Rousseau's Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, and the Drive for Recognition
Frederick Neuhouser
Language: English
Pages: 296
ISBN: 0199592055
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This book is the first comprehensive study of Rousseau's rich and complex theory of the type of self-love (amour propre ) that, for him, marks the central difference between humans and the beasts. Amour propre is the passion that drives human individuals to seek the esteem, approval, admiration, or love--the recognition --of their fellow beings. Neuhouser reconstructs Rousseau's understanding of what the drive for recognition is, why it is so problematic, and how its presence opens up far-reaching developmental possibilities for creatures that possess it. One of Rousseau's central theses is that amour propre in its corrupted, manifestations--pride or vanity--is the principal source of an array of evils so widespread that they can easily appear to be necessary features of the human condition: enslavement, conflict, vice, misery, and self-estrangement. Yet Rousseau also argues that solving these problems depends not on suppressing or overcoming the drive for recognition but on cultivating it so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood. Indeed, Rousseau goes so far as to claim that, despite its many dangers, the need for recognition is a condition of nearly everything that makes human life valuable and that elevates it above mere animal existence: rationality, morality, freedom--subjectivity itself--would be impossible for humans if it were not for amour propre and the relations to others it impels us to establish.
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To the self One important characteristic of amour-propre that contributes to its capacity to wreak havoc in human society is the ferocity and power with which it grabs hold of individuals and moves them to act. None of the other problematic features of amour-propre would ultimately be of much consequence to human affairs, if amour-propre, like natural pity, were a sentiment that spoke only ‘under certain circumstances’ and with ‘a gentle voice’ (DI, 152, 154/OC 3, 154, 156). Rousseau draws our.
About—is patently false. For we esteem great authors not primarily for their natural talents but for the use they have made of those talents in their literary work. This means that the excellences for which l’homme d’esprit is admired require his own participation, just as those of the virtuous man require his.¹⁷ If ‘the good man can be proud of his virtue because it is his’ (his own doing), then the man of genius ought to be permitted to take pride in his achievements to the extent that the same.
Rousseau’s texts in the present context. What one quickly discovers, though, is that it says frustratingly little that bears directly on the question of why human amour-propre is so likely to be inflamed. The most striking example of this is that when amour-propre first appears in the Second Discourse, it is already configured as a desire to achieve superior standing—to be regarded as the best singer or dancer (DI, 166/OC 3, 169)—and, contrary to what we might expect, Rousseau makes no effort to.
Inflamed amour-propre are not necessary consequences of human (or non-human) nature but the effects, to a significant degree, of free human action that might have had, and could in the future have, different results. This is clearer perhaps in the case of the social conditions, where it is relatively easy to see the division of labor, the rules of property, and improved methods of production as contingent results of human actions and as subject to modification by further human intervention in the.
Worth—is destined to be both futile and oppressive. Moreover, as I argue in the following two chapters, Rousseau holds that even if the extirpation of amour-propre were possible, it would be undesirable, since success in this undertaking would destroy the very condition of nearly everything that makes human existence valuable. 156 prescription It is necessary to underscore these points again here since, despite clear and abundant evidence that Rousseau rejects this strategy, it is not.