The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Two Discourses and the Social Contract - Hardcover

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226921867 ISBN 13: 9780226921860

Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

Individualist and communitarian. Anarchist and totalitarian. Classicist and romanticist. Progressive and reactionary. Since the eighteenth century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau has been said to be all of these things. Few philosophers have been the subject of as much or as intense debate, yet almost everyone agrees that Rousseau is among the most important and influential thinkers in the history of political philosophy. This new edition of his major political writings, published in the year of the three-hundredth anniversary of his birth, renews attention to the perennial importance of Rousseau&;s work.

 

The book brings together superb new translations by renowned Rousseau scholar John T. Scott of three of Rousseau&;s works: the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts, the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men, and On the Social Contract. The two Discourses show Rousseau developing his well-known conception of the natural goodness of man and the problems posed by life in society. With the Social Contract, Rousseau became the first major thinker to argue that democracy is the only legitimate form of political organization. Scott&;s extensive introduction enhances our understanding of these foundational writings, providing background information, social and historical context, and guidance for interpreting the works. Throughout, translation and editorial notes clarify ideas and terms that might not be immediately familiar to most readers.

 

The three works collected in The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau represent an important contribution to eighteenth-century political theory that has exerted an extensive influence on generations of thinkers, beginning with the leaders of the French Revolution and continuing to the present day. The new translations on offer here will be welcomed by a wide readership of both Rousseau scholars and readers with a general interest in political thought.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712&;78) was a leading Genevan philosopher and political theorist and one of the key figures of the Enlightenment. John T. Scott is professor of political science at the University of California, Davis. He has edited or translated several volumes on Rousseau and is coauthor of The Philosophers&; Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding.

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THE MAJOR POLITICAL WRITINGS of JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

THE TWO DISCOURSES AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT

The University of Chicago Press

Copyright © 2012 The University of Chicago
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-92186-0

Contents

Chronology.................................................ixIntroduction...............................................xiiiSelect Bibliography........................................xlvAcknowledgments............................................liNote on the Translation and Edition........................liiiDISCOURSE ON THE SCIENCES AND THE ARTS.....................1DISCOURSE ON IN EQUALITY...................................37ON THE SOCIAL CONTRACT.....................................153Bibliography of Rousseau's Sources.........................273Index......................................................275

Chapter One

FIRST PART

IT IS A GRAND and beautiful spectacle to see man emerging, as it were, out of nothingness through his own efforts; dissipating by the light of his reason the shadows in which nature has enveloped him; rising above himself; soaring by his mind to the celestial regions; traversing with the steps of a giant, like the sun, the vast expanse of the universe; and, what is even grander and more difficult, returning into himself in order there to study man and to know his nature, his duties, and his end. All these marvels have been revived in the past few generations.

Europe had fallen back into the barbarism of the first ages. Just a few centuries ago the peoples of that part of the world today so enlightened lived in a condition worse than ignorance. I know not what scientific jargon, even more despicable than ignorance, had usurped the name of knowledge and opposed an almost invincible obstacle to its return. A revolution was needed to bring men back to common sense. It eventually came from the quarter from which it was least expected. It was the stupid Muslim, it was the eternal scourge of letters who brought about their rebirth among us. The fall of Constantine's throne carried into Italy the debris of ancient Greece. France in turn was enriched by those precious spoils. Soon the sciences followed letters, the art of writing joined the art of thinking, a sequence which appears strange and is perhaps only too natural, and people began to feel the principal advantage of communing with the Muses, that of making men more sociable by inspiring in them the desire to please one another with works worthy of their mutual approbation.

The mind has its needs, as does the body. The latter make up the foundations of society, the former make it pleasant. While government and laws provide for the security and well-being of assembled men, the sciences, the letters, and the arts—less despotic and perhaps more powerful—spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which men are burdened, stifle in them the feeling of that original freedom for which they seemed to have been born, make them love their slavery and fashion them into what are called civilized peoples. Need raised thrones; the sciences and the arts have strengthened them. Earthly powers: love talents and protect those who cultivate them. Civilized peoples: cultivate them; happy slaves: you owe to them that delicate and refined taste on which you like to pride yourselves; that softness of character and urbanity of morals that make relations among you so affable and so easy; in a word, the appearance of all the virtues without having any of them.

This is the sort of civility, the more amiable as it affects to display itself less, that formerly distinguished Athens and Rome in the much lauded days of their magnificence and their splendor. It is through it, no doubt, that our age and our nation will surpass all times and all peoples. A philosophic tone without pedantry, natural and yet engaging manners, as far removed from Teutonic rusticity as from Italian pantomime: these are the fruits of the taste acquired through good education and perfected by moving in polite society.

How sweet it would be to live among us if outward appearances were always the image of the dispositions of the heart, if propriety were virtue, if our maxims served us as rules, if genuine philosophy were inseparable from the title of philosophy! But so many qualities are all too rarely found together, and virtue hardly proceeds with such pomp. Richness of attire may announce an opulent man, and his elegance a man of taste. The healthy and robust man is recognized by other signs: it is beneath the rustic clothes of a farmer and not beneath the gilt of a courtier that strength and vigor of body will be found. Finery is no less foreign to virtue, which is strength and vigor of soul. The good man is an athlete who enjoys competing in the nude. He spurns all those vile ornaments which would hinder the use of his strength, and most of which have been invented solely to hide some deformity.

Before art had fashioned our manners and taught our passions to speak a borrowed language, our morals were rustic but natural, and differences in conduct announced those of character at first glance. Human nature, at bottom, was not better. But men found their security in the ease of seeing through one another, and that advantage, of which we no longer sense the value, spared them many vices.

Today, when more subtle study and a more refined taste have reduced the art of pleasing to a set of principles, a vile and deceitful uniformity reigns in our morals, and all minds seem to have been cast from the same mold. Incessantly civility requires, propriety demands; incessantly it is customs that are followed, never one's own genius. One no longer dares to appear to be what one is; and under this perpetual constraint, the men who make up that herd called society, placed in the same circumstances, will all do the same things unless more powerful motives deter them from doing so. One will therefore never really be able to know those with whom one is dealing. To know one's friend, one will therefore have to wait for momentous occasions—that is, to wait until it is too late, because it is these very occasions for which it would have been essential to know him.

What a procession of vices must accompany this uncertainty! No more sincere friendships, no more real esteem, no more well-founded confidence. Suspicions, offenses, fears, coolness, reserve, hatred, betrayal continually conceal themselves behind that uniform and deceitful veil of civility, behind that much lauded urbanity we owe to the enlightenment of our age. The name of the master of the universe will no longer be profaned by swearing, but it will be insulted by blasphemies without our scrupulous ears being offended by them. People will not boast of their own merit, but they will belittle that of others. They will not coarsely insult their enemy, but they will artfully malign him. National hatreds will die out, but they will do so along with love of father land. Scorned ignorance will be replaced by a dangerous Pyrrhonism. There will be some forbidden excesses, some dishonored vices, but others will be dignified with the name of virtues; one will either have to have them or to affect them. Let those who so wish boast of the sobriety of the wise men of the age; as for me, I see in it merely a refinement of intemperance as unworthy of my praise as their artful simplicity.

Such is the purity our morals have acquired. This is how we have become affable men. It is for the letters, the sciences, and the arts to claim their share in such a salutary bit of work. I will only add one thought: that if an inhabitant of...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: UNIV OF CHICAGO PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2012
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0226921867
• ISBN 13: 9780226921860
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 344
• Herausgeber: Scott John T.
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: The University of Chicago Press; https://press.uchicago.edu/index.html; ; 5801 S. Ellis Avenue; Chicago; IL; 60637; USA
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar