ROUSSEAU’S COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT SUNY series in Social and Political Thought Kenneth Baynes, editor ROUSSEAU’S COUNTER-ENLIGHTENMENT A Republican Critique of the Philosophes Graeme Garrard STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2003 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher. Cover illustration: Anonymous print of Rousseau and Voltaire boxing, c. 1760–1770. Reproduced courtesy of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207 Production by Cathleen Collins Marketing by Jennifer Giovani Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Garrard, Graeme, 1965– Rousseau’s counter-Enlightenment : a republican critique of the Enlightenment / Graeme Garrard. p. cm. — (SUNY series in social and political thought) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–7914–5603-X (alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–5604–8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778. 2. Enlightenment—France. 3. France—Intellectual life—18th century. I. Title. II. Series. B2137 .G27 2003 194—dc21 2002021242 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Jeanette Shannon Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction 1 1. The Enlightenment Republic of Letters 11 The Party of Humanity 11 The Virtue of Selfish Sociability 19 2. Philosophe, Madman, Revolutionary, God: The Many Faces of Jean-Jacques Rousseau 29 Introduction 29 Rousseau and the Philosophes 30 The Invention of the “Revolutionary” Rousseau 35 Conclusion 40 3. Unsociable Man: Rousseau’s Critique of Enlightenment Social Thought 41 Introduction 41 From Contract to Community 42 Natural Order, Social Disorder 45 Conclusion 53 4. Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment Republic of Virtue 55 Introduction 55 Extending amour-propre 56 Statecraft as Soulcraft 59 Rousseau’s “Manly” Republic 64 Conclusion 67 vii viii Contents 5. On the Utility of Religion 69 Introduction 69 The Religious Basis of Morality 72 The Union of Church and State 76 6. Dare to Be Ignorant! 83 Introduction 83 Messieurs de l’Encyclopédie 84 “A Sweet and Precious Ignorance” 87 The Light Within 92 Conclusion 101 7. The Worst of All Possible Worlds 103 The Cautious Optimism of the Philosophes 103 Rousseau’s Optimism about the Past 106 Rousseau’s Pessimism about the Future 111 Conclusion 115 Conclusion 117 Notes 121 Bibliography 155 Index 179 Preface In his posthumously published notes The Will to Power, Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) traces what he calls the still-unresolved “prob- lem of civilization” back to the conflict between Rousseau (1712–1778) and Voltaire (1694–1778) that began in the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury.1 For Nietzsche, the “aristocratic” homme civilisé Voltaire defended civilization as a great triumph over the barbarism of nature, whereas the vulgar plebeian Rousseau—“beyond a doubt mentally disturbed”— inspired the revolutionary overthrow of all social orders in the name of the natural goodness of man.2 Voltaire felt “the mitigation, the subtleties, the spiritual joys of the civilized state,” unlike Rousseau, whose idealized conception of nature led him to cast a “curse upon society and civiliza- tion.”3Nietzsche believed that this clash was decisive not only for Voltaire personally, but for European civilization as a whole. With it, Voltaire ceased to be a mere “bel esprit” and man of letters and became “the man of his century” whose intense envy and hatred of Rousseau spurred him on to the heights of greatness.4 Nietzsche thought that Rousseau simulta- neously provoked Voltaire into effectively creating the Enlightenment as we now know it and banished the spirit of the Enlightenment by conjuring its nemesis, the French Revolution.5 Nietzsche’s antisocial Rousseau, like Voltaire’s (on which it is obvi- ously based), is a crude caricature.6 The clash between Voltaire and Rousseau was never really over the abstract question of which is prefer- able: society or the state of nature? (Even if that is how Voltaire viewed it.) Rousseau was very far from believing that it is either possible or desir- able to return to a presocial “state of nature.” But Nietzsche was defi- nitely on to something important in presenting Rousseau’s confrontation with Voltaire as a decisive moment in the debate over the nature of civi- lization that emerged in France in the second half of the eighteenth cen- tury.7 He correctly identified the moment when “the problem of civilization” first emerged as a major theme in eighteenth-century French ix