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Chapter 1

Being Aristos and the Politics of Aristocracy

Rousseau undertakes his initial inquiry into amour-propre early in part II of the Second Discourse. His first step is to connect it to aristocracy. In his anthropologic natural history, he describes early humans settling into villages for the first time. These new social living arrangements forever change the consciousness of the species and create a powerful new desire: that of being aristos, or “being best.” Rousseau writes,

It became customary to assemble in front of the Cabins or around a large Tree: song and dance, true children of leisure, became the amusement or rather the occupation of idle men and women gathered in a crowd. Everyone began to look at everyone else and to wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem acquired a price. The one who sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most skillful, or the most eloquent came to be the most highly regarded, and this was the first step at once toward inequality and vice: from these first preferences on one side were born vanity and contempt, on the other shame and envy; and the fermentation caused by these new leavens at last produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence.¹

Granted, Rousseau does not explicitly use the term amour-propre in the passage (hereinafter referred to as the “competition for esteem”). Many scholars, however, are comfortable with Victor Goldschmidt’s contention that Rousseau’s village residents are experiencing an emotion, if not the same as amour-propre, at least resembling it and represent a harbinger of things to come.² Like civil humans, as most scholarship acknowledges, the village inhabitants are both self-conscious and competitive. Self-consciousness, in fact, results from competitiveness. The villagers become aware of themselves as individuals and form an identity through repeated comparisons with their peers. As Jean Starobinksi observes, it is the first time in which there is an “active division between self and other.”³ In the process, the villagers develop a social consciousness in which they learn to view themselves through the perspective of others. That is, they learn to think of themselves in the third person. Surprisingly, however, little attention is paid to the language of being aristos in the “competition of esteem” passage—even though such language is clear and obvious. The members of Rousseau’s little society all want to be the best at something: singing or dancing, intelligence, and so on. Importantly, they do not want merely to be appreciated for their finer qualities or recognized as a person worthy of respect. They do not even want to be better than their neighbors. They want to be aristos, or to “claim first rank as an individual.”⁴ They desire a level of superiority that is not easily satisfied and leaves little room for the success of others. Most scholars, however, ignore this language and interpret it as either a proxy for the competitive nature of civil society or diminish it to a superlative desire for a higher relative rank. Almost no one takes seriously that Rousseau actually means in the passage “being best.”

The three “positive amour-propre” theorists—Dent, Cooper, and Neuhouser—interpret the competition for esteem in this manner. Dent is decidedly unimpressed with the passage. He dismisses it as “an attractive tale” noteworthy only for its vagueness: “Little explanation is given of why they wish to consider and be considered should emerge; nor of why once it has, it should come to dominate and shape the individual character and human relations so pervasively.”⁵ Tellingly, Dent reads being aristos right out of the passage and reduces it to a desire to “be considered.” Cooper’s analysis of the competition for esteem is brief and mostly addresses cognitive developments.⁶ Insofar as Cooper is interested in the link between talent, being aristos, and amour-propre, it is, following Dent’s lead, to demonstrate that Rousseau does not believe that aspirations for achievement necessarily lead to zero-sum competitions in which everyone wants to dominate others. Eager to capitalize on the positive aspects of amour-propre, he makes much of the pride and vanity distinction from Corsica and argues that there are nonrelational forms of amour-propre.⁷

Neuhouser is of two minds about this issue.⁸ In his first book, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, he contends that being best is the most primitive expression of amour-propre and is its default setting. He also expresses reservations about reading Rousseau as a proto-Kantian, arguing that self-esteem and being recognized as worthy of equal rights are not the same thing.⁹ In his second effort, Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality, he appears to reverse his position. He rarely mentions the aristocratic language of being best and is most interested in the relational or positional aspects of amour-propre. He writes: “The relativity of amour propre contrasts sharply with the absolute, or noncomparative, character of amour de soi-même.”¹⁰ Elsewhere, directly citing the lines about being best, he downgrades it to a desire to be more esteemed than others.¹¹ In addition, he moves closer to a traditional Kantian interpretation of Rousseau’s amour-propre by accepting Dent’s claim that equal social status can satisfy the urges for recognition born of amour-propre, though he is more interested in Joshua Cohen’s version of the argument.¹² As evidence, he cites the paragraph immediately following the competition for esteem, in which Rousseau states that “as soon as men had begun to appreciate one another and the idea of consideration had taken shape in their mind, each one claimed a right to it, and one could no longer deprive anyone of it with impunity. From here arose the duties of civility … and from it any intentional wrong became an affront.”¹³ Consistent with his Kantian interpretation of amour-propre as a form of recognition, Neuhouser construes “duties of civility,” questionably I think, as referring to objective standards of respect that everyone ought to enjoy equally. They represent a form of self-esteem that is absolute rather than relative.¹⁴

Dent, Cooper, and Neuhouser in Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality are not wrong to focus on the relational nature of amour-propre. Being best is by definition comparative, and Rousseau often writes of amour-propre without mentioning the desire to be best. He even uses the term “consideration” as a descriptor for the passion. They are also on safe ground in arguing for nonrelational forms of amour-propre. Nonetheless, the aristocratic-laden language is eye-catching and prominent in the text. It should not be casually dismissed or ignored.

There is a second interpretative approach to amour-propre also common in the literature. Numerous scholars maintain that Rousseau develops the concept primarily to criticize commercial society. Some make general claims that Rousseau is addressing either the harmony-of-interests model popular with defenders of the emerging capitalist order or simply the inequality of conditions in modern Europe.¹⁵ One Rousseau scholar, Helena Rosenblatt, contends that amour-propre is partially designed to shed light on the political corruption of the patrician classes in Rousseau’s hometown of Geneva.¹⁶ In her novel interpretation, Rousseau takes the side of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy of high birth. Other scholars, including Neuhouser, make analytic arguments to demonstrate that commercial economic activities themselves corrupt amour-propre. As a consequence of the competitive and zero-sum nature of commercial economies, they contend, the desire for recognition transforms into a desire for superiority.¹⁷

As with the Kantian-Hegelian approach, there is much to be said for these economic interpretations. In the Second Discourse, Rousseau links the innovations mostly commonly associated with the rise of commercial society, including division of labor and technological developments such as the use of metallurgy, to the bad forms of amour-propre. Furthermore, these economic interpretations rightly highlight the political critique underlying Rousseau’s anthropology. Whatever pretenses Rousseau has to providing an accurate natural history, his intention is to do social criticism.¹⁸ In addition to the “Preface,” in which he explicitly states that his natural history is designed to assist the reader in “judging our present state,”¹⁹ the final two paragraphs of the essay make clear that his comparison between natural and civil humans is designed to highlight the corruptions of his age. The discourse is plainly meant to be more than a naturalist screed against civilization.

The “commercial amour-propre” theorists, however, also wrongly ignore Rousseau’s reference to being aristos. In many of their accounts, amour-propre is downgraded from a desire to be best to a desire for praise and recognition.²⁰ On the surface, it makes perfect sense that these scholars would disregard Rousseau’s aristocratic language. If Rousseau is criticizing Europe’s present state, then it would seem that condemnations of aristocracy are anachronistic. By the mid-eighteenth century, Europe was transitioning to democracy and capitalism. The courtly aristocracy was in retreat and slowly being supplanted by a new upstart class composed of men of commerce, legally trained administrators, and intellectuals—even if the nobles in some nations retained considerable power through World War I.²¹ Few, after all, would consider the eighteenth century the “Age of Aristocracy.” Furthermore, the commercial values of the age, at least upon first inspection, appear antithetical to aristocratic ones. The new moneyed and administrative classes subscribed to economic and bureaucratic values of profit and orderliness in place of honor, and they championed a form of equality premised on the idea that everyone ought to have equal opportunity to amass societal rewards. They viewed les grands as their chief rivals.

This surface dismissal of Rousseau’s aristocratic language only makes sense, however, if aristocracy refers to the aristocracy of high birth—the modern European feudal nobility defined by hereditary titles, taxing and hunting privileges, special political dispensations, and refined mannerisms. If aristocracy is conceptualized as being best in terms of merit and excellence, then Rousseau’s intentions become clearer. Indeed, the aristocratic language provides an essential clue as to how Rousseau wants the reader to judge “our present state.” In surveying the emerging commercial societies, as argued in the “Introduction,” he seems to think that important elements of the aristocratic value structure thrived. Rather than view Europe as transitioning from aristocracy to democracy, he sees a reassertion of classical aristocratic values. To prove the claim that the values of modern commercial life overlap with those of classical aristocracy, he makes use of rather unorthodox evidence. He analyzes the psyche of the new commercial, administrative, and intellectual classes and portrays it as similar to that of the heroes of epic poetry. Amour-propre, an emotion born of the desires for excellence and honor, is the lynchpin in his damning portrayal.

Although this interpretation may seem strange and counterintuitive, it is consistent with the philosophical analysis Rousseau offers of amour-propre, the political development of modern Europe, and his experiences of these political developments while living in Paris. That is, philosophy, politics, and biography all point to such a conclusion.

Philosophical Evidence: Sophocles and the Classical Aristocratic Personality

Sophocles provides an especially helpful analysis of the classical aristocratic personality in his tragedy Ajax. He was fascinated by Homer and, as Jennifer March claims, “was known in antiquity as ‘the most Homeric’ tragedian, and certainly the Ajax can justifiably be considered the most Homeric of his extant plays.”²² Among other things, Ajax is a about the political and social world, in particular the transformation in fifth-century Athens from an aristocratic worldview to a democratic one.²³ To capture this change, Sophocles constructs a dichotomy between aristocratic and democratic psyches that is more analytically succinct than anything found in Homer’s celebrated poems. Like many in his age, he was acutely aware that the rise of democracy dramatically altered human consciousness. Democrats apprehend the world in ways fundamentally different from those of their aristocratic counterparts. The insights Sophocles dramatizes here remain relevant. His dichotomy between aristocracy and democracy has shaped much of the thinking on the subject and continues to structure scholarly opinion. As we will see in chapter 4, it is the starting point of Tocqueville’s analysis of American democracy.

In brief, Sophocles understands aristocrats to be honor loving, democrats to be prudent and calculating. His character of Ajax, who represents the aristocratic ethos, is a hulking warrior who cares only for honor and glory and fears nothing more than shame.²⁴ His devotion to these values is so complete that he commits suicide after being disgraced by the goddess Athena, who tricked him into slaughtering cattle rather than the Greek leadership he held responsible for awarding Achilles’ armor to Odysseus rather than himself. Ajax proclaims, “Honor in life or in death: a man is born noble, he must have one or the other.”²⁵ Conversely, Odysseus, who is a stand-in for democratic humans, looks after only his personal well-being, and does so in a meticulous and strategic way. As called for by the democratic world in which he lives, he carefully weighs and balances his options, looks to the future, and exhibits a flexibility utterly absent in Ajax. At times, he exhibits little fidelity to ideals or principles and does not look at himself or the world in exalted terms. It is a place that must be carefully navigated, which requires negotiation and compromise.²⁶ For example, regarding honor, Odysseus is willing to sacrifice much to avoid disgrace, as evidenced by the fact that he agrees to bury Ajax because he too will face the same need in the future and does not want to make enemies who might deny him last rites. He sees sacrifice in practical terms. Unlike Ajax, he does not wish to be great and has no need to make statements to the world. His drive for honor is moderated by prudence; he hedges his bets and opts for “not disgrace.” Likewise, he is not strongly attached to moral principle. Paul Woodruff, who writes a persuasive defense of Odysseus, concedes his “values slide around to suit his needs” and that “you can depend on him to look after himself.”²⁷ In the play, he readily admits that his well-being represents his overriding concern and that his compassion for Ajax’s humiliating death stems from his fear that he might share in the same fate.²⁸ The question of whether Ajax deserves burial is secondary to his own desire for a respectful funeral. Presumably, if some moral ideal disrupts Odysseus’s calculations of self-interest, then it can be ignored or rationalized away. Aware of this moral reasoning, Ajax complains Odysseus will do anything if it leads to personal benefit. Sophocles tidily sums up Odysseus’s attitude through one simple exchange with Agamemnon. When Agamemnon questions his unprincipled, individualistic ethic by snidely asking, “It’s all one, then, and each man works for himself?” Odysseus quickly retorts, “There is reason in that. Who else should I work for?”²⁹

To be sure, Sophocles’ Odysseus seems to be motivated by more than his own self-interest. At both the beginning and the end of the play, he appears to show genuine compassion for Ajax and demonstrates the ability to empathize with the loss of life and humiliations of others. For this reason, he has attracted some sympathy from scholars. Woodruff calls him a man of “deep compassion” and “deep reverence,” and March suggests that the pity Odysseus has for the dead is reminiscent of the more appealing portrayal of him in Homer’s Odyssey.³⁰ While his compassion is still selfish,³¹ it amounts to more than a shrewd attempt to tangibly improve his lot. It comes from a recognition of the precariousness of human fate. Tragedy is around the corner for everyone, Odysseus realizes, himself included. In addition, he makes an appeal to justice and natural law, arguing that both compel him to bury Ajax.³² This, too, implies that he is willing to stand on some moral principle or impulse that is not directly tied to his interests. By including compassion and justice in his moral reasoning, Sophocles complicates his moral psychology and makes it difficult to interpret Odysseus simply as a crass moral opportunist. If he works for himself, he can work for others as well.

At the same time, however, Sophocles’ nuanced portrayal of Odysseus’s moral impulses contains an obvious tension. Self-interest and justice do not always lead to the same conclusion. Sometimes, following justice requires that we work against ourselves. All this begs the question: Would Odysseus agree to bury Ajax if he believed it would harm his self-interest? For example, what if burying Ajax threatened his high standing and reputation among the Greeks or even the chance that he might receive a proper burial? There is no direct evidence in the text that answers this question. By presenting Odysseus’s self-interest as coinciding with justice—that is, both point to honoring Ajax in death—Sophocles avoids the tensions in Odysseus’s moral reasoning.³³ Accordingly, it might be presumptuous to contend that Odysseus is either opportunistic or compassionate and just. It might be argued that his willingness to utilize contradictory forms of moral reasoning confirms suspicions that he is a slippery, unprincipled opportunist who will say anything to further his interests. On this interpretation, Odysseus appeals to justice and natural law only as rhetorical device. If other people are moved by such considerations, then it makes sense to refer to them. It is just as plausible, however, to adopt Woodruff’s and March’s softer stances. The text cannot rule out either interpretation. Perhaps Sophocles only means to suggest that justice and natural law can find space to operate in the democratic consciousness and are not fully eclipsed by self-interest.

In any event, there are a few aspects of Sophocles’ dichotomy between aristocratic and democratic worldviews that are worthy of elaboration. First, the portrayal of Odysseus in Ajax as fundamentally prudent is slightly out of step with the more common view of him as cunning, artful, and clever. In Homer’s Odyssey, the reader is meant to marvel at his resourcefulness and sense of élan, which gets him out of numerous life-threatening predicaments. The Odysseus of the Ajax, by contrast, comes off as a somewhat meek and risk averse. His reasoning is not fantastical or unduly clever (unless his appeals to justice and natural law are more cynically interpreted as a function of his self-interest). At best, it is reminiscent of the reasoning in the “veil of ignorance” from Rawls’s Theory of Justice—a classic hedge to avoid the worst possible outcomes.³⁴ In addition, the submissive attitude of Odysseus toward Ajax at the end of the play arguably undermines the suspicion and distrust that many Greeks allegedly had of him. If he is often unprincipled, he is not conniving and deceptive. He is not the liar that he is sometimes made out to be in the literature. Indeed, his behavior is entirely predictable once his conservative orientation is understood. His selfishness is petty and ordinary, and more likely to inspire contempt than wariness.

Second, it is easy to overstate the differences between the aristocratic ethic and the democratic one. It is not as if aristocrats do not calculate or have no interest in money, just as it would be wide of the mark to suggest that democrats are indifferent to honor and sacrifice. Even Sophocles blurs the line between aristocrats and democrats. Every bit as self-centered as Odysseus, Ajax too works for himself by calculating that suicide can restore his honor and secure his destiny as a great warrior, whatever the consequences for anyone else. On the other side of the ledger, Odysseus still values honor. To reiterate, he elects to bury Ajax so as to not make enemies who might seek to shame him by denying him a proper burial. While his selfishness is noteworthy because it is enlightened and encourages compassion toward enemies, it is does not fully abandon the central value of aristocratic ethics.

Still, the two men reason from entirely different places. Ajax is narrowly focused on the value of his identity. He cares only about his aristeia, his being best on the battlefield, and defines himself solely by being superior to his peers. This superiority is his essence. It is, to borrow an epigram from Pindar, who Ajax is.³⁵ In the text, it is described as his destiny. If he holds a “great deeds” ethic, the emphasis is on “deeds” plural. His superiority is not based on one flash-in-the-pan achievement; it is sustained superiority rooted in his superior nature. The idea is that he is great, not merely that he does great things. This is why he can only interpret his defeat to Odysseus as an insult and cannot negotiate or bargain with the Greek leadership to lessen his humiliation. When the leaders of the Greek army judge him less worthy of Achilles’ armor than Odysseus and Athena tricks him into slaughtering cattle instead of the leaders, they do more than defeat him in a contest or make him look silly. They insult his nature and debase his identity. Ajax is no longer a great warrior but rather a laughingstock; he is fit for shame, not honor. It is all the worse that he loses out to faithless Odysseus, who values expediency over nobility and represents a society that mocks his aristocratic values.³⁶ The issue of identity is crucial, as it directly shapes how people experience honor and shame. As Bernard Williams observes, Ajax’s suicide is impossible to comprehend without understanding his identity as a hero. He is done in by his expectations of the world and its expectations of him.³⁷ His whole identity is predicated on the idea that he is not supposed to experience shame. When he does, he ceases to be who he is. This is why Odysseus feels compassion for him, and why many of his supporters in the play are perplexed by his behavior. The former knows all too well the burdens of superiority while the latter do not.

Furthermore, the concerns Ajax has about his identity have implications that extend beyond his immediate community. His aim is not merely to attain glory but to attain eternal glory. True to the Homeric code, he desires kleos, or the glory that earns him the privilege of being sung about by the poets in a thousand years. Achieving aristeia promises immortality or at least some version of it. What matters is not so much how he fares in this world but how he is remembered by future ages. The temporal considerations of immortality escalate the importance of his identity, which lead him to one inescapable conclusion. By taking his own life, Ajax can erase his final days and reclaim who he is. He can fulfill his destiny. His premise is that he has been dishonored and shamed in this life. If he continues to live, he will always be dishonored. So, by killing himself, he reasons he can reclaim his honor. Once dead, provided that he receives a proper burial, he will be defined not by his interactions with Odysseus and Athena but by his true nature. He will be remembered as a great warrior, a noble soul who restored his identity by courageously confronting and conquering his disgrace. While his reasoning may seem strange to the modern mind and indeed to the democratic ethics of fifth-century Athens, it is perfectly consistent with his worldview.

Finally, the natural superiority Ajax displays paradoxically compels him to accept the limits of human agency in the earthly world. To further diminish his defeat to Odysseus and subsequent humiliation by Athena, he endeavors to disavow as much personal responsibility for his downfall as possible by blaming it on fate. There is in the play a curious distinction between destiny and fate: if his destiny is to be immortalized as a great warrior, his fate is to have an unhappy ending in earthly life. His destiny is who Ajax is, or his essence; his fate is what is predetermined to happen to him during the course of his life. He assumes his suffering at the hands of Odysseus and Athena was prescribed by fate, even though his arrogance invited Athena’s wrath. In fact, upon reflecting on his disgrace, he realizes that his name, Aias in Greek, means “lament.” Sure enough, his final hours on earth could only be described as lamentable. His destiny and fate are at thus at cross purposes. It is through suicide that Ajax preserves the former from the machinations of the latter. Destiny, then, protects Ajax against the vicissitudes of life and ensures that his failures do not undermine his claim to aristeia. It insulates him from the uncertainties of actual competitions and in its own way is a hedge against the possibility of failure.

By contrast, Odysseus’s motives and primary loves lack such specific content. All we know about Odysseus is that timé and kleos are not his overriding desires. He willingly sacrifices them to avoid their inverse. He seeks to protect his well-being and shuns disgrace, even if it lessens the value of his personality. But, the reader acquires little insight into his values other than that his preeminent concern is not how others view him or whether he will be glorified by future ages. Similar to classical utilitarianism, kleos is presumably just one of many preferences that he may wish to pursue. Consistent with the democratic ethic, he still honors things. He honors useful things, however, which may or may not include aristeia and kleos. Other than his dedication to self-interest, there is no absolutism in his thinking. He is simply prudent and calculating and is not uniformly focused on one good or desire. It is implied that he is sensitive to his various needs and weighs and balances them as situations require. If this means he cannot have eternal glory, he at least takes comfort in avoiding eternal disgrace. It is safer to go unsung. Furthermore, Odysseus rejects Ajax’s fatalism and the idea that either his destiny or his fate is predetermined. He defines himself solely by his earthly interactions and takes full responsibility for the meaning of his existence. If he cannot fully control his life, he nonetheless can influence how he is perceived and how the world treats him.

Odysseus and Amour de Soi-Même, Ajax and Amour-Propre

The similarities between Odysseus’s “work for himself” ethic and Rousseau’s amour de soi-même are obvious enough, especially if the former is compared to Dent’s expansive interpretation of the latter. According to Dent, amour de soi-même “signifies a concern, a care, to look to, guard, preserve and foster one’s own personal well-being, guided by a true and clear sense or idea of what the well-being of oneself comprises and requires.”³⁸ Notably, it takes both nonreflective and reflective forms. The former is more primitive and represents an instinctual desire to survive. It lacks social awareness of and typically does not take into account other persons unless they are an immediate threat to survival. Reflective amour de soi-même, conversely, entails a deliberative attempt to ascertain well-being and does so in the context of one’s environment and how a person can thrive in that environment.³⁹ It calculates well-being with reference to others. The only concern of Odysseus, of course, is his well-being. His concession that Ajax is his superior to him with regard to his aristeia, in fact, can be interpreted as an expression of reflective amour de soi-même. Odysseus understands that he must grant Ajax his due if he is going to secure his own well-being.

Dent’s distinction between unreflective and reflective amour de soi-même is also helpful for explaining why Rousseau would not be favorably disposed toward Odysseus. Rousseau knows that he cannot recreate the unreflective amour de soi-même of primitive humans and understands that the desire for well-being is too thin to serve as a moral psychology to support freedom in the modern world. If selfishness is relatively harmless in a life of solitude, it raises numerous problems in collective social living. Indeed, amour de soi-même is just as likely to encourage someone to injure or coerce his or her neighbors as to assist them. As Sophocles’ portrayal of Odysseus demonstrates, individuals who “work for themselves” show compassion only when they reason from a position of weakness. Odysseus agrees to bury Ajax because he can imagine suffering the same disgrace in the future. From a position of strength, however, the same individuals might callously ignore or even directly harm their neighbors if they believed it would promote their interests. Accordingly, amour de soi-même is too unreliable to promote freedom and inspire people to adhere to the general will. It promotes sociability and concern for others only under certain conditions that likely will not exist on a permanent and universal basis. Presumably, by working for himself Odysseus would be one of the free riders that Rousseau must “force to be free.” He is too calculating to consistently submit to the common good and would depart from it if he could identify some private interest that contradicts it. To sustain the general will, people need not only affective ties to their community but also to dedicate themselves to right and justice; virtue must take the place of natural goodness. Petty selfishness will not suffice. This is why Rousseau scolds Enlightenment thinkers: “For vices that show courage and vigor, you have substituted those of small souls.”⁴⁰

Granted, in Emile Rousseau does make an argument that appears to correspond to Odysseus’s mind-set: “It is man’s weakness that makes him sociable.”⁴¹ Compassion and empathy of the sort exemplified by Odysseus, in other words, are crucial for a well-functioning, harmonious society. It is probably best, however, not to read too much into this general similarity. Other than their shared sense of compassion, Emile and Odysseus have nothing else in common. His sense of his vulnerability is supposed to form in Emile a species-based identity rather than an individualistic one. More to the point, his moral psychology is based on amour-propre, not amour de soi-même. It is more aristocratic—it is driven by a sense of who he is rather than how he might satisfy his well-being.

On the other side of the ledger, the aristocratic values Ajax has—to have his superior abilities, or his aristeia, eternally recognized by the species and to establish his identity as a great hero—overlap with the spirit of Rousseau’s amour-propre. This comparison plays out on several levels. First, as previously mentioned, Rousseau in the Second Discourse immediately connects amour-propre to both honor and being aristos in the competition for esteem. That is, everyone wants to be recognized as being the best at something. As in the Homeric honor culture, being best is linked to some socially relevant ability.⁴² Granted, there is a wider array of talents through which to distinguish oneself for Rousseau than among the classical aristocratic warriors, who care only for military might. Rousseau’s individuals care for being aristos, not the narrower desire for aristeia, and compete to be best based on such traits as physical strength, agility, physical attractiveness, and intellectual skill. Rousseau, of course, is alive in an age of commerce and intellectual advancement, not constant warfare, and identifies traits consonant with success in those activities. Heroes in commercial societies do not wield swords. Nonetheless, in both accounts, people seek to be honored for being best.

Second, Ajax’s preoccupation with the value of his identity also lies at the center of Rousseau’s notion of amour-propre.⁴³ Individuals in the competition for esteem become defined by their talents and abilities. They shape the core of a person’s identity. People are what they achieve. They are not merely singing and dancing; they wish to become great singers and dancers. Although Rousseau does not provide detailed philosophical analysis for his assumption that amour-propre involves the process of identity construction,⁴⁴ a case can be made for it using clues from the Second Discourse as well as statements from his other writings. In the discourse, amour-propre emerges only in social settings in which people have constant contact with individuals who are not part of their family. In such an environment, people are accustomed to seeing others and being seen by them. They cannot help but compare themselves to them. Importantly, their comparisons are not onetime evaluations. They are made repeatedly and form a pattern that allows people to develop conceptions of their neighbors. In other words, their observations of their peers are cumulative and hence give rise to public identities. In contrast to primitive humans who made few comparisons and probably forgot them upon making them, social humans come to have a defined sense of their neighbors as individual selves. In turn, people define themselves according to how they stack up against their peers and what is reflected back to them by their social interactions. They develop a social persona—they become someone. More simply put, they construct a narrative of their life based on their repeated peer comparisons. This narrative is how they come to know themselves and reflect upon the value of their existence. Rousseau even develops terminology to explain this phenomenon. At the end of the Second Discourse, he calls it “the sentiment of existence” and negatively describes it as tainted by amour-propre.⁴⁵ In Emile, he more appropriately terms it the “sentiment of identity” and neutrally describes it as a function of memory: “Memory extends the sentiment of identity to all the moments of his existence; he becomes truly one, the same.”⁴⁶ Or, from the same passage, it is the process by which a person “gains consciousness of himself.”⁴⁷ Thus, cognitively, amour-propre is a self-conscious reflection of a person’s public identity, which is based on socially recognized superior abilities.

Third, both Ajax and Rousseau view social life and identity as a zero-sum competition. One person’s success is by definition another person’s defeat. There is only one best. Everyone else suffers by comparison. Ajax takes no solace in being a great warrior. He needs recognition that after Achilles he is the best and cannot share this honor with Odysseus or any other warrior. Likewise, at the conclusion of the Second Discourse, Rousseau claims members of the aristocratic classes will fall into the lower ones until only one all-powerful tyrant remains. While such competitiveness need not necessarily undermine the felt need for respect and recognition, it nonetheless is a rather high hurdle in cultures with a strong sense of honor and shame.

Fourth, Rousseau holds a watered-down version of Ajax’s notion of destiny, arguing that an individual’s lot in life is largely predetermined. Nature endows individuals with certain talents and abilities, and there is little one can do to alter where one winds up on the social ladder. Only a few have a realistic chance of being best. This does not mean that identities can never change, as Rousseau thinks that people will always harbor hope that they can find their way to the top: “Remember that as soon as amour-propre is developed, the relative I is constantly in play.”⁴⁸ Still, once identities are formed, they are difficult to alter. Talents and physical appearance tend not to change much—they are something into which people are born. As Rousseau observes in “Preface to Narcissus, or the Lover of Himself,” “Men are rewarded only for qualities which do not depend on them: for we are born with our talents.”⁴⁹ To alter one’s identity may very well require moving to a new community and acquiring a new peer group. Even then, a person is still defined by his or her natural abilities and personal achievements that stem from them. Granted, Rousseau’s “fatalism” is less mystical than Ajax’s. He has no corresponding notion of Ajax’s fate. Misfortune in this life results mostly from a person’s destiny—of who the person is. If Bernard Williams is right that Ajax’s suicide is prompted as much by his identity as a great hero as by Athena’s tricking and hence disgracing him, there is no particular reason why Rousseau’s common person would contemplate suicide because of public shame. Common persons have no higher self to reclaim, and they enter society with much lower expectations they will be honored, or even appreciated, by their peers. Presumably, most silently endure their humiliating lot in life—one in which they are cruelly forced to compete in activities at which they can never win. If they commit suicide, it is probably because their constant shame becomes too much to bear or they tire of not mattering and having no meaningful expectations to live up to. The same lesson applies to fallen elites in Rousseau’s world. If they commit suicide, it is because they cannot endure the shame of their declining fortunes or public disgrace. There is nothing redemptive about suicide in the modern age. It is simply a means to eliminate pain.

Finally, Rousseau even claims that modern humans resemble Ajax in their desire for immortality. At the end of the Second Discourse, he states that “the Citizen, forever active, sweats, scurries, constantly agonizes in search of ever more strenuous occupations: he works to the death, even rushes toward it in order to be in a position to live, or renounces life in order to acquire immortality.”⁵⁰ The moderns, alas, also wish to be sung about.⁵¹

Rousseau Contra Sophocles

There are, of course, good reasons not to overstate a Rousseau-Sophocles linkage, though none rises to the level of making such a comparison indefensible. First, there is no direct textual evidence connecting Rousseau’s amour de soi-même and amour-propre distinction to the clash of values in fifth-century Athens that inspired Sophocles to write Ajax. Although Rousseau was familiar with both Homer and Sophocles, as demonstrated by the fact that he refers to them more than a dozen times in his published and unpublished works, he only once connects Homer to either amour-propre or being best and never mentions Sophocles’ Ajax.⁵² Both poets are mostly background noise cited for relatively minor arguments and concepts that at best play a supporting role in Rousseau’s philosophy. Still, as previously argued, the conceptual similarities between Sophocles’ distinction between democratic and aristocratic personalities and Rousseau’s amour de soi-même and amour-propre are conspicuous. Even if it is conceded that Rousseau did not directly borrow from Sophocles, the analytic similarities between the two distinctions are obvious enough. As I argue in Chapter 2, Rousseau’s entry point into the aristocratic mind-set comes from one of its critics, Saint Augustine.

Second, Rousseau is far less admiring of the Homeric honor culture than is Sophocles.⁵³ On the surface, this may not seem to be the case. In the one passage in which he discusses the content of Homeric ethics, he endorses it as necessary and good, at least for certain peoples. In Considerations on the Government of Poland, he tries to revive Polish patriotism and identify a suitable ruling class through agonistic games and events that reward the most talented and manly. These games, he proposes, should be modeled on “Homer’s heroes,” who “were all distinguished by their force and skill,” as well as “Knights’ tournaments,” in which men “were … avid for honor and glory.”⁵⁴

The purpose of such games, however, is not Homeric. They are not designed to provide source material for poets. Rather, they are a means to much more important ends: promoting patriotism and ensuring the safety of the state. Patriotism is achieved by increasing the “pride and self-esteem” of the participants, which is redirected to promote love of country and a common Polish identity through reminiscences of past national glories.⁵⁵ It is common among Rousseau scholars, in fact, to cite this passage as proof that amour-propre and honoring talents can be manipulated for positive purposes, such as the promotion of civic virtue. The latter goal of ensuring state security is attained through the selection and establishment of a manly aristocratic class capable of mounting an effective military defense against invaders. The Homeric games and knights’ tournaments are specifically tailored to address Poland’s geopolitical vulnerabilities. Rousseau worries that Poland is too decentralized and underpopulated to fend off military threats from its more powerful and despotic neighbors, such as Russia. If Poland is to prevent foreign invasion, it needs to become a unified nation guided by powerful military leadership. Thus, unlike Ajax and Achilles, Rousseau seeks to promote the glory of collective identities rather than individual ones and does so in service to amour de soi-même rather than amour-propre. Sensibly, Rousseau views Homer’s martial ethic as an asset for a people facing military dangers. In a world of nation-states, patriotism and a warrior class have their uses and must be cultivated. Homeric practices and attitudes are for him a means to a different end and do not imply an endorsement of aristocratic values.

Sure enough, absent such geopolitical concerns, Rousseau presents a much more mixed picture of classic aristocratic values. In “Discourse on Heroic Virtue,” he provides a modest defense of heroism and heroes. Love of glory, he claims, is responsible “for innumerable goods and evils.”⁵⁶ The formulation here is more balanced than his earlier descriptions of the utility of amour-propre in the Second Discourse and Emile, which are more skewed toward inevitable evils. But it is hardly a ringing endorsement. Moreover, Rousseau portrays martial glory as a poor substitute for virtue. True heroes are wise men who desire virtue and the happiness of their fellow citizens, not warriors trying to kill their way to eternal glory. And heroes for him are hardly the best of men. Rather, they are “a composite of good and bad qualities that are beneficial or harmful depending on circumstances.”⁵⁷ While the essay is not all that helpful—Rousseau begins it by conceding “this piece is very bad”⁵⁸—this last point about circumstance is crucial for understanding his critique of amour-propre and love of glory and why his endorsement of Homer in Considerations on the Government of Poland is not generalizable to other societies.

In the context of Enlightenment Europe, as evident from the first two discourses as well as later writings, Rousseau thinks the concept of the hero or the existence of a superior class of individuals is positively dangerous. In such environments, love of glory serves neither the collective good nor amour de soi-même. It becomes solely a means for self-aggrandizement. People will want to be best for the sake of being best, and hence will develop the worst sorts of amour-propre. In all likelihood, they will cause untold amounts of evil. The great, in other words, become a grave threat to the good. When writing of Paris and Enlightenment Europe, Rousseau dedicates himself to equality and promotes the virtues of the common person. He sees it as his duty to protect the dignity of such people against the superior personalities or heroes in their community.

When Rousseau writes in this vein, few would dispute that he is the “anti-Homer” or, as Judith Shklar once wryly referred to him, “the Homer of the losers.”⁵⁹ Nietzsche’s characterization of Rousseau as committed to “an ideal born of hatred for aristocratic culture” likewise gets to the core of Rousseau’s motivations.⁶⁰ Although Nietzsche has been accused of being unfair and simplistic toward his Genevan predecessor,⁶¹ a charge that is probably true, his bird’s-eye view of Rousseau nonetheless manages to identify the topical thread that ties together so many of Rousseau’s writings. Nietzsche’s Rousseau views genius and being best as a social problem in need of a solution.

Third, and most important, Rousseau blurs the aristocrat-democrat distinction that structures Sophocles’ Ajax. The modern Europeans whom he so persistently criticizes—the urban ones committed to the Enlightenment and commerce—are a strange amalgam of both the aristocratic and the democratic personalities. They are one part Odysseus and one part Ajax. They are strategic, calculating, and materialistic and yet supremely consumed with honor, the value of their identity, and ability-based superiority. In some cases, they even strive for immortality. If they speak the language of utilitarianism, they are still dedicated to being aristos and, as will be demonstrated, seeking societal dominance to complement their perceived excellences. They do more than work for themselves in the prudent, flexible way that is exemplified by Odysseus. There is a good deal of Ajax in them, even if they lack the vocabulary to account for it.

It requires little effort to reconcile the seemingly disparate democratic and aristocratic values of modern bourgeois Europeans. Their “democratic” commitments to utility and practicality are easily assimilated into the aristocratic value structure. They become yet another criterion for being aristos. Once utility and practicality are established as a dominant set of values, those who best exemplify such traits plausibly can demand membership among the aristoi. This is even true of Odysseus. He wins Achilles’ armor because he successfully argues that his intelligence is more useful to the Greek war effort than Ajax’s brute strength. As Woodruff points out, after nine years of war it was clear to everyone that brute strength was not going to win the war. It took Odysseus’s idea of the Trojan horse to finally secure victory.⁶² Rousseau essentially argues that the new bourgeois elite echoed Odysseus’s claim to being aristos and called for the establishment of an “Odyssean” aristocracy. The members of the elite argued that their ability to administrate the world, produce wealth, and invent knowledge ought to define new criteria for being best—that the useful and the clever ought to rule.⁶³

Publicly at least, these new bourgeois heroes did not speak like ancient heroes. Their vocabulary consisted of such terms as equality, popular sovereignty, and liberty. Rousseau, however, sees this as little more than hypocrisy and ideology, and he warns his readers not to be fooled. The new upstart men of commerce and administrators (and to a lesser degree intellectuals) supported opening up the political system and other democratic measures only to the extent that the new measures would weaken their perceived enemies and promote their own ambitions.⁶⁴ If they championed equality, it was only in a form such as equality of opportunity, which would not get in the way of their aristocratic ambitions.⁶⁵ They knew that if they were to attain their goals of becoming the new aristoi, they had to subvert the old powers. They had to delegitimize, in short, the courtly aristocracy and the church. If democratic language was suitable to this purpose, they were more than willing to use it. Thus, like Odysseus, their values slid around to meet their desires, which paradoxically were aristocratic.

It is therefore sensible to conclude that Rousseau interprets the great social-class battles of the eighteenth century as an ideological scrum between competing aristocratic factions rather than between democrats and aristocrats. The contest between Ajax and Odysseus is not between two separate worldviews so much as between competing claims to the same prize. While the old and new aristocrats fought for dominance, Rousseau worried about the common people. In his view, they were merely pawns in this upper-class competition, to be used, abused, and demeaned for someone else’s ends. Throughout his writings, he tears off the democratic clothing of Europe’s emerging elite and attempts to protect the masses against the elite’s scheming and maneuvering for dominance.

Political Evidence: Elias’s Civilizing Process and Elite Politics in Modern Europe

Rousseau’s intuition about the nature of eighteenth-century politics draws support from important historical scholarship. In particular, Norbert Elias’s Civilizing Process perfectly frames Rousseau’s narrative. According to Elias, the medieval era in Europe is at first dominated by a warrior aristocracy of landowning knights who, like the ancient Greek aristocrats, earned their superiority on the battlefield. It was a violent, almost anarchic age in which those with official power were unable to monopolize authority. The nobility could share in ruling, provided that they had “the power to command and punish, to coerce.”⁶⁶ In a violent age, naturally enough, the especially violent will dominate and have a strong claim to being best. True to classical aristocracy, these knights did not view their power simply in realpolitik terms. They obsessed about honor and glory and desired to be remembered and lauded by subsequent generations. The knightly aristocracy differed from their Greek counterparts in one crucial respect, however: they were also dedicated Christians and combined martial virtue with moral virtue.⁶⁷ They were firmly committed to ideals of compassion and justice, and believed it was their duty to protect the weak. This knightly ideal meant that warriors could not merely work for themselves. They had to think about others as a matter of principle and not just when they believed it to be beneficial. Interestingly, in this Christianized aristocracy, knights were receptive to the idea that members of the peasant classes could earn glory and honor. According to Johan Huizinga, “The passionate defenders of the ideal of knighthood at times intentionally list the deeds of peasant heroes … to show they had great courage.”⁶⁸ It was not unheard of for peasants themselves to try to immortalize themselves through great deeds. For example, Keith Thomas writes of Michael An Gof (a.k.a. Michael Joseph), a blacksmith who in 1497 led fifteen thousand Cornish tax rebels to London in the hope for “a name perpetual and a fame permanent and immortal.”⁶⁹ Unfortunately, An Gof was hanged for his crimes. To be sure, there is a rather wide gap separating the Christian ideals espoused by the knights and their actual behavior. While the knights believed themselves to be defenders of beauty and virtue and were of inestimable social value, critics tend to dismiss them as little more than a self-serving elite scrambling for power and glory. Indeed, “seen from a truly spiritual view, all the noble life was nothing but open sin and vanity.”⁷⁰

It was not hypocrisy that did the knights in, however. The anarchic political system could not last forever. Monarchical families emerged, as knights engaged in zero-sum competitions for land that increasingly concentrated power in a few hands until one family claimed victory and became the ruling family of the nation. Kings would slowly establish absolute power in England, France, and the Hapsburg territories. These structural changes led to the demise of the knightly aristocracy, as their abilities on the battlefield were not only unnecessary but also an unambiguous threat to these new absolutist kings. Warrior aristocrats simply could not be tolerated. At the same time, the new monarchs required capable administrators to govern their vast territories. Accordingly, universities became much more important, as they churned out a new socioeconomic class of lawyers and specialists capable of filling the monarchical need for rational administration. This new class of trained administrators was joined by a class of financiers and bankers, who learned to make money in the emerging commercial economy, and eventually a class of intellectuals, who taught in the universities and populated Europe’s urban centers. Combined, these new classes successfully challenged the old landed knightly nobility for social preeminence. Unsurprisingly, this struggle did not resolve itself quickly. The decline of the old knights was a slow process, as many could make money from their lands and remain powerful in the new age. Although they were, as Elias notes, a “functionless” social class and no longer had a claim to being best, they did not quietly disappear.⁷¹ Still, they slowly lost ground to the new administrative and commercial classes and by the beginning of the seventeenth century could no longer be considered the dominant social class.

For a time, the monarchs greatly benefited from this aristocratic turmoil. The two groups that posed greatest threats to their sovereignty were consumed with one another. As the new middle-rank lawyers, businessmen, and administrators increasingly gained the upper hand in their struggles against the old knightly aristocracy, however, the monarchs realized they could not afford to let these upstart classes vanquish the landed nobility. They surmised that a victorious middle rank would set its sights on political power next and try to supplant monarchy itself. So, they made every effort to string along class warfare as long as possible. To that end, the kings tipped the scales in favor of the old knightly aristocracy by awarding it tax exemptions, taxing powers, positions at court, and other important privileges in the hope of creating a roughly equal balance of power between the old knights and the new lawyers and bankers. The hope was that if the old knights could not compete monetarily with the upper strata of the upstart middle classes, at least they could claim to be the true aristocratic class.

Monarchical privileges alone, however, were not enough to merit the claim of being best. The old knights needed a new justification that would allow them to assert their superiority and define themselves as the true aristocracy. This was no simple task. The most obvious criteria for being best—superiority on the battlefield and wealth—were unavailable (though they would continue to subscribe to martial values even if they were rarely called upon to use them.) They would eventually settle on civilité. That is, they would distinguish themselves based on “fine dress, elaborate manners, and elegant speech.”⁷² They were, in short, members of a courtly aristocracy who were refined and polished, in contrast to the simple and vulgar or “rude” lower classes. This new aristocratic code of manners was not as petty as it sounds. It included civic virtue and was meant to publicly signify true superiority inherited from one’s ancestors. The nobles saw themselves as worthy of honor or public recognition for their distinctive genetic quality and felt obligated to behave in accord with their supposed superior nature. Nonetheless, whatever lip service was paid to love of country and virtue, courtly life was far from idyllic. Refined and polite mannerisms often did not lead to elevated behavior, even if there was little possibility of physical violence. The courtly aristocrats were cliquey and vigorously competed in what was a never-ending game for superior social status. Elias compares it to a stock market: “As in every ‘good society,’ an estimate of the ‘value’ of each individual is continuously being formed.”⁷³ Successful courtiers became experts at expressions, suppressing emotion, disguising passion, and any other dissimulations to conceal views or feelings that might detract from their public reputation. Thus, they were judged neither by talents nor achievement, nor even their wealth, but by how well they earned the favor of the monarch and how well they conformed to increasingly refined standards of taste and manners.

Elias, to be sure, has his detractors. C. Stephen Jaeger, for example, argues that courtliness originated much earlier in the clergy and later shifted to the secular nobility.⁷⁴ Jonathan Dewald contends that the knightly aristocracy was far more resilient and flexible than Elias assumes, and in large measure adapted to the new bourgeois standards of excellence. Many attended university and learned the art of administration so prized by ascendant monarchs. Others figured out how to succeed in the new commercial economy and retained or even grew their wealth. As a class, they managed to remain powerful in some nations into the twentieth century. In addition, a good number were neck deep in the new intellectual trends and helped shape the new bourgeois culture. The salons, which represented the physical space in which the Enlightenment developed in France, were funded by aristocrats. And, whatever role they played in advancing the social status of intellectuals, they still were governed by the rules of courtly aristocracy.⁷⁵ As Antoine Lilti notes, aristocratic hosts insisted that guests show “respect for the rules of civility and politeness, rules that governed both access to the salons and the attitudes of those who attended them.”⁷⁶ Rousseau, who was allowed some petty rebellions against the rules of civilité, is the exception that proves the rule. For their part, many bourgeoisie took advantage of every available opportunity to enter the nobility by purchasing titles from kings eager for cash. Dewald undoubtedly is correct in contending that the line separating the bourgeois classes and the nobility is much blurrier than Elias lets on. Nonetheless, the essential core of his narrative holds up. The knightly aristocracy gave way to competing bourgeois and courtly aristocracies in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Being aristos did not have coherent meaning.

Personal Evidence: Rousseau Contra the Philosophes

The problem of a bifurcated aristocracy would resolve itself in the eighteenth century, as the bourgeois classes would win something of a cultural victory. When they were finally confident enough to challenge the courtly aristocracy for social supremacy, the new bourgeois upstarts had little difficulty identifying their vulnerabilities. The courtly aristocracy, they argued, were not legitimate aristocrats and had no plausible claim to being best. Their supposed superiority—civilité—was not a true superiority. In place of civilité, the rising bourgeois classes strenuously asserted that only those who possessed talent, or more specifically, some form of intellectual ability, ought to be considered elite members of society. Thomas Paine may very well have summed up their line of attack with one acerbic quip: “Nobility equals no ability.”⁷⁷

As has been well established, Rousseau had a front-row seat to this cultural skirmish through his experiences with the philosophes. Although he also is critical of the economic elite and employs amour-propre against the wealthy, he begins with the intellectuals.⁷⁸ Like the administrators and bankers, the philosophes vigorously argued that they, the men of letters, were the most socially valuable members of society and hence ought to occupy the highest rungs of the social ladder. They had the most legitimate claim to being best. Many followed Voltaire in his “desire … to lift the status of the men of letters to the highest rank of society.”⁷⁹ Rousseau was plainly aware of this project, complaining in “Preface to Narcissus” that his intellectual friends “cared more about the interests of the men of letters than about the honor of literature.”⁸⁰

Rousseau, in fact, was a full-fledged participant in eighteenth-century aristocratic politics and was for a time probably supportive of his friends’ claims.⁸¹ In “Preface to Narcissus,” he concedes that he was “seduced by the prejudices of my century.”⁸² Like so many young provincials, his adolescent ambition, as detailed in The Confessions, was to become a celebrated man of letters.⁸³ Rousseau also grew up with little love for the courtly aristocrats and was contemptuous of the humiliating relationship between the peasants and their so-called superiors. His father, after all, was chased out of Geneva after a tiff with a local aristocrat involving hunting privileges. Both attitudes encouraged a restlessness and an eagerness to climb the social ladder, which eventually drew him to Paris.⁸⁴ Although he received little formal education and did not exhibit any intellectual ability during his childhood, he arrived in Paris aged almost thirty and ready to distinguish himself as both a musician and a playwright. In The Confessions, he describes his attitude as one perfectly consistent with those of his philosophe friends—talent was to be his ticket to a better life. He recounts thinking during his journey to the capital of the Enlightenment: “A young man who arrives in Paris with a passable appearance and who is heralded for his talents is always sure of being welcomed.”⁸⁵ Moreover, Rousseau admits that he was driven by the desire to be aristos and would do anything and everything to earn fame. In reference to his attempt to become a chess master, he writes, “I said to myself, ‘Whoever excels in something is always sure of being sought after. Be first, then in anything at all; I will be sought after; opportunities will present themselves, and my merit will do the rest.’”⁸⁶ It is easy to connect both of these recollections to the competition for esteem (or perhaps the “competition for excellence”) passage in the Second Discourse. The imagery of leisurely singing and dancing, of course, is clearly not a reference to Paris. Scholars think it refers to the village Maypole feast⁸⁷ or the naturalistic works of Joseph-François Lafitau or John Brown, which took American Indians as the model.⁸⁸ The competition aspect, however, arguably refers to Paris. Recall from the passage on competition for esteem that the two criteria by which people wish to distinguish themselves are talents and physical appearances: “The one who sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most skillful, or the most eloquent.” Aside from “the strongest,” all of these refer to intellectual or musical abilities and good looks—the same two criteria Rousseau claims would help him find acceptance in Paris in The Confessions. The second passage, with its reference to “being first,” is even more remarkable, as it directly links his own attitudes to the “being best” language in the competition for esteem that is generally ignored by scholars.⁸⁹

In any case, Rousseau eventually soured on Paris as it became clear that life as a man of letters was much harsher than he had supposed. His talents were not immediately welcomed, and he was never fully comfortable making them the core of his identity. His first try at fame, which came in the form of a submission of a musical notation system to the Academy of Sciences, revealed a spiteful side to him that seems almost unimaginable in his younger self. Although the committee ultimately rejected the system, he was congratulated for a fine effort and encouraged to pursue further study in the field. He managed, in short, to attract favorable consideration. Rousseau, however, saw no silver lining in the committee’s decision, and his reaction was bitter. Aside from one objection from the famous composer Rameau, Rousseau dismissed the criticisms of the committee members as nonsense and remained angry at them at least until he wrote The Confessions some twenty-five years later.⁹⁰ If his goal was to be aristos, then any sort of failure must have been completely unacceptable. His experiences did not improve much in this regard, and the next seven years proved frustrating.

To be sure, Rousseau did have some positive experiences in Paris. He was accepted in the salons, where his rustic mannerisms and creativity were appreciated as colorful. He also managed to make several friends among the salonistes and contributed several articles on music and one on political economy to Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia. Yet he was never comfortable in Paris and eventually succumbed to intense feelings of alienation and self-loathing. It was only a matter of time before he rejected the ideological claims of the philosophes to become the new aristocracy. By late 1740s, he had already emotionally divorced himself from Paris and expressed an irritation at its intellectual culture that began to show up in his writings. In a 1749 letter, he blasts Paris as an arrogant, snobby, inauthentic city that, tellingly, “crushes humble talents.”⁹¹

The First Discourse

The First Discourse gives philosophical expression to Rousseau’s discontent and systematically challenges the pretensions of the philosophes that they are the true aristocrats. In the essay, Rousseau makes three basic arguments. The first criticizes the philosophes on their own terms—that is, through an “Odyssean” or democratic category—by minimizing any possible social utility of the arts and sciences. Whatever social benefits that might be attributed to them are more than offset by the moral corruptions they induce. As he puts it in “Preface to Narcissus,” “A craving for distinction necessarily engenders evils infinitely more dangerous than all the good of letters is useful.”⁹² If it is possible to provide specific examples in which arts and sciences make genuine contributions to the well-being of society, and Rousseau plainly accepts that at least science is good at what it does,⁹³ he nonetheless urges his audience to consider the disastrous cultural consequences of the Enlightenment. The old moral system, he insists, was fully discredited by the new arts and sciences. Religion and patriotism in particular suffered badly: “They [the men of letters] smile disdainfully at such old-fashioned words as Fatherland and religion.”⁹⁴

Rousseau also attacks the most obvious benefit of the arts and sciences: their economic advantages. The Scottish theorists were particularly adept at identifying the processes by which this occurred. As David Hume observes in “On Commerce,” knowledge makes people more productive, which in turn leads to the creation of a manufacturing and luxury economy. Driven by the desire for new creature comforts, people work both harder and more shrewdly—they sweat and scheme to get their hands on the finer things in life, which leads to even more wealth and more production.⁹⁵ Rousseau is unimpressed, however, arguing that this alleged virtue is really a vice that makes people more miserable. Luxury, he contends, sets in motion a perverse trinity of hypocrisy, effeminacy, and idleness.⁹⁶ Appearance becomes all important, and people strive hard to remove labor as a condition of life and live in complete opulence. As a result, they become lazy and effete.⁹⁷

In addition, Rousseau fires a warning shot over his fellow intellectuals that they would not fare so well in the commercial world. While Voltaire heaped praise on the English in his Philosophical Letters for financially rewarding the merit of its writers,⁹⁸ Rousseau argues they are in a catch-22 situation. Either they are corrupted by the desire for success or they fail to profit from their endeavors. On the one hand, the desire for fame and glory encourages writers to dumb down their works and pander to public opinion.⁹⁹ Truth does not easily find a home among these new intellectual aristocrats, as it takes a back seat to personal ambitions. When people work for themselves, they are apt to ignore inconvenient truths that get in the way of their own aggrandizement.¹⁰⁰ The best thing that could happen to genius, Rousseau argues, is for it to be left alone to develop free from all the temptations of society. On the other hand, he accepts that most of the artists and scientists of his day are not financially thriving. Unlike the new class of bankers and financiers, they are anything but lazy and rich. For Rousseau, this only proves how inequitable the new economy actually is. The artists and scientists who create wealth have no share in it and wind up supporting the lavish lifestyles of the shrewd, slothful, and greedy.¹⁰¹ Lastly, Rousseau acknowledges that intellectual life is home to all sorts of unproductive rivalries and conflicts. In his “Letter to Beaumont,” he even claims that books themselves are the great cause of conflict; they “are sources of inexhaustible disputes.”¹⁰²

The second and third arguments shift away from disutility to aristocratic categories of vanity, identity, and natural superiority. Rousseau denigrates intellectuals as driven by nothing more than glory and ambition—by a desire to be publicly celebrated and socially important. Their motives resemble those found in Ajax. Artists and scientists are creatures of ego, more concerned with their own glory than any social good that might result from their pursuits.¹⁰³ At best, a few great scientists and philosophers can practice their trade without being corrupted by it: “Science is not suited to man in general.”¹⁰⁴ His soon to be former friends, he believed, were nothing more than self-serving phonies who managed to create a mean-spirited culture that made Socrates’ treatment by Athens seem tame by comparison.

Rousseau’s third argument continues this theme but considers it from the opposite side of the social spectrum. Rather than focusing exclusively on the winners, as did the ancient Greeks, Rousseau contends that the social esteem accorded to intellectual talent and genius demeans the overwhelming mass of ordinary citizens. In this new world of the arts and sciences, the basis of individual identity is dramatically altered, as identities based on moral character and citizenship give way to ones based on talent. In one passage, he laments that “we have Physicists, Geometricians, Chemists, Astronomers, Poets, Musicians, Painters; we no longer have citizens; or if we still have some left, dispersed in our abandoned rural areas.”¹⁰⁵ In another, he complains that “people no longer ask about a man whether he has probity, but whether he has talents.”¹⁰⁶ For the ordinary working-class and peasant citizens, Rousseau be lieves this shift is psychically catastrophic, as they can only be demeaned by this new value structure. Those “to whom Heaven has not vouchsafed such great talents and whom it does not destine for so much glory” will find life frustrating and demoralizing because they will be encouraged to think they are valuable only if they are engaged in the arts and sciences.¹⁰⁷ They will thus be judged by traits they lack: “Someone who all his whole life will be a bad versifier or an inferior Geometer, might perhaps have become a great clothier.”¹⁰⁸ Or, again from “Preface to Narcissus,” “men are rewarded only for qualities which do not depend on them: for we are born with our talents, only our virtues belong to us.”¹⁰⁹ And Rousseau worries that they could not help but feel bitter, resentful, and envious: “Let us know how to rest content … without envying the glory of those famous men who render themselves immortal in the Republic of Letters.”¹¹⁰ Outside the great urban intellectual centers, Rousseau argues, people are judged by their own good character and patriotism, which are things everyone can develop. In Paris and others cities in which talent replaces virtue as the standard for what it means to be an excellent human being, most people will come to loathe themselves and think they are of no value.¹¹¹ Societies that overvalue intellectual talent thus contain within them a bizarre and existentially troublesome contradiction. They still require farmers, clothiers, watchmakers, and others but refuse them the social basis for self-respect.

Thus, Voltaire’s project to elevate the men of letters to an aristocratic station would result in a modern form of the Homeric honor culture. Rousseau was well aware of how the common person fares in such a world. He fought against it throughout his career and consistently warned his fellow Europeans against talent-based public identities. “In a well-constituted State,” he writes in “Preface to Narcissus,” “all citizens are so equal that no one is preferred to others as being neither the most learned nor even the most skillful.”¹¹² In Emile, he directs his tutee to “desire mediocrity in everything, without excepting even beauty.”¹¹³ And, in unpublished notes, he approvingly cites the lack of stature of great writers in antiquity. Neither Homer nor Virgil, he claims, were considered great men despite their considerable ability. Agreeing with his ancient counterparts, he asserts that if “it is not impossible for an author to be a great man, it is not by writing books either in verse or in prose that he will become such.”¹¹⁴ On the other side of the coin, he also makes sure to hold up the working classes as the salt of the earth. He portrays them as the beacon of humanity and idealized their traits of simplicity, moderation, hard work, and authenticity as universal virtues to which everyone should aspire. In “Letter to d’Alembert on the Theater,” he praises “provincial men” as possessing “more original spirits, more inventive industry” and being “less imitative” than their Parisian counterparts. And, of course, rural genius “compares itself to no one.”¹¹⁵ His message to his Parisian colleagues is clear: do not take being an intellectual too seriously.

Rousseau and Adam Ferguson

Rousseau’s narrative shows up in a more economic form in Adam Ferguson’s Essay on the History of Civil Society. In the Essay, Ferguson echoes Hume’s view that increased productivity fuels a luxury economy, which in turn gives rise to new and more cognitively challenging occupations in such fields as banking and law. He follows Rousseau, however, by contending that these economic developments lead to a psychically bruising preoccupation with talent-based identities. In the new luxury economy, the identity of a person is a function of his occupation: “Each individual is defined by his calling.”¹¹⁶ Naturally, those with more intellectually challenging jobs are able to garner more social esteem. Led by “applause as well as profit,”¹¹⁷ the so-called best and brightest flocked to careers in law and finance in order to occupy a social status as high as possible. By contrast, the vast majority of workers, who remain in the older professions, the mechanical arts or farming, occupy the lower rungs. There is, moreover, a new class of factory workers that have even less challenging jobs. Because of the division of labor and industrialization, these individuals spend all their days performing mindless repetitive tasks. Accordingly, they are deprived of any intellectual stimulation and likely become dullards. They are mere cogs in machines: “Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most, where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may, without any great effort of imagination, be considered an engine, the part of which are men.”¹¹⁸ Adam Smith observes this phenomenon before Ferguson and more bluntly calls such workers “stupid.” In Lectures on Jurisprudence, he proclaims: “It is remarkable that in every commercial nation the low people are exceedingly stupid.”¹¹⁹ He repeats the charge in The Wealth of Nations, asserting that the average worker “naturally loses … the habit of exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”¹²⁰ Presumably, those on the assembly line become the dregs of society, invariably demoralized and ashamed of themselves. Individuals in more elevated professions—ones that require study and skill—look down on them and view them as men viewed slaves and women in earlier “rude” ages. As in Rousseau’s passage on the competition for esteem, the winners become vain and contemptuous of those below them, and the losers become envious and self-loathing. Ferguson’s conclusion is likewise Rousseauian: “In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of the few must depress the many.”¹²¹

Ferguson buttresses his case by contending that this problem is specific to modern commercial societies. The old aristocracies in “rude” civilizations, strangely enough, were far less enamored of talent and ability and maintained a general egalitarianism. Ferguson grants that during such ages some people might have been better warriors or had some special talents and that natural inequalities were ubiquitous. They were only recognized, however, during a hunt or whatever activity was taking place: “In times of relaxation,” which was most of the time, there was “no vestige of power or prerogative.”¹²² Thus, inequality was confined to certain times and did not become the core of a person’s identity. It is the rise of commerce that led people to answer the questions “Who am I?” and “What is my self-worth?” with “What can I do?”

Ferguson, of course, is not a full-fledged Rousseauian. Despite this glum portrait of commercial life, he remains committed to commercial capitalism. Still, the similarities between his analysis of the psychological effects of inequality in commercial life and Rousseau’s are striking. Both men view inequality as not merely an economic problem but a psychological and existential one that touches on people’s sense of their innate self-worth.

A Hesitant Debate

In any event, given the success of the First Discourse and the widespread attention it attracted, it was inevitable that Rousseau found himself in a spirited debate with his then friends. It took a while, however, for the debate to get off the ground, as both parties to the dispute had good reason to avoid it. The philosophes were surprised and disappointed by their friend’s apparent rejection of the Enlightenment after willingly contributing several entries to their Encyclopedia, and they had every reason to think they were innocent of the charge that they denigrated the working classes. Had they not, after all, made a special effort to afford the mechanical arts a prominent place in the Encyclopedia? Accordingly, they spent as much time downplaying their disagreement with Rousseau as they did defending their alleged aristocratic ambitions. Rousseau had his own problems. He very much wanted to remain an author yet had potentially undermined his literary credibility through his aggressive takedown of the arts and sciences in the First Discourse. Critics immediately seized on this paradox, noting that the great critic of the arts and sciences was himself an intellectual who used a public competition to make his case. Rousseau had tensions that had to be relaxed. He needed to distinguish himself from his Parisian friends, which required carving out some social space for arts and sciences that did not demean the lower classes.

It did not take much effort for Rousseau to solve his problem. All he had to do was to construct a new model of authorship that avoided all the perversities characteristic of urban intellectual life.¹²³ He did so by identifying a variety of traits that transformed writing books into a virtuous activity. According to Christopher Kelly, this included publishing material that promotes the common good and taking responsibility for what one publishes—writing in a manner that involves both discretion and openness.¹²⁴ Robert Darnton makes a similar point, though he argues that Rousseau also attempts to transform the nature of reading so that his audience would not be corrupted by intellectual values.¹²⁵ To read his novel Julie and glean its truths, Rousseau contends in its “Preface,” it is necessary to adopt the standpoint of a provincial, a foreigner, or a child.¹²⁶ And, with this problem out of the way, he was free to fully engage his former friends and challenge everything they stood for.

The issue of Rousseau’s apparent heresy raised in philosophe circles proved more difficult to resolve. D’Alembert, Diderot, and others employed several rationalizations and strategies to deescalate the conflict between them and their supposed fellow traveler. First, they denied Rousseau was repudiating the Enlightenment. As several scholars have noted, d’Alembert argues in his Preliminary Discourse that Rousseau’s very participation in the Encyclopedia confirmed he was a friend of the project and did not mean to include it in his critique of the arts and sciences.¹²⁷ More generally, the philosophes just assumed that Rousseau was being clever in an attempt to win a contest. Diderot, in fact, boasted that he provided Rousseau with the insight that the arts and sciences were corrupting and insisted it was merely an attempt to distinguish his essay from the essays of competitors.¹²⁸ He also encouraged his friend to use the discourse as a springboard to attain the fame all the philosophes sought by publishing it. When this happened and the discourse catapulted Rousseau into Europe’s collective consciousness, Diderot eagerly congratulated his friend: “It is succeeding beyond the skies; there is no precedent for a success like it.”¹²⁹ Some scholars, such as Rousseau biographer Raymond Trousson, interpret such congratulations as evidence that the philosophes were not threatened by Rousseau’s essay and did not “take offense neither at the thesis of the Discourse nor the responses.”¹³⁰ For his part, Rousseau was mildly irritated at the eagerness of his friends to explain away the First Discourse as well as their claims that he did not believe a word he wrote.¹³¹ This annoyance, however, did not immediately lead to breaking off his relationships.

Second, both Diderot and d’Alembert cast themselves as defenders of the artisan classes. In the Preliminary Discourse, d’Alembert goes out of his way to criticize the low esteem in which artisans are typically held: “But society, while justly respecting great geniuses for enlightening it, ought not to degrade the hands by which it is served.”¹³² At the end of the discourse, moreover, he chastises Ephraim Chambers, whose Cyclopedia was the model for his and Diderot’s own project, for his mediocre entries on the mechanical arts and his failure to take them as seriously as the liberal arts.¹³³ Diderot, whose father was a successful cutler, likewise calls on society to hold artisans in higher regard in some of his Encyclopedia entries. In “Art,” he laments that the distinction between liberal and mechanical arts has degraded people who are “estimable and helpful,” and “has given a low name to people who are worthy and useful.”¹³⁴ Such sympathies are also evident is in some of Diderot’s literary works and “bourgeois tragedies.”¹³⁵ Granted, d’Alembert and Diderot’s concerns about the dignity of the laboring classes were not unique among the philosophes and cannot with certainty be attributed to Rousseau’s criticisms of their elitism. The issue was in the air before Rousseau penned his dissident discourse. For example, in his 1747 Man a Machine the provocateur Julien Offray de La Mettrie, who can hardly contain his pride in his talents as a scientist and doctor, encourages “those on whom nature has piled her most precious gifts” to “pity those to whom these gifts have been refused.”¹³⁶ To avoid wounding the less talented, he counsels against false modesty, as it would only inflame their resentment. Still, given the developing tiff between Rousseau and Diderot, and others, it is sensible to interpret the aforementioned passages as attempts to assuage their friend’s fears of the Enlightenment.

Third, d’Alembert and Diderot’s defense of the mechanical arts includes concessions to Rousseau’s contentions that the arts and sciences could be corrupting and that intellectual achievement is motivated by a desire for glory and public esteem. In his Preliminary Discourse, d’Alembert grants that “letters certainly contribute to making society more amiable; it would be difficult to prove that because of them men are better and virtue is more common.”¹³⁷ And in a private letter to Rousseau, he accepts the argument that artists and scientists are driven by vanity: “Public esteem is the principal goal of every writer.”¹³⁸ He knows intellectuals can be foolish, self-important, and prone to unproductive factious rivalries. Again from his Preliminary Discourse: “Men of letters ordinarily have nothing in common, except the lack of esteem in which they hold each other.”¹³⁹ Poets, for example, think little of engineers, and vice versa. Diderot takes a similar tack in his Encyclopedia entry on encyclopedias from the fifth volume, entitled, appropriately enough, “Encyclopedia.” He too accepts that enlightenment and virtue are not perfectly compatible. The Encyclopedia should thus aim to teach humans to be virtuous as well as provide accessible knowledge, “because,” he writes, “it is at least as important to make men better as it is to make them less ignorant.”¹⁴⁰ To that end, he encourages people to record all the great deeds of virtuous behavior and inscribe them on a publicly displayed marble column to inspire virtuous behavior. He proposes that as the old monarchs are immortalized through public effigies, statues, or busts, private individuals should be honored in a similar way if they perform extraordinary acts of virtue. If there is any lingering doubt as to whom Diderot is addressing, he makes clear his audience by naming names: “Oh, Rousseau, my dear and worthy friend! I have never been able to refuse the praise you have given me, and I feel that it has increased my devotion to truth as well as my love of virtue.”¹⁴¹

Furthermore, Diderot acknowledges that the scholars who populated France’s various intellectual academies and societies were driven by glory.¹⁴² Tellingly, he describes them in unmistakably Homeric terms. Authors, he claims, “should strive for immortality by writing books.”¹⁴³ He even admits it is part of what drives him and d’Alembert: “And that posterity, while raising to immortality the names of those who will bring man’s knowledge to perfection in the future, will perhaps not disdain to remember our own names.”¹⁴⁴ While he assures his readers that the editors and contributors are self-sacrificing humanists who want to better humankind, his frank acknowledgment of his own vain ambitions and his explicit reference to the Homeric honor culture seem designed to mollify Rousseau by conceding his criticisms.¹⁴⁵

The Philosophes Strike Back

Nonetheless, no matter how heartfelt these concessions, there were limits to how far Diderot and d’Alembert would go in ameliorating Rousseau’s concerns.¹⁴⁶ D’Alembert in particular refuses to concede Rousseau’s argument that knowledge undermines virtue, contending that vice is much more dangerous when combined with ignorance.¹⁴⁷ Moreover, both d’Alembert and Diderot denigrate the mechanical arts in the very same essays in which they defend them. D’Alembert contends that the mechanical arts require little ability, as most have been simplified to a “routine” that most people can easily master.¹⁴⁸ As a consequence, jobs in the mechanical arts usually attract individuals from impoverished backgrounds. For his part, Diderot argues that progress in the mechanical arts is hampered by an irrational, almost superstitious, obsession with guarding trade secrets, which hampers progress. The mechanical arts, he thinks, also need the assistance of the natural sciences if they are to progress and develop. So, even as they go out of their way to defend the mechanical arts, d’Alembert and Diderot cannot help but belittle them. In other writings, they can be downright contemptuous of provincials and the working classes. In defending Voltaire’s attempt to establish a theater in Geneva, d’Alembert condescendingly asks: “Why begrudge men, destined almost exclusively by nature for crying and dying, some recreational diversions that help them bear the bitterness or the insipidity of their existence?”¹⁴⁹ Diderot likewise was not above making mean-spirited comments. In one of his nastier remarks, he wrote in a letter to his lover Sophie Volland that “mediocre men live and die like brutes.”¹⁵⁰ “The sense of the inequality of men,” one commentator observes, “… was deeply rooted in him.”¹⁵¹ Even some of his sympathizers concede that when Diderot tries to be complimentary toward the peasants in his plays, his portrayals are less than compelling and betray “a wide gulf between observer and observed.”¹⁵²

Beyond their deep-seated contempt for ordinary Europeans, the philosophes refused to back down from their insistence that they were the true aristocracy. Like the leading men of the Renaissance, they constructed a narrative in which they were the most important social class in modern Europe.¹⁵³ As Darnton has established, they defined knowledge such that the whole of human history was a product only of great kings and great geniuses.¹⁵⁴ Naturally, they had no doubt that they belonged in the latter category and believed that they alone were responsible for the progress of the species.¹⁵⁵ Mere months before Rousseau wrote the Second Discourse, d’Alembert penned an essay, entitled “Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands,” that specifically tried to make this case. Early in the essay, he beseeches the courtly aristocracy to recognize the superiority of the men of letters and encourages his fellow intellectuals to assume their rightful place at the top of the social and cultural ladder (though he sternly advises them to avoid politics).¹⁵⁶ At times, d’Alembert aggressively challenges the status of the courtly aristocracy. He was particularly incensed at the paternalistic relationship between the men of letters and the nobles, and followed his good friend Voltaire by reminding the aristocrats they were not superior to the men of letters but, indeed, were indebted to them. He writes: “The wise man does not forget that if there is an external respect which talents owe to titles, there is another and more real one which titles owe to talents.”¹⁵⁷ Moreover, in the preface to volume three of the Encyclopedia, d’Alembert mockingly informs princes and nobles that they will find themselves included in the Encyclopedia only if they earn inclusion, “because the Encyclopedia owes everything to talents, nothing to titles, and that is the history of the human spirit and not the vanity of men.”¹⁵⁸ The other philosophes fully embraced this project. Voltaire echoes d’Alembert’s call in a 1755 entry for the Encyclopedia, “Men of Letters,” in which he repeats the narrative from the Preliminary Discourse that the philosophes were anointed successors to the Renaissance and were charged with instructing and refining the species. Diderot, Rousseau’s best friend among them, also repeatedly calls for the elevation of the intellectuals in French society.¹⁵⁹ Furthermore, in a famous passage of Le fils naturel, he links this glorification of the talented to civic virtue, arguing that the talented have a unique obligation to serve society. In the play, Constance tells Dorval: “You have received the rarest talents, and you must render them to society. Let the useless move about without object, embarrass society without serving it, and distance themselves from it. They can. But you, I dare say, cannot without it being a crime.”¹⁶⁰ Notably, Dorval is instructed to serve society, not the government. His responsibility to humanity is much more important than formulating public policy and executing laws.

As with their view of the mechanical arts, however, the men of letters were of two minds in their aristocratic aspirations. If they wished to become a predominant class, they at times were respectful of the courtly aristocracy and sought some sort of fusion with it.¹⁶¹ Toward the end of his “Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands,” d’Alembert accepts that the nobles should still govern political life, and occasionally he less aggressively asserts the social value of the men of letters vis-à-vis the nobles. In one concessionary line, he proclaims that “a man of letters, full of probity and talent, is without comparison more worthy than an incapable minister or a dishonored aristocrat.”¹⁶² Presumably, the men of letters cannot claim such superiority over the better specimens of noble stock. One reason for d’Alembert’s softer stance is that many of the men of letters believed that the upper classes, crowned heads of Europe included, would be much more receptive to the message of the Enlightenment than the masses.¹⁶³ D’Alembert was increasingly frustrated “with the apathy and indifference of the masses who are interested in neither toleration, freedom, nor enlightenment.”¹⁶⁴ In this attitude, he follows Voltaire, who believed that 90 percent of humanity did not merit enlightenment.¹⁶⁵ In addition, some philosophes, most notably Voltaire, plainly enjoyed the status and luxury that attended life in polite society (though he too could be sharply critical of Paris, as evidenced by chapter 22 of Candide). Nevertheless, in the basic narrative of the philosophes, the nobles were the bad guys and were supposed to be supplanted. The truce suggested here is offered only as a matter of practicality and amour de soi-même.

The most systematic and detailed philosophe response to Rousseau is probably Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, which was written a few years after the contretemps had run its course. In the dialogue, geniuses are defended as socially beneficial and often virtuous, while the ordinary masses are portrayed as overwhelmed by amour-propre and completely vice ridden. The only silver lining for the masses is that they are driven to their behavior by the nobles, who preside over a cruel economy that forces people to behave poorly to meet their needs. Diderot’s dialogue, in fact, can be read as a point-by-point rejection of the narrative of intellectual life Rousseau laid out in two discourses and his concerns about the overvaluation of talent. Diderot addresses a number of themes and concepts prominent in Rousseau’s early writings, such as the relationship between virtue and talent, amour-propre and amour de soi-même, economic inequality, the plight of the poor, and the moral depravity in Paris. Given that the dialogue is rarely interpreted as a reply to Rousseau, it is worth analyzing in detail.¹⁶⁶

The first substantive discussion of the dialogue is about the social value of genius and talent.¹⁶⁷ Although Diderot never mentions his name, several arguments by Rousseau are subjected to careful scrutiny and do not hold up particularly well. They come out of the mouth of the knavish nephew, who ironically represents everything Rousseau hates about Paris, and are decisively refuted. The nephew-lui begins the dialogue by trying to make the Rousseauian case that genius is both useless and dangerous—useless because no true social good results from it and dangerous because geniuses are responsible for much of the evil in the world. He admits, however, that he has little knowledge of history and cannot verify his sweeping assertions. He is simply engaging in idle speculation. Moi, a philosopher who seems to be a stand-in for Diderot the philosophe, has little trouble swatting away his claims and makes several convincing counterarguments.

Geniuses are of tremendous social value, Diderot-moi claims, and help the masses understand their prejudices and errors. In direct contradiction to Rousseau’s claims in the First Discourse, he contends they also promote patriotism. He avers that people only honor nations that produce genius. Interestingly, one of his formulations is Homeric. Referencing the dramatist Jean Racine, he states: “A thousand years from now he will draw tears, will be admired by men all over the earth, will inspire compassion, human kindness, love. People will wonder who he was, from what country, and France will be envied.”¹⁶⁸ Like Achilles, Racine will earn cultural immortality through his literary genius. Naturally, Diderot-moi defends this fact in democratic terms. After conceding that Racine was by reputation a man of low moral character, he constructs a cost-benefit analysis in which he proves that nonetheless he is responsible for far more good than harm. Frenchmen, and indeed all Europeans, for a millennium will take enjoyment and become better people as a result of his plays. Only a few individuals, by contrast, had to endure him as a person. The same is true of Voltaire and even nephew-lui’s uncle. If a few people are hurt by Voltaire’s thin-skinned replies to criticism or Uncle Rameau’s selfishness, the nation as a whole is likely to benefit for centuries to come. Furthermore, in some instances, the very vices people despise in geniuses are partly responsible for their wonderful achievements. Diderot-moi speculates that the talents of the painter Jean-Baptiste Geuze and those of Voltaire cannot be decoupled from their vanity and hypersensitivity to criticism, respectively.

In addition, he quickly disposes of the claim that geniuses are evil and cause much of the misery in the world. While they suffer from vices, they are no more vice ridden than the population at large. Fools are no less likely to be knaves than are geniuses. The only difference is that the vices of the masses do not produce great cultural treasures. Finally, Diderot-moi convinces the nephew that critics of genius hypocritically pretend to be geniuses themselves and thus do not make sincere criticisms. It is easy enough to imagine that Diderot had Rousseau in mind when devising this argument.

After adequately defending geniuses against the charges they are useless and dangerous, Diderot proceeds to blame the masses and the wealthy for amour-propre and the moral degeneracy in Paris. He develops his case through the nephew, who hypocritically reveals that he would like nothing more than to be a genius almost immediately after suggesting they are evil. The nephew, however, has no hope of attaining the status of genius in the conventional way. His musical talent is middling, and he cannot follow in his uncle’s foot steps. Undeterred, he invents a new form of genius that he insists is just as real and admirable as his uncle’s. He boasts to Diderot-moi that he is a “master scoundrel” who excels in vice. That is, he makes a good living pretending to be a fool so he can live off wealthy and noble patrons. Strangely, wealthy Parisian families like having fools around. They are a source of endless amusement and presumably liven up tedious dinner parties. According to the nephew-lui, there is a science to being a parasite. He has to master the art of “pantomime,” which requires that he know how to lie, forswear, flatter, gossip, diffuse controversy, perfectly time his comments, and so forth. There is even a physical side to this playacting. The nephew-lui claims to have developed a variety of facial expressions and forms of physical posture to help make himself agreeable to his hosts. In general, his genius requires him to have a keen understanding of human nature. He must have an acute sense of what people need to hear, and how and when they need to hear it. Thus, while he appears to be an ignorant, lazy, impudent ne’er-do-well, he in fact is an expert at manipulation.

In making this argument, Diderot relies heavily on Rousseau’s psychological concepts and critique of Paris. The nephew-lui’s moral psychology is described as a combination of amour-propre and amour de soi-même. The desire of the nephew to be a genius appears to result from amour-propre. He admits he is “full of envy” and resentment when he witnesses genius like his uncle and desperately wants to be praised as a unique member of the species. He also concedes that he likes hearing salacious gossip about geniuses because it lessens his envy and, he says, “brings me closer to them; makes me bear my mediocrity more easily.”¹⁶⁹ In general, he wants to expose all great things as mere vanity and pull all decent people to pieces.¹⁷⁰ He likewise takes great pride in playing a fool rather than being one and taking advantage of the rich. He insists to Diderot-moi that his patrons are the real fools and knaves, and delights in recounting an anecdote about one of his fellow genius-scoundrels, the Renegade from Avignon, who gets his hands on his Jewish patron’s money by turning him over to the Inquisition. The nephew even admits, to foreshadow one of Rousseau’s arguments I explain in Chapter 3, that his amour-propre results in a new desire—the libido dominandi, or the desire to control and dominate people. When he contemplates the possibility of attaining wealth and power, he proudly announces, “I love bossing people and I will boss them.”¹⁷¹

Yet, the nephew eventually confesses that he chooses vice over virtue and being a fool over being a musician for reasons best explained by amour de soi-même. A life of vice, he claims, is more lucrative than one of virtue. As the dialogue progresses, he seems to care less about being a genius and more about money. At one point, he asserts to Diderot-moi: “Gold, gold is everything, and everything without gold, is nothing.”¹⁷² Rather than defend his chosen occupation on the grounds that it is a form of genius, he suggests it is the surest way to support himself. The nephew explains that the Parisian economy is “hell” for many people. It is unforgiving to everyone but the rich and talented, and a large portion of the city’s inhabitants live lives of desperation and poverty. Mediocre musicians like himself cannot hope to make an honest living. Thus, he opts for vice and hypocrisy as the most reliable means with which to avoid poverty and find some enjoyment in life. Best to playact the fool than make an honest living as a music tutor.

Diderot departs from Rousseau’s view of amour-propre in another important respect as well. He has the nephew reject the idea that amour-propre is born of society. Rather, it is a fact of nature that needs no societal catalyst. Referring to his young son as a “little savage,” which seems to be a reference to Rousseau’s primitive humans in the Second Discourse, the nephew asserts that his son “he would of his own accord want to be richly dressed, magnificently fed, liked by men and loved by women, and concentrate on himself all the goods of life.”¹⁷³ Nature makes us prefer ourselves to and wished to be esteemed by everyone, not civilization.

In any case, much of Diderot’s portrait of the nephew is consistent with the account of moral psychology and the characterization of Paris by Rousseau. His narrative is constructed, however, so he can defend the opposite politics. Specifically, he seeks to exonerate geniuses, which presumably includes the philosophes, from Rousseau’s indictment that they are responsible for the corruptions of the age. Contrary to Rousseau, the intellectuals in Rameau’s Nephew are not considered to be the best of the species and leaders of French culture. Instead, they are “queer people” who are badly out of step with the predominant values of the day. Although they are not perfect and include numerous bad actors among their ranks, Diderot still believes they tend to be as virtuous as the population at large and have more social value. The villains in his dialogue are the nobles and the wealthy, who hoard all of society’s resources and reward knaves and vice rather than virtue and talent.

Finally, it is arguable that Diderot-moi’s proposed solution to the nephew’s unfortunate predicament is a veiled criticism of Rousseau. At the conclusion of the dialogue, the nephew is encouraged by Diderot-moi to take Diogenes as a role model.¹⁷⁴ Rather than slavishly conform to Paris convention and value vice and gold, he could stop being driven by both amour-propre and amour de soi-même and follow Diogenes by dedicating himself to principles such as moderation and virtue. Notably, Rousseau was viewed by many of his contemporaries as a modern-day Diogenes.¹⁷⁵ Perhaps this reference is a reminder to Rousseau that he has failed to live up to his own philosophy. He still cares too much what people think of him and conforms to the values of the city he claims to ignore and despise.

The Abbé Petit in d’Holbach’s Salon

Rousseau had ample reason to distrust the defenses d’Alembert and Diderot give of the mechanical arts and the artisan classes. Their support for the average person is at best uneven and at worse insincere. Even if Rousseau had not read the letters and writings of his former friends (and he could not have read Rameau’s Nephew), he personally witnessed their contemptuous attitudes toward the masses and working classes. There is one particular experience, in fact, that perfectly sums up Rousseau’s criticisms of Paris and his defense of provincial life—one recorded by Baron d’Holbach himself. On Shrove Tuesday in 1754, Rousseau attended a reading on tragedy by the Abbé Petit, a provincial from Normandy, set up by Diderot at d’Holbach’s salon. The reading was a disaster from beginning to end, as the abbé began spouting out numerous absurdities on the nature of tragedy and quickly revealed he was utterly lacking in literary talent. Rather than politely allowing the abbé to finish and sending him on his way without any unnecessary encouragement, the attending members of the d’Holbach coterie were determined to humiliate him. They put “up a mock show of admiration for the wretched author’s tragedy.”¹⁷⁶ Rousseau was horrified by his friends’ puerile behavior, and he not so gently informed the author of the humiliating truth of the situation. Rather than thank Rousseau for his candor, however, the clueless abbé turned his anger on him, and the two had to be separated.

Rousseau’s Anglo biographers, while intrigued by the story, usually fail to appreciate its significance. Typically, it is read in light of Rousseau’s fraying relationship with the philosophes.¹⁷⁷ The content of the dispute is far more revealing, however, and ties in with Rousseau’s arguments at the end of the First Discourse. The poor abbé becomes the object of ridicule for the sole reason that he lacks literary talent. The philosophes in the room affirm themselves based on their superior talent. And, worst of all, the value of the abbé’s personality would invariably decline in his own eyes if he understood and accepted the truth of the situation. If he would accept the truth, he would be led to erroneously conclude that his contributions to the world as a religious leader are meaningless and that his life has value only if he is a writer. For Rousseau, this must have been a cruel case in which life imitated art, and it probably reminded him of his worry that in a culture enamored of the arts and sciences a great clothier would be shamed into quitting his trade to become “a bad versifier or an inferior Geometer”¹⁷⁸—or, in this case, an awful literary theorist.

Even if d’Alembert, Diderot, and the other philosophes were genuinely ambivalent about the mechanical arts, their occasional praise did nothing to soften the implications of judging people by their intellectual abilities. Rousseau’s position is that the philosophes could not simultaneously celebrate talent as the true measure of human worth and respect those without it, such as artisans and peasants. Moreover, their confidence that they had unique talents produced in the philosophes a subtle arrogance and contempt for the general mass of humanity. How much compassion can one expect, after all, from those who believe that the fate of the species rests on their shoulders? Rousseau asked the philosophes to repudiate themselves, and that they would not do. They would become who they were. Any concessions made to Rousseau masked their true intent: to double down on their original claims.

In the years right after the publication of the First Discourse, then, Rousseau found himself in a debate not so much about the value of the arts and sciences as about the social value of the artists and scientists themselves. The philosophes, he realized, were promoting themselves as a social class as much as they were promoting the knowledge they sought to catalogue and began to adopt the attitudes of classical aristocrats. Included in this aristocratic glorification of the talented was a healthy, if not always publicly expressed, contempt for average people, who according to the new value system were encouraged to view themselves through the eyes of those who looked down on them. The psychological and existential consequences of this project, Rousseau well understood, were devastating to all but a small sliver of the population. As his dispute with the philosophes developed, the concept of amour-propre would increasingly become one of the most effective arrows in his quiver.

Conclusion