Montaigne and Rousseau's First Discourse

• Author: Blair Campbell
• DOI: 10.1177/106591297502800102
• Published date: 01 March 1975
• Date: 01 March 1975
• Subject Matter: Articles

MONTAIGNE
AND
ROUSSEAU’S FIRST DISCOURSE
BLAIR CAMPBELL
University of California, Los Angeles
CHOLARLY analysis of Rousseau’s writings has grown increasingly
S charitable in recent decades. Ridiculed and excoriated for nearly two
~―~ centuries, Rousseau-apparently as irrepressible in death as in life-has
won his way back into our affections, fully vindicated against the intemperate
charges of earlier critics. He was not, we now believe, the irresponsible ration-
alist Burke’s followers took him to be, nor, at the other extreme, was he a
maudlin irrationalist, as he had been portrayed.’ Similarly, we have rejected
the extreme interpretations of his political views advanced by previous genera-
tions : in our current estimate he learned neither toward a collectivist despotism
nor an anarchic individualism.2
2
This charitable impulse has had its beneficial consequences. It has cleared
away much of the emotional debris left behind by previous students, often re-
placing the extravagant indictment with the balanced appraisal. And more
fundamentally, it reflects a more sophisticated assessment of the intellectual his-
torian’s critical task. The disorientation following the French Revolution created
an interpretative trend, resurrected after the second world war,3 which rejected
a cardinal ideal of scholarly criticism. During less turbulent periods it has been
taken for granted that the conscientious critic would approach his subject with
a measure of empathy, attempting, insofar as possible, to suspend his own pre-
judices and preconceptions for the moment in order to understand the doctrines
he is to criticize, to step within the symbolic world created by his Plato or Ro.us-
seau in order to view this world through the knowing eyes of its creator. But
critics of the post-revolutionary persuasion had little use for this ideal, since it
was attached to a conception of historical scholarship quite alien to their own.
They were less concerned to understand the past than to discover where their
1
See, for instance, Lester G. Crocker’s discussion of Irving Babbitt’s Rousseau and Romanti-
cism, "Professor Babbitt Revisited," Studies in Romanticism, 10 (Fall 1971), 260-83.
Although this debate has continued into the present century, with Robert Derathé’s
Le Rationalisme de J.-J. Rousseau (Paris: Bibliothéque de Philosophie Contemporaine,
1948) defending the rationalist thesis against Rousseau’s myriad psychological inter-
preters (see n. 5, below), the terms of the debate have changed: in recent times, both
sides have sought more to illumine Rousseau’s thought than to indict him for his "unin-
tended consequences." Judith N. Shklar’s Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s
Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) has provided a valuable
supplement to this debate in emphasizing Rousseau’s own psychological perspicacity.
2
For an account of the earlier literature, see "Reading About Rousseau," in Peter Gay’s
Party of Humanity: Essays in the French Enlightenment (New York: Knopf, 1964),
pp. 211 ff. Alfred Cobban has defended Rousseau against both charges in Rousseau and
the Modern State (London: Allen & Unwin, 1934), as has John Chapman in his ex-
cellent Rousseau—Totalitarian or Liberal? (New York: AMS Press, 1968). Of course
J. J. Talmon’s The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1961)
provides a major exception of my claim. I have criticized this work in my "Helvétius
and the Roots of the ’Closed’ Society," American Political Science Review, 68 (March
1974), 153-68.
3
Karl R. Popper is responsible, along with Talmon, for the recrudescence of this trend. See
The Open Society and its Enemies, 2 vols. (New York: Harper and Row, 1963).
7

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8
own world had gone awry, to identify and condemn the doctrines which they
held to be responsible for a number of the world’s ills. Consequently, they
scrutinized ideas in the fashion of the policeman leafing through his rogue’s
gallery: &dquo;Read intellectual history,&dquo; the Taines and Bonalds, Talmons and
Poppers command their readers in effect, &dquo;in order that you may know your
enemy!&dquo; Contemporary scholarship has thus effected a healthy retreat from this
approach. The old empathetic ideal has been embraced anew, fortified by
modem psychological and sociological insight.
However, the new mood has had its own unfortunate aspects. Empathy
at its best is only a stage in the act of assessment. If the critic is to remain true
to his calling he must go beyond empathy, divesting himself of his subjects’ biases
in his final act of judgment. He must chart the inconsistencies, contradictions,
and inanities, the deserts and shallows which remain invisible so long as he views
his symbolic world from its creator’s perspective. To fail to take this final step
is to veer to the post-revolutionary critics’ opposite extreme, confusing empathy
with an uncritical subjectivism which tends to blur the distinction between a
writer’s doctrines and his motives, and thus to put that eternal nemesis of
clear thinking, the ad hominem argument, to novel purpose-using it to defend,
rather than to attack, ideas.
The contemporary fashion of discovering a &dquo;unity&dquo; underlying Rousseau’s
writings provides an instance of this failure to go beyond empathy. Rousseau
repeatedly countered charges of inconsistency by insisting that his writings form
a unified whole,’ and modem scholars, determined to accept this assertion at
face value, have gleaned his writings in search of a master key, often without
pausing to clarify their objective.’ Consequently, the issue (indeed the very
meaning of &dquo;unity&dquo; in this context) remains as obscure as it had been for
Rousseau’s contemporaries.’ There is, of course, a sense in which we can accept
Rousseau’s own asseverations on this score as truistic. His thought had its source
in his deepest personal experience and was thus unified in a psychological sense,
part and parcel of his biography. However inconsistent his writings may seem,
they nonetheless serve the same psychological function, assisting him in that rest-
4
"I have written on diverse subjects, but always on the same principles, always the same
morals, the same belief, the same maxims, and, if you wish, the same opinions." Letter
to M. de Beaumont, quoted in Gay’s Party of Humanity, p. 212. Elsewhere he describes
the "great principle" (born of his "illumination" on the road to Vincennes) under-
lying his principal writings: "that nature has made man happy and good but that society
corrupts him and causes him misery." Rousseau Juge De Jean Jacques, Dialogue Troi-
siéme, Oeuvres Complètes, Edition Publiée Sous La Direction de Bernard Gagnebin et
Marcel Raymond (Paris: Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959), I, 934. (Cited hereafter
as Oeuvres.) See also Lettre à Malesherbes, June 12, 1762, Oeuvres, I, 1135-36, and
Préface d’une seconde lettre à Bordes, Oeuvres, III, 105-6.
5
Peter Gay provides an excellent resumé of this trend in his Party of Humanity, loc. cit. and
"The Old New Man," New York Review of Books, 11 (December 5, 1968), 33-36.
Also see below.
6
As Margaret Canovan observes: "When one reads the literature and surveys the various
ingenious but opposed interpretations, it seems hard to avoid the conclusion that although
all the scholars have thought it necessary to look for Rousseau’s system, none of them
has found it." "The Limits of Seriousness: Rousseau and the Interpretation of Political
Theory," European Studies Review, 2 (January 1972), 2.

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9
less process of self-clarification and self-assertion that constituted his identity.~
7
This truism is a harmless and even useful tautology (same-thought-because-
same-thinker) : it assumes only a unity of motive, construed in the broadest
sense; yet in underscoring the subjective dimension it has provided psychologi-
cally oriented biographers with an excellent vantage point for understanding
Rousseau’s personality.’ But while Rousseau’s insistence upon the unity of his
writings may suggest a wealth of meaning concerning his psychic life, it is of
little value-at least without additional information-for the task of elucidating
his ideas. &dquo;Unity,&dquo; like &dquo;sameness,&dquo; has no meaning apart from some specified
quality. &dquo;X is the same as [is unified with] Y&dquo; conveys information only if we
know the dimension in which sameness is being postulated, whether length,
beauty, or political consequence. And since Rousseau never stated clearly in
what respect he considered all his writings to be unified, it would seem that at
this point our empathetic interlude must end; his assertion is meaningless for
purposes of doctrinal analysis.’
Yet modem
scholarship has effected a gradual annulment of this difference
between the requirements of psychological and intellectual meaning in its quest
for Rousseau’s unity. The transition has been a subtle one. Gustav Lanson and
Ernst Cassirer took the first step in seeking a unity of intention, rather than of
motive.&dquo; They effected only a slight change in emphasis-there is, after all, a
sense in which &dquo;motive&dquo; and &dquo;intention&dquo; are synonymous-which was, on the
7
Yet even here we must be wary, for Rousseau could be quite emphatic in asserting his
characterological mutability: "In a word, a Proteus, a chameleon, or a woman are less
changeable beings than I. This fact must from the outset deprive the curious of any
hope of one day knowing me by my character; for they will always...