Considering the out-sized influence of Rousseau and some of his disciples on our civilization, his life and some events surrounding his death are marked by ironies. There are ironies in some of today's young leftists which remind me of certain stories about Rousseau.
Do you agree with the graphic representation above?
Rousseau's Children and Education
Rousseau’s book Emile, or On Education, is a notable proto-modern take on education. It was one of the first to move the focus of schooling away from teacher-centred instruction and towards child-centred curiosity and discovery. It also included a take on religion that led to the book being banned and burned. And it also included a take on female education (they shouldn’t be educated, lest they take over!)
The Taliban might agree!
The elder statesperson of French philosophy and letters at the time, Voltaire, was one notable critic. Rousseau, funnily enough, was an admirer of Voltaire. but he received mostly condemnation and bad reviews from Voltaire in return. Voltaire despised Emile, except for the anti-religious bit, which he called “among the boldest ever known.” Voltaire had written his own religious treatise – The Sermon of the Fifty – under a pseudonym. Rousseau outed him as the author, to Voltaire’s dismay. Time for some revenge!
Voltaire dug up a dirty secret of Rousseau’s, one that had been doing the rounds but had never been made public. Rousseau, that paragon of educational theory, was in fact the father of five children. And all five of those children had been abandoned at a foundling hospital at Rousseau’s urging. Voltaire published an anonymous pamphlet bringing this awful secret to light.
Rousseau’s partner, Marie-Thérèse Levasseur, was from a formerly prominent family that had fallen on hard times, and when she gave birth Rousseau (and Levasseur’s own mother) urged her to send their son to an orphanage. He claimed it was to preserve her honour (ew), but Rousseau later claimed it was because he was worried that the child would be better educated there (ew ew). Four more children followed, each following their elder sibling to the foundling hospital (ew ew ew). Rousseau later tried to track them down, but by that time they were probably all dead (ew ew ew ew).
This is what Rousseau had to say about the whole ugly affair:
Five children were born of [our] liaison, and all were placed in the Foundling’s Hospital, and with so little thought of the possibility of their identification that I did not even keep a record of their dates of birth [or of their gender]. For several years now, the self-reproach which my neglectful behavior has aroused in me has disturbed my peace of mind and I am about to die [a frequent condition in Rousseau’s life] without being able to remedy it, much to the mother’s and my own regret.
Failing to keep a record of his childrens' genders seems rather modern!
Rousseau's Influence
Do you recognize characteristics of any young leftists in this short summary from Britannica's biography?
Jean-Jacques Rousseau (born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerland—died July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France) was a Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation.
Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. His thought marked the end of the European Enlightenment (the “Age of Reason”
. He propelled political and ethical thinking into new channels. His reforms revolutionized taste, first in music, then in the other arts. He had a profound impact on people’s way of life; he taught parents to take a new interest in their children and to educate them differently; he furthered the expression of emotion rather than polite restraint in friendship and love. He introduced the cult of religious sentiment among people who had discarded religious dogma. He opened people’s eyes to the beauties of nature, and he made liberty an object of almost universal aspiration.
The entire biography is quite extensive and academic, however.
Does any of the summary above reinforce what Voltaire said? “No one has ever employed so much intellect to persuade men to be beasts. In reading your work one is seized with a desire to walk on all fours.”
Do "furries" come to anyone's mind?
Rousseau's Death
Reportedly, after he wrote Emile, or On Education, Rousseau was forced to become a fugitive from the French government due to official uproar over the book, though he was never imprisoned. He still had patrons. He died in July of 1778.
From A Daily Dose of History, Oct. 11:
By the time of his death in 1778 at age 66, Jean-Jacques Rousseau was world famous as a philosopher, novelist, composer, and all-around polymath. He was buried at midnight, by torchlight, on the Isle of Poplars, a small artificial island in a park in Ermenonville, France, where he had spent the last six weeks of his life. Rousseau’s tomb immediately became a place of pilgrimage for his admirers, but his remains were not to stay long on the peaceful little island.
Rousseau’s writings and philosophy had a profound impact on the French Revolution, especially among the most radical of the revolutionaries. Maximilien Robespierre, perhaps the most bloodthirsty of the Jacobins, appealed directly to Rousseau’s philosophy to justify the Terror, relying on Rousseau’s argument that the “general will” must prevail over individual private will, through the use of “universal compulsory force,” if necessary. Although Rousseau would most probably have disapproved, the Jacobins cited his work as thousands of heads deemed to contain insufficiently radical minds rolled down the guillotine chute.
But devotion to Rousseau did not die with the end of the Terror. In September 1794, less than two months after Robespierre himself was guillotined, the French Assembly proclaimed Rousseau to be a “Prophet of Jacobinism,” and voted to have his remains reinterred in the Panthéon.
Originally intended to be a new Church of Saint Genevieve (the patron saint of Paris), the building that would become the Panthéon was completed just as the French Revolution was getting underway. As part of the seizure of all church property, the National Assembly confiscated the building just before it was to be dedicated and declared that it would henceforth be a “temple of the nation,” where the “great men” of the nation were to be interred and honored. (About a year later revolutionaries burned the relics and remains of St. Genevieve and tossed the ashes unceremoniously into the Seine.)
In July 1791, Voltaire became the first of the great men to be reinterred in the Panthéon. Jean Paul Marat followed, after his assassination in 1793, only to have his remains ejected after he was later declared to be an “enemy of the revolution,” rather than a “great man.” In an effort to avoid such embarrassments in the future, in 1795 the Assembly passed a law providing that no one could be interred in the Panthéon until he had been dead for at least ten years.
But back to Rousseau. In October 1794 his remains were taken from the tomb on the Isle of Poplars and placed into a wagon for the thirty-mile journey to the Panthéon. A 12-horse team pulled the wagon, which also carried a statute of Rosseau, while the inhabitants of the villages where he wrote his most famous works walked along solemnly behind it, one of them carrying a copy his book “The Social Contract” on a velvet cushion. In the days leading up to the reinterment ceremony, public lectures praised him and throughout the country songs and plays were composed and performed in his honor.
Finally, on October 11, 1794, two hundred thirty-one years ago today, in a ceremony that one observer noted had a (perhaps ironic) “religious atmosphere,” the remains of Jean Jacques Rousseau were interred in the Panthéon. Rousseau’s remains were placed directly across from those of his former hero and philosophical rival Voltaire, who after reading Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality wrote, “No one has ever employed so much intellect to persuade men to be beasts. In reading your work one is seized with a desire to walk on all fours.”
I find the references to religious sentiment in writings about Rousseau to be sort of odd and interesting. What do you notice?
Weekend
The Week In Pictures: What Shutdown? Edition
The shutdown rages, ostensibly, but not many seem to notice. When will it end? I suppose when Chuck Schumer’s polling shows him pulling even with Ocasio-Cortez, now that he has stood up to the dreaded Trump.
In other more significant news, a cease fire finally came to Gaza. It is bittersweet: good to have the remaining hostages returned, bad that Hamas still exists. Whether any of the remaining points of President Trump’s peace plan are ever implemented, remains to be seen. But memesters gave Trump credit for saving the lives that could be saved.
Meanwhile, battles raged in Portland and Chicago. The Democratic Party and its judges came out foursquare for criminality, in what some see as a clarifying moment.
And, oh yes–meme creators are not yet done with the sombrero. Sombreros may attain a permanent place in the panoply of memedom. So here goes:
Okay then, sombreros:
Music
Hope you have something nice planned for this weekend.
This is the Thread before the Gardening Thread.
Last week's thread, October 4, How, exactly, do people "disagree better"?
Comments are closed so you won't ban yourself by trying to comment on a week-old thread. But don't try it anyway.