Jean-Jacques Rousseau is the political philosopher of cultural warfare, but it is hard to know whose side he takes. He identifies himself with Socrates, a hero of secular progressives, and proposes that men like Descartes and Newton should advise kings and instruct the people. But he also declares that common men already have the most important knowledge and appears to identify with those who would burn all books aside from the Gospel, since such books must be either superfluous or irreligious. Because Rousseau consciously embraces both the scientist and the yahoo, he reopens, even for us, the question of how knowledge is best pursued and used in democratic polities. But the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts (1750), or First Discourse, in which he strikes this strange pose, has been little studied, even though in the Second Letter to Malesherbes (1762), he singles it out as a principal work.

Jeff J. S. Black takes Rousseau at his word by giving the First Discourse its first book-length treatment. He seeks “to understand the meaning of Rousseau's critique of science” (p. 3). He takes him at his word, too, by offering a remarkably close reading, often drawing our attention to individual words and devoting entire chapters to a handful of paragraphs. This method, though it might strike some as peculiar, is appropriate for Rousseau, who claims in the Preface to a Second Letter to Bordes (1753) to “have often taken great pains to try to put into a Sentence, a line, a word tossed off as if by chance the result of a long sequence of reflections.” Black supports his careful reading with close attention to Rousseau's understanding of his audience, to Rousseau's sources, to his other works—especially his replies to critics of the First Discourse—and even to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century dictionaries. Because Black has been so thorough and careful, not only is his book a superb introduction to the First Discourse but it is also indispensable to those who have read it many times.

Black argues that “Rousseau's critique of science is primarily a critique of popular enlightenment” (p. 10). Rousseau opposes not science but popular reverence for science, which substitutes mental agility for virtue, patriotism, and piety as the most estimable possession. But Black's main contribution is that he recovers the psychological underpinnings of the conflict between the boosters of science and the yahoos, and the surprising similarity between them. Here, his careful reading reveals that each is moved by the “need for esteem” (p. 53). Indeed, every human being, from the citizen to the savage to Rousseau himself, feels that need, which, in Rousseau's view, animates societies (pp. 197–98). Both the politics of reason and the politics of virtue, patriotism, and piety address this need for esteem by distracting us from the constraining character of not just monarchical politics but politics altogether. In making this surprising claim, Black merely follows Rousseau, who exempts no politics from the charge of putting people in “iron chains” and stifling the sentiment of “original liberty” (pp. 53, 245; First Discourse, paragraph 9). Both sides in Rousseau's culture war are prideful, deceived, and in need of correction; he distinguishes them from one another only by the relative stability of the objects to which they are attached and, consequently, by the unity and vigor of soul they potentially foster (pp. 62, 267). The politics of virtue, patriotism, and piety attaches its adherents to relatively stable objects of esteem, while the politics of reason attaches its adherents to relatively unstable ones. If Black is right, Rousseau's “account of moral purity and corruption is strangely amoral” (p. 267) and implies that he embraces science, or at least psychology, his rejection of popular enlightenment notwithstanding.

Black demonstrates the virtues of close reading. But even his own central argument raises the question of why certain parts of Rousseau's argument can be discerned only by such a reading. Vanity is among the most important terms in Black's analysis, since it denotes that need for esteem which attaches us to unstable objects (p. 199). Rousseau himself uses the term vanité just twice in the First Discourse, and neither use suggests its overwhelming importance. So Black is compelled to rely on Rousseau's use of the term “vain” in phrases like the “vain sciences,” even when it seems to mean “useless” rather than “full of vanity” (p. 112). To be sure, the term is related to vanity and Rousseau may use it, even where it seems to mean useless, to indicate in a subtle way that vanity is the root of civilized corruption. But Black offers no reason, and I know of no reason, why Rousseau would need to denounce vanity subtly, when there is nothing controversial or dangerous about denouncing it. It is hard not to conclude either that vanity matters less to Rousseau than Black thinks or that Rousseau is less careful than Black thinks.

It is a virtue of Black's reading that he pays attention to individual terms, but he does not always explain why he emphasizes some more than others. Although Rousseau says that the mind “has its needs” and that the arts and sciences provide for them, he never says, as Black does, that the “mental need on which the pleasantness of society is founded is the mental need for esteem” (p. 53; First Discourse, paragraph 8). Black draws on two sources to support his interpretation. The first is Rousseau's peculiar claim that the “principal advantage” of the sciences and arts is “making men more sociable by inspiring in them the desire to please one another with works worthy of their mutual approval” (First Discourse, paragraph 9). While it is plausible that Rousseau uses “approval” (approbation) to signal that the principal advantage of the sciences is fostering mental esteem, there are at least two difficulties with this interpretation. First, Rousseau refers to multiple mental needs, not just one. Second, the advantage of the sciences and the arts is that they inspire the desire to produce not just any pleasing work that others approve but pleasing works “worthy” (dignes) of “mutual” (mutuelle) approval. Attending to “needs,” “worthy,” “mutual,” and “approval,” rather than “approval” alone makes Black's single-minded emphasis on the mental need for esteem questionable. The second source, in the next paragraph, is Rousseau's claim that civilized peoples “pride” themselves on their delicate taste. But this phrase occurs in a busy paragraph that includes references to other goods—for example “amiable and easy relations”—and is followed by a qualified praise of French manners, a praise that Black uncharacteristically dismisses (p. 70, n. 29).

Because Black makes the mental need for esteem so central to Rousseau's argument, it is troubling that his case for its centrality in the First Discourse is, however intriguing, not more decisive. Black splendidly succeeds in showing that the need for esteem is more important for understanding the First Discourse than has been evident. He thus illuminates Rousseau's contribution to our understanding of the effects of popular enlightenment. But he does not succeed in showing that it is the key to Rousseau's thought.