occupations in such fields as banking and law. He follows Rousseau, however, by contending that these economic developments lead to a psychically bruising preoccupation with talent-based identities. In the new luxury economy, the identity of a person is a function of his occupation: “Each individual is defined by his calling.”116 Naturally, those with more intellectually challenging jobs are able to garner more social esteem. Led by “applause as well as profit,”117 the so-called best and brightest flocked to careers in law and finance in order to occupy a social status as high as possible. By contrast, the vast majority of workers, who remain in the older professions, the mechanical arts or farming, occupy the lower rungs. There is, moreover, a new class of factory workers that have even less challenging jobs. Because of the division of labor and industrialization, these individuals spend all their days performing mindless repetitive tasks. Accordingly, they are deprived of any intellectual stimulation and likely become dullards. They are mere cogs in machines: “Manufactures, accordingly, prosper most, where the mind is least consulted, and where the workshop may, without any great effort of imagination, be considered an engine, the part of which are men.”118 Adam Smith observes this phenomenon before Ferguson and more bluntly calls such workers “stupid.” In Lectures on Jurisprudence, he proclaims: “It is remarkable that in every commercial nation the low people are exceedingly stupid.”119 He repeats the charge in The Wealth of Nations, asserting that the average worker “naturally loses … the habit of exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.”120 Presumably, those on the assembly line become the dregs of society, invariably demoralized and ashamed of themselves. Individuals in more elevated professions—ones that require study and skill—look down on them and view them as men viewed slaves and women in earlier “rude” ages. As in Rousseau’s passage on the competition for esteem, the winners become vain and contemptuous of those below them, and the losers become envious and self-loathing. Ferguson’s conclusion is likewise Rousseauian: “In every commercial state, notwithstanding any pretension to equal rights, the exaltation of the few must depress the many.”121
Ferguson buttresses his case by contending that this problem is specific to modern commercial societies. The old aristocracies in “rude” civilizations, strangely enough, were far less enamored of talent and ability and maintained a general egalitarianism. Ferguson grants that during such ages some people might have been better warriors or had some special talents and that natural inequalities were ubiquitous. They were only recognized, however, during a hunt or whatever activity was taking place: “In times of relaxation,” which was most of the time, there was “no vestige of power or prerogative.”122 Thus, inequality was confined to certain times and did not become the core of a person’s identity. It is the rise of commerce that led people to answer the questions “Who am I?” and “What is my self-worth?” with “What can I do?”
Ferguson, of course, is not a full-fledged Rousseauian. Despite this glum portrait of commercial life, he remains committed to commercial capitalism. Still, the similarities between his analysis of the psychological effects of inequality in commercial life and Rousseau’s are striking. Both men view inequality as not merely an economic problem but a psychological and existential one that touches on people’s sense of their innate self-worth.
A Hesitant Debate
In any event, given the success of the First Discourse and the widespread attention it attracted, it was inevitable that Rousseau found himself in a spirited debate with his then friends. It took a while, however, for the debate to get off the ground, as both parties to the dispute had good reason to avoid it. The philosophes were surprised and disappointed by their friend’s apparent rejection of the Enlightenment after willingly contributing several entries to their Encyclopedia, and they had every reason to think they were innocent of the charge that they denigrated the working classes. Had they not, after all, made a special effort to afford the mechanical arts a prominent place in the Encyclopedia? Accordingly, they spent as much time downplaying their disagreement with Rousseau as they did defending their alleged aristocratic ambitions. Rousseau had his own problems. He very much wanted to remain an author yet had potentially undermined his literary credibility through his aggressive takedown of the arts and sciences in the First Discourse. Critics immediately seized on this paradox, noting that the great critic of the arts and sciences was himself an intellectual who used a public competition to make his case. Rousseau had tensions that had to be relaxed. He needed to distinguish himself from his Parisian friends, which required carving out some social space for arts and sciences that did not demean the lower classes.
It did not take much effort for Rousseau to solve his problem. All he had to do was to construct a new model of authorship that avoided all the perversities characteristic of urban intellectual life.123 He did so by identifying a variety of traits that transformed writing books into a virtuous activity. According to Christopher Kelly, this included publishing material that promotes the common good and taking responsibility for what one publishes—writing in a manner that involves both discretion and openness.124 Robert Darnton makes a similar point, though he argues that Rousseau also attempts to transform the nature of reading so that his audience would not be corrupted by intellectual values.125 To read his novel Julie and glean its truths, Rousseau contends in its “Preface,” it is necessary to adopt the standpoint of a provincial, a foreigner, or a child.126 And, with this problem out of the way, he was free to fully engage his former friends and challenge everything they stood for.
The issue of Rousseau’s apparent heresy raised in philosophe circles proved more difficult to resolve. D’Alembert, Diderot, and others employed several rationalizations and strategies to deescalate the conflict between them and their supposed fellow traveler. First, they denied Rousseau was repudiating the Enlightenment. As several scholars have noted, d’Alembert argues in his Preliminary Discourse that Rousseau’s very participation in the Encyclopedia confirmed he was a friend of the project and did not mean to include it in his critique of the arts and sciences.127 More generally, the philosophes just assumed that Rousseau was being clever in an attempt to win a contest. Diderot, in fact, boasted that he provided Rousseau with the insight that the arts and sciences were corrupting and insisted it was merely an attempt to distinguish his essay from the essays of competitors.128 He also encouraged his friend to use the discourse as a springboard to attain the fame all the philosophes sought by publishing it. When this happened and the discourse catapulted Rousseau into Europe’s collective consciousness, Diderot eagerly congratulated his friend: “It is succeeding beyond the skies; there is no precedent for a success like it.”129 Some scholars, such as Rousseau biographer Raymond Trousson, interpret such congratulations as evidence that the philosophes were not threatened by Rousseau’s essay and did not “take offense neither at the thesis of the Discourse nor the responses.”130 For his part, Rousseau was mildly irritated at the eagerness of his friends to explain away the First Discourse as well as their claims that he did not believe a word he wrote.131 This annoyance, however, did not immediately lead to breaking off his relationships.
Second, both Diderot and d’Alembert cast themselves as defenders of the artisan classes. In the Preliminary Discourse, d’Alembert goes out of his way to criticize the low esteem in which artisans are typically held: “But society, while justly respecting great geniuses for enlightening it, ought not to degrade the hands by which it is served.”132 At the end of the discourse, moreover, he chastises Ephraim Chambers, whose Cyclopedia was the model for his and Diderot’s own project, for his mediocre entries on the mechanical arts and his failure to take them as seriously as the liberal arts.133 Diderot, whose father was a successful cutler, likewise calls on society to hold artisans in higher regard in some of his Encyclopedia entries. In “Art,” he laments that the distinction between liberal and mechanical arts has degraded people who are “estimable and helpful,” and “has given a low name to people who are worthy and useful.”134 Such sympathies are also evident is in some of Diderot’s literary
