Rousseau And the Ethics of Virtue (Continuum Studies in Philosophy)

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue

James Delaney

Continuum


Continuum Studies in Philosophy Justin Skirry, Descartes and the Metaphysics of Human Nature David A. Roberts, Kierkegaard's Analysis of Radical Evil Dale Wilkerson, Nietzsche and the Greeks Matthew Simpson, Rousseau's Theory of Freedom Llyod Strickland, Leibniz Reinterpreted: The Harmony of Things Carlos Garcia, Popper's Theory of Science David Roberts, Dialect of Romanticism Andrew Fiala, Tolerance and the Ethical Life


James Delaney

continuum

Continuum International Publishing Group The Tower Building 11 York Road London SE1 7NX

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© James Delaney 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. James Delaney has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 0826487246 (hardback) Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts. Printed and bound in Great Britain by Biddies Ltd, Kings Lynn, Norfolk

Contents

Acknowledgements

vii

Introduction

1

1 Virtue Ethics Past and Present

7

2 Virtue and the State of Nature

41

3 Virtue as the Cultivation of the Individual

73

4 The Virtuous Citizen and Rousseau's Political Philosophy

103

5 Toward a Rousseauian Theory of Virtue

129

Bibliography

157

Index

163

Acknowledgements

After reading Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequalityfor the first time, I was fascinated. As I pursued this fascination further, reading other works and discussing them with others, I realized quickly that there were many who did not share my zeal for his thought. Rousseau's philosophy has been accused of being unsystematic and contradictory. Perhaps because I was so sympathetic to many of his claims, I wanted to take it upon myself to defend him against some of these charges. In at least some small way, I hope this book serves that purpose. There are so many people whose support and help were invaluable to me in undertaking this project. I owe a great deal to my professors in the philosophy departments at Xavier University and SUNY Buffalo for their guidance and patience. I thank my colleagues at Niagara University for their day-to-day encouragement. I also thank my many students who continue to bring energy, creativity and enthusiasm to the study of philosophy. I must mention by name three people who read earlier drafts of the chapters and whose comments were so incredibly helpful to me. My deepest thanks go to Jeffrey Dueck, Kevin Klipfel and Kenneth Shockley. Finally, I thank my wife Sarah for her constant love and support, and S. Miles Grey, to whom this work is dedicated.

Introduction

This book is partly a work on the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and partly a study of the ethical theory commonly referred to as 'virtue ethics'. My hope is that bringing these two very different subjects together will serve to say something original about both of them. Given their somewhat distinct natures, I think it will be helpful to the reader for me to begin by giving a brief introduction: to Rousseau, to virtue ethics, and to the subjects of the five chapters that follow. Rousseau was one of the most influential, as well as enigmatic, thinkers during the famous Enlightenment period of eighteenthcentury France. Originally born in Geneva in 1712, Rousseau had a troubled youth. His mother died only a few days after his birth, and his father fled Geneva leaving Rousseau with an uncle when he was still only a child. After an unpleasant stint as an apprentice to an engraver as a teenager, Rousseau left Geneva and eventually settled in France. One of his great loves was music, and in 1742 he went to Paris to become a musician and composer. It was shortly after this that Rousseau became acquainted with several other famous French Enlightenment thinkers, among them, d'Alembert and Diderot. Shortly thereafter, he began his own philosophical career. In 1750, Rousseau published his first major philosophical treatise, the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts. This work, as well as later ones such as the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, were widely read but also raised much controversy. One reason for this is that it is difficult to say whether Rousseau is properly classified as a participant in the Enlightenment project or a critic of it. The Enlightenment project prided itself on progress. Building on the advances that had been made in metaphysics and science in the modern period, beginning in the sixteenth century, the Enlightenment project consisted in

2


large part in applying the same methods to topics in ethics and sociopolitical philosophy. Perhaps there is no greater example of such a project than as it is expressed in the work of Voltaire, who advocated the progression of the sciences and arts with great zeal. It's not at all surprising that Voltaire was one of Rousseau's most outspoken critics. For Rousseau, while he shared some of the Enlightenment project's ideals, also claimed that far from improving life, society, and this supposed 'progress', had actually done more to hurt humanity than to help it. Hence, it is difficult to classify his philosophy: is he an Enlightenment thinker or a counter-Enlightenment thinker? There is still debate about this among contemporary scholars just as there was during Rousseau's own time. Rousseau's public life was certainly marked by conflict and controversy, but his private life was even more tumultuous. He feuded with friends and acquaintances throughout his life, which led to fallouts with Diderot and David Hume among others. Rousseau himself argues that these feuds were the result of people who, either because of jealousy or unjustified contempt, had conspired against him. When we look back at Rousseau's writings, we are left with many puzzles and seeming contradictions. Part of the task that I undertake in this book is to offer something in the way of solutions to some of these puzzles, and clarifications of some of these apparent contradictions. Though it may be subtle, one observes the theme of virtue arising again and again in Rousseau's major works. This I will argue is no accident, and although the ways in which Rousseau uses the term vary in some cases from text to text, there is a common thread that runs through them: one that I hope to articulate in this book. To put it another way, I hope to show that Rousseau's ethical thought is best understood as an ethics of virtue. And this leads us to the second major subject of this book: virtue ethics. Virtue ethics is usually regarded among philosophers, along with deontology and consequentialism, as one of three major competing ethical theories. Very often these theories are associated with their most famous advocates in the history of philosophy. When one thinks of deontology, one usually thinks of the moral philosophy of another famous Enlightenment philosopher, Imma-

Introduction

3

nuel Kant (1724—1804). Consequentialism is expressed in the respective utilitarian positions of Jeremy Bentham (1748—1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806—73). These philosophers, it should be noted, lived relatively recently in terms of the Western philosophical tradition. By contrast, the most famous advocate of virtue ethics is Aristotle (384-322 BC). Aristotle's ethics was part of an allencompassing philosophical system that was the established school of thought when the modern period began. Aristotle's science, particularly his teleological metaphysics, was being discarded in the modern period and was replaced by mechanistic views such as those of Descartes and Hobbes. Enlightenment thinkers, and those who followed, attempted to formulate ethical systems that would replace Aristotle's ethics in the same way. But more recently, beginning in large part with G. E. M. Anscombe's 1958 article, 'Modern Moral Philosophy', virtue ethics enjoyed a revival. One of the major issues that this revival raised was the possibility of salvaging a basic Aristotelian framework in ethics without accepting a full-blown Aristotelian physics that would fly in the face of modern science. As Rousseau is a key figure in the Enlightenment, I contend that his writings must be examined if we are to understand the tradition of virtue ethics, from its beginnings in the ancient period to the present. Furthermore, since I will argue that Rousseau's ethical thought is best understood as a system of virtue ethics, pulling these two subjects together is a worthwhile project. The book will proceed in five chapters. Chapter One, 'Virtue Ethics Past and Present', presents a very general overview of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. Aristotle's ethics begins with the fundamental claim that human beings have a natural end for which they are intended, an end that we all agree is 'happiness'. But while we all agree that happiness is the goal for which we are all striving, there is great disagreement as to what precisely happiness is. Ultimately, Aristotle will argue that happiness is achieved only when one exhibits virtues, or excellences, in the performance of his or her natural function. Some of these virtues are intellectual, such as contemplative and practical wisdom. Others, such as temperance, courage and proper anger, are moral virtues. It is only by

4


means of such virtues, Aristotle says, that human beings can reach their natural goal and achieve happiness. Chapter One will then move from Aristotle to one of the most influential contemporary defenders of virtue ethics, Alasdair Maclntyre, and give a summary of some of the main points in his 1984 book, After Virtue. Maclntyre contends that the Enlightenment project, particularly as it was conceived by Soren Kierkegaard, Immanuel Kant and David Hume, was doomed to fail even before it started. Ethics, Maclntyre claims, needs some sort of conception of a human goal or end to serve as its foundation. Aristotle had advocated this, calling such an end a telos. The Enlightenment project, he argues, was characterized primarily by its attempt to strip away any such conception. Maclntyre then gives his own foundation for a human telos, one marked by notions of practice, narrative and community. My goal in this chapter is to give a basic historical overview of how virtue ethics was originally conceived by Aristotle, as well as to articulate some of the challenges and issues that face contemporary virtue ethicists. Chapters Two, Three and Four are dedicated specifically to an examination of some of the most important works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Chapter Two, 'Virtue and the State of Nature', deals mainly with the famous Discourse on the Origin of Inequality Among Men. In this work, Rousseau describes 'man in the state of nature', by which he means human beings stripped of those attributes they acquire as a result of living in society. The picture of such a savage man, as Rousseau calls him, is quite different from that of a civil man, which is how he refers to present-day human beings. Savage man is without language and relationships, and his faculty of reason is almost completely undeveloped. Therefore he has an existence that is similar to many other animals, but with one important difference: human beings, as opposed to other animals, have the potential to move beyond the state of nature, to form social groups, and ultimately to become moral creatures. Where Rousseau's account of human nature differs from that of some other modern thinkers, especially Thomas Hobbes, is in his claim that at their root human beings are basically good. It is through the historical process that ultimately ends in present-day civil society that they become selfish,

Introduction

5

violent and antagonistic toward one another. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequalitycontinues by describing the long and complicated series of historical events, most of which were accidental, that led human beings from the state of nature to their present existence. Chapter Three, 'Virtue as the Cultivation of the Individual', moves to Rousseau's discussion of human beings in the state of civil society. It explores three works that express Rousseau's views on the society in which he lives: the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, the Confessions, and the Emile. Through an examination of these texts, we see how Rousseau criticizes society for emphasizing superficial talents at the expense of virtue. Furthermore, we examine how Rousseau's conception of virtue is expressed in his philosophy of education. The basic theme that will emerge is that human beings, even in an unjust society filled with vices, can still flourish and become virtuous. In many ways this is accomplished by human beings emphasizing their natural characteristics, which, in a social context, enable them to regard each other without the vices that society has brought about. Chapter Four, 'The Virtuous Citizen and Rousseau's Political Philosophy', focuses specifically on Rousseau's political philosophy with a discussion of the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract. In these two works, Rousseau gives his vision of an ideal political regime. One of the most fundamental aspects of this vision is the concept of the 'General Will', which he says must govern all decisions. The political body, Rousseau argues, just like an individual body, is composed of many parts. Despite their many parts, however, each of these bodies possesses a will that directs the good of the whole. This notion will prove to be extremely important in our discussion, as Rousseau will claim that virtue in such an ideal regime is nothing more than the accord of each citizen's particular will with the General Will of the state. The fifth and final chapter, 'Toward a Rousseauian Theory of Virtue', pulls together the major themes of the first four. I begin by returning to the various accounts of virtue from Rousseau's major works, which were discussed in Chapters Two, Three and Four. Against the charge that Rousseau contradicts himself by claiming virtue to be one thing in one context and the opposite in another, I

6


argue that Rousseau's conception of virtue is actually quite consistent. To show this, I demonstrate that virtue will be expressed differently in different social contexts, whether that context is the absence of society, as it is depicted in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, the specious social contract in the background of the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, Confessionsand Emile,or the grand vision of the ideal society expressed in the Discourse on Political Economy and Social Contract. After establishing this conception of virtue in Rousseau, Chapter Five will then return to the discussion of Alasdair Maclntyre, which began in Chapter One. I look specifically at the central chapters of After Virtue that criticize the Enlightenment. I argue that if one accepts the Rousseauian conception of virtue I have presented, Rousseau cannot be said to fall victim to Maclntyre's general criticism of Enlightenment thinkers. Finally, I will close with a short discussion of the characteristics I think an ethical system must have in order to properly be called a 'virtue ethics'. Rousseau's ethics, I claim, fits exceptionally well into this category.

Chapter 1

Virtue Ethics Past and Present

The title of this chapter is certainly broad and it could constitute an enormous task. I should therefore begin by giving a brief account of what I am setting out to do in the chapter and give some explanation as to why I chose to do it that way. While I say virtue ethics past and present, I will actually focus my attention primarily on two authors, Aristotle and Alasdair Maclntyre. I think it can be said without much controversy that Aristotle is the figure in the history of philosophy (at least in the Western tradition) that is most responsible for the basic school that we now refer to as virtue ethics; but why Maclntyre? It is true that his book, After Virtue, is recognized as one of the most important works in ethics in the latter half of the twentieth century and he is credited in part with the 'revival' of virtue ethics. However, there are clearly other authors that contributed to this project and I want to make clear that my not discussing them here in no way means that I do not consider them to be extremely important to 'virtue ethics in the present'. 1 As my task in this book is partly an analysis of virtue ethics as a theory, and partly a work on Rousseau, I think Maclntyre is the most appropriate contemporary philosopher to consider. After Virtue not only examines the notion of virtue itself, and the ancient tradition from which that notion was handed down to us, but it also gives a rich interpretation of the Enlightenment project, beginning roughly in the eighteenth century, a period in which Rousseau is certainly a major player. The care and attention that Maclntyre takes in his discussion of the history of philosophy, and that discussion's significant role in his theory of virtue, make him the ideal figure to consider in my own project. Therefore, this chapter will essentially proceed in two parts, first a general discussion of

8


Aristotle's ethics, and second, an overview of Maclntyre's project in After Virtue. To give a general account of Aristotle's ethics is difficult for many reasons, but perhaps the biggest challenge is the enormous amount of secondary literature that poses a multitude of different interpretations. There are very few aspects of Aristotle's thought that can be stated without the possibility of a different interpretation. Therefore, I will try to avoid the particular problems of interpretation as much as is possible and sketch an outline of what I take to be the key elements of the Nicomachean Ethics and Politics in an effort to articulate the foundation of Aristotelian virtue ethics. My goal is not so much to solve the particular problems that concern Aristotle scholars, but rather to lay out the basic tradition to which Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau and contemporary thinkers like Maclntyre are responding. One key element of Aristotle's conception of virtue relates to his discussion of the sociability of human beings.2 To investigate this, I will focus on Book I of the Politics, and will proceed in four main parts. The first part will explore the general claim that Aristotle makes about human beings being social by nature, within the context of the rather problematic statement that the state is prior to the individual. I will attempt to form a coherent way of understanding this priority. Next, I will continue the analysis of Book I with an emphasis on three particular aspects of society: (1) the family, (2) private property, and (3) language. In the following chapter, we'll see Rousseau dismiss the notion that these three institutions are purely natural. Aristotle will claim otherwise, arguing that they are all in fact part of our nature, and are part of our natural sociability. Aristotle makes several claims in the opening of his Politics that seem contradictory, or, at the very least, problematic. He holds that human beings are social by their nature: 'man is by nature a political animal'. 3 Immediately preceding this statement, Aristotle states, 'it is evident that the state is a creation of nature'. 4 And finally, Aristotle asserts shortly after this that, 'the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is prior to the part'. 5 The natural sociability of human beings and the


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priority of the state become problematic. This is especially the case when one compares this natural priority with other statements about nature. One such statement is in the Nicomachean Ethics, in which Aristotle claims that something's nature cannot be changed, where he uses the example of trying to habituate a stone to move upward rather than downward. However, Aristotle remarks later in this same chapter of Book I, 'he who founded the first state was the greatest of benefactors'.6 If existence within the state is the natural condition of human beings, how can Aristotle discuss 'he who founded the first state'? This first state, by the very definition of a state, must have been comprised of more than this one person; by Aristotle's own more strict definition, it must have been comprised of several villages, which are each themselves comprised of several families. These people, and all those that came before them, existed previously without the state. There are two questions that logically follow: (1) how can the state be natural for human beings if human beings existed before the institution of the first state; and (2) given the existence of these human beings, in what sense can the state be prior to the individual? Some have argued that Aristotle's position is irreconcilable. David Keyt advocates such a position, claiming that a view such as that of Hobbes is the only coherent way to understand the state: Hobbes maintains in opposition to Aristotle that political community is entirely a product of art. Now, I claim that Aristotle ought to agree with Hobbes, that according to Aristotle's own principles the political community is an artifact of practical reason, not a product of nature, and that, consequently, there is a blunder at the very root of Aristotle's political philosophy.7 I would contend that a view such as this does not represent a very sympathetic reading of Aristotle.8 However, the problem of the priority of the state is still one that needs to be addressed. Hobbes would argue that the state does not arise by nature, but rather is the product of art or craft. Aristotle is clear that craft, while imitating nature, is not something that occurs by nature. Take the example of

10


a house; the parts of the house, the wood, stone, etc., are all things that come about by nature. However, the house is the result of a craft, as the form exists in the mind of the house builder and not in the materials themselves. Like the house, it could be argued that the state arises when its form is conceived in the mind of a given individual. Such a view is plausible, but not necessary. For the parts of the house are things that are separate from the artisan, while in the creation of a state, the artisan and the part are the same thing. That is, the house builder is different from the wood, glass and bricks that make up the house. The statesman, however, is not separate in this way; he is a part of the state as well as its artisan. The form of the state, one can claim in defence of Aristotle, is part of our nature, and naturally inclines us toward socialization. This type of understanding helps us to better understand Aristotle's notion of human beings as 'social by nature'. The second question to be addressed is that of the priority of the state to the individual. What type of priority can this be, especially when Aristotle praises the individual who first founded the state? The state arises from a group of villages, each of which is made of a group of households, each of which is comprised by a husband, wife and slaves.9 These smaller parts come together into the state, and it is clear that Aristotle means to say that each smaller part is prior in a chronological sense to the larger. Each larger group forms because it allows human beings a better way of life than was possible when only the smaller groups existed: The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants, and members of it are called by Charondas, 'companions of the cupboard', and by Epimenides the Cretan, 'companions of the manger'. But when several families are united, and the association aims at something more than the supply of daily needs, the first society to be formed is the village.10 The basic needs of human beings are satisfied by the structure of the family, but the village allows for humans to enjoy more things and live better. Furthermore, the families that existed prior to the state


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chronologically did not necessarily have slaves. The master—slave relationship is fundamentally based in nature, but this does not mean that a 'naturally-born slave' is formally a slave in a household. We should understand slaves in this sense to be those who are born with a predisposition to being ruled. Families that originally came together were not fully actualized households with formal slaves. Slavery, while in accord with the natural relationship of those predisposed to rule with those predisposed to be ruled, comes about chronologically later. Life improves as families become more stable; this occurs when natural relationships are cultivated. This improvement of life continues in the next progression: the movement from the village to the state. When several villages are united in a single complete community, large enough to be nearly or quite self-sufficing, the state comes into existence, originating in the bare needs of life, and continuing in existence for the sake of a good life. And therefore, if the earlier forms of society are natural, so is the state, for it is in the end of them, and the nature of a thing is its end.11 Aristotle is certainly not advocating that the state has always existed, or that human beings could never survive without the institution of a formal state. Obviously he thinks they did survive in precisely this way until the state 'came into existence'. As we saw earlier, the first families did not have slaves, but in this respect they were incomplete, inferior to, and less natural than households in the formal state that cultivate both the natural relationships: husbandwife and master—slave. The priority of the state to the individual, as well as priority of villages and even households to the individual, must therefore be understood in some other way than the chronological sense, and I propose that the priority relies on Aristotle's conception of function and teleology. The priority of the whole to the parts is based in this conception. When a part needs the whole in order to perform its function, we say that this whole is prior. This is clearly the case when discussing the various parts of the human body for instance. The function of an eye is to see, and it can only do this when it is

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functioning within the whole, which of course is the human body. Aristotle says that if we remove the eye from the body, it no longer performs its function, and can therefore only be called an eye in name. It would have the same type of status as a sculpture of an eye. There is clearly no problem then in saying that the human being is prior to the eye. In terms of a political situation, the priority of the whole can be understood similarly when one considers other political animals, such as bees. A bee belongs to the hive (which can be said to be the 'bee-equivalent' of the state), and perishes if it becomes separated from the group. Its status parallels that of the eye. However, it does not seem as though the case is analogous when one considers human beings. Keyt gives the example of Philoctetes, a man who has a snakebite that produces such an unpleasant stench that he is forced to leave the polis. Keyt says that we can compare this man to an out of work carpenter. Although he is unable to function as a carpenter, we may still call him a carpenter, and the term is not applied merely in name only. Philoctetes is still properly called a human being even though he has no polis. He does not perish in the same way that a bee does when he is no longer a part of the state. Therefore, Keyt argues, the relationship between the whole and the part, in terms of the human being and the state, is much more like the out of work carpenter than it is like the eye or the bee. The state cannot, therefore, be said to be prior to the individual. This argument does not significantly take into account, however, Aristotle's claim that the state is not merely a means for humans to live, but a necessity if they are to live well. Philoctetes may indeed be able to survive without a polis, but he will never be able to flourish completely as a human being. He has no ability to be morally virtuous, as nearly all the moral virtues require other people in order that they might be exercised. The carpenter who is out of work is still rightly called a carpenter, and Philoctetes is still rightly called a human being. However, neither are flourishing (one could also say neither are actualizing their respective potentialities) with respect to their given activities; the carpenter is not exercising carpentry, and Philoctetes is not exercising virtue. A human being without a polis is therefore able to live, but unable to live well. The


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notion of living well is not a craft according to Aristotle, but rather part of the human telos, which of course is something natural. It is in this teleological manner, therefore, that one should properly understand the notion of the state's priority to the individuals of which it is comprised. The state is natural, and human beings are naturally political; this is Aristotle's position, and as we shall see in the following chapters, it is in stark contrast to Rousseau's. Let us now move to an examination of some of the specific aspects of this natural sociability, namely the notions of the family, private property and language. As stated above, the state for Aristotle is comprised of villages, each of which is comprised of households. Each household represents the institution of family, which he sees as the most fundamental natural relationship between human beings. Each family or household is based in three types of relationship; the first is the relationship between man and woman, the second is the relationship between master and slave, and the third is that of the parent to the child: In the first place there must be a union of those who cannot exist without each other; namely, of male and female, that the race may continue (and this is a union which is formed, not of deliberate purpose, but because, in common with other animals and with plants, mankind have a natural desire to leave behind an image of themselves), and of natural ruler and subject, that both may be preserved. For that which can foresee by the exercise of the mind is by nature intended to be lord and master, and that which can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject, and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interest.12 It is clear that Aristotle recognizes the need of the species to procreate as a natural capacity ingrained in human beings. The male and female are therefore drawn together by nature for this purpose.13 The union, by nature, should be far more permanent than merely the procreative act. In order to live well, to flourish, males and females not only need to engage in the procreative act,

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but afterwards they must remain united in the traditional sense to raise their children and meet their basic needs: 'Out of these two relationships between the man and the woman, master and slave, the first thing to arise is the family.'14 Aristotle continues, 'The family is the association established by nature for the supply of men's everyday wants.'15 We can take these everyday wants to be the basic needs of survival: food, shelter, etc. All parties, men, women, and slaves benefit from the institution of the household, and just as men and women are categorized by certain roles to fulfil in this institution, nature ordains that some people are born to be rulers, and others are born to be slaves.16 The family as it exists in a proper household is prior in a teleological sense, although not in a chronological sense. Aristotle constantly chastises Barbarian societies, which do not allow for human development in accord with nature. Their families are not properly constructed households. Aristotle links the notion of property to the family; it is a necessity and a natural concept for human beings. He states, 'Property is part of the household, and the art of acquiring property is part of the art of managing the household; for no man can live well, or indeed live at all, unless he be provided with necessaries.'17 Here, Aristotle is speaking of a very specific kind of property, the slave. For there are, according to him, natural-born slaves and, of course, by the very concept of'natural slave' there is an entailment of natural property. Property in general is also defended as something natural by Aristotle several chapters later. Property for Aristotle is associated primarily with what he calls the 'art of wealth-getting'. A distinction is made between one form of wealth-getting, which is natural, and a second which is unnatural. Property, then, is natural in relation to the former activity of wealth-getting, which is directly related to the management of the household. It is associated with acquiring the basic necessities of life. Aristotle states of this activity: Property, in the sense of a bare livelihood, seems to be given by nature herself to all, both when they are first born, and when they are grown up ... Of the art of acquisition then there is one kind which by nature is a part of the management of a household, in so


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far as the art of household management must either find ready to hand, or itself provide, such things necessary to life, and useful for the community of the family or state, as can be stored. They are the elements of true riches; for the amount of property which is needed for a good life is not unlimited.18 Natural property for Aristotle is defined as those things that are necessary for life in order to sustain the household. In addition to slaves, these include food, clothing and shelter: these items must be acquired if the people in the family are to live at all. Aristotle recognizes such items as natural possessions, and it is important to note that he claims elements acquired in natural wealth-getting are limited. One has no need to acquire more food, for example, than the family can consume. The desire for unlimited goods comes in the second type of wealth-getting, which Aristotle identifies with retail, and the use of coin. This second type of wealth-getting is more based in art and experience, he says, and those that are obsessed with its pursuit are those that are consumed by pleasures of the body, rather than true human flourishing. Therefore, Aristotle does not identify the pursuit of huge amounts of wealth to be something natural. However, the natural institution of the family or household is intimately connected to the pursuit of the first type of wealth-getting, which is concerned with necessities of life. Therefore, on this level of necessity, as well as within the conception of natural slavery, Aristotle clearly advocates, against Rousseau, that property is something that is part of the fundamental nature of human beings. Finally, we come to Aristotle's discussion of the relation of language to nature. He mentions the subject only briefly, but takes it as a given that the faculty of speech is given to human beings by nature: Now, that man is more of a political animal than bees or any other gregarious animal is evident. Nature, as we often say, makes nothing in vain, and man is the only animal whom she has endowed with the gift of speech. And whereas mere voice is but an indication of pleasure or pain, and is therefore found in other

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue animals (for their nature attains to the perception of pleasure and pain and the intimation of them to one another, and no further), the power of speech is intended to set forth the expedient and inexpedient, and therefore likewise the just and the unjust. 19

Aristotle would likely grant that language develops; but despite this, he would also claim that it is natural in the sense that it is an aspect of our teleology. We function better when we develop speech. He also grants that families and larger groupings existed prior to the state. Even within the state he grants that some households do not have slaves: 'the ox is the poor man's slave'.20 But he takes households, slaves, villages and states as they exist in his own society as more natural than those that exist differently, whether in history or in barbarian societies.21 The basic theme that I have tried to pull from this investigation into the Politics is that, for Aristotle, the state and the social behaviour of human beings are not arbitrary developments. By their nature, human beings must live with one another, and live in fairly specific arrangements in order to live well. Aristotle's account of virtue, as it is expressed in the Nicomachean Ethics, must be understood in this social context. Let us now turn to an examination of this account. One element of virtue for Aristotle is its association with the excellence in something performing its proper function. For living things, Aristotle says we need to examine the different potentialities within the souls of each organism to determine these functions. Plants have the nutritive faculty; animals possess this as well as faculties of motion and appetites; and human beings are constituted by all of these as well as their own unique potentiality, rationality. A virtuous human being will function well in all her activities if the unique human faculty, rationality, directs the soul. For Aristotle, the human soul is divided into two parts, the rational and the irrational. Each of these parts is further divided into two more parts. The irrational part is composed of the nutritive and appetitive parts. The nutritive consists of the vegetative functions we have that control growth, digestion and other involuntary bodily functions. There is no link between the rational part of the soul and the nutritive part. As such, the nutritive has no share in virtue; recall


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that virtues are excellences directed by rationality. The appetitive part consists of our appetites for bodily pleasures as well as emotions like anger and fear. Strictly speaking, these are not rational faculties, but unlike the nutritive functions, the appetitive faculties can be directed by the rational. These two then, the nutritive and appetitive, constitute the irrational part of the soul. The rational part of the soul has both a contemplative part and a practical part. The function of the contemplative part is intellectual activity for its own sake. The proper activity of the practical part is to direct the appetitive part, and so is the link between the rational and irrational. This will result in the actualization of all of his or her potentialities. There are two basic types of virtue for Aristotle. He states: Virtue too is distinguished into kinds in accordance with this difference [the difference between the rational and irrational parts of the soul]; for we say that some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophical wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. 22 The two types of virtue, intellectual and moral, are then discussed at length in Books II—VI, and again in Book X with a specific discussion of the virtue of philosophical wisdom. I will outline these two types of virtue briefly. Firstly moral virtue, the type of virtue concerned with the irrational part of the soul, specifically the appetitive. Moral virtues are states of character, and are understood as means between extremes. This is best expressed by using an example of a particular moral virtue. The first one that Aristotle himself discusses is courage. Courage, he says, 'is a mean with regard to feelings of fear and confidence'.23 The courageous person is the one who feels the proper amount of fear and confidence in particular situations. The virtue is a state of character in the sense that it is habituated over a long period of time. The person must continually be courageous in different situations so that the virtue becomes like a second nature to him. Aristotle is very clear that virtue does not occur by nature, and

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this will be a similar notion in Rousseau. If something 'is' by nature, habituation cannot change it. In the preceding, we mentioned his example of throwing a rock in the air over and over; this will not habituate the rock to move contrary to its natural motion, which is toward the ground. This is puzzling, but we can take Aristotle to be using the word 'nature' in two different senses. As is the case with the state being natural, virtue must be understood as natural in a different way than as the internal source of motion in the rock example. We can understand the relationship between nature and virtue in a teleological way. By nature, human beings are disposed to becoming virtuous. A human being is still human if he is not virtuous, but is not functioning well until he possesses virtue. States of character can be either virtuous or vicious. People are not born with courageous states of character that cannot be altered, but rather are dependent on experience to develop such characters. Therefore, it is not enough for someone to be intellectually taught what courage is. He must practise the virtue until his character takes on the virtue. Aristotle's list of moral virtues is as follows: courage, temperance, liberality, magnificence, pride, ambition, good temper, friendliness, truthfulness, ready wit, shame and justice.24 All these virtues are (1) gained through habituation, (2) states of character, and (3) means between extremes. There is a link between the irrational part of the soul, with which these moral virtues are associated, and the rational part; the link is the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom. Practical wisdom is the proper governing of the irrational part of the soul, which we have stated is the part that is connected with moral virtue. Practical wisdom is the ability to deliberate well, or perhaps it is better to say the ability to direct the irrational part of the soul toward the correct state of character, in the proper way. True morality, then, can be understood as having both 'right character' and 'right reason'. I will examine the nature of the intellectual virtues in more detail below. Presently, however, I will continue with the role of habituation in cultivating moral virtue.25 The goal of the habituation process is twofold with regard to each of these moral virtues. First, the moral agent will have the virtue so ingrained within his person that he will not deliberate at all when a situation arises that demands a courageous act. The virtue has


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become instinctive. It would not only be repugnant to this moral agent to act in a non-virtuous manner, but such an action would never even occur to him. The second goal is related to this unshakeable character. There will be no confusion for the moral agent about what the virtuous act is in any situation. If he is truly courageous, his character will simply be inclined always toward the virtuous act. When these two goals are met, the virtuous person will love virtue, and be repulsed by vice, and secondly, he will have knowledge of how to act virtuously in any given situation. In discussing Aristotle's notion of intellectual virtue, it is first necessary to make a distinction between this second type of virtue and the first, moral virtue. We have seen above that Aristotle considers moral virtues to be the result of habit, and understands them as states of character. For example, we cannot simply instruct someone as to how to be courageous, but rather must train her by engaging her in situations which demand courage. This habituation process ensures that the courageous state of character will be produced in the agent. Intellectual virtues are acquired differently. As they exercise rationality and are not states of character, they are gained through teaching. A further distinction is that unlike moral virtues, intellectual virtues are not understood as means between excess and deficiency. In Book VI, Chapter Three, Aristotle defines intellectual virtues as those states by which we are able to possess truth. These states are five in number: art, scientific knowledge, practical wisdom, philosophic wisdom, and intuitive reason. The intellectual virtues are marked by necessity. They do not concern matters that can change, which is why Aristotle does not include among them states of judgement and opinion. Each of the intellectual virtues is treated individually in the chapters that follow the initial definition. Scientific knowledge is based in demonstration, which Aristotle discusses at length in the Posterior Analytics. Intuitive reasoning is the initial step in the process of acquiring scientific knowledge. Through induction, we are able to arrive at first principles, which we use as starting points in the process of syllogistic reasoning. The intellectual virtue of art is identified with a reasoned state of the capacity to make. The products of art are the result of the

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artisan and, by Aristotle's very definition of art, these products do not arise by nature. Their causes are not internal, which is the case with things that occur by nature, but rather are the artisans that produce them. Hence, Aristotle says, All art is concerned with corning into being, i.e. with contriving and considering how something may come into being which is capable of either being or not being, and whose origin is in the maker and not in the thing made; for art is concerned neither with things that are, or come into being, by necessity, nor with things that do so in accordance with nature. 26 The final two virtues, philosophic wisdom and practical wisdom, pose a problem for Aristotle's ethics, in that they relate to two different conceptions of happiness. Practical wisdom is an intellectual virtue, but serves as the link between the rational and irrational parts of the soul. It is the 'right reason' that directs appetites in the correct way. Aristotle explains this connection between the intellectual virtue of practical wisdom and the moral virtues in Book VI, Chapters Twelve and Thirteen. This is the account of moral happiness. He gives a more detailed account of the second type of happiness, the life of contemplation or philosophic wisdom, in Book X. We'll come back to this second notion of happiness shortly as there seems to be a great tension between it and moral happiness. Practical wisdom acts as the bridge between the intellectual and moral virtues for Aristotle. One can properly understand practical wisdom as 'right reason' to direct the appetites. When the appetites are directed in the right way, the virtuous states of character are produced. These states of character are relative to the particular moral virtues outlined above: courage, temperance, etc. The connection of practical wisdom to moral virtue is intimately related to the notion of perfect virtue. In contrast to what Aristotle calls 'natural virtue', in which one can be said to possess some but not all moral virtues, perfect virtue is described as 'good without qualification'. 27 By this, we understand Aristotle to be advocating the unity of the virtues. Therefore, if someone is truly said to be


21

practically wise, it must also be the case that he possesses all of the moral virtues. Aristotle states: It is clear, then, from what has been said, that it is not possible to be good in the strict sense without practical wisdom, nor practically wise without moral virtue. But in this way we may also refute the dialectical argument whereby it might be contended that the virtues exist in separation from each other; the same man, it might be said is not best equipped by nature for all the virtues, so that he will have already acquired one when he has not yet acquired another. This is possible in respect of the natural virtues, but not in respect of those in respect of which a man is called without qualification good; for with the presence of the one quality, practical wisdom, will be given all the virtues. And it is plain that, even if it were of no practical value, we should have needed it because it is the virtue of the part of us in question; plain too that the choice will not be right without practical wisdom any more than without virtue; for the one determines the end and the other makes us do the things that lead to the end.28 Practical wisdom, properly speaking then, is to be associated with 'perfect virtue' rather than 'natural virtue'. I take Stephen White to be correct in associating natural virtue with moral luck; the agent is disposed toward the right things, but is not unqualifiedly virtuous, because she lacks practical wisdom or 'right reason' to properly direct her actions. For the truly virtuous person, Aristotle's key distinction is in the last sentence of the paragraph cited above: practical wisdom determines the end, while moral virtue or character makes one act in the virtuous way. If one was trained to be courageous without practical wisdom, he could only be said to be 'morally lucky' when he acts in accordance with what that virtue demands. Practical wisdom requires knowledge of the cause, and allows one to know the correct action in situations in which he has not been specifically habituated. Having outlined the relationship between practical wisdom and moral virtue, let us move to the relationship between practical wisdom and the final intellectual virtue on Aristotle's list,

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philosophic wisdom. The pursuit of philosophic wisdom is the superior activity in which human beings can participate. Aristotle makes this clear in both Book VI (1145a, 7), as well as Book X in which he discusses the contemplative life. There is a tension that arises, however, in that Aristotle is advocating two types of happiness. In one sense, we can be happy by the proper cultivation of our character and thus acquire moral virtue. The happy person in this sense is marked by the particular moral virtues, and is directed by practical wisdom. Philosophic wisdom, or contemplation, is the means by which one can be happy in a very different sense than by being morally virtuous. Moral virtue is concerned with the excellent performance of activities pertaining to human beings. However, Aristotle maintains that the human being is not the best thing in the universe, though we do have a rational principle that allows us to contemplate the best things. These things are characterized by their eternal perfection. This notion is exemplified by Aristotle's conception of God, the unmoved mover. When we contemplate God, we are in a sense rising above our own imperfect human condition. Aristotle claims that this contemplative happiness is superior to the happiness gained through the acquisition of moral virtue precisely because the subject matter of the former, God, is better than the subject matter of the latter, human beings. Additionally, contemplative happiness is more self-sufficient than moral happiness. Aristotle states: Now this would seem to be in agreement with both what we have said before and with the truth. For, firstly, this activity [the activity of philosophic wisdom] is the best (since not only is reason the best thing in us, but the objects of reason are the best of knowable objects); and secondly, it is the most continuous, since we can contemplate truth more continuously than we can do anything. And we think happiness has pleasure mingled with it, but the activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures marvelous for their purity and their enduringness, and it is to be expected that those who know will


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pass their time more pleasantly than those who inquire. And the self-sufficiency that is spoken of must belong most to the contemplative activity.29 The notion of self-sufficiency should be explained a bit further. Aristotle's claim that contemplation is more self-sufficient than morally virtuous activity rests in the fact that all the moral virtues require some type of external support. Generosity requires money, temperance requires goods which can be abused such as food and drink, and courage needs situations to prompt responses of fear and confidence in the agent.30 Philosophic wisdom, Aristotle says, 'need[s] external goods, but little, or less than moral virtue does'.31 This notion of self-sufficiency is also helpful in illustrating why Aristotle equates the activity of philosophic wisdom with the divine. God has no need of moral virtues, for we do not think of God's activity as involving money, food, drink or the other external goods that we associate with the moral virtues. If we strip a being of these attributes, Aristotle claims, we are left with pure contemplation. Therefore, he says, 'the activity of God, which surpasses all others in blessedness, must be contemplative; and of human activities, therefore, that which is most akin to this must be most of the nature of happiness'.32 Having established these two very different conceptions of happiness, the contemplative and the moral, Aristotle's ethics now poses a severe problem. These two notions are constantly competing with one another. For if one devotes herself to the cultivation of the moral virtues, the life of contemplation suffers. The moral virtues require interaction with others, and all of the aforementioned external goods, in order that they may be cultivated. Similarly, if one devotes herself purely to the life of contemplation, it would be very difficult to attain a morally virtuous character, and even more difficult to engage in morally virtuous acts. The conflict is due to the fact that these two conceptions of happiness have exclusive subject matters. Moral happiness is concerned with the human entity as a whole, while contemplation focuses on only the best part of the human being; rational thought akin to the activity of God. There have been many attempts to reconcile, or at least to explain this

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conflict.33 Whether any attempts at a reconciliation between the two accounts of happiness have succeeded is certainly a matter for debate, and would be suitable for a project in its own right. To this debate, I will only say that it is clear that Aristotle himself is certainly aware of the tension. Especially in Book X, he advances these two accounts as separate means of attaining happiness. The most telling aspect of the debate may, however, be what Aristotle does not say. While he is well aware that he has given these two competing notions of human happiness, there is no attempt on Aristotle's part to form a harmonious relationship between them. Perhaps Aristotle is subtly telling us there is no possibility for such a relationship. I mention the conflict between contemplative and moral happiness in Aristotle because I contend that it is one of the most important aspects of his ethical thought. However, for my purposes in this book, I am more concerned with the notion of moral happiness, as it is this type of ethics that is most often associated with virtue ethics generally. Having looked briefly at the structure of Aristotle's theory of virtue, I will now turn to what I have earlier termed 'virtue ethics in the present', and give a similar outline of what I take to be the major points of Alasdair Maclntyre's understanding of virtue. Maclntyre's book, After Virtue, is more than a criticism of current moral philosophy. Rather, it is a claim that currently, we no longer do moral philosophy. He begins with an intriguing thought experiment, which he calls 'A Disquieting Suggestion'. He asks the reader to imagine that science as we know and understand it is eradicated. That is, for a period in history, all scientific texts are destroyed and any conception of science properly understood is lost. After this catastrophe, we attempt slowly to reconstruct science, by use of the fragments of scientific texts that remain. While some of the terminology from these texts is used by those attempting to once again do science, the terms themselves are not properly understood by those that use them. In this society, 'Nobody, or almost nobody, realizes that what they are doing is not natural science in any proper sense at all. For everything that they do and say conforms to certain canons of consistency and coherence and those contexts which


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would be needed to make sense of what they are doing have been lost, perhaps irretrievably.'34 The result is that the language of science, and even the way in which we conceive of what science is, is obscured. Subjectivist theories of science that claim they have deduced the proper way of understanding it would abound, and these theories would be altogether incompatible with one another. The thought experiment paints a very disturbing picture, and shows that any discipline could, in theory, be destroyed and rebuilt in such a way that it loses any possibility of being restored to its proper, original understanding. And it is with this disturbing thought experiment in mind that Maclntyre makes perhaps the most important claim in After Virtue: this catastrophe has already in fact taken place, but not in the domain of science. Rather this is the current state of moral philosophy. What are the 'subjectivist' incommensurable moral theories with which we must contend? According to Maclntyre, they are all quite well known to us. Some theories are based on supposed natural or human rights, others take various forms of utilitarianism, and still others are forms of Kantian deontology. All of these theories are able to start from basic first premises and derive true conclusions through valid arguments. However, there is no effective way to compare the premises themselves. For if one person argues from a consequentialist position, and another from a doctrine of natural rights, there will be no common ground with which to make such a comparison. The problem of 'apples and oranges' would prevent any legitimate means of finding an agreement between two such parties. Maclntyre illustrates this by discussing commonly used arguments based on these various subjectivist theories as they pertain to issues of just war, abortion, and the just distribution of goods. The failure to find a universal set of standards upon which to build a moral system thus results in our emotivist society. Maclntyre states, 'Emotivism is the doctrine that all evaluative judgments and more specifically all moral judgments are nothing but expressions of preference, expressions of attitude or feeling, insofar as they are moral or evaluative in character.'35 The set of criteria we use to argue our moral position on a given subject is ultimately

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based only on preferences, feelings or attitudes, none of which are rationally defensible against someone who holds different preferences, feelings or attitudes about the same subject. It is true that rational consistency still plays a role in the various arguments that the emotivist makes. Maclntyre's example is that of saying, 'arson, being destructive of property, is wrong'. A factual judgement is being made here, namely a rational connection between the act of arson and the destruction of property. However, ultimately, one must rationally connect the destruction of property with wrongdoing. This is something that the emotivist will never be able to do. Emotivism can be seen, then, ultimately as a kind of relativism. The implications of it are such that any emotivist claim cannot be justified on anything other than a preference, feeling, or attitude. Therefore, Maclntyre states: Of the self as presented by emotivism we must immediately note: that it cannot be simply or unconditionally identified with any particular moral attitude or point of view (including that of those characters which socially embody emotivism) just because of the fact that its judgments are in the end criterionless. The specifically modern self, the self that I have called emotivist, finds no limits set to that on which it may pass judgment for such limits could only derive from rational criteria for evaluation and, as we have seen, the emotivist self lacks any such criteria. Everything may be criticized from whatever standpoint the self has adopted, including the selfs choice of standpoint to adopt. It is in this capacity of the self to evade any necessary identification with any particular contingent state of affairs that some modern philosophers, both analytic and existentialist, have seen the essence of moral agency.36 Within the context of this discussion of emotivism, it is helpful to keep Maclntyre's thought experiment of the 'Disquieting Suggestion' in mind. Emotivism represents the aftermath of the eradication of moral philosophy. Like the new breed of scientist in Maclntyre's imaginary society, today's moral philosophers, as well as anyone else who attempts to formulate a moral position, fail to produce an


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account that encompasses what morality should actually be. Therefore, all such attempts are subjectivist, incommensurable and incomparable to all rival claims. If our current emotivist perspective represents the aftermath of the eradication of moral philosophy, where in history do we find the eradication itself? Maclntyre identifies it as the Enlightenment. How does the Enlightenment disfigure moral philosophy? Maclntyre's answer to this question is that it abandoned the concept of virtue. While Enlightenment thinkers certainly discussed virtue, the term came to mean something very different compared to the way in which it was understood by the preceding historical traditions. Maclntyre understands these traditions as the Homeric, the ancient and the medieval. However, he understands them as one unified tradition that continually evolved. These traditions, in their basic understanding of ethics, had an important unifying characteristic. They all recognized that ethics, as a discipline, was to be concerned with the good life for human beings. What the Enlightenment did was precisely to change the basic question of ethics. For the question, 'What kind of life ought I live?', requires a conception of the good life that in some way relates to a common human goal or telos. Aristotle's teleological system of nature had been abandoned in the realm of science. For Enlightenment thinkers, the task of moral philosophy then became one of finding a basis for right human action with no appeal to a natural goal or end for human beings. Morality now had to be understood within the context of a mechanistic philosophy and a Copernican revolution in our approach to nature. Maclntyre claims that any project that makes a denial of the human telos is bound to fail from its beginning, for ethics as a discipline depends on the existence of such a conception. He states: Ethics therefore in this [Aristotelian or teleological] view presupposes some account of potentiality and act, some account of the essence of man as a rational animal and above all some account of the human telos. The precepts which enjoin the various virtues and prohibit the vices which are their counterparts instruct how to move from potentiality to act, how to realize our

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue true nature and to reach our true end. To defy them will be to be frustrated and incomplete, to fail to achieve the good of rational happiness which is particularly ours as a species to pursue.37

It is precisely in the rejection of teleology that the enlightenment project gave itself an impossible task. How does one replace the human telos? Some rational account of human beings and their actions must now serve as the foundation for an ethical system. The prime candidates for such a rational account are, according to Maclntyre, given by Hume, Kant and Kierkegaard. All of these accounts have premises that serve to construct valid arguments and reach conclusions that logically follow. However, without a teleological account that serves to answer the question, 'What is the good life?', these accounts have no solid foundation. Their coexistence and incommensurability resembles the same conflict between ethical positions that Maclntyre recognizes in our own emotivist society. It is this stalemate that Maclntyre sees as the most significant aspect of the Enlightenment's ethical project: 'Indeed to the present day, Kierkegaard, Kant and Hume do not lack ingenious, academic disciples in the debate between whom the continuing power only the negative arguments of each tradition against the other is the most significant feature.' 38 We'll return to Maclntyre's critique of the Enlightenment in the final chapter of the book. The Enlightenment's failure leads Maclntyre in Chapter Nine to the stark question, Nietzsche or Aristotle? Here, Nietzsche is credited with effectively showing the failure of the Enlightenment project. Maclntyre agrees with Nietzsche that an attempt such as Kant's that appeals to a supposedly universal set of rational principles to govern all actions fails, as does any other, such as Hume's sentiment, or Kierkegaard's choice of the ethical life over the aesthetic. Where Maclntyre disagrees with Nietzsche, however, is in the latter's similar treatment of the Aristotelian tradition. So the question of Nietzsche or Aristotle really amounts to this: was Nietzsche correct in rejecting all of the history of moral philosophy, or only in his rejection of the Enlightenment project? And Maclntyre's answer to the question of Aristotle or Nietzsche is


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clearly, 'Aristotle'. His task is now to describe the nature of the virtues within this classical or Aristotelian tradition. By his own admission, the tradition that Maclntyre is concerned with is not easily labelled. Above I refer to it as classical or Aristotelian, but neither of these terms properly conveys the tradition that Maclntyre discusses. He states: When I first spoke of the tradition with which I am concerned in Chapter 5, I used the equally misleading expression, 'classical morality', equally misleading since 'classical' is too wide, just as 'Aristotelian' is too narrow. But although the tradition is not easy to name, it is not too difficult to recognize. After Aristotle, it always uses the Nicomachean Ethics and the Politics as key texts, when it can, but it never surrenders itself wholly to Aristotle. For it is a tradition which always sets itself in a relationship of dialogue with Aristotle, rather than in any relationship of simple assent.39 Aristotle's ethics is therefore the central core of the tradition to which Maclntyre here refers; yet as he says, to claim that Aristotle represents this tradition independently is mistaken. In fact, perhaps the most telling reason for this is, Maclntyre claims, that this tradition starts before Aristotle, in the tradition of Homeric virtue. There are four main periods that contribute to the tradition prior to the Enlightenment. 40 The first is the Homeric period just mentioned, the second Athenian virtue prior to Aristotle, the third Aristotle, and the fourth the medieval period. What is it about these four periods that unites them, making them one tradition according to Maclntyre? Most importantly, all of them focus their understanding of ethics on the central question, 'What is the good life for man?' No doubt each of the periods gives a different answer to this question, but all of them agree that this is the question that ethics poses; and it is also the question the Enlightenment ignores. Further, despite their differences, these four periods have the same general answer: 'The good life for man is the virtuous life.' The virtues in the Homeric tradition are particular kinds of excellence that apply to that particular kind of society. We identify

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these virtues as those of the proud warrior, and they deal with physical strength, loyalty and courage. The virtuous soldier of the Homeric era would no doubt be an anachronism in our own society; for us, virtue is different, because the society and tradition that forms our own moral understanding is different. But the Homeric era, as a particular point in time from which our own tradition progressed, still serves a purpose in that it shows us the proper way to understand ethics. Maclntyre states: [Wjhat we have to learn from heroic societies is twofold: first that all morality is always to some degree tied to the socially local and particular and that the aspirations of morality of modernity to a universality freed from all particularity is an illusion; and secondly that there is no way to possess the virtues except as part of a tradition in which we inherit them and our understanding of them from a series of predecessors in which series heroic societies hold first place.41 While these Homeric societies may never have in fact existed historically, their significance remains in that they contribute to the tradition. Those who inherited their stories believed they existed, and the account of the good life in Homeric literature was the moral backdrop for these believers' own societies. Fifth century (BC) Athens is one such group that inherited the virtues from the Homeric tradition, and it represents the second of the four periods that Maclntyre associates with the classical tradition. The virtues in Athens were constituted by the excellent performance of the specific roles involved in the life of the citizens of that particular city-state. The Homeric virtues no longer apply in the way that they did for the characters in the heroic age. Part of Plato's goal in dialogues such as the Meno, Euthyphro and Republic was to show the inadequacies of the Homeric virtues in his own time. While sophistry made critical points about the nature of virtue amounting to a kind of relativism, it did not abandon the proper framework for understanding virtue itself. As is the case in the Homeric tradition, Athenian virtue still consisted of the excellent performance of social roles within a particular social context.


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Maclntyre contends, 'All do take for granted that the milieu in which the virtues are to be exercised and in terms of which they are to be defined is the/w/u.' 42 Within the social structure of the polis, or any community for that matter, the people to whom the virtues apply will always be in the context of a particular kind of narrative. All of us are characters linked to one another in a common story, influenced by the tradition into which we are born. The narrative context of a citizen of fifth-century Athens is different than that of a Homeric warrior. But both exist as characters in a narrative. Maclntyre states, 'that generally to adopt a stance on the virtues will be to adopt a stance on the narrative character of human life'.43 Aristotle, whose Nicomachean Ethics and Politics we have already observed in Maclntyre's discussion constitute the canon of the classical tradition, is himself a member of the narrative that begins in the Homeric era and progresses to fifth-century Athens. By Maclntyre's own admission, treating Aristotle as a part of a tradition is a very un-Aristotelian thing to do. Aristotle thinks he is giving us the virtues of a universal human being, since the Athenian polis represents the maturation of the human species. The polis is both specific and universal in the same way that the adult is a specific form of the species, and the form that expresses its essential or universal characteristics. So Aristotle claims his ethics to be universal, while it is in fact particular, according to Maclntyre. While Aristotle believed his philosophy to be a culmination of the tradition, a correction of its past mistakes, Maclntyre contends that the Aristotelian project must be properly understood within the same historical framework as both the Homeric tradition and fifthcentury Athens. Again, Maclntyre's central claim is that the virtues must be understood in the narrative context, and for Aristotle that context is Athens (384-322 BC). Aristotle discusses the virtues within this context as well as in the general framework of his teleological metaphysics. Human beings have a certain nature, which can be demonstrated by way of syllogistic reasoning. And like all things in nature, humans have a natural end or telos. They require certain goods, some of which are external, in order that they might reach their end. As we saw above in the discussion of Aristotle, human

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nature is such that the end is only met when humans exist in a social environment. Within the Athenian polis, according to Aristotle, realizing the human telos is possible. It is possible when, along with practical wisdom, people's characters are habituated in the proper way, thus making them virtuous. After Aristotle the classical tradition that Maclntyre discusses continues. However, not all philosophical enquiries following Aristotle are part of that tradition. Stoicism is a notable example; it is not properly considered a part of the tradition because it abandons a notion of teleology. The medieval tradition, however, retains such a notion and is therefore the final period that Maclntyre discusses; final because the Enlightenment, which follows it, marks the end of a teleological understanding of human life and signals a period in which nature is understood mechanistically instead. Christianity certainly changes the virtues, and in fact some of the virtues of the medieval period would even have been called vices by Aristotle, humility for example. However, the basic framework in which the medieval virtues are understood remains. They are understood within the context of a particular social setting and culture, and represent the excellent performance of the activities essential to a good life within that culture.44 In the medieval period, despite the differences from Aristotle's specific description of virtue, Maclntyre claims: The narrative therefore in which human life is embodied had a form in which the subject — which may be one or more individual persons, or, for example, the people of Israel, or the citizens of Rome — is set a task in the completion of which lies their peculiar appropriation of the human good; the way towards the completion of that task is barred by a variety of inward and outward evils. The virtues are those qualities which enable the evils to be overcome, the task to be accomplished, the journey to be completed.45 The Enlightenment, in its attempt to strip away all elements of this traditional context from the individual, abandons what the Homeric Age, fifth-century Athens, Aristotle, and the medieval period all


33

had in common. Maclntyre sees his task as one of recovering virtue, although differently than any of the ways in which these four historical periods in the classical tradition conceived of it. For Aristotle, the virtues are the excellent performance of the roles that pertain to the natural human function. Therefore, they are understood in the context of what Maclntyre terms his 'metaphysical biology'. Part of Maclntyre's task is to construct an account of virtue that can exist outside of this framework. The account he puts forth is, therefore, not vulnerable to the criticisms of Aristotle that attacked this metaphysical biology. Maclntyre's account has three main parts, which we can term practice, unity of life, and community. The discussion begins with his description of practice, and he means something very specific here. He states: By 'practice' I am going to mean any coherent and complex form of socially established cooperative human activity through which goods internal to that form of activity are realized in the course of trying to achieve those standards of excellence which are appropriate to, and partially definitive of, that form of activity, with the result that human powers to achieve excellence, and the human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended.46 Examples of practices that Maclntyre gives are football, architecture, the arts and scientific enquiry. Chess is also a practice and this particular practice serves as the example by which Maclntyre makes the distinction between external and internal goods. If we take a seven-year-old child and teach him to play chess, we might initially reward him with candy. The candy would be an external good: external because it has nothing to do with the actual practice of playing chess. We would hope that as the child continues to play chess, he would begin to be motivated by that practice's internal goods. These goods can only be experienced within the practice of chess itself, such as the particular kinds of analytic skills and strategy that that practice requires in order for it to be performed well. Practices progress through history. Portrait painting, Maclntyre

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claims, develops throughout history, and what makes a particular painting excellent in one time period may not do so in another. The concept of internal goods, however, does not change. These goods will never be such that they can be enjoyed outside of the practice of portrait painting, however that practice might develop. The external goods could be any number of benefits that result from a practice. In the chess example, the external good is candy, but other external goods could include money, fame, prestige, or even the thrill of a vanquished foe. Virtue, Maclntyre contends, is related to the internal goods of a practice. He states, 'A virtue is an acquired human quality the possession and exercise of which tends to enable us to achieve those goods which are internal to practices and the lack of which effectively prevents us from achieving such goods.'47 In our social context, we engage in many different kinds of practices with one another as they relate to our particular social roles. We are among other things fathers, mothers, citizens, lawyers and artists. The practices that relate to these roles have various kinds of internal goods, and when we are able to acquire these goods well, we possess virtue. But practices alone are not sufficient to give a proper account of virtue. There are many activities, torture for example, that could be considered practices under Maclntyre's classification. We certainly would not consider this activity to have any share in virtue. Maclntyre agrees: That the virtues need initially to be defined and explained with reference to the notion of a practice thus in no way entails approval of all practices in all circumstances. That the virtues — as the objection itself presupposed — are defined not in terms of good and right practices, but of practices, does not entail or imply that practices as actually carried through at particular times and places do not stand in need of moral criticism.48 Maclntyre's response to the problem of associating virtue only with practices is that it fails to account for the aforementioned claim about the narrative element of human life. For someone who engaged in these seemingly evil practices may excel in those


35

particular practices, but his life as a whole would most likely be defective. Thus we must consider the second major part of Maclntyre's account, the unity of human life. Human actions, and more specifically practices, cannot be divorced from the particular context in which they take place. If one attempts to find meaning in someone's action, one cannot help but to put them in some type of context. One can interpret the same action as writing a sentence, finishing a book, trying to secure tenure, or solving a philosophical problem. All of these would be a satisfactory answer to the question, 'What is this person doing?' The narrative element of the person engaging in the action is crucial to our understanding. Maclntyre claims that without a narrative understanding of the human condition, all actions become unintelligible. The question, 'What is she doing?', as we have just seen, can be answered in a plethora of different ways. But apart from some idea of the circumstances leading up to her action and the way in which that action in some way continues her 'story' in the way that she wants, we cannot begin to understand the action. Thus, the Enlightenment's attempt to 'strip away' all of these kinds of circumstances so that a universal moral rule could be determined was doomed to fail. We understand what such a rule would need to be conceptually. It would bind all human beings despite their culture, community or historical perspective. It would apply in the same way to an Athenian soldier as it would for an American businessman. However, such a rule can never be formulated, because we have removed the fundamental element of ethics from our theory. Maclntyre states, 'From the standpoint of individualism I am what I myself choose to be. I can always, if I wish to, put in question what are taken to be the merely contingent social features of my existence.'49 This individualist standpoint however, ignores the narrative tradition that encapsulates our lives: What I am, therefore, is in key part what I inherit, a specific past that is present to some degree in my present. I find myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition. It

36

Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue was important when I characterized the concept of a practice to notice that practices always have histories and that at any given moment what a practice is depends on a mode of understanding it which has been transmitted often through many generations. And thus, insofar as virtues sustain the relationships required for practices, they have to sustain relationships to the past — and to future — as well as in the present. But the traditions through which particular practices are transmitted and reshaped never exist in isolation from larger social traditions.50

Our practices cannot be separated from the stories that constitute our lives. The society we are born into and the tradition we inherit determine the particular roles in which we must perform to live the good life. Each individual's story begins at birth and ends at death. The roles the individual has are many, as we stated above: mothers, fathers and workers. But we must add to this: mothers, fathers and workers in twenty-first century America for example. And being a good father in this tradition is no doubt different from being a good father in ancient Greece. Thus, Maclntyre concludes, 'The unity of human life is the unity of a narrative quest'.51 Finally, we come to the third element of Maclntyre's understanding of virtue, what I have called community. My narrative quest is not your narrative quest, but they overlap. There is a communal element to the good life within the tradition that the members of a particular culture inherit. Maclntyre states, T am part of their [others'] story, as they are part of mine. The narrative of any one life is an interlocking set of narratives.' 52 The virtues are not only the qualities that enable us to engage successfully in, and sustain, practices. They are also part of the communal sharing of narratives within a particular society, with all that it inherits from history. What I have sketched in this overview is not comprehensive. Maclntyre's discussion is rich and detailed, and my goal here is only to give an account that will be helpful within the scope of my own project, namely to consider Rousseau's discussion of virtue and how it fits into the progression of ethical thought from the ancient tradition of Aristotle to contemporary philosophers like Maclntyre.


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In the next three chapters, we will look closely at what I take to be the most important texts in uncovering Rousseau's account of virtue. In the final chapter, we'll return to Aristotle and Maclntyre in an attempt to formulate a Rousseauian theory of virtue. Notes 1 I cannot include a list of all these authors, but I should at least mention G. E. M. Anscombe, Iris Murdoch, John McDowell, Phillippa Foot and Michael Slote. 2 I speak here primarily of moral virtues and practical wisdom. It may be that contemplative wisdom does not require a social context in which to be exercised. More will be said on the distinction between moral happiness and contemplative happiness later in this chapter. 3 Aristotle, The Basic Works of Aristotle, Richard McKeon, ed. (New York: Random House, 1941), 1253a 3. 4 Ibid., 1253a 1. 5 Ibid., 1253a 19-20. 6 Ibid., 1253a 30. 7 David Keyt, 'Three Basic Theorems in Aristotle's Polities', Phronesis, 32 (1987), pp. 54-79, 54. 8 In his book, Nature, Justice, and Rights in Aristotle's Politics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), Fred Miller discusses Keyt's arguments, and formulates a way of reconciling the state's priority and the natural sociability of human beings. 9 Rousseau would of course disagree vehemently with Aristotle that there could ever be such a thing as a 'natural slave'. 10 Aristotle (1941), 1252b 11-17. 11 Ibid., 1252b 27-32. 12 Ibid., 1252a 26-1252b. We note here again that the fact that both forms of relationship — male/female and master/slave — are natural does not mean that they are both natural in the sense of being primitive or chronologically first. 13 Rousseau would not dispute this; however, the degree to which the male and female depend upon one another is certainly different. In the pure state of nature, as we have examined

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14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24

25

26 27

28 29 30

Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue above, the male and female engage in the procreative act, and leave each other immediately. Ibid., 1252b 9-10. Ibid., 1252b 11-12. As we shall see in the following chapter, Rousseau's position, that slavery is always an unjust violation of nature, would therefore make little sense to Aristotle; he would claim that Rousseau is attacking a structure engrained in the very nature of human beings. Ibid., 1253b 23-25. Ibid., 1256b 7-8, 27-33. Ibid., 1253a 7-14. Ibid., 1252b 11. Aristotle abstracts from these existing forms those of his own polis, while Rousseau, as we shall see in what follows, regards these existing forms as problematic. Rousseau understands them as the result of complicated causal developments. This is a reflection of the 'Copernican revolution' in science: what we perceive is merely an appearance, not the truth. Ibid., 1103a 3-6. Ibid., 1115a 7-8. Justice is not as simple a mean to identify as the others. He gives several ways of thinking about justice, some involving means, and some not. However, we can still think of a 'just person' as having a character habituated to the virtue of justice. Aristotle's discussion of this is in the Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, Chapters 1—7. This notion is present in Rousseau's theory of moral education as well, particularly in the Emile, which we will discuss in Chapter Three. Aristotle (1941), 1140a 11-15. For a thorough discussion of the distinction between 'natural virtue' and 'perfect virtue', see Steven White's article, 'Natural virtue and perfect virtue in Aristotle' (1992). Aristotle (1941), 1144b 30-1145a 6. Ibid., 1177a 19-29. Rousseau would likely agree with this. It is impossible for savage man to exhibit these social virtues. In order for the social virtues


31 32 33

34 35 36 37 38 39 40

41 42 43 44

45 46

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to come into existence, society needs to be formed. Natural sentiment can now be expressed in new forms, i.e. social virtues of generosity, temperance and courage. Ibid., 1177b 25. Ibid., 1178b 22-25. Some of the more fruitful discussions of the conflict are advanced by, among others, John Cooper, A. Rorty and Julia Annas. Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 1. Ibid., p. 12. Ibid., p. 31, original emphasis. Ibid., p. 52. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., p. 165. After the Enlightenment, there are attempts to construct accounts of virtue. The two most significant of these that Maclntyre discusses are those of Ben Franklin and Jane Austen. Franklin's account fails primarily because the virtues seem to be merely an effective tool to promote utility. They are not good dispositions in themselves. Austen's account fairs better. It describes the excellent performance of a set of roles within the context of a very particular kind of marriage and social class. Austen's account is according to Maclntyre the last genuine discussion of virtue. Maclntyre (1984), p. 126. Ibid., p. 135. Ibid., p. 144. We have just seen above that Maclntyre says Aristotle would likely disagree with his system being understood as part of a tradition rather than as a universally applicable system. One can say the same thing of the medieval tradition. Like Aristotle, they saw their account as universal. Ibid., p. 175. Ibid., p. 187. But how does one interpret this in more concrete terms for a society like the Athenian polis? There are practices related to certain natural roles, such as masters and slaves, all of

40

47 48 49 50 51 52

Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue which should be practiced well depending upon what role nature has given to a particular person. The Enlightenment idea of human equality breaks from all this: the society is based on essentially equal individuals who have different ideas about what they want to achieve and try out on their own. They are like the individuals in Kant's conjectural history — stepping forward into the unknown, without guidance from God/Nature, as interpreted by a paternalistic State. Ibid., p. 191. Ibid., p. 200. Ibid., p. 220. Ibid., p. 221. Ibid., p. 219. Ibid., p. 218.

Chapter 2

Virtue and the State of Nature

By the time Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality was published in 1755, he was already famous in academic circles. The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts had cast him into the spotlight five years earlier. But if one is interested in finding a starting point in Rousseau's thought, the Second Discourse is the logical place to do so.1 For this work expresses more explicitly than any other, Rousseau's conception of human history, the socialization process, the origins of reason and morality, and perhaps most importantly, his view of human nature. While the Second Discourse remains one of Rousseau's most important and influential writings, its basic project had already been undertaken by several other prominent philosophers in the modern period, most notably Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The project of these authors was to find a basis for ethics and politics that was to be rooted in a basic understanding of human nature that was objective and universal. To do this, the method was to strip away all aspects of human beings that could be traced to the social conventions of any given culture. If one could strip away all these conventions, even if it could only be done in a theoretical sense, one would then be able to identify human nature at its core. The significance of this is that the conclusions that could be drawn would apply to all people despite differences that exist due to nationality, religion or historical context. And so, unlike Aristotle, whose natural teleology prompted him to look forward to the final cause or lelos of human beings, these modern thinkers took the opposite approach, and looked backward. The fundamental question is therefore not about the goal for which nature intended human beings to live, but rather, a question of how human beings existed in a purely natural state and moved from it to present-day civil society.

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It makes sense, then, to begin our inquiry with a brief discussion of Thomas Hobbes: his account of nature, human beings and the Social Contract that binds us together. His masterpiece, the Leviathan, published in 1651, is one of the cornerstones of the modern philosophical period. This work, in addition to De Give, or The Citizen, provides the best insight into Hobbes' thought on matters of ethics and political philosophy. Hobbes was largely influenced by the revolutionary ideas of Kepler, Bacon and especially Galileo. He saw in these authors a new way to conceive the world, one that provided a welcome alternative to traditional Aristotlelianism. In 1628, Hobbes happened upon a copy of Euclid's Elements. He was immediately inspired by the method of geometry; for here was a system that could demonstrate necessary truths from axioms that were undeniable. Hobbes sought to employ the same type of necessary reasoning to understand human beings, in everything from the bodily movements that we make to the formation of political regimes. The result is a mechanistic, materialist view of human beings. The same laws that govern the movements of inanimate physical bodies can also explain our physiological and even psychological make-up. Human beings, for Hobbes, are nothing more than complex machines that are subject to these mechanistic laws. In terms of their philosophical scope, therefore, De Give and the Leviathan are not merely works on political philosophy, though that has certainly been their most historically significant legacy. They also give us a comprehensive metaphysical account of the universe. Once again, this account, like others in the modern period such as Descartes', explicitly reject the Aristotelian view of nature. This rejection was due in large part to advances in science, such as discoveries in astronomy, that showed Aristotle was wrong about the position of the earth, the sun and the orbits of other planets. The rejection is evident on a number of levels, not the least of which is Hobbes' denial of final causality. According to the Aristotelian doctrine of substance, it is far more important to understand the goal or end for which nature intends a given thing than to understand the material parts that make it up, or the process that led up to its creation. But for Hobbes, these material parts and these


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processes are the key to understanding everything. In the same way that a geometric claim can be understood by tracing back through the various calculations that prove it, we can understand bodily motion and even human behaviour by similarly tracing back the chain of events that led up to them. Each event in the chain is simply a mechanistic reaction, almost like a line of dominos, with the fall of each being caused by the fall of the one before it. One consequence of this view is that it ultimately entails a strict determinism, and thus, Hobbes is committed to the position that free will is merely an illusion. But Hobbes is completely comfortable with this position, though it may seem paradoxical that a philosophy that stresses the importance of establishing a particular kind of political regime would also claim that all of our actions are ultimately out of our control. To understand Rousseau's project in the Second Discourse, our concern with Hobbes is not so much to reconcile his ethical and political thought with his metaphysical determinism. Rather, it is the account of human nature in the Leviathan and De Give that will serve as an important foil to Rousseau. In De Give, Hobbes opens with a discussion of human beings in a state without civil society, which he calls the state of nature. With Aristotle no doubt in mind, he begins with a claim that the natural state of human beings is not that of society: The greatest part of those men who have written aught concerning commonwealths, either suppose, or require us, or beg of us to believe, that man is a creature born fit for society. The Greeks call him ^c&ov noXniKov; and on this foundation they so build up the doctrine of civil society, as if for the preservation of peace, and the government of mankind, there were nothing else necessary, than that men should agree to make certain covenants and conditions together, which themselves should then call laws. Which axiom, though received by most, is yet certainly false, and an error proceeding from our too slight contemplation of human nature. For they who shall more narrowly look into the causes for which men come together, and delight in each other's company, shall easily find that this

44

Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue happens not because naturally it could happen no otherwise, but by accident.2

The project that Aristotle undertook in the Politics, as well as that of any other work of political philosophy that made the claim that humans were social by nature, was therefore doomed to fail even before it started. For its entire foundation is erroneous. Instead of claiming that society is part of human nature, Hobbes suggests instead that society is an invention, one that could have easily not come about at all. Like all inventions, society is created because the inventors perceive some sort of advantage that they will glean from it. Society's primary benefit is protection; by nature, all human beings are more or less equal in the physical sense. There may be some differences among them; one might be slightly faster or stronger than another, but these differences are insignificant because none of them are so great that any one person has no reason to fear others. And this is the motivation for society, 'that the original of all great and lasting societies consisted not in the mutual good will men had towards each other, but in the mutual fear they had of each other'.3 In the state of nature, human beings are in a state of war, the war of all against all, because these human beings have a desire and will to hurt each other. This is not because there is something pleasurable in itself about the prospect of hurting another, but rather because in nature there is a limited supply of resources for which these people compete. And so in addition to the occasional desire to hurt others out of vanity or perceived insults, Hobbes says: [T]he most frequent reason why men desire to hurt each other, ariseth hence, that many men at the same time have an appetite to the same thing; which yet very often they can neither enjoy in common, nor yet divide it; whence it follows that the strongest must have it, and who is strongest must be decided by the sword.4 Human beings are, by their nature, individualistic, self-interested and have no fundamental desires to do anything that they do not perceive to be directly beneficial to them. We must keep in mind that human nature, in this egoistical sense, does not change; this is


45

simply the kind of beings that we are, according to Hobbes. In the state of nature, there are no covenants, no laws, no treatises and no personal relationships. And so it is not difficult to see why Hobbes describes the state of nature as the most brutal kind of war, the war of every man against every other. From this egoistic view of human nature, Hobbes moves to a discussion of natural rights. Natural rights, for Hobbes, are quite different than those of, say, Locke, who in his Second Treatise of Government advocates more familiar candidates such as life, liberty and property.5 Rather, Hobbes describes natural rights as stemming from human nature itself, which as we have seen, is simply a motivation toward our own self-interest in the threatening war of the state of nature: Among so many dangers therefore, as the natural lusts of men do daily threaten each other withal, to have a care of one's self is not a matter so scornfully to be looked upon, as if so be there had not been a power and will left in one to have done otherwise. For every man is desirous of what is good for him, and shuns what is evil, but chiefly of natural evils, which is death; and this be doth, by a certain impulsion of nature, no less than what whereby a stone moves downward. It is therefore neither absurd, nor reprehensible, neither against the dictates of true reason, for a man to use all his endeavors to preserve and defend his body and the members thereof from death and sorrows. But that which is not contrary to right reason, that all men account to be done justly, and with right; neither by the word right is anything else signified, than that liberty which every man hath to make use of his natural faculties according to right reason. Therefore the first foundation of natural right is this, that every man as much as in him lies endeavor to protect his life and members.6 There are several key points in this quote that ought to be noted. First, Hobbes says that to use all of one's efforts to protect oneself, even at the expense of others, is neither absurd, 'nor reprehensible'. So while some, including Rousseau, see Hobbes' account as extremely pessimistic and even heartless, Hobbes would basically

46


say that we ought not to beat ourselves up over our nature. Human beings did not choose to be this way; they simply are this way. Second, it is not difficult to see how this notion of natural rights plays out in the state of nature itself. If every human being has the right to do whatever he or she deems necessary to preserve his or her well-being, and the only judge of what one's well-being is rests with oneself, there will be obvious conflicts. As we have seen above, Hobbes says that the most frequent reason that human beings injure one another is that there are often situations in which there is one thing that is desired by two or more people. As Hobbes describes the state of nature, the image is always primitive, as there is no cooperation yet. But certainly there are needs, the most basic of which are food and shelter. So we might imagine that in the state of nature, a man comes upon a piece of food: he realizes that eating this piece of food will contribute to his well-being and, because he has a natural right to do anything he wishes to preserve his wellbeing, he is within his rights to take it. But now imagine that a second man comes on the scene just as the first man is about to eat the piece of food. Like the first man, this second man also realizes that eating the piece of food will contribute to his well-being. And because he is within his natural rights to do whatever he wishes to preserve his well-being, he knocks the first man unconscious and takes the food from him. According to the laws of nature and natural rights, this second man acted within his rights when he injured the first. Imagine that the first man, after he wakes up, realizes what happened and now sees the second man as a threat to his own well-being. He therefore seeks out the second man and kills him. The actions of both men in this example are all permissible, assuming that by permissible we simply mean that the agent acts within his or her rights. What Hobbes tells us about natural rights is that while they are based in our human nature to seek to preserve our well-being, the state of nature itself is not at all conducive to anyone's self-preservation. Everyone having the right to basically do whatever one wants is actually the same thing as no one having any rights at all; because any injury on the part of one person is the result of another person acting permissibly. Our typical understanding of rights only makes sense because


47

there are limitations. And Hobbes is clearly aware of this, stating, 'For although any man might say of every thing, this is mine, yet could not enjoy it, by reason of his neighbour, who having equal right, and equal power, would pretend the same thing to be his.'7 Why do people decide to leave the state of nature in favour of civil society? It is simply due to the fact that it is more beneficial for each person to give up his or her natural rights to all things, in favour of limited rights, so long as those limits apply to everyone else as well. And so, to avoid the brutishness and danger in the state of nature, people come together in what Hobbes calls the 'Social Contract', thus uniting themselves for their own protection. Once again it is imperative to note that this coming together has no altruistic motives. One person does not think that the suffering of others is something tragic that needs to be prevented by the formation of a society with rules and laws; it is simply in everyone's self-interest to do so. The last point that we should discuss with regard to Hobbes is how the state of civil society is maintained. It is important to remember that although human beings leave the state of nature in favour of civil society, human nature remains the same: we are motivated purely by self-interest. So in order for society to work, with its laws and covenants, it must be set up in such a way that people at least perceive it to be in their self-interest to obey these laws and covenants. This, Hobbes says, can only be done through terror; that is, the sovereign authority of the state must make the penalties for breaking the laws so severe as to outweigh the perceived benefit in breaking them. Thus, Hobbes says in the Leviathan: The final cause, end, or design of men, who naturally love liberty, and upon themselves, and dominion over others, in the introduction of that restraint upon themselves, in which we see them live in commonwealths, is the foresight of their own preservation, and of a more contented life thereby; that is to say, of getting themselves out from that miserable condition of war, which is necessarily consequent, as hath been shown, to the natural passions of men, when there is no visible power to keep

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue them in awe, and tie them by fear of punishment to the performance of their covenants.8

The Hobbesian account is certainly persuasive in many ways. If we doubt this egoistic view of human nature, Hobbes asks, how can we explain the egoism we see all around us? What would happen if, for instance, all threats of punishment were taken away? Would we nobly carry on abiding by the rules, and treating each other fairly, simply because it is 'the right thing to do'? Why is it, Hobbes asks, that we lock our doors at night, or arm ourselves when we travel? But while Hobbes gives us a persuasive account, is it the best account? Is there another way of conceiving human nature that makes as much or even more sense? I think the best way to approach Rousseau's philosophy, specifically the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, is to keep these questions in mind. For Rousseau will take on a very similar project, carefully exploring what human beings are by nature, as well as how and why they moved from this state to present-day civil society. In the end, the reader must look at the two competing views of human nature, Hobbes' and Rousseau's and decide which of them is more plausible. The specific theme that I'd like to focus on in my analysis of this text is what I'll call the notion of 'uncorrupted goodness' of human beings. I think this theme is key in understanding Rousseau's general account of virtue. The Second Discourse is Rousseau's response to a question raised by the Academy of Dijon: 'What is the origin of inequality among men; and is it authorized by natural law?'9 Rousseau claims that this question is one of the most important in philosophy, and that the primary problem that we have is that we do not really understand the nature of man sufficiently enough to answer it. For what experiments could we perform to properly observe man in his natural state? In the 'Preface', Rousseau claims that there are two principles that are 'anterior to reason', which come to us from the voice of nature. The first of these principles is self-preservation. This principle is not terribly controversial when it is examined alongside other popular theories of the natural state of human beings, such as those of Hobbes or Locke. As human beings, we have a drive to protect ourselves from the gravest evils, death being


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the most significant. Above we saw Hobbes state, 'It is therefore neither absurd, nor reprehensible, neither against the dictates of true reason, for a man to use all his endeavours to preserve and defend his body and the members thereof from death and sorrows.' Rousseau's language is similar: '[The first principle] interests us ardently in our well-being and our self-preservation.'10 But as we have seen, for Hobbes, this fundamental natural principle is the only drive that human beings have, and is the motivation for all our actions. This is true in the state of nature and in civil society. For Rousseau, however, the principle of self-preservation is only one part of our nature. The second principle he calls 'pity'. Rousseau describes it as a natural repugnance to see any sensitive being perish or suffer, especially other human beings. Human beings in the state of nature are ultimately motivated by both of these principles according to Rousseau. Part One of the Second Discourse gives the reader a picture of natural man, whom Rousseau calls 'savage man'. I will examine some of the more critical aspects of this picture to demonstrate the notion of uncorrupted goodness that comes from nature. Part One is divided into two main sections that discuss man in the state of nature. The first examines man in the physical sense, while the second discusses what Rousseau calls the 'metaphysical or moral' side of natural man. The purpose of this first section is to illustrate how human beings could have survived at all in this pre-social environment. Guarding himself against the possible objection that human beings are not self-sufficient, and therefore must have always relied on each other, Rousseau claims that natural man is significantly more resilient than civilized man. While he wants to make no claims about the peculiar physical differences that might have existed between human beings in the state of nature and human beings now, Rousseau does assert that the noble savage is far stronger and much better able to endure the hardships that come from living without clothing, shelter, tools and medicine. Savage man is therefore completely self-sufficient, and functions quite well in what we consider, as civilized people, to be a treacherous and threatening environment. In comparing the two, Rousseau states:

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue The savage man's body being the only implement he knows, he employs it for various uses of which, through lack of training, our bodies are incapable; our industry deprives us of the strength and agility that necessity obliges him to acquire. If he had an axe, would his wrist break such strong branches? If he had a sling, would he throw a stone so hard? If he had a ladder, would he climb a tree so nimbly? If he had a horse, would he run so fast? Give civilized man time to assemble all his machines around him and there can be no doubt that he will easily overcome savage man. But if you want to see an even more unequal fight, put them, naked and disarmed, face to face, and you will soon recognize the advantage of having all of one's strength at one's disposal, of always being ready for any event, and of always carrying oneself, so to speak, entirely with one.11

While Rousseau does not want to attribute to savage man any significant anatomical difference from civilized man, the two are extremely different physically. Civilized man is clearly not selfsufficient; if he were to attempt to live without all of his machines in the state of nature, he certainly would perish. However, savage man has all of his faculties and powers within himself. He has no need of such machines, and in fact has no concept of them to begin with. Savage man is robust, strong, and lives independently from the various inventions that civilized people deem 'necessities'. Rousseau then moves to a discussion of man from the metaphysical or moral point of view. In this discussion, there are several key elements that differentiate man from all other animals. We have already seen mentioned, in the 'Preface', the two principles of self-preservation and sentiment, which are evident by the light of nature. These two principles, however, can be observed in other animals as well. In addition to these, Rousseau discusses three other faculties that human beings possess, which are unique to him alone; these are freedom, perfectibility and reason. Rousseau's language is basically Cartesian when he explains the nature of all non-human animals. Each is, he says, 'an ingenious machine, to which nature has given senses in order to revitalize itself and guarantee itself, to a certain point, from all that tends to upset it


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or destroy it'.12 We observe, however, that animals act always according to these instincts, and infer that they do not have freedom. He gives the example that a pigeon will starve even if it had before it a basin filled with the best meats; a cat would likewise starve if it had access to fruits and grains, although both animals could easily survive by eating the food in front of them. Rousseau does grant that because animals have senses, they do in fact have ideas, and in this respect their difference from humans is only a matter of degree. It is not in this capacity that human beings have freedom. Rather, whereas nature commands all animals both human and non-human through instinct, humans have the unique capacity to act or refuse to act on this command. Freedom of the will is a spiritual capacity that cannot be explained or understood mechanistically. Here we see another fundamental difference between Rousseau and Hobbes, as the latter denies the existence of free will based on a deterministic materialism. The second faculty that differentiates man from all other creatures is what Rousseau calls 'perfectibility'. All other animals, he claims, reach their full potential a few months after their birth; in addition, the species of the animal is also limited in this way. For after a thousand years, any non-human animal species will remain exactly the same as it was in the first year of that thousand. Freedom has been defined as the ability of a person to resist instinct, that is, to turn away from the voice of nature. While these exercises of free will may occur first in the most simple and innocent of ways, the use of a tool, covering oneself with an animal skin, etc., it is in the long process of such compounded events that our species has indeed changed, and changed very significantly. Rousseau's discussion of the faculty of perfection is very pessimistic: It would be sad for us to be forced to agree that this distinctive and almost unlimited faculty is the source of all man's misfortunes; that it is this faculty which, by dint of time, draws him out of that original condition in which he would pass tranquil and innocent days; that it is this faculty which, bringing to flower over the centuries his enlightenment and his errors, his vices and his virtues, in the long run makes him the tyrant of himself and of nature. 13

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The faculty of perfectibility requires a long series of chance events in order to significantly change human beings. In the pure state of nature, human beings behave in much the same way that animals do. The faculty of perfection relies on some type of bizarre circumstance to be awakened. Once the process started, however, the end result was our present-day society, where we have forever lost the peaceful tranquility of life in the state of nature. Reason develops along this line as well, and Rousseau draws a link between the passions and the development of reason. The capacity to reason in any human being relies on the particular needs of that human being. The needs of the savage are simply to seek the pleasures of food, drink and procreation, while avoiding pain and hunger. Here again we see a major difference between Rousseau and Hobbes. For Hobbes, human beings in the state of nature fear death as the greatest evil and preserve their own lives in any way possible. Rousseau's claim is that human beings in the state of nature have no concept of death: 'knowledge of death and its terrors is one of the first acquisitions that man has made in moving away from the animal condition'.14 A being with the capacity for selfperfection, then, is best understood as one who is able to combine freedom with the potential to develop reason. Self-perfection is a goal that humans can achieve, which we will see in the following chapters of this book. Because human beings are able to exercise this faculty of self-perfection, their existence is fundamentally different from all other animals even when their behaviour is indistinguishable from them in the state of nature. Freedom and reason (however uncultivated) are innate natural faculties of human beings. Exercising them enables the species to change, and this is precisely what we understand as 'self-perfection'. These basic needs of pleasure and pain for natural man do not require any type of abstract philosophical thought: Should we want to suppose a savage man as skillful in the art of thinking as our philosophers make him; should we, following their example, make him a philosopher himself, discovering alone the most sublime truths and making for himself, by very abstract reasoning, maxims of justice and reason drawn from love of order


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in general or from the known will of his creator; in a word, should we suppose his mind to have as much intelligence and enlightenment as he must and is in fact found to have dullness and stupidity, what utility would the species draw from all this metaphysics, which could not have been communicated and which would perish with the individual who would have invented it?15 When Hobbes describes man in the state of nature, he simply does not go back far enough, for he attributes complicated forms of thought to natural man that Rousseau claims could not have been in any way useful to him. These kinds of abilities are part of the process of self-perfection, and take an extremely long time to come about (assuming the events necessary to stimulate them happen at all). The most important aspect of this development is the invention of language. Savage man has only the language of grunts and cries. Rousseau gives a very lengthy account of the origins of language, and makes the case that it could only have come about over a long period of time. We'll investigate this discussion in more detail below. Presumably with Hobbes in mind again, Rousseau counters the notion that the state of nature would be a miserable environment in which to live. For Hobbes, this state is described as one of war: the war of all against all. We need civil society because life in the state of nature is 'solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short'. But how can this be? Rousseau states: 'Now I would really like someone to explain to me what type of misery there can be for a free being whose heart is at peace and whose body is healthy? I ask which, civil life or natural life, is most liable to become unbearable to those who enjoy it?'16 Misery comes with civilization, while savage man has neither the foresight, nor the complicated set of perceived needs to become miserable. It is therefore not inappropriate to say that for Rousseau, human beings in the state of nature are, in a very legitimate sense 'happy', or at the very least, 'content'. For Aristotle, the happy life is the one aligned with virtue. Can one say this about the type of happiness that the noble savage enjoys in Rousseau's state of nature? The answer is no, if we are using virtue in the conventional way. However, Rousseau is quick to point

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out that while natural man is not conventionally virtuous, he is also not conventionally vicious in the way that Hobbes describes. Even if human beings were motivated purely by self-preservation as Hobbes claims, the state of nature would still not be a state of war. Rousseau argues: Reasoning upon the principles he [Hobbes] establishes, this author ought to have said that since the state of nature is that in which care of our self-preservation is the least prejudicial to the self-preservation of others, that state was consequently the best suited to peace and the most appropriate for the human race. He says precisely the opposite, because of improperly including in the savage man's care of self-preservations a multitude of passions which are the product of society and which have made laws necessary.17 There is yet another problem with the Hobbesian account, and this will be the key issue in understanding the uncorrupted goodness that human beings possess in the state of nature. As we have seen in the 'Preface', Rousseau does, like Hobbes, recognize self-preservation as one of the fundamental principles of natural human beings. However, it is only the first of two principles; the second principle, 'pity', is one that Hobbes altogether ignores. In describing the principle of pity, Rousseau says it was 'given to man in order to soften, under certain circumstances, the ferocity of his vanity or the desire for self-preservation before the birth of vanity'.18 Pity is best understood as a natural repugnance to see another being suffer, especially another human being. Unlike freedom and reason, pity is not limited only to human beings. Animals also exhibit this kind of behaviour; Rousseau describes the sad lowing of cattle entering the slaughterhouse, and observes that horses are agitated by, and refuse to walk over, the body of a dead horse in their path. His example of human pity, taken from Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, is particularly striking. He asks the reader to imagine an imprisoned man able to see from his cell a child being torn away from its mother's breast by a wild beast. The beast then rips the helpless child apart while its mother can do nothing.


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'What horrible agitation must be felt by this witness of an event in which he takes no personnel interest', says Rousseau. Understanding Rousseau's conception of this faculty, pity, is the key to understanding how it is that human beings can be said to be 'good' in the state of nature. This is the case despite the fact that Rousseau's position is that savage man is neither virtuous nor vicious, as we have seen above. There is an intrinsic link between the natural faculty of pity and the social virtues that arise upon the advent of society. While savage man is amoral, he does have the potential for morality, which is actualized through self-perfection. If this faculty of pity did not exist, we could hardly be more than monsters whether in the state of nature or in civil society. And so this sole natural virtue can be understood as the core of all social virtues. Rousseau states, Tn fact, what are generosity, clemency, humanity, if not pity applied to the weak, to the guilty, or to the human species in general?'19 It is strange that Rousseau admits that social virtues, while having a basis in nature, are indeed legitimate, because he is so pessimistic in the Second Discourse about the possibility of civilized man ever becoming virtuous. Savage man is continuously praised while civilized man can only hope not to have his sole natural virtue of pity completely stamped out by his unnatural environment. Especially when examined alongside later works such as the Reveries of the Solitary Walker, the Second Discourse appears to be a rejection of society, and a claim that only by leaving it can man return to this pristine state where pity remains unchained; that is, a state of uncorrupted goodness based in the sole natural virtue. Such a reading would lead one to the conclusion that Rousseau's discussions of virtue in other works contradict the Second Discourse. But such a contradiction is only an apparent one, as we shall see in what follows. The view of virtue that is found in other works such as the Emile, the First Discourse, and the Confessions, is more optimistic about a life within society (even an unjust one such as eighteenth-century France). The majority of the Second Discourse consists of Part One, which we have just examined, and Part Two, to which we will move our discussion. Part Two of the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality is Rousseau's account of how purely natural human beings moved from the state

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of nature to that of civil society. As we have seen, natural man and civil man are vastly different. It is helpful take an inventory of these differences, comparing the two. Timothy O'Hagan is helpful for putting together such an inventory. O'Hagan understands the process of moving from the state of nature to civil society in the Second Discourse as having five main stages. We begin with what he calls 'nascent man', which is the type of person that we find in the 'pure state of nature'. O'Hagan lists nine features of human beings in this state as Rousseau describes them: (1) they are dispersed; (2) they are amoral; (3) they identify with their species through compassion and reason; reflection and amour-propre are untriggered;20 (4) they are ignorant or indifferent to the opinions of others; (5) they are timid, but without anxiety; (6) they are indolent; (7) there is little communication beyond cries of warning; (8) sexuality consists of haphazard couplings; and (9) inequalities are unimportant. Through an analysis of the Second Discourse, O'Hagan also categorizes the long historical process that Rousseau maintains must have occurred to bring human beings from this pure state of nature to present-day civil society. This process proceeds through a series of six stages. The characteristics of human beings in civil society are the exact opposite of each of the nine qualities of purely natural human beings that I have just outlined above. The first of five transitions is from the first stage, the pure state of nature, or nascent man, to the second, a state of elementary co-operation. This process occurred over the period of many years, and was the result of climate changes rather than one chance event like the discovery of fire. Hunting, gathering and fishing mark the state of elementary cooperation. A single chance event, namely the discovery of tools, is the impetus for the next transition from a state of elementary cooperation to what O'Hagan refers to as the stone-age, or 'youth of the world'. Rousseau speaks of this era very favourably. In the Second Discourse, he states of the youth of the world: [T]his period of the development of human faculties, maintaining a golden mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our amour-propre, must have been the


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happiest and most durable epoch . . . the least subject to revolutions, the best for man. 21 Human beings are now associating with one another, and have thus begun to relate to each other on a moral level. The seeds of amourpropre have been planted, but there is not yet such a disparity of wealth and inequality that its evils have been manifested. In this stage also, language begins. Rousseau describes the necessity of language as arising from disastrous events such as floods and earthquakes. These events made it quite advantageous for human beings in the youth of the world to find more sophisticated ways of communicating with one another. The third transition is the movement of human beings from the youth of the world to 'nascent society', or from the stone-age to the iron-age. This transition is described as a revolution, dependent on some chance event. Rousseau hypothesizes that the eruption of a volcano could have prompted human beings to imitate the process of melting down metal, and forming it into useful tools. This is a complicated process, however, and requires the division of labour. If talents for all the different tasks required to maintain the iron-age were equal in all people, the society itself could have remained equal. This is not the case, however, and Rousseau describes how, 'the stronger did more work; the cleverer turned his to better advantage; the more ingenious found ways to shorten his labour; the farmer had greater need of iron or the blacksmith of wheat; and working equally the one earned a great deal while the other barely had enough to live'.22 In the nascent society, inequality grows along with amour-propre. This leads to the next transition, to the 'most horrible state of war'. Rousseau does not describe this transition in terms of one isolated event in the same way that the transition to the youth of the world and the subsequent transition to nascent society occur. Rather, as O'Hagan argues, 'The transition comes about through a gradual increase in inequality and amour-propre, the latter stages of the nascent society slowly collapsing into the state of war.' 23 This state is the one described by Hobbes as the original state of nature. In Rousseau's account, there is an enormous amount of time and

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chance events upon which the existence of the state of war is contingent. Hobbes saw the only escape from this state of war in the establishment of a Social Contract, one that kept its subjects from disobeying its laws by the constant threat of terror. Rousseau sees the move from the state of war to the state of present-day civil society as the next transition. O'Hagan states, 'The next break described in the Second Discourse inaugurated civil society, that is the political world which we now inhabit, unjust, for the moment relatively stable, but no less prone than its predecessor to collapse into anarchy or despotism.'24 The social contract that we have presently is not to be confused with the project described in Rousseau's work entitled The Social Contract. Present-day society is united under a specious social contract, one which is made by the powerful to keep their power. The Second Discourse paints the picture of savage man as timid, peaceful and content. His needs are few, and are therefore easily satisfied. It is the lack of society that essentially makes this existence possible. Man in the pure state of nature, or nascent man as O'Hagan describes him, is characterized by the nine points discussed above: isolated, amoral, acting on sentiment rather than amour-propre, etc. Any interaction that human beings have in this pure state is completely accidental and largely insignificant. Nascent man has no need of other human beings, and likewise has no reason to quarrel with them. We've just looked at a general outline of the various states of socialization that Rousseau says must have occurred in order to make the transition from the pure state of nature to present-day civil society. Again, these are the movement from the pure state of nature to the state of elementary co-operation; from there to the 'youth of the world'; next is the progression to the iron-age; and finally from the iron-age to the state of war, which gives way to civil society. I want to look at three specific themes in this progress as Rousseau puts them forth in the Second Discourse: the conceptions of the family, property and the faculty of speech. In the previous chapter, we saw that Aristotle defends all three of these as natural. In the pure state of nature, nascent man has no association with any of the other members of his species, with the exception of


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chance encounters, which are forgotten as quickly as they occur. There is no institution of family in any relevant sense. In his brief description of procreation and child rearing, in Part One, Rousseau says: Males and females united fortuitously, depending on encounter, occasion, and desire, without speech being a very necessary interpreter of the things they had to say to each other; they left each other with the same ease. The mother nursed her children at first for her own need; then, habit having endeared them to her, she nourished them afterward for their need. As soon as they had the strength to seek their food, they did not delay in leaving the mother herself; and there was practically no other way to find one another again than not to lose sight of each other, they were soon at a point of not even recognizing one another.25 There can certainly not be any type of conjugal love in the above account; human beings in the state of nature most likely do not even think about the sexual act until the opportunity explicitly presents itself. When it does, we can take them to merely be acting in accordance with the instinct. Furthermore, any concept of love at all can only exist by the expression of the natural faculty of pity, to which Rousseau gives no mention in his description of the procreative act in the state of nature. Although the family does emerge fairly early on in the development from natural man to civilized man, and therefore could be said to be 'close to nature', it is in and of itself not something that is purely natural. The institution of the family occurs in the third stage of the transition from nature to civil society, the 'youth of the world': The first developments of the heart were the effect of a new situation, which united husbands and wives, fathers and children in a common habituation. The habit of living together gave rise to the sweetest sentiments known to men: conjugal love and paternal love. Each family became a little society all the better united because the reciprocal affection and freedom were its only bonds; and it was then that the first difference was established in

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue the way of life of the two sexes, which until this time had had but one.26

We see that while the family is not natural in the strict sense, it is something that Rousseau regards highly, primarily because the feelings that come with it are not yet driven by the faculty of amourpropre. It is also in this stage in human history that the first seeds of private property are sown. Part Two of the Second Discourse begins with one of the most famous passages in all of Rousseau's works: The first person who, having fenced off a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared by someone who, uprooting the stakes or filling the ditch, had shouted to his fellow men; Beware of listening to this imposter; you are lost if you forget that the fruits belong to all and the earth to no one!27 For Rousseau, this cryptic view of the institution of private property is perhaps the single most important event in the history of human beings. It is at this point that he says human beings lost the last elements of the state of nature. However, to understand this event as one isolated incident within the pure state of nature is a mistake. As Rousseau says immediately following the remark above, 'It is very likely that by then things had already come to a point where they could no longer remain as they were.' To attribute this conception of the idea of private property to nascent man would be anachronistic, and would be a mistake similar to the one Hobbes makes when he attributes aggression and complicated reasoning processes to human beings in the state of nature. For Hobbes, the property drive is fundamental and the basis of conflict. There is no distinct moment to mark the origin of human beings' desire for property in Hobbes' account, which suggests that he assumes it from the very start. The Social Contract establishes the right to property. What follows Rousseau's statement about property is the account


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of human beings through the various stages from the pure state of nature to civil society. Property comes into its formal existence in the transition from the 'y°udi of the world' to the iron-age. Let us briefly recount the more significant aspects of these two stages of human history. As we have just seen above, in the discussion of the institution of the family, the youth of the world is a relatively happy time for human beings; while no longer living in the pure state of nature, they are still close enough to it to enjoy many of its benefits. At the same time, some primitive forms of social interaction have come into play, but they are not yet tainted to the point that amourpropre dominates the ways in which these people relate to each other. The notion of private property marks the transition from this state to the next, the iron-age. Rousseau states: As long as men were content with their rustic huts, as long as they were limited to sewing their clothing of skins with thorns or fish bones, adorning themselves with feathers and shells, painting their bodies with various colors, perfecting or embellishing their bows and arrows, carving with sharp stones a few fishing canoes or a few crude musical instruments; in a word, as long as they applied themselves only to tasks that a single person could do and to arts that did not require the cooperation of several hands, they lived free, healthy, good, and happy insofar as they could be according to their nature, and they continued to enjoy among themselves the sweetness of independent intercourse. But from the moment one man needed the help of another, as soon as they observed that it was useful for a single person to have provisions for two, equality disappeared, property was introduced, labor became necessary.28 We have already discussed the circumstances that Rousseau claims must have occurred in the transition from the state described above to the iron-age. The two arts that led to this transition more than any others are agriculture and metallurgy. Iron and wheat, when they become known to a group of people, require the division of labour, and exploit natural inequalities. These inequalities (differences in physical or mental capacities) are those which in nature are relatively unimportant. But in this social context, they become civil

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inequalities and therefore create drastic differences among people. The reason, Rousseau claims, that Europe is the most civilized part of the world is that it is most abundant in iron, and has the most fertile soil for cultivating wheat. 29 The transition to the iron-age is dependent on some chance event, like the eruption of a volcano. Such an event is the only way that human beings would have made the discovery of the art of metallurgy, seeing as how 'mines are found only in arid spots, stripped of both trees and plants; so that one would say that nature had taken precautions to hide this deadly secret from us'.30 Agriculture comes about from human beings gaining more sophisticated means of contemplating their needs. Rousseau claims that the general principles of agriculture must have been known long before the art was put into practice. To actually practise agriculture requires foresight and sacrifice. These characteristics are not to be found in the purely natural human being. Rousseau states: Besides, to devote oneself to that occupation and seed the land, one must be resolved to lose something at first in order to gain a great deal later: a precaution very far from the turn of mind of savage man, who, as I have said, has great difficulty thinking in the morning of his needs for the evening.31 With both agriculture and metallurgy now in practice, the movement toward civil society roars forward. For the art of mining requires humans to engage in work that does not give them time to acquire their sustenance. Enter agriculture and agricultural surpluses; others are able to supplement the needs of the miners by producing more food than they need. We now have producers of various goods, and exchange. Private property is firmly in place, as those in agriculture consider themselves to be in possession of the fruits of their labour. Likewise, those engaging in metallurgy consider the products of their work as their property. With property come the first notions of rules and justice. For if I consider a crop that I have farmed as mine, I claim some sort of right to it, a right that has been violated if someone takes it against my will. I desire retribution, or at least compensation for this


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violation. Hence, the social contract is put into place; Hobbes once again considers this social contract to be salvation from the brutality of the state of nature, whereas Rousseau considers it to be specious and put into place by the powerful to keep their power. He states: From the cultivation of land, its division necessarily followed; and from property once recognized, the first rules of justice. For in order to give everyone what is his, it is necessary that everyone can have something; moreover as men began to look to the future and as they all saw themselves with some goods to lose, there is not one of them who did not have to fear reprisals against himself for wrongs he might do to another. This origin is all the more natural as it is impossible to conceive of the idea of property arising from anything other than manual labor; because one can not see what man can add, other than his own labor, in order to appropriate things he has not made. It is labor alone which, giving the cultivator a right to the product of the land he has tilled, gives him a right to the soil as a consequence, at least until the harvest, and thus from year to year; which, creating continuous possession, is easily transformed into property.32 The right of property is clearly not natural for Rousseau. This is one of the most central claims of the Second Discourse. In fact, it would be correct to say that not only the right, but even the concept of property falls outside the scope of anything that can properly be attributed to man's nature. From chance events, and over the period of some time, the institution of property comes into existence. Language and speech come about in much the same manner. One of the nine characteristics of nascent human beings that we listed above is that purely natural human beings communicate little beyond grunts and cries. Language, like the family and property, is a human characteristic (though not a natural one) that develops over a very long period of time. Rousseau first discusses this phenomenon in Part One: Let us consider how many ideas we owe to the use of speech; how much grammar trains and facilitates the operations of the mind;

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue and let us think of the inconceivable difficulties and the infinite time which the first invention of languages must have cost. Join these reflections to the preceding ones, and we shall judge how many thousands of centuries would have been necessary to develop successively in the human mind the operations of which it was capable.33

Rousseau continues with this discussion, citing the various factors that would have prompted natural human beings to develop the art of speech. The most important of these factors is necessity; language, Rousseau claims, would not have developed spontaneously. The cry of nature is the most primitive language, and its use is restricted to extreme situations. 'As this cry was elicited only by a kind of instinct in pressing emergencies, to beg for help in great dangers, or for relief in violent ills, it was not of much use in the ordinary course of life.'34 The cry of nature is what Rousseau refers to as man's first language. Current language expresses much more complex ideas, and is quite far from this origin. It would be a mistake to say that complex philosophical thinking is an activity of natural human beings who merely do not have the developed skill of language to express them. There is no necessity in such thinking for natural human beings, and as language becomes more complex, so does our thinking. Rousseau is quite aware of the problem of which came first, language or thinking? He states: For if men needed speech in order to learn to think, they had even greater need of knowing how to think in order to discover the art of speech; and even should we understand how the sounds of the voice were taken for the conventional interpreters of our ideas, it would still remain to be seen what could have been the specific interpreters of this convention for ideas that, having no perceptible object, could be indicated neither by gesture or by voice. So that one can hardly form tenable conjectures about the birth of this art of communicating thoughts and establishing intercourse between minds.35 The evolution of language begins with the broad naming of objects,


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that is, the application of proper nouns. Using verbs and adjectives came much later, and at first were only used in the present tense. These steps come with much difficulty, Rousseau says. We can basically understand the progression of abstract thinking to parallel the progression of language. The art of language progresses to a point at which we would call it a language in a more strict sense (by this I mean that it significantly resembles our own language considerably more than the 'cry of nature') during the stone-age, i.e. the youth of the world. During the age prior to this one, the state of elementary cooperation, the language used was primarily the 'cry of nature', comprised of many gestures, inarticulate cries and imitative noises. We have already seen, however, that as this state gradually progresses into the youth of the world, the traditional family comes into existence. Rousseau describes how language comes into a more formal existence within this institution, but only does so indirectly. The more complicated ideas that prompt more complicated forms of language begin to develop in this third stage of human history. For it is here that Rousseau says: 'People grow accustomed to consider different objects and to make comparisons; imperceptibly they acquire ideas of merit and beauty which produce sentiments of preference.' 36 Compare this to the ideas that prompt more complicated forms of language that originate after the use of proper nouns in the discussion in Part One which discusses verbs and adjectives: When they began to distinguish subject from attribute and verb from noun, which was no small effort of genius, substantives were at first only so many proper nouns; the present infinitive was the sole tense of verbs; and the notion of adjectives must have developed only with great difficulty, because every adjective is an abstract word and abstractions are difficult and not very natural operations.37 We see the development of these abstract ideas as being first recognized within the third stage of history. The 'youth of the world' therefore is critical in Rousseau's discussion in the Second

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Discourse. We have seen that it is at this point that human beings stray from the state of nature and develop the traditional family, the first notions of private property, and have developed a much more sophisticated form of language than the mere 'cry of nature'. All three of these characteristics are clearly not natural for Rousseau, as all take an enormous amount of time and chance events in order to come into existence. In the final chapter, we'll look at these characteristics again, and discuss whether a virtue ethics like Aristotle's, which claims that language, the family and property are indeed natural, can be mapped on to Rousseau's very different account of the state of nature. There is one more topic to discuss that pertains to Rousseau, Hobbes and the modern philosophical project in general when it comes to positing a state of nature. That is, are we to understand these accounts as literally historical, or merely theoretical? For both Rousseau and Hobbes, the exact historical status of the 'state of nature' is not immediately clear. For Hobbes, the matter is stated slightly more specifically: It may peradventure be thought, there was never such a time, nor condition of war as this; and I believe it was never generally so, over all the world: but there are many places, where they live so now. For the savage people in many places of America, except in the government of small families, the concord whereof dependeth on natural lust, have no government at all; and live at this day in that brutish manner, as I said before. Howsoever, it may be perceived what manner of life there would be, where there were no common power to fear, by the manner of life, which men that have formerly lived under a peaceful government, use to degenerate into, in a civil war.38 Perhaps the best way that one should understand Hobbes' state of nature is as a thought experiment. The state of nature is a model for understanding the basic tenets of human nature, and it does this by stripping away the artificial characteristics that are the result of socialization; the true nature of human beings is to be found beneath these conventions. This process can only be done


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completely in theory, which is why Hobbes points out here that the state of nature should not be taken as a matter of historical fact, as a state that existed all over the world in some sort of pre-social condition. Rousseau makes a similar type of qualification in the Second Discourse, stating 'Let us therefore begin by setting aside all the facts, for they do not affect the question. The researches undertaken concerning this subject must not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasoning better suited to clarify the nature of things than to show their true origins.'39 We may take this to be a fairly solid explanation from Rousseau that the proper reading of the text involves a hypothetical perspective. However, immediately following this remark, Rousseau indicates that the reason for such a reading is due to the fact that revelation has already given us the historical truth of the matter, and the Second Discourse cannot challenge revealed truth. So Rousseau's emphasis on a hypothetical reading could simply be his attempt to defend himself against the possible charge of heresy; if this is the case, he may actually regard his account in the Second Discourse to be historical. Additionally, Rousseau's language throughout the text very often suggests that he is giving a historical account. We have already divided his progression from the state of nature to the state of civil society into its various distinct stages. Very often Rousseau makes claims about these stages which infer that he is indeed taking them to be historical truths. Deciding whether Rousseau takes the Second Discourse to be a literal history or not is a tricky business and one can't help but speculate. But my own view is that we can take either a historical or a hypothetical view of the Second Discourse. Whatever one thinks about the pure state of nature that Rousseau describes, there is a point in his account of human history at which, even in a hypothetical reading, we must take him to be arguing from the position of historical fact. Furthermore, I think that the Second Discourse retains its basic philosophical message, at least in terms of its claims about human nature and ethics, even on such a hypothetical reading. The first three stages of human history for Rousseau, as we have

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termed them are: (1) nascent man (man in the pure state of nature), (2) the state of elementary co-operation, and (3) the 'youth of the world', or stone-age. If we take Rousseau's account of this progress as merely hypothetical conjecture, we can only reasonably take these first two stages to be those which never existed historically. Rousseau argues that the third stage in this process, the 'y°uth of the world', is still observable in the world in remote areas. He states, 'This is precisely the point reached by most of the savage peoples known to us .. .'40 Although this stage in human history is marked by the beginnings of amour-propre, the social vices of human beings have not yet surfaced to the point that they have corrupted people completely. It is in this stage that people begin to gather together, and to compare themselves with one another. It is interesting, however, to note that Rousseau does not regard this state nearly as negatively as he does the latter stages in human history: Thus, although men had come to have less endurance and although natural pity had already undergone some alteration, this period of the development of human faculties, maintaining the golden mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of our vanity, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more one thinks about it, the more one finds that this state was the least subject to revolutions, the best for man, and that he must have come out of it only by some fatal accident, which for the common good ought never to have happened. The example of savages, who have almost all been found at this point, seems to confirm that the human race was made to remain in it always; that this state is the veritable prime of the world; and that all subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decrepitude of the species.41 The 'fatal accident' that Rousseau describes here is later defined as the discovery of metallurgy and agriculture. For these arts, as we have seen above, produce the division of labour, and extreme inequality. In the 'youth of the world' no labour or goods are needed which have this result. All of the tasks that people need to


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undertake can be easily accomplished by individuals themselves. There is no need to share labour, and hence inequalities remain relatively unimportant, and amour-propre relatively untriggered. The most extreme hypothetical reading with which one can reasonably understand the Second Discourse must therefore admit that Rousseau regards the movement from the stone-age through present-day society as a matter of historical fact. For he sees the state of the 'y ou th of the world' as empirically verifiable. Furthermore, the essential structure of this state is far more preferable than the stages that follow it, and the unnatural tendencies toward inequality and amour-propre are happily absent from the 'youth of the world'. The stages prior to the stone-age, nascent man and elementary cooperation, could be understood as conjecture; they are an abstraction from even the most primitive social structure and hold value as explaining the natural innocence of human beings. This may be best explained by once again comparing Rousseau to Hobbes, whose warlike state of nature is also hypothetical but explains the nature of man if all social institutions were taken away. Rousseau's thought experiment also removes these social institutions, but seeks to show that man is by nature peaceful and timid. In presenting an equally plausible account of human nature, the Second Discourse holds its philosophical value even on a hypothetical reading. I think that the Second Discourse leaves us with two fundamental but related questions. First, as we have set out to form a systematic account of Rousseau's notion of virtue, how does it fit into such an account? And more specifically, second, if human beings in the state of nature are amoral, that is, they are neither virtuous nor vicious, how is savage man relevant to this notion of virtue at all? Let us keep these questions in mind, but leave them aside for the moment. Before we can answer them, we need to look at several of Rousseau's other texts. In the next chapter, we'll look at the account of virtue that we find in the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, the Emile, and the Confessions.In Chapter Four, we'll move to a discussion of political virtue as Rousseau discusses it in the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract.

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Notes 1 For the sake of preserving space the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts is referred to as the 'First Discourse', and the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality is referred to as the 'Second Discourse'. 2 Thomas Hobbes, De Give, or The Citizen, S. P. Lamprecht, ed. (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1982), pp. 21-22. 3 Ibid., p. 24. 4 Ibid., p. 26. 5 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, C. B. MacPherson, ed. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980). 6 Ibid., pp. 26-27.

7 Ibid., pp. 28-29. 8 Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, M. Oakeshott, ed. (New York: Collier MacMillan, 1968), p. 129. 9 The Second Discourse is divided into four main parts. It begins with a dedication to the Republic of Geneva, and follows with a 'Preface', the 'First Part', and the 'Second Part'. 10 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 3: Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second Discourse); Polemics', and Political Economy, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992b), p. 15. 11 Ibid., p. 21. As we shall see in the next chapter, this hardy physical condition is also indicative of virtue in the individual. Emile is brought up to be physically strong and healthy, and this is important for his moral education. 12 Ibid., p. 25. 13 Ibid., p. 26. 14 Ibid., p. 27. 15 Ibid., p. 29. 16 Ibid., p. 34. 17 Ibid., p. 35. 18 Ibid., p. 36. 19 Ibid., p. 37. 20 The notion of amour-propre is a key concept in Rousseau's philosophy, one that he discusses in detail primarily in the Emile. We'll investigate this idea in the next chapter, but for the

Virtue and the Stale of Nature

21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

11

present, we should simply note that amour-propre is an unnatural form of self-love. It is exemplified by feelings of pride and superiority over others, and in the environment of civil society, it is the source of a great many vices. Rousseau (1992b), p. 48. Ibid., p. 51. Timothy O'Hagan, Rousseau (London: Routledge, 1999a), p. 53. Ibid., p. 54. Rousseau (1992b), p. 30. Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., p. 43. Ibid., p. 49. Rousseau speaks simply of 'Europe', but it is reasonable to suppose that he means the Mediterranean rather than northern Europe. Rousseau (1992b), p. 49. Ibid., p. 50. Ibid., pp. 50-51. Ibid., p. 29. Ibid., p. 31. Ibid., pp. 30-31. Ibid., p. 47. Ibid., p. 31-32. Hobbes (1968), p. 101. Rousseau (1992b), p. 19. Ibid., p. 48. Ibid., pp. 48-49.

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Chapter 3

Virtue as the Cultivation of the Individual

In the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (or Second Discourse), Rousseau gives a rich account of human history that leaves most readers wondering if the 'progress' that we have made has, in reality, doomed us to a life of misery. Rousseau's detailed depiction of the state of nature and the subsequent historical events that led human beings from it to the present day is certainly quite stunning; but he says very little in the Second Discourse about the possibility for improving upon our current situation. He has clearly answered the Academy of Dijon's question about the origins of inequality and its relationship to the natural law. The closing lines of the Second Discourse read: [I]t follows, further, that moral inequality, authorized by positive right alone, is contrary to Natural Right whenver it is not combined in the same proportion with Physical inequality: a distinction which sufficiently determines what one ought to think in this since it is manifestly against the Law of Nature, in whatever manner it is defined, that a child command an old man, an imbecile lead a wise man, and a handful of men be glutted with superfluities while the starving multitude lacks necessities.1 The most crucial question that one is left with after reading this text is whether or not there is some way to salvage the basic uncorrupted goodness that Rousseau describes as being at the heart of human nature. Clearly we can't return to the state of nature. This would mean that we would somehow have to abandon our use of speech, our dependency on one another, and most problematic, we would somehow need to 'untrigger' the use of reason. Fortunately, Rousseau does not advocate such a return to nature; but he does,

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nevertheless, have a great deal to say about the roots of society's vices, as well as the possibility of avoiding these vices through proper moral education. At the very heart of this discussion, I will argue, is Rousseau's conception of virtue. And I think that three texts in particular are helpful in understanding this conception: the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts] the Confessions', and the Emile. The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (or First Discourse) is the essay that originally won Rousseau fame and recognition. It is interesting to note that Rousseau himself did not think highly of the essay at all. In the Confessions he would later write that the First Discourse was 'absolutely lacking in logic and order; of all of the ones [writings] that have come from my pen, it is the weakest in its reasoning and the poorest in unity and harmony'. 2 But despite the criticisms of the author himself, the First Discourse remains to this day a powerful examination of present-day society: one we might very well take to be as relevant now as it was two hundred and fifty years ago. Like the Second Discourse, the work was originally crafted as a response to a question posed by the Academy of Dijon in 1750: 'Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?' Rousseau's answer to this question is a very firm 'no'. What the cultivation of the sciences and arts has actually done is to cause the degeneration of morals, in that they cause people in society to praise arbitrary characteristics such as talents rather than to acknowledge the truly valuable human characteristic: virtue. Rousseau's method in the First Discourse is part historical and part theoretical. His central claim is that there is an objective notion of virtue that is based in nature which has been sacrificed due to the focus on the cultivation of the sciences and the arts. Rousseau states this claim rather explicitly in the very opening lines of the First Discourse, presumably in an attempt to keep his readers from turning a deaf ear to his controversial answer to their question: It will be difficult, I feel, to adapt what I have to say before the tribunal before which I appear. How can one dare blame the sciences before one of Europe's most learned Societies, praise ignorance in a famous Academy, and reconcile contempt for study with respect for the truly learned? I have seen these


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contradictions, and they have not rebuffed me. I am not abusing science, I told myself; I am defending Virtue before virtuous men.3 Throughout the work Rousseau seeks to expose how present-day society has eliminated virtue from its sphere. Virtue has been replaced with a manipulative and oftentimes cruel set of arbitrary manners and social customs that are not only non-virtuous, but anti-virtuous. One can see that there are strains of thought in the First Discourse that find their full force in the Second Discourse, as Rousseau refers to our social customs before they had been corrupted by the arts and sciences as being 'rustic, but natural'. These customs 'spared a great many vices'.4 We see here once again the praise of the natural and the association of vice with the cultivation of civil society. But Rousseau's goal in the First Discourse is far less drastic than in the second. He examines different societies in history as exemplifying the kind of virtue that he ultimately will advocate; additionally, he draws parallels between his own society and those in the past that have placed too much stock in the cultivation of the arts and sciences. Ancient Greece is one of his most noteworthy examples. Sparta is praised as the ideal city-state. These citizens were rugged, noble and courageous. Athens, by contrast, is chastised for its emphasis on the arts and sciences. If one doubts that Athens had little share in virtue, says Rousseau, she need only to look to the example of Socrates. This man was the wisest in Athens, yet he claimed to have no knowledge of the arts. Those who thought they gleaned some moral truth through their knowledge of such things, the same people that Socrates questions, were in a worse position, because they were under an illusion. Rousseau sees his own society as having much more in common with Athens than with Sparta. Socrates' treatment would be essentially the same as it was in Athens if he were living in eighteenth-century France. He also would have most likely mocked all of the so-called 'progress' that is held in such high esteem. Virtues are not cultivated by the advancement of these disciplines, yet all of our emphasis is put on them. Rousseau states, 'without

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knowing how to distinguish error from truth, they will possess the art of making them both unrecognizable to others by specious arguments. But they will not know what the words magnanimity, equity, temperance, humanity, [and] courage are.'5 For Rousseau, the sciences and arts are not virtues. But it would be wrong, however, to conclude, with critics like Voltaire and Adam Smith, that Rousseau is an enemy of progress in all its forms. While they are not virtues, the sciences and arts, in and of themselves, are also not vices. At the very start of the First Discourse, Rousseau makes this point explicitly. Above, we saw him state, 'I am not abusing science, I told myself; I am defending virtue before virtuous men.'6 How is it that the arts and sciences have corrupted virtue? Before answering this question, a qualification must be made. It is certainly not Rousseau's claim that the pursuit of the arts and sciences themselves will always be at the expense of virtue. Rather, he argues that both historically and presently, human beings often mistake progress in these fields for moral progress. His own society is one that has failed to prize virtue, and has mistakenly replaced it with praise for the arts and sciences. Morality has thus suffered immensely from this replacement: Such is the purity our morals have acquired. Thus have we become respectable men. It is for literature, the sciences, and the arts to claim their share of such a wholesome piece of work. I will add only one thought: an inhabitant of some faraway lands who wanted to form a notion of European morals on the basis of the state of the sciences among us, the perfection of our arts, the decency of our entertainments, the politeness of our manners, the affability of our speech, our perpetual demonstrations of goodwill, and that tumultuous competition of men of all ages and conditions who seem anxious to oblige one another from dawn to dark; that foreigner, I say, would guess our morals to be exactly the opposite of what they are.7 The effect of this replacement of virtue by the arts and sciences is the hollow morality that causes so much strife and vice among people in


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society. Rousseau concludes this point by saying, 'our souls have been corrupted in proportion to the advancement of our sciences and arts toward perfection.'8 Passages such as these seem to imply that Rousseau sees all progress of the arts and sciences as negative. However, this not the goal of the First Discourse. Rather, it is a symptom of a larger problem, namely the problem of individualism, that is, people are more concerned with their own individual success, and that success often comes at the expense of others. This problem is marked by humans who are consumed by the unnatural and immoral form of self-love, which Rousseau calls amour-propre. The discussion of amour-propre is given in its fullest detail in the Emile, which we'll examine below. It is signified in large part by the desire of the individual to 'outdo' her fellow human beings. The sciences and arts, while not bad in and of themselves, are particularly dangerous because they tend to thrive in an environment plagued by amour-propre, and even tend to increase it. First, let us examine what Rousseau says about this problem by looking to his discussion of the sciences. Science, Rousseau claims, can tell us a great many things. However, most, if not all, of these things are unrelated to virtue. The examples he cites are discoveries of the ways in which particles attract each other in a vacuum, the orbits of the planets, geometry, and the relationship of the soul to the body. All of these advances do nothing to make us any better in the moral sense than if they had never been investigated. Of these scientists and philosophers, Rousseau asks, 'had you taught us none of these things, would we consequently be less well governed, less formidable, less flourishing or more perverse?'9 These discoveries can make social vices increase, but their activity in themselves is amoral. Once the seeds of amour-propre have been planted, the sciences provide another means by which people can compare themselves to one another, and claim an unwarranted superiority. This danger is made even more explicit in his subsequent discussion of the arts. Within a corrupt social state consumed by amour-propre, artists are willing to sacrifice the integrity of their art in an attempt to gain praise from their contemporaries. The worth of their craft is measured solely by the approval of the majority, who because they

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also exist in this conformist society, do not associate value with anything that can be considered truly good in a moral sense. Rousseau claims: Every artist wants to be applauded. The praises of his contemporaries are the most precious part of his reward. What will he do to obtain praise, therefore, if he has the misfortune to be born among a people and at a time when the learned, having themselves become fashionable, have enabled frivolous youth to set the tone; when men have sacrificed their taste to the tyrants of their liberty; when, because one of the sexes dares approve only what is suited to the weakness of the other, masterpieces of dramatic poetry are dropped and marvels of harmony rejected. What will an artist do, gentlemen? He will lower his genius to the level of his time, and will prefer to compose ordinary works which are admired during his lifetime instead of marvels which would not be admired until long after his death.10 Like the sciences, the arts tend to magnify the individualistic mentality and erode morality. As the arts develop, so does taste. But 'good taste' is arbitrary and artificial. It is merely a vehicle by which people can claim that they are better than others. Again, we should take notice of trains of thought that gain their full expression in the Second Discourse. Rousseau praises the simplicity of the earlier times, when people lived modestly in the same huts. It sounds very much like his discussion of the 'youth of the world', which as we saw in the previous chapter, Rousseau regards as the happiest state for human beings. Rousseau's basic criticism of the arts and sciences is best exemplified in the final paragraph of the First Discourse: O virtue! Sublime science of simple souls, are so many difficulties and preparations needed to know you? Are not your principles engraved in all hearts, and is it not enough in order to learn your laws to commune with oneself and listen to the voice of one's conscience in the silence of the passions? 11 That is true philosophy, let us know how to be satisfied with it; and without


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envying the glory of those famous men who are immortalized in the republic of letters, let us try to put between them and us that glorious distinction noted between two great peoples long ago [Athens and Sparta]: that the one knew how to speak well, the other to act well.12 This quote is helpful in illustrating a number of points. First, the thesis of the First Discourse serves very well to illustrate the problem of virtue for Rousseau. Like the Second Discourse, there is much said about the problems of society, although society in general is not under attack here, but rather the society that emphasizes the arts and sciences at the expense of virtue. Also like the Second Discourse, relatively little is said about how one can correct the problems of society. There are several places in the First Discourse where Rousseau points to a reformation of education in order that one might correct these problems. However, these passages are fairly general and do not offer any substantive account of how one would actually do this. The First Discourse essentially leaves us with two questions: (a) Can a virtuous individual exist in such a corrupt society? And (b) what is the possibility for establishing a society that holds virtue as its most important priority? The remaining part of this chapter will focus on the first question, while the following chapter will address the second. The possibility of a virtuous individual existing in a corrupt society is one that I think Rousseau addresses most explicitly in the Confessions and the Emile. The Confessions is Rousseau's autobiography. Its significance in the present enquiry is that at many points in his life, Rousseau saw himself as struggling to become a virtuous person. His opinion of the society in which he lived had softened only slightly between the writing of the First Discourse and the Confessions. In the latter, which was one of Rousseau's later works, his chastisement of Paris is based on many of the same objections found in the First Discourse, primarily its emphasis on talents, and arbitrary systems of manners and etiquette, rather than virtue. This is evident in various parts of the Confessions. One of the best examples is in Rousseau's discussion of Mme de Warens giving him

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moral guidance. Mme de Warens, whom Rousseau often refers to as 'Maman', took him in during his early teenage years and allowed him to live with her off and on throughout his life. Rousseau discusses how her attempts to make him socially acceptable, although done with good intention, were often contrary to virtue: Because of the intimacy in which I lived with her had allowed her to appreciate me more advantageously than she had, she judged that it was worth the effort to cultivate me for the social world in spite of my awkward manner, and if one day I could show myself on a certain footing there, I would be in a position to make my way in it. Based on this idea she applied herself, not only to forming my judgment, but my exterior, my manners, to making me amiable as well as estimable, and if it is true that one can blend success in the world with virtue — which for me I do not believe — at least I am sure there is no other route for this than the one she had taken and which she wished to teach me.13 Rousseau has nothing but praise for Mme de Warens throughout the Confessions, and one can rightly say that if he sees anyone as being able to teach a person how to be both socially gracious and virtuous, she would be that person. Therefore, not surprisingly, his tone in the passage just noted is very kind and sympathetic. However, it is clear that Rousseau is arguing for the incommensurability of the contemporary social values of his time and the cultivation of virtue. The public opinion of Rousseau's day comes under attack again in Book VIII of the Confessions. Here, Rousseau discusses how the pursuit of virtue necessarily implies a formal rejection of public opinion: Determined to pass the little time I had left to live in independence and poverty, I applied all of the strength of my soul to breaking the irons of opinion, and to doing courageously everything that appeared good to me, without bothering myself in any way about the judgment of men. The obstacles I had to combat and the efforts I made to triumph over them are


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unbelievable. I had succeeded as much as possible, and more than I myself had hoped. If I had also shaken off the yoke of friendship as well as that of opinion I would have attained the goal of my plan, perhaps the greatest or at least the most useful to virtue that a mortal might ever have conceived: but while I trampled underfoot the senseless judgments of the vulgar mob of self-proclaimed friends, who —jealous at seeing me walk alone in a new route and all the while appearing to be very much occupied with making me happy — in fact occupied themselves only with making me ridiculous, and began by working to degrade me so as to succeed afterwards in defaming me.14 A qualifying remark must be made here about the puzzling way in which Rousseau speaks about friendship in this passage. He is unable to shrug off the opinions of his friends about his attempt to reform his character according to virtue. Their motivation, however, is the result of their own lack of virtue. These so-called friends are themselves so entrenched in public opinion, and the false virtues it emphasizes, that they wrongly chastise him for his blatant rejection of these things. We cannot therefore take Rousseau to be advocating a rejection of friendship in a universal sense. Rather, we should understand this as an illustration of how public opinion within a corrupt and non-virtuous society can poison true friendships, because it inevitably leads to jealousy and wrongful judgements of people. Perhaps the most crucial part of the Confessions, with regard to virtue, is given in Book IX. It is here that Rousseau describes his own transformation into a virtuous person within the corrupt society in which he is living.15 Again, the key to this transformation is in the rejection of society's mistaken priorities. At this point in his life, Rousseau has already written both the first and second Discourses. He therefore has discerned, theoretically, the problems of his society, the central one of course being that there is no emphasis put on virtue. In Book VIII of the Confessions we see Rousseau attempt to put his theory into practice, using himself as the model. He explains here that T needed to put my conduct into accord with my principles in order to get a hearing.'16 From here,

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Rousseau addresses how he is able to make his transition to a virtuous character possible: Until then I had been good; from then on I became virtuous . . . I was truly transformed; my friends and relatives no longer recognized me. I was no longer a timid and bashful — rather than modest — man, who did not dare either to introduce himself or to speak; who was disconcerted by a playful word, who was made to blush by a look from a woman. Audacious, proud, intrepid, everywhere I carried an assurance that was all the more firm since it was simple and resided in my soul more than in my bearing. The scorn that my deep meditations had inspired me for the morals, maxims, and the prejudices of my century made me insensitive to the banter of the people who had them, and I crushed their little witty phrases with my apophthegms, as I would crush an insect between my fingers. What a change!17 As his character becomes truly virtuous, Rousseau gains a blissfully indifferent attitude toward society's priorities; these are the same priorities that come under attack in the First Discourse, which we examined above. Clearly, Rousseau is advocating a cultivation of the virtuous individual. This does not involve divorcing oneself from society itself, in the sense of attempting to return to the state of nature. Rather, it means refusing to be ruled by a relativistic value system that praises unimportant things. The Confessions serve as an important reference in understanding the cultivation of the virtuous individual. Rousseau, by his own declaration, is 'reconciling his conduct with his principles'. The Confessions, therefore, are best understood as precisely that: an attempt to actually practice the cultivation of an individual within a corrupt society. What we do not have in the Confessions, however, is an exhaustive account of the theory that Rousseau is trying to put into practice. How exactly does one understand the necessity of rejecting public opinion? How can we ensure that an individual will even be aware that the institutions that are in place in society, with their emphasis on arts, sciences and talents, are contrary to the virtuous life? This


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type of exhaustive account is not the subject of the Confessions. Such an account does exist, however, and its focus is on education. Education is of course not limited to purely academic disciplines like the arts and sciences which Rousseau criticizes in the First Discourse. Education deals in shaping the whole person, part of whom of course is the student's moral being; moral education is the cultivation of the virtuous individual. We shall therefore move to a discussion of Rousseau's philosophy of education, which is the subject of the Emile. Rousseau considered the Emile to be one of his most important works. The reaction to the book was twofold. On the one hand, it was widely read, and many took it to be a revolutionary work on education. On the other, however, it was condemned by the Church, and Rousseau was forced to flee Paris. Although, in one sense, it clearly is a work on education, it is, perhaps even more importantly, part of Rousseau's philosophical system. The evidence for this is found by examining what Rousseau himself says on the subject of the work in a 1762 letter to Malesherbes: Everything that I was able to retain of these crowds of great truths which illuminated me under that tree in a quarter of an hour has been weakly scattered about in my three principal writings, namely that first discourse, the one on inequality, and the treatise on education, which three works are inseparable and together form the same whole.18 It is therefore important to consider the Emile in our discussion of virtue, and to examine its connection to Rousseau's other works. As the above passage demonstrates, Rousseau himself advocates such a connection. The structure of the Emile is interesting in that it is presented as both novel and philosophical treatise. In terms of being a novel, the focus is on the character of Emile, who is Rousseau's imaginary pupil. Curiously, Rousseau begins with a discussion of education, starting at infancy, and the actual character of Emile does not come on the scene until later. In terms of being a treatise, the Emile makes many philosophical claims about education in general, the role of

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nature, the cultivation of good human beings, and the state of the present-day civil society. The speech of the Savoyard Vicar, in Book Four, is a passage that falls outside the scope of Emile's personal story, although it is presented as a lesson from which he can learn philosophical truths. The Vicar's speech contains Rousseau's most explicit discussions of metaphysics, morality and religion. These aspects of the novel were most likely not part of the original conception of the work, as they are not in the first version of the text. This is discussed by P. D. Jimack: The curious hybrid form of Emile [as both novel and treatise] seems to have come into existence during the actual writing of the work, more by accident than by design. The first manuscript draft reveals that all the references in Book I of the published text to the method Rousseau was to employ, namely the creation of the actual pupil, with Jean-Jacques as his tutor, are subsequent additions, as are all specific mentions of Emile before the beginning of what is now Book III, which is where the character of the pupil first appears on the scene.19 It is therefore appropriate to read the Emile in a theoretical framework, not only in terms of what it says about education, but also as Rousseau's account of the cultivation of the individual. It is a solution for an individual living in a society plagued by the problems that Rousseau articulates in the First Discourse and the Confessions, which we have examined above. In the opening of Book I, Rousseau discusses the conflict that exists between the natural man and the citizen. The comparison is strikingly similar to the account given in the Second Discourse. However, unlike the Second Discourse, the discussion in the Emile gives the reader some kind of alternative to the fate of existing in a corrupt and unhappy societal existence; 'The natural man lives for himself; he is the unit, the whole, dependent only on himself and on his like. The citizen is but the numerator of a fraction, whose value depends on its denominator; his value depends on the whole, that is, on the community.' 20 The goal of education is to create an individual who is capable of surviving within the corrupt society,


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but who also possesses virtue, thus making him a 'savage to inhabit the city'. Rousseau claims that this can be done by eliminating the inner conflicts that people feel with regard to these two sources of motivation: nature and society. A properly educated person, whom we can rightly call 'virtuous', is able to overcome these conflicts. Eliminating them is the primary task of the work and is stated by Rousseau explicitly: Our inner conflicts are caused by these contradictions. Drawn this way by nature and that way by man, compelled to yield to both forces, we make a compromise and reach neither goal. We go through life, struggling and hesitating, and die before we have found peace, useless alike to ourselves and to others. There remains the education of the home or of nature; but how will a man live with others if he is educated for himself alone? If the twofold aims could be resolved into one by removing the man's self-contradictions,21 one great obstacle to his happiness would be gone. To judge this you must see the man full-grown; followed his steps; in a word, you must really know a natural man. When you have read this work, I think you will have made some progress in i • • 99 this inquiry. Emile will be this natural man; the rest of the work allows us to 'follow his steps'. Emile will not be a natural man in the sense of the noble savage of the Second Discourse, but nature will be the foundation of his virtues. The artificial constraints imposed by society, which torment most people, will have no hold on Emile. In this sense we see Rousseau's goal in this work very clearly. However, the relevant question of how one actually educates a person so as to develop him or her in this manner should then be raised. This is a practical question, and much of what follows in the Emile is written in a very practical manner. Rousseau explains in painstaking detail all the intricacies of his educational system and stresses the central goal of creating an individual who is a 'savage meant to inhabit the city'. Timothy O'Hagan puts it this way:

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue In the utterly imperfect political and social environment of contemporary France, the education of the 'savage made to inhibit the cities' would be the best that could be attained, a realistic pis-aller. This is the approach that Rousseau adopts in most of the Emile. There he is pessimistic about the possibility of political and social change, but relatively optimistic in holding that a good individual, properly educated, can flourish even in an imperfect world. 23

One element of Emile's education that is crucial is habituation. And here we see a connection to Aristotle who maintains throughout his own discussion of moral education in the Nicomachean Ethics that we become morally virtuous by habit, not teaching. The tutor in the Emile is constantly controlling the environment of the pupil so that the pupil's character will be developed in the natural way. The habituation starts from the very beginning of the child's life. Rousseau has strong views about not swaddling the infant child, and when to respond to the child's cries; this is to ensure that the child becomes neither a tyrant, nor a slave to the adults around him. The strictly controlled environment in which the pupil lives ensures that virtues will be acquired rather than taught. As the examples of this in Emile are numerous, I will discuss one that I think illustrates this point particularly well. In Book III, when the child has reached the age of eleven or twelve, the tutor takes him to a fair. Here, the child sees a conjurer performing magic tricks. The child is curious as to how the conjurer is able to make a wax duck follow a piece of bread in his hand. Later, pupil and teacher try to recreate this trick, and discover that the duck has a magnet in it, and the bread contains a piece of iron. Knowing the secret, they go back to the fair, and at once the pupil leaps up, claiming that the trick is quite easy, and then demonstrates it himself. The conjuror congratulates the child and tells him to return the next night. The child does so, but on the following night the duck will not follow the piece of bread in his hand. Now it is the child's turn to be humiliated; he has the same experience that he inflicted on the conjuror the previous night. The next day, the conjuror comes to the


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house of the child and teacher, explains how rude it was to deprive him of his livelihood, and then shows that he has changed the trick slightly. An assistant secretly held another piece of iron under the basin of water upon which the duck floats. The child now knows the secret, but the next day when they go to see the conjuror again, the child sits quietly and does not attempt to do the trick himself. Rousseau explains what a valuable lesson this has been for the pupil: There is more meaning than you suspect in this detailed illustration. How many lessons in one! How mortifying are the results of a first impulse toward vanity!24 Young tutor, watch this first impulse carefully. If you can use it to bring about shame and disgrace, you may be sure that it will not recur for many a day. What a fuss you say. Just so; and all to provide a compass which will enable us to dispense with a meridian!25 Like Aristotle, Rousseau is clear that the lesson learned here about vanity cannot simply be taught. It must be gained through experience. The child's experience with the conjuror will not soon be forgotten. To the contrary, the experience is so powerful that the virtue of proper pride (to use an Aristotelian term) becomes a part of the child's character; the acquisition of virtue is a matter of experience, not teaching. In the conjuror example, Rousseau seems to be suggesting that one experience with humiliation is enough. He does not say that the experience with the conjuror must be repeated over and over again through habituation. One might think Rousseau does not consider habituation to be necessary in the way that Aristotle does. But such a claim does not take into account many other aspects of Emile's moral character, which clearly are the result of habituation. Consider what Rousseau says about curing someone of his fear of the dark: In everything habit overpowers imagination; it is only aroused by what is new. It is no longer imagination, but memory which is concerned with what we see every day, and that is the reason of the maxim, 'Ab assuetis non fit passio', for it is only at the flame

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue of imagination that the passions are kindled. Therefore do not argue with any one whom you want to cure of the fear of darkness; take him often into dark places and be assured this practice will be of more avail than all the arguments of philosophy. The tiler on the roof does not know what it is to be dizzy, and those who are used to the dark will not be afraid.26

Through practical experience and habituation, Emile is gaining the correct disposition to make morality possible. At the core of Emile, the various tactics involved in moral education, as well as the conflict between nature and society, amount to two kinds of feeling for oneself: amour-propre and amour de soi. The former, which we have examined several times in our earlier discussions of the first and second Discourses, is characterized by the problems in society. It has at its root feelings like envy and vanity. The other, amour de soi, is the general love of self that comes from nature. It does not rely on superficial external factors in the way that amour-propre does. Rousseau describes amour de soi this way: Self-love [amour de soi] is always good, always in accordance with the order of nature. The preservation of our own life is specially entrusted to each one of us, and our first care is, and must be, to watch over our own life; and how can we continually watch over it, if we do not take the greatest interest in it?27 Rousseau calls amour de soi the source and origin of all our other passions, as it is the only passion with which we are born. In its pure form, amour de soi is instinctive and is primarily a drive toward selfpreservation. All of our other passions are modifications of it, and in many cases they are harmful. This basic drive to preserve oneself evolves into feeling when we become aware of intention. We can certainly feel enjoyment at things that benefit us, and fear from things that harm us, but when someone intentionally bestows something beneficial we feel love for that person; likewise, when someone intentionally harms us, we feel hate for that person. When we begin to develop these feelings in a way more akin to nature, amour de soi is preserved, whereas when these feelings are


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developed in a manner more typical in corrupt society, the result is amour-propre. Both are forms of self-love, but the major difference between the two is with reference to how that love relates to others. Rousseau explains this difference in the following way: Self-love [amour de soi], which concerns itself only with ourselves, is content to satisfy our own needs; but selfishness [amour-propre], which is always comparing self with others, is never satisfied and never can be; for this feeling, which prefers ourselves to others requires that they should prefer us to themselves, which is impossible. Thus the tender and gentle passions spring from selflove [amour de soi], while the angry and hateful passions spring from selfishness [amour-propre]. So it is the fewness of his needs, the narrow limits within which he can compare himself with others, that makes a man really good; what makes him really bad is a multiplicity of needs and dependence on the opinions of others. It is easy to see how we can apply this principle and guide every passion of children and men towards good or evil.28 Rousseau goes on to explain that the whole of goal of moral education is to cultivate one's character in such a way that amour de soi is not corrupted into amour-propre. The distinction between the two forms of self-love is not entirely clear, however. How might one distinguish between two people, one of whom loves himself properly, and another who is consumed by amour-propre? The issues discussed in the First Discourse and the Confessions, which we examined above, are helpful in making such a distinction. Rousseau's criticism of the arts and sciences in the First Discourse, as well as his condemnation of public opinion in the Confessions, are precisely the kinds of dependence on others that he is attacking in the discussion of amour de soi versus amour-propre. These blatantly unnatural aspects of society become the sole source of motivation for the person ruled by amour-propre. We can easily imagine a person who, in every aspect of his life, bases his self-worth on the praise or blame that he receives from the people around him. For such a person, social status, financial success, a witty disposition, and even fashionable attire become extremely important. The common

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thread that exists between all these things is that they necessarily depend on comparison with others. One's social status, if it is favourable, raises her above the social status of others; financial success implies that one has more money than others; a witty disposition and fashionable clothes make one wittier, and better dressed, than others. For Rousseau, loving oneself for these reasons necessarily implies thinking of oneself as better (or worse) than the people around one. In the pure state of nature there would be no way in which amour de soi could become amour-propre. By definition, amour-propre depends on comparing oneself to others, and obviously there is no significant awareness of others in the state of nature. This is the most important aspect of amour de soi; it is fundamentally independent of the opinions and judgements of others. This does not imply, however, that it cannot exist in the state of civil society, or even in a particularly bad civil society. As stated above, Rousseau describes natural man as, 'the unit, the whole, dependent only on himself. This is the element of natural man that the person with a self-love rooted in amour de so shares. The love that this person has of himself is whole, and independent in the sense that it does not rely on the opinions of others: it is not independent in the sense that he does not need to associate with others. Preserving amour de soi within a social atmosphere is a considerably difficult task, however: True, man cannot always live alone, and it will be hard therefore to remain good; and this difficulty will increase of necessity as his relations with others are extended. For this reason, above all, the dangers of social life demand that the necessary skill and care shall be devoted to guarding the human heart against the depravity which springs from fresh needs.29 Amour-propre can arise in anyone in society. In great minds, Rousseau says, it becomes pride, and in small ones, vanity. Moral education is not easier or harder depending on the mental capacities of the pupil; Rousseau states very clearly in Book I that the pupil is of average intelligence. No matter what the innate capacities of each individual might be, the dangers of amour-propre are always there,


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and the severity of these dangers depends upon the particular society in which a person lives. Rousseau sees his own time as particularly precarious in this respect. The pupil, Ernile, functions as the embodiment of a virtuous character for Rousseau. Driven only by the natural form of self-love, amour de soi, he represents the goal of moral education: the preservation of proper self-love. As Book IV continues, Rousseau discusses what Emile will be like: a natural man living in society. His character is steadfast in its self-love, because the education that he has been given throughout his youth has prepared him in this way. He will not be vulnerable to the superficial and vicious opinions of those around him: Emile is not made to live alone, he is a member of society, and must fulfill his duties as such. He is made to live among his fellowmen and he must get to know them. He knows mankind in general; he has still to learn how to know individual men. He knows what goes on in the world; he has now to learn how men live in the world. It is time to show him the front of that vast stage, of which he already knows the hidden workings. It will not arouse in him the foolish admiration of giddy youth, but the discrimination of an exact and upright spirit. He may no doubt be deceived by his passions; who is there who yields to his passions without being led astray by them? At least he will not be deceived by the passions of other people. If he sees them, he will regard them with the eye of the wise, and will neither be led away by their example nor seduced by their prejudices.30 Emile is educated so that he can be engaged in society; he associates freely with others. However, he will never be moved to betray his independent self-love by seeking the approval of his fellow man, nor will he be impressed by the passions of others. When Emile sees someone in pain, a homeless person for example, his heart will go out to that person. He will feel a genuine sense of pity for that person, very similar to the notion of pity that Rousseau describes in the Second Discourse. The average member of society (according to Rousseau's conception of the average eighteenth-century French

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citizen) may feel something like this, but it is far more likely that the overwhelming reaction will be a feeling of superiority. Emile does not need to establish any such sort of superiority over others to realize his worth. His love is, 'united, whole, and independent'. We therefore see that Rousseau clearly advocates moral education in terms of the virtue of an individual. The character of Emile, and his existence within a corrupt society, evidence this. The first question that we saw posed by the First Discourse, namely 'Can a virtuous individual exist in a corrupt society?', has been answered in the affirmative. Through the examination of the Confessions, we see Rousseau using himself as an example of how an individual can overcome this corruption. In the Emile, we see Rousseau's imaginary pupil performing a similar role. In both examples, public opinion and custom are the particular aspects of corrupt societies that hinder virtue. The ability to ignore such concerns is the key for the virtuous individual. Through the distinction between amour-propre and amour de soi in the Emile, Rousseau shows how the goal of virtue is to be attained. The story of Emile's education comprises the majority of the book. However, the most controversial ideas that Rousseau presents in it are in Book IV, in a section entitled 'The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar'. The claims he makes in this section are primarily what led the book to be immediately banned by Parisian authorities, thus forcing Rousseau to flee France in 1762. As the character of Emile grows older, the tutor must decide how he will teach his pupil about matters of God and religion. It is prudent to examine the Profession of Faith for a number of reasons. First, this rather short text is the most explicit account that we have of Rousseau's views on metaphysics; among the topics included are the existence and attributes of God, the mind/body problem, and issues of free will and determinism. Also, especially for our purposes, the Profession of Faith gives further insight into Rousseau's general account of virtue and is, thus, extremely significant. The Profession of Faith is written in the first person, from the perspective of the Vicar. He explains that after becoming a priest, he was unable to live with his vow of celibacy, and was arrested, suspended and ultimately dismissed. His ideas of morality were


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deeply shaken by these events, and he even likens himself to Descartes, claiming that he was cast into a radical state of doubt and uncertainty. But unlike Descartes, the Vicar concludes that one cannot escape from this state and concludes that such scepticism is, 'a condition too violent for the human mind; it cannot long be endured; in spite of itself, the mind decides one way or another, and it prefers to be deceived rather than to believe nothing'. 31 Philosophers, the Vicar says, are engaged in constructing vastly complicated systems, none of which ultimately rests on any surer foundations than any other. And so, he elects instead to follow what he calls the 'Inner Light'. This Inner Light does not give truths that are impervious to doubt; rather, it can be understood as a kind of common sense philosophy that rests on very basic intuitions. In pursuing philosophy this way, the Vicar says: I then went over in my mind the various opinions which I had held in the course of my life, and I saw that although no one of them was plain enough to fain immediate belief, some were more probable than others, and my inward consent was given or withheld in proportion to this improbability. Having discovered this, I made an unprejudiced comparison of all these different ideas, I perceived that the first and most general of them was also the simplest and most reasonable, and that it would have been accepted by every one if only it had been last instead of first.32 We must note that although the kinds of truths that Rousseau is describing may seem very much like the same kinds of first principles that are put forth by the very philosophers he is claiming have produced absurdity, there is an important difference. Whereas these other philosophers, the Vicar claims, have attempted to resolve conflicts that arise between their principles, following the Inner Light means that we must accept these apparent contradictions: 'Every system has its insoluble problems, for the finite mind of man is too small to deal with them, these difficulties are therefore no final arguments, against any system.'33 One may take issue with Rousseau's philosophical rigour, as it seems that he is espousing a kind of scepticism himself. But I think the way Rousseau intends us

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to read the Profession of Faith is more in the spirit of his criticisms in the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts. The criticisms that he makes of philosophers in the Profession of Faith seem to be more of an indictment of those philosophers whose systems become so abstract and riddled with bizarre doctrines, so antithetical to common sense, that they cease to have any real, practical application anymore. The motivation for the systems is not the search for truth, which the Vicar says motivates his own pursuit, but rather the desire to outdo all others. This is why Rousseau says of these philosophers, 'There is not one of them, who, if he chanced to discover the difference between truth and falsehood, would not prefer his own lie to the truth which another had discovered.'34 Rousseau is keenly aware of the disputes between idealists and realists, as well as dualists and materialists. The account he gives of himself and the external world is based on ideas that, by the Inner Light, the Vicar concludes simply must be accepted. He exists as a being that senses, and the objects that cause his sensations exist outside of him. The external world exists as particles of matter, and what separates intelligent beings from mere matter is the ability of such beings not only to sense objects, but to compare them, that is, to 'judge'. In this respect, Rousseau seems to be moving very close to a Cartesian understanding of mind and body, an understanding in which bodies are merely extension in space that are subject to certain laws of motion: [T]his visible universe consists of matter, matter diffused and dead, matter which has none of the cohesion, the organization, the common feeling of the parts of a living body, for it is certain that we who are parts have no consciousness of the whole. This same universe is in motion, and in its movements, ordered, uniform, and subject to fixed laws, it has none of that freedom which appears in the spontaneous movements of men and animals.35 Of course this understanding of the universe presents certain problems, the most significant of which is the mind/body problem. We have two completely distinct types of substance, one is material,


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non-thinking and subject to mechanistic laws (body); and the other is an immaterial substance identified purely with thought (mind). The mind/body problem asks how it is that these two distinct substances can interact with one another. For a materialist like Hobbes, this problem does not exist. But as we saw in the last chapter, Hobbes is then left with a mechanistic determinism and, thus, no free will. This conflict between dualism and the mind/body problem on one hand, and materialism and determinism on the other, is precisely the kind that the Vicar says can be resolved by the Inner Light. It cannot be resolved by philosophical discourse; freedom, as well as the distinction between one's will and unthinking matter, are proven by the fact that they are so obvious in our own experience. He says: You ask me again, how do I know that there are spontaneous movements? I tell you, T know because I feel them'. I want to move my arm and I move it without any other immediate cause of the movement but my own will. In vain would any one try to argue me out of this feeling, it is stronger than any proofs; you might as well try to convince me that I do not exist.36 Rousseau is aware of the particular difficulties that come with trying to explain the relation of the mind to the body, or other complex philosophical problems. Indeed, the Vicar himself qualifies the above remarks by calling them 'obscure', but he also says that at least there is nothing in them that is repugnant to reason or our basic human experience. The Vicar continues to ponder the universe using the Inner Light as his guide, and he ultimately comes to the conclusion that God must exist. However, the God that he describes is distinct from the Christian God in significant ways, which is one reason why the Emile was so controversial. God is known through nature, according to Rousseau in the Profession of Faith; God is particularly evident when one attempts to understand living substances as distinct from inanimate matter. To deny that there is some kind of intelligence that intended these living substances is, according to the Vicar, to cling to an obscure and counter-intuitive philosophical system:

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Rousseau and the Ethics of Virtue What absurd assumptions are required to deduce all this harmony from the blind mechanism of matter set in motion by chance! In vain do those who deny the unity of intention manifested in the relations of all the parts of this great whole, in vain do they conceal their nonsense under abstractions, co-ordinations, general principles, symbolic expressions; whatever they do I find it impossible to conceive of a system of entities so firmly ordered unless I believe in an intelligence that ordered them. It is not in my power to believe that passive and dead matter can have brought forth living and feeling beings, that blind chance has brought forth intelligent beings, that that which does not think has brought forth thinking beings.37

This argument for God's existence resembles others, many of which had been used by Christian philosophers. One of Aquinas's five ways of proving God's existence is through the notion of the intention behind final causes in nature. But Rousseau stops short of using this reasoning to assert the existence of the Christian God or even monotheism in general. The Vicar is therefore quick to qualify his remarks by explaining that God is known to him purely in his effects; that is, the order of the universe around him and the impossibility of life emerging by chance. And so, he remains silent about the particular attributes of God and origins of the universe. All that he can discern from the Inner Light is that there is a single intelligence, power, or will: one that is the cause of everything in existence. However, these words do not really allow him to know the nature of God. The Vicar says: T see God everywhere in his works; I feel him within myself; I behold him all around me; but if I try to ponder him himself, if I try to find out where he is, what he is, what is his substance, he escapes me and my troubled spirit finds nothing.'38 While Rousseau argues, via the Vicar, that one can only know God in this very general sense, it is from this basic conception that we can learn a great deal about ourselves. As there is an intended order in the universe of which God is the author, human beings must have


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some intended place in this order. But what is this place? From a philosopher famously associated with praising all things in nature, it is somewhat surprising that he has the Vicar say that it is clear that man is the Lord of the earth and that there is no reason to doubt that all things in nature were created for him. Indeed he says that he observes nothing in the world, with the exception of God himself, which is better than the human species. For human beings alone are able to contemplate God's existence and feel what is meant by goodness, beauty and virtue. It is interesting, then, that the Profession of Faith moves from this more metaphysical and epistemological tone to a more ethical one. This is consistent with the criticisms of the sciences that Rousseau made in the First Discourse when he asked whether the advances in philosophy and science have served at all to make people morally better. In contemplating the order of the universe and the place of human beings in it, the Vicar is immediately led to a discussion of morality: While I meditated upon man's nature, I seemed to discover two distinct principles in it; one of them raised him to the study of eternal truths, to the love of justice and of true morality, to the regions of the world of thought, which the wise delight to contemplate; the other led him downwards to himself, made him a slave of his senses, of the passions which are their instruments, and thus opposed everything suggested to him by the former principle. When I felt myself carried away, distracted by these conflicting motives, I said, No; man is not one; I will and I will not; I feel myself at once a slave and a free man; I perceive what is right, I love it, and I do what is wrong; I am active when I listen to the voice of reason; I am passive when I am carried away by my passions; and when I yield, my worst suffering is the knowledge that I might have resisted.39 These two faculties, which are very similar to what Kant would later call 'reason' and 'inclination', mean human beings are free creatures. And they echo the same understanding of the human condition that Rousseau articulated in the Second Discourse. Human beings have the

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ability to obey the voice of reason, or they can disobey it. This ability is indicative of freedom. But here in the Profession of Faith, long after human beings have left the state of nature, people have been corrupted. They become slaves to their senses, but their freedom consists in their ability to act in accord with their sensory desires in ways that they know by their conscience is wrong, or against these desires and in accord with morality. And while materialists like Hobbes would argue that instances where man chooses between these two apparent motivations are merely illusions, Rousseau counters by saying that the experience of choosing is all the evidence that one needs to prove freedom. He replies to those who would deny this freedom, Tn vain do you argue this point with me; I feel it, and it is this feeling which speaks to me more forcibly than the reason which disputes it.'40 Because human beings act freely when they error, it is they who are culpable for their actions. To those who complain that God ought to have created men differently so that they would never choose wrongly, the Vicar answers that God has made virtue man's birthright, and has given man a conscience as a guide to living well. Like Aristotle, Rousseau associates morality, at least in the sense of acting virtuously or viciously, with happiness, i.e. the good life. Our happiness is in our own control according to Rousseau. Happiness has to do with putting one's passions in line with the higher moral order: Supreme happiness consists in self-content; that we may gain this self-content we are placed upon this earth and endowed with freedom, we are tempted by our passions and restrained by conscience. What more could divine power itself have done on our behalf? Could it have made our nature a contradiction, and have given the prize of well-doing to one who was incapable of evil? To prevent a man from wickedness, should Providence have restricted him to instinct and made him a fool? Not so, O God of my soul, I will never reproach thee that thou hast created me in thine own image, that I may be free and good and happy like my Maker!41 The connection between the natural order and morality is articulated further as the Profession of Faith continues. Goodness


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and justice are associated with order, and thus morality comes from recognizing and accepting one's place in this order. Perhaps the clearest sense with which one can understand this perspective is in the Vicar's example of a circle. By our senses, we put ourselves at the centre of the universe and mistakenly believe that all things revolve around us. However, knowledge of God and the proper moral and virtuous perspective consists in seeing oneself as existing on the circumference. There is one common centre for all of us; this perspective shows one how to be virtuous: In this world our inner consciousness is absorbed by the crowd of eager passions which cheat remorse. The humiliation and disgrace involved in the practice of virtue do not permit us to realize its charm. But when, freed from the illusions of the bodily senses, we behold with joy the supreme Being and the eternal truths which flow from him; when all the powers of our soul are alive to the beauty of order and we are wholly occupied in comparing what we have done with what we ought to have done, then it is that the voice of conscience will regain its strength and sway; then it is that the pure delight which springs from selfcontent, and the sharp regret for our own degradation of that self, will decide by means of overpowering feeling what shall be the fate which each has prepared for himself.42 The themes relating to virtue in the Profession of Faith are exemplified in the education of Emile in the rest of the book. Emile is made to regard himself as one part of the natural order and is certainly not a slave to his passions. The three works that we have examined in this chapter, the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, the Confessions, and the Emile, are certainly distinct from one another but I think that, especially in terms of what they tell us about Rousseau's views on virtue, it is appropriate to look at them together. Rousseau's criticism of society in the First Discourse, his own personal struggles in the Confessions, and the dangers from which the tutor must protect the pupil in the Emile, share a commonality. All three represent a corrupt society that has resulted from the loss of the state of nature and the

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institution of a specious social contract. The good news, however, is that Rousseau takes it upon himself in this work not only to diagnose the vices of society, but also to explain how one can escape them. Clearly though, Rousseau has a vision for the future, a political vision of a society that praises virtue. What we have above is a picture of virtue in an unjust society. In the following chapter, we'll examine Rousseau's account of virtue in a society united in a legitimate social contract.

Notes 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 3: Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second Discourse); Polemics', and Political Economy, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992b), p. 67. 2 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 5: The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995), p. 295. 3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 2: Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (First Discourse) and Polemics, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992a), p. 4. 4 Ibid., p. 6. 5 Ibid., pp. 17-18. 6 Ibid., p. 4. 7 Ibid., p. 7. 8 Ibid., p. 7.

9 Ibid., p. 13. 10 Ibid., p. 15. 11 This idea is very Kantian. For Kant rejects the arguments of Descartes and Leibnitz, who claim that to know what is good we need to develop science — knowledge of the consequences of our actions. We understand what is right by understanding the intrinsic nature of our actions, i.e. actions which are good or bad in themselves despite their results. 12 Rousseau (1992a), p. 22.


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13 Rousseau (1995), pp. 167-68. 14 Ibid., pp. 303-304. 15 We ought to make a qualification here. In his autobiographical writings, not only the Confessions, but also works such as Rousseau: Judge of Jean-Jacques and the Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau discusses his attempts to become virtuous. In many of these discussions, such as the selection quoted in this chapter, he seems to be saying that he has been successful in these attempts. However, Rousseau's life was not what many, including Rousseau himself, took to be the most virtuous. But Rousseau is clearly aware that he has not lived up to his own ideal. For many of these autobiographical texts are also filled with selfloathing, and Rousseau asks that the reader not judge the truth of his claims based on the personal inadequacies of their author. 16 Rousseau (1995), p. 349. 17 Ibid., p. 350. 18 Ibid., p. 575. The date of this letter is significant, in that it was written before the publication of The Social Contract. This best explains why this crucial text is not included in what Rousseau states here to be his 'principle works'. Rousseau claims that he has produced some works which are 'principle'; this suggests that there is a unity and coherence in which they fit together. This supports the type of account I give in this chapter: one that relies on such a unity of various texts. 19 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, B. Foxley, trans. (London: Everyman Publishing, 2000), p. xvii. 20 Ibid., p. 7. 21 Once again we see an idea that Kant similarly argues, namely that moral actions rely on consistency, and that self-contradictory actions are to be avoided. 22 Rousseau (2000), p. 9. 23 Timothy O'Hagan, Rousseau (London: Routledge Press, 1999a), p. 65. 24 The issue of vanity is key for Rousseau in the Emile. We see very clearly the relationship between vanity and amour-propre. Eliminating vanity is a crucial part of the moral education process.

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25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42


Rousseau (2000), p. 165 Ibid., p. 118 Ibid., p. 208. Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 209. Ibid., p. 349. Ibid., p. 276. Ibid., p. 278 Ibid., p. 277 Ibid., p. 277 Ibid., pp. 281-82. Ibid., p. 281 Ibid., p. 286. Ibid., p. 287 Ibid., p. 289. Ibid., p. 290. Ibid., p. 292. Ibid., p. 295.

Chapter 4

The Virtuous Citizen and Rousseau's

Political Philosophy

Rousseau's political thought is one of the most influential parts of his philosophical legacy. It's not surprising, therefore, that many read Rousseau merely as a political philosopher and do not attempt to put these ideas within the larger scope of his other works. In the final chapter, I will argue that this is a mistake, and that in order to truly grasp Rousseau's political vision, one must recognize the pertinent themes about virtue as they are expressed in the first two Discourses as well as the Emile and the Confessions. For the present, however, we will look at Rousseau's two most important works of political philosophy, the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract. The former, published in 1755, was originally written as an entry in Diderot's encyclopedia. The latter was published in 1762, the same year as the Emile, and exceeded the Discourse on Political Economy in its length as well as the detail and rigour with which Rousseau made his arguments. However, at their basic cores, both the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract express the same vision of the ideal political regime. They also shed a good deal of light on Rousseau's general account of virtue. Let us proceed by examining these two texts, turning our attention first to the Discourse on Political Economy. The first point that we ought to make in a discussion of the Discourse on Political Economy is a distinction, namely, the difference between what Rousseau terms public and private economy. Public economy refers to the state, while private refers to private groups within a state, most notably the family; the Discourse is concerned only with public economy, i.e. government or sovereignty. Rousseau's task is to propose a system of government that would

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be the best possible for human beings. As we have seen in the preceding chapters, the regime that he observes around him, most notably eighteenth-century France, is clearly not representative of such a system. Rousseau attacks the view that a legitimate political regime ought to mirror the natural family. That is, the sovereign ought to rule over the people in the same way that a father rules over his family. Several preliminary remarks need to be made here. First, Rousseau seems to be making a distinction between a natural institution, family, on one hand, and an invention, the state, on the other. But in the Second Discourse, we saw that Rousseau does not regard either of these institutions as natural in the strict sense. The family comes about after human beings leave the pure state of nature and basic states of elementary co-operation with one another. We raised some of these questions in the second chapter when we discussed whether the account in the Second Discourse was best understood as hypothetical or historical. Ultimately, I argued that Rousseau's basic philosophical project is the same regardless of where one stands on this issue, and I think that the same point holds here. Even if one regards the account in the Second Discourse as a strictly historical one, and the natural family as an institution that comes about largely by accidental historical events, it is still quite fair to say that the family is much closer to nature than is a large political regime, i.e. the state. Instinct, or the voice of nature, can reasonably serve for the father as a guide to leading his family. Rousseau argues that there are several reasons why the father is the natural leader over the mother and children, among them his physical strength, though we need not investigate these arguments here. Rather, our concern is why nature can serve as a guide to the father, but not the head of a state. Rousseau says: In the large family, all of whose members are naturally equal, political authority — purely arbitrary as regards its institution — can be founded only on conventions, and the magistrate can command the others only by virtue of the laws. The father's duties are dictated by natural feelings, and in a tone that rarely permits him to disobey. Leaders have no similar rule and are not

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really obligated to the people except for what they have promised to do, which the people has a right to require them to carry out.1 Because there is no natural interest in the head of state similar to that of the father's interest in his wife and children, not only is the voice of nature unsuitable as a guide for the ruler, but it actually would steer the ruler toward decisions that were harmful to the citizens. Rousseau warns that very often the leader of the state listens to the voice of nature and pursues his own happiness at the expense of the people that he is supposed to be serving. In monarchial governments, this is the reason for tyranny: 'To act well, the former [the father] need only to consult his heart; the latter [the magistrate] becomes a traitor the moment he heeds his.'2 If the voice of nature, that is instinct or feelings, is inadequate for a magistrate to properly rule the people of a state, what then should serve as the guide? This is certainly a difficult question; for Rousseau, answering it is the fundamental task of political philosophy. His answer relies primarily on his concept of the 'general will', which he discusses at length in both the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract. The general will is initially presented by Rousseau with an analogy between the political body and an individual living organism. Like a living body, the body politic is a unified whole with various parts. Each part has its own particular function, but these particular functions serve together for the good of the whole. The sovereign power represents the head of the body; the laws and customs the brain; commerce, industry and agriculture are likened to the mouth and stomach; public finances are the blood; and the citizens of the regime are like the physical limbs of the body. Like a physical organism, all the parts of the state must work together in order for it to subsist. The general will of a political regime is the same, in principle, as the will of an individual in that it does not represent just one part of the being, but the being as a whole: The body politic is thus also a moral being that has a will; and this general will, which always tends toward the preservation and welfare of the whole and of each part, and which is the source of

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the laws, is — for all the members of the state in relation to themselves and to it — the rule of what is just and unjust. 3 The central challenge in government is to make certain that the general will is followed, rather than the particular will of any given person or group. This echoes the theme we saw above, namely that it is not appropriate for a ruler to listen to the voice of nature because too often this voice will lead him toward the desires of his own particular will, often at the expense of the interests of the state as a whole. In the Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau states that if the concept of the general will is to serve as the first principle of public economy, there are three maxims that must be obeyed. The rest of the Discourse is a discussion of these three maxims. First, Rousseau says, and most importantly, is for a government to follow the general will in all things. While this point may seem obvious, in practice it becomes difficult to apply because in order to follow the general will, one must know what that will commands in any given situation. Most importantly, one must be able to distinguish the general will from particular wills, whether it is the particular will of a given individual, or a collection of the particular wills of a group of individuals with some common interest that is at odds with the interest of the society as a whole. If individuals commit to a civil society for their own protection, in what sense is the society justified in cases wherein the individual's particular will is at odds with the general will? In Rousseau's words: But how can men be forced to defend the freedom of one among them without infringing on that of the others? And how can the public needs be met without altering the private property of those who are forced to contribute to it? Whatever sophisms may be used to disguise all this, it is certain that if someone can constrain my will, I am no longer free, and that I am no longer master of my goods if another can meddle with them.4 Overcoming these difficulties, namely giving up one's liberty (at least to some degree) to be subject to a state, is accomplished by the law, according to Rousseau. So long as everyone in the society is


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subject to the law, the natural equality of human beings is preserved, even though they have left the state of nature. Unlike Hobbes, Rousseau argues that respect for, and obedience to, the law is accomplished by the citizens' genuine love and respect for it, not their fear of punishment: The power of the laws depends even more on their own wisdom than on the severity of their ministers, and the public will draw its greatest influence from the reason that dictated it. It is because of this that Plato considers it a very important precaution always to place at the head of edicts a well-reasoned preamble which shows their justice and utility. Indeed, the first of the laws is to respect the laws. Severity of punishment is merely a vain expedient thought up by small minds in order to substitute terror for the respect they can't obtain.5 Laws, however, cannot simply be arbitrary. Legitimate laws are only those which are based on the general will. Rousseau argues that in most cases the general will makes itself evident and that we observe this even in regimes in which the governmental authority does not have the public good in mind. But Rousseau says very little in this section about specific ways that governments might know what the general will commands. In what follows, however, in his discussion of the second rule of public economy, Rousseau gives us a bit more on this topic. The second rule builds on the first, which we have seen above, and declares that the government must follow the general will. This first rule is articulated in very general terms, and the second seeks to specify how the first is to be followed. It states that one must ensure that all particular wills are in accord with the general will. I want to emphasize this section in our discussion because it is here that Rousseau stresses the importance of virtue. But, for at least a moment, I think we ought to leave aside what Rousseau says about virtue in the first and second Discourses, the Emile, and the Confessions, which we have examined in the preceding chapters. For in the Discourse on Political Economy (as well as the Social Contract, as we shall see in what follows) Rousseau is giving us an account of

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political virtue, one that can only be properly understood in the context of a very particular and ideal kind of regime, i.e. one that follows the general will. Rousseau argues that virtuous citizens are a necessity in making the general will known and respected: If political writers were less blinded by their ambition, they would see how impossible it is for any establishment whatever to function in the spirit of its institution, if it is not directed in accordance with the law. They would feel that the greatest wellspring of public authority lies in the hearts of the citizens, and that for the maintenance of the government, nothing can replace good morals. Not only is it worthy people alone who know how to administer laws, but basically it is only decent people who know how to obey them.6 There is an important connection between Rousseau's emphases here on the virtue of the citizens and the discussion of respect for law in his discussion of the first rule of political economy. Virtuous citizens will have a genuine love and appreciation for the laws that bind them together in their society, and will not simply obey these laws because they fear the terror of the government punishment. This perspective is alien to the view that the role of government is merely to protect the rights of individuals, and simply keep order. For Rousseau, a good regime is not merely one in which individuals follow the rules, but also one in which they love those rules. A virtuous character is therefore fundamental to solving the problem of a particular will versus the general will. For it is impossible, no matter how much a government might try, to substitute particular laws to replace the citizens' love of country. If they lack virtue, people will always find ways of breaking these laws, which causes them to be constantly revised, amended and repealed, all in the vain attempt to create a just society. However, when the citizens are virtuous, Rousseau says: [W]hen citizens love their duty, and when the trustees of public authority sincerely apply themselves nourishing this love through their example and by their efforts, all difficulties vanish and


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administration becomes so easy that it can do without that shady art whose baseness produces all of its secrecy. Those ambitious minds, so dangerous and so admired, all those great ministers whose glory is combined with the people's misfortunes, are no longer missed. Good public morals replace the genius of leaders. And the more virtue reigns, the less necessary are talents.7 Essentially, the civic virtue that Rousseau describes is expressed as a genuine love of country; but citizens cannot simply be told to love their country. They must be educated, and their moral education ties into the faculty of natural pity that Rousseau describes in the Second Discourse. When the people are brought up in such a way that the society does not force them to harden their hearts to the point that they do not feel for their fellow citizens, virtue is possible. In practice, one of the most important elements of developing a virtuous citizenry is equality. In one sense, as we saw above, equality must be maintained in the application of law. If one group of the citizens is above the law, this injustice will cause the others to resent the government and its endorsement of inequality. But in addition to this legal equality, Rousseau maintains that there must be economic equality: It is, therefore, one of government's most important tasks to prevent extreme inequality of wealth, not by taking treasures away from those who possess them, but by removing the means of accumulating them from everyone; nor by building poorhouses, but by protecting citizens from becoming poor. People unequally distributed over the territory and crowded into one place while others become depopulated; arts or pleasure and pure invention favored at the expense of the useful and difficult trades; agriculture sacrificed to commerce; the tax farmer made necessary by administration of the state revenues; venality, finally, pushes to such excess that reputation is measured in coin and the virtues themselves are sold for money: these are the most tangible cases of opulence and indigence, of the substitution of private interest for public interest, of the mutual hate of citizens, of their indifference to the common cause, of the corruption of the

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people, and the weakening of all the mechanisms of government. Such are, consequently, the evils that are hard to cure once they make themselves felt, but which a wise administration should prevent in order to maintain, along with good morals, respect for the laws, love of fatherland, and a vigorous general will.8 Passages like this, combined with statements in the Second Discourse that the beginnings of private property led to the downfall and misery of humanity, have led some to accuse Rousseau of being an enemy of the idea of property altogether. But I disagree with such an interpretation. It is true that Rousseau thinks that disparity in wealth is a very dangerous thing that can undermine the very foundations of a society, but while economic equality is one key element in his discussion of virtue, another is liberty. This point relates to what we have seen throughout our analysis of the Discourse on Political Economy. Virtue is about character; it cannot be attained merely by setting up a system of rules, and so the discussion once again returns to the importance of education. If this sounds strange to us, it is only because, like Rousseau's contemporaries, we do not live under the type of regime that Rousseau is articulating. Because our society does encourage a 'survival of the fittest' kind of mentality among its citizens, the kind of love of homeland that Rousseau is advocating is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to produce in people. Rather, we, like Rousseau, live in a society that celebrates self-love, and pursuing one's particular will at all costs: It is too late to change our natural inclinations, once they have become entrenched, and habit has been combined with amourpropre. It is too late to draw us outside of ourselves, once the human self concentrated in our hearts has acquired that contemptible activity that absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life of petty souls.9 Children must be brought up from their births with the precepts of the general will constantly made evident to them. Rousseau compares the state to a 'gentle mother' and the citizens, like her


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loyal children, will feel the love of their country that constitutes virtue. These two rules of public economy, following the general will and putting particular wills in accord with it, are completed with Rousseau's third rule: the state must provide for the basic public needs of its citizens. Essentially, this third rule is articulated in the Discourse on Political Economy in a continued discussion of property, as well as Rousseau's views on legitimate taxation. Once again, we see that the emphasis is not so much on particular rules to govern property rights, as it is on the importance of the character of the citizens. If the people perceive very elaborate luxuries as necessities, they will ultimately be willing to forsake the good of the community for their own selfish desires. Rousseau offers several reasons why the public's perception of its needs can escalate from mere necessities to elaborate luxuries. One is the taste for conquest; if a state begins to focus on conquering other states and increasing its domain, a people will quickly come to think that it needs more territory, more power, and more influence. With this comes the taste for better living and exotic tastes that Rousseau says can bring a state to ruin. Another reason follows from this one. Once citizens start to value their own private interests, which, due to the state's desire for conquest, have become much more elaborate, their concern for the public good will wane. Thus, these citizens will ultimately be far less likely to sacrifice themselves for the good of their homeland. This leads to the government employing the use of mercenaries rather than loyal citizens for its military. These mercenaries obviously have money as their sole motivation, and there is no respect whatsoever for the general will. Rousseau cites the end of Rome's Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire as the turning point in its history for just this reason. This event marked the first time that mercenaries were used in the Roman army, an event that he claims, 'dishonored the legions'.10 In short, for Rousseau, as the perceived needs of the public increase, the stability and health of the regime decrease. There is, however, a crucial distinction to be made between luxuries and basic needs, and government has an obligation to make certain that the basic needs of all its citizens are satisfied:

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The distribution of foodstuffs, money, and merchandise in just proportions according to time and place is the true secret of finances, and the source of their abundance, provided that those who administer them know how to project their views far enough in advance and on occasion accept an apparent and proximate loss in order actually to obtain immense profits at a future time.11 Rousseau goes on to explain that the reasoning behind the government's distribution of wealth must be made known to the public. He describes how in his own homeland, Geneva, there are vast storehouses of grain whose purpose is to prevent famine should there be a food shortage. These storehouses are in plain sight for all the citizens to see; when these kinds of financial precaution are taken, the citizens will not suspect that the administrators of government are taking more than their fair share or spending public money foolishly. Public finances and their distribution lead us to Rousseau's discussion of taxation. Taxes, he says, are divided into two categories: property taxes and personal taxes. The former are paid on things that individuals own, and the latter are set amounts which are paid by each individual. Rousseau echoes Montesquieu's argument, from the Spirit of the Laws, that a property tax is usually more just than a personal one, but also says that a personal tax could be supported provided it was proportionate to the private means possessed by each citizen. This notion of proportionality is the fundamental basis for legitimate taxation in accordance with the general will: First, one should consider the relationship of quantities, according to which — all things being equal — someone who has ten times more goods than another should pay ten times more. Second, the relationship of use, that is the distinction between the necessary and the superfluous. Someone who has only the bare necessities should pay nothing at all; taxation on someone who has more superfluities, can, if need be, approach the totality of what exceeds his necessities.12


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That taxes ought to be administered in such a way is not unfair, according to Rousseau, even though it requires some (the rich) to pay more than others. The real unfairness is the current system, in which the whole basis of government is set up in such a way to be to the advantage of those with wealth. This criticism, which Rousseau expresses at the end of the Discourse on Political Economy, is the very same one that he levelled against society in the Second Discourse. Using powerful examples, which may hit home for us even more so than they did for the Discourse's original readers, Rousseau makes his argument for how the present state of affairs is set up to benefit those with much over those with little. He asks us to consider what happens when a man of wealth and power lies or cheats; most often if he is punished at all, it is nothing more than a slap on the wrist. If this same man is robbed, however, the entire police force rushes to his aid. If the axle of his carriage breaks, everyone is there to give him aid, and if someone of low standing should be in his way, this person is swept away for inconveniencing him. The plight of the poor man is quite the opposite. No one is willing to go out of the way for him. If he claims he has been wronged, far from everyone coming to his aid, people are sceptical and may even suspect him as the criminal instead of trying to aid him. This system of public economy is, like the specious social contract described in the Second Discourse, made by the powerful to keep their power. Rousseau ends the Discourse on Political Economy with a hypothetical conversation between the rich and the poor: You need me, for I am rich and you are poor, so let us come to an agreement between ourselves. I shall permit you to have the honor of serving me on the condition that you give me what little you have left in return for the trouble I shall be taking to command you.13 Rousseau's central claims in the Discourse on Political Economy focus on the notion of the general will, the love of citizens for their homeland, equality and liberty. Many of his arguments, however, leave the reader wanting for more detail as to how these ideals can come about and then be maintained in a given society. In fact, it

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seems that in some places in the text, Rousseau is making circular arguments. For example, the general will ought to be followed in all things; to do this, citizens must love their homeland; to instil this love, the state must follow the general will. Again, I think that these fallacies rely on a fairly uncharitable reading of Rousseau. I have maintained throughout the book that Rousseau's works cannot be read as isolated arguments, but rather, the whole system of his thought is evident when we read them together. And I think that many of the more general points that Rousseau makes in the Discourse on Political Economy are more explicitly explained and supported in his 1762 political masterpiece, the Social Contract. The Social Contract begins with one of Rousseau's most famous lines, 'Man was/is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.'14 The loss of freedom is, as we have seen in the Second Discourse, part of an historical chain of events that results in gross inequalities among people. But while the Second Discourse seeks to explain how human beings have moved from a free and equal state in nature to slavery and inequality in civil society, the Social Contract is forward looking, and seeks to explain how freedom can be regained. We should note that the freedom that Rousseau speaks of in the Social Contract is superior to that of the noble savage in the state of nature. Purely natural man is amoral, and is free in the sense that he has no commitments to others; he is not even capable of making such commitments. He is equal to his fellow men in a physical sense. The political vision of the Social Contract seeks to take civilized human beings, those who have a developed sense of reason, and give them a sense of moral equality. Let us examine this text. The Social Contract is divided into four books, each of which is devoted to a particular subject. The first book addresses several of the most fundamental questions in political philosophy, some of which were touched upon in the Discourse on Political Economy. Some of these questions concern equality, freedom and sovereignty. Rousseau begins with a claim which, on its surface, may seem contradictory to claims about nature made in the Second Discourse. He argues that the first and most lasting of all societies, and the only one properly called 'natural', is the family. Now it is true that in the Second Discourse, Rousseau claims that even this institution develops


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over time. In our discussion of this work in Chapter Two, we examined the process that takes human beings from the pure state of nature to civil society and saw that the family comes about only after the pure state of nature and the state of elementary co-operation. We also touched upon whether the historical process described in the Second Discourse is better understood as a hypothetical account or an actual historical one. Perhaps this discussion in the Social Contract is evidence that Rousseau had a more hypothetical account in mind. However, we also said in Chapter Two that whichever perspective one takes, with respect to the literality with which one ought to read the Second Discourse, it must be the case that from the stage of the family to the present, Rousseau bases his arguments in empirical observation, and thus should be understood as arguing from historical fact. Furthermore, we said that at its core, the philosophical content of the work remains the same despite the view one takes on this issue. I think this view is helpful in understanding the context in which we ought to understand Rousseau's claim that the family is a natural social group. Whether one takes this to mean that human beings have always existed in families or that the institution of the family came about after a state in which human beings were completely isolated from one another, it makes little difference in terms of the central themes in the Social Contract: freedom and equality. The slavery and inequality that are under lire in this work are absent from the stage in history, in which families live among one another, that we deemed the 'stone-age' in our discussion of the Second Discourse in Chapter Two. As Rousseau says, 'as long as they applied themselves only to tasks that a single person could do and to arts that did not require the cooperation of several hands, they lived free, healthy, good, and happy insofar as they could be according to their Nature'. 15 It is not until developments in technology, specifically agriculture and metallurgy, that the division of labour causes the fragmentation of society into distinct classes of rich and poor. It is from this fragmentation that the ills of inequality, and the slavery of the poor at the hands of the rich, result. So for Rousseau to claim in the Social Contract that the family is a natural society can at least be understood in the sense that the family is free of the

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grossly unnatural conditions of inequality that are present in current civil society. Clearly, Rousseau's emphasis on the natural equality and freedom of all human beings leads him to reject any view that advocates slavery as either natural or justifiable. Both Aristotle and Grotius are mentioned as posing such views. Rousseau argues against the latter that one of the first principles of legitimate government is that power is established for the benefit of those governed. With Grotius in mind again, as well as Hobbes, Rousseau denies that the notion of rights is based only on the strength of a group to enforce them, or as he puts it, the notion that 'might makes right'. At most, Rousseau says, obeying because of a fear of punishment is an act of prudence; it could never be a genuine duty. He states: Let us suppose this alleged right for a moment. I say that what comes of it is nothing but inexplicable confusion. For as soon as force makes right, the effect changes along with the cause. Any force that overcomes the first one succeeds to its right. As soon as one can disobey without punishment, one can do so legitimately, and since the strongest is always right, the only thing to do is to make oneself the strongest. But what is a right that perishes when force ceases? If it is necessary to obey by force, one need not obey by duty, and if one is no longer forced to obey, one is no longer obligated to do so. It is apparent, then, that this word right adds nothing to force. Hence it signifies nothing at all.16 Continuing his attack on Grotius and Hobbes, Rousseau argues that legitimate governmental authority must be based in a first agreement between all of the members of a society. A person cannot give up her natural freedom against her will; if her freedom is taken from her by force, then, as we have seen, that subversion is based merely in the 'might versus right' principle and is illegitimate. Even the principle of majority rule must originally be agreed upon by the members of a society. Rousseau says that if there are one hundred people who wish to have a master, and ten who do not, the larger group has no authority to make that decision on behalf of the


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smaller. The rules that govern a society, in order for them to be legitimate, require unanimity at least in their origin. The notion of sovereignty in the Social Contract is distinct from the Hobbeseian conception in another sense as well. Hobbes claims that the authority of the sovereign is maintained by the use of terror as a means of keeping the subjects from breaking the laws and thus returning to the state of nature: the war of every man against every other. Rousseau claims that sovereignty involves a reciprocal commitment between governmental authority and private individuals. It is not merely one group's exercise of power over another. Legitimate sovereignty is the free association of the citizens, and as Rousseau says in the discussion of the 'general will' in the Discourse on Political Economy, the joining of particulars into a united whole. He discusses the general will specifically in Books II and IV of the Social Contract, which we will examine below. The connection between the general will and sovereignty is a major theme in Rousseau's political thought. Rousseau will say later in Book I that sovereignty is nothing more than the exercise of the general will: But, the body politic or sovereign, deriving its being only from the sanctity of the contract, can never obligate itself, even towards others, in anything that violates this original act, such as alienating some portion of itself or submitting to another sovereign. To violate the act by which it exists would be to annihilate itself, and that which is nothing produces nothing. As soon as this multitude is thus united in one body, no one can offend any of its members without attacking the body, much less offend the body without the members feeling the effects. Thus, duty and interest equally obligate the two contracting parties to help each other, and the same men must seek to unite, in this double relationship, all the advantages that depend upon it. Now, the sovereign, formed solely by the private individuals who compose it, neither has nor can have any interest contrary to theirs; consequently, the sovereign power has no need to give a guarantee to the subjects, because it is impossible for the body to want to harm all its members, and we shall see thereafter that it cannot harm any one of them as an individual. Merely by virtue

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of its special nature, the sovereign is always everything that it should be.17 Rousseau follows this passage with a brief discussion of one of the central concerns that he had recognized earlier in the Discourse on Political Economy, namely the problem of the conflict of individuals' particular wills with the general will. The social pact between the citizens and the sovereign tacitly involves a commitment of the individual to the whole. And so while it is true the Rousseau argues that the state will never be authorized to force an individual to give up her liberty, once that individual commits to the society as one of its citizens, it can very often be the case that she has particular desires that go against what is best for the society in general. One might criticize Rousseau on precisely this point; how can it be said that the state does not violate my liberty when it is the state that compels me to abstain from doing what I take to be in my own interest? On the contrary, Rousseau argues that in these cases, the state is forcing the individual to be free. He states, 'by giving each Citizen to the fatherland, guarantees him against all personal dependence; a condition which creates the ingenuity and functioning of the political machine, and alone gives legitimacy to civil engagements'.18 Above, we saw Rousseau claim that the liberty that people enjoy in civil society is superior to the mere physical equality that they enjoy in the state of nature. The commitment of an individual to the state is a moral one, and purely natural man, as an amoral creature, is incapable of it. As such, Rousseau says: This passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they previously lacked. Only then, when the voice of duty replaces physical impulse and right replaces appetite, does man, who until that time had only considered himself, find he is forced to act upon different principles and to consult his reason before heeding his inclinations. Although in this state he deprives himself of several advantages given him by nature, he gains such great ones, his faculties are exercised and developed, his ideas broadened, his


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feelings ennobled, and his whole soul elevated to such a point that if the abuses of this new condition did not often degrade him beneath the condition he left, he ought ceaselessly to bless the happy moment that tore him away from it forever, and changed him from a stupid, limited animal into an intelligent being and a man.19 In this passage, perhaps more than any other in Rousseau's writings, we see similarities between his ethics and those of another great Enlightenment thinker, Immanuel Kant. Rousseau's distinction between nature and inclination on one hand, and reason and morality on the other, is similar to Kant's distinction between actions done from duty and actions done from inclination, especially in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. However, I think there is an important distinction between Rousseau and Kant as regards the relationship of morality to reason; Kant's emphasis on reason leads to the formulation of the categorical imperative and an act-based ethical system that Rousseau would ultimately disagree with. We'll look at this in more detail in the final chapter, but for the present let us continue our discussion of the Social Contract. Book II further explores the notion of sovereignty and the general will, but gives the reader more detail and a more systematic analysis than one finds in the Discourse on Political Economy. The general will represents the overall good of the society, and sovereignty the exercise of the general will. Here Rousseau must once again articulate the complex relationship of the general will to the particular wills of individuals. Ideally, each individual's particular will is in accord with the general will, which, as we saw above in our discussion of theDiscourse on Political Economy,is indicative of a virtuous citizen. Sovereignty is both inalienable and indivisible. It cannot legitimately give itself any future limitations by saying, for example, 'we shall will whatever this individual wills to be in our best interest'. Furthermore, Rousseau attacks the divisions that others make in trying to limit sovereign power by dividing it into various parts. He returns to the analogy of the body, which he frequently uses to explain the general will, to illustrate the problems that come with such divisions:

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But our political thinkers, unable to divide the principle of sovereignty, divide it in its object. They divide it into force and will; into legislative power and executive power; into rights of taxation, justice, and war; into internal administration and power to negotiate with foreigners. Sometimes they mix all these parts together, sometimes they separate them. They turn the sovereign into a fantastic being formed of bits and pieces. It is as though they created a man out of several bodies, one of which would have eyes, another arms, another feet, and nothing more.20 The division of sovereignty that Rousseau is criticizing, and he has Grotius in mind again in this passage, comes from a misunderstanding of sovereign authority. The various governmental authorities that are listed here, declaring war, taxation, etc., are not in themselves parts of sovereignty. Rather, Rousseau argues, they are different types of the sovereign's application. The general will looks to the well-being of the whole, and just as an individual does not have one will that tends to the needs of her digestive system, one for her circulatory system, and one for her sight, sovereignty cannot be composed of separate wills that tend to the various aspects of government. The general will is also infallible. Now this is not to say that a given people will never enact policies that are unfair or even detrimental to the society. The general will, and here again we can see a parallel to the Kantian morality, is universal, unchanging, and exists independently from any collection of particular wills. These particular wills, if they are opposed to the general will, are driven by inclination rather than reason. Rousseau claims that there is an important distinction to be made between the 'will of all' and the general will. The will of all is merely a collection of individuals' private wills and tends only toward their own particular interests. However, Rousseau says, 'take away from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the remaining sum of the differences is the general will'.21 The people can be deceived about what the general will demands, but the general will as a concept is always clear in what it demands. The primary root of these deceptions is the formation of factions within a society:


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If, when an adequately informed people deliberates, the Citizens were to have no communication among themselves, the general will would always result from the large number of small differences, and the deliberation would always be good. But when factions, partial associations at the expense of the larger one, are formed, the will of each of these associations becomes general with reference to its members and particular with reference to the State. One can say, then, that there are no longer as many voters as there are men, but merely as many as there are associations. The differences become less numerous and produce a result that is less general. Finally, when one of these associations is so big that it prevails over all the others, the result is no longer a sum of small differences, but a single difference. Then there is no longer a general will, and the opinion which prevails is merely a private opinion. 00

To protect against the formation of factions that would undermine the clarity of the general will, Rousseau says that it is necessary to ensure that each citizen speaks only on behalf of himself. He cites the historical examples of Lycurgus, Solon, Numa and Servius as rulers who were able to multiply these small groups to the point that they were unable to assume power over the state and substitute their collective will for the general will of the whole society. Keeping factions from gaining such a strong interest is the only way that the general will remains enlightened and clear, and the people are not deceived. In the Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau claims that the miracle of uniting a group of individuals and making them subject to the general will, while still respecting the freedom and equality of the individuals themselves, is worked by the law. The relationship of law to the general will and sovereignty is a key aspect of Rousseau's political thought. In Book II, Chapter Six, of the Social Contract, the concept of law is explained and framed within the context of sovereignty and the general will. There is a universal law that emanates from reason alone, but unless the laws apply to all of the members of the state, they are nothing more than speciously reasoned policies that work only toward the advantage of those to

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whom they do not apply. This is not to say that there can be no social classes, or even that there is only one specific form of government that can be legitimate. It only means that, whatever classes there might be, and whatever form of government happens to be in place, the laws cannot arbitrarily point to specific people or groups by name and make exceptions for them that are not accorded to others. Therefore, for a law to be legitimate, it must be an act flowing from the whole people, for the good of the whole people: [W]hen the entire people enacts something concerning the entire people, it considers only itself, and if a relationship is formed then, it is between the whole object viewed in one way and the whole object viewed in another, without any division of the whole. Then the subject matter of the enactment is general like the will that enacts it. It is this act that I call a law.23 In Book III, Rousseau discusses the various forms of government, democracy, aristocracy and monarchy, and reiterates the point that there is no one form that is to be universally preferred. He claims that in most cases democracy is best for a small state, aristocracy for a moderately sized one, and monarchy for a large state. In any group of people that come together and commit themselves to a state, there is a general will. Even a monarchy can be a legitimate form of government provided that the ruler is subject to the same laws as his subjects, and those laws are based on the general will of the people. We've said a great deal about the general will, and I do not think it at all controversial to say that this concept is the very cornerstone of Rousseau's political philosophy. In both the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract, we see him articulate it and speak of the primary dangers that can come about when the general will is ignored. The most significant danger is mistaking a collection of particular wills for the general will. We have seen that this mistake can be the result of several different problems: gross disparities of wealth, powerful factions, and certain groups arbitrarily made to be above the society's laws. However, while we have said a great deal


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about what kinds of problems can hurt the ability of the people to know what the general will demands, little has been said about how to know the general will when there are no such problems. The most explicit account we have seen is Rousseau's analogy of the political body to a physical body in the Discourse on Political Economy. In the final book of the Social Contract, Book IV, Rousseau gives us some insight into how the general will can be known. We shall look at this discussion, though it still gives perhaps less detail than one would like given that the concept of the general will is such a crucial part of the work. It is my own contention, which I will argue shortly, that it is the theme of virtue that ties Rousseau's political philosophy together. The title of the opening chapter of Book IV is 'That the General Will is Indestructible'. It begins with this passage: As long as several men together consider themselves a single body, they have only a single will, which relates to their common preservation and the general welfare. Then, all the mechanisms of the State are vigorous and simple, its maxims are clear and luminous, it has no tangled, contradictory interests; the common good is clearly apparent everywhere, and requires only good sense to be perceived.24 This may seem puzzling. If the general will is so obvious to any group of people, and they need only look to common sense to discern it, why is it that societies both in Rousseau's time and in ours are so plagued with problems? Private interests seem to be in constant conflict with one another and there is any number of factions trying to gain their own advantage. How can one explain this? I think the answer lies in the background that Rousseau gives us in the Second Discourse and the history of human beings from the state of nature to civil society. If we continue further in the Social Contract, we can see this connection. Rousseau explains that if one looks to how the earliest societies were governed, we can see that the general will was fairly obvious to the people. Presumably, Rousseau has in mind societies comprised of several families; in our discussion of the Second

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Discourse, we termed this the 'stone-age'. In the Social Contract, he describes groups of peasants settling their differences by sitting together under an oak tree. These societies have very few laws because they need very few laws. When one of them speaks to the others about what ought to be done, the others would immediately recognize whether the person was speaking about what is truly in the interest of the whole or was attempting to subvert the society's well-being with her own private interests. If we look at the historical progression in the Second Discourse, it is not until the arts of metallurgy and agriculture are discovered that inequality, slavery, and the competition of private interests overcome the general will. I think that what Rousseau is telling us in his Social Contract is a continuation of the same message that he gives us about human history in the Second Discourse. It is from largely accidental historical events, and not something inherent in human nature, that the problems in society have arisen. The goal for human beings is to move beyond the specious social contract that came about due to this unfortunate history and to form the society that Rousseau describes in the Social Contract: one that is governed on the basis of the general will. Above, I said that I think the key to achieving this goal is in Rousseau's notion of virtue. Let us return briefly to the Discourse on Political Economy. In articulating his second of the three rules of political economy, he gives an explicit definition of virtue: The second essential rule of public economy is no less important than the first. Do you want the general will to be fulfilled? Make certain that all particular wills are related to it; and, since virtue is only this conformity of the private to the general, to say the same thing briefly, make virtue reign.25 We have seen Rousseau articulate the general will as a rational principle, one that is discoverable whenever a group of people come together and agree to live with one another. Virtue, however, is not a principle but rather a particular kind of disposition. It has to do in part with one's inclinations; Rousseau argues that virtue is nothing more than having one's private will in accord with the general. This


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accordance, a love of the general will, is what we can take Rousseau to mean by virtue, at least in the context of the political philosophy he is presenting in the Discourse on Political Economy and the Social Contract. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that he spends a great deal of the Social Contract discussing the importance of the moral education of citizens. There are certainly similarities to the account of moral education in his other works, especially in the Emile. However, we must keep in mind that the project in the Emile differs in a very significant way from the specifically political works that we have discussed in this chapter. The Emile gives an account of how to properly educate a person who lives in a flawed society, in which the majority of people are concerned with their private interests and give little or no thought to the general will. The focus is the education of one individual, represented by the character of Emile himself. By contrast, the Social Contract discusses the education of an entire people, and focuses on the importance of developing virtuous citizens. Just laws will not preserve a society if the people do not have a genuine love and respect for them. Rousseau argues that many societies have flourished despite the lack of virtue. By flourishing, we can take him to mean that these societies were merely able to subsist over time. Ironically, had these societies had just laws, they would have been unable to sustain themselves: A thousand nations that have flourished on the earth could never have tolerated good laws, and even those that could were only so disposed for a very short time during their entire existence. Most Peoples, like men, are docile only in their youth. They become incorrigible as they grow older. Once customs are established and prejudices have taken root, it is a dangerous and foolhardy undertaking to want to reform them. The people cannot even tolerate having their ills touched for the purpose of destroying them, like those stupid and cowardly patients who tremble at the sight of a doctor.26 Rousseau is not at all optimistic here about the possibility of a people changing its character when the society in which they live is driven by private interest and has been since its beginnings.

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However, the fact remains that an intense desire for one's private interests is not the sole foundation of human nature. And while the Social Contract may leave us wanting in terms of how to correct society's ills, it is very clear about the principle that would ground a legitimate regime. And the picture of the virtuous citizen that Rousseau paints in it is not to be divorced from the natural goodness he describes in the state of nature in the Second Discourse, which we discussed in our second chapter. Nor can it be excluded from the account of moral education and virtue of the individual we examined in the previous chapter, which focused on the First Discourse, the Confessions and the Emile. Putting these three conceptions of virtue together, (a) goodness in the state of nature, (b) the virtuous individual, and (c) political virtue, into a unified system is part of the task of the final chapter.

Notes 1 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 3: Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second Discourse); Polemics; and Political Economy, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992b), p. 14. 2 Ibid., p. 142. 3 Ibid., p. 143. 4 Ibid., p. 145. 5 Ibid., p. 147. 6 Ibid., p. 149. 7 Ibid., p. 150. When Rousseau says that the more virtue reigns the less need there is for talents, we ought to recall the First Discourse. It is not as though talents are no longer necessary at all. Some talents are certainly needed in order to produce necessities in any regime. I think we should take Rousseau to mean that talents are no longer needed in order to aid citizens in their moral views of one another. There is no need to measure the worth of fellow citizens in terms of their talents for things like the sciences and arts. 8 Ibid., p. 154. 9 Ibid., p. 155.

The Virtuous Citizen and Rousseau's Political Philosophy 10 11 12 13 14

15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26

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Ibid., p. 162. Ibid., p. 161. Ibid., p. 164. Ibid., pp. 165-66. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 4: Social Contract; Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero; Political Fragments; and Geneva Manuscript, G. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1994), p. 131. Rousseau (1992b), p. 49. Rousseau (1994), p. 133. Ibid., p. 140. Ibid., p. 141. Ibid., p. 141. Ibid., p. 146. Ibid., p. 147. Ibid., p. 147. Ibid., p. 153. Ibid., p. 198. Rousseau (1992b), p. 149. Rousseau (1994), p. 157.


Chapter 5

Toward a Rousseauian Theory of Virtue

In the first chapter, we examined the tradition of virtue ethics with a discussion of Aristotle and Maclntyre. We then shifted our focus specifically to Rousseau in Chapters Two, Three and Four. Our task in this final chapter is threefold. First, I will argue that Rousseau's various uses of the term 'virtue', although seemingly very different, are actually part of a consistent and unified account. This account is best understood as the expression of naturally rooted dispositions in the context of a threefold historical process. Having argued for such an understanding of virtue in Rousseau, we will return to our discussion of Maclntyre, with a specific focus on his criticism of the Enlightenment. Regardless of whether or not Maclntyre is right in the manner that he dismisses Kierkegaard, Kant and Hume, I will argue that Rousseau does not fit into Maclntyre's general criticism of the Enlightenment. Finally, I will say a bit about what I take an ethical theory to be, in order to be legitimately considered a 'virtue ethics' properly speaking, and argue that Rousseau does indeed fall into this category. One of the most common criticisms of Rousseau, when discussing almost any subject of his work, is that his thought is contradictory. This criticism is not without some support, and one can point to many passages in which Rousseau makes a claim about a given subject in one context, but later makes another claim about that same subject which appears to be in complete contrast to the first. In discussing his conception of virtue, this problem is evident. As I hope to have shown in the previous three chapters, Rousseau sees the cultivation of virtue as one of the most important, if not the most important, aspect of our humanity. However, there is much confusion about what this cultivation actually means. In his own day, Rousseau himself was aware that the unique presentation of his

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work subjected him to charges of inconsistency and even contradiction. His style left him vulnerable to the criticisms of some of his most notable contemporaries. Commentator Robert Wolker specifically discusses two of these contemporaries, Voltaire and Adam Smith: Adam Smith, who was to become the eighteenth century's principal advocate of commercial society, and of the morally refining institutions associated with it, also took a dim view of the preference for savagery over civilization expressed particularly in the Second Discourse. Together with other philosophes, Voltaire and Smith elaborated educational, political, and economic programmes which encouraged mankind's moral improvement, while Rousseau, in fomenting opposition from some such quarters, came to seem an enemy of progress in all its forms.1 Rousseau argues against the charge that he is promoting the barbarism attributed to him by these critics, by stating that such claims are likely to be brought against him by his 'enemies'. This criticism, that Rousseau seems to be an Enlightenment thinker who is opposed to progress, is just one example of what could be taken as a contradiction in his work. Contemporary scholars are more sympathetic to these apparent contradictions, however, and most of them attempt to reconcile Rousseau's account in a way that promotes a more unified understanding of his work. One of my central goals in this chapter is to show the place of virtue in such an understanding. In some accounts, virtue is presented only in a limited scope. Some writers make a drastic separation of the political conception of virtue from Rousseau's discussions of virtue in his other major works. One such author is John Hall, who states: [An approach to Rousseau that attempts to incorporate works which are not specifically political to those that are specifically political] is of no use to the philosopher, who looks to Rousseau for arguments that may be judged valid or invalid and whose conclusions may be true or false. These arguments are to be found


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in those writings in which Rousseau is consciously and explicitly engaged in political philosophy, and they deserve to be taken at their face value as philosophical arguments and not treated simply as evidence of Rousseau's underlying concerns.2 He continues, 'I have ignored suggestions that the position of the author in Emile should be treated as political parables and used as aids to the interpretation of the explicitly political works.'3 While Hall represents an extreme position in his isolation of political virtue from all of Rousseau's other discussions, others, especially contemporary Rousseau scholars, have attempted to understand these accounts in a more unified way. Perhaps the most important reason why we ought to attempt to read Rousseau's work in such a way is that Rousseau himself advocates such an understanding of his thought. The most explicit statement of this is presented in one of his last works, Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques. This autobiographical text is written in the form of three dialogues and involves two characters, 'Rousseau' and an interlocutor referred to only as a 'Frenchman'. The character of Rousseau in the dialogues represents the actual Rousseau if he had only read, but had not written, all of his works. In the dialogues, the author of the works is referred to as 'Jean-Jacques', and he is the character that is judged by Rousseau and the Frenchman. In the third dialogue, the Frenchman states that, despite his personal character flaws, Jean-Jacques' thought articulates one unified system: In reading these books, it wasn't long before I felt I had been deceived about their contents, and that what I had been told were fatuous declamations, adorned with fine language but disconnected and full of contradictions, were things that were profoundly thought out, forming a coherent system which might not be true but which offered nothing contradictory. In order to judge the true goal of these books, I didn't apply myself to picking apart a few scattered and separate sentences here and there; but rather consulting myself both during these readings and as I finished them, I examined as you desired the dispositions

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of the soul into which they placed and left me, judging as you do that it was the best means to penetrate through to that of the Author when he wrote them and the effect he proposed to produce. I don't need to tell you that in the place of the bad intentions that had been attributed to him, I found only a doctrine that was as healthy as it was simple, which without Epicureanism and cant was directed only to the happiness of the human race.4 Based on passages such as this, I argue that attempting to find a unified understanding of virtue that spans all of his major works is a very Rousseauian thing to do. However, providing such an account is difficult. Consider the following passages, some of which we have addressed in previous chapters such as this one from the Confessions'. Up until then I had been good; from then on I became virtuous . . . I was truly transformed; my friends and relatives no longer recognized me. I was no longer a timid and bashful — rather than modest — man, who did not dare either to introduce himself or to speak; who was disconcerted by a playful word, who was made to blush by a look from a woman. Audacious, proud, intrepid, everywhere I carried an assurance that was all the more firm since it was simple and resided in my soul more than in my bearing. The scorn that my deep meditations had inspired me for the morals, maxims, and the prejudices of my century made me insensitive to the banter of the people who had them, and I crushed their little witty phrases with my apophthegms, as I would crush an insect between my fingers. What a change!5 In this passage, we see Rousseau praising virtue as the ability to shrug off the meaningless conventions of society. The virtuous person is not disturbed by the superficial opinions of others and conducts himself with rugged, almost brutal, honesty. We saw a similar account of virtue in both the Emile and the First Discourse in Chapter Three. A virtuous citizen can arise even in the bonds of society and his disposition will be such that he looks within his soul rather than to the conventions of society to discern his actions.


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Consider Book V of the Emile, in which Rousseau gives a formal definition of this kind of virtue. He states: What is meant by a virtuous man? He who can conquer his affections; for then he follows his reason, his conscience; he does his duty; he is his own master and nothing can turn him from the right way. So far you have had only the semblance of liberty, the precarious liberty of the slave who has not yet received his orders. Now is the time for real freedom; learn to be your own master; control your heart, my Emile, and you will be virtuous. 6 But this account of virtue appears to be in stark contrast to others, particularly those we examined in Rousseau's political writings. Consider once more the following passage from the Discourse on Political Economy. The second rule of public economy is no less important than the first: do you want the general will to be fulfilled? Make sure that all private wills are related to it; and since virtue is only this conformity of the private will to the general, to say the same thing briefly, make virtue reign.7 Here, virtue is described in such a way that it seems to contradict that which we just saw above in the selections from theConfessions and the Emile. Virtue is not gained by opposing society's customs. Rather, it is defined as having one's individual will in accordance with the general will of society. Human beings are therefore 'good' when they submit themselves to a particular kind of state. Additionally, let us not forget Rousseau's description of human beings in the state of nature. This depiction is one of the most famous aspects of his thought. It leads one to believe that people are good in nature, but forever corrupted once they have left that state and live in community with each other. Rousseau describes the difference between the 'noble savage' and 'civilized man' this way: [T]he soul and human passions, altering imperceptibly, change their Nature so to speak; why our needs and our pleasures change

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their objects in the long run; why, original man vanishing by degrees, society no longer offers to the eyes of the wise man anything except an assemblage of artificial men and factious passions which are the work of all these new relations and have no true foundation in Nature. What reflection teaches us on this subject, observation confirms perfectly: Savage man and Civilized man differ so much in the bottom of their hearts and inclinations that what constitutes the supreme happiness of one would reduce the other to despair.8 The praise of the state of nature in the Second Discourse leads to much criticism. Rousseau's tone in this work is very pessimistic, as he is relatively silent about what human beings can do to salvage goodness, now that we have strayed so far from our natural state. Human goodness, it appears, is lost once human beings come together in society. The best example of this criticism comes from Voltaire, who says sarcastically that Rousseau's work made him want to crawl on all fours like an animal. Is this criticism valid? Rousseau does praise the solitary life, so one might therefore take Voltaire's criticism to be quite substantial. In the Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Rousseau states: Fleeing from men, seeking solitude, no longer using my imagination and thinking even less, yet endowed with a lively nature that keeps me from languid and melancholy apathy, I began to take an interest in everything around me, and a quite normal instinct led me to prefer those objects which were most pleasing to me.9 Here, Rousseau is indeed retreating from society and trying as much as possible to return to a solitary life in nature. Later in this passage, he describes humans who attempt to cultivate nature as corrupting themselves: Then he [civilized man] has to call on ingenuity, drudgery and toil to assist him in his need; he scours the entrails of the earth and descends into its depths, risking his life and health, in search of


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imaginary gains to replace the true blessings which it offered him spontaneously when he was capable of enjoying them. He flees the sun and the light, which he is no longer worth of seeing, he buries himself alive, and rightly so, since he no longer deserves to live in the light of day. Then quarries, pits, forges, furnaces and a world of anvils, hammers, smoke, and flame take the place of the sweet images of rustic labor.10 In this passage, we see Rousseau praising the solitary life and describing those who attempt to advance past the pristine state of nature as condemning themselves to a life of toil, torment and misery. Nature is good; this is a claim that Rousseau maintains throughout all of his writings. However, virtue still remains a puzzle. In Chapter Two we saw virtue associated with the faculty of pity, which, though natural human beings are asocial, is ultimately the source of all social virtues. In Chapter Three we saw it described as the cultivation of an individual in opposition to society. And in the last chapter virtue was defined as conforming one's particular will to the general will of society. These are the three primary ways in which Rousseau speaks about virtue and, more generally, human goodness. Reconciling these three perspectives is the key to understanding the notion of virtue in Rousseau's writings in a comprehensive and non-contradictory way. Against writers like Hall, the method I will use to do this will be to understand these three perspectives not as isolated and incommensurable discussions, but rather as dispositions in accord with our nature. These dispositions manifest themselves differently depending on the environment in which the individual lives. Essentially, Rousseau gives us a historical process that has three main parts. This understanding is used by O'Hagan, who calls theDiscourse on the Origin of Inequality,theEmileand the Social Contract the three axes of Rousseau's thought, each of which represents one of these three parts.11 I will attempt to put these three notions of virtue together: (a) virtue as impossible and the goodness of the state of nature as the only possibility for human goodness; (b) virtue as the proper

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disposition of an individual within any given society, however corrupt; and (c) virtue as the accord of a person's will with the general will of a good society. Rather than understanding them as distinct accounts, they should be put together, and understood as the parts of a process. Human beings are good in the state of nature, and through a long historical process of largely accidental events, become corrupted upon the institution of society. In this corrupt state, individuals need the proper kind of education, which makes them virtuous despite their environment. This is the first step toward creating the ideal state, which we see in Rousseau's Discourse on Political Economy and Social Contract. Once this state has been realized, virtuous individuals are also virtuous citizens. There is no longer a tension between the individual and society. Both are in accord with nature, which is the constant foundation to which human beings can look in order that they might become good. In Chapter Two, we examined the historical process that takes human beings from the pure state of nature to the state of civil society as Rousseau expresses it in the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Borrowing from Timothy O'Hagan, we categorized this process in terms of seven stages. First, we have man in the pure state of nature. The second stage is marked by the formation of temporary groups for the purposes of very simple and specific objectives, which we termed the state of elementary co-operation. The third stage, the one that Rousseau calls the 'happiest for man', is the stone-age. It is marked by the beginnings of the traditional family as well as the 'two sweetest human sentiments', conjugal love and paternal love. The fourth stage, the iron-age, comes about after the arts of agriculture and metallurgy are discovered. These arts require the division of labour and produce vast differences in wealth between classes. Disparity of wealth leads to conflict and results in the fifth stage, 'the most horrible state of war'. As the wealthy have enough foresight to realize that this stage poses a great threat, they lead the way in instituting a social contract. But the contract is specious, it was set up by the powerful in order to keep their power, and the less powerful were unable to see this. This stage, the sixth, is civilized society as we know it and is the stage that Rousseau saw all around him in the eighteenth century.


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The final transition, the movement from the specious social contract to a legitimate one, has not yet occurred. The regime described in the Discourse on Political Economy and Social Contract is the goal to which we should strive. The relationship of virtue to nature can be understood within these transitions, in the context of the nine points that O'Hagan describes, which differentiate man in the pure state of nature, or 'nascent man' from civilized man. Virtues are possessed by social individuals returning to some of these points, but not all of them. Again, this list of nascent men's characteristics is: (1) they are dispersed; (2) they are amoral; (3) they identify with their species through compassion and reason, while reflection and amourpropre are untriggered; (4) they are ignorant or indifferent to the opinions of others; (5) they are timid, but without anxiety; (6) they are indolent; (7) there is little communication beyond cries of warning; (8) sexuality consists of haphazard couplings; and (9) inequalities are unimportant. We can now formulate a better answer to the question of how nature relates to social behaviour when nature itself is asocial. For virtue is gained by social human beings, not by returning to all nine of these characteristics, but rather only to some of them. Which of these nine can we understand Rousseau to include as characteristics of virtuous human beings? By the very fact that we are now talking about civilized man, we can eliminate (1) from these characteristics. Social human beings are not dispersed precisely because they are social. Similarly, we can eliminate (2) because we are talking about virtuous or 'moral' human beings, and again, by the very concept of a moral agent, we cannot be talking about something that is 'amoral'. We can discount item (6) as well, although this requires a bit more explanation. In nature, human beings are indolent, whereas in civil society, they are industrious. Human beings, even in the ideal society, cannot be lazy; in recognizing their roles within the larger context, the body politic, they necessarily have certain roles to play in order to be in accord with the general will. Item (7) states that there is little language beyond cries of warning in the state of nature, and in civil society we see a great need for language. Therefore we certainly cannot take Rousseau to be advocating an abandonment

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of language as part of the criteria for attaining virtue. Finally, item (8) should also be discounted; Rousseau sees a morality in sexual relationships when human beings live together in society. Random sexual encounters that dissolve immediately after the fact are not virtuous though they are natural, in the strict sense, for 'savage man'. We are now left with items (3), (4), (5) and (9). When we imitate these items, we are returning to nature in a sense, but doing it in a way that makes us virtuous people: i.e. 'noble savages living in society'. Item (3) states that human beings relate to one another based on compassion, rather than amour-propre, which is the common way that socialized people currently relate to each other. When pity, which we have seen Rousseau describe in the Second Discourseas the sole natural virtue, springs into particular social virtues, humans in civil society regard each other with the natural faculty of selflove, amour de soi. We have seen Rousseau's emphasis on a return to this superior, natural form of self-love in the Emile. Emile is first introduced to poor people, so that he might pity their condition, and regard them through amour de soi. Therefore, item (3) is certainly one to which we should return in our efforts to cultivate virtue. Item (4) states that nascent man is indifferent to the opinions of others. We have examined, above, many instances of Rousseau arguing against subjugating oneself to the opinions of others, or 'public opinion'. We should therefore include this item in the list of natural characteristics that are the mark of the virtuous civilized man. However, we must make a slight qualification. Item (4) should be understood within the context of item (3). We should not be completely indifferent to the opinions of others, but rather to those that spring from amour-propre. Such opinions are those that Rousseau condemns in the First Discourse, the Confessionsand theEmile,which emphasize competition, and comparison of talents. The fifth item discusses the lack of aggression in natural human beings. O'Hagan describes nascent man as 'timid, but without anxiety', while civilized man is 'aggressive and anxious'. It is correct to include (5) as an element of societal virtue, but only to a certain degree. Human beings in society have a certain rational foresight


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that natural human beings lack, thus making some degree of anxiety inevitable. However, we can again understand the kind of aggression and anxiety that stems from amour-propre as contributing to vice, while the perspective of proper self-love allows anxiety to be considerably minimized in civilized people. Finally, we come to item (9), which simply states that inequalities among people are unimportant in the state of nature, yet very important in civil society. One of the most significant aims of Rousseau's political philosophy, as it is expressed in the Discourse on Political Economy and Social Contract, is the elimination of inequalities among citizens. When human beings recognize inequalities among one another, competition and amour-propreemerge. Therefore, virtue requires that human beings be relatively indifferent to inequality. We are now in a position to draw the connection between the first two notions of virtue that have been examined above. Virtue in the state of nature exists in the form of a kind of amoral goodness; it is good in the sense that it is not bad, and vice comes from the institution of society. In the Emile especially, and also in the Confessions and First Discourse, we have seen how the cultivation of the virtuous individual is possible by making a return to some of the attributes of human beings in the state of nature. Specifically, this is done by education, or the habituation of individuals to ignore public opinion and inequality. Individuals' abilities are developed in line with nature, but kept in a social context. In other words, the goal is to function with the proper and virtuous notion of self-love, amour de soi, rather than the destructive form of self-love,amour-propre. Now, we are left with the task of demonstrating the connection between what I call 'cultivation of the virtuous individual', with 'political virtue'. This connection is best understood as the former being a necessary step to produce the latter. Rousseau's discussion of the creation of human beings that are properly called 'citizens' is best expressed in the Discourse on Political Economy, and this discussion parallels very closely the discussion of the cultivation of the virtuous individual, as it is expressed in the 'Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar' in the Emile. To demonstrate the connection between the virtuous individual and the virtuous political regime, I will briefly outline these two discussions.

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In our discussion of moral education in the Emile, primarily in Chapter Three, we touched on the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar. As we saw, this was one of Rousseau's most comprehensive philosophical discussions, touching on metaphysical issues such as the mind/body problem, as well as epistemological topics like the challenge of scepticism. We looked at the general scope of the Vicar's speech and saw how these metaphysical and epistemological discussions carried implications that affected Rousseau's views regarding religion and ethics. And while Rousseau is somewhat pessimistic about the ability of reason to come to any concrete truths regarding the metaphysical problems of dualism and causality, he claims that nature endows us with self-evident truths regarding free will and moral goodness. Therefore, I would like to return to this text and show how several of its themes are important in understanding Rousseau's conception of virtue. Nature is the guide in the Vicar's self-examination. His language is basically Kantian, in the sense that a division is made between inclination and moral duty, a division we saw similarly articulated in the Social Contract: I have a body which is acted upon by other bodies, and it acts in turn upon them; there is no doubt about this reciprocal action; but my will is independent of my senses; I consent or I resist; I yield or I win the victory, and I know very well in myself when I have done what I wanted and when I have merely given way to my passions. I have always the power to will, but not always the strength to do what I will. When I yield to temptation I surrender myself to the action of external objects.12 Rousseau sees no need to justify his claim that he has a will as well as passions, because his own experience of these things is its own justification. Recall that the Vicar knows all of this simply by means of the 'Inner Light' that guides him. He argues that when we experience a passion or temptation, we also are aware of the ability to resist or give in to that temptation. When we go against our passions, we know that we are going against them. This is an act of will, and our will enables us to act morally.


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The voice of nature should be the inspiration of one's will. We have seen the way in which Rousseau regards the vices of human beings as the result of society's deviation from nature. We must listen to what the voice of nature says to our hearts, or conscience, if we are to know what morality commands. The faculty of reason, according to Rousseau, speaks both to one's will and to one's body or passions. It is strange, he reflects, that this voice contradicts itself; very often what I perceive to be good according to my bodily passions is in direct opposition to what nature inspires in me as a moral duty in my soul: I do not derive these rules [of moral duty] from the principles of the higher philosophy, I find them in the depths of my heart, traced by nature in characters which nothing can efface. I need only consult myself with what I wish to do; what I feel to be right is right, what I feel to be wrong is wrong; conscience is the best causist; and it is only when we haggle with conscience that we have recourse to the subtleties of argument. Our first duty is to ourselves; yet how often does the voice of others tell us that in seeking our good at the expense of others we are doing ill? We think we are following the guidance of nature, and we are resisting it; we listen to what she says to our senses, and we neglect what she says to our heart; the active being obeys, the passive commands. Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it strange that these voices often contradict each other? And then to which should we give heed? Too often does reason deceive us; we have only too good a right to doubt her; but conscience never deceives us; she is the true guide of man; it is to the soul what instinct is to the body; he who obeys conscience is following nature and he need not fear that we will go astray.13 The unjust society in which we live may corrupt us to a great degree, but it cannot completely silence the voice of nature, which speaks to our hearts, and is understood as our conscience. The question could be raised at this point as to how one knows whether the voice in her head is coming from her heart, or her

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passions. Essentially, we can understand morality as requiring us to understand our proper perspective in the universe. We are not the only beings in nature, and we should especially bear this in mind when acting with regard to other human beings. Rousseau explains the notion of perspective using the analogy of a circle, which we touched on briefly in Chapter Three. Conscience requires that we understand ourselves as being on the circumference of the circle rather than in the centre of it. This proper natural perspective is the mark of virtuous human beings: Virtue we are told is love of order. But can this love prevail over love for my own well-being, and ought it so to prevail? Let them give me clear and sufficient reason for this preference. Their socalled principle is in truth a mere playing with words: for I also say that vice is a love of order, differently understood. Wherever there is feeling and intelligence, there is some sort of moral order. The difference is this: the good man orders his life with regard to all other men; the wicked orders it for self alone. The latter centers all things round himself; the other measures his radius and remains on the circumference. Thus his place depends on the common center, which is God, and on all the concentric circles which are his creatures.14 The relationship between nature and God is an intimate one, and when we conduct ourselves according to the voice of nature, we are, in effect, obeying the will of God. Rousseau sees the soul as hierarchically superior to the body. Seeing oneself as always part of a community of basic equality with other human beings is, therefore, an essential part of the cultivation of the virtuous individual. This natural perspective of removing oneself from the centre of all things is also one of the key elements in the formation of a virtuous citizen, and on a collective level of all citizens, the mark of the virtuous political regime. This is evident in Rousseau's discussion of the formation of citizens in the Discourse on Political Economy. Rousseau claims that it is not enough to say to a citizen, 'be good'; but rather, each citizen must be taught to be good. The role


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of education is once again critical for the cultivation of the virtuous citizen in much the same way that it is for the individual; this can be seen by the similar description of the education of Emile. Ensuring that citizens become virtuous in the context of the ideal political regime is taken to mean that one's particular will should be in accordance with the general will. This parallels the discussion of amour-propre versus amour de soi; Rousseau tells the reader that the most effective way to produce love of country is to ensure that every man is virtuous, that is, ensure that his particular will conforms in all things to the general will. We observe this when citizens want those things that are also wanted by the people they love. The resemblance of this notion in the Discourse on Political Economy to that of the natural perspective, which we have just examined in the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, is clearly evident. Citizens are made virtuous when they are able to recognize their places on the 'circumference' of the society, and put the needs of the body politic ahead of their own particular wants and desires. The difference between the environment in the ideal political regime, and the current one, is that all citizens in the former will recognize their proper places with regard to the general will. This will ensure that no one citizen will be used as a means to some other end, or be unjustly sacrificed for the benefit of the others. If a society were to do this, Rousseau says, everything would be lost. The goal of the ideal regime is just that: a goal. And this goal is one toward which we must move from our present state. The cultivation of virtuous individuals is a step toward this goal. The creation of citizens, like the education of Emile, must begin at birth and relies on using nature, and the proper perspective on one's own place in the world, as the guide. Citizens must be taught to love their duty, and to have love for each other by way of the principle of the general will. Like the imaginary pupil in the Emile, as well as Rousseau himself in the Confessions,virtue is acquired by cultivating amour de soi, and limiting amour-propre. This cultivation must begin early. Recall that in the Discourse on Political Economy Rousseau tells the reader: 'It is too late to change our natural inclinations, once they have become entrenched, and habit has been combined with amour-propre. It is too late to draw us outside of

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ourselves, once the human selfconcentrated in our hearts has acquired that contemptible activity that absorbs all virtue and constitutes the life of petty souls.'15 Education is therefore aimed at the same goal whether or not the ideal political regime has already been established. For the education of the individual in present-day civil society parallels the education of a citizen in the ideal political regime of the Third Discourse and Social Contract, in that both emphasize the proper selflove of amour de soi, and the importance of removing oneself from the centre of the circle of moral perspective. We must begin in our present state, teaching individuals this moral perspective which goes against the present-day social standard. The creation of virtuous individuals is the first step toward the realization of virtue on a social scale; the goal is the virtuous society, where the general will is the centre to which all individuals look in making their moral decisions. Once this regime is realized the conflict between selfinterest and morality, which is considerable in present-day society, will be greatly reduced. I have proposed in this chapter that these three broad notions of virtue in Rousseau, (a) uncorrupted goodness in the state of nature, (b) the cultivation of the individual in an unjust society, and (c) the subordination of the particular will to the general in the ideal political regime, should be understood as dispositions rooted in nature that are expressed uniquely within the parts of a threefold historical process. A helpful way of thinking about this process is to frame it in terms of virtue in the past, present and future. Virtue in the past consists of the pristine innocence of human beings in the state of nature; they are motivated by a proper type of independent self-love and relate to each other only on the level of sentiment or pity. Although they are neither vicious nor virtuous in the strict sense, they are uncorrupted because society has not yet imposed the vices of amour-propre. Through a long historical process, which O'Hagan describes in a very helpful manner, human beings move from the pure state of nature to the world of present-day civil society, linked together by a specious social contract. This society is designed by the powerful to keep their power; human beings in this community are motivated


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by self-interest, competition and public opinion: in a word, amourpropre. Virtue is still possible, however, and is attained by returning to several of the natural aspects of our humanity. The imaginary pupil Emile is the model for how a virtuous individual can be cultivated within this unjust society. The cultivation of individuals is one of the first steps toward overcoming a society plagued with amour-propre, and once this evil can be eliminated on a social-scale, all citizens will recognize their proper places among each other. This vision represents virtue in the future; citizens will conform their particular wills to the general will, and virtue will replace amour-propre in the form of the ideal political regime of the legitimate social contract. Thus, by incorporating all of his most significant works on the subject, this threefold process is the context in which we must understand Rousseau's notion of virtue. Let us now shift our focus from Rousseau back to the general themes of virtue ethics as we expressed them in Chapter One. There, we put forth a general account of the ethics of Aristotle and Alasdair Maclntyre. One of the central claims in Maclntyre's book, After Virtue, is that the Enlightenment project not only failed to provide a foundation for doing ethics. The previous tradition, especially as it was conceived in the Aristotelian framework, was successful because it focused on the three notions of (a) man as he is, (b) man as he could be if he were to reach his telos, and (c) the precepts that allow man to move from the former to the latter. Aristotle's ethics, in large part because of its emphasis on final causality, which Maclntyre calls his 'metaphysical biology', was disregarded by philosophers in the modern period. And so a major part of Maclntyre's task, in After Virtue, is to provide an ethical framework that salvages the conception of 'man as he could be if he reached his telos' without rooting that telos in nature in the same way that Aristotle did. As we saw in the first chapter, Maclntyre ultimately roots that conception in the notions of practice, narrative and community. Briefly, we touched upon Maclntyre's criticism of the Enlightenment, though we postponed a specific analysis of this criticism. I would now like to resume this discussion and explore the criticism in order to determine how Rousseau fits into it. The two central chapters in After Virtue that deal with the Enlightenment take

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slightly different approaches. Chapter Four is a historical account that suggests that particular Enlightenment figures, particularly Kierkegaard, Kant and Hume, fail to form a rational defence of morality.16 The fifth chapter is a more general criticism which suggests that the failure of the Enlightenment was not due to the inadequacies of the particular Enlightenment figures themselves, but rather is a consequence of the Enlightenment task itself. For the Enlightenment distorts what should be the true nature of moral philosophy, and attempts to replace it with a universal set of rules or principles that are divorced from a teleological conception of the good life. In this section, I will summarize these two chapters, and argue that Rousseau cannot be said to fail for this reason. Maclntyre's strategy in Chapter Four is to work backwards; starting with Kierkegaard, he traces the Enlightenment through Kant, and finally Hume. Kierkegaard provides a morality based on choice, the choice between the ethical life and the aesthetic life. The aesthetic life is characterized by the disjointed passion that one feels at any given moment. It can be understood as having no necessary connection to past or future events, which might warrant obligations or commitments. By contrast, the ethical life is necessarily connected to the past and future in precisely this way. The two kinds of life are, therefore, often at odds with one another; how I feel at a given moment is irrelevant to the way that I should live. The problem with this account is not that the lives themselves are incoherent or contradictory, but rather that there is no good reason to choose one life over the other. Maclntyre states: But now the doctrine of Enten-Eller is plainly to the effect that the principles which depict the ethical way of life are to be adopted for no reason, but for a choice that lies beyond reason. Yet the ethical way of life is to have authority over us. But how can that which we adopt for one reason have any authority over us? The contradiction in Kierkegaard's doctrine is plain.17 The problem of justifying the ethical life over the aesthetic one is the failure of Kierkegaard's moral project. The choice between the two lives is ultimately 'criterionless', according to Maclntyre, because


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like in all Enlightenment philosophy there is no telos upon which to base such a choice. Kierkegaard's philosophy is a reaction to Kant, who attempts to form a moral philosophy based on reason, though according to Maclntyre, it also fails. Kant's categorical imperative is supposed to serve as the supreme moral principle, the test for all moral actions to determine whether or not they are permissible. However, the test does not seem to be able to prohibit a number of maxims that seem clearly immoral. Furthermore, these maxims seem to be in direct opposition to other maxims Kant uses as examples. For instance, take Kant's example of the maxim, 'Never make a false promise'. There seems to be no rational contradiction, nor apparent reason, that I cannot will the following maxims to be universal laws: 'Everyone but me must never make a false promise', or 'I should keep all promises except this one'. We must make constant qualifications in order to prevent Kant's moral system from leading to these disturbing problems. The morality that Kant is attempting to justify on, supposedly, purely rational grounds is an illusion, according to Maclntyre. For the morality to which his examples point us is indicative of Kant's own moral tradition, his upbringing, and his culture. Kant's attempt to justify this particular morality, to extend it universally by basing it in a purely rational system is impossible. But Kant too is responding to a failed system: And yet if we understand Kierkegaardian choice as a surrogate for Kantian reason, we must also in turn understand that Kant too was responding to an earlier philosophical episode, that Kant's appeal to reason was the historical heir and successor of Diderot's and Hume's appeals to desire and to the passions. Kant's project was an historical response to their failure just as Kierkegaard was to his.18 Maclntyre now moves to the problems inherent in the moral philosophy of Hume and Diderot, and argues that morality based on sentiment fails just as much as does criterionless foundational choice in Kierkegaard, and reason in Kant.

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The power of Hume, according to Maclntyre, is in his negative arguments. Hume stresses that morality must be based either in reason or in the passions. It cannot be the work of reason, so the passions must then serve as the basis. The fundamental problem that Hume encounters is how one can justify breaking the general rules of morality prescribed by reason that serve our long-term goals. Sometimes, and this is something that Kant would of course deny, breaking these rules seems necessary. Take the example of promise keeping once again. There are certainly times when breaking a promise would serve our interests, and the breaking of the promise would have no ill consequences. Sympathy, the particular name of the passions from which morality flows according to Hume, serves to justify just such an action. The problem, Maclntyre claims, is that Hume 'is compelled to the conclusion that morality is a work of the passions quite independently of any positive arguments for that position'.19 The cogent arguments of the Enlightenment are significant, therefore, not in demonstrating a universal set of rules or principles for an objective morality, but rather in showing how all of these Enlightenment figures fail to provide a system that is preferable to the others: 'Thus, the vindication of each position was made to rest in crucial part upon the failure of the other two, and the sum total of the effective criticism of each position by the others turned out to be the failure of all.'20 But it was not due to the particular inadequacies of Kierkegaard, Kant or Hume that the Enlightenment project was unsuccessful. The Enlightenment project would have failed no matter who attempted it, and this is the thesis of Maclntyre's subsequent chapter in After Virtue, 'Why the Enlightenment Project of Justifying Morality Had to Fail'. What Kierkegaard, Kant and Hume share is an agreement on the character of morality. A rational justification of morality would include key premises that give a fundamental description of human nature. The rules of morality would derive from these premises, thus giving a standard by which anyone, despite historical or cultural differences, should adhere to. As we have just seen, the specific element of human nature upon which these premises are based differs from thinker to thinker. For Hume it is the passions, for Kant


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reason, and for Kierkegaard some characteristic of fundamental decision-making. All intentionally ignore the history and traditions of which they are a part. Thus it is no coincidence that the morality prescribed by these Enlightenment thinkers, supposedly based on their universal conceptions of human nature, is actually very similar to the religious and cultural morality into which they were born. If one attempts to completely dissociate from one's historical context, it will, nevertheless, enter indirectly or unconsciously. The problem with all attempts of the sort the Enlightenment tried to produce was that they lacked the Aristotelian scheme that we saw above: (a) man as he happens to be, (b) man as he could be if he reached his telos, and (c) the moral precepts that enable man to pass from the former stage to the latter. The precepts in the third element are the specific virtues that correctly order our emotions and desires so that we might reach our true end, namely the good life. In the morality of the Enlightenment, there is no longer an account of the human telos, and, therefore, any attempt to undertake such a project is destined to be frustrated and incomplete. It would lack a goal or end of human life, and therefore lose the element of human function. If ethics is concerned with the good life, the good man as it were, we need to have some understanding of man's function. Maclntyre uses the example of a watch to make this point clearer. It makes no sense to ask whether or not a watch is good apart from the function of the watch. A watch is supposed to keep good time; that is its function. If I lack this understanding, the whole question of whether or not the watch is good is unintelligible. For I could use the watch for other things, throwing it at someone, a paperweight, etc. However, unless we agree on what a watch by its nature is supposed to do, we cannot begin to understand whether or not it is good. My concern is whether or not it is appropriate to include Rousseau in the group of Enlightenment thinkers that Maclntyre discusses in this criticism. I argue that it is not. For Rousseau does not ignore the notion of a human telos. As I have attempted to show throughout this book, virtue and the good life for human beings are at the core of Rousseau's moral philosophy. Robert Wolker gives an excellent response to Maclntyre's treatment of the Enlightenment,

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although Rousseau is only mentioned in passing.21 Part of Wolker's thesis is that Maclntyre does not include all of the relevant Enlightenment figures. He states: Neither is Maclntyre correct to claim that Enlightenment thinkers characteristically believed in the uniformity of human nature and the moral laws that govern it. Many eighteenthcentury moral philosophers, including Helvetius and Kant, did subscribe to such views, but those that did generally agreed with Hume that men might change their situations and circumstances and thereby improve or worsen their conduct. Others, like Turgot or Adam Smith, adopted more manifestly developmental notions of human nature and character, deemed to pass through stages, like the epochs of civilization. Still others endorsed biological models of mankind's perfection or corruption, along lines intimated by the natural historians of humanity, most notably G.L. Buffon. Rousseau not only adopted yet another evolutionary perspective, but in fact invented the term perfectibilite to encapsulate his understanding of the malleability of human nature, in a potentially benign but in fact humanly blighted providential framework somewhat akin to that of Pelagius. Teleological conceptions of man's moral metamorphosis such as Aristotle had put forward are not absent from eighteenthcentury philosophy, even if Aristotle himself was no longer widely acclaimed for such notions. Maclntyre's account of the Enlightenment Project is on this point far too blunt and shallow.22 I take Wolker's thesis to be correct, but his claim that Rousseau's notion of self-perfection is a teleological framework which is akin to Aristotle needs further explanation. The role that nature plays in the respective teleological frameworks of Aristotle and Rousseau is different. As we saw in Chapter One, for Aristotle, the goal of human beings is part of their nature. For Rousseau, human nature strictly speaking is understood as human beings in their untutored state, and reason is the faculty, along with freedom, that allows human beings to move from this untutored state to their goal: the virtuous life. Aristotle's natural


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teleology is dependent on his metaphysical biology, which Maclntyre clearly establishes. But a theory of virtue need not rely on such a basis. Maclntyre claims that one of the major advantages of his own theory of virtue is that it is divorced from Aristotle's metaphysical biology. And therefore we see that a foundation of virtue in nature is not essential to a proper understanding of virtue in Maclntyre's view, although Rousseau's account of virtue is not entirely divorced from nature. In the Emile, nature is the guiding thread that guides moral education. Furthermore, nature plays a crucial role in the development of virtue, specifically with the notion of natural sentiment or pity. We should recall once again that in the Second Discourse, Rousseau claims that natural sentiment is the 'sole natural virtue'. Perhaps even more important than determining precisely how nature in Rousseau is different than nature in Aristotle is the specific focus that Maclntyre makes on another characteristic of Enlightenment systems of ethics. All of them, he says, attempt to reduce the scope of ethics to one faculty or characteristic. Even if one agrees that Maclntyre is right in reducing Kierkegaard's ethics to the ability to choose between different ways of life, Kant's to reason, and Hume's to sentiment, can one say the same of Rousseau? Is there some element in Rousseau's philosophy that is the source of ethics? I argue that there is not. As we have seen in the previous chapters, Rousseau's is not a system of ethics that can be neatly couched in such a way. It is true that he makes statements that, if read uncharitably, could make him vulnerable to Maclntyre's criticism, such as the one in the Second Discourse that pity is the sole natural virtue. But it is clearly not the case that one can simply trace his entire conception of the good life and virtue to expressions of that faculty. Similarly, Rousseau says, in the Discourse on Political Economy, that virtue is simply the conforming of a particular will to the general will; but the human telos cannot simply be reduced to one's obedience to an abstract principle. And so, as we saw above, if one wants to truly understand Rousseau's account of virtue, one must take into account the nature of human beings, the relationship of nature to reason, the historical progress that human beings have made and continue to make, and the

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particular social circumstances in which they live at any given time or place. I therefore think it quite mistaken to dismiss Rousseau on Maclntyre's grounds. But aside from Maclntyre's arguments, what can be said about the general criteria of an ethical system that make it, legitimately speaking, 'virtue ethics'? Obviously such a question is extremely broad and could easily warrant a book (or books) in its own right. Therefore, I will be content to close this book with an outline of three very general criteria that I think an ethical theory needs to meet to be included in this category. These three could likely be expressed in different ways, and there is certainly a good deal of connection between them. I think, however, that they are best expressed as follows. First, and this I borrow from Maclntyre, a virtue ethics needs to have some notion of a goal or telos for human beings. As he says, there must be some notion of human beings as they are, as they could be if they reached their telos, and the precepts that are needed to move from the former to the latter. As we saw above, it need not be the case that this telos is somehow rooted in nature in the same way that Aristotle says that it is. If it were, then Maclntyre's own account would not qualify as a system of virtue ethics. In fact, the precise role that nature plays in Rousseau's ethics probably falls somewhere in between Aristotle's teleology and Maclntyre's account of practice and tradition. Let us simply say that Rousseau's account of human perfectibilite, which we discussed at length in Chapter Two, in our examination of the Second Discourse, represents the kind of telos necessary for a coherent theory of virtue. Second, a virtue ethics cannot be reduced to a particular rule for right action. This is the basic distinction between an act-based system and a character-based system. Whether or not there could be character-based systems of ethics that are not virtue ethics is not an issue that I'm confident I can answer. What I will say, however, is that any ethical system that culminates in a rule for right action shifts the focus from the agent to the act. This is the most obvious reason that utilitarianism and deontological systems of ethics are not virtue ethics. From our analysis of Rousseau's ethics in this book it

Toward a Rousseauian Theory of Virtue 151

153

should be clear that Rousseau is not comfortable in reducing ethics to some sort of overarching principle. The closest that he comes is in his conception of the general will, which we examined in detail in Chapter Four. And while much of this discussion points to an almost Kantian notion of a universal moral principle, Rousseau stops short of articulating the general will in this way. There is nothing like the categorical imperative in this discussion. In fact, we saw in the previous chapter that he cautions against such an understanding, and emphasizes that we cannot create a series of rules and laws to perfectly articulate the general will. Rather, the general will is obvious to those with a virtuous character. This leads to the third general criterion of virtue ethics, that there must be an emphasis on the disposition of the agent. In some way, the agent must be held accountable, not only for what he does, but also for how he feels about it. Because virtue ethics denies that there is some overarching rule for actions that grounds notions of right and wrong, the agent's disposition cannot simply be useful for acting rightly in the future. That is, a virtue ethics could never say, 'courage, a disposition that makes courageous acts pleasant to the agent, is good because it is conducive to an agent performing future courageous acts'. If that were the case it would seem that the only reason that the disposition is good is because of the actions it is likely to produce. The virtue is not good in and of itself. From a virtue ethics perspective, courage would be good because it is an excellence needed for one aspect of the human telos. The emphasis on the agent's disposition is perhaps the most evident of these three characteristics when one examines Rousseau's works. As we saw in Chapter Three, especially in the discussions of the Confessions

the Emile, the goal of moral education is to produce a certain kind of character, one that ensures that the agent will not only act rightly, but love acting rightly. Rousseau's ethics, then, is best understood as a comprehensive account of human nature, human goodness, and the means by which we can improve ourselves as individuals and communities. Virtue is at the very heart of this long and often difficult improvement, and as Rousseau says:

154


Some of my readers, even those who agree with me, will think that it is only a question of a conversation with the young man at any time. Oh, this is not the way to control the human heart. What we say has no meaning unless the opportunity has been carefully chosen. Before we sow, we must till the ground; the seed of virtue is hard to grow; and a long period of preparation is required before it will take root. 23

Notes 1 Robert Wolker, Rousseau (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 55.

2 John Hall, Rousseau (Cambridge: Schenkman Publishing, 1973), p. 7. 3 Ibid., p. 7. 4 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 1:

5

6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques; Dialogues, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1990), p. 209. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 5: The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995), p. 350. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, Barbara Foxley, trans. (London: Everyman Publishing, 2000), p. 489. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 3: Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second Discourse); Polemics; and Political Economy, C. Kelly and R. Masters, eds (Hanover: University of New England Press, 1992b), p. 149. Ibid., pp. 65-66. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Peter France, trans. (London: Penguin Books, 1979), p. 112. Ibid., p. 113. Timothy O'Hagan, Rousseau (London: Routledge Press, 1999a). Rousseau (2000), p. 290. Ibid., p. 298. Ibid., p. 305.


155

15 Rousseau (1992b), p. 155. 16 Maclntyre also discusses Diderot, although the criticism he makes is essentially the same as the one he makes of Hume. 17 Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1984), p. 42. 18 Ibid., p. 47. 19 Ibid., p. 49, original emphasis. 20 Ibid., pp. 49-50. 21 Robert Wolker, 'Projecting the Enlightenment', in J. Horton and S. Mendus, eds, After Maclntyre: Critical Perspectives on the Work of Alasdair Maclntyre (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 125-26. 22 Ibid., pp. 125-26. 23 Rousseau (2000), p. 339.


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Index

Anscombe, G. E. M. 3 Aquinas, Thomas 96 Aristotle 3-4, 7-24, 27, 28-9, 31-3, 36-7, 41, 42, 43-1, 53, 66, 86-7, 98, 116, 129, 145, 149, 150-52 Bacon, Francis 42 Bentham, Jeremy 3 Buffon, G.L. 150

151, 153 Kepler, Johannes 42 Keyt, David 9, 12 Kierkegaard, Soren 4, 28, 129. 146-9, 151 Locke, John

41, 45, 48

d'Alembert, Jean Le Rond 1, Descartes, Rene 3, 50, 93-5 Diderot, Denis 1, 2, 103, 147

Maclntyre, Alasdair 4, 6, 7, 24-37, 129, 145-52 Mandeville, Bernard 54 Mill, John Stuart 3 Montesquieu, Charles de Secondat. 112

Euclid

Nietzsche, Friedrich 28

42

Galilei, Galileo 42 Grotius, Hugo 116, 120

O'Hagan, Timothy 135, 136-9, 144

56-8,

Hall, John 130-1, 135 Helevitus, Claude Adrien 150 Hobbes, Thomas 3, 4, 9, 41, 42-9, 51-4, 58, 60, 63, 66-7, 69, 95, 98, 107, 116-17 Hume, David 2, 28, 129, 146-9, 150, 151

Plato

Jimack, P.O. 84

Voltaire

Kant, Immanuel 2-3, 25, 28, 97, 119, 120, 129, 140, 146-9, 150,

White, Stephen 21, 76 Wolker, Robert 130, 149-50

30, 107

Smith, Adam Socrates 75

76, 130, 150

Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques 150 2, 130, 134

85-6.

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