Republican Salvation: Rousseau's Civic Transformation & Moral Preservation

• In Event: Poster Session: Normative Political Theory

Abstract

Recent work on the normative prescriptions of republican thought has grappled with the implications of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s own republic priorities. Neo-republican theories of freedom as non-domination, as studied by theorists like Philip Pettit, largely remove Rousseau from these discussions by claiming his politics eliminate space for a willing and judging citizen. Frederick Neuhouser’s recent recent book, Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality, comes into tension with Pettit’s account. Instead, Neuhouser proposes that Rousseau’s conceptions of freedom and authority in the Second Discourse indeed abide by the parameters of non-domination and frame his critique of inequality in society. My project interjects in this discussion by contending that while Rousseau’s political theory is not compatible with freedom as non-domination, this tension is productive in assessing the politics of education and influence in republican political thought. I make two principle claims from this assessment. First, I demonstrate Rousseau’s incompatibility with non-domination theory by analyzing his deployment of “sublime,” “rare,” but mortal figures like the lawgiver in the Social Contract and the tutor in Emile. Both the lawgiver and the tutor influence and transform the moral impulses of their subjects through external, arbitrary authority—a relational inequality that signals domination for neo-republican theorists. Further, as illustrated by Sophie in Emile, Rousseau does not exclude the possibility of abiding by conventional practices that infringe upon the independent wishes of individual citizens. In the case of Sophie, her position as a citizen and woman binds her duties to both Emile and the nation, in turn framing her civic performance under an assumed republican femininity.

Rousseau’s inextricable incompatibility with non-domination theory lends room for the second claim of my project. Rousseau’s contributions to republican political thought reinforces the importance of carefully considering the diverse prescriptions of republican politics. Rather than reconciling Rousseau with theories of freedom as non-domination, studies of republican thought must account for the multiplicity of ways in which the republican vision was deployed throughout ancient and early modern Europe. In the case of Rousseau his own republican priorities left space for both subjection to a virtuous leader and free will in the citizen. This characteristically paradoxical conception is best understood by Rousseau’s political priorities. Rousseau’s republican project is most invested in altering, and thus saving, the moral trajectory of humanity despite the inescapable ills of their civil condition. The lawgiver and the tutor, then, are figures of rare but possible salvation. Subjection to a superior being for Rousseau, may simply be the price one must pay to reach a virtue and enlightenment. I hope this project may spur further discussion on contextually-dependent accounts of republican thinking and their possible contributions for assessing the needs of our own political world.

Author

• Arturo Chang, Northwestern University