Jean-Jacques Rousseau: A Friend of Virtue.

By Joseph R. Reisert. Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, 2003. 211p. $42.50.

Joseph Reisert has written an insightful, wonderfully readable, and sympathetic exploration of Rousseau's defense of the morally virtuous or just life. Like the citizens in the Social Contract and like Emile, we should find our own happiness in serving the welfare of others, but, if necessary, we should also possess the strength of will to choose the good for its own sake, even at the cost of our own happiness (pp. 8, 55, 87). The “problem of virtue” Rousseau sets out to solve, then, is not so much to learn what justice requires, but rather—as reflected in his own notorious shortcomings—to motivate people to do what justice requires (pp. 5, 22, 81). Accordingly, Reisert argues that Rousseau's novel contribution to political and ethical thought is his “moral psychology,” or “physics of the soul” (p. 14), a profound understanding of the passions that make us act, and, in particular, of amour-propre. Rousseau traces the political and ethical corruptions of his times to amour-propre, especially in its “inflamed” or “disordered” form (pp. 20, 107), and presents an education in unadulterated virtue as the only cure.

Amour-propre, which makes us “rational but unreasonable” (p. 10), defeats the hopes of the proponents of enlightened self-interest as a reliable moral or political motive. Amour-propre explains both why men fail to stand up for themselves in politics and why they prefer to seek their own well-being only at the cost of others, with the result that they are good neither for themselves nor for others. Reisert's Rousseau calls on amour-propre to answer the question of why men who are born free are everywhere in chains. In his persuasive analysis, Reisert points thus to a specific kind of demoralization operative in modern hierarchical societies—one that, less than grinding people down by an oppression they regard as insurmountable, inures them to feeling it; misdirecting their energies and setting them inveterately against one another, while inclining them at the same time supinely to acquiesce in tyranny (pp. 32, 51).

Reisert's succinct, lucid, and amply illustrated account of the political and ethical importance of amour-propre, and his case for the superiority of Rousseau's psychology on this score to his most important predecessors and heirs, make significant contributions to scholarship. Reisert also befriends Rousseau, who is often declared persona non grata among liberal democrats, by urging that we include his voice in the ongoing scholarly conversation about how to cultivate and/or to preserve virtue in liberal democracy (pp. 7–8). To define his position more clearly, Reisert also enters into helpful exchanges with several influential interpreters of Rousseau.

Not surprisingly, given the priority of education over institutions in Rousseau's enterprise, enlightened statesmen, or their philosophical-literary equivalents, must always be at the helm. Judging that the prospects even for Emile's virtue are gloomy without the ever-present attentions of his wise tutor (and claiming that Emile only acquires his virtue by imitating the tutor), Reisert concludes both that we stand in the same need as Emile and that we have in Rousseau the requisite mentor and friend. He argues that Rousseau's relationship to his readers is parallel to the tutor's relationship to Emile, albeit arising from a legislative ambition that is greater than the tutor's, encompassing, as it does, the bringing of generations of readers toward virtue (pp. 168–69).

To inspire the “‘passion for virtue’” (p. 109) in us, Rousseau depicts it in others, putting the virtuous life in the most lovable light, most notably in his philosophical novels Emile and Julie (aimed respectively at men and women) (p. 169). In the “self-commanding virtue” the protagonists exhibit, he presents models for our imitation or “exemplary lives” (pp. 22, 174). A friend who, like Rousseau, lays his own soul bare is the authority figure we need to rectify our judgments, stiffen our spines, and hold our amour-propre at bay (p. 23). In obeying the counsels of an intimate friend, we seem to obey only ourselves, and, to put it in Rousseau's terms, feel ourselves to be, therefore, as free as we were before.

Without wishing to detract at all from the originality and well-grounded character of Reisert's case for the paramount importance of the tutor–Emile relationship, and while appreciating his keen sensitivity to Rousseau's overall legislative intentions, I will nevertheless raise a few questions about the argument.

Among the significant points of contact between Emile and the Republic that Reisert adduces is the implicit political conservativism of the endings of both works. He argues that, short of the very worst cases, the imperfections of political regimes—say, Emile's France—do not excuse us from “practicing virtue” in our own lives (pp. 137–38). If true freedom resides in the heart of a free man, it will always be possible to build a model regime in one's own soul. This teaching seems to replicate the political resignation that Rousseau criticizes in his contemporaries. Could Rousseau really want to teach quiescence or quietism to men of whom Reisert says they are already only too willing to put up with despotism? Rousseau's teaching on duty would seem, in any case, to subvert the “the laws of France,” since all duties derive from rights not recognized there. And, as presented by Rousseau, justice not only involves us in the welfare of others but also calls forth the virile self-respect we need to stand up for ourselves.

According to Reisert, the tutor is an idealized version of Rousseau, endowed “with all the virtues … that he himself so conspicuously lacked” (pp. 105, 141). One could argue, however, that Rousseau's way of befriending the reader implies at least a friendly criticism of virtue and of the tutor's position as a “figure of authority” in Emile's life. Both the downside of the tutor–Emile relationship and the downside of the “‘passion for virtue’” may be surmounted, however, in the particular way Rousseau performs his legislative function. The providential intercession of a benevolent, quasi-divine tutor—the obvious benefactor of a chosen person or chosen people—makes one dependent on a will that may come to seem arbitrary. By contrast, an invisible authority, who, by his confessions of weakness, cedes all claims to being an authority, violates neither the principle of freedom nor equality; nor do people see themselves as subject in any way to his will: There is no subjection so perfect as that which maintains the appearance of freedom.

Finally, the tragedy dogging the lives of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's virtuous protagonists and his own literary theory raise a question about his intentions. Does his very appeal to our passions subvert his praise of the sacrifice of inclination to duty?