Abstract
Rousseau did not believe that we could or should return to the primitive condition that he thought most conducive to human happiness. This chapter examines the highly original way in which he used insights drawn from Plato’s Laws to defend institutions adopted in the Republic of Geneva against threats posed by Enlightenment philosophy. His Letter to d’Alembert analyzes the subversive effects on human happiness of decadent art and the accompanying distortions of relations between the sexes. Traditional family life, the indispensable and fragile basis for the kind of liberal society promoted by Enlightenment thinkers, is threatened by the cosmopolitan principles those thinkers advocate.
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- 1.
Rousseau was intimately familiar with the Laws. For evidence, see J.M. Silverthorne , “Rousseau’s Plato.”
- 2.
The Dorians, a Greek tribe or ethnic group, controlled Sparta and Crete as well as a number of other cities during Plato’s time. The Athenians belonged to a different tribe, called Ionians. Knossos was one of Crete’s principal cities.
- 3.
Compare Laws 709d10–710d5 with Seventh Letter 335c3–336c1.
- 4.
In the Republic, Socrates suggests that the quickest and easiest way to establish the best city would entail the expulsion of everyone over the age of ten (540d1–541a7). The Stranger emphasizes the efficacy of a certain kind of tyranny in effecting beneficial political reforms, but he does not recommend that Kleinias adopt anything like the radical measures proposed by Socrates (709e–712a).
- 5.
Apology of Socrates 21b1–2; 33a5–6. Shortly after denying that he has been anyone’s teacher, he repeats his opinion that it is just to be a teacher at his trial (35b9–c2).
- 6.
For a provocative analysis of Socrates’ presentation of himself in the Apology, which suggests to me why Socrates did not, and perhaps would not, undertake a project like the Stranger’s, see David Leibowitz , The Ironic Defense of Socrates: Plato’s Apology.
- 7.
The Argument and the Action of Plato’s Laws, 1. This claim is consistent with Socrates’ own claim in the Apology that he never voluntarily involved himself in political affairs (31d5–e1).
- 8.
It is not easy to believe that the Stranger just happened to encounter Kleinias on the road up to Mount Ida, and just happened to initiate a very probing and sophisticated conversation about laws and regimes, only to be surprised to learn that Kleinias is about to participate in founding a new city. More likely, the Stranger sought Kleinias out in order to assist him with this project.
- 9.
No explanation is given for assigning this name to the city in whose founding Kleinias is to be involved. Perhaps none was needed because the location described by Kleinias corresponded to the site of an abandoned city of that name. See Glenn R. Morrow , Plato’s Cretan City, 30–31; Diskin Clay , “Plato’s Magnesia.” In any event, the name is provisional (Laws 969a5–6).
- 10.
For a detailed comparison of the Stranger’s proposals with institutions and practices that are known to have existed in the ancient world, see Morrow , Plato’s Cretan City. Morrow ’s emphasis on Plato’s innovations with respect to what we would call separation of powers, or checks and balances, is particularly valuable. What we often credit to Locke and Montesquieu may owe a lot to Plato’s influence on the Romans, or perhaps it was simply forgotten through inattention to Plato. Either way, Plato’s originality in offering proposals that we have come to regard almost as self-evident truths should provide an incentive to give serious thought to those elements of the Laws that may strike us as self-evidently wrong.
- 11.
Sparta, at least, seems to have had some such law, but there is no reason to think it was “first” in any sense of the word. See Plutarch , Life of Lycurgus 15.1–2. In Book VI, when the Stranger begins to present the laws in their proper order, he begins with religious gatherings, which turn out to provide fitting occasions to prepare young people of both sexes for marriage (771a–772a).
- 12.
As a means to achieving this double purpose, the Stranger indicates that the lawgiver should aim to make the city (understood as something distinct from the citizens) free, prudent or intelligent, and a friend to itself. See the slightly different formulations at 693b2–5, 701d7–9. On the distinction between the city and the citizens, see Strauss , Argument and the Action, 175.
- 13.
The Stranger mentions that his interlocutors are unfamiliar even with pre-Socratic philosophers (886c–e). Catherine H. Zuckert argues that the dramatic setting of the Laws is pre-Socratic, largely because the interlocutors mention historical events up to the end of the Persian Wars but say nothing at all about the Peloponnesian Wars (Plato’s Philosophers, 53–54). As Zuckert recognizes, it is at least conceivable that the interlocutors might have avoided this topic in order to facilitate a friendly conversation. She rejects this as implausible, but the obvious allusions to the city of the Republic make her own conclusion quite implausible, for there is no reason to think that city had been heard of before Socrates began talking about it. In addition, the Laws contains some obscure allusions to historical events that may have taken place well after the death of Socrates. See Mark Munn , “Erōs and the Laws in Historical Context,” 33, 45nn6–7. The Menexenus, moreover, has Socrates referring to events that took place after his own death—a fortiori the Laws could easily be set after Socrates died.
- 14.
Later, the Stranger introduces Kleinias and Megillus to incommensurable magnitudes (819d–820c). He says that all human beings are by nature in a laughable and shameful ignorance about this, which makes them seem more like pigs than humans, and he claims that after learning about incommensurable magnitudes he became ashamed not only for himself but for all the Greeks (819d1–e1). This bizarre confession and indictment is most directly tied to the ensuing discussion, at 821a–822c, of education about the relation between the heavenly bodies or celestial gods and “the greatest god and the whole cosmos” (821a2). But that discussion may in turn help Kleinias to appreciate the difficulties that must arise when dealing with incommensurable political goals.
- 15.
Something like the first alternative is touched on by the Eleatic Stranger in the Statesman (293d4–e5).
- 16.
The Greek word for courage, andreia, literally means “manliness.”
- 17.
The Stranger also cites Homer for the proposition that slaves are untrustworthy because slavery makes their souls unhealthy (776e–777a). Homer’s text makes the plausible suggestion that slavery takes away half one’s virtue because slaves must be forced to do what they should, but the Stranger alters the quotation so that it advances the much less plausible claim that slavery takes away half one’s intelligence. This calls attention to the fact that Homer ironically puts the assertion in the mouth of a remarkably trustworthy and intelligent slave (Odyssey 17.322–23). If, as the Stranger hopes, the Laws will be studied in Magnesia (811c–e), or wherever statesmanship is taken seriously, intelligent readers will be able to discover the Stranger’s own irony.
- 18.
One can imagine a variety of responses that might be adopted by the Magnesians. They might, for example, sell the children of their slaves and purchase substitutes from other lands, which would follow the model provided by the Stranger’s law on metics. Such a practice, however, would encourage slave revolts. The Magnesians might also consider some system of selective emancipation adapted from existing Greek practices, a strategy that Rousseau would later recommend in his Considerations on the Government of Poland. See chap. 6, O.C., 3:974. The Stranger leaves such questions unaddressed, perhaps because he sees the tension between the necessity of slavery and its natural injustice as one that the city’s founders cannot attempt to resolve at the outset. Subsequent European history—which saw the persistence of slavery well past the time when Christianity threw its injustice into a new light and well after new technologies rendered it unnecessary—suggests that the Stranger’s reticence was not without justification. Cf. Tocqueville , Democracy in America, vol. 2, pt. 1, chap. 3 (claiming that even the great writers of antiquity were blind to the injustice of slavery, asserting the necessity of Christ’s appearance on earth to make it understood that all people are alike and equal, and leaving it to the reader to notice how long slavery persisted after the Christian era began).
- 19.
See 760b–763c. Leo Strauss assumes that Magnesia’s rural police (agronomoi, or kryptoi as the Stranger calls them at 763b7) would help the citizens to recover runaway slaves (Argument and the Action, 89). This may be true, but such assignments would not have anything like the central importance that controlling the helots had for the krypteia in Sparta.
- 20.
Citizens will not even be permitted to use their own slaves for these purposes (846d). The Stranger also proposes a number of other laws designed to keep this economic system stable, including a ban on the private ownership of precious metals, a refusal to make contracts among citizens legally enforceable, and a limit on the time that metics can remain in the city. See, for example, 741e–742c; 850b–c.
- 21.
Non-political communism is a somewhat different matter. See, for example, Chapter 2; Laws 678e–680e (and note that at 680a9 the Stranger says that even life before there were cities was already in some way a polity).
- 22.
My translation of this difficult passage has been influenced by Tormod Eide, “Including the Women in Plato’s Laws: A Note on Book 6, 781a–b.”
- 23.
Catherine McKeen believes that Plato regards women as “morally inferior” to men, and that his “clear implication” in this passage is that “women are inferior in virtue as a matter of nature, and not simply as a matter of bad training or teaching” (“Why Women Must Guard and Rule in Plato’s Kallipolis,” 541, 544n2). I believe that McKeen has conflated the impression that Kleinias and Megillus might easily have gotten with what Plato must have thought. For a careful reading of the text, which comes closer to my interpretation, see T.J. Saunders , “Plato on Women in the Laws,” 592–93.
- 24.
These are also qualities that enable women to assist men who may not realize they need assistance. Plato, moreover, is himself a secretive and wily writer. Among countless examples, compare the Stranger’s proof of the existence of the gods, which assumes that the cosmos came into being, with his much earlier statement that “every man (anēr) needs to well understand this much, that the coming into being of human beings either had absolutely no beginning and will never have an end, but always was and surely will be, or that some immensely long time would have elapsed since its beginning” (893b–899b; 781e7–782a2). In their own very different way, the very manly men of the Spartan krypteia were also secretive and wily. See, for example, Thucydides 4.80; Plutarch , Life of Lycurgus 28.1–4.
- 25.
Rousseau offers somewhat similar advice in the Emile (O.C., 4:765–68, Bloom, 407–09). Socrates takes a very different approach when he suggests that the guardians of his city in speech be bred according to scientific eugenics principles, like livestock (Republic 458c6–461b7).
- 26.
Dorian institutions obviously would have prepared the Knossians to accept public supervision of child rearing.
- 27.
In a somewhat ambiguous passage, the Stranger seems to allow girls to opt out of the preliminary training in military exercises (794c8–d2). He subsequently withdraws this suggestion (804d6–805d2).
- 28.
Notwithstanding what Kleinias had said, the Stranger praises hoplite training because it develops steadfastness in a way that other modes of combat do not (706b7–c7). Later, he pointedly makes the possession of heavy arms a condition of voting for certain offices (753b4–7).
- 29.
The Stranger had prepared this suggestion with a discussion of the relation between the right and left limbs of the human body: nature makes one side somewhat stronger, but we decide whether to cultivate that natural difference or compensate for it through training. In our time, a basketball player practices free throws with his strong arm only, but competitive pressures require him to become as ambidextrous as possible in making layups. The Stranger advocates a literal training in the ambidextrous use of weapons, and invites Kleinias to see the analogy in the city’s training of women (794d–795e).
- 30.
In the Republic, Adeimantus articulates a version of this argument when he objects to requiring the warriors in the emerging just city to be ill-paid servants of the weaker citizens (419a1–420a8). Aristotle provides a different kind of illustration when he alludes to a madman who receives sound counsel from a woman he took as booty in war—counsel that would have saved him from destruction—and rebukes her with the comment that “silence brings order [or adornment: kosmos] to a woman” (Politics 1260a30, quoting Sophocles, Ajax 293).
- 31.
Even before Kleinias had revealed that he was to participate in founding a city, the Stranger hinted at his goal by listing seven disparate claims to rule without mentioning the claim of men to rule women (689e–690d).
- 32.
Even in the Iliad , the extraordinary personal prowess of an Achilles, an Ajax, or a Diomedes was primarily a source of glory, rather than of a claim to rule, as we can see most strikingly in the relationship between Achilles and Agamemnon. By the time Plato wrote, the desire for glory in warfare had been channeled into behavior that was less individually spectacular than much of what we see in the Iliad, and the Greek phalanx provided even less scope for claims to rulership based on individual feats of valor. For the persistent influence of the Iliad on Greek warfare, however, see J.E. Lendon, Soldiers and Ghosts: A History of Battle in Classical Antiquity.
- 33.
Gender and Rhetoric in Plato’s Political Thought.
- 34.
It should be stressed that Magnesian women will have considerably greater rights and privileges in family life than Athenian women did. See T.J. Saunders , “Plato on Women in the Laws,” 598–602. Arlene Saxonhouse stresses that the Laws (unlike the Republic) proposes a model that “takes men and women as they are, as they arrive from various communities around Greece” (Women in the History of Political Thought, 57). More dubiously, she concludes that “in Plato’s vision, [women can never] fit comfortably into the world of political activity” (ibid., 62). Susan Moller Okin , whose interest in Plato is manifestly subordinate to her own commitment to promoting the thoroughly equal treatment of women, appears to believe that Plato’s general attitude to and beliefs about women, “which reflect much of the highly misogynic Greek tradition,” prevented him from carrying out “his professed intentions in the Laws to emancipate women and make full use of the talents that he was now convinced they had” (Women in Western Political Thought, 10, 27, 50). Both of these commentators seem to me to have been far less successful than Plato in transcending the climate of opinion in which they lived.
- 35.
The Stranger obviously could have presented a less puzzling argument, as Xenophon ’s Socrates does for the benefit of Lycon (Symposium 8; 9.1). But he chose not to do so, and Megillus’ immediate acquiescence shows how much progress the Stranger has made in leading him away from allegiance to all things Dorian.
- 36.
This may help to explain why Kleinias cannot be expected to decide just yet whether the Stranger’s proposal is a useful one. See 837e, 842a.
- 37.
The Stranger also notes that some athletes remain celibate during training, overlooking both the temporary nature of this self-restraint and the fact that serious athletic training resembles nothing so much as the excessive and illiberal physical labor from which Magnesian citizens will be released. The Stranger himself notes that such physical labor “most of all extinguishes wantonness” (835d8–e1).
- 38.
In one sense, of course, this observation may reinforce the Stranger’s claim that such acts are unnatural. More vividly, however, it reminds one that there is a certain illusion involved in supposing that pederasty transcends whatever sordid qualities one might associate with opposite-sex intercourse.
- 39.
The adjective philos, meaning “friendly,” has both an active and passive sense. The Stranger exploits the ambiguity to suggest that his reform will lead to mutual affection between husbands and wives, which is something that the marital contract alone cannot accomplish.
- 40.
For a subtle and erudite exploration of the role of homoeroticism in Greek political thought, see Paul W. Ludwig , Eros & Politics: Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory. Ludwig ’s brief discussion of women in the Laws, ibid., 306n116, has a different focus than I offer, but I do not believe the two are at odds.
- 41.
The funeral oration of Pericles offers a particularly vivid expression of the Athenian attitude toward women’s natural role. Pericles reluctantly addresses the widows of the fallen, whose loud public display of grief is a central element of such funerals. Without so much as pretending to offer them any consolation, he curtly tells them that a good reputation will be theirs if they are neither praised nor blamed among the men (Thucydides 2.45.2).
- 42.
See, for example, 790a8–b6; 828d5–829a8; 840c5–6; 858d6–9; 870b6–c1.
- 43.
The nocturnal council was first introduced as a body charged with helping misguided religious heretics to reform (908a–909a). In Book XII, it is described in more detail, and assigned to debrief selected citizens who have traveled for the purpose of studying other cities (951a–952e). At the end of the dialogue, this council is assigned to undertake a quest for the knowledge that will be needed for the preservation of the city (960b–968e). It is not clear that all three functions will be performed by exactly the same people. See, for example, Harvey Flaumenhaft , “The Silence of the Spartan: City, Soul, and Study of the Stars in the Epilogue to Plato’s Last and Longest Dialogue,” 74–75. More important, the Stranger emphatically denies that the preliminary conversation now coming to its end has disclosed what these guardians of the city will need to know about virtue, or its relation to “the beautiful and the good,” and he denies that the education they will need can be described in advance (965c–966a; 968d–e).
- 44.
O.C., 3:21n (quoted in context at the beginning of this chapter).
- 45.
As we frequently find with Rousseau, his public discourse and his personal life become entangled in the Letter to d’ Alembert. For a brief treatment of the factual background, see Maurice Cranston , The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 1754–1762, 128–37. The subtleties and difficulties presented by Rousseau’s use of personal elements in his writings, here and elsewhere, raise a myriad of interesting questions that I will generally not address.
- 46.
“Geneva,” in Lettre de M. d’ Alembert à M. J.-J. Rousseau sur l’article “Genève” tiré du septième volume de l’Encylopédie Avec quelques autre pièces qui y sont relatives [hereafter cited as “Geneva Collection”], 1–40. An English translation of d’Alembert’s “Geneva” is available in Allen Bloom’s translation of the Letter to d’ Alembert.
- 47.
D’Alembert praised the “many” Genevan clergy who reject the divinity of Jesus , the existence of Hell, and all things called mysteries. In his somewhat intricate response to this allegation of theism, Rousseau argues that d’Alembert is either speculating that the pastors are heretics or betraying their confidences (d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:9–14, Bloom ed., 9–15). In response to Rousseau’s criticism, d’Alembert denied that he had betrayed any confidences, and maintained that his claims were based on public statements by Genevan pastors (“Letter to Rousseau,” in Geneva Collection, 150–56). Whether or not d’Alembert’s speculations or inferences were supported by the public record, the Genevan clergy repudiated the claims he had made about their beliefs (“Declaration of the Pastors of Geneva,” in ibid., 41–60).
The most striking feature of Rousseau’s criticism of d’Alembert lies in what is missing. Rousseau does not criticize the beliefs attributed to the clergy by d’Alembert, nor does he defend the clergy against the charge of having adopted them. Nowhere does Rousseau imply that he disbelieves what d’Alembert said or that he thinks that such heresies and hypocrisies on the part of the pastors would be pernicious. Several years afterward, when the Emile was condemned in Geneva, Rousseau indicated that he did not give much credit to the pastors’ repudiation of d’Alembert’s claims (Mountain, lett. 2, O.C., 3:717–18).
Later in the Letter to d’ Alembert, Rousseau mentions that he has abandoned his own previous opinion that virtue can do without the support of religion, leaving the reader to wonder about the reasons for both his previous and current views (O.C., 5:89n, Bloom, 97n). In later publications, he had much more to say about all this. See, for example, Emile, O.C., 4:632–35n, Bloom, 312–14n; Mountain.
- 48.
For an overview of Greek religion that emphasizes the disconnect between its practice and the poets’ stories about the gods, see Jon D. Mikalson , Ancient Greek Religion.
- 49.
Among many indications that the Athenian Stranger means to convey an understanding of political reform that has applications beyond the immediate task facing Kleinias, see 736c–737b.
- 50.
The notice also ironically characterizes the piece as a mere “bagatelle” (O.C., 5:1195). In Rousseau Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues, a character named “Rousseau” offers a list of six works about which he says, “I doubt that any philosopher ever meditated more profoundly, more usefully perhaps” (Second dialogue, O.C., 1:791). The last item in the list is Theatrical Imitation .
- 51.
Plato’s Socrates is more tentative or equivocal in attributing the authorship of ideas to a god (Republic 597b).
- 52.
In the Republic, Socrates uses household furniture for examples.
- 53.
Ficino’s Latin translation of the Republic, on which Rousseau relied, correctly distinguishes the name of Plato’s brother and the name of the mythical figure.
- 54.
This may help to explain why Rousseau’s initial (and supposedly inadvertent) release of Theatrical Imitation occurred when he sent the manuscript to his publisher along with the plates for The New Heloise . See O.C., 5:1831 (editor’s note). That novel, and the kind of private education it depicts, supplies an appropriate complement to Theatrical Imitation in a way that the Letter to d’Alembert does not. The only quotation from Plato in the Letter to d’Alembert is from Book III of the Republic (O.C., 5:109n, Bloom, 120n*). This is fitting because both skip lightly over the human response to mortality. That response is treated in Book X of the Republic and in The New Heloise .
- 55.
The Letter focuses on the theater, not imitation or even fiction in general, and it acknowledges that its “correctives” are finally applicable only to a city like Geneva.
- 56.
Theatrical Imitation itself points toward the Laws, though very indirectly. In a footnote, Rousseau interprets Plato as drawing a sharp distinction between a poet’s success in becoming popular and a poet’s success in teaching useful things. Rousseau then says that Tyrtaeus might be offered as an example to refute Plato, but contends that Plato could “extricate himself” by treating Tyrtaeus as an orator rather than a poet (O.C., 5:1202n). Tyrtaeus is never mentioned in the Republic, but he is discussed several times in the Laws. Whereas the Republic replaces traditional poetry with the philosophic poetry of Socrates, the Laws replaces traditional poetry with the philosophic oratory of the Stranger and his “preludes.”
- 57.
Cf., for example, Laws 801c–d with Republic 398a–b.
- 58.
Comedy is attacked along with tragedy in the Republic (606c).
- 59.
Rousseau never refers to this passage in d’Alembert’s article. The Letter, however, makes it clear that Rousseau regarded reliance on sumptuary laws alone as dangerously naïve, and that he thought Geneva was lagging behind French mœurs, rather than showing where the French were headed (d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:102, Bloom, 111–12).
- 60.
Rousseau asks whether plays appropriate for Geneva might be written by Genevan dramatists. While acknowledging the possibility of such a thing in principle, he concludes that it is almost certain not to occur (ibid., 109–11, Bloom, 120–22).
- 61.
Leo Strauss characterizes the Stranger’s arguments up through most of Book XII as “sub-Socratic” (Argument and the Action, 182). By “sub-Socratic,” Strauss does not mean unphilosophic. See ibid., 129 (calling Book X “the most philosophic, the only philosophic part of the Laws”). Whatever Strauss may have in mind, Rousseau’s arguments are both non-Socratic and philosophically informed.
- 62.
“[M]an is born good, I think it and believe that I have proved it (d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:22, Bloom, 23). No such proof is offered in the Letter, and Rousseau is manifestly alluding to the Discourse on Inequality.
- 63.
Compare Inequality, O.C., 3:159–60, 171, with d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:22 & n, Bloom, 23 & n.
- 64.
Compare Inequality, O.C., 3:158, with d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:77–78, Bloom, 84–85. The Discourse on Inequality’s discussion of sexual relations in what Rousseau calls “the pure state of nature” treats sexual desire as a peripheral part of natural human experience, much as Socrates does in the Republic. Like the Laws, the Letter to d’ Alembert restores this passion to the central place that it must assume in a more complete understanding of politics and human life.
- 65.
Rousseau reinforces the implication that his real argument is not based on nature’s voice by dropping a long and impassioned footnote distinguishing appropriate male boldness from insolence and brutality.
- 66.
Rousseau had previously provided an elaborate refutation of a similar argument for the naturalness of monogamy offered by Locke (Inequality, Note XII, O.C., 3:214–18).
- 67.
This word refers to sexual bashfulness, and especially the exhibition (real or feigned) of this sentiment.
- 68.
Note, however, Rousseau’s use of the word “if” at the beginning of the sentence. The Emile offers a more complex account of the relation between female pudeur and the requirements of social life, which is explicated in Shell , “Nature and the Education of Sophie.”
- 69.
Perhaps the most significant exception for Rousseau is Sparta. “If the [northern] Barbarians of whom I just spoke lived with women, they nevertheless did not live like them; it was the women who had the courage to live like them, just as the Spartan women did. The woman made herself robust, and the man was not enervated” (d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:94, Bloom, 103). Sparta (especially as it is described by Plutarch ) is frequently Rousseau’s exemplar of achievable civic excellence, but Rousseau also discreetly alludes in passing to the reputation Spartan women had for sexual promiscuity. See, for example, ibid., 81–82, 122, Bloom, 89, 133.
- 70.
One such accident, the political influence of Calvin , is passed over in silence, though Rousseau comments on it elsewhere. See, for example, S.C., bk. 2, chap. 7, O.C., 3:382n; Mountain, O.C., 3:715, 726n. At least one reason for the omission of this factor in the Letter may be that it raises issues about the relation between Calvin’s political and theological thought. Rousseau’s rebuke of d’Alembert for describing the theological views of the Genevan clergy suggests that he believed that no good could come of discussing this matter in the Letter.
- 71.
In Bérénice, Titus must choose between marrying the queen of Palestine, with whom he is in love, and remaining the emperor of Rome. Zaïre presents the story of a Christian slave with whom the Sultan of Jerusalem falls in love, and whom the Sultan eventually murders because of an imagined infidelity.
- 72.
2.2.244–50. (All citations are to act, scene, and lines in the Arden Shakespeare .) When Antony tells Enobarbus that he wishes he had never met the queen, Enobarbus wryly disagrees: “O, Sir, you had then left unseen a wonderful piece of work, which not to have been blest withal would have discredited your travel” (1.2.160–62). Enobarbus surely knows that Antony agrees, and he probably hopes that Antony will come to be satisfied with having seen Cleopatra, who is deeply threatening to Antony’s self-interest and his own.
- 73.
For a detailed analysis of the relationship between the instability in Rome and the instability in the relationship between Antony and Cleopatra, see Paul A. Cantor , Shakespeare’s Rome: Republic and Empire.
- 74.
As a monarch ruling in the shadow of Roman hegemony, Cleopatra had effectively employed sexual diplomacy with the elder Pompey and Julius Caesar. When reminded of how she had once talked about this Caesar, she waves it off as the stuff of “My salad days / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood” (1.5.76–77). But her alliance with Antony was not a bad political bet. He was militarily the strongest of the Roman rivals, and it actually took a series of very foolish mistakes on his part to lose out to Octavius. Had she been more schooled in Roman affairs, and more ruthless, Cleopatra might have managed Antony much better than she did. One can wonder whether she was more deficient in ruthlessness or in prudence, and one can wonder whether Antony would have fallen for her so completely if she were less deficient. In any event, until all hope was gone Cleopatra did keep looking for a way to save her crown and her life, and to pass the throne to one of her sons—presumably Julius Caesar’s child, not one of Antony’s.
- 75.
If Octavius looks contemptible compared with Antony, it is mainly because he is impervious to Cleopatra’s charm. The only characters who appear more contemptible are Lepidus, who ineffectually seeks to foster civic friendship, and the younger Pompey, who anachronistically and inconsistently struggles to maintain the old ideals of Roman virtue. The youth of Geneva would hardly benefit from juxtapositions like these.
- 76.
Desdemona accompanies Othello as his wife. It is inconceivable that she would actually participate in war, either incompetently like Cleopatra or independently like Fulvia.
- 77.
As the play opens, Iago tells Roderigo that he hates Othello for giving Cassio an undeserved military promotion that Iago thought should have been his (1.1.7–65). In subsequent soliloquies, which are presumably more candid, Iago attributes his hatred to rumors or suspicions that he has been cuckolded by Othello (1.3.384–88; 2.1.290–93). There are no other indications in the play that Iago deserved the promotion or that his wife had been unfaithful (or even that she had been rumored to have been). Because Iago, “for mere suspicion in that kind / Will do, as if for surety” (1.3.387–88), we have to suspect that he himself does not fully understand the sources of his hatred for Othello.
- 78.
Rousseau dismisses the popular and superficially appealing theory that tragedy provides a healthy catharsis of dangerous passions. Only reason can purge the passions, and reason has no effect in the theater (d’ Alembert, O.C. 5:20, Bloom, 21). It may well be that tragedy leads to pity through fear, but this pity is only a temporary and vain emotion (ibid., 23, Bloom, 24–25). And perhaps most persuasively:
It is pretended that we are cured of love by the depiction of its weaknesses … [B]ut I see that the spectators always take the part of the weak lover, and that they are often vexed that he is not more so. I ask: is this a great way to avoid resembling him? (ibid., 48, Bloom, 52)
Rousseau is well aware of Aristotle’s Poetics, which he quotes with approval in a different context (ibid., 25, Bloom, 27). But Rousseau argues that tragedy had a distinctive function in Greek political life, where it had far different effects than in our culture (ibid., 26n, 31, Bloom, 28n, 33).
- 79.
Antony and Cleopatra, 3.13.113 (Antony describing Octavia). Rousseau explains the threat posed by characters like Desdemona:
The most charming object in nature, the one most capable of stirring a sensitive heart and turning it to the good, is, I acknowledge, a pleasing and virtuous woman. But where is this celestial object hiding itself? … If a young man has seen the world only on the Stage, the first means of pursuing virtue which offers itself to him is to seek a mistress who will conduct him there, quite hoping to find at least a Constance or a Cénie. Thus, on faith in an imaginary model, on a modest and touching appearance, on a counterfeit sweetness, nescius aurae fallacis [ignorant of the deceptive breeze], the young madman quickly loses himself while thinking that he is becoming wise. (d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:44, Bloom, 47–48, footnote omitted)
- 80.
On this, as on many other points, one’s view of the play is apt to change as one gets to know it better. For purposes of understanding Rousseau’s argument, however, the initial impression (especially on the impressionable) is more important.
- 81.
Rousseau does not condemn this womanly inclination, which he assigns in the Emile to Sophie, the girl formed to suit a man raised according to nature for life in society (O.C., 4:809–10, Bloom, 439). Ironically perhaps, Rousseau’s writings were a smash hit among the ladies of Paris. According to one of their own number, they “praise him with enthusiasm, although no Author treats them with less respect … [H]e has mentioned them with contempt, but with an air of passion, and passion excuses everything” (Melissa A. Butler , “Eighteenth-Century Critics of Rousseau’s Views on Women,” 133, quoting Mme. Comtesse de Genlis). D’Alembert drew the same conclusion: “[M]any sins are forgiven him because he has loved so much” (ibid., quoting d’Alembert’s “Jugement sur Emile”).
- 82.
We can see an example of this in a comic interlude in Othello. Roderigo is so taken with Desdemona that he contemplates suicide after learning of her marriage to Othello. When Iago mocks him, Roderigo confesses that he is ashamed of his infatuation, “but it is not in my virtue to amend it.” Iago responds: “Virtue? a fig! … But we have reason to cool our raging motions, our carnal stings, our unbitted lusts … [and reason will show the way to cuckold Othello, thus enabling you to] doest thyself a pleasure” (1.3.317–72).
- 83.
Rousseau appears to believe that his critique of tragedy applies to all tragedy, including ancient plays presented to modern audiences. Although he says that all comedy is “bad and pernicious,” his evidence is drawn exclusively from the French theater (d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:31, Bloom, 34). I have no reason to question Rousseau’s claim that even the best French comedies that would be staged in Geneva were all “bad and pernicious,” but his broader generalization is questionable. Had Rousseau been familiar with Shakespeare , which I do not believe he was, he might have qualified his denunciation of all comedy.
- 84.
In Rousseau’s time, fashionable ladies had a problem dealing with fireplaces, which could melt the makeup on the side of the face that was turned toward the flames. They used handheld screens, often artfully decorated, to protect themselves against such a disaster.
- 85.
Rousseau appends to this passage a footnote in which he claims that women are in general bereft of artistic genius. He acknowledges that there are exceptions, but he knows of only two: Sappho and one other whom he does not name. In an effort to provide a kind of proof that he is not just manifesting male chauvinism, Rousseau offers this: “I would wager anything in the world that the Lettres portugaises were written by a man.” Modern scholarship has uncovered strong evidence, though not absolutely conclusive proof, that Rousseau was correct. See, for example, F.C. Green, “Who Was the Author of the Lettres Portugaises?”; Charles R. Lefcourt, “Did Guilleragues Write ‘The Portuguese Letters’?”; Anna Klobucka, The Portuguese Nun: Formation of a National Myth, 11–15. In any event, Rousseau’s point is that men who adopt criteria of literary excellence designed to increase the number of women whose work will qualify should be suspected of offering compliments arising more from diffidence than honest admiration.
- 86.
In The New Heloise , Rousseau suggests that these institutions had already lost their vitality (pt. 2, lett. 21, O.C., 2:269n). In the Letter to d’ Alembert, Rousseau may have hoped to promote their reinvigoration by affecting not to have noticed their decay.
- 87.
Rousseau was well aware that the cercles were not comparable to the institutions of public education among the Greek republics, but he defended them as a practicable alternative to the domestic education provided under monarchies, “where all the subjects must remain isolated, and have nothing in common except obedience” (Rousseau to Théodore Tronchin, 26 Sept. 1758, Corr. Comp., 5:242).
- 88.
See, for example, Charles W. Hendel , Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Moralist, 2:62.
- 89.
The discussion of drinking and drunkenness in the Laws arises from a dispute between the Stranger and Megillus, beginning at 636a, that involves a comparison between the Athenian vice of drinking and Sparta’s reputation for male homosexuality and female promiscuity. The Stranger argues that public drinking could be put to good use in a well ordered city, a claim that he never makes about pederasty or promiscuity. See also 790a8–b6 (arguing that a stable community depends on the correct legal regulation of private households, as does the happiness of both the household and the city).
- 90.
Rousseau gratuitously anticipates the mocking suggestion that he would even like to revive the Spartan practice of naked dancing by young women. This objection provides him with an opportunity to illustrate the great gulf between Spartan mœurs and those of people who are merely “upright (honnête)” (d’ Alembert, O.C., 5:122, Bloom, 134). In this passage, he points out that artful dress is more provocative than absolute nudity and that “I propose for [Genevans] only the Lacedaemonian institutions of which they are not yet incapable” (ibid.). Such praise of Sparta very near the end of the Letter may serve to remind us that the Athenian Stranger’s reform of Dorian institutions aims at a kind of equality and friendship between men and women that is beyond the reach of Geneva. Perhaps Rousseau wants to leave a hint that he does not regard such relations as inherently unattainable.
- 91.
Rousseau recognizes without alarm, and almost with approval, that even elderly judges may depart from strict justice in response to the physical beauty of some contestants (ibid., 119, Bloom, 130). Better that, perhaps, than that the city breed a bunch of old bourgeois Octaviuses.
- 92.
Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts , O.C., 3:21n (quoted in context at the beginning of this chapter).
- 93.
Ibid.
- 94.
In the Laws, the Stranger rebukes Megillus for thinking that victory in battle necessarily implies anything at all about who deserved to prevail (638a3–b9).
- 95.
This had in fact been done, and it is one feature of the King’s effort that Rousseau approved.
- 96.
Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts , O.C., 3:21n (quoted in context at the beginning of this chapter).
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Lund, N. (2016). Greatness of Soul and the Souls of Women: Rousseau’s Use of Plato’s Laws in the Letter to d’ Alembert . In: Rousseau’s Rejuvenation of Political Philosophy. Recovering Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41390-7_4
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