This new book by Edward O. Wilson is extremely short, which is a plus, but I didn't find it particularly satisfying. I had a similar reaction to Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life, which was published in 2016. I guess this is to be expected, given that Wilson is now almost ninety. He seems to be a compulsive writer, and producing new books must be his hobby. Still, he always provides many examples from the zoological world, and in this case he roughly traces evolution from the earliest times to the present. The stages he lists are:
1. The origin of life
2. The invention of complex ("eukaryotic") cells
3. The invention of sexual reproduction, leading to a controlled system of DNA exchange and the multiplication of species
4. The origin of organisms composed of multiple cells
5. The origin of societies
6. The origin of language
The primary subjects discussed are social evolution, eusociality, group selection and the emergence of modern humans. If you are already familiar with the concepts, there is little new here.
Throughout nature, most species survive primarily with the selfish behavior of individuals. Although we tend to associate altruism with high status within the animal kingdom, it is no more than an evolutionary accident. There is a spectrum of cooperation that enters natural selection and varies from no cooperation to complete cooperation. Schools of fish, flocks of birds and swarms of insects protect individuals from predators and are one of the simplest forms of cooperation. In the extreme case of ants and termites, individual survival may be completely subordinated to group survival, and most individuals are incapable of reproduction. Under group selection, fitness may be conferred to a group as a whole rather than to individuals. Quoting David Sloan Wilson, the evolutionary biologist, Wilson sums up the difference between individual and group selection as follows: within groups, selfish individuals win against altruists, but groups of altruists beat groups of individuals. At times, I found that there were so many examples of adaptation that it was difficult to think of eusociality as a distinct process. Occasionally it is unclear exactly how a behavior is encoded in genes, and it may be triggered only under certain conditions. In this respect, Wilson isn't much clearer than Jonathan Losos in Improbable Destinies: the underlying processes are so complex that descriptions seem like oversimplifications.
I had been hoping that Wilson would have more to say about modern humans. There are a few interesting facts, but Wilson is not an anthropologist, and while he is fairly philosophical for a scientist, he isn't particularly philosophical by other standards. One reviewer criticized him for linking homosexuality to eusociality. Wilson may be correct, but from a research standpoint that view seems controversial. An area that interested me was research on aggression in chimpanzees and humans. Chimpanzees have been observed patrolling the border of their territory and capturing and eating babies from neighboring groups. There is a table listing archaeological and ethnographic evidence of human mortality due to warfare. Known groups of hunter-gatherers have always had a small percentage of adult deaths attributable to warfare. Thus, Rousseau's idea that life used to be better seems merely to be a variation of the Garden of Eden myth from the Bible.
In Wilson's explanation, modern humans developed on the savannas of Africa. He thinks that wildfires burned animals, and humans began to eat cooked meat this way. Soon they were keeping fires and eating meat regularly. Meat provides nutrition more efficiently than plants, and a carnivorous diet takes less time and effort than a vegetarian diet. Wilson thinks that meat consumption is associated with the rapid increase in the brain size of modern humans. I have often wondered why I like fires so much: it's probably because my ancestors sat beside them for hundreds of thousands of years.
Wilson does not engage in the kind of speculation about the future of mankind that I enjoy. He seems comfortable thinking of us as a type of animal and leaving it at that. To me, it isn't an idle thought to consider the conditions in which human existence might become more peaceful and sustainable. This could be facilitated by conditioning people to believe that they all belong to the same group, as I've mentioned before. A world government would help, but Wilson doesn't pursue such ideas.
Thursday, March 28, 2019
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Diary
After being engrossed with Rousseau for so long, I was having a hard time finding something new to read. At this stage in my life, I get bored immediately by most popular books, and I gave up on one that I had started. What happens usually in the case of popular nonfiction is that the main ideas in the book can be summed up in a few sentences. Quite often, after reading the introduction, there is no point to reading further. I find that there is so little information on most pages that I start to skim them quickly in search of new content. Often there isn't much there – for hundreds of pages. Rather than forcing myself to read something that I didn't like, I looked around and discovered that Edward O. Wilson is about to publish a new book. I've ordered it and will wait for that. Wilson is getting very old, but he has ideas that are more relevant today than ever.
I am still interested in the influence, or, more often, the lack thereof, of intellectuals in their societies. Rousseau, for instance, seems to have influenced aesthetic trends. He popularized the idea of individual freedom and the enjoyment of nature, which relate more to lifestyle choices than to anything substantive. He had no effect on the Industrial Revolution and very little on subsequent political systems. Much of the research in science that has been conducted since the beginning of the Enlightenment has been of service mainly to capitalism, and scientists themselves have tended not to become public intellectuals. My thought is that, with all of the anthropogenic changes taking place on the planet now, it would be appropriate for more biologists to speak out about the environment in the way that Edward O. Wilson has. I think that science has advanced far enough that, when articulated properly, it can serve to redirect public policies into directions that would be beneficial for everyone. Wilson's ideas have been unpopular in the humanities, but he knows what he's talking about and should not be ignored.
Part of the problem in the U.S., as noted by Tony Judt, is that intellectuals here do not play the same public role as those in France do. If there is a problem in France, it is that French intellectuals as a group are now of fairly low quality. Although, say, Michel Houellebecq doesn't have quite the same stature in France as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre or Michel Foucault did, I wouldn't consider any of these four scientifically informed. Most public intellectuals in both the U.S. and France are drawn from the arts and humanities, which limits the scope of their knowledge. The U.K. seems to produce some scientifically-oriented public intellectuals, such as Martin Rees and Richard Dawkins, but Dawkins is an unnecessarily polarizing figure. Scientifically-oriented public intellectuals in the U.S. tend to be either advocates of capitalism, like Steven Pinker, or dogmatic atheists in the vein of Richard Dawkins.
My interest in public intellectuals dates back to my reading of the New York Review of Books, which, as I've said, was extremely disappointing. The writers there opposed the ideas of E.O. Wilson, did nothing to prevent the election and reelection of George W. Bush, and nothing to prevent the Iraq War. There were articles by Steven Weinberg and Freeman Dyson, but they tended to be apolitical and conservative. I haven't read it for several years, but they probably also did nothing to prevent the election of Donald Trump. As the premier outlet for public intellectuals in the U.S., the New York Review of Books has produced social results that can only be called pathetic. The sloppy thinking, laziness and stupidity that underlies the ineffectiveness of that publication is associated with its emphasis on the arts over the sciences and its knee-jerk service to academics in the humanities.
While my orientation is probably more towards the humanities than the sciences, I increasingly find that the humanities are more subject to the influence of popular trends that reinforce ideas with no scientific basis. It would be easy to write an entire book of examples, but I'll just mention a couple of critical ones. The most obvious fallacies perpetuated in the humanities are those stemming from political correctness. Thus, while scientific evidence continues to accumulate indicating that humans embody genetic determinism – just the same as other species – in the cultural environment at most universities, the myth persists that improved educational opportunities for the economically underprivileged could eradicate their lack of access to good jobs. Though I think that people should be treated the same, this doesn't mean that they are literally the same. For me, one of the greatest fallacies is that the democratic process is a panacea for social inequality. What I notice, particularly now that the Internet is altering the way in which human cognition functions, is that large segments of the population, whether liberal or conservative, are increasingly incapable of making informed decisions, even when those decisions have a direct impact on the quality of their lives. In my view, we are well past the time when science ought to be the basis for most public policy decisions, and the failure of traditional intellectuals with backgrounds in the humanities is beginning to seem astounding.
I am still interested in the influence, or, more often, the lack thereof, of intellectuals in their societies. Rousseau, for instance, seems to have influenced aesthetic trends. He popularized the idea of individual freedom and the enjoyment of nature, which relate more to lifestyle choices than to anything substantive. He had no effect on the Industrial Revolution and very little on subsequent political systems. Much of the research in science that has been conducted since the beginning of the Enlightenment has been of service mainly to capitalism, and scientists themselves have tended not to become public intellectuals. My thought is that, with all of the anthropogenic changes taking place on the planet now, it would be appropriate for more biologists to speak out about the environment in the way that Edward O. Wilson has. I think that science has advanced far enough that, when articulated properly, it can serve to redirect public policies into directions that would be beneficial for everyone. Wilson's ideas have been unpopular in the humanities, but he knows what he's talking about and should not be ignored.
Part of the problem in the U.S., as noted by Tony Judt, is that intellectuals here do not play the same public role as those in France do. If there is a problem in France, it is that French intellectuals as a group are now of fairly low quality. Although, say, Michel Houellebecq doesn't have quite the same stature in France as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre or Michel Foucault did, I wouldn't consider any of these four scientifically informed. Most public intellectuals in both the U.S. and France are drawn from the arts and humanities, which limits the scope of their knowledge. The U.K. seems to produce some scientifically-oriented public intellectuals, such as Martin Rees and Richard Dawkins, but Dawkins is an unnecessarily polarizing figure. Scientifically-oriented public intellectuals in the U.S. tend to be either advocates of capitalism, like Steven Pinker, or dogmatic atheists in the vein of Richard Dawkins.
My interest in public intellectuals dates back to my reading of the New York Review of Books, which, as I've said, was extremely disappointing. The writers there opposed the ideas of E.O. Wilson, did nothing to prevent the election and reelection of George W. Bush, and nothing to prevent the Iraq War. There were articles by Steven Weinberg and Freeman Dyson, but they tended to be apolitical and conservative. I haven't read it for several years, but they probably also did nothing to prevent the election of Donald Trump. As the premier outlet for public intellectuals in the U.S., the New York Review of Books has produced social results that can only be called pathetic. The sloppy thinking, laziness and stupidity that underlies the ineffectiveness of that publication is associated with its emphasis on the arts over the sciences and its knee-jerk service to academics in the humanities.
While my orientation is probably more towards the humanities than the sciences, I increasingly find that the humanities are more subject to the influence of popular trends that reinforce ideas with no scientific basis. It would be easy to write an entire book of examples, but I'll just mention a couple of critical ones. The most obvious fallacies perpetuated in the humanities are those stemming from political correctness. Thus, while scientific evidence continues to accumulate indicating that humans embody genetic determinism – just the same as other species – in the cultural environment at most universities, the myth persists that improved educational opportunities for the economically underprivileged could eradicate their lack of access to good jobs. Though I think that people should be treated the same, this doesn't mean that they are literally the same. For me, one of the greatest fallacies is that the democratic process is a panacea for social inequality. What I notice, particularly now that the Internet is altering the way in which human cognition functions, is that large segments of the population, whether liberal or conservative, are increasingly incapable of making informed decisions, even when those decisions have a direct impact on the quality of their lives. In my view, we are well past the time when science ought to be the basis for most public policy decisions, and the failure of traditional intellectuals with backgrounds in the humanities is beginning to seem astounding.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity IV
The epilogue consists of a summary of Rousseau's contributions and a description of the influence of his work over time. The material was drawn by the editors from essays and lectures previously published by Maurice Cranston.
Rousseau was a force in the backlash against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and it was no coincidence that he broke with some of his Parisian friends. Rationalism manifested itself not only in the sciences, but also in the arts. He opposed the formalism in the musical theory of Rameau, and his popular opera, Le Devin du Village, introduced a new musical style to Paris that later influenced Mozart. His novel, Julie, which became the main source of his popularity, was the first romantic novel and added a new kind of realism to literature, with an emphasis on the beauty of nature. Before Rousseau, people didn't generally hike, and they typically thought of mountains as forbidding and dangerous places that should be avoided. The Romantic poets of England and Germany were probably the most obvious adopters of Rousseau's ideas. Further on in time, he may indirectly have influenced Henry David Thoreau and the hippie movement. Very loosely, he might be linked to environmentalism. I think that his most enduring work is Confessions, which is still quite readable and marked the beginning of the modern autobiography.
In his political writings, it seems that Rousseau fizzled quickly. This was partly because his views changed over time, and even the later ones seem incoherent to me. He started out with Geneva and tried to make that his model, but his later modifications got him into trouble there. He read Hobbes and Locke, probably in an attempt to be intellectually thorough, but I think that he was out of his depth. His thinking on politics is so far from mine that I don't take him seriously at all. I fall within the rationalist school of thought, and, in my view, Rousseau and most political thinkers don't frame their questions properly. Although nationalism and patriotism are instinctively appealing, on an increasingly crowded planet they now seem like foolish ideas. To me, the main questions to be addressed are whether all people will be treated equally under the law and whether the governing body is capable of making sound decisions, without bias. If a government does this job, its form is irrelevant to me, and I wouldn't necessarily care whether it was a democracy, a monarchy, a dictatorship or a communist regime. The primary obstacles to good governance, I think, are incompetence and corruption. One need only look at the federal government of the U.S. to see how badly it works in these respects. The Constitution is largely obsolete. Many laws are poorly conceived and badly written, and congress, the supreme court and the president all make bad decisions. Beyond the cognitive limitations of humans there is the self-interest of individuals and groups. Though the Founding Fathers fell short with respect to equality, they wisely separated church and state and designed the branches of government in such a manner as to balance power, but in the long run they failed to prevent special interests from infiltrating and manipulating each branch. This is why I favor, when it becomes technologically feasible, an AI-based world government. Taking humans out of the process could be a vast improvement that would benefit everyone.
Rousseau can't be faulted for not knowing what the world would be like in 250 years. Who now knows what it will be like in 2270? I have enjoyed this biography even though it became tedious at times. It was possible to overcome Cranston's limitations as an academic by ruminating over the material that he provided. As I move away from fiction, I increasingly find a deep immersion into someone else's life more satisfying, whether I identify with the biographical subject or not. There was a special flavor to Rousseau's life, because he lived in a time when people's worldviews were quite different from the ones we have now.
Rousseau was a force in the backlash against the rationalism of the Enlightenment, and it was no coincidence that he broke with some of his Parisian friends. Rationalism manifested itself not only in the sciences, but also in the arts. He opposed the formalism in the musical theory of Rameau, and his popular opera, Le Devin du Village, introduced a new musical style to Paris that later influenced Mozart. His novel, Julie, which became the main source of his popularity, was the first romantic novel and added a new kind of realism to literature, with an emphasis on the beauty of nature. Before Rousseau, people didn't generally hike, and they typically thought of mountains as forbidding and dangerous places that should be avoided. The Romantic poets of England and Germany were probably the most obvious adopters of Rousseau's ideas. Further on in time, he may indirectly have influenced Henry David Thoreau and the hippie movement. Very loosely, he might be linked to environmentalism. I think that his most enduring work is Confessions, which is still quite readable and marked the beginning of the modern autobiography.
In his political writings, it seems that Rousseau fizzled quickly. This was partly because his views changed over time, and even the later ones seem incoherent to me. He started out with Geneva and tried to make that his model, but his later modifications got him into trouble there. He read Hobbes and Locke, probably in an attempt to be intellectually thorough, but I think that he was out of his depth. His thinking on politics is so far from mine that I don't take him seriously at all. I fall within the rationalist school of thought, and, in my view, Rousseau and most political thinkers don't frame their questions properly. Although nationalism and patriotism are instinctively appealing, on an increasingly crowded planet they now seem like foolish ideas. To me, the main questions to be addressed are whether all people will be treated equally under the law and whether the governing body is capable of making sound decisions, without bias. If a government does this job, its form is irrelevant to me, and I wouldn't necessarily care whether it was a democracy, a monarchy, a dictatorship or a communist regime. The primary obstacles to good governance, I think, are incompetence and corruption. One need only look at the federal government of the U.S. to see how badly it works in these respects. The Constitution is largely obsolete. Many laws are poorly conceived and badly written, and congress, the supreme court and the president all make bad decisions. Beyond the cognitive limitations of humans there is the self-interest of individuals and groups. Though the Founding Fathers fell short with respect to equality, they wisely separated church and state and designed the branches of government in such a manner as to balance power, but in the long run they failed to prevent special interests from infiltrating and manipulating each branch. This is why I favor, when it becomes technologically feasible, an AI-based world government. Taking humans out of the process could be a vast improvement that would benefit everyone.
Rousseau can't be faulted for not knowing what the world would be like in 250 years. Who now knows what it will be like in 2270? I have enjoyed this biography even though it became tedious at times. It was possible to overcome Cranston's limitations as an academic by ruminating over the material that he provided. As I move away from fiction, I increasingly find a deep immersion into someone else's life more satisfying, whether I identify with the biographical subject or not. There was a special flavor to Rousseau's life, because he lived in a time when people's worldviews were quite different from the ones we have now.
Friday, March 8, 2019
The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity III
The remainder of the book, apart from the epilogue, covers the period from 1765 to 1778, and the last chapter was pieced together from Cranston's notes and other sources by the editors after Cranston died. While there are some comments on Rousseau's character, the final chapter seems incomplete to me, though I'm not sure that Cranston would have had more to say.
Gradually, Rousseau's reputation as a heretic increased in Môtiers, aided by the local preacher. At first there were minor incidents on the streets, but then, in September, 1765, Rousseau's house was stoned, breaking windows, and he decided that he and Thérèse would have to leave. After weighing several possibilities, Rousseau moved to the Isle de St-Pierre on Lake Bienne, northwest of Bern. At this stage, he had some income from his previous publications and expected more to come from his forthcoming Collected Works and Dictionary of Music. He also accepted money from George Keith. Rousseau loved the island and imagined retiring there, but he was soon informed by Bernese authorities that he would have to leave because of his publications.
He initially traveled to Strasbourg with his dog and was treated like a celebrity. As had been suggested by friends, he decided in November to move to England with assistance from David Hume, among others. At the time, Hume was in Paris working in the office of the British ambassador, but his employment there was ending. While in Paris, Rousseau was mobbed, and he was worn out by a constant stream of social engagements. Intellectuals flocked to Paris in those days, because it was the only place in the world where they could count on being treated like royalty. A few years later, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could be found living it up there. Rousseau had been working on Confessions in Môtiers and finished it while in Paris. Hume accompanied him to England in January, 1766.
Rousseau's English episode was truly bizarre, and I don't think it is adequately explained in the book. Immediately after arriving, Rousseau developed a persecution complex. After the usual fussing about not accepting gifts, he and Thérèse moved to the vacant Wootton Hall in Staffordshire. There isn't a very good record of what Rousseau did while he lived there, because he left no writings about it. It appears that he immediately began carrying on with the local aristocratic women, just as he had in Montmorency. He liked the house and the countryside, but Thérèse was rejected by the servants because she could not comport herself properly as the lady of the manor. His relationship with Hume was good up to a point, but it suddenly took an abrupt turn. A joke, which originated with Horace Walpole, had been circulating for some time. The joke was a fictitious letter from King Frederick II of Prussia to Rousseau. In the letter, Frederick offers to take in Rousseau and persecute him at his pleasure. The gist, of course, is that Rousseau likes to be persecuted. Rousseau eventually found out about the joke, and in his mind he linked it to Hume, who lived in the same house as Walpole. To make matters worse, the son of Dr. Théodore Tronchin, Rousseau's greatest enemy in Geneva, lived in that same house. When the joke appeared in the St. James Chronicle, Rousseau also noted that the editor was a friend of Hume. He immediately severed his relationship with Hume in an exchange of letters. Hume, wanting to protect his reputation, perhaps in a mistake of judgment, published the letters under the assumption that Rousseau would publish his. Thenceforth, Rousseau thought that he was the victim of a massive conspiracy conducted by all of his enemies, and that he was unsafe in England. He left England permanently in May, 1767.
The remaining eleven years of Rousseau's life are covered in fewer than fifteen pages, so there is far less detail in this section than there is for any other period. In 1767 he lived in Normandy under the protection of the Prince de Conti. In 1769 he moved to Monquin, near Grenoble, and married Thérèse. In 1778 he retired with Thérèse to a cottage in Ermenonville, near Paris. Throughout this period he continued to write, but produced only lesser-known works. One of them was an analysis that had been requested by Poland for its constitution. He died from a stroke on July 2, 1778 at the age of sixty-six. Initially he was buried in Ermenonville, but, after the Revolution, his body was moved to the Panthéon in Paris, where he still lies, along with Voltaire, who died a month before him. Thérèse survived him by twenty-two years.
There is hardly any discussion in the book on Rousseau's character. Since I don't find his ideas particularly interesting and think that much of his current importance comes from his vague association with the French Revolution through a few of his phrases supporting equality and individual freedom, I think that his psychological makeup is more worthy of attention. The only insightful comment in the book comes in a footnote quoting Jean Starobinski:
[Rousseau] never agreed to recognize the long-term effects of what he did. He pursued only immediate goals, hence, he never wished for all the embarrassing repercussions and dishonorable aftermath. He put his children in a public orphanage, but only because they were unwanted consequences of immediate pleasures savoured in all innocence with Thérèse.
I think that his unsupervised upbringing and extended adolescence with Mme. de Warens allowed him to develop habits that diverged considerably from social norms. No one draws attention to the fact that he was repeatedly fired from jobs and did not leave "home" with Mme. de Warens until he was thirty. While most people recognize that even if they don't like their jobs they have to support themselves, Rousseau decided that he should never have to be an employee. Furthermore, he decided that taking handouts from benefactors was a little like being an employee, so he wouldn't do that either. It also appears that, as in the case of Hume, if there were any whiff of disapproval, Rousseau would permanently disassociate himself from that person, especially if he or she wasn't an attractive young female. I think that one of the greatest omissions of this biography is the lack of follow-up on what the women in Rousseau's life who survived him had to say about him after he had died. In particular, I would have liked to know the final thoughts of Sophie d'Houdetot, the Comtesse de Boufflers, the Marquise de Verdelin, Mme. de Luxembourg and Thérèse, because they probably understood him better than others. Rousseau knew something was wrong with the way that he had handled his children, but his account of it in Confessions reads more like a rationalization than a mea culpa. Much of Rousseau's writing intentionally places him in a position of high moral authority, and it is possible that this was a cover for his actual laxity as demonstrated by his life. In that sphere he seems more like a hedonist who gave little thought to the consequences of his actions and valued relationships only when they served his needs.
There is a short epilogue that I have yet to read, and after that I'll be done.
Gradually, Rousseau's reputation as a heretic increased in Môtiers, aided by the local preacher. At first there were minor incidents on the streets, but then, in September, 1765, Rousseau's house was stoned, breaking windows, and he decided that he and Thérèse would have to leave. After weighing several possibilities, Rousseau moved to the Isle de St-Pierre on Lake Bienne, northwest of Bern. At this stage, he had some income from his previous publications and expected more to come from his forthcoming Collected Works and Dictionary of Music. He also accepted money from George Keith. Rousseau loved the island and imagined retiring there, but he was soon informed by Bernese authorities that he would have to leave because of his publications.
He initially traveled to Strasbourg with his dog and was treated like a celebrity. As had been suggested by friends, he decided in November to move to England with assistance from David Hume, among others. At the time, Hume was in Paris working in the office of the British ambassador, but his employment there was ending. While in Paris, Rousseau was mobbed, and he was worn out by a constant stream of social engagements. Intellectuals flocked to Paris in those days, because it was the only place in the world where they could count on being treated like royalty. A few years later, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson could be found living it up there. Rousseau had been working on Confessions in Môtiers and finished it while in Paris. Hume accompanied him to England in January, 1766.
Rousseau's English episode was truly bizarre, and I don't think it is adequately explained in the book. Immediately after arriving, Rousseau developed a persecution complex. After the usual fussing about not accepting gifts, he and Thérèse moved to the vacant Wootton Hall in Staffordshire. There isn't a very good record of what Rousseau did while he lived there, because he left no writings about it. It appears that he immediately began carrying on with the local aristocratic women, just as he had in Montmorency. He liked the house and the countryside, but Thérèse was rejected by the servants because she could not comport herself properly as the lady of the manor. His relationship with Hume was good up to a point, but it suddenly took an abrupt turn. A joke, which originated with Horace Walpole, had been circulating for some time. The joke was a fictitious letter from King Frederick II of Prussia to Rousseau. In the letter, Frederick offers to take in Rousseau and persecute him at his pleasure. The gist, of course, is that Rousseau likes to be persecuted. Rousseau eventually found out about the joke, and in his mind he linked it to Hume, who lived in the same house as Walpole. To make matters worse, the son of Dr. Théodore Tronchin, Rousseau's greatest enemy in Geneva, lived in that same house. When the joke appeared in the St. James Chronicle, Rousseau also noted that the editor was a friend of Hume. He immediately severed his relationship with Hume in an exchange of letters. Hume, wanting to protect his reputation, perhaps in a mistake of judgment, published the letters under the assumption that Rousseau would publish his. Thenceforth, Rousseau thought that he was the victim of a massive conspiracy conducted by all of his enemies, and that he was unsafe in England. He left England permanently in May, 1767.
The remaining eleven years of Rousseau's life are covered in fewer than fifteen pages, so there is far less detail in this section than there is for any other period. In 1767 he lived in Normandy under the protection of the Prince de Conti. In 1769 he moved to Monquin, near Grenoble, and married Thérèse. In 1778 he retired with Thérèse to a cottage in Ermenonville, near Paris. Throughout this period he continued to write, but produced only lesser-known works. One of them was an analysis that had been requested by Poland for its constitution. He died from a stroke on July 2, 1778 at the age of sixty-six. Initially he was buried in Ermenonville, but, after the Revolution, his body was moved to the Panthéon in Paris, where he still lies, along with Voltaire, who died a month before him. Thérèse survived him by twenty-two years.
There is hardly any discussion in the book on Rousseau's character. Since I don't find his ideas particularly interesting and think that much of his current importance comes from his vague association with the French Revolution through a few of his phrases supporting equality and individual freedom, I think that his psychological makeup is more worthy of attention. The only insightful comment in the book comes in a footnote quoting Jean Starobinski:
[Rousseau] never agreed to recognize the long-term effects of what he did. He pursued only immediate goals, hence, he never wished for all the embarrassing repercussions and dishonorable aftermath. He put his children in a public orphanage, but only because they were unwanted consequences of immediate pleasures savoured in all innocence with Thérèse.
I think that his unsupervised upbringing and extended adolescence with Mme. de Warens allowed him to develop habits that diverged considerably from social norms. No one draws attention to the fact that he was repeatedly fired from jobs and did not leave "home" with Mme. de Warens until he was thirty. While most people recognize that even if they don't like their jobs they have to support themselves, Rousseau decided that he should never have to be an employee. Furthermore, he decided that taking handouts from benefactors was a little like being an employee, so he wouldn't do that either. It also appears that, as in the case of Hume, if there were any whiff of disapproval, Rousseau would permanently disassociate himself from that person, especially if he or she wasn't an attractive young female. I think that one of the greatest omissions of this biography is the lack of follow-up on what the women in Rousseau's life who survived him had to say about him after he had died. In particular, I would have liked to know the final thoughts of Sophie d'Houdetot, the Comtesse de Boufflers, the Marquise de Verdelin, Mme. de Luxembourg and Thérèse, because they probably understood him better than others. Rousseau knew something was wrong with the way that he had handled his children, but his account of it in Confessions reads more like a rationalization than a mea culpa. Much of Rousseau's writing intentionally places him in a position of high moral authority, and it is possible that this was a cover for his actual laxity as demonstrated by his life. In that sphere he seems more like a hedonist who gave little thought to the consequences of his actions and valued relationships only when they served his needs.
There is a short epilogue that I have yet to read, and after that I'll be done.
Sunday, March 3, 2019
The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity II
In 1763, George Keith, the governor of Neuchâtel, retired to Scotland, while Rousseau remained in Môtiers. Rousseau continued to write, and his next major work was Letters from the Mountain, which was directed specifically at the government of Geneva and was published in 1764. This caused him additional trouble in Geneva, and finally Rousseau gave up on effecting any changes there or making a return. Once again, Cranston is boring me to tears with superfluous details, which are doubly irrelevant as I don't care much about politics or Rousseau's political ideas. It appears that Voltaire actively worked behind the scenes to damage Rousseau's reputation in Geneva while outwardly pretending to like him. Cranston has yet to provide an adequate explanation of why Voltaire disliked Rousseau so intensely. One problem may have been incompatible personalities: Rousseau was charming and needy, while Voltaire, in Cranston's description, was witty and sarcastic. It may also have been a simple matter of professional rivalry, but I don't think that Cranston provides either a satisfying explanation or sufficient information for the reader to arrive at one. Some of Rousseau's contemporaries did think that Rousseau was crazy, but Cranston seems to downplay this possibility – he had a conflict of interest in the sense that, as a biographer, he presumed that Rousseau was worthy of study.
Life in Môtiers itself was a mixed bag for Rousseau. During the winters he became infirm, and he developed sciatica. Suffering pain, at one point he contemplated suicide. Then it seems that each year, when spring arrived, he began hiking, and suddenly he became robust again. Visitors could hardly keep up with him in the mountains, and he started a new hobby, botany, though he was only interested in it pictorially and not scientifically. Thérèse didn't like Môtiers and thought that they were unpopular with the locals. Although in theory Rousseau should have liked them, as they would demonstrate the benefits of rural life, uncorrupted by cities, he actually preferred sophisticated people who were capable of engaging in stimulating conversation. Montmorency had been quite close to Paris, whereas Môtiers was in the middle of nowhere.
Rousseau continued old correspondences and started new ones. Cranston likes to draw attention to instances in which Rousseau demonstrated bad manners. With Rousseau in his fifties, friends were beginning to get old and die. He seems to have been terrible at letters of condolence, and in the ones he wrote he tended to change the subject almost immediately to the suffering that he was undergoing. He was particularly insensitive when writing to Mme. de Luxembourg after M. de Luxembourg had died. He also developed a flirtatious correspondence with one of his young female admirers, who went to the trouble of having a painting made of herself and then shipping it to him: he barely acknowledged its receipt, and the relationship collapsed for a while before recovering later.
Another area in which I find Cranston a little obtuse is in his lack of recognition that Rousseau loved attention whenever it associated him with higher social status. If Rousseau had been a true "hermit," as he had made himself out to be, he would have detested contact with the outside world. Yet, the more famous he became, the more visitors he wanted to see. Mind you, his favorite visitors didn't simply get brief audiences with him: they actually stayed with him in his house and ate meals with him prepared by Thérèse. A young, ambitious James Boswell, visiting from Scotland, stopped by and flirted with Thérèse, who was nineteen years older than he was. Someone representing Corsica wrote to request that he draft a constitution for the country, and he accepted with alacrity.
At this point in his life, with the mixture of fame and notoriety, and how he chose to handle it, Rousseau seems more interesting to me. Even so, his indifference to and avoidance of science, I think, made him a marginal thinker in historical terms. I will make two more posts before finishing and will try to wrap my final thoughts in the second post.
Life in Môtiers itself was a mixed bag for Rousseau. During the winters he became infirm, and he developed sciatica. Suffering pain, at one point he contemplated suicide. Then it seems that each year, when spring arrived, he began hiking, and suddenly he became robust again. Visitors could hardly keep up with him in the mountains, and he started a new hobby, botany, though he was only interested in it pictorially and not scientifically. Thérèse didn't like Môtiers and thought that they were unpopular with the locals. Although in theory Rousseau should have liked them, as they would demonstrate the benefits of rural life, uncorrupted by cities, he actually preferred sophisticated people who were capable of engaging in stimulating conversation. Montmorency had been quite close to Paris, whereas Môtiers was in the middle of nowhere.
Rousseau continued old correspondences and started new ones. Cranston likes to draw attention to instances in which Rousseau demonstrated bad manners. With Rousseau in his fifties, friends were beginning to get old and die. He seems to have been terrible at letters of condolence, and in the ones he wrote he tended to change the subject almost immediately to the suffering that he was undergoing. He was particularly insensitive when writing to Mme. de Luxembourg after M. de Luxembourg had died. He also developed a flirtatious correspondence with one of his young female admirers, who went to the trouble of having a painting made of herself and then shipping it to him: he barely acknowledged its receipt, and the relationship collapsed for a while before recovering later.
Another area in which I find Cranston a little obtuse is in his lack of recognition that Rousseau loved attention whenever it associated him with higher social status. If Rousseau had been a true "hermit," as he had made himself out to be, he would have detested contact with the outside world. Yet, the more famous he became, the more visitors he wanted to see. Mind you, his favorite visitors didn't simply get brief audiences with him: they actually stayed with him in his house and ate meals with him prepared by Thérèse. A young, ambitious James Boswell, visiting from Scotland, stopped by and flirted with Thérèse, who was nineteen years older than he was. Someone representing Corsica wrote to request that he draft a constitution for the country, and he accepted with alacrity.
At this point in his life, with the mixture of fame and notoriety, and how he chose to handle it, Rousseau seems more interesting to me. Even so, his indifference to and avoidance of science, I think, made him a marginal thinker in historical terms. I will make two more posts before finishing and will try to wrap my final thoughts in the second post.
Tuesday, February 26, 2019
Michel Houellebecq
I came across this article by Michel Houellebecq and decided to comment on it in order to take a short break from Jean-Jacques Rousseau; I'll return to Cranston on my next post. At the moment I feel vindicated in preferring essays to fiction, because, in the case of an essay, the author can't attribute ideas to fictional characters, and he or she therefore has less wiggle room. Houellebecq's essay reads almost exactly the same as his novels, and now at least he is taking direct responsibility for positions rather than placing them in the mouths of imaginary characters.
The essay starts out reasonably well, and along the way Houellebecq admits that Donald Trump is a "pretty repulsive" person. He provides what I think is an acceptable short summary of the role the U.S. played during World War II and its actions on the international scene since then. America helped defeat Hitler and prevented the U.S.S.R. from advancing into Western Europe. However, America's international record since then has been dismal, if you only look at Vietnam and Iraq and don't even count Afghanistan or Libya. Houellebecq correctly notes that the quality of U.S. presidents has been amazingly low since World War II. I'm thinking that perhaps Eisenhower wasn't too bad, but all of the rest have been in the mediocre-to-inferior range. Houellebecq scorns American interventionism in a manner understood by many throughout the world, but which receives little negative publicity here. Beyond this point, I think the essay goes downhill.
As a foreign observer of America, I don't think that Houellebecq is fully attuned to the nature or extent of Donald Trump's ignorance. He misattributes Trump's treaty renegotiation strategy and "America first" slogans to a rare sagacity that is beyond the capacities of most politicians. He thinks that Trump's policies, besides getting the U.S. off the backs of other countries, will benefit American workers. At this point in the essay there is an explosion of Houellebecq's ignorance, something that simmers in the background of his novels but never shows itself in the light of day. Trump's trade war is disrupting international economic activities at no benefit to any country. Of particular importance, and contradicting Trump's campaign promises, American farmers are declaring bankruptcy in droves, partly as a result of low commodity prices exacerbated by the trade war. I should also mention that there is no evidence that Trump's policies will increase the number of manufacturing jobs or middle-class incomes in the U.S. To make matters worse, Houellebecq loves Brexit and the disbanding of the EU and NATO, mistakenly thinking that the end of globalization will bring prosperity to ordinary workers. Houellebecq has also bought into the somewhat improbable suggestion that Trump, through shrewd negotiating techniques, will denuclearize North Korea. Oddly, Houellebecq even seems to like Vladimir Putin.
Thanks to this essay, I have a clearer idea of Houellebecq's intellectual deficiencies. He doesn't recognize that, like Donald Trump, he has no understanding of economics. Also, far more important in a novelist, he doesn't realize that Trump's pathology and actual skills are a detriment to his being of service to anyone other than himself. Trump came to prominence by teaming up with criminals and bullying whoever stood in the way of his business interests. He only cares about activities that will benefit him personally. This is evident in everything that he does and has resulted in one of the most incompetent executive branches in American history and the careless and irresponsible violation of the U. S. Constitution. Houellebecq doesn't mention climate change, which is being denied by Trump. He also says nothing about overpopulation or repressive regimes; Trump supports overpopulation by opposing abortions, and his primary solution for asylum-seekers seems to be to let them die on the opposite side of a wall. Houellebecq clearly hasn't done his homework, or he would have known that Trump's tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy and has inflated the budget deficit for future generations. Perhaps Houellebecq's most conspicuous omission is the way in which Trump's right-wing populism echoes the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany during the 1930's.
Just to speculate a little, it may be that, now that Houellebecq has become internationally famous, he has started to follow in the footsteps of his friend, Gérard Depardieu, the tax dodger: Donald Trump may be just the man for nouveau-riche bourgeoisie who can never have enough money to satisfy themselves. I had been thinking about reading Houellebecq's latest novel, Serotonin, but I'm going to give it a pass. Whatever Houellebecq's motives, he is simply too ignorant to be taken seriously. After spending time reading about the French Enlightenment, it is disappointing to see just how far the standards have fallen. In order to qualify as a French intellectual, one once had to know something; today a cursory knowledge of blowjobs seems to be all that is necessary. Houellebecq is the last person anyone would want to consult regarding the problems currently facing the world.
The essay starts out reasonably well, and along the way Houellebecq admits that Donald Trump is a "pretty repulsive" person. He provides what I think is an acceptable short summary of the role the U.S. played during World War II and its actions on the international scene since then. America helped defeat Hitler and prevented the U.S.S.R. from advancing into Western Europe. However, America's international record since then has been dismal, if you only look at Vietnam and Iraq and don't even count Afghanistan or Libya. Houellebecq correctly notes that the quality of U.S. presidents has been amazingly low since World War II. I'm thinking that perhaps Eisenhower wasn't too bad, but all of the rest have been in the mediocre-to-inferior range. Houellebecq scorns American interventionism in a manner understood by many throughout the world, but which receives little negative publicity here. Beyond this point, I think the essay goes downhill.
As a foreign observer of America, I don't think that Houellebecq is fully attuned to the nature or extent of Donald Trump's ignorance. He misattributes Trump's treaty renegotiation strategy and "America first" slogans to a rare sagacity that is beyond the capacities of most politicians. He thinks that Trump's policies, besides getting the U.S. off the backs of other countries, will benefit American workers. At this point in the essay there is an explosion of Houellebecq's ignorance, something that simmers in the background of his novels but never shows itself in the light of day. Trump's trade war is disrupting international economic activities at no benefit to any country. Of particular importance, and contradicting Trump's campaign promises, American farmers are declaring bankruptcy in droves, partly as a result of low commodity prices exacerbated by the trade war. I should also mention that there is no evidence that Trump's policies will increase the number of manufacturing jobs or middle-class incomes in the U.S. To make matters worse, Houellebecq loves Brexit and the disbanding of the EU and NATO, mistakenly thinking that the end of globalization will bring prosperity to ordinary workers. Houellebecq has also bought into the somewhat improbable suggestion that Trump, through shrewd negotiating techniques, will denuclearize North Korea. Oddly, Houellebecq even seems to like Vladimir Putin.
Thanks to this essay, I have a clearer idea of Houellebecq's intellectual deficiencies. He doesn't recognize that, like Donald Trump, he has no understanding of economics. Also, far more important in a novelist, he doesn't realize that Trump's pathology and actual skills are a detriment to his being of service to anyone other than himself. Trump came to prominence by teaming up with criminals and bullying whoever stood in the way of his business interests. He only cares about activities that will benefit him personally. This is evident in everything that he does and has resulted in one of the most incompetent executive branches in American history and the careless and irresponsible violation of the U. S. Constitution. Houellebecq doesn't mention climate change, which is being denied by Trump. He also says nothing about overpopulation or repressive regimes; Trump supports overpopulation by opposing abortions, and his primary solution for asylum-seekers seems to be to let them die on the opposite side of a wall. Houellebecq clearly hasn't done his homework, or he would have known that Trump's tax cut mainly benefits the wealthy and has inflated the budget deficit for future generations. Perhaps Houellebecq's most conspicuous omission is the way in which Trump's right-wing populism echoes the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany during the 1930's.
Just to speculate a little, it may be that, now that Houellebecq has become internationally famous, he has started to follow in the footsteps of his friend, Gérard Depardieu, the tax dodger: Donald Trump may be just the man for nouveau-riche bourgeoisie who can never have enough money to satisfy themselves. I had been thinking about reading Houellebecq's latest novel, Serotonin, but I'm going to give it a pass. Whatever Houellebecq's motives, he is simply too ignorant to be taken seriously. After spending time reading about the French Enlightenment, it is disappointing to see just how far the standards have fallen. In order to qualify as a French intellectual, one once had to know something; today a cursory knowledge of blowjobs seems to be all that is necessary. Houellebecq is the last person anyone would want to consult regarding the problems currently facing the world.
Sunday, February 24, 2019
The Solitary Self: Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Exile and Adversity I
In 1762, after fleeing Montmorency, and having just turned fifty, Rousseau arrived in Yverdon, Switzerland, part of the Bernese republic, where he temporarily stayed with a retired Swiss banker whom he knew from Paris. His infamy, which derived from accusations of heresy in Émile and his criticism of the government of Geneva in The Social Contract, was about to relegate him to permanent refugee status. He was soon looking for a new domicile and found one in Môtiers, which was located over the Jura mountains in the principality of Neuchâtel. At this stage in his life, when he was quite famous, Rousseau had little difficulty enlisting assistance, though, as was his custom, he rejected pure handouts. Soon Thérèse joined him and resumed her role as servant and cook, and it was apparent that they sincerely enjoyed each other's company, despite the waning of sexual attraction.
Rousseau befriended George Keith, the governor of the province, an exiled Earl Marischal of Scotland who soon took on the same role as M. de Luxembourg and became his protector. The weather was cold in the mountains, and, as usual, Rousseau intermittently thought that he was about to die. He would have liked to return to Geneva and attempted to draw support there, but his opponents maintained an upper hand. Various friends made recommendations as to where he might go to avoid persecution, but, as far as I've read, he has rejected all of them. He might have visited David Hume in Scotland at that time, but he showed little interest. In Môtiers, he attempted to befriend the ordinary citizens by making ribbons with them, but he soon found their conversation boring. He began to receive a stream of visitors and enjoyed walking in the mountains, as it was quite beautiful and reminded him of the mountainous regions near Geneva.
In his correspondences of this period, Rousseau sounds more mature than previously. Anecdotes from visitors make him seem lively, enthusiastic, friendly and a good host. In person, he never seems to have been a stuffy intellectual but rather preferred animated conversation. I have been thinking about how well he did as a public intellectual when you consider how limited his formal education was. He was remarkably well-read for someone who never attended a university. However, you have to put this in context, and if he were alive today his life could never have followed the trajectory that it did. Without the proper education, he may have found himself working in a more limited range, perhaps as a playwright but not also as a composer or philosopher. On the whole, I am inclined to think of him as an artist rather than as a thinker.
Rousseau above all conjures up the image of a romantic, a man who loves nature and language, leads a picaresque life and seems to represent high ideals. This is what seems to have made him appealing both to his contemporaries and to his readers up to the end of the nineteenth century. In comparison, Lord Byron seems like a decadent version of Rousseau, with fewer ideas. The impression I'm getting is that Rousseau was unintentionally theatrical and put an entertaining spin on his life. I'm still a little disappointed in Cranston's analysis of Rousseau as a person. He notes with surprise that Rousseau spoke highly of his father even though he had essentially been abandoned by him when he was ten, and doesn't connect this with Rousseau's abandonment of his own children. Cranston also has nothing to say about Rousseau's reaction to the fate of Mme. de Warens: she died in poverty in 1762 after years of little contact with Rousseau, and, given the importance Rousseau placed on her in Confessions, this seems incongruous with his emphasis on virtue. It seems possible that Rousseau went to extremes to obscure these unpleasant aspects of his life. He used poverty as an excuse for child abandonment and may have espoused lofty ideals in order to distract from his own questionable behavior. His sensitivity and support of morality were magnets for the aristocratic young women whose attention he craved. However, he was never able to snare them completely and had to content himself with the attentions of the less-polished Thérèse and older, less-attractive women such as Mme. de Warens and Mme. de Luxembourg. He certainly brought out the maternal instincts in the women he knew. Perhaps I'm being too hard on him, but I do get a sense of his life as an improvised act more than as a serious meditation. What is missing so far in Cranston is the recognition that, while Rousseau was charismatic and habitually presented himself as morally upright, he was more often a recipient of help than a provider of it; there is no mention that a modern reader might construe Rousseau as a self-indulgent navel-gazer.
Rousseau befriended George Keith, the governor of the province, an exiled Earl Marischal of Scotland who soon took on the same role as M. de Luxembourg and became his protector. The weather was cold in the mountains, and, as usual, Rousseau intermittently thought that he was about to die. He would have liked to return to Geneva and attempted to draw support there, but his opponents maintained an upper hand. Various friends made recommendations as to where he might go to avoid persecution, but, as far as I've read, he has rejected all of them. He might have visited David Hume in Scotland at that time, but he showed little interest. In Môtiers, he attempted to befriend the ordinary citizens by making ribbons with them, but he soon found their conversation boring. He began to receive a stream of visitors and enjoyed walking in the mountains, as it was quite beautiful and reminded him of the mountainous regions near Geneva.
In his correspondences of this period, Rousseau sounds more mature than previously. Anecdotes from visitors make him seem lively, enthusiastic, friendly and a good host. In person, he never seems to have been a stuffy intellectual but rather preferred animated conversation. I have been thinking about how well he did as a public intellectual when you consider how limited his formal education was. He was remarkably well-read for someone who never attended a university. However, you have to put this in context, and if he were alive today his life could never have followed the trajectory that it did. Without the proper education, he may have found himself working in a more limited range, perhaps as a playwright but not also as a composer or philosopher. On the whole, I am inclined to think of him as an artist rather than as a thinker.
Rousseau above all conjures up the image of a romantic, a man who loves nature and language, leads a picaresque life and seems to represent high ideals. This is what seems to have made him appealing both to his contemporaries and to his readers up to the end of the nineteenth century. In comparison, Lord Byron seems like a decadent version of Rousseau, with fewer ideas. The impression I'm getting is that Rousseau was unintentionally theatrical and put an entertaining spin on his life. I'm still a little disappointed in Cranston's analysis of Rousseau as a person. He notes with surprise that Rousseau spoke highly of his father even though he had essentially been abandoned by him when he was ten, and doesn't connect this with Rousseau's abandonment of his own children. Cranston also has nothing to say about Rousseau's reaction to the fate of Mme. de Warens: she died in poverty in 1762 after years of little contact with Rousseau, and, given the importance Rousseau placed on her in Confessions, this seems incongruous with his emphasis on virtue. It seems possible that Rousseau went to extremes to obscure these unpleasant aspects of his life. He used poverty as an excuse for child abandonment and may have espoused lofty ideals in order to distract from his own questionable behavior. His sensitivity and support of morality were magnets for the aristocratic young women whose attention he craved. However, he was never able to snare them completely and had to content himself with the attentions of the less-polished Thérèse and older, less-attractive women such as Mme. de Warens and Mme. de Luxembourg. He certainly brought out the maternal instincts in the women he knew. Perhaps I'm being too hard on him, but I do get a sense of his life as an improvised act more than as a serious meditation. What is missing so far in Cranston is the recognition that, while Rousseau was charismatic and habitually presented himself as morally upright, he was more often a recipient of help than a provider of it; there is no mention that a modern reader might construe Rousseau as a self-indulgent navel-gazer.
Monday, February 18, 2019
The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 VII
The remainder of the book covers the publication of Émile and The Social Contract, followed by Rousseau's sudden departure from France. Cranston also provides a summary of the ideas in The Social Contract, and they seem incoherent to me. Rousseau advocated some sort of republic in which the democratic process occurred only in the legislature, and it is unclear to me how the members would be appointed. Rousseau hated hereditary monarchies, so they wouldn't come from there. He also hated the suppression of the poor by the rich, so they would not come from the wealthy. In some bizarre way, it seems that he wanted a theocracy that would be based on the Christian God, but without any of the trappings of Catholicism or Calvinism. He also threw in ancient Sparta as a model. To me, this is an example of the confused thoughts that scholars analyze and discuss pointlessly for centuries. Rousseau's ideas here are unacceptable to me because they require belief in the existence of God, the soul and free will. The one good idea that I was able to glean from this was Rousseau's recognition of the risks associated with allowing poorly-educated people to vote. Modern democracies have yet to design systems in such a manner that people like Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini or Donald Trump cannot rise to power in general elections.
It may be just as well that Cranston isn't devoting much space to Rousseau's ideas. On the other hand, I think that he goes overboard in chronicling the daily events in Rousseau's life; that may simply be because this middle period is extremely well documented. You find out, for example, that Rousseau's catheter got stuck in late 1761, and a couple of his fans found out about it and suggested doctors for him to consult. In the spring of 1762 he began to wear a caftan made by a local Armenian tailor, which allowed him to go out without wearing breeches and facilitated urinating with a catheter. The detailed description of every person and event pertaining to the publication of each book, however, is tedious, to say the least.
Émile appeared first in France and received a ho-hum public reception. But, in the climate of the time, certain passages were considered blasphemous, and Rousseau was initially cavalier about this, even though it might have cost him his life. He made no preparations of any kind, and then one night in May of 1762 he was suddenly warned by Mme. de Luxembourg that gendarmes were on their way from Paris to arrest him. He quickly decided to flee to the Bernese region of Switzerland on Lake Neuchâtel, since The Social Contract would have caused his arrest in Geneva. M. de Luxembourg offered him a carriage, and he departed in a nick of time, passing the gendarmes, who were coming in the opposite direction on the road. He took his papers with him and left Thérèse behind to care for the house.
Aside from the complaints that I've been making, I still find Rousseau's life interesting. It is useful to me to know how a complex person lived his life in a different age. Notwithstanding Cranston's scholarly proclivities, which sometimes seem psychologically and intellectually lacking, the series is worthwhile. I will shortly begin the last volume, which was published after Cranston died suddenly from a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 73. That volume is much shorter than the others and includes an epilogue describing Rousseau's place in intellectual history.
It may be just as well that Cranston isn't devoting much space to Rousseau's ideas. On the other hand, I think that he goes overboard in chronicling the daily events in Rousseau's life; that may simply be because this middle period is extremely well documented. You find out, for example, that Rousseau's catheter got stuck in late 1761, and a couple of his fans found out about it and suggested doctors for him to consult. In the spring of 1762 he began to wear a caftan made by a local Armenian tailor, which allowed him to go out without wearing breeches and facilitated urinating with a catheter. The detailed description of every person and event pertaining to the publication of each book, however, is tedious, to say the least.
Émile appeared first in France and received a ho-hum public reception. But, in the climate of the time, certain passages were considered blasphemous, and Rousseau was initially cavalier about this, even though it might have cost him his life. He made no preparations of any kind, and then one night in May of 1762 he was suddenly warned by Mme. de Luxembourg that gendarmes were on their way from Paris to arrest him. He quickly decided to flee to the Bernese region of Switzerland on Lake Neuchâtel, since The Social Contract would have caused his arrest in Geneva. M. de Luxembourg offered him a carriage, and he departed in a nick of time, passing the gendarmes, who were coming in the opposite direction on the road. He took his papers with him and left Thérèse behind to care for the house.
Aside from the complaints that I've been making, I still find Rousseau's life interesting. It is useful to me to know how a complex person lived his life in a different age. Notwithstanding Cranston's scholarly proclivities, which sometimes seem psychologically and intellectually lacking, the series is worthwhile. I will shortly begin the last volume, which was published after Cranston died suddenly from a heart attack in 1993 at the age of 73. That volume is much shorter than the others and includes an epilogue describing Rousseau's place in intellectual history.
Saturday, February 16, 2019
The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 VI
The process of publishing Julie continued to be a fiasco for quite some time. The first edition from Amsterdam took so long to arrive in France that a second edition printed in Paris was released first. In addition, there were pirated editions in circulation in France simultaneously. None of the editions had the same text, and they all contained errors. Nevertheless, the novel became one of the most popular of the eighteenth century, and although it didn't make Rousseau rich, it made him more famous than ever.
In 1761, Rousseau engaged in final preparations for the publication of Émile and wrote The Social Contract. His health wavered throughout the year. At one point he thought that he was going to die. A doctor diagnosed an enlarged prostate gland. For a time he concerned himself with making provisions for Thérèse in the event of his death. He also sought to find the firstborn of his abandoned children, a girl, with assistance from Mme. de Luxembourg, who contacted an agent for that purpose, but to no avail. By the end of 1761 he had recovered his health.
A few readers of Julie began correspondences with Rousseau. Most of them were women, and some were aspiring writers. He also received a surge in visitors at Petit Montlouis, and on the whole he began to experience more social contact than he liked. He began to consider moving to a more remote location. As I mentioned earlier, Cranston is not particularly good at extracting how Rousseau's ideas could be based on little more than his personal preferences. The only instance that he has pointed out so far is Rousseau's inconsistent views on theatrical performances. On the one hand, it was fine for Rousseau to write and stage theatrical productions in Paris, but on the other hand it was wrong for Voltaire to write and stage theatrical productions in Geneva. Cranston seems to say that although Rousseau did attempt to rationalize this inconsistency, his underlying reasoning had more to do with dislike of Voltaire reigning over his home turf than with any substantive principle. Where I think Cranston has completely missed the boat is in not tracing Rousseau's concept of the noble savage to his preference for limited social contacts.
Looking at many of Rousseau's life choices, it is obvious that he had an introverted personality. He moved away from Geneva to a rural area as soon as he was able to. He disliked the intense social requirements of living in Paris. Even while living in Montmorency, he preferred very small social gatherings to large ones. I think that Rousseau's idealization of earlier times in human history was mostly an overgeneralization of his personal preferences. Not knowing that he had the personality of an introvert, and that most other people were inherently more sociable than he was, he arbitrarily blamed the ills of modern civilization on society itself. It does not seem to have occurred to him that people are social creatures and that most of them don't mind things that disturb him. Thus, from my point of view as a psychologically informed introvert, the conditions that developed in Paris during the eighteenth century had mainly to do with overpopulation and the availability of jobs in urban locations. The social adaptations that occurred were caused by increases in population density, not by the evil effects of society on individuals who would otherwise have behaved according to an idealized model of pre-civilized people about whom Rousseau knew little. It is for reasons such as this that I am tempted to dismiss most of Rousseau's ideas, and I am more comfortable seeing him simply as a talented writer rather than as some sort of prophet.
I don't have many more pages left in this book and will finish commenting on it in my next post. However, there is still one volume to go – but it's the shortest of the three.
In 1761, Rousseau engaged in final preparations for the publication of Émile and wrote The Social Contract. His health wavered throughout the year. At one point he thought that he was going to die. A doctor diagnosed an enlarged prostate gland. For a time he concerned himself with making provisions for Thérèse in the event of his death. He also sought to find the firstborn of his abandoned children, a girl, with assistance from Mme. de Luxembourg, who contacted an agent for that purpose, but to no avail. By the end of 1761 he had recovered his health.
A few readers of Julie began correspondences with Rousseau. Most of them were women, and some were aspiring writers. He also received a surge in visitors at Petit Montlouis, and on the whole he began to experience more social contact than he liked. He began to consider moving to a more remote location. As I mentioned earlier, Cranston is not particularly good at extracting how Rousseau's ideas could be based on little more than his personal preferences. The only instance that he has pointed out so far is Rousseau's inconsistent views on theatrical performances. On the one hand, it was fine for Rousseau to write and stage theatrical productions in Paris, but on the other hand it was wrong for Voltaire to write and stage theatrical productions in Geneva. Cranston seems to say that although Rousseau did attempt to rationalize this inconsistency, his underlying reasoning had more to do with dislike of Voltaire reigning over his home turf than with any substantive principle. Where I think Cranston has completely missed the boat is in not tracing Rousseau's concept of the noble savage to his preference for limited social contacts.
Looking at many of Rousseau's life choices, it is obvious that he had an introverted personality. He moved away from Geneva to a rural area as soon as he was able to. He disliked the intense social requirements of living in Paris. Even while living in Montmorency, he preferred very small social gatherings to large ones. I think that Rousseau's idealization of earlier times in human history was mostly an overgeneralization of his personal preferences. Not knowing that he had the personality of an introvert, and that most other people were inherently more sociable than he was, he arbitrarily blamed the ills of modern civilization on society itself. It does not seem to have occurred to him that people are social creatures and that most of them don't mind things that disturb him. Thus, from my point of view as a psychologically informed introvert, the conditions that developed in Paris during the eighteenth century had mainly to do with overpopulation and the availability of jobs in urban locations. The social adaptations that occurred were caused by increases in population density, not by the evil effects of society on individuals who would otherwise have behaved according to an idealized model of pre-civilized people about whom Rousseau knew little. It is for reasons such as this that I am tempted to dismiss most of Rousseau's ideas, and I am more comfortable seeing him simply as a talented writer rather than as some sort of prophet.
I don't have many more pages left in this book and will finish commenting on it in my next post. However, there is still one volume to go – but it's the shortest of the three.
Monday, February 11, 2019
The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 V
I'm now up to 1761 and am becoming a little tired of Cranston's slow pace. Rousseau
moved back to Petit Montlouis in late 1759, and his relationship with M. and Mme. de Luxembourg continued to flourish. By 1760 they kept permanent rooms for him in their house in Paris so that he could spend time with them there. While his relationship with Sophie d'Houdetot gradually declined, he developed new ones with other young, aristocratic women such as Mme. de Verdelin, who was a friend of Sophie, and the Comtesse de Boufflers, who was a friend of Mme. de Luxembourg. These new relationships seem to have been platonic. Although Rousseau was still only in his late forties, he and his friends were frequently ill, and they grumbled about their illnesses the same way that people do now when they're in their eighties.
In the section that I just finished, Rousseau spent much of his time in correspondence regarding the publication of Julie. It was published in 1761 in Amsterdam to avoid censorship problems in France, and production was forestalled by events such as the freezing of canals, which delayed paper shipments, and shortages of type, which limited the number of pages which could be printed at a time. In addition to this, the proofing process was painfully slow, with Rousseau receiving few pages at a time, with those containing numerous typographical errors.
While Cranston seems to be trying to offer an even-handed view of Rousseau, I think that his commentary is a little too generous. Even Rousseau seems more self-critical in his Confessions. I would have hoped that by now Cranston would have offered a more insightful explanation of Rousseau's behavior. The key term of self-criticism that Rousseau used in Confessions was amour propre, which roughly means vanity or an exaggerated sense of self-worth. If you expand upon this idea, it becomes easier to understand Rousseau's behavior, but Cranston does not explore that avenue. The pattern that I notice is that of Rousseau being extremely competitive while taking great pains to conceal his pursuit of fame. It seems to me that he engaged in gratuitous quarrels simply because he was jealous at various times of the relative success of his peers. I think that he picked fights with his closest friend, Diderot, simply because Diderot was more successful than he was. Although he never developed such a close friendship with Voltaire, that relationship also began to take a turn for the worse for no apparent reason. Cranston fails to draw attention to the fact that Voltaire published the popular novel Candide in 1759, while Rousseau was working on Julie. If Rousseau had been able to behave like a mature adult, these major breaks could easily have been averted.
As with other biographical works that I've read, it can pay off to review different sources. Regarding the game of chess, Cranston merely remarks that Rousseau played it a few times and was fairly good: he beat Diderot and a nobleman who visited him later at Petit Montlouis. According to another source I read, Rousseau played regularly when he first arrived in Paris and honed his skills for quite some time. However, Rousseau seems to have suggested to others that he had hardly played at all, which would make him appear naturally talented if he were able to defeat more experienced players. I have the impression that Rousseau was extremely competitive from the start but hid it by pretending to be a virtuous ascetic. The reality seems to have been that from the beginning he wanted to be a rock star and get all the hot chicks, although, as an introvert, he avoided excessive exposure to the public.
Another fruitful clue that I think Cranston has missed was Rousseau's inexplicable taking of offense when friends sent him gifts. By 1759, many of his friends and supporters were wealthy, yet he would complain bitterly if they sent him, for example, some venison. His standard explanation to others would be that he had chosen to live an ascetic lifestyle for philosophical reasons, and that therefore he could not accept gifts that might alter his mode of living. However, my interpretation is that he was obsessed with his social rank, and that any suggestion that he might be in need of assistance was worrisome to him, because that might blow his cover as a fake hermit. I should also mention that there is little record of what went on behind the scenes in Rousseau's daily life. It would have been interesting to know exactly what Mme. Levasseur and Thérèse, who actually lived with him, thought. My guess is that they would have found him impractical and too focused on his public image.
In the broader picture, it is easiest to see Rousseau as incredibly ambitious if you look at all of the activities in which he attempted to excel: chess player, composer, librettist, playwright, novelist, philosopher and autobiographer. While such a range was more common during his lifetime, it would still have been relatively rare. Compare him to a more recent ambitious person in the arts, Stanley Kubrick: chess player, photographer, director, screenwriter and producer – a variety of skills, but over a much narrower range. It is obvious to me that if Rousseau's primary intent had been to live a reflective, rustic life, he could easily have done that without making a furious effort to achieve fame and recognition.
moved back to Petit Montlouis in late 1759, and his relationship with M. and Mme. de Luxembourg continued to flourish. By 1760 they kept permanent rooms for him in their house in Paris so that he could spend time with them there. While his relationship with Sophie d'Houdetot gradually declined, he developed new ones with other young, aristocratic women such as Mme. de Verdelin, who was a friend of Sophie, and the Comtesse de Boufflers, who was a friend of Mme. de Luxembourg. These new relationships seem to have been platonic. Although Rousseau was still only in his late forties, he and his friends were frequently ill, and they grumbled about their illnesses the same way that people do now when they're in their eighties.
In the section that I just finished, Rousseau spent much of his time in correspondence regarding the publication of Julie. It was published in 1761 in Amsterdam to avoid censorship problems in France, and production was forestalled by events such as the freezing of canals, which delayed paper shipments, and shortages of type, which limited the number of pages which could be printed at a time. In addition to this, the proofing process was painfully slow, with Rousseau receiving few pages at a time, with those containing numerous typographical errors.
While Cranston seems to be trying to offer an even-handed view of Rousseau, I think that his commentary is a little too generous. Even Rousseau seems more self-critical in his Confessions. I would have hoped that by now Cranston would have offered a more insightful explanation of Rousseau's behavior. The key term of self-criticism that Rousseau used in Confessions was amour propre, which roughly means vanity or an exaggerated sense of self-worth. If you expand upon this idea, it becomes easier to understand Rousseau's behavior, but Cranston does not explore that avenue. The pattern that I notice is that of Rousseau being extremely competitive while taking great pains to conceal his pursuit of fame. It seems to me that he engaged in gratuitous quarrels simply because he was jealous at various times of the relative success of his peers. I think that he picked fights with his closest friend, Diderot, simply because Diderot was more successful than he was. Although he never developed such a close friendship with Voltaire, that relationship also began to take a turn for the worse for no apparent reason. Cranston fails to draw attention to the fact that Voltaire published the popular novel Candide in 1759, while Rousseau was working on Julie. If Rousseau had been able to behave like a mature adult, these major breaks could easily have been averted.
As with other biographical works that I've read, it can pay off to review different sources. Regarding the game of chess, Cranston merely remarks that Rousseau played it a few times and was fairly good: he beat Diderot and a nobleman who visited him later at Petit Montlouis. According to another source I read, Rousseau played regularly when he first arrived in Paris and honed his skills for quite some time. However, Rousseau seems to have suggested to others that he had hardly played at all, which would make him appear naturally talented if he were able to defeat more experienced players. I have the impression that Rousseau was extremely competitive from the start but hid it by pretending to be a virtuous ascetic. The reality seems to have been that from the beginning he wanted to be a rock star and get all the hot chicks, although, as an introvert, he avoided excessive exposure to the public.
Another fruitful clue that I think Cranston has missed was Rousseau's inexplicable taking of offense when friends sent him gifts. By 1759, many of his friends and supporters were wealthy, yet he would complain bitterly if they sent him, for example, some venison. His standard explanation to others would be that he had chosen to live an ascetic lifestyle for philosophical reasons, and that therefore he could not accept gifts that might alter his mode of living. However, my interpretation is that he was obsessed with his social rank, and that any suggestion that he might be in need of assistance was worrisome to him, because that might blow his cover as a fake hermit. I should also mention that there is little record of what went on behind the scenes in Rousseau's daily life. It would have been interesting to know exactly what Mme. Levasseur and Thérèse, who actually lived with him, thought. My guess is that they would have found him impractical and too focused on his public image.
In the broader picture, it is easiest to see Rousseau as incredibly ambitious if you look at all of the activities in which he attempted to excel: chess player, composer, librettist, playwright, novelist, philosopher and autobiographer. While such a range was more common during his lifetime, it would still have been relatively rare. Compare him to a more recent ambitious person in the arts, Stanley Kubrick: chess player, photographer, director, screenwriter and producer – a variety of skills, but over a much narrower range. It is obvious to me that if Rousseau's primary intent had been to live a reflective, rustic life, he could easily have done that without making a furious effort to achieve fame and recognition.
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 IV
As it happened, one of Rousseau's neighbors in Montmorency was Charles-François-Frédéric de Montmorency-Luxembourg, Duc de Luxembourg and Maréchal de France. He was a friend of the King and a chief military advisor, and he spent much of his time in Versailles. He made several attempts to meet Rousseau by inviting him to his château, but was rebuffed because Rousseau thought that he would be treated like a peasant and take meals with the servants. Finally, the Maréchal himself actually showed up at Petit Montlouis and couldn't be avoided. Rousseau was already acquainted with the Maréchal's wife, Mme. de Luxembourg, whom he knew from his salon days in Paris. He liked her but was intimidated by her because she could be spiteful. Before long, Rousseau was visiting them at their château.
In the summer of 1759, Petit Montlouis was so badly in need of repairs that the floors were caving in and it was becoming uninhabitable. The Maréchal offered Rousseau the use of an apartment in his Petit Château, an elegant, landscaped building close to his main house, while Rousseau's landlord made repairs to Petit Montlouis. Rousseau befriended the Maréchal, remaining a little wary of his wife. Rousseau felt more at home with aristocratic people, who never thought about money or advancing themselves, than with his intellectual peers in Paris or the social climbers whom he encountered everywhere. Without changing his attire, he met and conversed informally with the Maréchal and his friends, preferring only small groups.
At this stage, Rousseau's health had improved, and he was shopping out Julie for publication and writing Émile. Cranston devotes a chapter to the content of Émile. I read it a few years ago and was not impressed. It is interesting to me only to the extent that it shows how Rousseau conceived of education, both for men and women. Most of the book reads like a manual for use by a full-time tutor who has been assigned to raise a boy named Émile who comes from a wealthy family. Towards the end, the book begins to read like a novel, when Émile meets Sophie, his ideal partner who has also been raised according to Rousseau's principles. Rousseau manages to throw his entire cosmology, which is quirky to say the least, into the book. As with everything written by Rousseau, he is good at explaining how he came to adopt certain ideas, and it is left to the reader to decide whether those ideas might have any relevance to them. Usually that is not the case.
By contemporary standards, Rousseau's scheme is bizarre. He thought that only wealthy men of high rank deserved proper educations and the right to participate in government. Women, peasants and artisans had other tasks to perform and should stick to those. This is hardly a formula for equality. Rousseau is fairly consistent in his assertion that civilization and society ruin people, and that some sort of reversion to an earlier state would be desirable. However, he doesn't appear to have known how people actually used to live. He seems to have thought that men and women just wandered around in the woods alone and mated randomly, and that when women gave birth they raised their babies on their own. Although it is true that modern marital arrangements are products of civilization, Rousseau overlooked the fact that humans have always been social animals and have lived in small groups for thousands of years. With regard to religion, he believed in God, but not in the religious institutions that dominate religious beliefs. He found religion in nature and was suspicious of Christian theology: he did not consider Christ a divine being or think that the Bible was the word of God.
One of the things that I like about Rousseau is that he can be used as a reference point for how ideas develop and change over time, which makes it easier to look at one's own life and see it in a context that remains almost invisible in the present. He was born 238 years before I was, and the belief systems of his time were quite different from those of today. Even when he was wrong about something, it is useful to see how he interpreted and challenged orthodoxy. How will your current belief system stack up in 250 years? In a broad sense, he was right that social pressures force people into modes of thought which don't necessarily suit them well. It is also true that people may generally accept ideas that have no real merit under close examination. I think that, although there were disadvantages, Rousseau was able to benefit from the fact that he did not have what then would have been considered a proper formal education, because it allowed him to think independently. Then as now, it is beyond the scope of your plodding contemporaries to transcend the popular prejudices of the day. Certainly, the relegation of thought to formal institutions such as universities and the pervasive presence of advertising tend to encourage the acceptance of dubious truths and unthinking conformity. One of my frequent complaints on this blog pertains to the apparent absence of big thinkers today, and I would be happy to have another one come along even if he or she were just as error-prone as Rousseau.
In the summer of 1759, Petit Montlouis was so badly in need of repairs that the floors were caving in and it was becoming uninhabitable. The Maréchal offered Rousseau the use of an apartment in his Petit Château, an elegant, landscaped building close to his main house, while Rousseau's landlord made repairs to Petit Montlouis. Rousseau befriended the Maréchal, remaining a little wary of his wife. Rousseau felt more at home with aristocratic people, who never thought about money or advancing themselves, than with his intellectual peers in Paris or the social climbers whom he encountered everywhere. Without changing his attire, he met and conversed informally with the Maréchal and his friends, preferring only small groups.
At this stage, Rousseau's health had improved, and he was shopping out Julie for publication and writing Émile. Cranston devotes a chapter to the content of Émile. I read it a few years ago and was not impressed. It is interesting to me only to the extent that it shows how Rousseau conceived of education, both for men and women. Most of the book reads like a manual for use by a full-time tutor who has been assigned to raise a boy named Émile who comes from a wealthy family. Towards the end, the book begins to read like a novel, when Émile meets Sophie, his ideal partner who has also been raised according to Rousseau's principles. Rousseau manages to throw his entire cosmology, which is quirky to say the least, into the book. As with everything written by Rousseau, he is good at explaining how he came to adopt certain ideas, and it is left to the reader to decide whether those ideas might have any relevance to them. Usually that is not the case.
By contemporary standards, Rousseau's scheme is bizarre. He thought that only wealthy men of high rank deserved proper educations and the right to participate in government. Women, peasants and artisans had other tasks to perform and should stick to those. This is hardly a formula for equality. Rousseau is fairly consistent in his assertion that civilization and society ruin people, and that some sort of reversion to an earlier state would be desirable. However, he doesn't appear to have known how people actually used to live. He seems to have thought that men and women just wandered around in the woods alone and mated randomly, and that when women gave birth they raised their babies on their own. Although it is true that modern marital arrangements are products of civilization, Rousseau overlooked the fact that humans have always been social animals and have lived in small groups for thousands of years. With regard to religion, he believed in God, but not in the religious institutions that dominate religious beliefs. He found religion in nature and was suspicious of Christian theology: he did not consider Christ a divine being or think that the Bible was the word of God.
One of the things that I like about Rousseau is that he can be used as a reference point for how ideas develop and change over time, which makes it easier to look at one's own life and see it in a context that remains almost invisible in the present. He was born 238 years before I was, and the belief systems of his time were quite different from those of today. Even when he was wrong about something, it is useful to see how he interpreted and challenged orthodoxy. How will your current belief system stack up in 250 years? In a broad sense, he was right that social pressures force people into modes of thought which don't necessarily suit them well. It is also true that people may generally accept ideas that have no real merit under close examination. I think that, although there were disadvantages, Rousseau was able to benefit from the fact that he did not have what then would have been considered a proper formal education, because it allowed him to think independently. Then as now, it is beyond the scope of your plodding contemporaries to transcend the popular prejudices of the day. Certainly, the relegation of thought to formal institutions such as universities and the pervasive presence of advertising tend to encourage the acceptance of dubious truths and unthinking conformity. One of my frequent complaints on this blog pertains to the apparent absence of big thinkers today, and I would be happy to have another one come along even if he or she were just as error-prone as Rousseau.
Wednesday, January 30, 2019
The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 III
As far as I've read, Rousseau is forty-seven and has spent two years in the rundown cottage in Montmorency, which was known as Petit Montlouis, because it was on a larger estate named Montlouis. Since Mme. Levasseur had moved back to Paris, he was alone with Thérèse. His health was poor because of urinary problems and a hernia, and the house was cold during the winter due to a lack of heat; he thought that he didn't have long to live. He became increasingly religious and said that he wanted to go to heaven. Initially he had few visitors and spent most of his time writing. His main work during this period was an essay titled A Letter to Monsieur d'Alembert on the Theatre. D'Alembert had written an article for Diderot's Encyclopédie in which he discussed Geneva and argued for adding a theater there to give a spark to the arts. The Calvinists had banned theaters because they thought that they had a corrupting effect on the population. Rousseau was on neutral terms with d'Alembert but was miffed because he hadn't been consulted. His essay supported the ban and included barbs against Voltaire and Diderot. At the time, Voltaire was living in Geneva, and Rousseau assumed that the essay was for his benefit, because a theater would allow him to stage his own productions there. The veiled criticism of Diderot had nothing to do with the article or Geneva and served only to solidify their split. Rousseau had been on cordial terms with Voltaire, but his essay caused a breach. Other than this essay, Rousseau continued to work on Julie and maintained correspondences, some of which pertained to copyrights and publishers who had cheated him out of money. At this stage he was entirely self-financing and paying rent.
Cranston is good at providing important biographical details, but I am finding him weaker when it comes to analyzing Rousseau's psychodynamics. Rousseau's behavior was considered unusual then, and it would be now. In the absence of discussion on this topic, I am piecing together a model to try to make sense of this. Some of Rousseau's antisocial behavior probably stemmed from his urinary problems, which made it necessary for him to urinate very frequently, making normal social interactions awkward. Part of it may also have had to do with the fact that Rousseau was not an extroverted person and tended to be shy. Another part may have had to do with the fact that he was not accustomed to urban living as he encountered it in Paris and felt uncomfortable there. He seems to have had a theatrical flair, so it may have been easiest for him to invent a persona as a hermit, an ascetic and a citizen of Geneva. One of the areas in which he was most confounding was in his reluctance to take ordinary steps to secure a sufficient income. He could easily have accepted an undemanding job that would have covered his expenses, or he could have found a suitable patron whose support he accepted graciously, but he did neither. I'm not sure whether he was stubborn, stupid, or both.
There were other complexities which are subtler and more difficult to resolve. He seemed to develop frictions with his friends among the Parisian philosophes, not always with clear causes. One aspect of this may simply have been male rivalry. His relationships with women were no less problematic, perhaps because he was more emotionally dependent on them than on men. For the time, Mme. de Warens had met his needs, though he cannot be said to have loved her as much as he loved Sophie, who was doubly unavailable as a spouse and mistress. His relationship with Thérèse seems to have been based primarily on sex until his mid-forties, whereupon she became a mere servant.
Perhaps what I like to speculate on the most about Rousseau are the inconsistencies of his ideas and his role in the Enlightenment, though ideas are not the main focus of Cranston's biography. I get the sense that Rousseau was not a great thinker, but that he was able to leverage the abilities he did have to the best possible effect. I think that he was unusually capable at looking inward and identifying what was most important to him, and then use this as a basis for his writings. That included an appreciation of nature and rural life. Though he probably made many blunders in writing Émile, he understood that a certain kind of life would be the right one for him and would allow him to express who he was; this countered the ideas of his more scientific friends, who, at the time, were thinking of humans as blank slates. In at least this respect, Rousseau was far ahead of his time. In other areas, I'm not so sure that he warrants much attention, except as a compelling writer, primarily in his autobiographical works.
The main incongruity that I see is Rousseau's endorsement of Calvinism while pursuing a completely improper relationship with Thérèse. That relationship was not one of equals, and I have seen no evidence that she had say in the disposal of the five children that they produced together. Would she have liked to have kept them? It is possible that she concurred with Rousseau that they couldn't afford them, but there is no record of her having a voice in the decision. Outwardly, Thérèse may as well have been a sex slave with no rights. Rousseau conveniently labeled himself a Calvinist while living in France, when his behavior would have landed him in jail in any puritanical jurisdiction. The moral high ground that he took in his writing is absurd if you look closely at his actual behavior. It should also be noted that while he was willing to accept charity at the expense of friends who could ill afford it, I see no evidence that he ever extended himself to help anyone else. Thérèse, his lifelong companion, lived in poverty just as he did. Arguably, she was an unpaid sex worker.
In regard to the Enlightenment, Rousseau did not seem to fit in well with it in a broad sense, unless you include his political theories. Compared to the other philosophes of his era, he was notably conservative and anti-scientific. I think perhaps that this was an early demarcation that still manifests itself in the rift between the arts and the sciences. Literary types and scientific types remain poorly integrated.
Cranston is good at providing important biographical details, but I am finding him weaker when it comes to analyzing Rousseau's psychodynamics. Rousseau's behavior was considered unusual then, and it would be now. In the absence of discussion on this topic, I am piecing together a model to try to make sense of this. Some of Rousseau's antisocial behavior probably stemmed from his urinary problems, which made it necessary for him to urinate very frequently, making normal social interactions awkward. Part of it may also have had to do with the fact that Rousseau was not an extroverted person and tended to be shy. Another part may have had to do with the fact that he was not accustomed to urban living as he encountered it in Paris and felt uncomfortable there. He seems to have had a theatrical flair, so it may have been easiest for him to invent a persona as a hermit, an ascetic and a citizen of Geneva. One of the areas in which he was most confounding was in his reluctance to take ordinary steps to secure a sufficient income. He could easily have accepted an undemanding job that would have covered his expenses, or he could have found a suitable patron whose support he accepted graciously, but he did neither. I'm not sure whether he was stubborn, stupid, or both.
There were other complexities which are subtler and more difficult to resolve. He seemed to develop frictions with his friends among the Parisian philosophes, not always with clear causes. One aspect of this may simply have been male rivalry. His relationships with women were no less problematic, perhaps because he was more emotionally dependent on them than on men. For the time, Mme. de Warens had met his needs, though he cannot be said to have loved her as much as he loved Sophie, who was doubly unavailable as a spouse and mistress. His relationship with Thérèse seems to have been based primarily on sex until his mid-forties, whereupon she became a mere servant.
Perhaps what I like to speculate on the most about Rousseau are the inconsistencies of his ideas and his role in the Enlightenment, though ideas are not the main focus of Cranston's biography. I get the sense that Rousseau was not a great thinker, but that he was able to leverage the abilities he did have to the best possible effect. I think that he was unusually capable at looking inward and identifying what was most important to him, and then use this as a basis for his writings. That included an appreciation of nature and rural life. Though he probably made many blunders in writing Émile, he understood that a certain kind of life would be the right one for him and would allow him to express who he was; this countered the ideas of his more scientific friends, who, at the time, were thinking of humans as blank slates. In at least this respect, Rousseau was far ahead of his time. In other areas, I'm not so sure that he warrants much attention, except as a compelling writer, primarily in his autobiographical works.
The main incongruity that I see is Rousseau's endorsement of Calvinism while pursuing a completely improper relationship with Thérèse. That relationship was not one of equals, and I have seen no evidence that she had say in the disposal of the five children that they produced together. Would she have liked to have kept them? It is possible that she concurred with Rousseau that they couldn't afford them, but there is no record of her having a voice in the decision. Outwardly, Thérèse may as well have been a sex slave with no rights. Rousseau conveniently labeled himself a Calvinist while living in France, when his behavior would have landed him in jail in any puritanical jurisdiction. The moral high ground that he took in his writing is absurd if you look closely at his actual behavior. It should also be noted that while he was willing to accept charity at the expense of friends who could ill afford it, I see no evidence that he ever extended himself to help anyone else. Thérèse, his lifelong companion, lived in poverty just as he did. Arguably, she was an unpaid sex worker.
In regard to the Enlightenment, Rousseau did not seem to fit in well with it in a broad sense, unless you include his political theories. Compared to the other philosophes of his era, he was notably conservative and anti-scientific. I think perhaps that this was an early demarcation that still manifests itself in the rift between the arts and the sciences. Literary types and scientific types remain poorly integrated.
Friday, January 25, 2019
The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 II
1757 turned out to be an excessively melodramatic year for Rousseau, who was then forty-five. A sister-in-law of Mme. d'Épinay, Comtesse d'Houdetot, known to friends as Sophie, lived in a rented house near the Hermitage and Mme. d'Épinay's chateau, which was called La Chevrette. Although she had known Rousseau from earlier encounters, they struck out on a romantic relationship. She was eighteen years younger than Rousseau and nine years younger than Thérèse, attractive but not pretty, with a good figure and a warm personality. The relationship included a few encounters of an undetermined sexual nature, secret meetings in the woods, hiding letters to each other in a tree, etc. – all a little corny to me. Sophie belonged to an ancient aristocratic lineage and had three children, and, as was the norm for aristocratic women at that time, had a lover; he was named St-Lambert and was away at war. It appears that Rousseau's celebrity status had attracted her to him, and that he may have been drawn to her aristocratic credentials, but they still managed to form a genuinely close relationship.
Maurice Cranston makes a valiant effort to sort out exactly what transpired, and there are mountains of extant evidence in the form of letters, but the whole situation still seems murky to me. By current standards, Rousseau may have been going through a midlife crisis, with sexual boredom and early inklings of his death. Sophie became the model for Julie in his novel, and clearly he was obsessed with her. Unfortunately, Mme. d'Épinay took an interest in this and may have used Thérèse, who also must have been displeased, to intercept his letters to Sophie. Moreover, Sophie loved St-Lambert and didn't want to hurt him. The situation boiled out of control when Mme. d'Épinay decided to make a winter trip to Geneva to see her doctor, who was an acquaintance of Rousseau. She wanted Rousseau to accompany her, but he didn't want to go. This resulted in a flurry of letters full of recrimination, which left Mme. d'Épinay, her lover, Grimm, a fellow encyclopédist, and Diderot, who somehow got dragged into this, displeased with Rousseau's conduct. The turn of events may have been an early example of Rousseau's paranoia causing ill effects, and it seems to me that he could easily have prevented the outcome by exercising greater tact. If he had consulted each person face-to-face and stated his position plainly without any innuendos, it seems that the situation might have been salvaged.
That outcome, however, was ruined relationships. In a letter to Grimm, Mme. d'Épinay described Rousseau as "a moral dwarf on stilts." Grimm wrote to Mme. d'Épinay, "You know madmen are dangerous, especially if one panders to them as you have sometimes done to that poor devil through your ill-judged pity for his insanity." Diderot became involved with this fiasco, and his relationship with Rousseau was subsequently ruined. Though Rousseau managed to remain on good terms with Sophie and St-Lambert, in late 1757 Mme. d'Épinay's entourage departed for Geneva without him and he moved out of the Hermitage to a cottage two miles away in Montmorency. There was a side to Rousseau that was not at all flattering: on the one hand he seems to have been a sensitive soul who became closely attached to people, particularly maternal women, but on the other hand he was not always straightforward in his dealings with people and generated unnecessary confusion. I think that he may have unconsciously engaged in social climbing, and when confronted he took solace with sympathetic women without dealing effectively with the men. One might surmise that he does not appear to have been emotionally self-aware.
I should mention at this point that the aristocratic women who participated in the French salons of Rousseau's time seem remarkably sophisticated. By current standards they seem unusually intelligent, well-informed, sensitive and articulate, certainly more so than any American women I've ever met. One begins to get a sense of what was lost when the aristocratic institutions of France collapsed. When the hordes of bourgeoisie finally took over public life in France, the salons were replaced with boring social gatherings like those hosted by Mme. Verdurin in Proust's Swann's Way, and a little later Simone de Beauvoir avoided them like the plague. It would seem that one of the highlights of Western civilization has vanished forever. The apparent social equality that arose with the death of monarchies was accompanied by a kind of crudeness that came at an aesthetic cost.
Maurice Cranston makes a valiant effort to sort out exactly what transpired, and there are mountains of extant evidence in the form of letters, but the whole situation still seems murky to me. By current standards, Rousseau may have been going through a midlife crisis, with sexual boredom and early inklings of his death. Sophie became the model for Julie in his novel, and clearly he was obsessed with her. Unfortunately, Mme. d'Épinay took an interest in this and may have used Thérèse, who also must have been displeased, to intercept his letters to Sophie. Moreover, Sophie loved St-Lambert and didn't want to hurt him. The situation boiled out of control when Mme. d'Épinay decided to make a winter trip to Geneva to see her doctor, who was an acquaintance of Rousseau. She wanted Rousseau to accompany her, but he didn't want to go. This resulted in a flurry of letters full of recrimination, which left Mme. d'Épinay, her lover, Grimm, a fellow encyclopédist, and Diderot, who somehow got dragged into this, displeased with Rousseau's conduct. The turn of events may have been an early example of Rousseau's paranoia causing ill effects, and it seems to me that he could easily have prevented the outcome by exercising greater tact. If he had consulted each person face-to-face and stated his position plainly without any innuendos, it seems that the situation might have been salvaged.
That outcome, however, was ruined relationships. In a letter to Grimm, Mme. d'Épinay described Rousseau as "a moral dwarf on stilts." Grimm wrote to Mme. d'Épinay, "You know madmen are dangerous, especially if one panders to them as you have sometimes done to that poor devil through your ill-judged pity for his insanity." Diderot became involved with this fiasco, and his relationship with Rousseau was subsequently ruined. Though Rousseau managed to remain on good terms with Sophie and St-Lambert, in late 1757 Mme. d'Épinay's entourage departed for Geneva without him and he moved out of the Hermitage to a cottage two miles away in Montmorency. There was a side to Rousseau that was not at all flattering: on the one hand he seems to have been a sensitive soul who became closely attached to people, particularly maternal women, but on the other hand he was not always straightforward in his dealings with people and generated unnecessary confusion. I think that he may have unconsciously engaged in social climbing, and when confronted he took solace with sympathetic women without dealing effectively with the men. One might surmise that he does not appear to have been emotionally self-aware.
I should mention at this point that the aristocratic women who participated in the French salons of Rousseau's time seem remarkably sophisticated. By current standards they seem unusually intelligent, well-informed, sensitive and articulate, certainly more so than any American women I've ever met. One begins to get a sense of what was lost when the aristocratic institutions of France collapsed. When the hordes of bourgeoisie finally took over public life in France, the salons were replaced with boring social gatherings like those hosted by Mme. Verdurin in Proust's Swann's Way, and a little later Simone de Beauvoir avoided them like the plague. It would seem that one of the highlights of Western civilization has vanished forever. The apparent social equality that arose with the death of monarchies was accompanied by a kind of crudeness that came at an aesthetic cost.
Monday, January 21, 2019
The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754-1762 I
This second volume in Maurice Cranston's series starts where the first leaves off, in 1754. After returning to Paris from Geneva, Rousseau resumed his salon participation while living frugally without a regular job and supporting Thérèse and her mother, Mme. Levasseur, who was getting old. He sought a publisher for his Discourse on Inequality. At the age of 42, Rousseau's eccentricities become more apparent. In those days, publishing a book was generally not very profitable for the author, and his friends, such as Diderot, earned a living in the same way that many intellectuals do today, by writing commissioned articles for journals. Rousseau refused to engage in this type of work and, besides his income as a copyist, he depended on handouts that he would accept only when they didn't compromise his ascetic lifestyle. It seems that many aspects of his life as a principled philosophe were a bit of a sham, because Mme. Levasseur was constantly going behind his back and soliciting funds from people to support the three of them.
Rousseau disliked living in Paris, because it was congested, unhealthy and corrupt, and he preferred the outdoors. It seems that his plan had been to take Geneva by storm and retire there. His Discourse on Inequality was dedicated to that city, but, when it was published, it turned out to be flop in Geneva, which was not an intellectual hub. Furthermore, although he seems to have wanted to idealize Geneva as a utopia which reflected his ideals, in fact it was a patrician city with distinct classes that hardly demonstrated his ideas regarding equality. One of the Parisian salon hostesses, Mme. d'Épinay, had a house to the north of Paris in Montmorency, and she remodeled a building on the property, which she named the Hermitage, so that Rousseau, Thérèse and her mother could live there. In 1756, the three moved in. Generally, this arrangement suited Rousseau, and he began to write his first novel, Julie. His house was a mile from the nearest neighbor, and, far ahead of his time, he enjoyed walking in the country. He usually walked alone, since Thérèse didn't like walking.
When Mme. d'Épinay was staying at her house there, Rousseau socialized with her, though the conversation was not at salon levels, and sometimes he found her boring. She was not sexually attractive to him, and they did not become involved in that way. By this time, Thérèse was also unattractive to him, and although they seem to have had a good relationship, she came to resemble a servant and nurse in her household role. Despite the fact that Montmorency is close to Paris, in those days getting there often involved walking through five miles of mud, so Rousseau didn't get many visitors. He communicated with friends via letters, and, much as what happens today with emails, misunderstandings sometimes arose. In particular, Diderot, who was busy supporting his own family and secretly subsidizing Mme. Levasseur to assist Rousseau, didn't like to take time off to trudge through the mud, and this produced some animosity. He was probably irritated by Rousseau's "hermit" act because of the inconveniences it caused for everyone else.
My reading of this biography falls broadly into my analysis of intellectuals, and I am particularly interested in thinking about how much importance should be placed on their ideas after you have seen how they originated. In Rousseau's case, I identify with his appreciation of the outdoors and rural living and his disdain for being an employee, but I think that some of his ideas were simply idealizations of Calvinism and Geneva. In the case of all intellectuals, they may have some insights or special knowledge, but, in the end, they suffer from much the same ignorance and prejudice as everyone else. From the vantage point of the present, Rousseau had little or no understanding of what the effects of the Industrial Revolution and population growth would be. Regardless of what he thought, people were about to move to cities and take industrial jobs rather than work or live rurally. He advocated small, democratically-governed republics without recognizing that economies of scale would soon render such political and economic structures obsolete. Moreover, he engaged in a lot of fuzzy thinking regarding who would actually vote in his ideal republic. Certainly, he would not place illiterate servants or farm laborers on the same level as educated people like himself. Thus, "equality" coming from Rousseau had a specialized meaning which did not provide all people with identical rights. Nor, so far as I'm aware, did Rousseau delineate in a useful way the conditions under which rights should be restricted. Rousseau was one of the most original thinkers of the Enlightenment, but I think it is important to view even the most influential of thinkers as having thoughts of limited applicability, simply because, at best, they are likely to be only somewhat less ignorant than their peers.
Rousseau disliked living in Paris, because it was congested, unhealthy and corrupt, and he preferred the outdoors. It seems that his plan had been to take Geneva by storm and retire there. His Discourse on Inequality was dedicated to that city, but, when it was published, it turned out to be flop in Geneva, which was not an intellectual hub. Furthermore, although he seems to have wanted to idealize Geneva as a utopia which reflected his ideals, in fact it was a patrician city with distinct classes that hardly demonstrated his ideas regarding equality. One of the Parisian salon hostesses, Mme. d'Épinay, had a house to the north of Paris in Montmorency, and she remodeled a building on the property, which she named the Hermitage, so that Rousseau, Thérèse and her mother could live there. In 1756, the three moved in. Generally, this arrangement suited Rousseau, and he began to write his first novel, Julie. His house was a mile from the nearest neighbor, and, far ahead of his time, he enjoyed walking in the country. He usually walked alone, since Thérèse didn't like walking.
When Mme. d'Épinay was staying at her house there, Rousseau socialized with her, though the conversation was not at salon levels, and sometimes he found her boring. She was not sexually attractive to him, and they did not become involved in that way. By this time, Thérèse was also unattractive to him, and although they seem to have had a good relationship, she came to resemble a servant and nurse in her household role. Despite the fact that Montmorency is close to Paris, in those days getting there often involved walking through five miles of mud, so Rousseau didn't get many visitors. He communicated with friends via letters, and, much as what happens today with emails, misunderstandings sometimes arose. In particular, Diderot, who was busy supporting his own family and secretly subsidizing Mme. Levasseur to assist Rousseau, didn't like to take time off to trudge through the mud, and this produced some animosity. He was probably irritated by Rousseau's "hermit" act because of the inconveniences it caused for everyone else.
My reading of this biography falls broadly into my analysis of intellectuals, and I am particularly interested in thinking about how much importance should be placed on their ideas after you have seen how they originated. In Rousseau's case, I identify with his appreciation of the outdoors and rural living and his disdain for being an employee, but I think that some of his ideas were simply idealizations of Calvinism and Geneva. In the case of all intellectuals, they may have some insights or special knowledge, but, in the end, they suffer from much the same ignorance and prejudice as everyone else. From the vantage point of the present, Rousseau had little or no understanding of what the effects of the Industrial Revolution and population growth would be. Regardless of what he thought, people were about to move to cities and take industrial jobs rather than work or live rurally. He advocated small, democratically-governed republics without recognizing that economies of scale would soon render such political and economic structures obsolete. Moreover, he engaged in a lot of fuzzy thinking regarding who would actually vote in his ideal republic. Certainly, he would not place illiterate servants or farm laborers on the same level as educated people like himself. Thus, "equality" coming from Rousseau had a specialized meaning which did not provide all people with identical rights. Nor, so far as I'm aware, did Rousseau delineate in a useful way the conditions under which rights should be restricted. Rousseau was one of the most original thinkers of the Enlightenment, but I think it is important to view even the most influential of thinkers as having thoughts of limited applicability, simply because, at best, they are likely to be only somewhat less ignorant than their peers.
Tuesday, January 15, 2019
Diary
The Rousseau biography is quite long – over 900 pages in small print – but I am finding it worthwhile and think it deserves a close reading. I apologize to those of you who have no interest in the subject, since I'm only about a third of the way through, and it will take a month or two for me to finish it at the current rate.
This is the perfect time to be settled indoors, as cold weather and permanent snow have arrived. From footprints on the roof, I can see that one of the mice that I blocked out in 2017 is still trying unsuccessfully to enter the house. Other than reading and an occasional walk, there isn't much to do. I have been following the Trump debacle and hoping that it will end soon. I think that he is hanging by a thread, and that he could be gone quite rapidly, depending on the Mueller findings. A possible scenario would be that Mueller provides proof of Trump's direct involvement in the obstruction of justice, which causes a drop in Trump's popularity and a loss of support by Republican senators. Under such a scenario, Trump would face immediate impeachment and would probably resign under pressure. Even if the Mueller investigation doesn't pan out, there are several separate investigations underway in the House of Representatives which will probably uncover damaging information about Trump and perhaps reveal crimes not examined by Mueller.
Some pundits think that the normal democratic process – presidential votes – should be the deciding factor in what happens to Trump. I disagree, in that Trump is a menace to society, and the risks associated with his remaining in office for two more years outweigh the desirability of normal electoral procedures. Even if I were able to convince myself that he had a coherent set of policies that are plausibly in the American interest, he has repeatedly demonstrated that he has very little understanding of his responsibilities or what actions he should take to exercise them. For those who somehow manage to agree with him on anything, chances are that he will be unable to fulfill his promises, because he is demonstrably incompetent. Beyond this, it seems possible that he will ultimately be found guilty of multiple crimes. The writing is on the wall: he will be regarded as the worst president in American history, and, with any luck, Congress will pass a law to prevent such a mistake from occurring in the future. Trump is unfit for the presidency, and I would prefer to see him dead or in prison. Allowing him to remain the most powerful person in the world is beyond absurdity.
This is the perfect time to be settled indoors, as cold weather and permanent snow have arrived. From footprints on the roof, I can see that one of the mice that I blocked out in 2017 is still trying unsuccessfully to enter the house. Other than reading and an occasional walk, there isn't much to do. I have been following the Trump debacle and hoping that it will end soon. I think that he is hanging by a thread, and that he could be gone quite rapidly, depending on the Mueller findings. A possible scenario would be that Mueller provides proof of Trump's direct involvement in the obstruction of justice, which causes a drop in Trump's popularity and a loss of support by Republican senators. Under such a scenario, Trump would face immediate impeachment and would probably resign under pressure. Even if the Mueller investigation doesn't pan out, there are several separate investigations underway in the House of Representatives which will probably uncover damaging information about Trump and perhaps reveal crimes not examined by Mueller.
Some pundits think that the normal democratic process – presidential votes – should be the deciding factor in what happens to Trump. I disagree, in that Trump is a menace to society, and the risks associated with his remaining in office for two more years outweigh the desirability of normal electoral procedures. Even if I were able to convince myself that he had a coherent set of policies that are plausibly in the American interest, he has repeatedly demonstrated that he has very little understanding of his responsibilities or what actions he should take to exercise them. For those who somehow manage to agree with him on anything, chances are that he will be unable to fulfill his promises, because he is demonstrably incompetent. Beyond this, it seems possible that he will ultimately be found guilty of multiple crimes. The writing is on the wall: he will be regarded as the worst president in American history, and, with any luck, Congress will pass a law to prevent such a mistake from occurring in the future. Trump is unfit for the presidency, and I would prefer to see him dead or in prison. Allowing him to remain the most powerful person in the world is beyond absurdity.
Sunday, January 13, 2019
Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 VII
A second competition was announced by the Academy of Dijon in 1753. The question this time was "What is the origin of inequality among men, and is it authorized by Natural Law?" Of course, Rousseau immediately began writing, and, although he didn't win on this occasion, he managed to produce his best essay to date. It was here that he set out his "natural man" theory for which he is best known today. Rousseau was usually a lyrical and literary writer, but he closely consulted Diderot, and the essay has a more scientific ring to it. In what might be called a pre-Darwinian description of the evolution of mankind, he articulated how humans evolved from less-sophisticated animals. He argued that, at some time in the distant past, man was morally good in comparison to his current state. The change began when agriculture became popular, along with the concept of private property. Eventually, man had to earn his living by wages, subjecting himself to the will of others, and society imposed new rules, such as monogamy, in order to maintain order. Rousseau argued that this was a corruption from the earlier state in which man was happy. The essay was published and drew much public attention. He sent Voltaire, an acquaintance but not a friend, a copy. Voltaire was then enjoying a bourgeois life and was not about to have his lifestyle challenged. In characteristic wit, he replied:
I have received, Monsieur, your new book against the human race, and I thank you. No one has employed so much intelligence to turn us men into beasts. One starts wanting to walk on all fours after reading your book. However, in more than sixty years I have lost the habit.
Besides Voltaire, the younger encyclopédistes of Rousseau's set were generally rationalists and not amenable to the religious undertones of the essay. Despite this, it was widely read and contributed further to Rousseau's fame.
In the summer of 1754, Rousseau traveled to Geneva with Thérèse and visited family members and old acquaintances. In order to do so, he had to renounce Catholicism and become a Calvinist again. Because of his celebrity, the Genevans made this easy for him, despite his living arrangements with Thérèse. The moral laxity of Paris was not accepted in Geneva, but Rousseau was able to meet the requirements simply by stating that Thérèse was his nurse. They enjoyed the summer and early fall there, spending much of their time walking outdoors before returning to Paris in October.
This brings to a close the first of three volumes. Although there is more detail here than necessary, I am enjoying the richness of the description. Though I don't take Rousseau completely seriously as a thinker, the information is useful for understanding the history of ideas. What I like about Rousseau is that he wrote from the heart, and that his ideas lack the opacity that pervades most academic writing. It is interesting to me that basic questions such as the rights of individuals and the meaning of equality have scarcely advanced since the eighteenth century. Academic writing usually consists of a regurgitation of what someone else said, and along the way the meaning of the original thought becomes lost. It is shocking how few original thinkers there have been throughout history, and when you find one like Rousseau, it is difficult, despite his limitations, not to marvel at his rarity. The valuable lesson from Rousseau is not primarily conceptual: it is his articulation of the visceral feeling that he had in response to nature and his repulsion to the aspects of civilization that made him feel ill-at-ease. Such observations do not generally arise in the circles of modern academics or intellectuals. When I think about my life, the most absurd and unsatisfactory aspects of it were usually related to my status as an employee. My caveat regarding Rousseau is that going back in time is not a real solution to human happiness. If other species are "happier" because they are not conscious in the same sense that we are, then so be it. I don't think that most people would like to revert to a lower state of consciousness even if they could. Nevertheless, I agree with Rousseau in his rejection of an economic system that subtly enslaves some people to others. Of course, the solution to such a problem was well beyond the scope of what Rousseau could hope to offer the modern world, but I have always felt that the state of being an employee is an unpleasant subjugation that I would have avoided if it had been tenable. Rousseau lacked the sophistication to provide a comprehensive outline of the shortcomings of modern capitalism, but he had the right reaction. Unfortunately, such questions also seem to be beyond the scope of contemporary writers such as Thomas Piketty – thus it is difficult not to admire Rousseau as a powerful writer.
I have received, Monsieur, your new book against the human race, and I thank you. No one has employed so much intelligence to turn us men into beasts. One starts wanting to walk on all fours after reading your book. However, in more than sixty years I have lost the habit.
Besides Voltaire, the younger encyclopédistes of Rousseau's set were generally rationalists and not amenable to the religious undertones of the essay. Despite this, it was widely read and contributed further to Rousseau's fame.
In the summer of 1754, Rousseau traveled to Geneva with Thérèse and visited family members and old acquaintances. In order to do so, he had to renounce Catholicism and become a Calvinist again. Because of his celebrity, the Genevans made this easy for him, despite his living arrangements with Thérèse. The moral laxity of Paris was not accepted in Geneva, but Rousseau was able to meet the requirements simply by stating that Thérèse was his nurse. They enjoyed the summer and early fall there, spending much of their time walking outdoors before returning to Paris in October.
This brings to a close the first of three volumes. Although there is more detail here than necessary, I am enjoying the richness of the description. Though I don't take Rousseau completely seriously as a thinker, the information is useful for understanding the history of ideas. What I like about Rousseau is that he wrote from the heart, and that his ideas lack the opacity that pervades most academic writing. It is interesting to me that basic questions such as the rights of individuals and the meaning of equality have scarcely advanced since the eighteenth century. Academic writing usually consists of a regurgitation of what someone else said, and along the way the meaning of the original thought becomes lost. It is shocking how few original thinkers there have been throughout history, and when you find one like Rousseau, it is difficult, despite his limitations, not to marvel at his rarity. The valuable lesson from Rousseau is not primarily conceptual: it is his articulation of the visceral feeling that he had in response to nature and his repulsion to the aspects of civilization that made him feel ill-at-ease. Such observations do not generally arise in the circles of modern academics or intellectuals. When I think about my life, the most absurd and unsatisfactory aspects of it were usually related to my status as an employee. My caveat regarding Rousseau is that going back in time is not a real solution to human happiness. If other species are "happier" because they are not conscious in the same sense that we are, then so be it. I don't think that most people would like to revert to a lower state of consciousness even if they could. Nevertheless, I agree with Rousseau in his rejection of an economic system that subtly enslaves some people to others. Of course, the solution to such a problem was well beyond the scope of what Rousseau could hope to offer the modern world, but I have always felt that the state of being an employee is an unpleasant subjugation that I would have avoided if it had been tenable. Rousseau lacked the sophistication to provide a comprehensive outline of the shortcomings of modern capitalism, but he had the right reaction. Unfortunately, such questions also seem to be beyond the scope of contemporary writers such as Thomas Piketty – thus it is difficult not to admire Rousseau as a powerful writer.
Tuesday, January 8, 2019
Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 VI
During the late 1740's and early 1750's in Paris, the new breed of young intellectuals who had contributed to Diderot's Encyclopédie became respected participants in the salon set, and intelligence and wit became part of the package, perhaps for the first time. Rousseau did well at this, though he was shy and, since he never had much money, didn't like to dress up. His next big break came with the composition of the opera Le Devin du Village in 1752. At this stage, Rousseau was advocating the Italian style of opera over the French, and it caught on. The opera was first performed for the King at Fontainebleau and was a great success. This plunged Rousseau into the musical world, and before long he was getting into fights with Rameau, the elder statesman of French music who had criticized Les Muses galantes. Soon after, Rousseau staged a play that he had written much earlier at Chambéry, but it was more or less a flop.
In his late 30's and early 40's, Rousseau's final adult personality emerged, and it wasn't all pretty. In my opinion, he willfully remained poor long past the time that he had to be, and he refined his poverty as an odd sort of act. Because wealthy people were more than willing to help him once he became famous in Paris, he received a high-paying job as a cashier in an office of the Receiver-General of Finances. However, having a regular job made him ill, and he soon quit. The King so liked Le Devin du Village that he was prepared to offer Rousseau a pension. Somehow, Rousseau rationalized not accepting a pension on the grounds that it would compromise his integrity. This occurred while he was living in near-squalor, supporting Thérèse's parasitic and intrusive family and earning a pittance by copying music. This kind of obstinate impracticality eventually irritated his closest friend, Diderot, who seems to have been far more sensible.
What irks me at the moment is that while Rousseau could easily have increased his income substantially without much effort, he was sending what little money he had to Mme. de Warens, apologizing as he did that he wished that he had more to send. Apparently her financial situation had become dire when she lost her pension from Turin. Moreover, Rousseau abandoned all of his five children and never saw them again. It is hard to recognize this as some sort of principled behavior: he was simply a disingenuous friend and an irresponsible parent. He seems to have thought that by remaining poor he could never be accused of malfeasance. Unfortunately, for all his braying about equality, he didn't seem to think that he had to make any sacrifices for women, children or friends as long as he could stay poor or sick. In addition, he does not seem to have thought about or addressed the problems associated with Thérèse's family. As far as I am able to determine, Rousseau's ideas regarding personal austerity did not stem from the refinement of a belief system, but rather derived from the dogma that he had passively absorbed while growing up in Calvinist Geneva.
I am still reading this with great interest, but not because I want to emulate Rousseau. I merely think that he was a talented writer who lived an interesting, well-documented life during interesting times. Though he may have possessed excellent language skills and a reasonably good knowledge of music, a lot of his thinking seems half-baked, leading me to conclude that he was not as great a philosopher as some have made him out to be. This wouldn't be of much significance in itself were it not for the fact that he influenced later political thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson. Reading about Rousseau, it is no surprise that Jefferson, who lived in style, complete with French wines imported to Virginia at great expense, was in debt throughout his life and didn't treat slaves, women or non-landowning males as equal citizens. Furthermore, Jefferson had five illegitimate children with his slave, Sally Hemings: how enlightened was that? Some of the elements of Rousseau's legacy, it must be noted, are about as unequal as you can get.
I will make one more post on this book, take a short pause, and then start the next volume.
In his late 30's and early 40's, Rousseau's final adult personality emerged, and it wasn't all pretty. In my opinion, he willfully remained poor long past the time that he had to be, and he refined his poverty as an odd sort of act. Because wealthy people were more than willing to help him once he became famous in Paris, he received a high-paying job as a cashier in an office of the Receiver-General of Finances. However, having a regular job made him ill, and he soon quit. The King so liked Le Devin du Village that he was prepared to offer Rousseau a pension. Somehow, Rousseau rationalized not accepting a pension on the grounds that it would compromise his integrity. This occurred while he was living in near-squalor, supporting Thérèse's parasitic and intrusive family and earning a pittance by copying music. This kind of obstinate impracticality eventually irritated his closest friend, Diderot, who seems to have been far more sensible.
What irks me at the moment is that while Rousseau could easily have increased his income substantially without much effort, he was sending what little money he had to Mme. de Warens, apologizing as he did that he wished that he had more to send. Apparently her financial situation had become dire when she lost her pension from Turin. Moreover, Rousseau abandoned all of his five children and never saw them again. It is hard to recognize this as some sort of principled behavior: he was simply a disingenuous friend and an irresponsible parent. He seems to have thought that by remaining poor he could never be accused of malfeasance. Unfortunately, for all his braying about equality, he didn't seem to think that he had to make any sacrifices for women, children or friends as long as he could stay poor or sick. In addition, he does not seem to have thought about or addressed the problems associated with Thérèse's family. As far as I am able to determine, Rousseau's ideas regarding personal austerity did not stem from the refinement of a belief system, but rather derived from the dogma that he had passively absorbed while growing up in Calvinist Geneva.
I am still reading this with great interest, but not because I want to emulate Rousseau. I merely think that he was a talented writer who lived an interesting, well-documented life during interesting times. Though he may have possessed excellent language skills and a reasonably good knowledge of music, a lot of his thinking seems half-baked, leading me to conclude that he was not as great a philosopher as some have made him out to be. This wouldn't be of much significance in itself were it not for the fact that he influenced later political thinkers such as Thomas Jefferson. Reading about Rousseau, it is no surprise that Jefferson, who lived in style, complete with French wines imported to Virginia at great expense, was in debt throughout his life and didn't treat slaves, women or non-landowning males as equal citizens. Furthermore, Jefferson had five illegitimate children with his slave, Sally Hemings: how enlightened was that? Some of the elements of Rousseau's legacy, it must be noted, are about as unequal as you can get.
I will make one more post on this book, take a short pause, and then start the next volume.
Friday, January 4, 2019
Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 V
Initially, life in Paris was good when Rousseau returned from Venice. A new friend whom he had met in Venice, the Spanish nobleman Ignatio Altuna, allowed him to stay with him in his Paris apartment and paid his expenses. However, Altuna returned to Spain in the spring of 1745, and Rousseau was then left to his own devices. He moved into a low-budget hotel, where he met Thérèse Levasseur, the illiterate laundress who was to become his lifelong mistress. There he composed his operatic ballet, Les Muses galantes. Though he managed to arrange for a rehearsal, the ballet never went into production. In 1746, he attended the salon of Mme. Dupin, and after they became acquainted he took a position as secretary within her household. The Dupins were wealthy dilettantes who were trying to make names for themselves in their writings, but, despite Rousseau's talent, they did not produce any memorable works. He received another small inheritance in 1747 when his father died, but his financial state remained weak, because he received little pay from the Dupins. By 1749, Rousseau was making contributions to Diderot's Encyclopédie, along with Diderot and d'Alembert. Rousseau provided entries on music while d'Alembert focused on math and science. This work, however, produced no immediate income.
In 1749 there was a crackdown on heretical writings in France by Catholic authorities, and Diderot was arrested and jailed in Vincennes. He was allowed visitors, and Rousseau visited him by walking about six miles each way from Paris. To occupy himself while walking, Rousseau read, and one day he noticed an article announcing a prize sponsored by the Academy of Dijon. The prize would be awarded for the best essay on the subject "Has the progress of the arts and sciences done more to corrupt or to purify morals?" Rousseau was immediately inspired and wrote the winning essay, which was to be a major turning point in his life. He took the more controversial anti-arts-and-sciences position, in which he seemed reactionary, but his essay won, and soon he was famous. While there were inconsistencies and flawed logic in his essay, it was widely debated in France, and Rousseau became a celebrity for the first time. He wrote that the arts and sciences "cast garlands of flowers over the chains that men bear, crushing in them that sense of original liberty for which they were born, making them like their slavery, and turning them into what is called a civilized people." The main thesis of most of Rousseau's subsequent work was that man is good but is corrupted by culture.
After living with the Dupins, Rousseau moved in with Thérèse Levasseur's family and provided most of their financial support. During the course of his relationship with Thérèse, she produced a total of five babies, all of which were sent to the orphanage. Rousseau is thought to have been their father, though there have been skeptics. Rousseau apparently had a birth defect which made it difficult for him to urinate, and he was subject to various infections and illnesses. While he later expressed regret about abandoning the children, the practice was normal then, when modern birth control didn't exist, under those conditions in which parents couldn't afford to raise them.
As I proceed through these books, I hope to comment more on Rousseau's ideas. At this stage in his life, he felt oppressed and abused by the wealthy, who, for the purposes of his essay, were the primary advocates of the arts and sciences. Clearly, in Paris at the time, there was a lot of unpleasant, competitive behavior among them, and their servants, Rousseau, for instance, often bore the brunt of it by being overworked and underpaid. I don't think that Rousseau's idea that life was better before civilization came along holds up well if you use conventional measures of the quality of life, but if you view his main point rather as an indictment of social inequality and its ill effects, his thoughts are still relevant today. Thus, I think that his ideas regarding inequality have held up, while his harkening back to an idealized past is mistaken. Although I frequently criticize the current state of the arts, I would never suggest, as he did, that they should not exist. Similarly, I think it would be idiotic to renounce all of science. However, in the history of ideas, Rousseau is worth considering, with the proviso that he wrote at a time when social science was in its infancy, and that he could not have known how our distant ancestors actually lived.
In 1749 there was a crackdown on heretical writings in France by Catholic authorities, and Diderot was arrested and jailed in Vincennes. He was allowed visitors, and Rousseau visited him by walking about six miles each way from Paris. To occupy himself while walking, Rousseau read, and one day he noticed an article announcing a prize sponsored by the Academy of Dijon. The prize would be awarded for the best essay on the subject "Has the progress of the arts and sciences done more to corrupt or to purify morals?" Rousseau was immediately inspired and wrote the winning essay, which was to be a major turning point in his life. He took the more controversial anti-arts-and-sciences position, in which he seemed reactionary, but his essay won, and soon he was famous. While there were inconsistencies and flawed logic in his essay, it was widely debated in France, and Rousseau became a celebrity for the first time. He wrote that the arts and sciences "cast garlands of flowers over the chains that men bear, crushing in them that sense of original liberty for which they were born, making them like their slavery, and turning them into what is called a civilized people." The main thesis of most of Rousseau's subsequent work was that man is good but is corrupted by culture.
After living with the Dupins, Rousseau moved in with Thérèse Levasseur's family and provided most of their financial support. During the course of his relationship with Thérèse, she produced a total of five babies, all of which were sent to the orphanage. Rousseau is thought to have been their father, though there have been skeptics. Rousseau apparently had a birth defect which made it difficult for him to urinate, and he was subject to various infections and illnesses. While he later expressed regret about abandoning the children, the practice was normal then, when modern birth control didn't exist, under those conditions in which parents couldn't afford to raise them.
As I proceed through these books, I hope to comment more on Rousseau's ideas. At this stage in his life, he felt oppressed and abused by the wealthy, who, for the purposes of his essay, were the primary advocates of the arts and sciences. Clearly, in Paris at the time, there was a lot of unpleasant, competitive behavior among them, and their servants, Rousseau, for instance, often bore the brunt of it by being overworked and underpaid. I don't think that Rousseau's idea that life was better before civilization came along holds up well if you use conventional measures of the quality of life, but if you view his main point rather as an indictment of social inequality and its ill effects, his thoughts are still relevant today. Thus, I think that his ideas regarding inequality have held up, while his harkening back to an idealized past is mistaken. Although I frequently criticize the current state of the arts, I would never suggest, as he did, that they should not exist. Similarly, I think it would be idiotic to renounce all of science. However, in the history of ideas, Rousseau is worth considering, with the proviso that he wrote at a time when social science was in its infancy, and that he could not have known how our distant ancestors actually lived.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 IV
Rousseau arrived in Paris relatively well-prepared at the age of thirty, especially if you compare him to another writer, Stendhal, who arrived as an uninformed teenager a few decades later. He had the appropriate letters of introduction and already knew which salons he should attend. Though he still had some of the characteristics of a country bumpkin, Parisians cut him slack, since that was how they thought of the Swiss. His timing may also have been lucky, since he immediately met Denis Diderot, who was a year younger and had himself just arrived from the boondocks. They immediately became friends. Although he sometimes misread the salon hostesses, Rousseau did well in salons, because he was both eloquent and interesting in conversation. One must also note that, off the bat, he was incredibly ambitious and wanted to associate with the best people possible and make a good impression on them. His first major attempt to impress people was the presentation before an assemblage of luminaries a new system of musical notation that he had invented himself. They listened closely and set up a special committee to consider it further. Unfortunately, the committee didn't think that it merited implementation, and Rousseau was crushed. Rather than accept this verdict humbly, Rousseau wrote a book on the notation and published it at some expense to himself. The book didn't change matters, but many Parisians who had an interest in music read it, and at least it improved his name recognition and gave him some standing.
He seems to have had a knack for impressing upper-class women, and, since his financial status remained dire, he managed to enlist Mme. de Broglie, a marquise, to help him. In no time at all she had found him a position as secretary to the Compte de Montaigu, the newly appointed French Ambassador to the Venetian Republic. Rousseau arrived in Venice in September, 1743. Venice, with its gaiety, appealed to Rousseau, and he made friends. His job involved writing letters daily to Versailles and other diplomatic offices. The War of Austrian Succession affected France and Venice during his tenure. However, Rousseau seems to have been more competent than his boss, Montaigu, and he tended to exceed his authority. Montaigu didn't compensate him fairly according to the terms of his employment, and Rousseau's financial status remained fragile. In the summer of 1744, Rousseau and Montaigu were on very bad terms and had an argument in which Montaigu lost his temper. According to Montaigu, he "dismissed the man like a bad valet for the insolence he allowed himself." By the end of August, Rousseau was unemployed and on his way back to Paris. The episode with Montaigu and its aftermath had a lasting impact on Rousseau's thought. While most of the people he spoke to agreed with him that he had conducted himself properly, they accepted as a matter of course that Montaigu had to be shown deference in light of his aristocratic credentials and position. Rousseau wrote that this "sowed the seed of indignation in my soul against our stupid civil institutions, in which the real public interest and genuine justice are always sacrificed for the sake of any kind of apparent order which is actually detrimental to real order, and only adds the sanction of public authority to the oppression of the weak and the iniquity of the strong."
There is another event from the Venice period that is worth mentioning, as it is one of the few that I still recall from reading Confessions a few years ago. Rousseau had an awkward rendezvous at the house of a beautiful woman named Giulietta whom he had met at a party the day before. He noticed that one of her nipples was deformed:
I carried my stupidity to the point of speaking to her about her nipple. At first she treated my remark as a joke, and in her lighthearted way she did things that should have made me die for love. But as I continued to betray a residue of unease which I could not hide, in the end she blushed, adjusted her clothes, and moved without saying a single word towards the window. I wanted to sit there beside her, but she turned and sat on the sofa, then quickly rose and walked around the room fanning herself. Finally, she said to me in a cold, scornful voice: "Jacko, give up women and study mathematics."
When Rousseau went to see Giulietta a day or two later, she had departed for Florence.
He seems to have had a knack for impressing upper-class women, and, since his financial status remained dire, he managed to enlist Mme. de Broglie, a marquise, to help him. In no time at all she had found him a position as secretary to the Compte de Montaigu, the newly appointed French Ambassador to the Venetian Republic. Rousseau arrived in Venice in September, 1743. Venice, with its gaiety, appealed to Rousseau, and he made friends. His job involved writing letters daily to Versailles and other diplomatic offices. The War of Austrian Succession affected France and Venice during his tenure. However, Rousseau seems to have been more competent than his boss, Montaigu, and he tended to exceed his authority. Montaigu didn't compensate him fairly according to the terms of his employment, and Rousseau's financial status remained fragile. In the summer of 1744, Rousseau and Montaigu were on very bad terms and had an argument in which Montaigu lost his temper. According to Montaigu, he "dismissed the man like a bad valet for the insolence he allowed himself." By the end of August, Rousseau was unemployed and on his way back to Paris. The episode with Montaigu and its aftermath had a lasting impact on Rousseau's thought. While most of the people he spoke to agreed with him that he had conducted himself properly, they accepted as a matter of course that Montaigu had to be shown deference in light of his aristocratic credentials and position. Rousseau wrote that this "sowed the seed of indignation in my soul against our stupid civil institutions, in which the real public interest and genuine justice are always sacrificed for the sake of any kind of apparent order which is actually detrimental to real order, and only adds the sanction of public authority to the oppression of the weak and the iniquity of the strong."
There is another event from the Venice period that is worth mentioning, as it is one of the few that I still recall from reading Confessions a few years ago. Rousseau had an awkward rendezvous at the house of a beautiful woman named Giulietta whom he had met at a party the day before. He noticed that one of her nipples was deformed:
I carried my stupidity to the point of speaking to her about her nipple. At first she treated my remark as a joke, and in her lighthearted way she did things that should have made me die for love. But as I continued to betray a residue of unease which I could not hide, in the end she blushed, adjusted her clothes, and moved without saying a single word towards the window. I wanted to sit there beside her, but she turned and sat on the sofa, then quickly rose and walked around the room fanning herself. Finally, she said to me in a cold, scornful voice: "Jacko, give up women and study mathematics."
When Rousseau went to see Giulietta a day or two later, she had departed for Florence.
Tuesday, December 25, 2018
Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 III
Mme. de Warens was living in an apartment in Chambéry with Claude Anet when Rousseau arrived. Anet was a few years older than Rousseau and had accompanied her since she had departed Switzerland. He was a herbalist who prepared potions for her, and he also watched over her financial affairs, as she was susceptible to unprofitable money-making schemes presented to her by charlatans. Rousseau got a clerical job at the Survey Office, which he enjoyed initially, but he soon found it repetitious, and he didn't like his coworkers, who were crude by his standards. Although Mme. de Warens was sexually involved with Anet, she had a good reputation in Chambéry, and mothers brought over their daughters for musical events. After a few months, in 1732, just before the age of twenty, Rousseau left his job and began to provide music lessons for the girls.
At about the age of twenty-one, Rousseau was approached by Mme. de Warens, who delivered a rather serious speech about sex. For reasons that are not entirely clear, she had decided that they should begin to have a sexual relationship. In all likelihood, she had noticed his attraction to some of his students, and she probably had well-formed opinions regarding the sexual needs of men and how they ought to be addressed. Thus, they entered a long sexual relationship that was awkward and problematic. It was awkward in the sense that Rousseau thought of her as his mother, calling her maman, and he probably had no lustful feelings toward her; similarly, she may have had no lustful feelings toward him. Furthermore, as Cranston speculates, Mme. de Warens's sexual relationship with Anet created a sexual triangle, which may have caused Anet to become ill or suicidal. There was probably a lot of sexual tension in the household, though Rousseau doesn't refer to this in his autobiographical writings. In 1734, according to Rousseau, Anet became ill and died. Thereafter, Rousseau took on some of Anet's responsibilities, though he had no success in keeping Mme. de Warens's life organized. Her financial situation, which had always been precarious, became more so.
In 1735 or 1736, they decided to lease a house outside of town in the rural area of Les Charmettes in order to escape their gloomy apartment in town during the warm months. This episode in Rousseau's life became a watershed for his intellectual development. Mme. de Warens attempted to earn money through agriculture, which included fruit trees, beehives and some livestock, while Rousseau read widely and increased his appreciation of rural life. They would return to the apartment in town for the winters.
After Rousseau turned twenty-five in 1737, he received a small inheritance from his mother's estate in Geneva. He used much of the money to buy books and build up his library. However, since he had been experiencing ill health for some time, he also decided to make a trip to Montpellier in search of medical advice. Though he disliked Montpellier and did not find any useful advice, he met an older, upper-class woman while on the road there; she took an interest in him, and they had a short tryst. While staying in Montpellier, he wrote letters to Mme. de Warens, though her replies were erratic. Upon his return to Les Charmettes, he found that Mme. de Warens had replaced him with a Swiss hairdresser named Jean-Samuel-Rodolphe Wintzenried, who was six years older than he was. Wintzenried was more physically robust than Rousseau and better-suited to farm-related tasks. Though Rousseau once again became part of the household, this was the beginning of the end for his relationship with Mme. de Warens. When she and Wintzenried moved back to town for the winter he remained in Les Charmettes and became somewhat of a hermit. He continued his studies and took an interest in astronomy. He acquired a telescope, and, seeing him outside at night, some of his neighbors thought that he was practicing witchcraft. Mme. de Warens and Wintzenried returned to Les Charmettes in the summer of 1739. Rousseau could not tolerate the living arrangements, and it was agreed that he would eventually leave. That did not occur until the spring of 1740. Mme. de Warens found him a position as a tutor in Lyon, and he subsequently spent a year there.
The time spent in Lyon was productive for Rousseau, though he decided that he was not cut out to be a tutor. His employer and Lyon in general were far more advanced intellectually than anything that he was used to, and in some ways Lyon was more like Paris at the time, a center of the early Enlightenment in France. Thus, when he decided to quit his job in Lyon, he chose Paris as his next destination. First he returned to Les Charmettes in late 1741, where Mme. de Warens was wintering at the time. She nursed him back to health from an illness, he sold all his possessions to raise funds, and in the summer of 1742 he headed for Paris. It is possible that he might have remained at Les Charmettes, but, besides the friction caused by the presence of Wintzenried, Rousseau, at the age of thirty, felt more strongly that he should make a career for himself. Moreover, Mme. de Warens's financial state was increasingly dire, and he did not want to become an additional burden on her.
Although the amount of detail in this biography sometimes becomes a little tedious, I am still finding the book extremely rewarding. The odd thing about Rousseau is that, despite having lived centuries ago, his life is so well-documented that you can know more about him than you are likely to know about any of your contemporaries. What appeals to me the most is the way that he developed at his own pace and formed his ideas organically rather than being force-fed information in an academic setting and then, at the age of twenty-two, following a boring career for several decades. On the negative side, science had advanced so little by his lifetime that religion still managed to have an undue influence over his thoughts. Still, the rebel in me finds much to like in Rousseau in our age of specialization and conformity. He lived the way many would now if given a choice.
At about the age of twenty-one, Rousseau was approached by Mme. de Warens, who delivered a rather serious speech about sex. For reasons that are not entirely clear, she had decided that they should begin to have a sexual relationship. In all likelihood, she had noticed his attraction to some of his students, and she probably had well-formed opinions regarding the sexual needs of men and how they ought to be addressed. Thus, they entered a long sexual relationship that was awkward and problematic. It was awkward in the sense that Rousseau thought of her as his mother, calling her maman, and he probably had no lustful feelings toward her; similarly, she may have had no lustful feelings toward him. Furthermore, as Cranston speculates, Mme. de Warens's sexual relationship with Anet created a sexual triangle, which may have caused Anet to become ill or suicidal. There was probably a lot of sexual tension in the household, though Rousseau doesn't refer to this in his autobiographical writings. In 1734, according to Rousseau, Anet became ill and died. Thereafter, Rousseau took on some of Anet's responsibilities, though he had no success in keeping Mme. de Warens's life organized. Her financial situation, which had always been precarious, became more so.
In 1735 or 1736, they decided to lease a house outside of town in the rural area of Les Charmettes in order to escape their gloomy apartment in town during the warm months. This episode in Rousseau's life became a watershed for his intellectual development. Mme. de Warens attempted to earn money through agriculture, which included fruit trees, beehives and some livestock, while Rousseau read widely and increased his appreciation of rural life. They would return to the apartment in town for the winters.
After Rousseau turned twenty-five in 1737, he received a small inheritance from his mother's estate in Geneva. He used much of the money to buy books and build up his library. However, since he had been experiencing ill health for some time, he also decided to make a trip to Montpellier in search of medical advice. Though he disliked Montpellier and did not find any useful advice, he met an older, upper-class woman while on the road there; she took an interest in him, and they had a short tryst. While staying in Montpellier, he wrote letters to Mme. de Warens, though her replies were erratic. Upon his return to Les Charmettes, he found that Mme. de Warens had replaced him with a Swiss hairdresser named Jean-Samuel-Rodolphe Wintzenried, who was six years older than he was. Wintzenried was more physically robust than Rousseau and better-suited to farm-related tasks. Though Rousseau once again became part of the household, this was the beginning of the end for his relationship with Mme. de Warens. When she and Wintzenried moved back to town for the winter he remained in Les Charmettes and became somewhat of a hermit. He continued his studies and took an interest in astronomy. He acquired a telescope, and, seeing him outside at night, some of his neighbors thought that he was practicing witchcraft. Mme. de Warens and Wintzenried returned to Les Charmettes in the summer of 1739. Rousseau could not tolerate the living arrangements, and it was agreed that he would eventually leave. That did not occur until the spring of 1740. Mme. de Warens found him a position as a tutor in Lyon, and he subsequently spent a year there.
The time spent in Lyon was productive for Rousseau, though he decided that he was not cut out to be a tutor. His employer and Lyon in general were far more advanced intellectually than anything that he was used to, and in some ways Lyon was more like Paris at the time, a center of the early Enlightenment in France. Thus, when he decided to quit his job in Lyon, he chose Paris as his next destination. First he returned to Les Charmettes in late 1741, where Mme. de Warens was wintering at the time. She nursed him back to health from an illness, he sold all his possessions to raise funds, and in the summer of 1742 he headed for Paris. It is possible that he might have remained at Les Charmettes, but, besides the friction caused by the presence of Wintzenried, Rousseau, at the age of thirty, felt more strongly that he should make a career for himself. Moreover, Mme. de Warens's financial state was increasingly dire, and he did not want to become an additional burden on her.
Although the amount of detail in this biography sometimes becomes a little tedious, I am still finding the book extremely rewarding. The odd thing about Rousseau is that, despite having lived centuries ago, his life is so well-documented that you can know more about him than you are likely to know about any of your contemporaries. What appeals to me the most is the way that he developed at his own pace and formed his ideas organically rather than being force-fed information in an academic setting and then, at the age of twenty-two, following a boring career for several decades. On the negative side, science had advanced so little by his lifetime that religion still managed to have an undue influence over his thoughts. Still, the rebel in me finds much to like in Rousseau in our age of specialization and conformity. He lived the way many would now if given a choice.
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1712-1754 II
I am slowly plugging away at the book and will probably pick up my reading over the next few days. I hope that I won't bore my readers too much with Rousseau, because I'm going to be on him for a long time. With the wealth of information available to Cranston, along with his skill as an essayist, I am finding the work more engrossing than fiction. The reader gets a strong sense of what it would have been like to live Rousseau's life, including the altogether unfamiliar environment of eighteenth-century Europe. Some novelists, such as George Eliot, are able to pull off something similar in the form of a novel, but I find that the amount of knowledge necessary to do that effectively exceeds the mental capacity of most authors.
Rousseau's early years were full of naïveté and trial-and-error attempts to find his way in the world. There is a richness to the text, in that Rousseau himself was relatively honest in his autobiographical accounts and in that Cranston is there to correct him when he has misremembered an event or distorted or omitted one to create a certain image of himself. The trip to Turin seems to have been a complete fiasco. Rousseau converted to Catholicism with no religious conviction whatsoever and then took the only job for which he was qualified: domestic servant. He wasn't even good at that and eventually was fired. All was not lost, though, because he learned a little Italian and Latin and was exposed to wealthy, educated families. Turin was also a major cultural center compared to Geneva, and Rousseau heard good music for the first time in his life. While in Turin he corresponded with Mme. de Warens, and he ended up back in Annecy after about two years and lived in her house for a time.
Mme. de Warens herself could be the subject of a biography. She was an impetuous organizer who liked to help people but often lacked follow-through, and disastrous consequences sometimes ensued. She disliked her hometown, Vevey, a Germanic Protestant town northeast of Geneva, and had escaped to Savoy, abandoning her husband, to live in a French-speaking environment. The manner of her departure inadvertently ruined her husband financially, and he ended up moving to England penniless. Furthermore, even by our standards, she was sexually promiscuous. However, if she had not taken Rousseau under her wing, it would by no means have been certain that he would have gone on to his illustrious career. Cranston describes her as follows:
Mme. de Warens was a paradoxical person, and Rousseau did not always understand her. On the one hand, she adored practical organization; on the other, her mind was always dwelling on mystical ideas; she was both pure and sexually experienced; she was at once cunning and naïve, selfish and generous; and while she entertained liberally, she bought very few clothes for herself and ate almost nothing.
When Rousseau returned to Annecy, she talked him into studying theology at a local seminary, but he had no academic skills and was soon expelled. He liked singing, so she then convinced him to learn music with a choirmaster. When the choirmaster decided to quit his job and move to Lyon, Mme. de Warens suggested that Rousseau accompany him, perhaps to get him out of her hair for a while because of some intrigue she had to attend to in Paris. Rousseau went to Lyon but abandoned the choirmaster and returned to Annecy only to find that Mme. de Warens had mysteriously disappeared. Soon after, Rousseau was recruited to escort one of Mme. de Warens's maids to Switzerland, which he did, followed by various misadventures there, among which he passed himself off as a music teacher. He also served as a translator for a man who presented himself as a Greek monk raising money for a charity but was actually a con artist. In attempting to locate Mme. de Warens, he worked briefly as a music copier in Lyon, though he wasn't competent at that either. Finally, when he was about nineteen, he reconnected with Mme. de Warens, who had moved to Chambéry, still in Savoy, because of a political upheaval. She was dependent on the King of Sardinia for the pension that she lived on, and Chambéry was an administrative headquarters for Savoy. Soon Rousseau had moved in with her again.
I've got a long way to go, as Rousseau lived to the age of sixty-six.
Rousseau's early years were full of naïveté and trial-and-error attempts to find his way in the world. There is a richness to the text, in that Rousseau himself was relatively honest in his autobiographical accounts and in that Cranston is there to correct him when he has misremembered an event or distorted or omitted one to create a certain image of himself. The trip to Turin seems to have been a complete fiasco. Rousseau converted to Catholicism with no religious conviction whatsoever and then took the only job for which he was qualified: domestic servant. He wasn't even good at that and eventually was fired. All was not lost, though, because he learned a little Italian and Latin and was exposed to wealthy, educated families. Turin was also a major cultural center compared to Geneva, and Rousseau heard good music for the first time in his life. While in Turin he corresponded with Mme. de Warens, and he ended up back in Annecy after about two years and lived in her house for a time.
Mme. de Warens herself could be the subject of a biography. She was an impetuous organizer who liked to help people but often lacked follow-through, and disastrous consequences sometimes ensued. She disliked her hometown, Vevey, a Germanic Protestant town northeast of Geneva, and had escaped to Savoy, abandoning her husband, to live in a French-speaking environment. The manner of her departure inadvertently ruined her husband financially, and he ended up moving to England penniless. Furthermore, even by our standards, she was sexually promiscuous. However, if she had not taken Rousseau under her wing, it would by no means have been certain that he would have gone on to his illustrious career. Cranston describes her as follows:
Mme. de Warens was a paradoxical person, and Rousseau did not always understand her. On the one hand, she adored practical organization; on the other, her mind was always dwelling on mystical ideas; she was both pure and sexually experienced; she was at once cunning and naïve, selfish and generous; and while she entertained liberally, she bought very few clothes for herself and ate almost nothing.
When Rousseau returned to Annecy, she talked him into studying theology at a local seminary, but he had no academic skills and was soon expelled. He liked singing, so she then convinced him to learn music with a choirmaster. When the choirmaster decided to quit his job and move to Lyon, Mme. de Warens suggested that Rousseau accompany him, perhaps to get him out of her hair for a while because of some intrigue she had to attend to in Paris. Rousseau went to Lyon but abandoned the choirmaster and returned to Annecy only to find that Mme. de Warens had mysteriously disappeared. Soon after, Rousseau was recruited to escort one of Mme. de Warens's maids to Switzerland, which he did, followed by various misadventures there, among which he passed himself off as a music teacher. He also served as a translator for a man who presented himself as a Greek monk raising money for a charity but was actually a con artist. In attempting to locate Mme. de Warens, he worked briefly as a music copier in Lyon, though he wasn't competent at that either. Finally, when he was about nineteen, he reconnected with Mme. de Warens, who had moved to Chambéry, still in Savoy, because of a political upheaval. She was dependent on the King of Sardinia for the pension that she lived on, and Chambéry was an administrative headquarters for Savoy. Soon Rousseau had moved in with her again.
I've got a long way to go, as Rousseau lived to the age of sixty-six.
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