Politics and Tragedy: The Case of Rousseau

• Date: 01 June 2020
• Author: Jason Neidleman
• Published date: 01 June 2020
• DOI: 10.1177/1065912919839144
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912919839144

Political Research Quarterly

2020, Vol. 73(2) 464 –475

© 2019 University of Utah

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DOI: 10.1177/1065912919839144

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Does politics confront us with a set of problems to be

resolved or a set of conflicts to which we must accom-

modate ourselves? Political theorists have typically situ-

ated themselves within the framework of the former, but

of late many have begun to think about what it would

mean to approach politics through the lens of the latter.

For those moving toward this latter framework, the idea

of tragedy has proven to be very useful. There is a grow-

ing interest in exploring the relationship between tragedy

and politics, or the ways in which a tragic heuristic can be

useful for understanding politics (Curtis 2007; Euben

1990; Harris 2006; Johnston 1999, 2015; Pirro 2001,

2011; Stow 2017; Williams 1993). The appeal of tragedy

as a way of thinking about politics stems from its account

of conflict, impossibility, and dissolution. Whereas politi-

cal theory has historically approached conflict in one of

two ways—either as a problem to be transcended or over-

come or as a danger to be managed, diminished, or depo-

liticized—a tragic vision conceives of conflict as the stuff

of politics, refusing either the utopian impulse to escape

it through transcendence or the liberal impulse to neuter it

through depoliticization. Tragedy occupies the space

between utopianism and quietism or resignation. It occu-

pies the space of struggle, change, conflict; of fits and

starts; of assertion followed by dissolution; and of impos-

sibility. It is the enactment of a disjunction born of the

fact that (to put it in Rousseauean terms) our desires

exceed our capacities (Rousseau 1992b, 27).

Born of ambiguity, tragedy is correspondingly diffi-

cult to define. It involves despair but is not only despair;

it involves conflict but is not only conflict; it involves

destruction but is not only destruction. Tragedy begins

from a particular conception of conflict (as inescapable),

impossibility (as constitutive), and dissolution (as inevi-

table). When applied to politics, it can be usefully under-

stood in opposition to utopianism (as transcendence) and

liberalism (as modus vivendi), because it disallows the

possibility of either overcoming conflict (utopianism) or

dramatically reducing its stakes (liberalism).1 It insists on

lingering in conflict, on incorporating conflict, differ-

ence, and otherness into an understanding of ordinary

political life. This brings me to what I take to be the

essence of Rousseau’s tragic spirit: Human beings desire

a wholeness they cannot achieve. This is the primary

apparatus of tragedy in Rousseau’s work. Rousseau’s

dreams of reconciliation and transcendence are punctured

839144PRQXXX10.1177/1065912919839144Political Research QuarterlyNeidleman

research-article2019

1University of La Verne, CA, USA

Corresponding Author:

Jason Neidleman, University of La Verne, 114 Founders Hall, 1950

3rd St., La Verne, CA 91750, USA.

Email: jneidleman@laverne.edu

Politics and Tragedy: The Case

of Rousseau

Jason Neidleman1

Abstract

There is a growing body of scholarship in political theory that explores the ways in which a tragic heuristic can

be useful for understanding politics. This scholarship has generally seen Rousseau as having articulated a political

theory that might be illuminated by the application of a tragic heuristic but not one that might itself illuminate

tragic predicaments in democratic politics. Readers have criticized Rousseau for inadvertently succumbing to a

series of tragic conflicts, primarily by virtue of his insistence on a homogeneous political culture. Through an

analysis of Rousseau’s theory of sovereignty, this essay argues that Rousseau has something more to contribute

to the scholarship on tragedy and politics. His political theory includes both moments of tragic overreach as

well as moments of tragic narration. More than simply a victim of tragic dissolution, Rousseau deployed his own

tragic prism for conceptualizing what he called the “fundamental problem” of politics. This tragic prism, the essay

concludes, expands the applicability of Rousseau’s political theory beyond the small, homogeneous republics he

took as his model. The final section of the essay makes use of the “paradox of politics” to illustrate the applications

of Rousseau’s theory of sovereignty to democratic theory writ large.

Keywords

Rousseau, tragedy, sovereignty, democracy