through the eyes of others. He lives outside himself, not within himself. He is neither whole nor part of a larger whole. He is nothing.11
The bourgeois may be neither man nor citizen, but one might say the same of Emile himself, who, although a “savage made to inhabit cities” (E, 205; 4:484), possesses neither the absolute independence of natural man living in the state of nature (since he marries and joins society) nor the fervor of the citizen who exists only in relation to the whole. He is simultaneously attached and detached. Moreover, he is taught to compare himself with his fellow men, and to see himself through his beloved’s eyes. He therefore exhibits a certain degree of self-consciousness, but always in tandem (and in tension) with his unselfconscious naturalness, a tension that Rousseau suggests must somehow be reconciled. Emile’s example, and the project of his education, thus raises the question of whether there can be some positive form of in-betweenness, in Rousseau’s view. A positive in-betweenness that incorporates a healthy form of self-consciousness is necessitated by the fact that the wholeness that is the distinctive feature of Rousseau’s twin poles—natural man and citizen—is utterly fragile unless maintained by some outside force. In the political realm, that external force is obviously the legislator, and in Emile it is the tutor, who must employ a great deal of art to maintain his pupil’s alleged naturalness. This paradox is already reflected in the Second Discourse, which depicts the progress of human development without any guiding hand, divorced from considerations of divine providence (or humans “left to themselves,” as Rousseau puts it). In this presentation, human beings fall away from their natural independence without realizing what is happening. They lack foresight to anticipate the implications of various changes they make to their environment. They embrace new chains, thinking that they are embracing freedom. Thus the lack of foresight and self-consciousness that makes possible a perfect equilibrium between desires and faculties (and thus facilitates self-contained wholeness) is also the Achilles’ heel of that wholeness.12 Is there some way in which this potential weakness can be transformed into a strength? This transformation is, I submit, the ultimate goal of education for Rousseau.13
In exploring the possibility that there may be a positive form of in-betweenness for Rousseau, I join a number of scholars who understand the tensions that pervade Rousseau’s work as just as (or even more) important to his project as the simple model “wholes” that he presents in a polarized fashion. For example, Mark Cladis argues that Rousseau seeks “a middle way” between individuality and social assimilation, embracing “both humanity and citizenship, morality and politics, individuality and social cooperation.”14 Rousseau’s point is not to choose between the alternatives of self-possession and citizenship, but to come to see that they are mutually implicated and to combine them. Jonathan Marks also illuminates Rousseau’s concern for the harmonization, rather than the utter assimilation, of disharmonious goods.15
One virtue of these readings is that they provide a way of explaining the paradoxes in Rousseau’s thought without explaining them away. They also suggest that Rousseau is neither inconsistent nor indecisive. He is not alternately individualist and collectivist, but rather theorizes important connections between the two poles.16 These interpretations help us to see that the common characterization of Rousseau’s overriding concern in terms of the goal of achieving unselfconscious “wholeness” (whether of the naturally unified man or of the artificially unified citizenry)17 is overdrawn, and that his writings are oriented to the problem of combining and harmonizing competing goods rather than forcing a choice between them. As Marks, for example, puts it, “Far from impatiently seeking unity at the cost of human freedom, Rousseau was willing to preserve tension in order to give the plurality of human goods their due.”18
Scholars developing this line of thought often focus on the individual and the community as the most fundamental of the competing goods that Rousseau seeks to reconcile. The tension with which I am especially concerned is that between truth and illusion, and how these operate in Rousseau’s understanding of freedom, judgment, and the relation between the two (in his theory of education as well as in his own rhetorical strategy). This does not mean that I wish to ignore the individual/collective tension in his thought, but rather that I aim to explore the underlying human psychology that makes possible the achievement of Rousseau’s ideal middle state between individualism and collectivism. While I agree with Marks that “Rousseau views the human good not as a unity but as a set of disharmonious attributes or tendencies that must somehow be arranged in a life so as not to tear the human being apart,”19 I would add that this “somehow” raises troubling questions about the role of illusions, manipulation, and conditioning in this arrangement. Does Rousseau’s amelioration of this disharmony entail the sacrifice of self-rule?
To address these questions adequately, it is necessary that we rethink not only Rousseau’s understanding of the relationship between the “I” and the “we,” but also the stance of the “I” toward itself and toward the illusions that nourish that sense of self, whether identity is individual or collective. Whereas the bourgeois is unhappy and unfree because he sees himself only through the eyes of others, natural man and citizen do not see themselves at all, so seamlessly do they inhabit their identities, which is problematic in a different way. Is there, for Rousseau, a form of self-awareness that does not simply get in the way of freedom but actually allows one to preserve it from within? Can one achieve a measure of detachment that allows one to both be whole and know that one is whole, thus actively preserving that wholeness rather than having it maintained by some external force? Does this require dispensing with all illusions, which Rousseau seems to suggest is impossible, or does it require, instead, achieving some measure of detachment from those illusions while still being moved by them?
My reading of Emile suggests that although Rousseau sees salutary illusions as inescapably necessary to foster the conditions that make freedom possible, he nevertheless preserves a distinction between these illusions—which can and should be objects of critical reflection, and bear some essential relationship to truth—and mere prejudice. He does not simply sacrifice genuine self-rule for the sake of an illusory freedom out of a distrust of judgments that are not guided by some passionate attachment to a salutary ideal. Rather, he explores the question of whether illusions might not simply dazzle and inspire but also provoke critical reflection and judgment. Illusions might then contribute to the genuine education of judgment instead of simply circumventing the need for judgment, and thereby foster genuine self-rule rather than a condition that is subjectively experienced as autonomy but is actually a state of subjection. The question of whether freedom is fostered by naked truths or salutary chimeras is an undercurrent throughout Emile, implicated in every aspect of Emile’s education, from his exposure (or lack thereof) to books, to his physical education, to his religious education, to his development of pity and his experience of falling in love—each of which I address in the chapters that follow.
I pursue these issues primarily in the context of Emile, and the organization of my chapters tracks the stages of Emile’s education as it unfolds, but these issues resonate in Rousseau’s more explicitly political writings as well, and I trace these resonances in my concluding chapter. Even in Rousseau’s discussions of civic education, he indicates that the people cannot remain in a state of dependence upon the machinations of a legislator figure forever. As he states in the Discourse on Political Economy, citizens should one day become “the fathers of the country whose children they have been for so long” (PE, 156; 3:261). This is more than a matter of generational progression. The underlying question is: how will citizens subjected to a rigorous, parochial civic education from birth suddenly stop behaving like obedient children and become the “fathers”? And how then are we to understand the middle ground that Rousseau implies each time he suggests that a people must somehow be young and old at the same time?
While Rousseau does not adequately address the question in his overtly political works, he makes it a central question in his work on education. In a critical scene, as Emile approaches adulthood and marriage, the tutor explicitly reprimands him for being a mere product of his conditioning, and demands that he begin to make truly independent
