987111

American Philosophical Society is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Proceedings of theAmerican Philosophical Society.

http://www.jstor.org

Rousseau's Discourse on Heroes and Heroism Author(s): M. W. Jackson Source: Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 133, No. 3 (Sep., 1989), pp.

434-446Published by: American Philosophical SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/987111Accessed: 27-04-2015 14:02 UTC

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of contentin a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship.For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

This content downloaded from 14.139.212.114 on Mon, 27 Apr 2015 14:02:42 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=amps

http://www.jstor.org/stable/987111

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Rousseau's Discourse on Heroes and Heroism

M. W. JACKSON

University of Sydney

I. INTRODUCTION

X X/X A That is the virtue most necessary to the hero?" This was jfj \/the question set for the first essay competition spon- TYs sored by the recently created Academy of Belles Lettres

of Corsica in December 1750.1 The competition was open to all and a handsome cash prize was offered. According to the advertisement in the Mercure de France a second prize of equal worth was also offered, limited to Corsican entrants. The question for this second prize was "What is the virtue most necessary to man?" In the event a Father Chabaud won the first prize and a Professor Popgil the second.2 The title of Popgil's discourse, let it be noted, was the virtue of the citizen and not of man.

Rousseau did not win this prize; he did not submit the discourse that he had written for it.3 Later in his autobiographical Confessions Rousseau described this period as one of great upheaval in his private life.4 It was certainly a time of great upheaval in his professional life also. The No- vember issue of the Mercure de France bore the announcement of Rous- seau 's prize winning discourse at Dijon along with a resume of it, making him famous overnight. The ideas for his second Dijon discourse on the origins of inequality might have been buzzing in his head. By the end of 1751, Mercure de France regularly published critiques of Rousseau together with his replies. The Corsican competition had lost his attention.

If Rousseau had been satisfied with his discourse for Corsica, he

*1 am grateful to the Bibliotheque Publique et Universitaire Neuchatel for allowing me to examine the autograph manuscript. This essay was composed while I was at the Nether- lands Institute for Advanced Study. It was greatly improved by the painstaking comments of an anonymous reviewer.

1 Mercure de France (December 1750), pp. 76-77. 2 Ibid. (October 1751), p. 157. 3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuivres ComplHtes, Volume II, Michel Launay, ed. (Paris: Edi-

tions du Seuil, 1971), p. 117. 4 Confessions, Chapter IX.

PROCEEDINGS OF THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, VOL. 133, NO. 3, 1989

434



ROUSSEAU'S DISCOURSE 435

would have resisted demands on his time long enough to have finished and submitted it. However, he was not satisfied, as his prefatory note to the manuscript says (118).5 Moreover, once he had won an important competition it would not have been unnatural for him to conclude that it would jeopardize his new-found fame to enter and lose a competition, especially a second-rate one. These considerations would have weighed all the heavier, since he found the Corsican question uncongenial in the first place.

So the discourse is an unfinished work. In it we find Rousseau at a crossroads trying to establish his own motif and idiom, indeed, trying to establish himself. In this discourse, as it is the purpose of these pages to show, he gives the classical subject of heroism a modern treatment, making clear at once how much he had learned from the classics and how much he departed from them in what he had to teach. In time Rousseau would perfect a style that allowed him to use the ancients to criticize the present in order to show what the future could be.6 In this discourse he is practicing that style. With Rousseau's other works such as The Social Contract the comparable books are modern-John Locke's or Immanuel Kant's. The classical influence is so great in the discourse on heroes and heroism that the comparable works are ancient, Plato's Laches or Aristotle's Ethics.

The nature and character of the hero represented an important prob- lem for the ancients because it was a part of the larger issue of the relation between philosophy and politics. When Plato elaborated his political theory in The Republic he subordinated politics and its heroes to the sovereignty of philosophy, but not without equivocation. He conceived of a philosopher become monarch, while admitting the greater possibility of a monarch become philosopher. The latter possibility took Plato to Syracuse, an ill-fated adventure to which Rousseau refers in this discourse (118). There were those in the eighteenth century who thought that monarchs were becoming philosophers.7 They announced the doctrine of despotisme eclaire. How different was Rousseau! The ancients found politics and philosophy to be inconsistent and concluded that philosophy must dominate, while some of Rousseau's contemporaries denied the inconsistency and celebrated monarchs. For his part, Rousseau affirms the inconsistency as inevitable and recommends neither philosophers nor monarchs, but citizens as the point of reconcilia- tion of politics and philosophy. This we can see emerging from this discourse. However much he was dissatisfied with his argument in this discourse, he continued to concentrate on the inconsistency of philos-

5 The numbers within parentheses refer to the pages of the most recent printing of this discourse, "Quelle est la vertu la plus necessaire aux heros," Oeuvres Completes, Volume II, Launay, ed., pp. 117-125. The translations are mine.

6 Rousseau's use of ancient classics is replete with paradox; see Roger Masters, "Intro- duction" to Rousseau, First and Second Discourses (New York: St. Martin's, 1964), p. 21.

7 Cf. Francois Bluche, Le Despotisme Eclaire (Paris: Fayard, 1968), pp. 315-380.



436 M. W. JACKSON

ophy and politics throughout his later work. It was Rousseau's inheritance from Plato.8 We can see Rousseau wrestling with his inheritance if we proceed through this unfamiliar discourse on heroism in some detail.

II. COMMENTARY

The inconsistency between philosophy and politics makes its first appearance on page one of this discourse. Responding to a question that invited mounting declamations on the virtue of the hero for a competition sponsored by a man who was a warrior of sorts, the Marquis de Cursay, commander of the French garrison in Corsica, Rousseau subor- dinates the hero to the sage in the beginning.9 There the pacific sage is declared to be the model of perfect virtue. Whatever else may be sub- sequently said of the sage we know that the conventional hero is not the model of perfect virtue, and we know it immediately. The sage, especially as symbolized by Socrates, was an obsession of the eighteenth century. Later in his life many people likened Rousseau to Socrates. One to do so was David Hume.10 Flattering as that comparison must have been it would not altogether have pleased Rousseau, since his admira- tion for Socrates was limited.

Specifically, the discourse opens by inviting the reader to compare Diogenes and Alexander (118). The style is rhetorical, the allusions classical, definitely written to be read aloud, as was the requirement of the competition. "A conqueror would rather consent to being a sage than a sage to being a conqueror" (118), Rousseau asserts. (Rousseau later proposes a parallel encounter between Cato and Caesar in Emile.)"1 In the discourse on heroes and heroism he sets about to marshal the proofs of this conclusion. The sage, he writes, possesses all the virtues. Un- fortunately, Rousseau does not reveal what he takes these virtues to be. The hero, by contrast, is brilliant. While truth is the object of the sage, greatness is that of the hero. Taken individually, he opines, the sage is to be preferred. Socially, though, heroes have their place (118). Why is this? Because the sage seeks only his own happiness. Moreover, the sage is incapable of leading others to happiness. Rousseau is more ex- plicit in another unpublished piece fugitive that compares Socrates and Cato. Socrates, the philosopher-soldier, found it possible to live under a tyranny, while Cato, the soldier-philosopher, could not. 12 Though the abstract prescriptions of the sage could well improve human happiness they will not be followed spontaneously. "Men do not govern themselves thus by abstract visions," he says (118). No indeed, "they are

8 See L. Millet, "Le platonisme de J.J. Rousseau," Revue de l"Enseignernent philosophique (1967).

9 Rousseau, Oeuvres Completes, Launay, ed., p. 119. 10 The Letters of David Huine, J. Y. T. Grieg, ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932),

Volume 1, p. 530. " Oeuvres Completes, B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond, eds. (Paris: Pliade, 1969), Volume

IV, R. 596. if C Pichois and R. Pinard, Rotusseau entre Socrate et Caton (Paris: Coti, 1972), p. 54.




made happy only by compulsion" (119). Here is a sentence that reminds one of his famous sentence in The Social Contract about forcing men to be free.13 For the moment the point would seem to be that the sage lacks the means to compel happiness. Is this then the task that falls to the hero?

Indeed, Rousseau goes on to suggest that the true hero's object is the happiness of other men. Because he acts for the happiness of others, the hero is unquestionably superior to the sage.14 Those who are governed must demand that those who govern them abide by this standard of heroism. Already in his discussion of heroes Rousseau has imported the citizen. Of course, he acknowledges that it is rare for a hero to relinquish all personal interest and to be satisfied merely with the praise won by serving others. It is a point to which he will have occasion to return shortly. For now, Rousseau makes two things clear: social utility is the standard of heroism and not all who are called hero meet this standard (120). While David Hume admitted that heroism is not only socially useful but also admirable in itself, even if destructive, Rousseau makes so much concession in this discourse. 15 A hero must earn his precedence by benefiting others.

There follow several paragraphs where Rousseau reminds readers of the competitive and destructive nature of heroes (120). If there is more than one on the scene there will likely be conflict. The more heroes there are, the more conflict there will be. Heroes who are supposed to be dedicated to the common good, would destroy that common good in their own rivalries. This happens because the end of the hero is not the good of others but the glory derived from serving the good of others. This observation on the tempestuous nature of the hero may betray the deeper insight that glory is more the cause of conflict than economics or ideology. 16 Rousseau does explicitly take up the pugnacious character of the hero, as we shall see in a moment. The destructiveness of a multi- plicity of heroes would seem to lead to the conclusion that one hero is enough, a point to bear in mind. Characteristically, here Rousseau praises ancient virtues like courage, but stops well short of recommend- ing them to modernity. 17 So he would later caution his Emile.18

Now we have been told that the hero is not the model of moral perfection. That crown remains for the sage. The hero is not virtue unalloyed but rather a combination of virtues and vices, within the prevailing social and historical circumstances. A complex person like this, Rousseau says, can do more good than a pillar of rectitude. In

13 Denise Leduc-Fayette, J. J. Rousseau et le Mythe de l'Antiquite (Paris: Vrin, 1979), p. 60. 14 Ibid., p. 58. 15 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, L. A. Selby-Bigge, ed. (London: Oxford

University Press, 1888), p. 600. 16 See Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (London: Paladin, 1970 [1949]), p. 112. 17 P. Emberly, "Rousseau and the Domestication of Virtue," Canadian Journal of Political

Science, XVII. 4 (1984), p. 734. 18 Emile, Oeuvres Compltes, IV, p. 535.



438 M. W. JACKSON

passing, Rousseau reminds us that not all virtues are consistent with heroism. More significantly, he causes us to see that social necessity, not moral excellence, recommends the hero. This would seem to be a conclusion at odds with the classical view of the hero. A reader familiar with the classical accounts of the hero might well suppose that Rousseau's purpose was to criticize these accounts, failing to see that his ultimate aim is to criticize the contemporary view that rests on a distortion of the classical account. There is an indirection in his method of argument to win the reader's attention.

It is the common opinion that the warrior is the hero (120), and this opinion Rousseau accepts for the purposes of his argument along with the equally common view that courage is fearlessness. Plato and Aris- totle, to simplify, held that fearlessness was foolishness. For them courage was the control of rightful fear. After all, some things are to be feared. Nor does Rousseau disagree. His device is to accept these common opinions in order to argue that courage-fearlessness (if that is what constitutes courage)-is not the virtue of heroism and that the warrior (even if courageous) is not the hero.

He is quick to note that the esteem in which the common opinion holds the warrior ignores his essential destructiveness (120-121). Earlier references to this destructiveness have prepared the way for his argument at this point. Truly heroic character, he asks us to consider, must involve more than fury. The warrior's courage is a quality of greatness only in some circumstances (121). Alone, unqualified it is without value or worse. Many villains have undoubtedly been courageous. One is reminded of Aristotle's distinction between doing what a virtuous man would do and doing it as a virtuous man. For Rousseau virtuous men would act for the benefit of others, but many so-called heroes act only for their own selfish glory. Heroic character, Rousseau concludes, is something more complicated than the fearless courage that bedazzles the commons. Presaging a later and more general conclusion, Rousseau contends that "the brave man proves himself only on the days of battle. The true hero shows his virtues everyday" (121). On the nature of courage he will have more to say shortly.

Having noted that courage unalloyed is no virtue, Rousseau now turns to elaborate this point, the better to show the importance of circumstances. His method is concrete. Totila, Marius, and Tamberlaine- these men were of undoubted courage but they were not virtuous for it (121). Hard upon the heels of this rhetorical point with which one can hardly disagree, there follows an altogether more judicious observation: many a man acts bravely not from some inner strength of character but out of fear of being shamed in the eyes of lord and peer (121). Even so great a hero as Caesar, Rousseau is at pains to remind us, admitted to being afraid (121). Rousseau refers to Ajax, Hector, and Achilles in The Iliad. The Iliad, perhaps it needs to be said, provided the casebook for classical discussions of courage. In The Iliad the heroes whom Rousseau




names are not portrayed as fearless beasts but rather as men struggling to control their fears and not always succeeding.

Courage alone insures neither virtue nor victory. The vanquished are often as glorious as the victorious, sometimes more so (121). Moreover, there have been great men who have resisted the seductions of glory and there have been heroes who were not warriors. Who were these men? The first example that Rousseau names of heroes who were not warriors are the legislators, more particularly, the law-givers of Sparta and Athens. He goes on to name Augustus whom he says lacked the warrior's courage, yet was a hero nonetheless for having enforced peace and order (122). The standard, we must remember is social utility- happiness-and Augustus meets it admirably. Curiously enough, Rous- seau then refers to the sage acting for the happiness of others. Since Augustus is the last person whom Rousseau had mentioned acting for the welfare of others, Augustus is briefly and indirectly associated with the title of sage (122), although it is by no means clear that Rousseau intends this reading. Rousseau's treatment of Augustus in these pages is contrary to his reference to Augustus in The First Discourse, where the absolute monarchy of Augustus is implicitly equated with slavery.19 Here Rousseau is satisfied to mention the pardon of Cinna by Augustus. This pardon had long enjoyed mythic status in French literary circles, thanks to Pierre Corneille's play Cinna (1640). In that play the pardon proves the nobility of Augustus, just as Rousseau would seem to have it.

Rousseau declares that courage is the arm that executes what the head conceives (122). The plain implication is that the arm is subordinate to the head. Heroism properly understood then lies in the difficult combination of head and heart with arm (122). Wisdom from the head and spirit from the heart must combine to produce the sufficient condition for courage, and for all other virtues (122). Attaining this combination is no simple matter. Courage itself does not constitute the character of the hero. Quite the opposite. Courage is the effect of the hero's character, of the hero's head and heart, and not the cause. In the virtuous character, in the virtuous soul, courage is a virtue. In a vicious soul it is a vice (123).20 Consequently, the hero must master many great and difficult virtues before he can command well (123).

If this conclusion is no very great surprise, what follows surely is. Having tried to satisfy the discourse competition's implicit requirement to sing the praises of the conventional hero with indifferent success, Rousseau then says: Of course humble citizens must possess even more

19 See The First and Second Discourses, Roger Masters, ed., p. 41, and see Masters's comments at pp. 68-69.

20 Courage as a virtue remains contentious. Some praise it as an antique virtue, e.g., Alastair Maclntyre, After Virtue (2nd ed.) (London: Duckworth, 1985), p. 180, and others dismiss it, e.g., Derek Phillips, Toward a Just Social Order (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986), p. 230.



440 M. W. JACKSON

numerous and taxing virtues to obey well (123). It would seem that Rousseau is separating himself from the classical accounts of virtue that made it the exclusive preserve of a moral elite, an elite bearing no necessary relation to an existing oligarchy and aristocracy, but an elite all the same. Plato dared to hope that this moral elite could govern others. Men of lesser virtue would be guided albeit unknowingly by those of greater virtue and not left to their own vices. Not so for Rousseau. Citizenship demands its own particular virtues, which are not only distinct from those of the hero but also superior to them. Later, in The Social Contract, he would make it his business to spell out the nature of the civic virtues that he only heralds here. His mind is already disposed to turn in this direction. To speak of the virtues of the citizen Rousseau leaves the assigned question of the competition and refers to that other, second question, on the virtue of man, or as it became in Professor Popgil's reply, the virtue of the citizen. Rousseau's remark about citizens here shows us something of his turn of mind. It also shows a particular of this discourse in that it clarifies the relation between the hero and the citizen prefigured by his earlier references to the heroic goal being the good of others and social utility being the standard of heroism. Citizen- ship is, Rousseau now makes clear, the larger frame of reference within which heroism has its meaning, and not the other way around. Along with hero and citizen the third party in this discourse is the sage. The hero is thus the character between the sage who appeared on the first page and the citizen who now appears. The hero is infused with the wisdom of the sage and acts for the good of citizens. Such a person would truly be a hero.

Although Rousseau has avoided a discussion of the classical treatment of courage, he now comes to it direct in speaking of the four principal virtues recognized by philosophers (123). (In this connection he uses the word "philosophe" and not "sage.") To the ancient philosophers there were four cardinal virtues that formed a descending order, called the ladder of virtue, from justice to prudence to temperance to courage. Rousseau follows this order without acknowledging it, starting with justice.

Each of the three virtues other than courage, he shows, is not the virtue of heroism, and names a hero who did not possess the required virtue. His method is inductive enumeration. This sort of argument by counter-example is effective only if the reader intuitively accepts the examples named as heroes. Rousseau is careful to make this acceptance easy by referring to ancient and uncontroversial heroes like Alexander the Great.21 On the other hand, he writes, the virtuous man is just, and prudent, and temperate without being on that account a hero (124).

21 He took Alexander to be the model of continence about the same time as the writing of this discourse. See his "Derniere Reponse a Bordes," Oeuvres Completes, III, p. 75.




Such an enumeration of counter-examples also meets the requirement of the competition that those heroes who have lacked the necessary virtue of heroism be identified.

A reader familiar with the classics would have anticipated Rousseau's conclusion here, especially a reader unfamiliar with Rousseau's unor- thodox views. Plato supposes that prudence is really the philosopher's wisdom and so he argues in The Republic that only philosophers can be fully just since only philosophers have the knowledge fully to compre- hend justice. The philosophers are Plato's moral elite. By his references to the classics Rousseau nurtures this anticipation only to frustrate it. For he concludes that each of these four virtues befits one sort of person best. "The statesman should be prudent. The citizen should be just. The philosopher should be temperate. The hero should be courageous" (124). If one clings to Plato's notion that justice is the highest virtue, then the citizen turns out to be the person of the highest virtue. However, Rousseau's listing of these four types does not follow the ladder of virtue. Indeed there is no apparent order in the list, but it should be noted that the hero whom this competition was to praise comes last. The citizen and the philosopher are mentioned after the statesman, about whom little has been said.

With the hero thus firmly put in place and Rousseau rapidly reaching the end of his allotted time (for entries in the competition were to be read aloud in half an hour), the author concentrates on the virtues of the hero. "Strength of soul" is that virtue (124). One can do great deeds without being or becoming a great man, just as every action of a great man is not a great deed (124). Agent and action Rousseau clearly sepa- rates, noting that the character of the agent is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a great deed-which makes behaviour unpre- dictable. What distinguishes the hero from other men is the readiness, even willingness, to attempt the great deed (124). That is greatness. To be great one must master oneself, for vice is more often the result of weakness than of evil.22 "It is within ourselves that our most formidable enemies lie" (124). Strength enlivens the other virtues and can even replace them in some circumstances. When reason contains passion, then the hero can see the association between the happiness of others and his own (124). "Strength is therefore the virtue that characterizes the hero" (124).

Rousseau first announced this thesis at Dijon in The First Discourse and he maintained it in Emile.23 Putting aside a great deal of what he has argued, Rousseau goes so far as to say that "all the other virtues have been lacking in some great men, but without strength of soul there

22 A sentiment echoed in Hannah Arendt's remark that most evil in our century has been done by people who never made up their minds to do good or evil: Life of the Mind, I, Thinking (London: Secker and Warburg, 1978), p. 180.

23 Oeuvres Compltes, III, p. 8, and IV, p. 817, respectively. See also the "Lettre a M. de Franquieres," Volume IV, p. 1143.



442 M. W. JACKSON

would never have been a hero" (125). If we were to read this statement as saying that a person can be a hero with no other virtue than strength, then Rousseau would seem to be contradicting at least two important positions that he has already maintained. First, he would seem to be saying that the deed makes the agent, great deeds make one great. And second, he would also seem to be separating courage from the other virtues, after having repeatedly said that they must be joined for courage to become a virtue. To read Rousseau so literally at this point-the final paragraph of the discourse-would be to miss the last rhetorical flourish of the discourse. For the statement in question serves to remind us that the virtue of courage alone is not sufficient for the hero, but at the same time no one can be hero without it. Though plain people occasionally rise to heroic deeds, this does not make them heroes. So ends the discourse.

III. CONCLUSION

The result of Rousseau's argument seems to be that "strength of soul" corresponds to the classical conception of courage as the executive virtue. If Rousseau deliberately refrains from calling "strength of soul" by the name of "courage," perhaps it is to dissuade readers from assimi- lating courage to the fearlessness of the warrior. According to Rousseau, the hero is not necessarily fearless and not necessarily a warrior.

Rousseau's discussion of courage might also have reminded some readers of Machiavelli's The Prince in which virtu is much discussed.24 A good half of men's lives come under the sway of fortuna, said Machia- velli, but the remaining half can be under one's control. To master this other half requires the quality of virtu, which is nothing more than the will to act. For virtu to be effective the actor should attend to the tech- niques of power that Machiavelli would teach. One thing is clear. By virtu Machiavelli did not mean a moral virtue in the classical sense. His virtu was like the classical virtue only in being the executive virtue that would bring deeds from words. But whereas Plato insisted that courage was but a small part of a wider morality, Machiavelli takes it in isolation from morality. Indeed, one requirement he imposes on virtu is the willingness to act immorally, that is, to act contrary to the conventional morality. Rousseau does not agree with Machiavelli, even though he learned much from him.25 Like Plato, Rousseau searches for a means to integrate courage with the other virtues.

Plato establishes a social division of morality, but Rousseau does not follow suit. His matching of the four principal virtues with four kinds of persons is simply an illustration, not a theory. In fine, Rousseau

24 See The Prince, Chapter 25, and also Chapter 6, and The Discourses, Book I, Chapter X. Consider Y. Levy, "Machiavel et Rousseau," Le Contrat Social, VI. 3 (1963) or R. Payot, "Rousseau et Machiavel," Les Etudes philosophiques (1971-1972), pp. 211-218.

25 See Rousseau, Du Contrat Social, Ronald Grimsley, ed. (Oxford University Press, 1972), Book III, Chapter 4, p. 169.




matched virtues with offices, and not with types of persons. Unlike Plato, Rousseau did not despair of seeing these virtues united in the breast of each citizen. Naturally, Rousseau did not doubt that some people possessed higher virtues than others, but for him ordinary citizens hold the most difficult and important office. In The Social Contract he spells out these demands. In this discourse he is already champion- ing the citizen against both the hero and the sage.

Another similarity with the ancients in Rousseau's discourse cannot pass unremarked at a time when so much is being written about justice. In the ancient world justice was a virtue. Hence the just person was the focus of classical political theory. Justice was something in what a man did. In the contemporary world justice is not a personal quality but an institutional one. Justice is something that happens to a person. In the ancient world the purpose of the political justice of institutions was to make the moral justice of individuals possible. Classical writers concerned themselves with institutional arrangements as a means to an end. Today, the purpose of political justice is conceived to be to make moral justice unnecessary.26 On this issue Rousseau sides with the ancients. The subject of his discourse is the virtue of individuals, not of institutions. When he came to write of institutions in The Social Contract, he retained the primacy of this focus on individuals. The institutions described there are intended to make morality possible and they depend on a certain moral transformation. They are not intended to make indi- vidual morality unnecessary.

In The Social Contract Rousseau recognized the importance of a warrior prince who founds a dynasty, the kind of prince favored by Machiavelli.27 Though he grudgingly admitted the importance of warriors for the defense of the polity, the hero he describes in the end is not the warrior, but the lawgiver. The wisdom of a lawgiver can unite the head and heart through the creation of social and political institutions. A polity needs but one such hero in the right circumstances. The virtue of strength of soul that Rousseau ascribes to the hero corresponds to the power of personality that he stresses in The Social Contract as necessary to the successful lawgiver. Andreia was the ancient virtue of courage, defined as the habit of the soul to be moved emotionally to counter- action in the face of injustice.28 Not only is this the virtue that the lawgiver must possess, it is also the virtue that must be instilled in the citizens. Whether or not he had this forceful personality, Rousseau was moved by injustice, and he was himself a kind of lawgiver in setting forth the institutions and practices of The Social Contract.

Consequently, we might say that in the terms of this discourse Rous- seau was himself a kind of hero, but not the courageous warrior hero

26 For more along these lines, see M. W. Jackson, Matters of Justice (Wolfeboro: Croom Helm, 1986).

27 The Social Contract, Book II, Chapter 7, and Book III, Chapter 6. 28 E. Voegelin, "The World of Homer," Review of Politics, XV. 4 (1952), p. 500.



444 M. W. JACKSON

beloved of vulgar minds. If the institutions he envisaged cannot be attained, perhaps it is because Rousseau's philosophical heroism, like Achilles' martial heroism, was too perfect for the imperfect world. Rous- seau is to other philosophers as Achilles is to other warriors, unwilling to accept a single one of the compromises of politics. Still, if we agree with Rousseau's view in this discourse that social utility is the measure of a hero's worth, than perfect heroism may be worth less than an imperfect heroism.

Rousseau's hopes for the hero and the lawgiver are extravagant, to be sure. But compared with those of his contemporaries who hoped for a despotisme e'claire, how much more sound Rousseau's aspirations seem.29 Many historians have denied that despotisme e'claire' was ever seriously advocated in Rousseau's time. I am not concerned to dispute the point, but it is undeniable that certain philosophes expressed the hope for an enlightened monarch.30 Again, the philosophes can be quoted both for and against despotisme c'clairc'.31 But not Rousseau. Among Rousseau's contemporaries there were some who thought that the time had arrived when monarchs were becoming philosophers, or at least were listening to some philosophers. It must have been very flattering for the philosophers to be taken seriously by the head that wore the crown. Voltaire confessed that monarchs were attractive to philosophers less because they were enlightened than because they were monarchs.32 Of course, if one accepts monarchy as given, then an enlightened monarch is better than an unenlightened one.

In the doctrine of despotisme e'claire' there is no tension between philosophy and politics. Thanks to Plato's teaching, Rousseau was not so sanguine. He would have agreed that an enlightened prince is better than an ignorant one. But more important is the fact that he was prepared to consider a world without crowns of any kind. Such a world there was soon to be. It should be clear, though, that putting an end to monarchy would not resolve the inconsistency between philosophy and politics; it would restore it to its proper sphere, namely among the citizens. The divide between philosophy and politics is inherent in the nature of each; it is not a function of a particular political system called monarchy. It cannot be eliminated but it can be eased if the citizen is created.

29 See the comment of the translator in the preface to Rousseau's The Social Contract, M. Cranston, trans. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968), p. 25.

30 Among them Voltaire, Oeuvres Completes, L. Morland, ed. (Paris: Garnier, 1877-1885), XXXIII, p. 470; Helvetius, De l'homme (London: Chez la Societe Typographique, 1773), I, p. 283; and d'Holbach, Essai sur les pre'juge's (Amsterdam: Rey, 1770), p. 46.

31 John Lough, The Philosophes and Post-Revolutionary France (London: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 14.

32 "M6moires," Oeuvres, Volume I, p. 17, quoted by Peter Gay, The Enlightenment (Lon- don: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1969), p. 453.




IV. THE TEXT

Since the discourse on heroes is both a minor work and unavailable in English, a few words on the text may be instructive. Immediately after having written the discourse, Rousseau described it as barbouille (scrib- bling), a label he stuck to years later (125 N156). When his fame was established a publisher could find a profit in anything with Rousseau's name on it. This rise in market value finally brought the discourse into print. It appeared in unauthorized editions in 1768 in Lausanne, and in Paris in Freron's Anne'e Litte'raire.33 His letters from the time show a Rousseau much upset by these editions. He calls them theft, but shows no interest in the contents of the discourse. He refers to it again as barbouillage in a letter to Laliaud of 1769.34 In that same year his publisher included the discourse in a general edition of Rousseau's works. Rous- seau depreciated the essay, once more.35 The intensity of of his anger at the unauthorized publications was not matched by any visible desire on his part to improve the discourse. Aside from the injury of theft and the loss of income, what may have troubled Rousseau was the possibility that the pirated editions would be altered or annotated damagingly as often happened in the days before copyright. The innocent reader would take the text as being all Rousseau. It was common practice for authors to insert notices in literary magazines disclaiming responsibility for certain editions that appeared over their names. Sometimes these notices appeared in the very magazines that had produced the unauthorized version. The point to note here is that Rousseau did not revise the discourse for publication in the authorized version which is virtually identical with the unauthorized versions.36 Since Rousseau's intellectual interest in the discourse seems to have ended with the composition of it in 1751, the manuscript itself has been taken as the basis of this study.37

This manuscript seems to have been composed in one sitting and revised for style in another. The evidence for two sittings is a slight difference in the colors of the ink. The text itself is written with virtually no emendations until near the end, surely a sign of fatigue. At that point

3 For the bibliographic details of these editions, see Jean Senelier, Bibliographie Gene'rdle des Oeuvres de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1950), p. 182.

3 See his letter to A. M. Laliaud, 18 January 1769, Correspondance Complete de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, R. A. Leigh, ed. (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 1980), XXXVII, p. 33 and Laliaud's reply of 4 February 1769, ibid., pp. 42-44.

5 See his letter to Marc-Michel Rey of 31 January 1769: ibid., pp. 34-36. The discourse is also mentioned in Rousseau's letters to P. A. du Peyrou of 18 January 1769 and to C. Aglancier de Saint-Germain of 12 March 1770: ibid., pp. 32-33 and 327-330, respectively.

36 All these editions differ from the contemporary printing cited above more than from each other. That difference is in the handling of the variations resulting from the cross- outs and marginal notes. The earlier editions deleted most of these, while Launay incor- porates them into the text.

37 The autograph copy of the manuscript is in the Bibliotheque Publique et Universitaire de Neuchatel, Switzerland. It is described in some detail in Theophile Dufour, Recherches Bibliographiques sur les Oeuvres Imprine'es de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Paris: Libraire Giraud- Bodin, 1925), II, p. 156. For an account of the date and circumstances of the composition, see Pichois and Pinard, pp. 58-64 and 85-94.



446 M. W. JACKSON

that handwriting also becomes less clear. The few earlier changes are stylistic. There are two lengthy omissions by crossing out with long marginal insertions at the end. Both marginal notes seem to be an effort to rephrase the argument preparatory to the conclusion. If so, they fail, for they do not alter the meaning one iota.

These features of the manuscript confirm one's impression from reading the discourse. It contains many interesting but underdeveloped ideas presented with Rousseau's commanding literary style, but it is inconclusive. That is no doubt why he did not submit it to the Corsican Academy.

The discourse is available in a recent printing in Michel Launay's edition of Rousseau's Oeuvres Comple'tes. There Launay notes some, but not all, of the variants in the Neuchatel manuscript and identifies most, but not all, of the allusions and references that Rousseau makes. Why this is done selectively is not made clear. In any event, it does not add to the reader's grasp of Rousseau's meaning and so these details have not been considered here.



987111

Documents