourse, Collected Writings, III, 27, 86.
51. Emile, Bloom, 81–82.
54. See p. 4 below. The argument that the simultaneous misery and greatness of the human soul is unintelligible to philosophy, but explained by Christianity, is made most powerfully by Pascal. This part of the Letter can be taken as Rousseau’s most direct response to Pascal.
63. Rousseau does concede that “other passages present a meaning contrary” to the ones he cites (p. 172 below).
66. A very useful treatment of Rousseau’s thought with particular emphasis on the Letters Written from the Mountain is James Miller, Rousseau: Dreamer of Democracy (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1984).
70. See pp. 257–258 below.
72. Collected Writings, IV, 196–197.
1. 2 Timothy 3: 1–4 and 8.
2. Wisdom 4: 12. Wisdom is a part of the apocrypha.
3. This is a reference to Rousseau’s Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.
4. This is a reference to the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality.
5. This is a reference to Julie.
6. 1 Peter 2: 2.
7. Emile, Bloom, 92.
8. Emile, Bloom, 260. Beaumont abridges and alters the passage slightly.
9. Epistle to the Romans, 12: 1.
10. Psalms 92: 5.
11. This is a paraphrase of Emile, Bloom, 256.
12. Saint Augustine, Confessions, I. 9.
13. Emile, Bloom, 257.
14. Emile, Bloom, 178–179.
15. Emile, Bloom, 94.
16. Emile, Bloom, 258.
17. Epistle to the Romans 1: 19–22.
18. Emile, Bloom, 276–277.
19. Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, I.
20. Emile, Bloom, 295.
21. Emile, Bloom, 297.
22. Emile, Bloom, 298–299.
23. Emile, Bloom, 299. Beaumont abridges the paragraph.
24. Emile, Bloom, 307–308. As Rousseau points out (72 below), Beaumont both misquotes and abridges the passage.
25. Emile, Bloom, 308. Beaumont abridges slightly.
26. Psalms, 26: 12.
27. Emile, Bloom, 212.
28. Emile, Bloom, 266.
29. Emile, Bloom, 300.
30. Emile, Bloom, 303.
31. Emile, Bloom, 236.
32. Proverbs 8: 15.
33. First Epistle of Peter 2: 17.
34. Epistle to the Romans 13: 1, 2.
35. Saint Augustine, Enarrat, in psal., 124.
36. Epistle to Titus 2: 12, 13.
37. 2 Timothy 4: 1, 2.
38. Tobias 14: 11.
39. Tobias 14: 17.
40. Proverbs 22: 6.
41. Jean Damascene, t. II, 462–463.
1. “Pardon me if I speak freely, not to insult you, but to defend myself. I presume upon your seriousness and prudence, because you can consider the necessity of responding that you have imposed on me.”
2. Rousseau wrote the First Discourse in response to the question, “Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?” posed by the Academy of Dijon in 1749 when he was thirty-seven years old. The Discourse, some of the attacks on it referred to below, and Rousseau’s responses can be found in Collected Writings, II. An account of the effect of his new fame can be found in Confessions, VIII, in Collected Writings, V.
3. After attacking French opera in the “Letter on French Music” (Collected Writings, VII, 141–174) in 1753, one year after his great triumph with his opera, The Village Soothsayer, Rousseau was burned in effigy. There was in fact a lettre de cachet issued against him. See Confessions, Collected Writings, V, 322–323. For an excellent account of these events that supports much of what Rousseau says about them, see Robert Wokler, “Rousseau on Rameau and Revolution,” Studies in the Eighteenth Century 44 (1978), 251–283.
4. This was a commonplace of the attacks on the First Discourse; see Collected Writings, II, 28–32, 66, 70, 95, and 132.
5. After sending the manuscript to the publisher Rousseau changed the original “opinions” to prejudices. The reason for this change was to use a masculine word to make it clear that the “my own” later in the sentence (which is a feminine) would be read as referring back to “wills” and not to “opinions.”
6. A warrant for Rousseau’s arrest was issued by the Parlement of Paris on June 9, 1762, not long after the publication of Emile. Upon being informed of the warrant, Rousseau fled France and began a period of wandering through Europe. The events around the condemnation of Emile can be found in Book XI of the Confessions.
7. Emile was published with legal permission of the government of Holland, which was indicated on the title page.
8. Rousseau uses the expression droit des gens, which refers to standards of justice between peoples of different communities, not merely to treaties and other formally recognized agreements.
9. In the manuscript opposite this passage Rousseau wrote fragment 1, p. 84 below.
10. For Rousseau’s account of his flight from France, see Confessions, XII. Ham is cursed by his father, Noah, for having seen him naked without covering him (Genesis, IX: 20–25).
11. Spinoza (1632–1677) had his Theological-Political Treatise published anonymously in 1671. It was greeted by intense criticism and circulated only with false title pages. He was, however, offered pensions and professorships, which he declined.
12. The “illustrious protector” is Lord Marshal George Keith who was governor of Neuchâtel for the “enlightened Prince,” Frederick the Great. Rousseau found refuge at Môtiers in the territory of Neuchâtel from 1762 to 1765.
13. In the manuscript opposite this paragraph Rousseau wrote fragment 2, p. 84 below.
14. The word translated “prig” is “cuistre.” Rousseau first wrote Grimaud, which is a term for a bad writer or artist.
15. The Pléiade editors suggest that the two anecdotes could be the ones reported in the Confessions, 477 and 484–485, which concern Rousseau’s suspicions of machinations against him while Emile was in press and shortly after its publication.
16. The Jesuits were banished from France in 1762.
17. Collected Writings, VI, 562–563. The note is to the term “pietists” and says: “A kind of madmen who took it into their heads to be Christians, and to follow the Gospel to the letter: more or less like the Methodists in England, the Moravians in Germany, the Jansenists in France; except that these latter have only to become the masters to be harsher and more intolerant than their enemies.”
18. On Rousseau’s suspicions of his neighbors at Montmorency, see Confessions, XI, Collected Writings, V, 477–478.
19. In the manuscript opposite this paragraph Rousseau wrote fragment 3, pp. 84–85 below.
20. The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar contains a dialogue between a “reasoner” and an “inspired man” (Emile, Bloom, 300–301).
21. Fragment 5, pp. 85–87 below, originally took the place of this paragraph.
22. In the Profession of Faith, Rousseau identifies himself as its editor, not its author.
23. The published edition reads amour-propre here rather than amour de soi. Editors have generally followed the draft, which says amour de soi, and changed the reading. This is consistent with Rousseau’s normal distinction between the two terms.
24. The word politique, translated here and elsewhere as “political thinker,” covers a range of meanings from politician to statesman and from advisor to rulers to political philosopher.
25. St. Augustine was a teacher of rhetoric by profession.
26. Thomas Burnet (1635–1715) was a theologian at Cambridge.
27. Some of the terms of this passage occur at pp. 85–90 below.
28. The French word translated “Grace” here is Grandeur, an ecclesiastical title that is not identical to Monseigneur, which is also translated as “Grace.” Rousseau thus makes a slight distinction between this hypothetical interlocutor and Beaumont.
30. Rousseau alters Beaumont’s formulation.
31. Rousseau is referring to Henri IV (1553–1610).
32. Rousseau changes Beaumont’s statement slightly.
33. Opposite this paragraph in the manuscript Rousseau wrote fragment 6, p. 90 below.
35. In the manuscript Rousseau wrote fragment 7, pp. 90–91 below, opposite this paragraph.
36. Rousseau abridges slightly.
37. The text of fragment 8, p. 91 below, occurs here in the first draft.
38. Romans, I: 19–22; See p. 8 above.
39. Emile, Bloom, 258.
40. The Vicar actually begins by saying “I believe” rather than “I know.” The missing sentence reads, “As soon as this knowledge has something to do with my interests, I shall make an effort to acquire it. Until then,” (Emile, Bloom, 276–277).
41. The remainder of this paragraph is a revision that Rousseau made after sending the manuscript to the publisher. The omitted passage reads, “The first manner is greater, simpler, more sublime, but it is less proportionate to the human mind above all when the ideas of the heterogeneous substances are mutually exclusive and when one of them must owe its existence to the other without anyone being able to imagine how this can be.
“The second manner is clearer and more conceivable to the understanding, but it satisfies reason less in that it assumes that two principles are known, the existence of which is absolute and independent, and nevertheless one of which acts on the other as if this latter depended on it.”
42. In the manuscript sent to the publisher this note concluded, “It is not at all a question of entering into debate with Plato.” Rousseau had the publisher delete this conclusion.
43. In an edition of the letter printed in London in 1782 the passage beginning with the next sentence and ending, “have this same meaning, since,” reads, “Nothing is less rare than words whose meaning changes with the passage of time, and that cause one to attribute to ancient Authors who used them ideas they did not have at all. The Hebrew word that has been translated by ‘create, to make something out of nothing,’ signifies instead, ‘to make, to produce something with magnificence.’ Rivet even claims that neither this Hebrew word, Bara, nor the Greek word that corresponds to it, nor even the Latin word creare can be restricted to this particular signification of ‘to produce something out of nothing.’ It is so certain, at least, that the Latin word is taken in another sense that Lucretius, formally denies the possibility of all creation.” See Pléiade, IV, 1739.
44. Isaac de Beausobre published Histoire de Manichée et Manichéism in several volumes from 1734 to 1739.
45. The word torts, translated “errors” here, also has the sense of “wrongs.” Thus Rousseau is pointing out Beaumont’s mistakes that have wronged Rousseau by distorting his position. In the first sentence of each of the next three paragraphs tort is translated “wrong.”
46. Rousseau is referring to Frédéric-Guillaume de Montmollin, who was his pastor at Môtiers. Montmollin originally welcomed Rousseau, but after the publication of the Letter to Beaumont and the Letters Written from the Mountain stirred up the public against Rousseau by comparing him to the Antichrist in a number of sermons.
47. The term translated “nominal Christians” would be literally “Christians in effigy.”
48. Rousseau’s translation is rather free.
49. There were two Joly de Fleury brothers who successively held the post of avocate général. One of them was responsible for demanding the warrant for Rousseau’s arrest issued by the Parlement of Paris.
50. Rousseau’s statement about marriage here should be compared with the letter to Mme. de Francueil of 1751, which he appended to the Confessions (Collected Writings, V, 551–552). Although Rousseau lived with Thérèse Le Vasseur (a Catholic) from 1745, he did not marry her until 1768, when he did so in a sort of civil ceremony. Legally Protestants and Catholics were not allowed to marry.
51. As always the term translated as “morality” is la morale, which means moral doctrine or system of ethics. It is distinguished from “morals,” or moeurs, which occurs in the following sentence. Rousseau’s point is that moral doctrine does not correspond to actual practices.
52. The argument developed in this and subsequent paragraphs is a working out of the implications of the discussion of civil religion in the Social Contract, Collected Writings, IV, 216–224.
53. The issue of hypostasis concerns the question of the Trinity, whether there can be three persons in only one God without saying that there are three substances, and the question of how Jesus can be one person with two natures (divine and human). These issues were debated in the Christianity of the third and fourth centuries in the disputes with the Arians.
54. The “Constitution” was the papal bull Unigenitus, September 8, 1713, which attacked Jansenism.
55. Rousseau discusses civil and theological intolerance in the Social Contract (Collected Writings, IV, 223).
56. In 1762 Jean Calas, a Protestant, was accused of murdering his son for wishing to convert to Catholicism. Calas the elder was tortured to death. After a campaign of protest led by Voltaire he was posthumously exonerated.
57. Rousseau is referring to Apologie de Louis XIV et de son Conseil, sur la révocation de l’édit de Nantes, pour servir de réponse à la “Lettre d’un patriote sur la tolérance civile des protestants de France” avec une dissertation sur la journée de Saint-Barthélemi published in 1758 by the abbé Jean Novi de Caveirac.
58. Rousseau translates the Latin passage.
59. Anne du Bourg was hanged in 1559 and the inhabitants of the villages referred to by Rousseau were accused of heresy and killed in 1545.
60. Rousseau abridges the passage.
61. The so-called St. John of Paris (1690–1727) was revered in Jansenist circles. His tomb in Saint-Médard Cemetery was the location of many supposed miracles. The cemetery was closed in 1732 by order of the king.
62. Rousseau uses the technical term diallelus for circular reasoning here.
63. Emile, Bloom, 308.
64. The Chevalier de Mauléon de Causans claimed to have discovered how to square the circle.
65. Antoine de Malvin de Montazet was archbishop of Lyon and sympathized with the Jansenists. He had opposed Beaumont and written a public letter attacking him in 1758. Beaumont did not respond to the attack.
66. Emile, Bloom, 303.
67. The word translated as “stupid” is bête, the plural of which is translated as “beasts” immediately above. The same ambiguity is contained in Voltaire’s remark on the Second Discourse, “Never has so much intelligence been used in seeking to make us stupid” (Collected Writings, III, 102).
68. Rousseau refers to the notoriously obscene book Aloisiae Sigaeae Toletanae satyra sotadica de arcanis amoris et Venris, Aloisia hispanice scripsit, altinitate donavit Joannes Meursius by Nicholas Chorier (1612–1692).
1. The term libelles refers to a genre of writing involving defamatory personal attacks.
2. The idea that Rousseau’s enemies have used personal attacks to give his books a bad reputation is at the foundation of the argument of Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques.
3. Rousseau is referring to Republic, Books II–III.
4. Rousseau is referring to Voltaire, who had entered the Académie française in 1746.
5. Rousseau first wrote, “What! Is error always a crime.”
6. Here Rousseau first wrote, “and you man.”
7. At this point Rousseau wrote and then crossed out, “It is for that that abandoning all these writings and their cowardly authors to the disdain and to the indignation they deserve,” after which he wrote and also crossed out, “I separate you, Your Grace, from the crowd, you and your pastoral letter.”
8. Rousseau first wrote, “Fire, water.”
9. Rousseau discusses the Abbé de St. Pierre’s boldness in the Confessions (Collected Writings, V, 356).
10. The term Monseigneur does, in fact, occur in the final version of the Letter. Literally it would be “My lord.”
11. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “more sincerely.”
12. In the manuscript this note (probably written earlier) occurs with the remainder of the text: “Perform your profession, Your Grace, I will continue to perform mine, your arms will be (like those of the inspired man) epithets and insults, mine will be proofs and reasons.”
13. At the end of this paragraph Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “Let us now enter.”
14. This sentence is unfinished in the manuscript. It would appear that Rousseau intended to quote or paraphrase the beginning of the Pastoral Letter. See p. 3 above.
15. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out “could God have inflicted.”
16. In the manuscript Rousseau wrote the following opposite this paragraph: “their little heads are filled with such narrow prejudices and their hearts with passions so base.
“all the ministers of Kings can persecute me at their ease, they will never hate me as much as I despise [them] and will never do me as much evil as I have received for the good of the human race.”
17. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “soldiers.”
18. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “subjects.”
19. Opposite these lines Rousseau wrote, “May I see this day of glory born and have contributed to it.”
20. Rousseau first wrote, “upon which opinion has no hold at all.”
21. After this Rousseau wrote and crossed out, “Is the one who occupies himself with them by that very fact an abominable scoundrel who ought to be forbidden fire and water everywhere?”
22. After this Rousseau wrote and then crossed out, “The true Christian leaves obscure what is obscure in scripture and does not at all meddle in being.”
23. After this Rousseau wrote, “it says too much about it to be believed.”
24. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “orthodox enough.”
25. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “transgressed.”
26. The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar is part of a story within the story of Emile. It is presented as a separate work by an unidentified author.
27. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “See in effect what absurdity would follow.”
28. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “the propositions of his book that he advances as from himself, or as those from someone else.”
29. Following “impute” Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “at the same time.”
30. Following “con” Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “at will.”
31. Julie contains a lengthy debate about suicide (Collected Writings, VI, 310–323).
32. In place of “these opinions” Rousseau successively wrote and crossed out, “the sentiment that is claimed to be mine,” “that is judged appropriate to attribute to me,” and “that they take pleasure in attributing to me.”
33. Following this sentence Rousseau wrote and then crossed out, “I am certainly careful to find it bad that my enemies talk nonsense and I am not seen to be very excited by rare arguments.”
34. The term translated “at law” is en justice. Rousseau first wrote and then crossed out, “before the tribunals, that could be because everything becomes feasible and just as soon as it is a question of oppressing me, but you will agree very much.” In this version, instead of “feasible” Rousseau first wrote “possible” and instead of “you will agree very much,” he first wrote “at least I think that.”
35. In 1703 Baron de Lahontan published a book entitled New Voyages of the Baron de Lahontan in South America . . . The objections to the clergy and religion in this book are expressed by the Indians met by the Baron.
36. The fragment ends here.
1. This and the four following paragraphs are on a separate sheet and have been added to the manuscript.
2. This refers to Aristotle’s account of climate in forming the character of nations (Politics, VII.1327b19–1328a15.
3. Rousseau’s term, metropolitain, applies to an archbishop having authority over a city.
4. The term droits regaliens applies to kingly and hence sovereign rights.
5. Vidomne is the Genevan equivalent of vidame. A viscount is the lieutenant or representative of a count, while a vidame is the temporal representative of a bishop.
6. A native was the child of a resident foreigner. Natives had more legal rights than their parents, but not as many as citizens.
7. Rousseau and his source both leave the date blank.
8. On this formulation see Social Contract, I, 1 (Collected Writings, IV, 131).
9. Equestrian colony.
10. In other words, it would have been absorbed by France.
1. This motto from Juvenal (Satires, 4.91) means “to consecrate one’s life to the truth.” Rousseau used it as his motto from the time he wrote the Letter to d’Alembert.
2. This is the way we will translate the term représentants, which indicates the people who made official remonstrations (représentations) to the government on Rousseau’s behalf.
3. The book to which Rousseau refers in this note is De l’esprit by Helvétius, which appeared in 1758 and was promptly condemned by the Parlement of Paris.
4. D’Alembert argues this most notably in his “Justification of the Article, ‘Geneva,’ in the Encyclopedia.”
5. On the Minister Montmollin, see pp. 47–48 above.
6. Rousseau praised the Genevan clergy in both the Letter to d’Alembert and the Dedicatory Letter to the Second Discourse.
7. The expression Rousseau uses is a colloquial one, the literal meaning of which would be, “they do not know which saint to dedicate themselves to.”
8. These speeches occur in Chapters XI and XII of Pantagruel.
9. The “Constitution” was the papal bull Unigenitus issued against the Jansenists in 1713.
10. Emile, Bloom, 310.
11. The temple of Fortune at Praenestum was famous in antiquity for its oracle.
12. Guillaume-François Rouelle was a famous chemist with whom Rousseau had studied in the 1740s.
13. Jean-Antoine Nollet was a famous physicist.
14. Brioché and the peasant of North Holland were prominent attractions at the Paris fairs.
15. Albert the Great (thirteenth century) was said to have constructed a mechanical man who could answer questions.
16. In the middle of the eighteenth century numerous miracles were alleged to have occurred at the cemetery of Saint Médard.
17. Jacques-Jean Brouhier wrote a two-volume study of premature burials and embalmings.
18. The word translated as magic trick is prestige, which can mean “illusion,” but Rousseau questions the assumption that such tricks are different from miracles.
19. Acts, VIII: 9–24.
20. The translation has been altered to reflect a change Rousseau made in his quotation of the passage.
21. The declaration Rousseau refers to is his proclaimed decision to stop responding to his critics after he had written answers to several attacks on his First Discourse.
22. Emile, Bloom, 298.
23. Emile, Bloom, 374.
24. Joseph-Isaac Beruyer was a Jesuit priest who wrote fashionable versions of biblical episodes.
25. Rousseau had officially reconverted to Calvinism and been restored to his citizenship during a visit to Geneva in 1754.
26. This story, which can be found in numerous sources, is not from Brantome.
27. The word is pratiquer.
28. The condemnation of Emile took place about two weeks after its appearance in Paris.
29. Reflections and Maxims, CLXIII, by Luc Clapiers, marquis de Vauvenargue (1715–1747).
30. See Emile (Bloom ed.), 33, and Confessions, Collected Writings, V, 300–302 and 344, on Louise-Alexandrine-Julie de Chenonceaux and her request that Rousseau write a treatise on education.
31. Rousseau is referring in particular to anonymous works by Voltaire.
32. All of Voltaire’s works were printed in Geneva and most of them were prohibited in France.
33. Rousseau is referring to the Letter to Beaumont.
34. See Confessions, XII, Collected Writings, V, 516–517.
35. For Rousseau’s relations with George Keith, see Confessions, XII.
36. There are a few alterations in this quotation.
37. Spirit of the Laws, XII, 4.
38. Voltaire had taken up residence outside of Geneva and was in frequent contact with its leading citizens. The speech Rousseau puts into Voltaire’s mouth immediately below enraged the latter because it made him admit that he was the author of works he had published anonymously. Voltaire considered Rousseau to be a police informer because of this and urged the government of Geneva to issue a death sentence against him.
39. In the Essai sur les moeurs.
40. This article was published in the Encyclopédie in 1758. Rousseau’s Letter to d’Alembert was a response to it, and the Genevan clergy also responded as a body.
41. Book V of Emile contains a summary of much of the argument of the Social Contract. See Emile, Bloom, 458–467.
42. This is a direct quotation from Social Contract, III, 1 (Collected Writings, IV, 166).
43. Rousseau ordered copies of both Thomas More’s Utopia and Denis Vairasse’s Histoire de Sévérambes (originally published in 1677) from a bookseller around the time the Letters Written from the Mountain was published.
44. While Emile was banned throughout Europe, the Social Contract was not generally banned.
45. Algernon Sidney was arrested and executed in 1682. His Discourses Concerning Government were published in 1698.
46. Johannes Althusius was the author of Politica, which was published in 1603.
47. Charles Castel de Saint-Pierre (1658–1743). Rousseau abridged and commented on the Abbé de Saint-Pierre’s Polysynody and Perpetual Peace. In the Confessions Rousseau indicates that he became aware of the dangers of being involved in the publication of the Abbé’s works (Collected Writings, V, 354–356).
48. This statement is sometimes taken as a claim that Rousseau agreed with Locke’s conclusions about the principles of political right, but, in context, it seems more obviously to be a claim that the two of them wrote bold general treatments of political right without making explicit applications to particular governments.
49. Rousseau uses this formula in his dedication of the Second Discourse, thereby indicating that he is dedicating it to the people of Geneva rather than its government, the members of which he refers to as “Magnificent and most honored lords.” See Collected Writings, III,
50. The three bodies are the general Council, the Two-Hundred, and the small Council.
51. This is a common remark about the government of Poland in the eighteenth century. Rousseau proposes a remedy for it in his Considerations on the Government of Poland.
52. See the Fourth Letter, pp. 192–193 above.
53. This article appeared in volume seven of the Encyclopédie.
54. To reclaim is to demand that someone be captured and brought to a particular jurisdiction. In this context it is the equivalent of a request for extradition.
55. The word translated as “supervision” is police, otherwise translated as “public order.”
56. “Lack of public order” is the translation of Rousseau’s neologism impolice, which he uses occasionally elsewhere, but it is otherwise not common in French.
57. The case took place in 1707 and involved Nicolas Lemaître, an ally of Pierre Fatio in defending popular rights.
58. In these states the Two-Hundred is the sovereign council, equivalent to the Genevan general Council.
59. The so-called Thirty Tyrants ruled in Athens for a short time near the end of the fifth century B.C.
60. Article XLIV reads, “All the Articles contained in the present Settlement will have the force of Laws in the future, and will not be capable of being susceptible to any change, whatever it might be, except with the consent of the General Council legitimately assembled by the Small and Great Council.”
61. Article XV stipulates that the garrison of the town cannot be increased except with the consent of the General Council.
62. Article III says, “The Rights and Attributions of the General Council, legitimately assembled, will remain invariably fixed and limited to the following Articles.
63. Sarrazin was auditor in 1667.
64. Rousseau invents the word équiponderant, which clearly means “is equal to in weight.” It can be compared to the word ponderant, which Rousseau also invented and used in the “Letter to Franquières.” See Collected Writings, VIII, 336–337, n. 30.
65. Otho’s career is described in Tacitus, History, I.36.
66. Du Droit de la nature et des gens, I, 1, 20.
67. The companies were the divisions of the militia.
68. The estimates of the number of Remonstrators at the height of their assemblies range from 480 to over 700.
69. See Collected Writings, IV, 196–197.
70. The assembly was actually convoked for the 15th of May.
71. Three leaders of the Bourgeoisie were arrested less than three months after the declaration of an amnesty.
72. The word translated as “remonstrance” throughout this text is réprésentation, except for the case immediately below in which Rousseau, in fact, uses remontrances.
73. In order to sharpen his own interpretation of the significance of this passage, immediately below Rousseau changes the formulation from the Letters Written from the Country given here, substituting “prevent” for “oppose.”
74. The words “speak at his fancy” are not in the Letters Written from the Country.
75. This is a summary of the passage in the Letters Written from the Country, rather than a quotation.
76. Rousseau is referring to an affair involving John Wilkes and the periodical The North Britain in 1763. Wilkes was granted one thousand pounds in damages because of the violation of habeus corpus in his case.
77. See pp. 295–296 below.
78. On the case of Abraham-Gédéon Binet, see the Seventh Letter, p. 244 above.
79. See the Seventh Letter, p. 248 above.
80. On the right of declaring war and making peace, see Social Contract, II, 2, Collected Writings, IV, 146.
81. For Rousseau’s treatment of the Tribunes, see Social Contract, IV, 5, Collected Writings, IV, 211–212.
82. Book IV, Chapters 4–7, of the Social Contract are concerned with Roman institutions.
83. The “beneficent philosopher” is the title taken by Stanislas Leszczynski, the former King of Poland with whom Rousseau had had an exchange after the publication of the First Discourse. See Collected Writings, II, 28–54. The remark quoted here by Rousseau occurs in Stanislas’s Observations on the Government of Poland.
85. For a copy of Rousseau’s letter to Silhouette and an account of the circumstances in which he wrote it, see Confessions, Collected Writings, V, 445.
86. This is the case of Rousseau himself.
87. The book in question was Rousseau’s Emile, and Bardin was ultimately paid for the books.
88. We read sait rather than fait, following the first edition of the Letters rather than Pléiade.
89. This story can be found in Plutarch’s Life of Pericles.
90. See letter 8, p. 256 above.
1. Jean Jacques Imer (1740–1804) was named Deacon in 1763.
2. In fact, a rumor did circulate in Val-de-Travers that Rousseau had claimed in Emile that women had no souls.
3. Apparently a local innkeeper.
4. A neighbor of Rousseau, Henri Baillods (1700–1791) had been mayor of Travers from 1731 to 1742.
5. On Montmollin, see note 46 above to the Letter to Beaumont.
6. Esprit has the sense of wit or intelligence as well as of spirit. The last is used here to preserve Rousseau’s play on words.
7. This verse puns on Boy’s name, which could be taken as a form of the verb “boire” or drink.
8. Rousseau originally wrote and then crossed out the following footnote to be placed at this point: “His real name is Pierre Boy, and the nickname Pierrot of the Ladies has really been given to him by the People.”