Jean Jacques Rousseau, A Friend of Virtue

228 Pages·2003·18.846 MB·English

by  Joseph R. Reisert

JEAN-JACQUES RoussEAu

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ean.Ja cques
Rousseau
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A Friend of Virtue
JOSEPH R. REISERT
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
Ithaca and London
Copyright © 2003 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this
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First published 2003 by Cornell University Press
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication
Reisert, Joseph R.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau: a friend of virtue I Joseph R. Reisert.
p. em.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN o-8014-4096-3 (cloth)
1. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712-1778-Ethics. 2. Virtue
History-18th century. 3· Ethics, Modem-18th century.
I. Title.
B2138.E8 R45 2003
170'.92-dc21 2002152o61
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Contents
Preface ix
Abbreviations xiii
CHAPTER 1. The Problem of Virtue 1
CHAPTER 2. The Political Argument 28
CHAPTER 3· The Ethical Argument 53
CHAPTER 4· Friendship and Love 78
CHAPTER 5· Justice, Happiness, and Virtue 106
CHAPTER 6. Emile's Moral Education 141
CHAPTER 7· The Author as Tutor 168
CHAPTER 8. Rousseauian Virtue and Contemporary Liberalism 185
Bibliography 197
Index 205

Preface
WHENEVER I READ ROUSSEAU, I feel that he is speaking directly to me
not in the way that all great thinkers who address universal human con
cerns necessarily speak to each reader because they speak to all-but in a
more personal way. That feeling has persisted from my first encounter with
Rousseau down to the present. I still wince when I read his assault on the
vanity of intellectuals in the Discourse on the Sciences and Arts; I still cringe
when I read his critique of avarice in the Discourse on Inequality; I still thrill
to the dream of freedom when I read the Social Contract; I still cry when I
read Emile. Others, of course, respond differently-sometimes with anger,
indignation, or even outrage. But no one can read Rousseau and be un
moved. That is just as he wished.
Rousseau addresses each of his readers personally because he addresses
the concerns, small and great, that each of us must confront for ourselves,
in our own daily existence. He writes about the everyday challenges of the
moral life, about how hard it can be to live up to our own ideals, and about
what steps we can take in order to live happier and better lives. He writes
about the everyday challenges of our living together in political commu
nity, about the difficulty of preserving our freedom, both from the power
ful, institutional forces that threaten to overwhelm us from the outside and
from our own vices, which threaten to destroy our liberty from within. And
Rousseau addresses these concerns-my concerns-with passion and in
tensity, as if they matter more than anything else in the world.
Rousseau takes with utmost seriousness the ancient idea that we reflect
about action, not primarily for the sake of understanding, but for the sake
of acting well. This conviction shapes all his works and accounts for their
peculiar duality. On the surface, the seductive beauty of Rousseau's prose
beckons toward an easy acceptance of the moral advice he offers. But with
the brilliance of his ingenious paradoxes Rousseau invites-demands-a
measure of philosophical reflection. On first reading, Rousseau's books tell
us how to live and show us how we are failing to live as we know we ought.
On subsequent readings, if we attend carefully to his arguments, we find
that they also articulate and defend a model of human nature that explains
why we find it so hard to live as we ought and shows us how we can be
moved to do what reason requires. My aim in this book is to explain this
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