degrees, just as natural man in the Second Discourse vanishes by degrees. As Emile must learn gradually to see and judge the world around him, the reader must learn to see and judge Emile.
Once individuality becomes an issue, so does happiness—and not before. Rousseau waits until book II to explain the understanding of happiness that guides his entire endeavor, or at least serves as a point of departure. “A being endowed with senses whose faculties equaled his desires would be an absolutely happy being” (80; 4:304, emphasis added). This would seem to suggest that for Rousseau the natural man, in his simplicity and physical robustness, is the best judge, or sets the standard against which the human condition must be judged. “The closer to his natural condition man has stayed, the smaller is the difference between his faculty and his desires, and consequently the less removed he is from being happy” (81; 4:304). But it is precisely the perfect equilibrium of absolute happiness that makes it impossible to stay close to this natural condition, for natural man lacks the foresight and experience to understand and maintain his condition.4 Our perfectibility may be what moves us away, but our unselfconsciousness and ignorance are what make us susceptible to moving in directions that diminish our happiness and freedom.
This helps us to make sense of why Rousseau introduces his definition of the absolutely happy being with the remark that we cannot know what absolute happiness or unhappiness is (80; 4:303). Even as he states this unequivocally, Rousseau at the same time implies that it might be possible to experience absolute happiness. The absolutely happy being thus resembles the natural man of the Second Discourse insofar as he experiences perfect contentment but does not know enough to appreciate its fragility. Such a being is an absolutely happy being but does not know it. The underlying question is whether knowing that one is happy is an essential component of being happy.
To the degree that Emile exemplifies the happy equilibrium of desires and faculties, his equilibrium is maintained artificially by the tutor’s absolute control over him. He resembles natural man but has the added benefit of the tutor’s guiding hand to protect his innocence (whereas Rousseau introduces his portrait of natural man in the Second Discourse with the remark that he will consider what human beings would become if left to themselves). Emile does not know what happiness is, or even that he is happy (awareness of which requires comparison to other states, a lesson Rousseau saves for a later time). One should not mistake Emile’s lack of self-awareness for evidence that Rousseau’s model of human happiness (and, by extension, human freedom) excludes self-reflection. Rousseau gives us several indications, even at this early stage in Emile’s upbringing, that a perfect equilibrium maintained by external force(s) rather than by self-consciousness is not in fact his ultimate model.
Rousseau begins by distinguishing the happy child from the spoiled (gaté) child, clarifying that his point is not to fulfill every desire (which is a recipe not for equilibrium but for disequilibrium, since desires can be limitless) but precisely to limit desire in the first place. Making a child happy does not mean making him spoiled, and making a child good does not mean making him unhappy. So far, we are in familiar territory, for this is all quite consistent with Rousseau’s conception of man’s natural goodness. However, once Rousseau has articulated this formulaic conception of happiness (happiness equals equilibrium), he raises the following question: “In what, then, consists human wisdom or the road of true happiness?” (80; 4:304). Rousseau’s initial answer to this question reinforces the importance of equilibrium between desires and faculties. Of all the animals, human beings alone have superfluous faculties, and these become the instruments of our unhappiness. Specifically, foresight and imagination awaken new hopes and desires and extend the “measure of the possible” (91; 4:304), causing us to project goals and destinations at which we never arrive. Therefore, Rousseau advises that we restrict ourselves to a very narrow, simple sphere of existence, within which equilibrium is possible. “Let us measure the radius of our sphere and stay in the center like the insect in the middle of his web; we shall always be sufficient unto ourselves; and we shall not have to complain of our weakness, for we shall never feel it” (81; 4:305).
However, as Rousseau continues his discussion of human wisdom and its relation to happiness, he leaves behind the image of an insect caught it its own web and begins to emphasize the reflective dimension of human happiness. While he advises man to “remain in the place which nature assigns to you in the chain of being” (83; 4:308), he also notes that the wise man “knows how to stay in his place” (84; 4:310, emphasis added). Unlike the insect, who remains in place by instinct or impotence, or natural man, who lacks the foresight and experience to understand the consequences of leaving it, the wise man understands his distinctive place in the chain of being and knows how to maintain it. Rousseau contrasts this wisdom not only with the simplicity of other animals but with that of the human child, who “does not know his place [and] would not be able to keep to it” (84; 4:310). Unlike the child, whose equilibrium and thus happiness must be maintained by an external force (in this case, the tutor), the wise man must possess, in addition to an equilibrium of desires and faculties, some faculty that allows him to reflect on and maintain that very equilibrium. This is likely to involve the “superfluous” faculties that, Rousseau laments, tend to serve as instruments of unhappiness rather than happiness (81; 4:305). Rousseau’s implicit question seems to be not simply whether this superfluity can be severely curtailed or even avoided altogether but whether it can be harnessed to serve the cause of happiness rather than unhappiness.
Rousseau’s distinction between childish happiness and adult happiness implies that only children (specifically, children whose equilibrium has been maintained for them) can be perfectly happy. But this happiness is fleeting. Rousseau insists that childhood gaiety and innocence be preserved and cherished rather than sacrificed to an uncertain future, but at the same time he has long-term aspirations for his pupil’s happiness. “I shall not seek a distant happiness for him at the expense of the present. I want him to be happy not once but always, if it is possible” (326–27; 4:653). Insofar as growing up means learning to maintain your own equilibrium—learning how to stay in your place—it means relinquishing a perfect (but externally maintained) equilibrium for a less perfect but more independently maintained equilibrium. This raises the question of how a child held to one standard becomes an adult held to a very different standard. How does one learn to stay in one’s place if one has always been made to stay in one’s place? Rousseau underscores the importance of this transition at the beginning of book III, when he begins to characterize his subject not simply as “the child” but as “the child whom one wants to make wise” (166; 4:428).
The implied distinction between being happy and knowing what happiness is runs parallel to the distinction between staying in place and knowing how to stay in place. Both are related to the central issue of book II: how to combine integrity and motion, or movement and staying in place. Rousseau’s prescribed education for the preadolescent is designed at once to preserve childhood innocence and to bring the child to “the maturity of childhood” (162; 4:423). One must therefore grow and learn—both in order to achieve the maturity of childhood and, more fundamentally, because perfectibility is part of human nature. The challenge is to do so while remaining unified and whole. Perfect equilibrium is a static condition, but it is in the nature of human beings to move. In light of this fundamental tension, Rousseau’s choice of illustration for book II—Chiron training the young Achilles to run—takes on added significance. At stake is not only the matter of teaching a child to move with swiftness and agility but also the underlying issue of how one might encourage a child to run or, more broadly, to move—that is to grow, learn, and change—while keeping him in his place by forestalling the development of all his superfluous faculties. The two objectives are intimately related inasmuch as Rousseau claims that the key to forestalling the development of superfluous faculties involves preserving the child as a purely physical being. Thus running is an appropriate activity for the child, whereas reading, which stimulates the imagination, is not. But there is more to Rousseau’s discussion of learning to run; he raises the broader question of how, in light of his insistence on a negative education, one might properly learn anything at all.
Learning
