Rousseau Presentation 2024 PDF

BACK TO NATURE WITH JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778) Le Guin, Newton’s Sleep (1991): OVERVIEW  A critique of rationalist, techno-scientific Utopia “It was what man had sought so long and never found, never could find, on Earth: a rational happiness. Down there, all they had ever had was life, li...

BACK TO NATURE WITH JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU (1712-1778) Le Guin, Newton’s Sleep (1991): OVERVIEW  A critique of rationalist, techno-scientific Utopia “It was what man had sought so long and never found, never could find, on Earth: a rational happiness. Down there, all they had ever had was life, liberty, and the pursuit. Now they didn’t even have that.” (Ike, p. 317)  … as an (impossible) fantasy of escaping the imperiled, perilous Earth  … where “Earth” signifies not only the planet but all the forms of dependency upon, vulnerability to, responsibility for, and entanglement with Other beings that being terrestrial entails {Whether Other in terms of race, class, gender, dis/ability, animality, materiality … ... and Earth-escape represents the climax of dream that (falsely) equates a) human freedom with total autonomy / in-dependence / control  Big, brave question: Thomas More, Utopia: OVERVIEW What does the existence of private property, money, and inequality prevent us from imagining? How does capitalism constrain our social dream? No (agri)culture UTOPIA means... NATIVES: Land can be the expropriated UTOPIA/“NATURE” Cultural People must SOCIETY requires... Other assimilate/accultura te or be expelled or realigned with killed (HUMAN) NATURE and PRODUCTIVITY No (agri)culture “NATURAL LAW” and Less than human by CULTIVATION ZAPOLETE nature - Simple, S: the Born for social death of both Racial “natural”pleasures LAND Other Should be “used up,” and “purged” from “the - Simple, “natural” order human race” PEOPLE (patriarchy, gerontocracy) Manual work only, no mental cultivation - Balance between SLAVES: Must perform de- manual and mental The Caste humanizing work cultivation Other Keeps other workers morally, materially clean (purification)  OVERVIEW: Rousseau valorizes UN-CULTIVATED, UN-CIVILIZED, UN- SOCIALIZED, “NATURAL MAN”  Openly speculative, conjectural, counterfactual, impossible experiment in imagining Man’s original “STATE of NATURE” … from a position embedded in modern history, society, culture, morality, civilization, and technology… all opposites of “nature” in Rousseau  Rousseau’s radical UTOPIANISM: this unthinkable back-to-nature thought experiment enables a devastating, even revolutionary critique of modern society, esp. inequality  Prizing the “State of Nature” over “Civilization” is a radical reversal in modern philosophy: - Questions the whole notion of human “progress” in history - Expresses a new ethos of reverence for uncultivated human and non-human “nature”: the WILDERNESS, the “Noble(?) Savage,” the Child } “ROMANTICISM”  “Natural” and “Savage” are synonyms in the text - By Rousseau’s logic, there are non-Euro “savages,” that currently exist in the literally  QUESTION Posed by the Academy of Dijon What is the origin of inequality among mankind and does natural law decree inequality? “ENLIGHTENMENT”: The Age of Reason, The Age of Doubt, and the explosion of the Public Sphere  Openly speculative, conjectural, counterfactual, implausible experiment in imagining Man’s original “STATE of NATURE”  …From a position embedded in modern history, society, culture, morality, civilization, and technology… all opposites of Nature in Rousseau And how shall man be able to see himself, such as nature formed him, in spite of all the alterations which a long succession of years and events must have produced in his original constitution, and how shall he be able to distinguish what is of his own essence, from what the circumstances he has been in and the progress he has made have added to, or changed in, his primitive conditions? The human soul, like the statue of Glaucus which time, the sea and storms had so much disfigured that it resembled a wild beast more than a god, the human soul, I say, altered in society by the perpetual succession of a thousand causes, by the acquisition of numberless discoveries and errors, by the changes that have happened in the constitution of the body, by the perpetual jarring of the passions, has in a manner so changed in appearance as to be scarcely distinguishable; and by now we perceive in it, instead of a being always acting from certain and invariable principles, instead of that heavenly and majestic simplicity which its author had impressed upon it, nothing but the  Rousseau’s UTOPIANISM: the back-to-nature thought experiment that enables a devastating critique of modern society: “The times I am going to speak of are very remote. How much you are changed from what you once were! It is in a manner the life of your species that I am going to write … Discontented with your present condition … you will perhaps wish it in your power to go back; and this sentiment ought to be considered a panegyric of your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a source of terror to those who may have the misfortune of coming after you” (89)  Social inequality is NOT natural, which means it is NOT necessary -- hence Rousseau’s stress on the inconceivably long and slow series of “accidents” that brought about the societal status quo -- what is not necessary/natural is subject to CHANGE/TRANSFORMATION -- philosophical CRITIQUE as the method that parses Natural Necessity from Historical Accident  Against Thomas Hobbes’ seminal depiction of life in the State of Nature as a “war of all against all” in which the life of man is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”(Leviathan, 1651) - a situation so dire that men willingly surrender their natural liberty to an absolute sovereign in the interest of order and security REVOLUTIONARY ROUSSEAU: Immediately REJECTS the suggestion contained in the prize question, that “natural law” might “decree inequality” in any meaningful sense: Granted, there exist NATURAL/PHYSICAL inequalities: -- differences of age, health, strength, mental and spiritual qualities But these must be distinguished from MORAL/POLITICAL inequalities -- these are conventional, rather than natural (“depend upon a kind of convention”) -- “the different privileges, which some men enjoy, to the prejudice of others, such as … being richer, more honored, more powerful, and even that of exacting obedience from them.” (87) “It were absurd to ask … if those who command are necessarily better men than those who obey; and if strength of body or mind, wisdom or virtue are always to be found in individuals, in the same proportion with power, or riches: a question, fit perhaps to be discussed by slaves in the hearing of their masters, but unbecoming free and reasonable beings in quest of truth.” (88) The question, then, is what “chain of amazing events” subordinated Nature to Convention / Obedience For: “it is evidently against the law of nature that children should command old men, and fools lead the wise, and that a handful should gorge themselves with superfluities, while the starving masses lack the barest necessities of life.” (138) REVOLUTIONARY ROUSSEAU, cont.  Demanding to close the gap between the Enlightenment ideal of free reason/progress and real conditions of hierarchy, subordination, and misery  … even at the cost of violently overthrowing the present arrangement of power  In the contorted end section Rousseau affirms this revolutionary principle: -- Inequality is unnatural; -- “life and liberty” are “essential gifts of nature” (130); -- Therefore, “the insurrection which ends in the death or deposition of a sultan, is as juridical an act as any by which the day before he disposed of the lives and fortunes of his subjects.” (136) ROUSSEAU’S RHETORIC + LOGIC ECHO in the UNITED STATES DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE (July 4th, 1776) “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.” … A pattern of gratuitous polemics against “sociability” and mutual need/aid On domestic vs. wild animals: “it looks as if all our attention to treat them kindly, and to feed them well, served only to bastardize them. It is thus with man himself. In proportion as he becomes sociable and a slave to others, he becomes weak, fearful, mean-spirited, and his soft and effeminate way of living at once completes the enervation of his strength and his courage.” (94) On the obscure, inaccessible origin of language: “Whatever these origins may have been, we may at least infer from the little care which nature has taken to bring men together by mutual wants, and make the use of speech easy to them, how little she has done towards making them sociable and how little she has contributed to anything which they themselves have done to become so. In fact, it is impossible to conceive why, in this primitive state, one man should have more occasion for the assistance of another, than one monkey, or one wolf for that of another animal of the same species …” (104) On morality in the State of Nature: Can be derived from the two principles of self-interest and compassion for suffering, “without there being the least necessity for adding to [these two principles] that of sociability” (84) SELF-SUFFICENCY, INDEPENDENCE above all NATURE SOCIETY “As long as men remained satisfied with their rustic huts; Independence Interdependenc as long as they were content with clothes made of the skins of animals, sewn with thorns and fishbones; as long as they Self-sufficiency e continued to paint their bodies different colors, to improve Need, or ornament their bows and arrows, to fashion … clumsy Equality instruments of music collaboration Freedom Inequality, … in a word as long as they undertook such works only as Health property a single person could finish, and stuck to such arts as did Happiness not require the joint endeavors of several hands, they lived Slavery free, healthy, honest, and happy; Honesty Sickness, but from the moment one man began to stand in need of Indolence (lack weakness another’s assistance; from the moment it appeared an of pain/labor) Misery advantage for one man to possess enough provisions for Hunting, two, equality vanished; property was introduced; labor Deception, became necessary; and boundless forests became smiling gathering pretenses fields, which had to be watered with human sweat, and in Boundless Sweat, labor of which slavery and misery were soon seen to sprout out and Forests grow with the harvests.” (120) tilling (The Fall, the Curse) NO LASTING BONDS, JUST RANDOM BONKING: “In this primitive state, as there were neither houses nor cabins, nor any kind of property, everyone took up his lodging at random, and seldom continued above one night in the same place; males and females united without any premeditated design, as chance, occasion, or desire brought them together, nor had they any great occasion for language to make known what they had to say to each other. They parted with the same ease.” (100) MATERNITY (a slight complication) “The mother suckled her children, when just born, for her own sake; but afterwards when habit had made them dear to her, for theirs; but they no sooner gained strength enough to run about in quest of food than they separated even from her, and as they scarcely had any other method of not losing each other, than of remaining constantly in each other’s sight, they soon came to a point of not even recognizing each other when they happened to meet again.” (100) WHAT NON-HUMAN NATURE DOES “Natural” Man REQUIRE? A VAST FOREST WILDERNESS for subsistence and disappearance, i.e. for the maintenance of FREEDOM as a-sociality, anonymity, autonomy “The earth, left to its own natural fertility, and covered with immense woods that no hatchet ever disfigured, offers at ever step food and shelter to every species of animals.” (90) “If I consider him [man], in a word, such as he must have issued from the hands of nature … I see him satisfying his hunger under an oak, and his thirst at the first brook; I see him laying himself down to sleep at the foot of the same tree that afforded his meal; and there are all his wants completely supplied.” (90) “Authors are constantly crying out, that [in a state of nature], the strongest would oppress the weakest. But … it would be a hard matter to drive even the meaning of the words domination and servitude [into the heads of savage men]. One man might indeed seize the fruits which another had gathered … but how is it possible he should ever exact obedience from him, and what chains of dependence can there be among men who possess nothing? If I am driven from one tree, I have nothing to do but look out for another; if one place is made uneasy to me, what can hinder me from taking up my quarters elsewhere. But suppose I meet a man so much superior to me in strength, and withal so depraved, so lazy and barbarous, as to oblige me to provide for his subsistence while he remains idle; he must resolve not to take his eyes from me a single moment … let him abate ever so little of his vigilance; let him at some sudden noise but turn his head another way; I am already buried in the forest, my fetters are broken, and he never sees me again. (112) Logical consequences of ROUSSEAU’S PREMISE, interdependence = inequality  COLLECTIVE LIFE (life in groups, life in society) IS AN INHERENT THREAT TO HUMAN FLOURISHING  TO IMAGINE HUMAN FREEDOM, HAPPINESS, AND EQUALITY IS TO IMAGINATIVELY PURGE THE HUMAN OF EVERY SOCIAL TIE  … PRODUCING A “NATURAL MAN” AND A “STATE OF NATURE” THAT ARE DEFINED AGAINST EVERY FORM OF COMMUNAL LIFE  SOLITUDE, AUTONOMY, SELF-SUFFICIENCY, AND ANONYMITY IS MAN’S NATURAL STATE AND NATURAL RIGHT { hence birth, infancy, breastfeeding are special topics  SOCIETY, SOCIABILITY, AND MUTUAL AID/NEED ARE UNNATURAL, UNNECESSARY ACCIDENTS OF HISTORY  NATURE AND SOCIETY ARE ANTONYMS  NATURAL/ INDIGENOUS/ “SAVAGE” PEOPLE HAVE NO SOCIETY  NON-HUMAN NATURE IS A VAST CONTAINER THAT SUSTAINS EACH MAN IN HIS ASOCIAL  DISCUSSION Q: What defines THE ”SAVAGE”? IS THE STATE OF NATURE “Noble” or APPEALING? “Let us conclude that savage man, wandering about in the “Who does not perceive that everything seems to forests, without industry, without speech, without any fixed remove from savage man the temptation and the residence, an equal stranger to war and every social tie, means of altering his condition? His imagination without any need of his fellows, as well as without any paints nothing to him; his heart asks nothing from desire of hurting them, and perhaps even without ever him. His moderate wants are so easily supplied with distinguishing them individually one from the other, subject what he everywhere finds ready at his hand, and he to few passions, and finding in himself all he wants, let us, I stands at such a distance from the degree of say, conclude that savage man had no knowledge or feelings knowledge requisite to covet more, that he can but such as were proper to that situation; that he felt only neither have foresight nor curiosity. The spectacle his real necessities, took notice of nothing but what it was of nature, by growing quite familiar to him, in his interest to see, and that his understanding made as becomes at last equally indifferent … His soul, little progress as his vanity. If he happened to make any which nothing disturbs, gives itself up entirely to discovery, he could the less communicate as he did not the consciousness of its present existence … Such even know his children. The art perished with the inventor; is, even at present, the degree of foresight in the there was neither education nor improvement; generations Caribbean: he sells his cotton bed in the morning, succeeded generations to no benefit; and as all constantly and comes in the evening with tears in his eyes, to set out from the same point, whole centuries rolled on in buy it back.” (98) the rudeness and barbarity of the first age; the race was grown old, and man still remained a child.” (111) Rousseau’s ”savage” INDOLENCE: refusing the Curse of Labor: “Civilized man … is always in motion, perpetually sweating and toiling, racking his brains to find out occupations still more laborious: he continues a drudge to the last minute; nay, he courts death to be able to live, or renounces life to acquire immortality… Proud of his slavery, he speaks with disdain of those who have not the honor of sharing it. What a spectacle must the painful and envied labors of a European minister of state form in the eyes of a Caribbean! How many cruel deaths would not this indolent savage prefer to such a horrid life[?]” (137) Damning critique of OWNERSHIP, PRIVATE PROPERTY, ENCLOSURE: “The first man, who after enclosing a piece of ground, took it into his head to say, this is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society. How many crimes, how many wars, how many murders … would that man have saved the human species, who pulling up the stakes or filling up the ditches should have cried to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are, lost, if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong equally to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” (113) “NATURAL PITY”: MORALITY before/outside REASON and SOCIETY: “I think I can distinguish in [the human soul] two principles prior to reason; one of them interests us deeply in our own preservation and welfare, the other inspires us with a natural aversion to seeing any other being, but especially any being like ourselves, suffer or perish …” (84) NATURAL PITY / COMPASSION: “speak immediately by the voice of nature” (84); by “the pure impulse of nature, anterior to all manner of reflection” (107) “Pity is a natural sentiment, which, by moderating in every individual the activity of self-love, contributes to the mutual preservation of the whole species. It is this pity which hurries us without reflection to the assistance fo those we see in distress; it is this pity which, in a state of nature, takes the place of laws, manners, virtue, with this advantage, that no one is tempted to disobey her gentle voice.” (108)  From these two principles “flow all the rules of natural right” … “without there being the least necessity for adding to them that of sociability” (84)