Jean-Jacques Rousseau (German Edition)

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To have complete access to the thousands of philosophy articles on this site, please. According to a popular legend the philosopher Immanuel Kant was so punctual that his neighbours would set their clocks by his daily constitutional. The book so captivated him that he missed his afternoon walk for several days.

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Furthermore, the only piece of art that the austere Kant kept in his home was a portrait of Rousseau, which hung above his writing desk. Another German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche, was not so impressed.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)

At the end of the nineteenth century he denounced Rousseau as a tarantula who poisoned Kant with his moralising. When Rousseau arrived in Paris in he was a poor, unknown, unpublished, thirty-year-old Genevan with no job, relatively little formal education although well-read , whose mother had died in childbirth, and whose watchmaker father had abandoned him when he was ten years old.

By the twentieth century, Rousseau had been blamed for influencing if not actually causing romanticism, anarchism, nationalism and even totalitarianism. He remains one of the most important, influential, divisive and widely-read thinkers in the history of ideas. He wrote an influential treatise on education of the young, yet put all five of his children into a foundling home as soon as they were born where probably most of them died. He is famous as a proponent of democracy, yet claimed in his main political work, The Social Contract that the only place where democracy had any realistic prospect in contemporary Europe was in remote Corsica.

He was one of the most admired and mesmerisingly eloquent writers of his age, yet he had little formal education and married an illiterate seamstress. However, its controversial assumptions and prescriptions have long since been superceded by rival pedagogies. Many of his other works, above all in cultural anthropology and political philosophy, are classics that continue to resonate very powerfully with readers.

Although it was not awarded first prize by the Academy of Dijon, for which it was written, it caused a sensation when it was published, and has had a huge and lasting impact on natural and social science. This account, while speculative and hypothetical, was enormously influential on debates about human nature and the origins of social and political life at a time when there was very little empirical evidence on these subjects and the gap between science and political philosophy was far less broad than it is today. No one was surprised by any of this, least of all Rousseau.

But Rousseau was shocked and dismayed when the book was banned in his native Geneva.

The authorities ordered it burned and its author arrested if he ever dared to set foot in the city again. The Social Contract was even proscribed in relatively liberal, tolerant Amsterdam. It seemed as though all of continental Europe — Catholics and Protestants, secularists and religious fanatics, Jesuits and Jansenists, philosophes and anti-philosophes — had united against Jean-Jacques, who was forced to flee.

He even considered suicide. As soon as they are elected, slavery overtakes it, and it is nothing. The question, What do I feel and think? We may invoke Rousseau again as the thinker who posed this requirement and fulfilled it by writing his Confessions.

Christian Hochmuth's Jean-Jacques Rousseau in der Kritik (German Edition) PDF

Two things almost mutually exclusive unite in me I know not how: One would say that my heart and my spirit do not belong to the same individual. Feelings, strong but not clear, fill my soul; but instead of enlightening me, they burn and astonish me. I feel all and I see nothing. In the Romantic view, human consciousness exists at the interface between two enigmatic worlds: The view, one may say, is blurred in either direction. Beyond our immediate perceptions, of ourselves and of the world, there stretches an immense backdrop of obscurity.

For the adventuresome and enterprising spirit, however, it is an obscurity that beckons with promise and possibility. As in the great misty vistas of Romantic paintings, the landscapes within as well as outside of us are full of half-hidden shapes and patterns, barely recognizable forms that suggest an interconnectedness of meaning beyond the surmise of ordinary consciousness.

It is tempting to look at all these diaphanous and disparate ideas and reject them out of hand as being too flimsy to have affected education or even schooling.

The only writer of the age besides Tolstoy to have any genuine involvement in education was the gloomy and pessimistic Matthew Arnold who was also a school inspector. And the accompanying belief in the worthy nobility of the common man has driven us to attempt to educate everyone, whether or not he wants or is capable of learning. At least one man, a journalist of the period, William Hazlitt, addressed that subject and suggested in his essay "On genius and common sense" that universal education should be of a limited and specific nature:.

If a whole court say the same thing, this is no proof that they think it, but that the individual at the head of the court has said it: I believe that the best way to instruct mankind is not by pointing out to them their mutual errors, but by teaching them to think rightly on indifferent matters, where they will listen with patience in order to be amused, and where they do not consider a definition or a syllogism as the greatest injury you can offer them. Even in his day, Hazlitt "saw the self-defeating factors in the sentimentalism and emotionalism of the extreme Romantic writers: The fascination with self and the desire to indulge it and divulge its secrets has led to a whole panoply of narcissistic behaviors, a pseudo-science in the form of psychotherapy, and a cross-cultural victim mentality.

Childhood memories have been expanded to include nearly obligatory abuse and dysfunction. In fact, the sociology of childhood has demonstrated an interesting history, starting with its invention in the mind of Rousseau. Prior to that time, children were dressed as small adults, powdered wigs and all, and expected to act appropriately to their appearance:. The Biedermeier era of the early s" in Germany was quite typical of western Europe in bringing "a new attention to the world of children.

Now there were special rooms - nurseries - and a great wealth of toys, especially at Christmas Spatial separations grew out of and reinforced an understanding of children as vulnerable beings who needed to be protected from physical or psychological intimacy with adults. Here, there were eight young gentlemen in various stages of mental prostration, all very hard at work, and very grave indeed Of the remaining four, two who grasped their foreheads convulsively, were engaged in solving mathematical problems; one with his face like a dirty window, from much crying, was endeavoring to flounder through a hopeless number of lines before dinner; and one sat looking at his task in stony stupefaction and despair - which it seemed had been his condition ever since breakfast time.

For the ultimate in utopian educational coddling, "Edward Bellamy, in Looking backward , depicted a mythical Boston in which all children were entitled by right as human beings and future citizens to the finest possible care and nurture, in which advanced liberal and technical education as well as elementary and secondary schooling were available to the entire population" Cremin, , p.

And finally, the obsession with personal freedom has changed social views of sexual activity. The quest for political freedom has resulted in a seemingly endless string of "revolutions", a topic which will be explored later. As the themes of Romanticism evolved into the forms just described, and which we still recognize today, the main body of the movement met a crueller fate. It more or less crashed against the shoals of twentieth century realities.

As Tarnas expressed it:. A stupendous quantity of information had become available about all aspects of life - the contemporary world, the historical past, other cultures, other forms of life, the subatomic world, the macrocosm, the human mind and psyche - yet there was also less ordering vision, less coherence and comprehension, less certainty. The great overriding impulse defining Western man since the Renaissance - the quest for independence, self-determination, and individualism, had eventuated in a world where individual spontaneity and freedom were increasingly smothered by the ubiquitous collectivity and conformism of mass societies.

Just as man had become a meaningless speck in the modern universe, so had individual persons become insignificant ciphers in modern states, to be manipulated or coerced by the millions. The earlier Romantic passion to merge with the infinite began to be turned against itself, inverted, transformed into a compulsion to negate that passion. The revolt against conventional reality began to take new and more extreme forms. Earlier modern responses of realism and naturalism gave way to the absurd and surreal, the dissolution of all established foundations and solid categories.

The quest for freedom became ever more radical, its price the destruction of any standard or stability. A literary figure who represented this transition was Franz Kafka During his life, which was cut short by tuberculosis, he practiced a nominally successful career in the claims department of an accident insurance corporation.

In his spare time he wrote a grotesquerie of short stories and novellas where the characters battled hopelessly against the insane demands of their societies, armed only with the useless weapon of common sense. For example, in "The metamorphosis", Gregor Samsa is transformed into a giant beetle, or cricket, symbolic of the total unimportance of a man in the grand scheme. Even in that state, he tries to think sensible thoughts and do sensible things, but to no avail.

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The political philosophy of Rousseau, generated in the 18 th century, provided the basic ideas, premises and terminology for the collectivist movements which in the belief of Walsh "began in Europe in the 19 th century and which produced such horrors throughout the whole world in the 20 th , all the way down through Cambodia". These collectivist movements, Marxism, fascism, and welfare-statism, could only have come to power and remained in power by first planting their ideas among the educated classes and then spreading them by cultural osmosis to the people at large.

Rousseau set these ideas in motion by his antipathy towards the class of people called bourgeois. He thoroughly disparaged the bourgeoisie and envisioned a collectivist utopia, ideas which appeared again in the works of Hegel and Marx. Lewis wrote the words for a devil to say in "Screwtape proposes a toast" ,.

Hidden in the heart of this striving for Liberty there was also a deep hatred of personal freedom. That invaluable man Rousseau first revealed it. From that starting point, via Hegel another indispensable propagandist on our side , we easily contrived both the Nazi and the Communist state. William Torrey Harris, and John Dewey were both admirers and serious students of the works of Hegel as well as prominent educators in the United States. Counts, advocated schooling for the reconstruction of society. In the case of Counts, his writing made it clear that the goal he sought was reconstruction of society in the Marxist mold.

Ivan Illich and the other radical Romantic education critics also looked upon modern education as a tool of the oppressors to produce a steady supply of workers for the capitalist industries. In Germany, the homeland of both Marx and Hegel, the Frankfurt School of critical theorists was founded, a group who apparently had an effect upon the French intellectuals, the American literature professors, and the radical pedagogues such as Paulo Freire, Henry Giroux, and others.

This group was as intent on the defeat of the bourgeoisie as Counts and Illich, but chose to work through the deconstruction of language and the promotion of literacy for political ends.

Public opinion contains all kinds of falsity and truth, but it takes a great man to find the truth in it. The great man of the age is the one who can put into words the will of his age, tell his age what its will is, and accomplish it. What he does is the heart and the essence of his age, he actualizes his age. The man who lacks sense enough to despise public opinion expressed in gossip will never do anything great.

It is the greatness of this facility which is suspect and, in light of the events which followed Rousseau, he might have been considered to be doing mischief, or worse, wreaking havoc. He set forth his ideas about citizenship in The social contract and, much later, in "A letter to the government of Poland" , proposed a national system of education charged with the responsibility of producing a competent body of voters. Much of that education would have as its goal the subjugation of personal interests to communal ones:. Education - this is the essential point.

It is education which must shape their minds in the national mould and which must direct their tastes and their opinions, till they are patriotic by inclination - by instinct - by necessity. A child should see his fatherland when he first opens his eyes, and till death he should see naught else. This love makes up his life; he only sees his fatherland, and only lives for his fatherland; his country lost, he lives no more; if not dead, he is worse. David Hamilton , enamored of the method of upbringing described in Emile , could not bring himself to criticize Rousseau for his ideas about training for citizenship, so he left them as a series of unanswered questions:.

The status of citizenship was pursued by Rousseau in The social contract. Central to his book was a discussion of the conflict between the rights of the individual and the social responsibilities of citizenship. What, then, is the freedom and autonomy of the individual? Are citizens merely subordinates of the state? Is citizenship restricted to males, leaving females in a natural state of subordination and subjection?

Or is it possible to resolve the interests of the state with those of the autonomous citizen?

Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Wikiquote

The concept of equality was pursued by Rousseau in his "Discourse on the origin of inequality" which was written as an entry in a contest in His reflections led him to conclude that man in the primitive state had no sense of inequality because he possessed the virtue of compassion and was not burdened with the vice of egotism: This was the first step toward inequality, and also toward vice. From these first preferences arose vanity and contempt, on the one hand, and shame and envy, on the other. If we follow the progression of inequality through these various changes, we find that the establishment of law and the right of property was its first phase, the institution of magistracy its second, and the transformation of legitimate power into arbitrary power its third and last.

The first gave rise to the distinction of rich and poor, the second to that of weak and powerful, and the third to that of master and slave, which is the ultimate degree of inequality and the one to which the others all lead, until new changes dissolve the government completely, or bring it back to legitimacy. His writings about equality were taken more literally than he ever intended and led, at least temporarily, to mob rule.

It took Napoleon, a powerful leader, but one steeped in the Romanticism that Rousseau had also inspired, to lead the country out of its morass. However, in so doing, he very nearly destroyed a few other cultures, notably that of Prussia. After a demoralizing defeat, the Prussians, energized by the rector at the University of Jena, Johann Fichte, determined to rebuild their national pride by creating a state system of schools:.

The new idea as to the purpose and functions of the State promulgated by English and French eighteenth-century thinkers, and given concrete expression in the American and French revolutions near the close of the century, imparted, as we have seen, a new meaning to the school and a new purpose to the education of a people.

In the theoretical discussion of education by Rousseau and the empirical work of Pestalozzi a new individualistic theory for a secular school was created, and this Prussia, for long moving in that direction, first adopted as a basis for the state school system it early organized to serve national ends. The new American States, also long moving toward state organization and control, early created state schools to replace the earlier religious schools; while the French Revolution enthusiasts abolished the religious school and ordered the substitution of a general system of state schools to serve their national ends The original purpose in the establishment of schools by the State was everywhere to promote literacy and citizenship.

The term "citizenship training" is most often used. Since the schools created under this system are tax-supported, they are tools of the government and reflect the wishes of that government. They shall henceforth be referred to as "government schools" in this paper. Briefly re-examining the main concepts of this paper, we see that Jean-Jacques Rousseau spun his web of ideas with threads that had far-reaching effects, leading ultimately to the educational systems that are extant today, certainly in the United States, Europe, and Russia.

Pestalozzi in turn instructed Froebel, who created the kindergarten and taught the concept to many, including Elizabeth Peabody who founded one of the early ones in America. She was also a close associate of Bronson Alcott who claimed not to have read Rousseau, although he was familiar with the works of both Pestalozzi and Froebel.

The Social Contract

Alcott was a teacher and an administrator in the progressive, child-centered mode. He also had an intimate relationship with Henry Brockmeyer and Willam Torrey Harris who, along with Dewey, were disciples of Hegel and instrumental in bringing his ideas to the United States. Another thread emanating from Rousseau, and the one which encompasses all the others, was Romanticism. The three elements of the Romantic movement as expressed by its writers and artists and musicians were: The first two of these have been reflected in educational thought even to the extremes of environmentalism and narcissism:.

The invasion of the schools by environmentalism is intended to influence children from an early age with a pagan-style worship of Mother Earth. The environmental movement has succeeded in shaping the curriculum for most children. Teachers are bombarded with materials arguing that capitalism will destroy the planet unless government is given substantial new powers. The yearning for freedom has ultimately resulted in the behavior which brought about the school and college rebellions in the sixties and early seventies, and the personal license first exhibited in the life and poetry of Byron which manifested in the sexual revolution of the sixties and seventies as well, and might have led to the tragic shootings of the past two years.

The third Rousseauian conceptual thread evolved from his antipathy towards a group of people who had recently risen out of the lower classes.

They were merchants and business men, aware of and motivated by profit, and called disparagingly the bourgeoisie. Rousseau despised them because he felt that they were driven by their egos rather than the compassion of simpler folk. To his thinking that was the origin of inequality, and he visualized a utopian society wherein there would be no private ownership of property.

This is one of the ideas adopted by Marx and refined by Lenin into the Soviet system. Another basic tenet of Marxist thought was the form of dialectic invented by Hegel out of the paradoxes presented by Rousseau. This concept of collectivism has reached our schools via the neo-Marxist critical theorists spawned in Germany, developed in France, and thriving in U.

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