Jonathan Marks

Rousseau's Discriminating Defense of Compassion

Political theorists from Martha Nussbaum to Amitai Etzioni appeal to compassion as a basis that liberalism otherwise lacks for refraining from exploiting and even for helping others. However, critics like Clifford Orwin and Richard Boyd have raised this question: is compassion too weak and undiscriminating to rely on in politics? Jean-Jacques Rousseaus account of compassion helps answer it. Rousseau understands compassion as a useful manifestation of the otherwise dangerous desire to extend the self and show signs of power. Consequently, he considers compassions relative weakness a strength and explains how it can be supplemented and complemented by other, independent motives for serving others, including gratitude, friendship, and obligation. Compassions weakness also makes it less likely than self-love, narrowly conceived, to overwhelm reason. Rousseau excels compassions contemporary defenders in his awareness of the complex relationship between compassion and other social passions and of the dangers that his understanding of compassion addresses.

The Divine Instinct? Rousseau and Conscience

Political theorists have long disagreed about what Rousseaus account of conscience means. While most approaches to that account focus on the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar,” this essay focuses on another aspect of Emile , the development of conscience in Emile himself. First, I argue that conscience is transformed from problem to solution when self-love is transformed, first into gratitude, then, with the aid of religion, rhetoric, and imagination, into duty. Those who insist that conscience is rooted in passion are right, though that passion is not necessarily low. Second, those who argue that Rousseaus teaching on conscience, as set forth in the First Discourse and elsewhere, is a salutary untruth are right. Emiles conscience shouts “virtue!” not because conscience always does so in uncorrupted souls once they enter the moral world but because it has had voice lessons from Emiles governor, who makes liberal use of illusion and rhetoric.

Rousseau’s Critique of Locke’s Education for Liberty

Locke and Rousseau both address the question of how best to educate children, who love both freedom and power, to be free adults who submit only to reason. Contrary to the common view that Rousseau’s disagreement with Locke stems from Rousseau’s radical understanding of freedom, I argue that the disagreement stems from Rousseau’s view, for which he argues convincingly, that Lockean education cannot secure even Lockean freedom. This reconception of Rousseau’s disagreement with Locke makes Rousseau difficult to dismiss and leaves us at an impasse with respect to the question of how to educate for liberty.

Who Lost Nature? Rousseau and Rousseauism

Some of the most profound political consequences for which Jean-Jacques Rousseaus thought is credited or blamed rest on his justification of nature, or physiodicy. That physiodicy, in turn, rests on a distinction between nature and history, which allows Rousseau to declare nature innocent of both the miseries human beings suffer in society and the difficulties that drive human beings into society in the first place. In this essay, I argue that Rousseau knowingly undermines the distinction between nature and history that he proposes early in the Second Discourse, and that he ultimately conceives nature not as a prehistoric beginning but as an end or perfection. Rousseaus thought, properly understood, moderates the extravagant hopes for social reform his successors entertained.

Rousseau's Use of the Jewish Example

Rousseau refers to the Jews in major and minor works, setting them alongside the Greeks and Romans as models for republican politics. Yet Rousseaus use of the Jewish example has been almost entirely neglected. I argue that this example, which for Rousseau stands between paganism and Christianity, plays a unique role in Rousseaus political thought. In particular, Judaism, as Rousseau presents it, surpasses Christianity in its this-worldly emphasis on compassion and justice, an emphasis that even the classical republics that are Rousseaus usual models for social and political well-being cannot match. It does so, moreover, without fostering the dogmatism that, along with Christian otherworldiness, has, in Rousseaus estimation, helped to spoil European politics.