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“Rousseau and the Minimal Self”
Over the last twenty years, there has been a revolution in Rousseau scholarship.
Traditionally, it has been held that Rousseau’s view of amour-propre is almost
exclusively negative. As the argument runs, it gives rise to zero-sum competitions in
which people aspire to be proclaimed the best and hence most socially valuable.
According to Rousseau, no one really wins these competitions, as everyone’s moral
personality is corrupted. The winners become vain and arrogant while the losers envious
and spiteful. And, for good measure, society is subsumed by an unspoken civil war.
Rousseau’s first sustained analysis of amour-propre, from the Second Discourse, is a
secularized Garden of Eden parable in which amour-propre is responsible for casting
people out of paradise. It is akin to the sin of pride. Beginning with N.J.H Dent’s
groundbreaking work in the late 1980s,1 however, a new Rousseau has emerged. This
Rousseau believes amour-propre to be fundamentally neutral. It can be either good or
bad. Scholars leading this reassessment are particularly impressed by a line from the
Second Discourse: “I would show that it is this ardor to be talked about, to this frenzy to
achieve distinction….that we owe what is best and what is worst among men.”2 [Italics
mine.] In a text that is overwhelmingly critical of amour- propre, Rousseau asserts that it
is responsible for what is best in the species. Through careful textual analysis of
N.J.H. Dent, Rousseau: An Introduction to his Psychological, Social and Political Theory (New York:
Basil Blackwell, 1988. See also N.J.H. Dent and Timothy O’Hagan, “Rousseau on Amour-Propre,” The
Aristotelian Society 72 (1): 57-73; Timothy O’Hagan, Rousseau (London: Routledge, 1999), 171-73.
Granted, older scholars were cognizant of Rousseau’s claim of positive amour-propre. For example, See
Judith N. Shklar, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau’s Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1969), 19, 21, 28. However, Dent is the first to make the idea the centerpiece of his
interpretation of amour-propre.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, in The
Discourses and Other Early Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1997), 184/ O.C. III, p. 189.
Rousseau’s major works, especially Emile, several scholars have had considerable
success in identifying positive benefits of the emotion. Cooper, for example, argues that
amour-propre “is a necessary condition for many good things,”3 including familial and
conjugal love, civic virtue, compassion, moral heroism, etc. Neuhouser more
ambitiously contends that “rationality, morality, and freedom—subjectivity itself—would
be impossible for humans if it were not for amour-propre…”4 There is a lot of
confidence in this new interpretation. Neuhouser boasts that “the textual evidence for
this more nuanced understanding of amour-propre is overwhelming and decisive.”5
There is little point in contesting Neuhouser’s seemingly brash claim. Even a casual
perusal of book IV of Emile confirms his certainty. There is a lot more going on with
amour-propre than mere petty vanity.
That said, it is important to be cognizant of exactly what is being claimed here.
The argument is not that positive amour-propre cancels out the bad or “inflamed” sort.6
Indeed, in Emile, Rousseau asserts that the negative form of amour-propre is still the
most common, and that “it rarely does good without evil.”7 Rather, it is argued only that
it is possible to create a rational, moral being out of the inclination to be admired by
others. The prospect of avoiding or transcending “inflamed” amour-propre is still an
open question of which many of the new “Rousseauists” disagree. Dent is largely
confident that negative amour-propre can be overcome (though he concedes that
. See Laurence D. Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life (University Park, PA:
Penn State University Press, 1999), 123.
Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition
(Oxford: Oxford University, 2008), 2.
Ibid., 15.
As Neuhouser notes, Rousseau uses the term “inflamed” to describe the negative form of amour-propre
once in the text. Dent takes over the term and labels all bad amour-propre as inflamed. See Neuhouser,
Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 58n.
Jean-Jacques, Rousseau, Emile or On Education, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1979),
245/ O.C. IV, 536.
Rousseau “was sharply aware of the potential for damage…”)8, while Cooper and
Neuhouser less so. Cooper correctly notes that “amour-propre never stops being
dangerous—indeed, potentially calamitous—and hence needs to be sternly and
thoroughly governed,”9 and suggests that Rousseau’s own attempt to transcend it is not
plausible for an overwhelming portion of the population. Neuhouser agrees, asserting
that “the highly unusual and demanding conditions that these solutions to the problem of
evil presuppose—not merely a godlike legislator and an improbably wise tutor but also a
complete wiping of the historical slate (in the case of politics) and total seclusion from
the particular bonds of family (in the case of education)—must make us wonder exactly
what kind of possibility Rousseau takes himself to be demonstrating.”10
While there is no doubting Rousseau’s apparent fatalism, there is a mid-level
critique concerning amour-propre that stands between Dent’s unjustifiable optimism and
Neuhouser’s pessimism that may be of more practical interest. Lawgivers and governors
aside, at the core of Rousseau’s discussions of both the negative and positive form of
amour-propre is a forceful cultural critique. For Rousseau, amour-propre is
fundamentally about the construction of individual identity. He wants to know how a
person becomes a self. The process of identity formation or becoming a self is not
merely a social process, i.e. identities are formed in relation to other individuals, but a
cultural one. The criterion by which a person is defined, and indeed the importance of
individuality itself, is set by cultural mores.
In Rousseau’s works, it is easy enough to discern the cultural mores that he found
so troubling. He repeatedly attacks the urban, Enlightenment centers in eighteenth8
Dent, Rousseau, 114.
Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life, 118.
Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 5. See also p. 157.
century Europe. He believed they were factories for amour-propre. His own
experiences taught him that in cities the importance of the individual was elevated to
dangerous levels. Everyone was to be defined and rewarded according to their talents
and achievements. The individual became bigger and bigger while collective identities
such as religion and nationality were ridiculed as superstitious and old-fashioned. This
unrelenting attention on the individual made it so people could not stop thinking about
themselves and how they stacked up against their neighbors.
In defining the urban mores as one of the primary factors inflaming amourpropre, Rousseau at the same time suggests a possible remedy: leave the city. If amourpropre cannot be eliminated, it can be moderated or even re-channeled a healthier
collective form, e.g. patriotism. As Cooper remarks, people “can retreat into the rustic
simplicity of country life and so liberate themselves from a good part of their feverish
amour-propre.”11 Unfortunately, Cooper never follows up on this one sentence, and does
not develop the argument. This essay contends that this partial solution is a good deal
more effective than he or even Rousseau imagines, and should be considered the best
practical advice that can be found in Rousseau’s works.
Amour-Propre and the Self
Rousseau’s first in-depth description of amour-propre comes from the
“competition for esteem” passage in the Second Discourse:
It became customary to assemble in front of the Cabins or around a large
Tree: song and dance, true children of leisure, became the amusement or
rather the occupation of idle men and women gathered in a crowd.
Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life, 179-80.
at once toward inequality and vice: from these first preferences on one
side were born vanity and contempt, on the other shame and envy; and
the fermentation caused by these new leavens at last produced
compounds fatal to happiness and innocence.”12
This passage is complicated, and there will be no attempt try to unpack all of it. Rather, I
would like to draw attention to the process of identity formation implied in it. According
to Rousseau’s narrative, when people began to live in close proximity with one another,
they become a condition of each other’s existence. They begin to pay attention to others,
i.e. how others look to them and they imagine how they might appear to others, and begin
to judge one another and themselves. Importantly, this constant social interaction paves
the way for the development of individual identities. The judgments that people make of
one another solidify, and everyone comes to have a public reputation—they develop
social selves that form the core of their identity and self-conception.13 To take two of
Rousseau’s examples, people are not merely singing and dancing. They are becoming
singers and dancers. More accurately, they are becoming good or bad singers and
This is a remarkable cognitive step in human history. A distinction from Emile
helps clarify Rousseau’s point. Before the advent of social living, people experienced life
as a “sentiment of existence,” which is merely an awareness that one exists. Upon
engaging in social living, they develop a “sentiment of identity,” which refers to the
process by which a person becomes a self-aware individual. It is at this stage “that he [a
Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, in The Discourses and
Other Early Writings, 166/ O.C. III, p. 169-70. .
Charvet and Shklar both emphasize the identity aspect of Rousseau’s analysis. See John Charvet, The
Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 2) and
Shklar, Men and Citizens, 88-90.
person] gains consciousness of himself.”14 Self-consciousness is linked to memory,
Rousseau contends, as there is a temporal aspect to identity. Through memory, humans
are able to unite their entire life into single narrative: “Memory extends the sentiment of
identity to all the moments of his existence.”15 A person’s habits, traits, and activities
become part of their history and define them. While public reputations are not entirely
static, they tend to be durable and difficult to alter once established. Many of a person’s
most visible traits and habits do not change, and people tend to unwittingly play the roles
assigned to them. Identities can become a self-fulfilling prophecy.16 Scholars have been
impressed with Rousseau’s social psychology or, perhaps more accurately given the
direction of modern psychology, social philosophy.17 He has given expression to a
fundamentally important part of conscious life and provides a compelling social ontology
that sheds light on how all of us experience life. Dent offers a concise summation:
“Rousseau’s fundamental insight is that our engagement with others necessarily involves
transformation in our self-constitution and self-characterization.”18 Thus, amour-propre
is not fundamentally about envy, jealousy, spite, etc. These are merely emotional
symptoms connected with the larger issues of individuality and identity-formation. It is
the rise of individuality and self-consciousness that prompts amour-propre.19
From a historical perspective, however, the “competition for esteem” parable
raises a few troubling issues. Scholars have long debated whether or not Rousseau is
Rousseau, Emile, 78/ O.C. IV, p. 301.
For example, Jean-Paul Sartre observed that the poet Jean Genet became a thief after people thought of
him as one. A more contemporary example is girls doing poorly in math because they have internalized
that boys are better at it.
Honneth calls Rousseau “the founder of social philosophy.” See Axel Honneth, Disrespect: The
Normative Foundations of Critical Theory, trans. Joseph Ganahl (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2007), 10.
Dent, Rousseau, 22.
See Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life, 174.
attempting authentic natural history. While it must be conceded that he has some interest
in constructing a credible parable—he does utilize the most compelling scientific sources
of his day, i.e. Buffon’s Natural History and travel literature—the structure of his parable
contains some obvious historical errors that indicate he is more interested in playing the
role of social critic than natural historian.20 In particular, he gets ahead of himself by
referencing cognitive and social developments that could not have occurred in human
history both when and how he claimed they did. These errors reveal Rousseau’s real
motive—to criticize the salonistes for fetishizing individual talent and achievement, i.e.
their attempts to make individual identity supreme and define people in terms favorable
to their own personal strengths.21
Neuhouser identifies one such error in Rousseau’s narrative. In the paragraph
immediately following the competition for esteem, Rousseau claims that once people
became aware of social esteem “everyone claimed a right to it” and “duties of civility”
were established, “even among savages.”22 As Neuhouser rightly argues, notions of
right and duty also had yet to develop and Rousseau gives no account as to why they
would develop simply because people desire to be the best: “…the practices of respect
presuppose not only the moral idea of what a person is entitled to demand from others but
also the ability to conceive of oneself abstract, as a ‘person’ who shares a fundamental
nature and identical rights with all other individuals despite the many particular qualities
In the “Exordium,” Rousseau concedes that “the Inquiries that may be pursued regarding this subject
ought not to be taken for historical truths…” See Rousseau, Discourse on the Origins and Foundations of
Inequality Among Men, in The Discourses and Other Early Writings, 132/ O.C. III, p. 133.
For a developed account of this thesis, see Michael Locke McLendon, “Rousseau, Amour Propre, and
Intellectual Celebrity,” The Journal of Politics, Vol . 71, No. 2 (2009): 506-519.
Other Early Writings, 166/ O.C. III, 170.
that differentiate them.”23 Historically, of course, the idea of individual rights does not
become widespread until the seventeenth century, and the “duties of civility” as a social
requirement does not become especially important until doux-commerce theorists such as
Hume argue for it in the eighteenth century.
More importantly, Rousseau’s excessive focus on individuality also betrays his
political agenda. While people may have become cognizant of their individuality at the
dawn of society, as Rousseau suggests, individual identity did not become significant
feature of conscious life until modernity. The great classical sociologists—Weber,
Durkheim, Tönnies, Simmel, etc—all persuasively defend this argument.24 They all
contend that for much of human history, people were defined by their group membership
and there was little room to develop individual identity.25 Much of conscious thought
came straight from the social group, and the individual has only recently been freed from
collectivist self-consciousness. To take Durkheim’s language, early or primitive societies
exhibited a “mechanical solidarity” in which the collective group “completely envelopes
our total consciousness, coinciding at every point.”26 As society developed and social
organization became more differentiated, people eventually assumed individual social
roles. This social differentiation results in “organic solidarity,” and opens the door for
the development of an individual personality: “When people have their own space, they
Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 66.
Other thinkers outside of European classical social theory held similar views. For example, George
Herbert Mead states that : “…primitive human society offers much less scope for individuality—for
original, unique, or creative thinking and behavior on the part of the individual self within it or belonging to
it—than does civilized human society…” See George Herbert Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, ed. Charles
W. Morris (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962), 221.
Interestingly, in his own consideration of Rousseau, Durkheim does not make this point and makes no
mention of his own theory. His only claim is that Rousseau understood that society cannot be reduced to
an aggregate of individual transactions: “society is nothing if not a single definite body distinct from its
parts.” See Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of Sociology (Ann Arbor, MI: The
University of Michigan Press, 1965), 83. In general, see pages 76-91.
Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labor in Society, trans. W.D. Halls (New York: The Free Press, 1984),
are free to make their own choices about how they use that space; social differentiation
…is the formative condition of individual liberty.”27 Durkheim thinks that division of
labor is the driving force in social differentiation, and hence the material condition
necessary for individuality and hence individual freedom. Granted, many of these
nineteenth century thinkers did not reduce individuality to ability and physical
appearance, as Rousseau does in the “competition for esteem” parable. Durkheim is
mostly interested in the ability to choose one’s lifestyle and make one’s own value
judgments. Nonetheless, the problem of group identity remains. There was much less
opportunity for the emergence of individual public identities.
Rousseau’s own views of division of labor, which are similar to Durkheim’s,
confirm this point. As with Durkheim, he concedes that division of labor hardly existed in
early human societies, and only considerably alters individual consciousness with the
advent of agriculture and metallurgy. And, even these two developments do not lead to
the sort of specialization and cognitive inequalities that bothered Rousseau. Emile’s
choice set for professions, e.g. farmer, carpenter, blacksmith, are of the sort that depend
upon these advances. In any case, without a more mature division of labor, it seems
implausible that individual identities would take on significant importance. Individuals
working in solitary professions would have little incentive or opportunity to pay attention
to each other. If survival could be ensured through individual effort, there is little reason
to gaze at one’s neighbors. And, when people work separately and have little economic
interaction, it is difficult to judge the social value of a person’s talents. Division of labor,
however, promotes economic integration and makes people dependent upon each other. It
Raymond Aron, Main Currents in Sociological Thought II: Durkheim, Pareto, Weber, trans. Richard
Howard and Helen Weaver (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1970), 24.
creates a system in which everyone has a specific and publicized role. As such,
observing and ranking others is an unavoidable and relatively easy task. Thus, as
Rousseau puts it, the advent of division of labor makes it so “…all natural qualities [are]
set in action, every man’s rank and fate are set…”28 Moreover, Rousseau appears to
inadvertently question whether leisurely activities—the ones described in the
“competition for esteem” passage—could trigger high levels of amour-propre:
“inequality of prestige and authority becomes inevitable among private individuals as
soon as, united in one society, they are forced to compare themselves one with the other
and, in the continual use they have to make of one another [italics mine], to take into
account the differences they find.”29 Leisurely activities do not require that people make
continual use of each other. It is not necessary for singers and dancers to engage each
other; it is for bankers and lawyers. Finally, although Rousseau paints a nasty picture in
the “competition for esteem,” he still refers to such periods as golden eras. Soon after
describing the psychological fall of man in the “competition for esteem” passage, he
quickly turns around and claims that this early phase of social development is “our most
happiest epoch”30 because it occupies “a just mean between the indolence of the
primitive state and the petulant activity of our amour propre…”31 Amour- propre in
small doses is good, and can function as an important emotional ingredient in a welldeveloped moral personality. While there are elements of early social living that portend
badly for the future, amour-propre only becomes dangerous when combined with certain
socio-economic developments that spring from advanced division of labor, i.e. improved
Other Early Writings, 170/ O. C. III, p. 174.
Ibid., 183/ O.C. III, p. 188-89.
Ibid., 167/ O.C. III, p. 171.
methods of production, establishment of private property, and the emergence of a distinct
social class structure.32 Thus, there is a clear linkage in the text between amour-propre
and the rise of commercial society. Pierre Force correctly notes that while amourpropre’s goal is not material gain, “one of Rousseau’s main points in the Second
Discourse is that in modern commercial society, there is a contamination between
material needs…and symbolic needs (the desire to be approved of).” 33
There is other evidence in Rousseau’s texts that cast doubt that early humans
considered themselves first and foremost as individuals who competed for favorable
recognition. In the First Discourse, he complains that communal identities of religion
and nationality have been supplanted by individual identities based on talent: “we have
Physicists, Geometricians, Chemists, Astronomers, Poets, Musicians, Painters; we no
longer have citizens.”34 He likewise fumes that the new men of letters “smile
disdainfully at old-fashioned words as Fatherland and religion.”35 So, before writing
word one of the Second Discourse, Rousseau pines for an earlier age in which individual
identity and individual achievement was less socially important—an age that occurs well
after the “competition for esteem” is supposed to have taken place.
That Rousseau introduces too many cognitive and cultural developments in his
anthropology of the earliest moments of organized social living suggests that his concern
is not merely describing the psychological processes of the mind but a specific form of
consciousness he found in the eighteenth century Enlightenment. The rise of commerce
See Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 119-28. .
Pierre Force, Self Interest Before Adam Smith: A Genealogy of Economic Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 129-30.
Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, in The Discourses and Other Early Writings, 24/ O.C. III,
p. 26.
Ibid., 17/ O.C. III, p. 19
was accompanied by the rise of individuality. People had more specialized roles in
society, and had cognitively developed to the point that allowed natural inequality to both
develop and become socially important. These changes compelled people to care
exclusively about their role in the group, and not the group itself. For Rousseau,
however, making the individual the center of conscious life had considerable psychic
costs. People turned their back on their most endearing relationships such as family and
community, and suffered from a whole new set of painful emotions. Individuality can be
a tremendous burden.
The Solutions to Amour-Propre and the Minimalization of the Self
Rousseau’s uneasiness with excessive individuality is also reflected in his
solutions to the problem of amour-propre. Both Emile’s education and the general will
are designed to diminish the social importance of individual identity and elevate
communal identities. With regard to Emile, when his sexual desires develop and he must
enter the world of men, Rousseau outlines means by which his tutor can steer him away
from appetites for superiority and celebrity. Sexuality, he argues, can be redirected into
healthier outlets, i.e., friendship and love of humanity itself. Thankfully, by nature,
sexual desire first encourages humans to seek out tenderness rather than lust. Such
affection, Rousseau argues, can be extended to the whole of humanity through the power
of empathy. Emile will identify with his species through shared vulnerabilities and
misery: “it is man’s weakness which makes him sociable; it is our common miseries
which turn out hearts to humanity.”36 When people witness someone happier or superior,
they become envious and jealous. Upon seeing someone suffer, they empathize, i.e. they
Rousseau, Emile, 221/ O.C. IV, p. 503.
put themselves in the other person’s shoes. So, through contemplating his own
vulnerabilities, Emile will develop something resembling a species-consciousness. The
motive here is still selfish—it is amour propre or self-love. But it is amour-propre in an
extended sense. Emile privately reasons: “I am interested in him for love of myself.”37
So, through self-love, Emile paradoxically develops a collective consciousness and
concern for his fellow humans.
Importantly, there is a limit to this group identity. Emile never stops being an
individual, and Rousseau is eager to point out that his first duty is always to himself. He
is to be a man, not a citizen.38 He even experiences a sort of perverse pleasure in pity
upon witnessing someone suffer. He “feels the pleasure of not suffering as he does.”39
Moreover, he is not to be some crusader for social justice and the common good, and
does not take any pride in his moral superiority or try to define himself as the
embodiment of justice. As with all moral men, he is “too sensible to be vain about a gift
[he] did not give [himself].”40 He is very much a simple man who thinks of his own
needs and feelings. Additionally, Emile cares about succeeding in his profession for
selfish reasons. He still covets praise from his peers.
At the same time, however, Rousseau identifies means and attitudes to prevent
Emile’s selfishness from developing into “inflamed” amour-propre. While he is eager
for praise, following Hutcheson and Smith, he will only accept it for truly praiseworthy
acts.41 He measures himself not against others individuals so much as an external
Ibid., 235fn/ O.C. IV, p. 523.
Ibid., 41-42/ O.C. IV, p.251-52.
Ibid., 221 O.C. IV, p. 504..
Ibid., 245/ O.C. IV, p. 537.
Hutcheson argues against Mandeville’s rigorism by claiming that people have a moral sense that
overrides considerations of vanity: “But shall any Man ever really love the Publick, or study the good of
others in his heart, if Self-love be the only spring of his actions? No: that is impossible. Or shall we really
standard of excellence.42 While Emile will be pleased at a job well done, Rousseau is
clear that he is to value good work but not the individual worker. If a pupil seems
pleased with praise or says “I made that,” Rousseau counsels the tutor to retort: “you or
another, it makes no difference; in any event it is well-done.”43 Emile is to work hard
and be competent but he is not to define himself by his deeds. He wants to do a good job,
but not for the sake of vanity. He also is devoid of ambition and does not want to get
ahead. As Rousseau states in the Dialogues, “one of the things on which he congratulates
himself is that in his old age he finds himself in just about the same rank as the one into
which he was born…”44 Thus, it bears repeating, despite Rousseau’s refusal to let Emile
get swallowed up by his human identity, he is eager to minimize the individual self and
puncture any puffed-up individualistic pretensions. Individuality persists but is never
allowed to become the primary basis of Emile’s identity. He knows himself first and
foremost as a human.45
Rousseau’s tact in The Social Contract is similar. Collective identity still trumps
individual identity, though in this case collective identity is based on patriotism rather
love Men who appear to love the Publick, without a moral sense? No…we should hate them as Hypocrites,
and our Rivals in Fame.” See Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and
Virtue. Revised Edition, ed. Wolfgang Leidhold (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2008), 154. Smith adopts
this critique of Mandeville in The Theory of Moral Sentiments, asserting that “the desire of doing what is
honorable and noble…cannot with any propriety be called vanity.” See Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral
Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1984), 309. Neuhouser is
good on this point as well. See Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 241.
In the Plan for A Constitution for Corsica, Rousseau claims “esteeming onself based on truly estimable
goods” is appropriately considered pride, and not vanity. According to this distinction, then, Emile will
experience pride rather than the bad form of amour-propre. See Jean-Jacque Rousseau, Plan for A
Constitution for Corsica, in Collected Writings, vol. 11, trans. Christopher Kelly (Hanover, NH:
Dartmouth College Press, 2005), 154/ O.C. III, p.938.
Rousseau, Emile, 202/ O.C. IV, p. 479.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, in Collected Works, vol. I. Trans.
Christopher Kelly (Hanover: University of New England Press, 199), 147/ O.C. I, p. 850. See also
Rousseau, Plan for A Constitution for Corsica, in Collected Writings, vol. 11, 126/ O.C. III, p. 905.
Cohen rightly criticizes Durkheim, Cassirer, and Bloom for failing to recognize Rousseau’s commitment
to individuality. See Joshua Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2010), 35-40. However, he understates Rousseau’s concern of the dangers of individuality.
than humanity.46 Nationalism replaces cosmopolitanism. Rousseau’s basic argument is
that the great human interest in freedom is realized only by privileging one’s collective
identity as citizen to private interest. Rousseau maintains that each person has two wills:
“a private will contrary to, or different from the general will that he has as a citizen.”47
Throughout the text, Rousseau’s “constant aim is to generalize will.”48 Anyone who
smuggles in private interest into sovereign deliberations turns his or her fellow citizens
into extensions of their will, thereby robbing them of their freedom. So, as long as one
promises to abide by the social contract, they must act from their general will. If not,
they will be forced to be free. Rousseau rejects the idea that private wills can regularly
coincide with the general will.
Again, however, Rousseau does not seek to annihilate individuality.49 In his
system, only the public self is alienated to the sovereign: “We have agreed that each man
alienates by the social pact only that part of his power, his goods and his liberty which is
the concern of the community.”50 As private persons, people have natural rights and
freedoms that are independent of the sovereign. Each citizen has a zone of privacy that is
out of reach of the sovereign, and “can do what he pleases with such goods and such
freedom as is left to him by these covenants.”51 Granted, the sovereign is responsible for
determining exactly what counts as a community concern. Still, since everyone is both
In the Discourse on Political Economy, Rousseau that patriotism is a combination of amour-propre and
virtue, and hence is sublimated self-love. See Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on Political Economy, in
The Discourses and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1997), 16/ O.C. III, p. 255.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, trans. Maurice Cranston (New York: Penguin Books,
1968), 63/ O.C. III, 363.
Patrick Riley, The General Will Before Rousseau: The Transformation of the Divine into the Civic
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), 243.
Marks has a helpful discussion of this issue. See Jonathan Marks, Perfection and Disharmony in the
Thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 79-80.
Rousseau, The Social Contract, 74/ O.C. III, p. 373.
Ibid., 77/ O.C. III, p. 375.
sovereign and subject, it is unlikely they would define the public concern too broadly as
they too would suffer from an overly-intrusive state. Nonetheless, the right to cultivate
one’s own garden is strictly a private matter and whatever one does in private life is
subordinate to the general will, and is only acknowledged if it undermines collective
political life. Excessive wealth or anything else that draws undue attention to an
individual will not be tolerated.
Interestingly, Rousseau does afford individual talent and natural inequality a
public role. The best and the brightest are expected to populate government—they are to
be heavily involved in administration, which is responsible for executing the directives
formulated by the sovereign. As he puts it in the First Discourse, the learned and
talented ought to “find honorable asylum in the courts.52 Rousseau knows that there are
inequalities in abilities and they should be exploited when they are of social value. It is
better to be ruled by genius than by stupidity. Yet, Rousseau is careful to hide this fact
from the public. Once again, he does not want genius to be publicly praised and
celebrated for their talents and social value. This would only inflame amour-propre, as
everyone wants to claim such superiority. So, the talented are bracketed away from the
citizenry; they are to be socially invisible.53 They produce more harm than good unless
they are unseen.
Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, in The Discourses and Other Early Writings, 27/ O.C. III,
p. 29-30. See also Letters Written from the Mountain, in which Rousseau claims that “the best of
Governments is aristocratic; the worst of sovereignties is the aristocratic.” Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letters
Written from the Mountain, in Collected Works, Vol. 9, trans. Judith R. Bush and Christopher Kelly
(Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2001), 233/ O.C. III, 809.
This is the opposite position of d’Alembert, who argues that learned and gifted should shun political life
but informally govern society by arbitrating values and monopolizing public esteem. See Jean le Rond
d’Alembert, “Essai sur la Société des Gens de Lettres et des Grands,” in Oeuvres Complètes, Vol.
IV(Geneva, Slatkine Reprints, 1967), 356.
Back to the Provinces
It is crucial to recognize that both of these solutions to amour-propre rest upon an
underappreciated premise: that minimizing individuality can only be achieved in rural
life. If Pierre Force is right that Rousseau’s discussion of amour-propre in the Second
Discourse is “contaminated” by the emerging commercial economy, then it would seem
that one way to lessen amour-propre is to avoid the new commerce and the cities that
housed it. In his texts, Rousseau repeatedly encourages people to do this very thing. He
praises country simplicity and disparages city-life as corrupt. He writes of “the black
morals of cities,”54 and claims they “are the abyss of the human species.”55 They are
places of vice, crime, and “inflamed” amour-propre. Rousseau insists that Emile be
raised in the country and champions peasants as the most suitable citizens for a society
governed by the general will, i.e. “when we see among the happiest people in the world
bands of peasants regulating the affairs of state under an oak tree, and always acting
wisely...”56 Rousseau’s early critics recognized his taste for provincial life, i.e. Voltaire’s
smarmy accusation that he wants humanity to return to walking around on all fours and
Constant’s charge that he naively thinks he can recreate Sparta. Both criticisms are wide
of the mark. It is not difficult to locate textual evidence with which to defend Rousseau
against both indictments. Two passages should suffice: “human nature does not go
backward”57 and “ancient peoples are no longer a model for modern ones; they are too
Rousseau, Emile, 95/ O.C. IV, p. 326.
Ibid., 59/ O.C. IV, p. 277.
Rousseau, The Social Contract, 149/ O.C. III, p.437. Granted, in Emile, he does belittle peasants as
being too thoughtless and attached to habit. See Rousseau, Emile, 118/ O.C. IV, p. 360.
Rousseau, Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, in Collected Works, vol. I, 213/ O.C. I, 935.
This argument was put to rest by Arthur Lovejoy. See Arthur Lovejoy, “The Supposed Primitivism of
Rousseau’s ‘Second Discourse,” in Essays in the History of Ideas (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 1948), 14-37.
alien to them in every respect.”58 Nonetheless, Voltaire and Constant do touch upon
something true about Rousseau. He rejects progress as defined by the intellectuals of his
day, and is nostalgic for a simpler age. If it is impossible to literally go back in time,
Rousseau realizes that the past still lives in much of modern life, especially in the
provinces. By being behind the times, they manage to escape modern corruptions. Thus,
by leaving the city, one can effectively return to a simpler age in which individuality
counts for less and there are fewer temptations that “inflame” amour-propre.
Much of Rousseau’s argument rests upon economics. In the provinces, there is
much less wealth. Most are engaged in the mechanical arts and low-level commerce, and
do not amass great fortunes. The provincial political economy is primarily a medieval one
in that it is dominated by agriculture and skilled craftsmen. While there are hierarchies,
few think of climbing the social ladder and most, like Emile and Rousseau from the
Dialogues, are content with their lot in life. As a result, people are more focused on
survival or amour de soi than superiority. To repeat some earlier points, division of labor
is less mature, and people’s economic lives are less integrated. People mostly work out of
view of their neighbors, and are less dependent upon them in their day to day tasks. Not
having the same economic function (except farmers), most have neither the expertise nor
the inclination to judge one another. In short, they are less immersed in society and have
the space to be self-referential, at least part of the time. Moreover, when people do
engage socially, they tend to be drawn together by their collective identities, which are
far stronger in the country than in the city. Provincial men are more likely to define
Rousseau, Letters Written from the Mountain, in Collected Works, Vol. 9, 292/ O.C. III, p. 881. In fact,
Rousseau argues that compare oneself to such an illustrious past is an expression of amour-propre.
themselves through their religion and nationality rather than their achievements.59
Amour-propre, then, takes a qualitatively different form in the provinces.
Rousseau also thinks that provincial division of labor is ennobling. Everyone
becomes a craftsman and can perform challenging and socially useful work that everyone
recognizes—yet at the same time does not swell amour-propre. Since most people live
modestly and work with their hands, few have the time and inclination to make great
contributions to the arts and sciences. There is, therefore, less cognitive inequality than in
the cities, as natural inequalities have much less space in which to develop. There are
still intellectuals and artists, but they exist in fewer numbers and have much less status.
At bottom, the economic and social conditions in the provinces are unfavorable to
individual distinction. In the Letter to M. D’Alembert on the Theatre, Rousseau draws a
compelling picture of provincial economic life. Rural artisans possess “…the simplicity
of true genius. It is neither scheming or busybodyish; it knows not the path of honors and
fortune nor dreams of seeking it; it compares itself to no one; all its resources are within
itself; indifferent to insult and hardly conscious of praise, it if it is are of itself, it does not
assign itself a place and enjoys itself without appraising itself.”60 This is the reason why
Emile is to be a farmer, or short of that, a carpenter.
Thus, while living in the country does not eliminate amour-propre, there is much
less chance it will come to dominate conscious life. It bears repeating that in the
provinces, individuality is less important and the limited economic progress leaves very
little room for financial and cognitive inequalities to emerge. Arguably, this minimizing
Rousseau’s description of the patriotism of the Saint Gervais Festival is evidence for this claim. See
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to M. D’Alembert on the Theatre, trans. Allan Bloom (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1960), 135 fn/ O.C. V, p.
Ibid., 60/ O.C. V, p.
of the self and of inequality may be enough to reduce bad forms of amour-propre to
manageable levels and provide adequate outlets for collective forms of it to develop.
Rousseau assumes that once people become self-aware individuals, they are obsessed
with their social status and can think of nothing else: “When I see each of us ceaselessly
occupied by public opinion extending sot to speak his existence entirely around him
without reserving hardly any of it in his own heart.”61 This assumption is questionable,
and as Rousseau admits, especially in the country when people’s lives are less integrated
and inequalities less perceptible. Farmers, for example, live a solitary existence and
rarely consort with others. Blacksmiths, carpenters, etc, likewise probably had limited
social circles. When they did socialize, as Rousseau claims, they were united by God or
country. Even people who lead a more social existence may not feel the intense pangs of
amour-propre that wracked Rousseau’s consciousness. It is no secret that Rousseau was
exceptionally sensitive and that he spent many years pursuing celebrity.62 Perhaps his
decade spent in the Parisian salons had jaded him too much. Furthermore, Rousseau
downplays the psychological defenses that allow people to cope with disappointment and
failure. Even in cities, most people come to terms with their social status and learn to live
with amour-propre. It need not consume people. Of course, there is no empirical
evidence available that might demonstrate the level at which amour-propre becomes
dangerous. Internal subjective states are not amenable to empirical analysis. However,
this is no reason to uncritically accept Rousseau’s assertions, particularly when he
identifies socioeconomic conditions that increase amour-propre.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Moral Letters in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 12, trans. and ed.
Christopher Kelly (Lebanon, NH: Dartmouth College Press, 2007), 198/ O.C. IV, 1112.
Christopher Kelly, Rousseau’s Exemplary Life: The Confessions as Political Philosophy (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1987), 191.
Wrong Turns
Although the three positive amour-propre theorists—Dent, Cooper, and
Neuhouser—hold differing views as to how the negative form of amour-propre can be
overcome, they all ultimately believe that the problem is ultimately solvable. Dent, to
repeat, is the most optimistic, believing that the problem of amour-propre comes from
amour-propre itself. Cooper and Neuhouser, on the other hand, are more skeptical that
amour-propre contains its own cure, and seek solutions elsewhere. Cooper looks to the
sentiment of existence while Neuhouser abandons Rousseau altogether and finds a
solution in Hegel. All three attempts, it shall be argued, are unconvincing.
To begin, Dent argues that amour-propre need not result in jealousies and
rivalries and only requires that people treat others “as a morally significant being, a
bearer of certain rightful titles and immunities.”63 The interpretation here is Kantian and
Hegelian, as is the solution. One can only be treated as a morally significant being if one
treats others as such. “Inflamed amour-propre,” conversely, “devises a significance for
others which directly denies the possibility of achieving its own inherent goal, that of
securing categorically recognized standing.”64 As such, Dent thinks it is self-defeating.
His move here is straight out of Kant’s third formulation of the categorical imperative,
i.e. one’s freedom to choose one’s own ends must be consistent with other’s attempts to
do the same, and Hegel’s contention in the master/slave passage that one can only be free
and recognized as such by recognizing other individuals as free and equal beings. The
claim rests upon a fundamental equality—everyone has equal dignity as a moral person.
Dent, Rousseau, 23. Cohen makes virtually the same claim. See Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community
of Equals, 101-104.
Dent, Rousseau, 119. In general, see 117-19.
Furthermore, Dent argues that so long as this baseline recognition is provided to all the
members of the community, inequalities in talent are tolerable, even welcome, if they can
be shown to either assist an individual in achieving his freedom or benefit the
community. Writes Dent: “All he requires is that those attributes in which one person
exceeds another, for his superiority in which he may be honoured and esteemed, be ones
that disclose excellences in the person that are inherently enlarging to the quality and
fullness of his substantial life, and/or benefit to others.”65
Both of Dent’s claims are highly questionable. To begin, as Neuhouser contends,
Dent confuses respect and esteem, 66 a distinction first made by Axel Honneth (this debt
is acknowledged in a footnote). According to Honneth, recognition is about one’s
general humanity while esteem emphasizes one’s individuality and uniqueness:
recognition “is a matter of the general feature that makes them persons at all, whereas
[esteem]…is a matter of the particular characteristics that distinguish them from other
persons.”67 While Rousseau does not explicitly make his distinction, Neuhouser claims
that both can be readily identified throughout his writings, and that the problems of
esteem are too complex to be resolved by recognition.68 As a consequence of failing to
appreciate this distinction, Dent is far more comfortable with interpersonal inequalities
than is Rousseau. Dent is correct that Rousseau accepts inequalities and allows them
expression, especially when they benefit society. However, as previously argued,
Rousseau is also careful to manage the public expression of talent. While the talented are
welcome in administration, their job is to work behind the scenes and be largely invisible
Ibid., 67.
See Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 62.
Axel Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition: The Moral Grammar of Social Conflicts, trans. Joel
Anderson (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995), 113.
Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 63-67.
to the population at large. They are not to be honored and esteemed, as talents are not to
be linked to public identity. Rousseau under no circumstances wants people to compare
themselves with genius, or even think of themselves in such terms. He does not want
great clothiers to be shamed into becoming “a bad versifier or an inferior Geometer…”69
If there is to be room for private fulfillment, as Dent contends, Rousseau is adamant that
it remain private.70 If the talented perform public acts of obvious social value, it might
only further inflame amour-propre as they can legitimately claim to be more valuable. A
beneficial and deserved hierarchy is still a hierarchy, and may actually further demoralize
those on the bottom rungs of society. To be at the bottom of the society is painful
enough, deserving to be there is even more so.
Additionally, it might be argued that when rights and honors are evenly
distributed, they become taken for granted as people care little for them. If everyone has
something, it ceases to become special. Hence, moral recognition may not provide the
dignity that Dent supposes. Finally, as Tocqueville effectively demonstrates, equality
may actually exacerbate amour-propre (though he is careful never to use the word.)
Although there is no logical necessity to this, both Aristotle and Tocqueville think that
political equality has a spillover effect. To quote Aristotle, democrats think “if they are
equal in one respect, for example free birth, they consider themselves to be equal in
all.”71 Tocqueville terms this “complete equality,” and claims it is wholly unrealistic, as
there are all sorts of natural inequalities that find expression in American commercial
Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, in The Discourses and Other Early Writings, 26/ O. C.
III, p. 29.
Huilling correctly observes that “Rousseau rejected their [the philosophes] yearnings for a social order
dedicated to the fostering the development of individual talent, which to him would be nothing better than
the triumph of amour propre in its most virulent form.” See Mark Hulliung, The Autocritique of the
Enlightenment: Rousseau and the Philosophes (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 133.
Aristotle, The Politics, 1280a25.
society. His democrats spend lots of psychic energy attempting to ignore talent and any
other inequality they inevitably come across in their everyday life. “Complete equality”
thus results in democrats become resentful, envious, and bitter. They “are tired of the
sight of any superiority, however legitimate.”72 This problem is intensified by the fact
that the expectation of equality makes democrats hyper-sensitive to inequality: “when
each sees a million others around him all with the same or similar claims to be proud,
pride becomes exacting and jealous.”73 So, there is little reason to believe that Dent’s
Kantianism resolves the problems of amour-propre.
Second, Cooper’s measured treatment for a third solution to amour-propre found
in The Reveries of the Solitary Walker suggests that it does not represent a meaningful
possibility. In the text, Rousseau recalls that during his time on the Île de Saint-Pierre, he
was capable of wiping away his self-consciousness while lying in a boat or on the banks
of the water in complete solitude. This period, he claims, was the happiest in his life
because he was able to confine his consciousness to the “sentiment of existence.” Writes
Rousseau: “As long as this state lasts, we are sufficient unto ourselves, like God.”74
Elsewhere in the text, he fondly recalls an incident in which he was knocked out by a
Great Dane and suffered temporary amnesia.75 His description of his mental state is
nothing short of remarkable:
“Entirely absorbed in the present moment, I remembered nothing; I had
no distinct notion of my person nor the least idea of what had just
happened to me; I knew neither who I was nor where I was; I felt neither
injury, fear, nor worry. I watched my blood flow as I would have
Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, trans. George Lawrence (New York: Harper Collins,
1969), 198.
Ibid., 613.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, trans. Charles E. Butterworth (Indianapolis:
Hackett Publishing Co., 1992), 67-70/ O.C. I, p. 1045-48
For a good discussion, see David Lay Williams, “The Platonic Soul of the Reveries: the Role of Solitude
in Rousseau’s Democratic Politics,” History of Political Thought, Vol. 34, no. 1 (Spring 2012): 111-114.
watched a brook flow; without even suspecting that his blood belong to
me in any way. I felt a rapturous calm in my whole being; and each time
I remember it, I find nothing comparable to it in all the activity of known
Whether on a boat or admiring his head injuries, Rousseau is clear about his goal—to
utterly forget his individual self and experience life from nowhere. In these reveries, bliss
results from being completely drained of self-consciousness.77 Rousseau makes a similar
statement in Emile: “A truly happy being is a solitary being. God alone enjoys an
absolute happiness.”78 And, from Julie, “in seclusion, one has other ways of seeing and
feeling than in involvement with the world…”79 Cooper celebrates Rousseau’s reveries
on the Île de Saint-Pierre (he curiously ignores the vignette about the Great Dane
knocking him senseless), claiming that he “has added new dimensions or even wholly
new capacities to the ordinary complement of mental powers.”80 He views Rousseau’s
conscious state as a form of mysticism that allows him to adopt the consciousness of the
savages from the Second Discourse without losing his self-awareness.
In one respect, Rousseau’s reminiscing confirms one of the central theses of this
essay—that he is mostly concerned with the psychological problems associated with
individual identity and self-consciousness. At the same time, Cooper concedes that this
is not a widely available option. Only a few special souls are capable of it, and even
Rousseau only attained it in old age. He likewise acknowledges that it contradicts the
positive amour-propre thesis and undermines his more measured treatments of the
Rousseau, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, 16/ O.C. I, p. 1005.
Rousseau elsewhere claims that solitude is a defense against amour-propre: “A proof that I have less
amour propre than other men, or that mine is made in another manner is the facility that I have at living
alone.” See Rousseau, My Portraits, in in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 12, 40/ O.C. I,1124.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Julie or the New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at
the Foot of the Alps, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 6, trans. Philip Stewart and Jean Vaché
(Hanover, NH: University of New England Press, 1997), 9/ O.C. II, p. 14.
Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life, 178.
problem in both Emile and The Social Contract. As previously argued, in those texts he
argues that allowing individual space to develop ability and make one’s own decisions is
a good thing both for the individual and society. By transcending individuality all the
positive effects of amour-propre are lost. Less positive amour-propre means less of what
is best in humans.
The problems, however, may be worse than Cooper imagines. Rousseau’s claim
that he is able to avoid amour-propre through a solitary lifestyle may be either too
ordinary or too fantastic. If Rousseau only means that he is able to escape from the
competitive social grind, then it would seem his ability is not all that unique. It is not
uncommon for people retreat to their private gardens, so to speak, and successfully turn
off the noise of society and their relationships frequently in the course of their lives. He is
hardly the only person who has retreated to nature to flee the pressures of society. On the
other hand, if he has, as Cooper contends, managed to experience a wholly new form of
consciousness, then there is reason not to believe him. Or course, no one can verify
subjective states, so it is impossible to disprove Rousseau. However, Rousseau’s claims
of transcendence seem less persuasive than other attempts to argue for the presence of a
subjective state. With amour-propre, Rousseau can, like a good phenomenologist, appeal
to his readers’ experiences. We can verify his claims because his descriptions match up
with our experiences. The same cannot be said of transcending amour-propre, for almost
no one has achieved it. This is akin to Nagel’s claim that no human no know what it is
like to be a bat—one can only imagine what it is like being a human imagining what it is
like to be a bat.81 Similarly, it could be argued that Rousseau does not really know what
Thomas Nagel, “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” Philosophical Review, Vol. LXXXIII, No. 4 (October
1974): 435-50.
it is like to transcend amour-propre—he only is a person with amour-propre imagining
what it is like not to have it. And, unsympathetic critics might very well argue that his
contention that he has transcended amour-propre is itself proof that he suffers from it.
His claims amount to little more than assertions of moral superiority. This is not
Rousseau at his best.
Finally, Neuhouser attempts to remedy the problems of esteem by widening the
available avenues by which one may earn esteem. He suggests that Rousseau might
develop his theory in a manner similar to Hegel by allowing individuals to find esteem in
other spheres of society, such as the family or civil society.82 A good parent might not
compare him or herself to a surgeon. Or, someone with low socio-economic status might
find respect in a non-economic activity, e.g. singing in the church choir or playing in a
pick-up basketball league. This argument can take another form. Mead, for example,
argued that division of labor can be expanded to allow everyone a socially valuable
productive role. This would allow people to gain recognition in an activity in which they
are superior, i.e. they are better than the general population.83 The idea is simple: the
more socially valuable economic roles that exist, the more people who will perform those
roles and hence gain sought after esteem. His model is lawyers and surgeons—“one is a
good surgeon, a good lawyer, and he can pride himself on his superiority…”84
Both of these claims are plausible, and probably help alleviate some of the
problems of amour-propre. However, there are still reasons to remain skeptical. Taking
Mead first, division of labor increases both financial and cognitive inequality, and again
overemphasizes individual identities. There is no reason to think these problems will
Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, 169.
See Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, 208 and Honneth, The Struggle for Recognition, 88.
Mead, Mind, Self, and Society, 208
disappear with extreme division of labor. Indeed, societies that maintain advanced
division of labor tend to create a small cadre of powerful leaders and a large majority of
workers engaged in monotonous and tedious labor. Most jobs in such societies are mindnumbing and are less cognitively demanding than the medieval trades they replaced.
This critique is ubiquitous in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,85 and includes some
of the preeminent capitalist theorists themselves. Smith, for example, worries that the
average worker “naturally loses…the habit of exertion, and generally becomes as stupid
and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”86 In the twentieth century,
Schumpeter argues that lack of meaningful work will lead to an “electoral” revolution
that will put an end to the dominance of the entrepreneurs.87 Capitalists tend to dislike
skilled labor—it requires high wages and makes the owners too dependent upon the
workers. They want perfectly replaceable cogs in their highly differentiated wheels.
There is thus an incentive to chop up an activity into so many parts that few occupations
require ability. Thus, capitalists do not want to create new professions akin to surgeons
and lawyers.88 They want to make work as simple and meaningless as possible. And, it
should be remembered, Emile is not to participate in mind-numbing or stupid
To name a few, Ferguson, Goethe, Sismondi, Marx, Tocqueville, and Simmel. Indeed, by the time
Simmel addresses the topic in 1900, he opens his discussion by commenting that “…it has been
emphasized often enough that the product is completed at the expense of the development of the producer.”
[italics mine]. See Georg Simmel, The Philosophy of Money, trans. Tom Bottomore, David Frisby, and
Keethe Mengelberg (New York: Routledge, 2011), 492.
Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations, ed. Edward Cannan (New York: Random House/ The Modern Library,
2000), 840.
See Joseph A. Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Third Edition (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1950), Part II, chapters XII-XIV.
Interestingly, Schumpeter’s argument has recently been applied to doctors and surgeons. See Eric Topol,
The Creative Destruction of Medicine: How the Digital Revolution Will Create Better Health Care (New
York: Basic Books, 2012).
professions.89 Thus, in advanced capitalist societies, there is still a premium on
individual talent and an ever-decreasing pool of challenging jobs.
Neuhouser’s suggestion is more compelling but also not entirely persuasive. It is
far from certain that success in family life or another civil sphere will make up for
deficiencies in the areas of life that reap most of society’s social and economic rewards.
Amour-propre is a cultural problem, and is most problematic in cultures that put too
much value on individual achievement. A cultural overhaul is necessary, as Rousseau
makes clear time and time again. It is not enough to find dignity in other spheres of life.
There is no doubting that Rousseau believed that rural life was a necessary
condition for curing inflamed amour-propre. However, he stops short of suggesting that
it is a sufficient condition. Despite the fact that the “leavens” that inflame amour-propre
cannot be found in the provinces, Rousseau remains pessimistic that rural folk can
maintain healthy moral personalities. Living away from the city, he maintains, is simply
not enough.
Why such pessimism? On a practical level, Rousseau would probably argue that
Enlightenment culture is much too imperialistic to be confined to the cities. Culturally,
the philosophes wanted the world—they wanted to define social mores for everyone. As
Melzer observes, “in Rousseau’s time, France, above all, acted as a cultural magnet
drawing the rest of Europe to imitate its splendid vices.”90 With all eyes became fixated
on the city. Rousseau plainly fears that provincial men will be much too tempted by
Rousseau, Emile, 200-201/ O.C. IV, p. 477.
Arthur M. Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau’s Thought (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1990), 275.
wealth and the promise of celebrity to want to be farmers, smiths, abbeys, etc.91 As
evidence, Melzer cites a line from Julie in which Claire warns Julie that France “has
more than one manner of making conquests, and its armies are less to be feared than its
mores.”92 Elsewhere in Julie, Rousseau laments that rural men and women almost
slavishly consume the novels, plays, and tales of the city, despite the fact they “all heap
derision on the simplicity of rustic morality” and “preach the manners and pleasures of
high society.”93 Rousseau makes a similar appeal in his Plan for Corsica, contending
that “a cultivating people must not look covetously at residence in cities and envy the fate
of the sluggards who live there.”94 If they do, good clothiers will insist upon becoming
bad geometers, and virtuous cities like Geneva will want to import features of urban
culture such as theaters.
Rousseau’s pessimism seems presumptuous. It seems equally plausible to suggest
that a provincial population—especially if they are made aware of their special virtues—
may very well remain uninterested in their urban neighbors or might even embrace a
cultural populism of the sort found in the contemporary American Republican party.
Even if they take in a play or two, it is doubtful rural inhabitants could be induced to
internalize values that demean them so easily. At the very least, it is unlikely that there
There is a famous story in which Rousseau gets into a fight with an Abbé from Normandy who read a
tragedy at d’Holbach’s Salon. The Abbé’s work was atrocious, and the d’Holbach coterie sarcastically
mocked his work. Rousseau was aghast at his friends’ behavior, and politely informed the Abbé of the
humiliating truth of the situation and encouraged him to value his work as an Abbé rather than trying to be
a writer. As a reward for his good deed, Rousseau was physically assaulted by the poor Abbé. See
Maurice Cranston, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Early Life and Work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1712-54
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), 313-14, and Leo Damrosch, Jean-Jacques Rousseau:
Restless Genius (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 251-52.
Alps, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 6, 9/ O.C.
Rousseau, Julie or the New Heloise, in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. 6, 14/ O.C. II, p. 20.
Or, from Corsica: “The stupid pride of bourgeois does nothing but debase and discourage the plowman.”
See Rousseau, Plan for A Constitution for Corsica, in Collected Writings, vol. 11, 131/ O.C. III, p. 911.
Rousseau, Plan for A Constitution for Corsica, in Collected Writings, vol. 11, 132/ O.C. III, p. 911.
would be a monolithic positive response to pressures to adopt urban attitudes.
Rousseau’s determinism here can probably be attributed to his philosophy of history
outlined in the Second Discourse, which holds that social living puts humanity on a
course of irreversible degeneration. Europe, he believed, was so hopelessly corrupt that
some sort of moral salvation could only be had in a few isolated areas of the continent,
such as Corsica.
If this pessimistic theory is rejected, however, then there may be no reason for
Rousseau to resort to a lawgiver or governor to liberate the species from the bad forms of
amour-propre. The conditions of rural life do a lot of work for him—they lessen the
importance of the mainspring of amour-propre, i.e., individual identity. The modern self,
then, need not be re-made—only minimized. The provinces themselves might arguably
be “a just mean between the indolence of the primitive state and the petulant activity of
our amour propre…”95 Are there grounds for rejecting Rousseau’s theory of history?
Indeed there are. As Melzer contends, Rousseau’s views are so radically pessimistic that
they are wholly “opposed to the prevailing views of his time and ours.”96 We need not
follow Rousseau down such a dangerous path.
Other Early Writings, 167/ O.C. III, p. 171.
Melzer, The Natural Goodness of Man, 266.