Jean-Jacques Rousseau

16. Lüthy, From Calvin to Rousseau (28 July 2024)

by kurto

Sketches the 17th- and 18th-century Geneva’s contribution to Western political economy, commencing with Calvinist government and concluding with subjection to French Louisianan oligarchy and Rousseau’s utopianism.

To Weber as to Marx, the Reformation was the first bourgeois revolution, foreshadowing capitalism. Lüthy dismisses Weber’s thesis of Calvinist Protestantism promoting capitalism, showing predestination is not pivotal to Calvin and simplistic definitions obscure more than they clarify: it’s survives only because succeeding scholars couldn’t agree definitions either. The Reformation was evidently a milestone in the progression from the medieval to the modern world, and Calvinist views indeed underpinned northwestern Europe; but this was just one of many conditions, also to include money (specie) from the new world, emigration (especially Huguenot) within Europe prompted by the Counterreformation, the rise of banking, and the maturation of medieval republican city-states. Is it not also evident that the Counterreformation stifled what would have happened in Catholic countries, especially as Spain and Italy were the more advanced economies?

Calvinism was important for manifesting reformist Christianity most clearly independent of politics and statecraft. The connection to economics is less fear of predestinarian uncertainty and more release of fears of other men, of social stricture. The Reformation destroyed social hierarchy more than it shaped individual values. Calvin broke the hold of usury by common sense: wealthy lenders have richer men as clients, demonstrating the borrower is not always and evidently prey. The rule of equity (i.e., the golden rule) guides proper lending, Calvin observed in overturning Aristotelian view that money (interest) does not engender money. Protestant lenders were no different from Catholics for example in maritime credit, bills of currency exchange. Ironically classical Greece alone among the ancients employed a productive credit system, to support the agricultural regions near the poleis.

Neither the French monarchy nor the country’s national church fits comfortably into the common dynastic vs national schema. France’s centralizing tendencies were most evident in the Academy Francaise (i.e., control of language), which produced clarity over fuller participation in the Enlightenment. Louis XV’s reign completed his predecessor’s making aristocratic and heritable bourgeois office completely dependent on the throne. The constitution of society was economic and social, not only political – a regime in the full sense of the word. The French economy amounted to starveling producers and consumers exempt from tax; there were regional exceptions in Brittany, Normandy, and Languedoc that proved the rule. Quesnay’s primary concern was distribution of ‘net product’ of agriculture (i.e., primary produce) among the royalist entourage: Louis XV’s era was an age of unbounded, reckless enthusiasm not the edge of the abyss. The rise of the Atlantic trade from 1760 undermined the specifics of physiocratic economics, and Quesnay lacked the tooling of the modern discipline, but he was not wrong in his assessment of the country’s dynamics. By contrast, Turgot changed men’s minds in their understanding of the state’s role in the economy.

Rousseau sought to understand the act by which a people is a people, but compromised by proposing the tyrannical general will. Having posited society corrupts natural man, he could not allow for civic order which protects individual rights. In fairness, he saw the Greek city-state as a model; his eloquence raised its applicability to large, modern nations – and led directly to 20th-century tyrannies. In his own time, Genevan democrats (‘populists’) brought the general will to Louis XV’s France, foreshadowing Mirabeau and Robespierre.

In France, finance was the preserve of Catholic royalist administrators, banking was open to all, that is to Protestants. The former traded with Spain, the latter with faster-growing England. Absolute monarchy and public credit were discovered by Necker to be incompatible, and in the late 18th century the latter won. The Protestants retained the anti-dogmatic attitudes of 17th-century emigres to Geneva, mixed with the Enlightenment’s freethinking, critical reasoning, and sovereignty of conscience. But in the storm of the Revolution, the Catholic Church proved a shelter against the radicals, whereas the Protestant churches lacked institutional bulwark: liberalism was first to succumb.

NB: the example of Genevan oligarchies sacrificing Calvinist self-governance to Catholic Paris is relevant to 21st-century USARFU (p. 260)

10. Bloom, Giants and Dwarfs (15 April 2024)

by kurto

Essays spanning literary criticism and political thought, insistently making the point that only recovering the origins of one’s ideas, so as to see the real arguments before they calcified, makes one a thoughtful analyst. Some of the things we hold true are so, some are not.

Modern science seeks to explain man by what is not man, not by the soul. It broke with the classics, Swift first noted in Gulliver’s Travels, when it could no longer reason but only slavishly follow process: humanity was sidelined for Cartesian rationalism. But a man is most what he is by result of what he does, by the character of his activity. Schiller thought modernity was characterized by abstract science and also unrefined passions, whereas a good man and conscientious citizen seeks for harmony. But the ‘accidents of life’ force men into customs which cause them to forget the whole. Harmony is not daily but transcendent.

Since Rousseau, overcoming society’s bourgeois has been seen as very nearly the whole problem of realizing true democracy and simultaneously achieving genuine ‘personality’. Rousseau studied the passions to balance them, not to govern them. Yet he sought to reproduce Platonic egalitarianism based on morality, not post-Machiavellian self-interest. He introduced sublimation of the will as a source of higher expression (e.g., the arts); Nietzsche coined the erm; Freud popularized it. In Emile, lessons are separated into layers where philosophy seeks for the whole. Only in the end, in winning Sophia, does the protagonist distinguish between inclination and will; morality is the struggle between these since nature is primary and authority comes from within. Thus balanced can man be free and moral.

The bourgeois as Rousseau popularized them stand between the naturally good and the moral public. Rousseau follows Montesquieu in seeing virtue as a passion (as against the ancients), in believing passion the real power of the soul, in seeing only passion as able to control passion. But Enlightenment sought to connect selfish passions to the rational, dependable civic ones, while Rousseau defended morality versus reason and denied the otherwise desired transition. Consequently while the ancients saw the freedom of the small community as the means to virtue, he made freedom the end. Willing the general will was a new kind of inclination: obedience is freedom! Rousseau looked to aristocratic Sparta and Geneva as models.

To summarize

    Natural Right and History

(pp. 241-242): Strauss thought Nietzsche wrong to assert rationalism was a line of inquiry unbroken from the ancients to contemporary science. The succession of philosophical developments obscures the core questions and their alternatives. To reject historicism is to seek to understand people as they themselves did, not to assert one can know more than the principals themselves.

On Aron: the Cold War was the political issue of the 20th century. The greatest sign of liberal decay was the savaging of the university by people who called themselves liberals. The tyrannies see bourgeois society as the enemy; communism says reason can’t be free, and must be replaced by theory; fascism wants to be replace reason with passion. Both undercut rationalism.

Kojeve saw Hegel as primarily concerned with self-knowledge, the ability for the philosopher to explain his doings. Hegel fulfilled the Platonic-Aristotelian goal of absolute wisdom – without such possibility, all knowledge, science, and philosophy itself is impossible. Thus the end of history, for only at the end can all be known. But if we lack final wisdom, then the matter is to understand alternatives.

Modern state-of-nature theorists (Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau) agreed with Plato and Aristotle that nature is the permanent standard, but disagreed on what is natural. John Rawls is an updated utilitarian. Simplifying Hobbes and Locke, uninfluenced by Rousseau or Kant, focused on the satisfaction of desire but not morality let alone virtue, he thought pursuing contradictory social ends presented no problems, but evidenced freedom. Thus he was to intuit equality, dispensing with the question of whether equality is just.

Socrates saw the contest between philosophy and poetry stemming from religion, and more specifically the latter’s connection to fanaticism – a connection present in all artistic ‘cultures’. Culture implies opposition to commercial society (i.e., pursuits based on reason). It stems from the Platonic cave. During the Enlightenment art and religion became subservient to more amorphous culture. Bloom holds up Goethe as able to see the real problem of coming to terms with what is, not first reforming the world to one’s vision.

The

    Republic

attempts to find a regime in which philosophers are not ruled by hypocrites. Paraphrasing Aristotle, we begin with the things which are first to us, in order to reach what is first to nature. Aristotle saw the essence of happiness as virtue; life, liberty, and property are merely conditions favored by the moderns. In politics, teachings (i.e., consensus) reflect what is more powerful in the regime and in turn magnify the regime’s most dangerous tendencies. Yet there’s no reason to compromise public views which are conducive to the general good to accommodate the freedom of fanatical minorities.

The sociology of knowledge is a premise which accepts that which is to be investigated as established, that which is to be proven (by exegesis) as a given. A corollary: in what appears similar, we should look for distinctions.

Most university scientists are sub-theoretical technicians, and most research for commercial purposes. Only the money stops conflict from being apparent. More broadly, the modern university’s divided pursuits is the decisive intellectual phenomenon of the late 20th century (and counting?). The left sees the university as the means to addressing contemporary politics (or even forcing the issue). To assert students have the right to judge their teachers is to convert the school to a marketplace.

16. Cassirer, Rousseau, Goethe, Kant (16 Aug 2017)

by kurto

The Enlightenment was equally a philosophical and empirical worldview — right thinking as a precursor to right action. Cassirer shows Kant appreciated Rousseau as the ‘Newton of the moral universe’. For example, Kant saw that Rousseau’s state of nature was important not because of its lost splendor but for what society should aspire to: the Swiss sought to revisit man’s natural state in order to identify ‘errors’ of contemporary society. Where Rousseau deduced this ideal, however, Kant (like Burke) saw civilization as the focal point of humanity, and declared the task of philosophy (i.e., defining what it is to be human) began from this point. They share a grounding in the priority of the individual’s rights, and saw conscience as the basis for appreciating God — not metaphysical proof. But where Rousseau is optimistic of man’s increasing happiness, Kant departed in holding that deeds not outcomes are the of final importance: existence is to prove humanity’s worthiness of freedom. Ultimately, Kant gave Rousseau’s conceptual work rigor. Conversely, in the second essay Cassirer shows how Kant’s empiricism established a basis for Goethe’s theoretical advances, such as metamorphosis, the process of becoming in nature. This bore fruit in the arts: both believed that genius give rules and form to creation; science is more beholden to experience, although the two differed on degree. Goethe concluded understanding doesn’t derive (a priori) from nature but is inspired by it. Separately, Kant held everything has value or worth. Value has a substitute, whereas worth is unique. That which is truly worth is borne of moral choices, which alone bear dignity.

5. Babbitt, Democracy and Leadership (20 Mar 2021)

by kurto

Humanistic disciplines teach man to control his will, for as Burke observed, the less control within, the more without. Forsaking the fostering of individual character and sociopolitical standards risks civilization. Not reason but imagination holds the balance of power between lower and higher nature of man. Criticism must aim for centered judgments, an abiding unity, above the shifting impressions of individuality.

In the long run, democracy will be judged by the caliber of its leaders, effectively a judgment on their vision and imagination. Rome and early 20th-century America alike display ‘psychological imperialism’ – the will to power. Should the aristocratic principle of merit give way to egalitarian denial of principled leadership, parliamentary government will likely fail.

Western decay primarily traces to Bacon (utilitarianism), Rousseau (naturalism), Machiavelli and Nietzsche (imperialism; individual license transformed into will to power), with an assist to Descartes’ substituting demonstrable science (mechanism) for higher will (transcendence) as the definition of reason, and Freud’s corrupting ethics by asserting to refrain is automatically bad. The way back is Socrates (definition), Aristotle (habit), and religion (humility).

Rousseau, Babbitt’s bete noire, flattered mankind by asserting man is naturally good and corrupted only by his institutions. He taught that to pity is to exercise morality and so virtue, and glorified the instinct, the irrational. He denied personal liberty in the Social Contract’s civil religion. Rousseau inspired to violent revolt versus civilization: anarchy today, social despotism tomorrow. By result, since the 18th century Western leaders have increasingly pursued the ‘idyllic imagination’.

The English utilitarians, following Bacon, sacrificed ethics to progress. They identified progress as simple movement toward undefined, far-off events, a projection of idyllic imagining. Ridding politics of theology, as Machiavelli did, entails dispensing with ethics: men cannot be ruthless statesmen and moral exemplars. Nietzsche extended the license of Machiavelli’s prince to all.

The net result is imperialistic leadership, the will to power toward the idyllic. Yet the modern sensibility wishes to be anti-institutional but also enjoy the benefits of religion and humanism. ‘The implication of unity in diversity is the scandal of reason’ – the point of politics is to abstract unity from diversity: e pluribus unum.

The first reply to human torments is not perfect theory but developed character. The problem is to be self-reliant, to develop personal standards, the freedom to act on them, and humility (i.e., will, intellect, imagination in right relation). Greek philosophy failed to adequately address the problems of right conduct guided by higher will. Subordinating the ordinary to the higher is common to all religion. Humility, which came into the West via Christianity, made control of will more important than primacy of the intellect, but the church was less concerned with mediating metaphysics than following Aristotle’s golden mean. In dispensing with pride of intellect, the Christian tended to dispense with reason altogether, whereas the Orient showed little antagonism between the two. Karma (spiritual strenuousness) is to work on one’s highest calling. The Asiatic emphasis on humility as preceding emotion or intellect was a superior approach.

The Socratic thesis is knowledge is virtue, the Baconian that it is power. Confucius was the master of those who will act on will. Burke saw humility as the first of virtues, that tradition is a mechanism for individuals to achieve superior social standards. But he underestimated utilitarianism.

True liberty lies neither in society or nature, but inside: self-control makes one free. Expansive emotion cannot substitute for higher will. To act according to ethical will is to limit. Standards are a matter of observation and common sense; the absolute is a metaphysical conceit. Kant’s freedom to do does not address freedom to refrain.

The highest virtue of social order is justice. To collectively work toward a just order is a higher sense of work; but it is a gathering of individualized work, not minding one another’s business – contemporary ‘social justice’.

Moral realism is refusing to shift the struggle between good and evil from the individual to society. The chimerical equality of social justice is incompatible with liberty, the inner working according to standards, to higher will. That is, equality clashes with humility. Mere humanitarian ‘service’ can’t ward off the will to power. The failings of social justice are the undermining of individual responsibility, the obscuring of practical sense – as evidenced by the use of government power.

The conflict between the liberty of the unionist and the idyllic equality of the Jeffersonian is core to American history. In response to evil, the Puritan begins with inner reform, the humanitarian regulation.