is nonetheless little chance of limiting its dangerous expressions.
Despite this stipulation, there is something deeply dissatisfying about emphasizing the positive dimensions of amour-propre. By casting Rousseau as a proto-German idealist who holds that equal social standing can satisfy the emotional needs of self-respect often associated with the passion, they blunt the critical edge of his daring political theory. The central message of his various discussions of amour-propre is not that it is a malleable passion capable of redirection toward some social or emotional good. Rather, it is that the emerging eighteenth-century democratic and commercial order corrupts the human need for self-love. It tolerates and nurtures high levels and specific forms of inequality that, combined with amour-propre, often result in domination and cruelty. Indeed, it is impossible to fully understand the view Rousseau has of amour-propre without putting it in the context of his social and political criticism. At its core, his political thought is about inequality in liberal democracies, as is his conceptualization of amour-propre.
To be fair, the three positive amour-propre theorists are not insensitive to Rousseau’s politics. Neuhouser, in particular, recognizes that the Second Discourse is primarily a critique of modern commercial society.34 His discussion is largely abstract, however, and mostly involves identifying the various economic and institutional conditions that “inflame” the passion, such as leisure, luxury, division of labor, individual differentiation, and private property.35 Neuhouser does not fully examine Rousseau’s actual social criticisms and specific political enemies. His is an analytic exercise, which has considerable value but is insufficient to fully grasp Rousseau’s decisively political treatment of amour-propre.36 Consequently, like his fellow positive amour-propre theorists, Neuhouser does not appreciate the radicalness of Rousseau’s criticism of commercial democracy and its tendency to overvalue individual talent.37
Furthermore, by focusing so much on the positive aspects of amour-propre, scholars disregard Rousseau’s powerful critique against his contemporaries. Most seventeenth-century and eighteenth-century thinkers—such as Pierre Nicole, Pierre Bayle, Bernard Mandeville, and others—enthusiastically celebrate amour-propre as a cure for poverty, a catalyst for economic growth, an inspiration for intellectual development, and the emotional glue bonding society together. Rousseau was far more skeptical of amour-propre than his peers, rejecting most of their attempts to extract political, social, and economic value from the passion. When he argues for positive usages of amour-propre, it is mostly to construct healthy moral personalities that transcend the selfishness inherent in it. Amour-propre, in other words, can be transformative. It can create new forms of consciousness. Rousseau rarely argues it should merely be redirected to mimic virtues such as charity or promote economic growth. His utilization of amour-propre for positive ends is much more circumscribed than that of many of the thinkers of his age.
While the desire of the positive amour-propre theorists to correct for the error of earlier scholars who held too dismal a view of Rousseau’s treatment of the passion is welcome, I worry that they overcorrect this problem—especially Dent and Neuhouser in his second book, Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality. Rousseau is not Kant. Rather than try to reconcile him with liberalism, we should embrace his far-reaching social and political criticism and interpret amour-propre in the context of this criticism. We will learn more about him, more about amour-propre, and more about modern life.
The four chapters in this book trace the development of amour-propre from its genealogical roots in the Homeric honor culture to Saint Augustine and medieval Christianity to its rebirth among seventeenth-century French neo-Augustinians. It continues through Rousseau’s debate with the philosophes, and finally to Tocqueville’s interpretation of it as a democratic vice, though one that is ultimately harmless and occasionally useful.
In Chapter 1, I argue that Rousseau defines amour-propre in terms of classical notions of aristocracy and draws upon it in his critique of the philosophe project to become a new aristocracy.
Chapter 2 examines the religious origins of amour-propre through Augustine’s concept of amor sui (translated as self-love in English and amour-propre in French) and traces its development through seventeenth-century neo-Augustinians and early Enlightenment thinkers such as Mandeville. Augustine’s treatment of amor sui is varied and wide-ranging. Augustine offers, however, two narratives of the passion that are of supreme importance in modernity. The first is democratic and seeks to identify instances in which amor sui can be manipulated for some societal benefit. The second is aristocratic and identifies a process in which amor sui degenerates into a more destructive passion—libido dominandi, or lust for domination and control. Surprisingly, most neo-Augustinians hold a more modern, utilitarian interpretation of amor sui and downplay Augustine’s own warnings that it tends to become a gateway emotion to the lust for domination. Instead, they emphasize its social utility in the city of humans, or civitas terrena.
In Chapter 3, I contend that Rousseau’s narrative in the Second Discourse closely mirrors Augustine’s treatment of amor sui as a gateway to domination and despotism. Furthermore, I examine his various solutions to amour-propre and conclude they all are designed to eliminate the aristocratic and commercial conditions most responsible for its most dangerous expressions.
Finally, in Chapter 4, I argue that Tocqueville implicitly challenges Rousseau’s thesis that amour-propre results from aristocratic psychology and is dangerously inflamed by commercial capitalism. While he accepts that “inflamed” amour-propre is most common in commercial societies that sustain social-class fluidity, he also believes the passion to be essentially democratic rather than aristocratic. That is, it results from the commitment to equality more than from the rewarding of excellences. Tocqueville is also less pessimistic than Rousseau and rejects his argument that it degenerates into a desire to dominate and tyrannize over one’s neighbors. The most dangerous tyrannies of the modern age, he thinks, are inspired by weakness and mediocrity, not the excellences of the talented.
Chapter 1
Being Aristos and the Politics of Aristocracy
Rousseau undertakes his initial inquiry into amour-propre early in part II of the Second Discourse. His first step is to connect it to aristocracy. In his anthropologic natural history, he describes early humans settling into villages for the first time. These new social living arrangements forever change the consciousness of the species and create a powerful new desire: that of being aristos, or “being best.” Rousseau writes,
It became customary to assemble in front of the Cabins or around a large Tree: song and dance, true children of leisure, became the amusement or rather the occupation of idle men and women gathered in a crowd. Everyone began to look at everyone else and to wish to be looked at himself, and public esteem acquired a price. The one who sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most skillful, or the most eloquent came to be the most highly regarded, and this was the first step at once toward inequality and vice: from these first preferences on one side were born vanity and contempt, on the other shame and envy; and the fermentation caused by these new leavens at last produced compounds fatal to happiness and innocence.1
Granted, Rousseau does not explicitly use the term amour-propre in the passage (hereinafter referred to as the “competition for esteem”). Many scholars, however, are comfortable with Victor Goldschmidt’s contention that Rousseau’s village residents are experiencing an emotion, if not the same as amour-propre,
