Thursday 9 December 2010

Rousseau’s triumph


I have a long-standing detestation of the political philosophy of Jean Jacques Rousseau, something I’ve alluded to on previous occasions, most recently in my piece on celebrity (The Silliness of Celebrity). I suppose I detest the thinkers of the French Enlightenment in general, but he incites a particular animus. His manifesto, his belief in human perfectibility, is the guide for all that follows, all the horror from Robespierre and the Republic of Virtue to Pol Pot and Year Zero.

Rousseau stands in sad contrast to the brilliant and prescient Edmund Burke, who in Reflections on the Revolution in France warned of the implications of the new all or nothing ideologies, warned that reform could only be pursued on a piecemeal basis in the context of existing social and political institutions if disaster was to be avoided, if state tyranny, terror and dictatorship were to be avoided.

Now I’ve read a timely reminder by Fraser Nelson in the Spectator’s Coffee House Blog (Why we must remember the lessons of the Anglo-Scottish Enlightenment) that there are other thinkers beyond Burke to whom conservatives are indebted. There is also another Enlightenment altogether, far more constructive in every way than the French. He is writing of the Scottish school of the eighteenth century, a brilliant period in that nation’s history, that saw the emergence of thinkers and writers like Adam Smith, David Hume (one he neglects to mention), Adam Ferguson and Francis Hutchison.

Fraser makes the crucial point that though many of those in the Continental tradition might express admiration for the people as a general concept they had, in practice, little faith in the people;

They feared that humans pursuing their self-interests would become corrupt – and that, left alone, selfish instincts would prevail. It followed that strong government was vital for a strong country. The only question was who should hold power. That so many people still believe this to be true (government virtuous, masses selfish) is testament to the allure of the French Enlightenment. It has been the basis of socialist government worldwide.

This, in short, is the basis of statism, the inversion whereby people are acted on rather than acting, managed rather than managing. Now consider the Scots. Not only was their approach empirical and practical but their philosophy was quite different from the pessimistic and all-encompassing French model. People if left alone, they held, were essentially virtuous and would, with the right tools, work out what was best for themselves and their families. Thus progress and change would be cautious and incremental, evolutionary and not revolutionary. The solution to a particular set of social problems lay, in other words, with the people, not with an elite purporting to represent the people.

The paradox is, as Fraser says, that though the positive Anglo-Scottish tradition (Anglo because he adds John Locke to the mix) is better in every way than the French, it’s their model we have ended up with. This country does best, as Margaret Thatcher demonstrated, when it follows the dictums of Adam Smith, offering practical solutions rather than grand abstractions. What he neglects to say, though, is that we have lost our way, lost sight of sober Anglo-Scottish principles, because we are now part of a Continental Empire, part of a European Union, driven by the idea that the people are not to be trusted, that only a benign and remote elite can address problems with centralised and statist solutions. The principle that drives the bureaucrats in the European Commission is not ‘we, the people’ but ‘they, the people.’ It’s Rousseau’s final triumph.

21 comments:

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  3. I wish you would not exaggerate so. Anyway, I take my stand with the the empiricists and the 'liberals', men like Adam Smith, who by no measure put forward 'ideologies.' Notions of a 'social contract' are alien to this tradition.

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  6. The Empire started to come off the rails when romantic, dare I say it, Rousseau-like, notions of manifest destiny and the white man's burden replaced an ad-hoc, pragmatic amalgam of trading relationships. Imperialism replaced empiricism.

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  7. Rousseau, Hegel, et al: poisonous alien ideas - curse their rotted flesh. Millions of tortured corpses are their legacy.

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  8. Rousseau, who invented the concept of the "noble savage", was obviously never chased by a pack of them.

    I enjoy your posts, & have linked to your site.

    Bob Mack

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  9. Adam, I do not think you understand the nature of ideology. Smith was an empiricist, one who gave us a practical insight into the workings and benefits of a free economy, a contrast with the mercantilism that went before. The exaggeration refers to your silly ‘vengeful boycott' comment.

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  10. Suciô, that's a very interesting observation.

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  11. Yes, society has corrupted the "nobel savage", aristocrats to the guilotine.

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  13. Ana-you've somewhat mis-stated Rousseau's position. He likewise believed that human nature was fundamentally good, and left to its own devices would develop into freedom and responsibility. The State and its agents were the enemy here. "Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains." This is, in contrast to the conservative's stance, Burke's stance, that human nature left to its own devices is fundamentally corrupt and needs strict laws and supervision to regulate it. Burke is less naive and more realistic than Rousseau, but no free spirit. In my heart of hearts I'm on Rousseau's side. From an individualist's perspective I think he was right; it's human nature that is wrong.

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  14. Adam, read the Wealth of Nations. There is really no more for me to add.

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  16. NP, yes, thanks. Yes, there was virtue alright in Rousseau’s scheme of things, virtue in Man (the cap is quite deliberate), an ideal concept of Man, a concept of Man, of natural Man, uncorrupted by power, the state, religion and social institutions, But what’s the basis for this abstraction? It’s simply because Rousseau says so, no more than that. I other words his thesis has no empirical roots at all; it’s pure ideology, a chimera, an intellectual fantasy. But all those influenced by Rousseau, people like Robespierre, believed that it was possible to create Rousseau’s ideal state, to create a republic of virtue by removing the old corruptions. They aimed for perfection on the basis of imperfection – the result was the guillotine and the killing fields.

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  17. I agree, Ana. That's why I quipped "it's human nature that is wrong." After all, what would literature and philosophy be without its Don Quixotes and its Platos. But philosophers are not responsible for how political fanatics use their ideas. Rousseau is no more to blame for Robespierre than Nietzsche is for Hitler.

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  18. Actually, I think philosophers are responsible for the practical application of prescriptive ideologies: Utopias are never more than gateways to hell, decked in flowers as they may be. Rousseau does indeed bear a direct responsibility for Robespierre's notions of the Supreme Being, the cult of Reason and the cult of virtue. Nietzsche, in contrast, does not sit at all well with Hitler and the Nazis. Some of them may have read Nietzsche but...well, I'm sure recall the line from a A Fish called Wanda.

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