Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

Really just an astonishing memoir, and not at all what I was expecting. Instead of a dry, didactic, rationalist, Enlightenment-era reflection, this is a warts-and-all, somewhat unreliable, page-turner that includes several jaw-dropping revelations. He gave all five of his children away to a foundling hospital!! He shacked up with his mistress Therese (who was the daughter of his servant). He was involved in at least one menage a trois.

The Confessions does not include any discussion of show more Rousseau's philosophy, although through his gradual turn to misanthropy and his retreat to nature, he exemplifies a sort of proto-Romantic hero. Because his work was considered heretical by the Jesuits in France, he was forced into exile and spent several years running from one safe haven to another. The Confessions is the earliest memoir I have read that feels contemporary. Augustine's Confessions were written ultimately to make converts; Rousseau on the other hand, wants to tell the truth of his life. show less

The one star rating does not mean I don’t recommend reading The Social Contract. Everyone should. It’s that important, that influential and reading this was certainly eye-opening. One star does not mean this was tedious, dry or difficult. In fact this treatise is not long, is easy to understand and can be read in a few hours. And Rousseau can certainly turn a phrase. Lots and lots that’s quotable in this book. But I don’t simply not like the book (which on Goodreads means one star) I show more absolutely despise this book and everything it stands for. Leo Strauss called Machiavelli the “teacher of evil” and goodness knows I have nothing kind to say about Marx. But both feel clean and wholesome in comparison to Rousseau. Machiavelli at least is open about urging there is no place for morals in politics, but Rousseau is positively Orwellian.

He begins the first chapter of Social Contract with the stirring worlds: Man is born free and everywhere is in chains. But though he speaks of liberty and democracy it’s clear that his ideal state as he defines it is totalitarian. Those who don’t want any part of his state, who won’t obey, should be “forced to be free.” Locke argued inalienable rights included life, liberty, and property; governments are instituted to secure those rights. For Rousseau, life, liberty and property are all things you give wholly to the state “retaining no individual rights.” Rousseau states:

Whoever refuses to obey the general will shall be compelled to do so by the whole body... the social contract gives the body politic absolute power over all its members... when the prince says to him: “It is expedient for the State that you should die,” he ought to die.

Even Rousseau thought his ideal system couldn’t work in large territories. He ideally wanted direct democracy, with all citizens meeting in assembly such as in the ancient city-state of Athens, not representative democracy, which he doesn’t see as true democracy. (And the larger the state, the more absolute in its powers and more autocratic the government should be lest it fall into selfish anarchy.) Alissa Ardito says in the Introduction to my edition that: “Politics... is also about language, talking, negotiating, arguing; and for that Rousseau had no need and little patience. The goal in The Social Contract is always about consensus, and in the end one suspects what Rousseau finally wanted was silence.” You cannot have liberty or democracy while shutting up and shutting down anyone who dissents from the “general will.” And then there’s Rousseau’s urging of a civil religion, where one literally worships the state. What you get then is the obscenity of a state as the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” whose only nod to democracy is in the name, and where its leader takes on a quasi-religious status.

Can I see any good in this treatise? I can see the form the United States took in the discussion of a mix between monarchy (President), aristocracy (Senate, Supreme Court) and democracy (Congress) and checks and balances between them. But such features are also discussed in Locke’s Second Treatise of Government and in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, both of which predate The Social Contract. In fact, Rousseau's categories of government can even trace its roots to Aristotle. So, what good I can see in it is hardly original. Well, and The Social Contract did argue for sovereignty being lodged in the people rather than a Divine Right of Kings--it’s supposed to have inspired the French Revolution, and its cry of “liberty, equality, fraternity.” If so, it’s easier to understand why the French Revolution turned into the Reign of Terror. I do consider this a must-read, and I’m glad I read it. It’s enlightening, like turning over a rock to see all the nasty things that were hiding underneath. show less

Among the reasons I have enjoyed reading Rousseau's obsessively detailed, confessional autobiography is that I recognize in him a fellow book lover. Consider this quote from ""JJ": "I have lost or dismembered numbers of books through the habit of carrying them about with me everywhere, in the pigeon-house, in the garden, in the orchard, and in the vineyard. While occupied with something else, I put my book down at the foot of a tree or on a hedge ; I always forgot to take it up again, and, show more at the end of a fortnight, I frequently found it rotted away, or eaten by ants and snails. This eagerness for learning became a mania which drove me nearly stupid, so incessantly was I employed with muttering something or other to myself."

However, I cannot recongnize in myself (thankfully) thin-skinned Rousseau's small-mindedness, petulance, defeatism, and general self-defeating actions. It is somewhat amazing the the author of The Social Contract had such a bizarrely unhealthy sex life, a streak of self-abasing confessionalism, and a Tesla-like ability to confound his own financial success and security through his intellectual property.

A few things made an impact on me and will stay with me from this book:

- In Rousseau's younger years, he was one of the rootless, poor vagabonds which dotted the landscape of Europe in the early 18th Century. That lifestyle, during which Rousseau typically wrecked his own chances of betterment time and time again, of cottage industries, patronage, and latent feudalism was a fascinating part of the work which I am sure is among the earliest examples of the hyper-confessional autobiography that is not uncommon today. (Lance Armstrong, where's yours?)

- In one bizarre episode Friedrich Melchior Von Grimm, Rousseau and another man of letters stop in to visit a simpleton tween sold off by her mother as a concubine. Grimm, apparently, claimed to have only lingered in the young girl's room to make the others wait and Rousseau typical sexual encounter was an episode of weeping self-loathing. He confesses the peccadillo in his mind to his wife (five children, all dropped off at the orphanage) who forgave him and then Grimm shows up to tell on Rousseau. So, what's Rousseau's take on this? Grimm is a jerk ... no commentary on the poor young girl, the motivations of her mother, or the general behavior of his colleagues. It was all par for the course in that day and age, apparently.

- I am amazed Rousseau gives so much of his supposed enemie's correspondence, which only supports the apparent fact that Rousseau was a self-destructive, peevish whiner. show less

Rousseau wrote his memoirs in two portions, two years apart, though they are now normally published together. The first part covers from childhood to when he is a young man finding independence, and sets the template for future memoirs by other authors by its ascribing importance to influences and 'dishing the dirt' on every aspect of his life. Rousseau's excruciating effort to tell all dated back to his first writings in the 1750s when he challenged the popular view of progress and set the show more pattern for living a life which would reflect the beliefs he professed. His confessions probably offered more honesty than contemporary readers bargained for, by not shying away from topics that lay outside the bounds of polite society when it was published four years after his death. Hopefully it was not the cause of too much trouble, since he did not varnish his version of the truth about others any more than himself.

While his attempt at honesty seems earnest, he lacks some personal insight that would have helped guide his pen. He is poor at foreshadowing, often claiming such-and-such was his last moment of happiness but then describing another happy interlude; claiming a tragedy awaits on the next page, but then not really living up to its billing. He over-inflates events in his life that may have cut him to the quick but do not seem so deserving of the impact he allows them. Some faults he can't recognize or name that we know today as "middle age crisis" or "making an ass of himself", and his over-indulgence in self-pity can be very annoying in places. He is far too quick to award himself title to a uniquely noble soul, and to suspect the motives and nature of others when he would prefer to cast the blame afield. He wants again and again to be understood for his intentions rather than his words and actions, but he's not willing to extend the same grace to others.

Part two of these confessions (the latter six parts of twelve) takes a darker turn. Rousseau removes his rose-coloured glasses when inspecting the more recent years of his life and, while the tone remains the same, the content becomes that of a man defending himself against libel. At the same time some of his own darkest episodes occur here, as much a factor of his times (to judge from how cavalier he is about them) as of himself. There is the episode, for example, where he and another man adopt a girl and raise her with the intention of betraying her innocence once she comes of age. Happily they do not follow through, but this was apparently a socially acceptable plan. Similarly, he has little compunction (only excusing himself by saying he was drunk) in partaking of another man's obviously reluctant kept child in Paris. In another vein, he is defensive but sees little wrong with how he coerced his wife to give up their newborn babe to an orphanage. So little wrong, in fact, he made her do the same thing four more times with every child they had together, although he does experience guilt about it (not actual regret) later in life.

His unacknowledged faults extend to the intellectual sphere. Charged with editing the posthumous words of the Abbe de Saint-Pierre, Rousseau cannot commit to supporting the messages of a man who so firmly viewed humanity as being invested with the power of reason. Rousseau is entirely dismissive of the idea that "men are governed by their reason rather than by their passions," suggesting that the Abbe was "working only for imaginary beings." This belief goes a long way to explaining some of Rousseau's subsequent actions in his personal life and his perception of their fallout.

Rousseau's confessions were far more engaging than I'd anticipated, even through the less entertaining second half. The historic value of this memoir is undeniable, and the value of the model it set for autobiography going forward. It also establishes a basis for how readers should interpret such works. Rousseau's quest for honesty was for his readers' (and reputation's) sake, but he had too many blind spots to be successfully honest with himself. Thus it provides a textbook case of a memoir that is as significant for what it doesn't acknowledge as what it does. show less