Rousseau

The Romantic era came after the Enlightenment, the age of empiricism. There is a simple and large difference between the two lines of thought: where enlightenment philosophy and empiricism relies on logic and the literal, romanticism is a thing of emotions and idealism. Subjectivity over objectivity.

Rousseau is the fundamental Romantic philosopher. He eschewed the enlightenment philosophies and thought little of the greatness of Man. He saw what he regarded a beautiful innocence in nature and simplicity, respecting the 'noble savage' and holding that the theoretical state of nature was a decent state of being. Having said that, he also realised that humans have come too far along the path of civilisation to ever return to that state of nature, when we were most like animals.

His theory was that the state of nature (theoretical as it may be) was interrupted when one man first fooled another man that a patch of land belongs to him. Personally, I disagree with him on this, for the simple fact that there are territorial animals. Dogs, for example, claim their land by marking it with their urine and will continue to defend it from other dogs, but they have nothing close to resembling what we might call civilisation. We are territorial by nature as by having territory we preserve ourselves. In a state of nature, for example, this territory might include a fruit tree or a grassy plain where animals graze. It is in our interest to keep others from acquiring these assets, so that we might survive - and survival is inherently selfish. Then again, there are nomadic tribes which we might not call civilised, such as the indigenous North Americans or Arabian bedouins. These people, while they have a culture and a society between themselves, believe the land to be a communal possession of everyone, with their only property being their animals, clothes, tools and tents. So perhaps I'm not really making much of a point here...

Still, having said that, I would say that civilisation began when large numbers of people came together, and the surplus of food was enough that they could do other things than focus constantly on their survival. As far as I'm aware (and my awareness extends to a documentary I watched on iPlayer a few months ago), this is the commonly held view of the birth of civilisation, as the people naturally congregated together and formed the first cities in ancient Babylon. But perhaps I'm taking Rousseau's words too literally. Perhaps, all he is saying is that the selfishness of ownership is the 'original sin', as such, of civilisation.


An opening quote from Rousseau's The Social Contract are very striking to me:

Man is born free but everywhere is in chain. One thinks himself the master of others, and still remains a greater slave than they.

 I can't disagree with him. Earlier today in our seminar we talked briefly about how from the moment a child is born, they are chained by the society their parents grew up in and moulded based on how their parents think they should be. We were talking about feminism there, but the same point applies here. The idea that 'man is born free' is very reminiscent of Locke's tabula rasa. We are born blank slates, but are completely formed by our upbringing and education, until eventually we become set in our ways and unable to break free from the chains of our own mind. The one time that we do try to break free from those chains is the teenage years, when we're trying to figure out who we are. But then we become comfortable with who we are, settle with that, and that in itself is a chain. The second part of that quote is also interesting, as to me it suggests that a ruler is only a master of others so long as they allow him to be; a ruler can be ousted and a new one put in place, should the people will it. I'm not sure if this is what Rousseau meant, but it's how I make sense of it. After all, that's the cause of civil war and uprising. The obvious and current example is Egypt: they grew tired of Mubarak and they were empowered by Tunisia, and when the people (the general will, it might be said) willed that he should leave, he was powerless (despite his attempts) to do otherwise.

Speaking of the general will, that's another of Rousseau's ideas: he believes that the general will is a form of legislature/law, unwritten or not, that the public all agree on, without exception. Due to the people all believe that it is in their interest, there is no loss of freedom. This is the idea of direct democracy, with no representation.  The inherent danger is that of a mob mentality forming: if someone disagrees, they will be forced to agree, against their will but 'for their sake'.

Rousseau believes that the general will is never wrong, though the way in which it manifests its laws can be. I disagree with Rousseau here again, as the general will by its nature suggests that everyone's opinion is equal. I think, instead, that there is a truth in they saying that people do not know what they want. We just don't. There are just too many things that effect us and too much politics and bureaucracy for any one person to keep track of and have a developed, weighted opinion on. If everyone had a say in everything, we would have more of what Dara O'Briain mocks here, influencing things that really matter:

So yes. I think representation and specialisation are better than a general will. This was found true in the French Revolution, where the rebels put the general will to the test and pure chaos was derived from this idea that the public is always correct. Unfortunately, we're not (though that's not to say politicians and such leaders always are, either).

I also noticed, while reading Bertrand Russell, that Rousseau was incorrect in his presumption that the Russians were too barbaric for civilisation:

AS, before putting up a large building, the architect surveys and sounds the site to see if it will bear the weight, the wise legislator does not begin by laying down laws good in themselves, but by investigating the fitness of the people, for which they are destined, to receive them.

He goes on to say from there as the people of Russia were not ready for change such as in western Europe, the new legislation would not be successful. However, Russell (and the course of history) prove him wrong:

In old days, peasants lived as their parents and grandparents had lived, and believed as their parents and grandparents had believed; not all the power of the Church could eradicate pagan ceremonies, which had to be given a Christian dress by being connected with local saints. Now the authorities can decree what the children of peasants shall learn in school, and transform the mentality of agriculturists in a generation; one gathers that this has been achieved in Russia.

All in all, I'm not entirely sure I agree much with Rousseau. The theories of the empiricists, and especially Locke and Hume, seem to be a lot more applicable to the world than Rousseau. Rousseau is an idealist, and as someone who would call himself a realist, I find myself generally rejecting his ideas that people are best at their simplest.