Jean-Jacques Rousseau MODERNITY AND POLITICAL THOUGHT Series Editor: Morton Schoolman The Politics oft he Ordinary State University of New York at Albany This unique collection of original studies of the great figures in the history of political and social thought critically examines their New Edition contributions to our understanding of modernity, its constitution, and the promise and problems latent within it. These works are written by some of the finest theorists of our time for scholars and students of the social sciences and humanities. The following titles are available as New Editions from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics of Morality TRACY B. STRONG by William E. Connolly Emerson and Self-Reliance by George Kateb Modernity and Political Thought Series Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics by Stephen K. White Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary by Tracy B. Strong Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom by Thomas L. Dumm Reading "Adam Smith": Desire, History, and Value by Michael J. Shapiro Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics by Richard E. Flathman Thoreau's Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild by Jane Bennett ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Lanham• Boulder• New York• Oxford ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD PUBLISHERS, INC. Published in the United States of America by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. A Member of the Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group 4720 Boston Way, Lanham, Maryland 20706 In memoriam www.rowmanlittlefield.com Judith Nisse Shklar 12 Hid's Copse Road Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 911, England "It is modest of the nightingale not to require any one to listen to it; Originally published in 1994 by Sage Publications, Inc. but it is also proud of the nightingale Reprinted in 2000 by AltaMira Press New Preface and Introduction Copyright © 2002 by not to care whether any one listens to it or not." Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a S. Kierkegaard retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior On the Difference Between a Genius and an Apostle permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available The Library of Congress has cataloged the previous edition as follows: Strong, Tracy B. Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the politics of the ordinary I Tracy B. Strong. p. cm.-{Modemity and political thought: 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. l. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778--Contributions in political science. 2. Political science-France-History-18th century. I. Title. II. Series: Modernity and political thought: vol. 6. JC179.R9S77 1994 320'.092--dc20 94-4599 ISBN 0-7425-2142-7 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 0-7425-2143-5 (paper : alk. paper) Printed in the United States of America eTM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO 239.48-1992. Contents Series Editor's Introduction 1x Morton Schoolman Preface to the New Edition xix Preface xxvii 1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the fear of the Author 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Life 4 The Author as Personality 8 Why Confess? 12 Confession ad Constancy 16 Clearing the Ground: The First Discourse and the Question of Philosophy 19 The Language for the Human 25 2. Rousseau and the Experience of Others 30 Citizen of Geneva 31 The Absence of the Thought of the Common 35 Looking Into Books 37 What Nature Is Not 40 Loving Oneself 48 The Self Encountering the Self and the Other 49 Reading and Seeing 50 Nature and Denaturation 52 Music and the Public Realm 59 Alone, With Oneself 64 3. The General Will and the Scandal of Politics 67 The Thought of the Common 75 The Nature of Political Society: The General Will 79 The Seductor Narcissist 85 Sovereignty 88 Representation and Time 90 Series Editor's Introduction Government 94 The Threat of Corruption 101 4. The Education of an Ordinary Man 104 Education and the Philosopher 110 The Stages of a Life: Feeling 113 The Stages of a Life: Control and Morality 116 The Stages of a Life: Appearance and Convention 119 The Stages of a Life: Knowing Others 120 The Premise of Human Criticism 124 Sex and the Other 130 The Stages of a Life: Sex, Politics, and Virtue 131 5. The Ends of Politics 139 T racy ~- Strong's Je.an-Jacqu~s Rousseau: The Poli~ics of the O,~di The Remedy and the Illness 141 The Alternative of Transparency 145 nary 1s the fourlh volume m lbe Rowman & Littlefield senes Humanity and Transparency 147 Modernity and Political Thought to be published in a second edi The Deduction of Immanence 149 tion, and follows publication of the new editions of William E. Connolly's A Human Home 152 The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics of Morality, Rich Who Has No Home? 155 ard E. Flathman's Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chas Is Sex Human? 159 tened Politics, and Michael Shapiro's Reading "Adam Smith": Desire, What Is the Legislator? 160 Ends to the Human 162 History, and Value.1 Each of the remaining six original volumes belonging to Modernity and Political Thought, studies of G. W. F. Hegel, by Fred Notes (Chapters 1-5) 164 Dallmayr, Edmund Burke, by Stephen White, Henry David Thoreau, by Bibliographical Afterword 191 Jane Bennett, Ralph Waldo Emerson, by George Kateb, Michel Foucault, by Thomas Dumm, and Hannah Arendt, by Seyl a Benhabib, also are sched Name Index 195 uled to appear in a second edition in the fall of 2001.2 In addition, new Index of Major Discussions works for Modernity and Political Thought are underway, and among of Texts From Rousseau 198 others will focus on such diverse thinkers as Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aqui nas, Thomas More, Niccolo Machiavelli, John Locke, Karl Marx, Friedrich About the Author 201 ix x JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Series Editor's Introduction xi Nietzsche, and John Stuart Mill, as well as a selection of contemporary by Nietzsche as running far deeper, so deep, in Strong's words, that it is political thinkers. As those who are familiar with the previous works of "incarnate in humans themselves, or, at least, in humans as they are now." series authors will expect, taken together their studies adopt a variety of Departing from usual philosophical practices, Nietzsche does not offer us approaches and pose importantly different questions. As contributors to new answers to profound problems, but rather a mode of human archeol Modernity and Political Thought, however, their efforts also are com ogy, an analysis of the particular "soil" -that is, of the sorts of beings men monly devoted to effecting critical examinations of major political theorists were-from which these problems have sprung. who have shaped our understanding of modernity-its constitution, prob This analytical tum, Strong presumes, is the point of departure for Nietz lems, promises, and dangers that are latent within it. sche's strictures against the "human-all-too-human," and provides the The rich and fertile qualities of Strong's earlier writings make it a simple foundations for two seminal theoretical conceptions. It is the ground for matter to discover theoretical interests that run through them to anchor the Nietzsche's call for something or someone who is not similarly human, but study of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. His first major work, Friedrich Nietzsche rather "overman." And it is the basis for his projection of a form of life and the Politics of Transfiguration, was one of the first English language that renders obsolete the need for answers to chronic historical problems examinations to recognize the importance of Nietzsche for political the by depriving them of their "necessity." This would be a form of life that ory. 3 Noted especially for the complexity and range of its analysis, Strong's would possess as little as possible of what afflicts men and women at pres text focused on Nietzsche's philosophy of "eternal return" as a procedure ent. Indeed, because Nietzsche's genealogical critiques established the for transfiguration. Perhaps reflecting the spirit of the 1960s, Strong extent to which the past so aggressively informs and thus contributes to the embraced the notion of transfiguration enthusiastically, arguing that eternal decline of the present and future, it would have to be a form of life that return ought to be construed as a form of praxis rather than as a passive would constitute nothing less than a qualitative break with the past. Even attitude toward the world. In the course of developing this argument, Strong an emphatic denial of the past by the human so powerfully tied to it would also illuminated dimensions of Nietzsche's work that now play an equally be insufficient to break its hold over everything that follows or to measure provocative but far more prominent role in Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Among the change entailed by his conception of a new form of life. To alter so these dimensions, of particular interest for the present study is Strong's dramatically a form of life that has held us prisoner, in other words, is to exploration, in Nietzsche's thought, of the relationship between modernity bring about a metamorphosis-a transformation-in those to whom this and what it means to be human. life belongs. Strong explains all of this by saying that Taking Nietzsche's work as a whole, Strong argues that an aim of his enterprise was to show that whatever culturally had bound together men it is a mistake to think that Nietzsche criticizes morality, or politics or any and women in Western society has broken down. Moreover, all that has other traits of Western man, as "simply" illusions, which can be wiped away with bold words. His critique is of us, the men and women for whom that been dominant in the politics, religion, and morality of Western culture is morality is not "childish" nonsense, but actual. Morality is real because of of a piece, and no one part of it will pass away without the rest eventually the sort of people we are. A critique of morality, or of politics, or religion, following. Signaled by the death of God, as this crisis marking the veritable cannot stop with the institution or practice; for Nietzsche, it must continue on end of Western culture and the precipitous slide into nihilism unfolds, men to the beings of whose life it is a necessary part.• and women gradually will discover, as Strong poignantly expresses it, that they "no longer know their way about with themselves, or with others." With this, it is easy to see why Strong underscores how deficient are As Strong describes it, the crisis of Western culture emerges because the philosophies and psychologies that stress the acquisition of self-knowledge presuppositions that constitute its foundations and on which individuals as either an end to which humans ought to aspire or as a means to an end base their thought and action are no longer available. Yet, the source of the when there is posted a demonstrable need for radical change. From Nietz problems and of the discontents characterizing modernity's decline is seen sche's standpoint, the self that can be known might well prove to be flawed xii JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Series Editor's Introduction xiii profoundly. If so, then its beliefs and truths, or that of which the self is, is, other than human being. Essentially and most importantly, then, by quite literally, constructed, might also be flawed. Knowing such a self, destroying the capacity for judgment and justification modernity spoils the therefore, holds no promise for reform and cannot stand in place of a self possibility to craft a common authority in common, and to live a common fully transfigured. But a self who must press far beyond self-knowledge form of life. will be left without borders and horizons to which it is accustomed. It will Aesthetics, Strong argues, could in Nietzsche's view lead the way to a not, Strong contends eloquently, "know [its] way about, and what will recovery of common authority by restoring the capacity for judgment, but count as a question, or an answer, or indeed as truth itself, is not clear." only if we could first imagine an aesthetic that ceased to equate art with its Strong's Nietzsche thus "seeks to show us that a world we have thought representational orientation toward the world. Art must be conceived as an familiar has, in fact, become strange, even though we have yet to acknowl activity that constructs, rather than imitates or represents, the very world to edge this. Then, having shown us that we have and will become strangers which it refers. Tragedy, in particular, can be so conceived, Nietzsche pro to ourselves, he would show us a world where we might, once again, and poses in The Birth of Tragedy, because it "establishes the authority of a for the first time, come to be ourselves."5 human sense before the audience in a manner that this sense can be experi In "Nietzsche's Political Aesthetics," an essay composed several years enced both as something external and found in oneself."7 Through tragedy, after the appearance of Friedrich Nietzsche and the Politics of Transfigura in other words, one is taught to interpret the experience that one has with tion, Strong sets for himself the task of trying to understand, in relation to another as authoritative and thus learns to recognize and to acknowledge Nietzsche's life's work, the political position he appeared to adopt at the judgment and justification. The aesthetics of tragedy accomplishes what end of his life when he may have been overcome by his madness.6 Along Strong refers to as the "Emersonian moment of transfiguration." Emerson the way of this difficult investigation, Strong takes the opportunity to revisit had considered the only legitimate authority to be that which can be found some of the arguments he made in his own first study as well as to look inside the self. Tragedy allows us to take that necessary preliminary step, anew at other facets of Nietzsche's thought. Both of these objectives suc in effect to undergo a transfiguration, which makes it possible to discover ceed in bringing into even sharper relief his earlier concern with modernity authority inside the self and thus to form relations of authority with others. and the nature of the human. By renewing the capacity for judgment and justification in this way, trag The singular problem for modernity, as Nietzsche understood it, Strong edy lays the groundwork for a reconstitution of individual and social iden contends, is that we have lost the human capacity for accepting justifica tity and for a new form of life. The aesthetic mode thus provides Nietzsche tion, that is, the ability to recognize in oneself the validity of another's with a world that is human. Moreover, it is a world that is securely judgment. Thus Strong roots the heart of this problem, the status and stand grounded in that it does not point nor seek to point beyond itself for author ing of authority in the modem world, in the human. For it is precisely this human capacity for engaging in human relationships that establishes ity, that is, beyond the forms of life that a restored human capacity for judg authority that modernity first erodes, and finally destroys. The immediate ment has made possible. consequence of modernity's achievement is that no longer can anything Strong suggests that at the end of his life the promise of renewal that stand authoritatively for us. Of far greater consequence, however, is that Nietzsche held for art is relinquished. Just as modernity destroys our capac absent the establishment of authority through relations between and among ity for justification, Nietzsche feared, it likewise disfigures our capacity for selves and others, no form of life can be grounded legitimately, that is, aesthetic experience. Nietzsche then turns instead to politics to recreate the authoritatively. Such an authoritative grounding roots a form of life so possibility for aesthetic reflection-unfortunately, to a politics of domina deeply in human being as to place it beyond question. Indeed, Strong tion. Strong's work clearly shows us that, the faults that attend the diseases weights this depth dimension of the grounding of a form of life by saying of the mind aside, Nietzsche's entire enterprise of transfiguration, whether that "were we able to question it we would literally be another being," that conceived as the engendering of an "overman" or of beings who could xiv JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Series Editor's Introduction xv again bear witness to the presence of authority in their lives, was directed of politics will be the language of the human and this, in tum, again striking toward the revivication of what is truly human. a chord that resonates in Nietzsche, will have an aesthetic configuration. In Without intending to diminish in the least the significance of this exami addition, because politics thrives on the availability of the human and it is nation of Nietzsche, it is apparent that one of its finest accomplishments possible for everyone to be human (again), Strong makes an excellent case was to lay the foundations for a subsequent and uniquely creative interpre for the thoroughly democratic and egalitarian qualities of Rousseau's poli tive project. Although there are prolific and theoretically interesting differ tics. The importance of Strong's contribution here cannot be overestimated. ences between Strong's Rousseau and his Nietzsche, Jean-Jacques When at one point he says, in a particularly poignant expression of Rous Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary is a beautifully constructed argu seau's own humanity, that there is "meaning shining in every facet of ment that sustains Strong's interest in the relationship between modernity Rousseau's existence," Strong appears to be speaking not just descrip and humanity. tively, but analytically, as well. Because if Rousseau is human and it is his Strong uses the term ordinary in no ordinary sense to describe Rous humanness that is meaningful, then by virtue of their humanness every seau's undertaking. Rousseau, he explains, attached the greatest possible facet of every other human's existence is equally meaningful. As the basis significance to what he believed to be the most profound experience we, as of politics, then, the human would in no sense be diminished through politi human beings, can have-the experience of the "ordinary," of the "com cal activity and find it anathema. The human would find politics to be the mon," or, to be precise, the experience of the human. Modernity is charac most accommodating vehicle for self-expression. terized by the loss of our human capacity to have this experience of the As Strong construes them, neither Rousseau's conception of humanity human in another, to acknowledge our commonalty, to acknowledge, in or of politics should be confused with utopian proposals that bear some other words, the way in which another is exactly the same as I. superficial resemblance. On the contrary, it is one of Strong's most compel From the start Rousseau's similarity to Nietzsche is distinctive. He ling insights that Rousseau confronts and even accepts the conditions that speaks to the eclipse of capacities to discover in all of its forms the other constitute modernity. Rousseau refuses to draw from the past, from nature in myself and myself in the other, to recognize humanness and to make it or some other extrasocietal or transcendental source for philosophical available for experience in all of its potentiality and multiplicity. At the grounding. Rather, the human is to be recovered from within modernity, a same time as it spoils the capacity to experience commonalty, modernity position that appears to leave the framework of the modem world standing. opposes its discovery by concealing the multiplicity of human being The Rousseau Strong has presented us with, then, is a thinker for "we beneath the proliferation of personal identities. Identity is opposed to the modems," as Nietzsche would put it, and perhaps more than he has been human by making that which is many into the one. Identity imposes unity, coherence, and consistency on being that in its own protean self-sameness understood to be. We can see clearly from Strong's analysis, for example, is essentially in excess of and inimical to the limitation that identification that Rousseau's critique of identity anticipates some of the most radical and representation entails. Modernity, in light of Strong's reading of Rous indictments of modernity by our contemporary postmodern and poststruc seau, never has afforded us the Shakespearean choice "to be, or not to be." turalist theorists. In addition, it confirms some of their worst fears about Rather, in the modern world, to be is always also not to be. For to be some the human implications of modernity's structural imperatives. Rousseau thing or someone is not to be something or someone else, not to be avail directs our attention, for example, to structural factors that breed identity able in our multiplicity and in excess of any identity. through processes of rationalization. Such processes individuate the self Although the experience of the ordinary is not our everyday experience, according to the limitless production of roles required to meet the impera Rousseau, Strong argues, seeks to make it so. The human must become the tives of unbounded economic growth. And he leads us further to examine stuff of politics, for the social contract will return the human to us. The the function of knowledge-based disciplinary practices. These impel indi political realm is thus legitimized on the basis of the human. The language viduals to pursue ideals of selfhood that foreshorten the self while devalu- xvi JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Series Editor's Introduction xvii ing an other who serves instrumentally to maintain the identity in which of what is human. In the Rousseauian mirror that Strong has provided us, the self becomes normatively encased. what sort of human reflection would liberal democracy cast today? And whereas Strong's exposition reveals Rousseau's affinity for post Part of the answer to that query lies in this. Rousseau and Nietzsche were modern and poststructuralist critique, he certainly figures, as well, as one both solitaries. As Strong explains, they stood as "other" in relation to the of the earliest critics of Enlightenment rationalism. Rousseau draws our rest of us. Their "difference" presents special problems for the interpreter, attention to positivist and metaphysical strains of rationalism that fix who must find a way to represent it in terms sufficiently familiar for the human identity either by construing it as "given" or by privileging certain reader to grasp, without at the same time giving that difference a new iden moral and ethical categories. Rousseau also joins those few Enlightenment tity and betraying the intentions of the theorist. Strong accomplishes this thinkers who are hostile to forms of thought that conceive of our relation admirably, perhaps because he never tries to abolish-but only to explain ship to the world as one of mastery. Here Rousseau's notion of the human and to problematize-that irreducible distance between the reader and the would function very much like certain concepts in Burke's writings. As text. Thus the reader is doubly fortunate in being able to be clear about Stephen White has importantly shown in Edmund Burke: Modernity, Poli what Strong makes perfectly intelligible, but paradoxically even clearer tics, and Aesthetics, the aesthetic dimension of Burke's work opposes those about what he leaves mysterious by locating it on the interpretive horizons of our own form of life. Liberalism, if only implicitly, is here chastened for modem forms of thought that represent or impose an identity on the world its failure to accord difference the space warranted by that which stands as some "thing" that can be infinitely mastered by a will not guided by a sense of "finitude."8 apart and challenges us with an unfamiliar image of ourselves. Finally, Strong's interpretation of Rousseau transcends the overused and stale framework of the individualism-communitarian debate, which by his * * * reading of Rousseau is now shown to have only obscured the more complex I am especially grateful to Steven Wrinn of Rowman & Littlefield for and subtle dimensions of his thought. Rousseau's conception of the human shepherding Modernity and Political Thought through the transitional illuminates a potential for each individual that exceeds the ambitions of stages to our new publisher and home, and for his thoughtfulness and pro contemporary theories of individuality. Yet, it is a potential that at the same fessionalism that make it possible for editor and authors alike to produce time appears disposed to constituting a form of life that can tie rather than their best work. And while each of the authors of series volumes will earn bind individuals together. And this potential is alien to such fetters, because rewards and punishments commensurate with his or her contribution, as the the human is resistant to the denaturation of which Rousseau is accused by hidden architects of the series each must also share credit with me for those who take his politics to be nothing more than another vehicle for the launching Modernity and Political Thought. tyranny of the majority of the community. This position that Rousseau enjoys above the individualism-communitar -Morton Schoolman State University of New York at Albany ian debate enables us to renew our critical perspective on modem liberal democracy, as in different ways has each of the earlier contributions to Modernity and Political Thought. For liberal democratic society is the Notes form of life that is frequently promoted as realizing the ends of both indi viduality and community without becoming vulnerable to either communi tarian or individualist critiques. It would be difficult, at best, to sustain • 1. William E. Connolly, The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics ofM oral ity; Richard E. Flathrnan, Thomas Hobbes: Skepticism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics; unquestionably this favorable view of liberalism in light of the new require Michael Shapiro, Reading "Adam Smith": Desire, History, and Value (Lanham, Boulder, ments for individuality and community outlined by Rousseau's conception New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). xviii JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU 2. Modernity and Political Thought was first published by Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California. Volume I, William E. Connolly, The Augustinian Imperative: A Reflection on the Politics of Morality (1993); Volume 2, Richard E. Flathman, Thomas Hobbes: Skepti cism, Individuality, and Chastened Politics (1993); Volume 3, Fred Dallmayr, G. WF. Hegel: Modernity and Politics (1993); Volume 4, Michael Shapiro, Reading "Adam Smith": The Pol itics of Desire (1993); Volume 5, Stephen K. White, Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics (1994); Volume 6, Tracy Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordi nary (1994); Volume 7, Jane Bennett, Thoreau's Nature: Ethics, Politics, and the Wild (1994); Volume 8, George Kateb, Emerson and Self-Reliance (1994); Volume 9, Thomas Dumm, Michel Foucault and the Politics of Freedom (1996); Volume 10, Seyla Benhabib, Hanriah Arendt's Reluctant Modernism (1996). 3. Tracy B. Strong, Friedrich Nietz.sche and the Politics of Transfiguration (Berkeley: Uni- versity of California Press, 1975, Revised and expanded edition, 1988). 4. Ibid., xi. Preface to the New Edition 5. Ibid., 19. 6. Tracy B. Strong, "Nietzsche's Political Aesthetics," in Michael A. Gillespie and Tracy B. Strong, eds. Nietz.sche's New Seas (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988). ON READING ROUSSEAU IN OUR TIMES 7. Ibid., 164. 8. Stephen K. White, Edmund Burke: Modernity, Politics, and Aesthetics. Modernity and Political Thought, ed. Morton Schoolman (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001). Si nce writing lhjs book, 1 have elsewhere pursued some of the ques tions left untreated here.• I should like in this new introduction to take up three related malters, each of which finds instantiation, albeit a brief one, in this book. I am grateful for the opportunity to extend my thoughts here. Let me start with two texts not ordinarily associated with Rousseau. I do so because it is with texts such as these that I wish to read Rousseau; indeed, it is in resonance with texts such as these that I claim Rousseau should be read. You can find in a text whatever you bring, if you stand between it and the mirror of your imagination. You may not see your ears but they will be there. 2 -Mark 1\vain, 1909 Ultimately, nobody can get more out of things, including books, than he already knows. For what one lacks access to from experience one will have xix xx JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU Preface to the New Edition xxi no ear. Now let us imagine an extreme case: that a book speaks of nothing but Most people wanted to interpret the scriptures and as the verb itself indi events that lie altogether beyond the possibility of any frequent or even rare cates this meant that they wanted to put something between the text and the experience-that it is the first language for a new series of experiences. In capacity of the text to work on them. Interpretation was a way of holding that case, simply nothing will be heard, but there will be the acoustic illusion God's word at a distance, of not allowing an incarnate presence to it.6 that where nothing is heard, nothing is there. This is, in the end, my average experience and, if you will the originality Rousseau, I suggest below, does not want us to "interpret" him; more of my experience. Whoever thought he had understood me had made up importantly, he writes so as to prevent that. In the Essay on the Origin of something out of me after his own image.3 Languages, Rousseau writes of a fantasy first or natural language. Among -Friedrich Nietzsche, 1888 its qualities would be a plethora of nouns so as to "express the same being in its different relations" and "instead of arguments it would have maxims Twain and Nietzsche tell us that if I stand between myself and the (sentences), it would persuade without convincing and depict (peindrait) text-we might call this inter-pretation-I will hear only what my ears can without reasoning .... "7 Rousseau hopes that his own writing will achieve already hear, although I will almost certainly be unaware that I am hearing this effect. It is noteworthy that in the Social Contract, during his discus myself. If we see books as containers of meaning from which we extract sion of the legislator figure, some of the same distinctions recur. As the content, we will find only what we already have.4 Rousseau gives us a simi legislator can use "neither force nor reason, it is from necessity that he has lar warning. In his Dialogues a character makes reference to the fact that recourse to another kind of authority, that can bring others along without Jean-Jacques (who is the subject of the dialogue) has placed the following violence and persuade without convincing."8 quatrain under one of the portraits that an admirer had commissioned of What is wrong with interpretation as a way of approaching a text? him. It reads: Instead of a text, think of a human being. You are my good and trusted friend; you approach me accompanied by another person, whom I do not Those knowing in the art of pretense know. You say: "Tracy, I would like you to meet Jean-Jacques-you two Who give me such gentle features, should get to know each other." I do not-I hope-for the least moment No matter how you wish to portray me You will have only displayed yourselves.' entertain the idea of interpreting this other person: to the degree that I do I will never come to know nor will I be moved by that person. Can one, My juxtaposition of these passages is intended to call preliminary atten however, respond to a text as one can to a person? Can I be called out, tion to two claims of this book. The first claim has to do with what it means provoked by a text in the way that I can be by a teacher or lover or a friend? to read Rousseau, or any important text. All of these passages are about the I note in chapter 1 below that already in Rousseau's time his writing made relation of a text to those who read that text. Both of them suggest that if available to some an immediacy of response that passed all rational under one approaches a text in such a matter as to interfere with it, either by standing. standing between it and one's imagination or by bringing only experience Why though is this important? Or: why should one speak approvingly of of one's own to that text, one will find only what one already has. The text it at all? Is not rationality and argument the best foundation for a civilized will do nothing to you, it will lack what Samuel Beckett called its "power society? I argue in this book that while Rousseau does not reject rationality to claw." or argument, he is convinced that the crisis of society is such that a kind of The point---0ne of the points---0f these passages is to dissuade us from new beginning, a recommencement, is necessary and that for this some the idea that what we should do, or what we are doing, in reading a text thing other than rational argumentation will be required. This conviction that we find important, is to interpret it. When in the seventeenth-century means that the terms of argumentation that are acceptable in society will be Tyndale, Lilburne, and the others preached in favor of a literal reading of inadequate, precisely because they are the terms of that society. Rousseau's the Scriptures they had in mind something that they knew to be difficult. concern with language is a concern to find a way to make his thought avail-