Abstract
IN TURNING FROM the musical writings to the rest of Rousseau’s work, one has the sense of following a stream that suddenly vanishes underground, leaving the critic or promeneur solitaire momentarily checked and confused. Perhaps the stream never emerges again and is lost in cavernous depths, but tracing where it might be, following the path that it might have taken, the ear does catch subterranean murmurings that seem to testify to its presence. That is particularly true in the Second Discourse, where the whole musical controversy is at once absent and essential. There the echoes become in the end quite distinct, with the relationship to the Essai sur l’origine des langues offering plausible but treacherous guidance. More confusing, if no more complex, are cases such as that of the Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles, where Rousseau seems to turn his back on his aesthetic theories in the name of a higher moral principle.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
See Rousseau’s Fragment biographique of about 1755: ‘J’étudiois l’homme en lui même et je vis ou je crus voir enfin dans sa constitution le vrai systême de la nature qu’on n’a pas manqué d’appeler le mien quoique pour l’etablir je ne fisse qu’ôter de l’homme ce que je montrois qu’il s’étoit donné…’ (Fragment biographique, Pléiade I, 1115). On these questions see also Roger D. Masters, The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 151–157.
The first model is implicit in Rousseau’s chronological approach to the question; the second is most apparent in the image of the statue of Glaucus in the Preface to the Discourse (Pléiade III, 122). In attempting to discover his own nature man must distinguish ‘ce qu’il tient de son proprefond d’avec ce que les circonstances et ses progrès ont ajoûté ou change à son Etat primitif’ (122). Ajoûté ou changé: addition or transformation. The two models are present throughout the passage, as the wording makes evident: les changemens, l’ame humaine altérée, on the one hand, but also l’acquisition on the other. Jean Starobinski writes in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, la transparence et l’obstacle (Paris: Gallimard, second edition, 1971): ‘L’image de la statue de Glaucus, dans le contexte de Rousseau, garde quelque chose d’énigmatique. Son visage a-t-il été rongé et mutilé par le temps, a-t-il à jamais perdu la forme qu’il avait en sortant des mains du sculpteur? Ou bien a-t-il été recouvert d’une croôte de sel et d’algues, sous laquelle la face divine conserve, sans aucune perte de substance, son modèle originel? Ou encore le visage originel n’est-il qu’une fiction destinée à servir de norme idéale pour qui veut internréter l’état actuel de l’humanité?’ (28).
In his Rousseau’s Exemplary Life, Christopher Kelly quotes the passage from Book 8 of the Confessions which begins: ‘…enfoncé dans la forest, j’y cherchois, j’y trouvois l’image des prémiers tems dont je traçois fiérement l’histoire…’ (Pléiade I, 388). Kelly comments: ‘This makes the truth of his understanding of nature depend on the accuracy of an image. For certainty, one would prefer the discovery to be derived from the direct contact with nature. In sum, Jean-Jacques’s system stands in the same situation as the philosophic systems Rousseau attacks. It appears to be a rationally constructed image of the world, but neither its rationality nor its comprehensiveness proves that it is a correct image of the world… The personal character of the Confessions, compared, for example, to the general character of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind, leaves Rousseau vulnerable to the charge that his system is radically dependent on the existence of a unique individual.’ See Christopher Kelly, Rousseau’s Exemplary Life (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), 189. Kelly goes on to offer answers to these difficulties; I quote this passage here, however, because it so clearly shows how the elaboration of Rousseau’s system, while being philosophic, also partakes of other modes of discovery. Compare Rousseau himself, in the Second Discourse: ‘Toute idée générale est purement intellectuelle; pour peu que l’imaginations’en mêle, l’idée devient aussitôt particuliére’ (Pléiade III, 150).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Lettre à Mr d’Alembert sur les spectacles, édition critique de M. Fuchs (Lille: Giard; Geneva: Droz, 1948). Quotations are given according to the text of this edition, which retains the original spelling. I have also consulted the valuable, extensively annotated edition by Jean Varloot, Discours sur les sciences et les arts, Lettre à d’Alembert sur les spectacles (Paris: Folio, 1987). Page references to both editions are incorporated in the text; F indicates the Fuchs edition, V the Varloot edition.
Among the relevant passages in La Nouvelle Héloïse are Pléiade II, 128, 265–280, 449 ff. (passage quoted from the Lettre à d’Alembert, 456/7), 500 ff. See also Emile, Bk 5, Pléiade IV, 692 ff., and Lettres morales, 5, Pléiade IV, 1110. There are specific verbal echoes of the Lettre à d’Alembert in both Emile and the Lettres morales. Emile, 694, paragraph beginning ‘Qui est-ce qui peut penser…’ is especially close to the Lettre à d’Alembert, F112, V244/245. There are now many studies of the place of women in Rousseau’s writings. Some of the clearest insights are in Jacques Derrida, De la grammatologie, 249–272. Other studies consulted are: Elisabeth Badinter, ‘L’éducation des filles selon Rousseau et Condorcet’ in Rousseau, l’Emile et la Révolution. Actes du colloque de Montmorency 1989, edited by Robert Thiéry (Paris: Universitas, and Ville de Montmorency, 1992), 285–291;
Richard A. Brooks, ‘Rousseau’s Antifeminism in the Lettre à d’Alembert and Emile’ in Literature and History in the Age of Ideas. Essays on the French Enlightenment Presented to George R. Havens, edited by Charles G.S. Williams (Columbus, Ohio: Ohio State University Press, 1975), 209–243;
Elisabeth de Fontenay, ‘Pour Emile et par Emile, Sophie; ou l’invention du ménage’ Les Temps modernes, 31 (1976), 1774–1795;
Claude Habib, ‘L’Intelli-gence du sexuel: Rousseau’, Littérature, 60 (December 1985), 31–47; and by the
same author, ‘La Part des femmes dans l’Emile’, Esprit, 11th year, new series, 8–9 (August/September 1987), 7–22;
Sarah Kofman, Le Respect des femmes (Paris: Galilée, 1982). A valuable new study,
Judith Still, Justice and Difference in the Works of Rousseau: bienfaisance and pudeur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993)was unfortunately published too late for me to draw on its insights. For a favourable view of Rousseau’s discussion of women see Paul Hoffmann, La Femme dans la pensée des Lumières (Paris: Editions Ophrys, 1977) (ch. 5: ‘Le mythe de la femme dans la pensée de Jean-Jacques Rousseau’, 359–447) and Colette Piau-Gillot, ‘La misogynie de J.J. Rousseau’, SVEC 219 (1983), 169–182.
Rousseau does not explicitly define his own relationship to the ecclesiastical tradition of hostility to the theatre. At one stage, however, he answers an objection against a point made by the ecclesiastical writers as if on their behalf (F68/69, V203 /204). On the burial of actresses see the Epître dédicatoire to Zaïre, or Candide, chapter 22. See also John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 259 ff.
In his article ‘“Qu’est-ce que le talent du comédien?”’ Jean Rousset writes: ‘Sur cette faculté d’annulation de soi comme condition premiere de toute métamor-phose, il semble que règne un accord complet dans le milieu des Encyclopédistes et de ceux qui leur sont proches…’ (27), citing Mlle Clairon and Marmontel as well as contemporary French accounts of Garrick’s art (including that of Diderot) as evidence. Rousseau thus differs from his contemporaries in the moral commentary he proposes rather than in his concept of the nature of acting. See Jean Rousset, ‘“Qu’est-ce que le talent du comédien?”’, Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 37 (1966–68), 19–34.
In Le Fils naturel it is Constance who pronounces the fatal words ‘11 n’y a que le mechant qui soit seul’. In the same scene the same character declares: ‘… les temps de barbarie sont passes. Le siecle s’est eclaire. La raison s’est epuree. Ses preceptes remplissent les ouvrages de la nation. Ceux ou l’on inspire aux hommes la bienveillance generale, sont presque les seuls qui soient lus. Voila les lecons dont nos thedtres retentissent, et dont ils ne peuvent retentir trop souvent.’ See Diderot, Le Fils nature!, edited by Jacques and Anne-Marie Chouillet in CEuvres complltes, (Paris: Hermann, 1975–), X (1980), 65 (Act IV, scene 3). In the Lettre a d’Alembert, Rousseau writes, on the subject of the moral ambiguity of comedy: ‘Ces defauts sont tellement inherens a notre Theatre, qu’en voulant les en Oter, on le defigure. Nos auteurs modernes, guides par de meilleures intentions, font des PiPces plus épurees; mais aussi qu’arrive-t-i!? Qu’elles n’ont plus de vrai comique et ne produisent aucun effet. Elles instruisent beaucoup, si l’on veut; mais elles ennuient encore davantage. Autant vaudroit aller au Sermon’ (F62, V197). Diderot understood perfectly who and what was meant: ‘son dernier ouvrage estfait en partie contre moi f…1 il dit du mal du comique larmoyant parce que c’est mon genre.’ Text quoted from Rousseau, Correspondance complPte, V, Appendiee A206,‘Les Tablettes de Diderot’, 282. Diderot’s Dela poesiedramatique (1758), published with Le PPre de famille and almost simultaneously with the Lettre a d’Alembert, offers a subtler version of its author’s argument: ‘Le parterre de la comedie est le seul endroit oA les larmes de l’homme vertueux et du mechant soient confondues. Liz, le mechant s’irrite contre des injustices qu’il aurait commises, compatit a des maux qu’il aurait occasionnés,et s’indigne contre un homme de son propre caractere. Mais l’impression est recue; elle demeure en nous malgre nous; et le mechant sort de sa loge moins dispose c3faire le mal, que s’il eat ete gourmande par un orateur sevPre et dur.’ See Diderot, Œuvres esthétiques, edited by Paul Vernière (Paris: Garnier,1968), 196.
Ernest Campbell Mossner, The Life of David Hume (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2nd edition, 1980), 518.
See also Louis-John Courtois, Le Séjour de Jean-Jacques Rousseau en Angleterre (1766–1767) (Lausanne: Pache-Varidel et Bron, 1911), 19.
The source given for this story is Joseph Cradock, Literary Miscellaneous Memoirs (London, 1828). Alas, Leigh in the Correspondance complète questions its authenticity: according to Mrs Garrick it was in order to satisfy the public’s curiosity that Rousseau leaned out. See Correspondance complète, XXVIII, editor’s note to No. 5031, Hume to his brother John Home, dated by Leigh to 2 February 1766. If the story is not true it ought to be.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1995 Michael O’Dea
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
O’Dea, M. (1995). Desire and the Danger of Marrying Bérénice. In: Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23930-6_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-23930-6_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-23932-0
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-23930-6
eBook Packages: Palgrave Religion & Philosophy CollectionPhilosophy and Religion (R0)