depicts men learning from women.) The book within a book on Sophie is itself further divided, consisting of a lengthy discussion of women in general followed by the story of Sophie in particular. These two accounts of “woman” (the general and the particular) are not entirely consistent. Thus the “or” in the book’s subtitle might be taken as disjunctive rather than conjunctive, or at least as ambiguous. Moreover, the figure of Sophie also has a double. Rousseau offers, in the middle of her story, a digression about “a girl so similar to Sophie that her story could be Sophie’s without occasioning any surprise” (E, 402; 4:759). This other Sophie, who ends up a victim of her own unattainable standards of virtue, is abandoned when Rousseau decides to “resuscitate this lovable girl” and “to give her a less lively imagination and a happier destiny.” He returns to his original Sophie, but only after complicating his narrative of feminine education to the degree that he makes it difficult to discern which image of womanhood he wishes to present as ideal.
Finally, we must keep in mind that Emile’s story does not end with Emile but carries over into Emile and Sophie, or The Solitary Ones. The existence of a sequel, even an unfinished one, raises questions about what it might mean to understand and evaluate Emile’s education as a whole. Since Rousseau chose to publish Emile alone, with its happy ending and without any reference to Emile’s subsequent experiences, Emile can and should be considered a whole unto itself. At the same time, it is not a complete whole in light of the sequel. I draw attention to these ambiguities, and to the fact that every major character in Emile has a double or foil, to raise the question of what it means to talk about wholeness and psychic unity in the context of so many split identities and narrative cleavages. Bifurcation is structurally important in Emile in another way as well.37 There are numerous instances in which Rousseau returns to a subject he addressed earlier in order to present it in a new (and more critical) light, asking his reader to judge in both cases. In each case, the initial lesson points the reader directly to an explicitly specified conclusion, whereas the subsequent lesson introduces considerations that may call into question the initial conclusion, and then withholds any indication of the desired or correct conclusion. This pattern, which persists throughout Emile, brings to light (both discursively and performatively) Rousseau’s considered view of what good judgment is and how it develops. By calling for increasingly sophisticated judgments on the part of the reader, as we shall see, Rousseau does much more than simply redirect readers’ passions, seducing them toward virtue with necessary and noble chimeras. Rather, he cultivates a model of good judgment that calls for a more reflective stance than most commentators acknowledge—one that, to be sure, necessarily involves some degree of seduction by chimeras or illusions (of which the figures of Emile, and even of “natural man,” are examples), but simultaneously entails critical awareness of their chimerical quality and the hold they have on us. This middle ground is my focus, for it reflects the necessary combination of attachment and detachment that makes judgment possible, inasmuch as judgment can be neither reduced to the utter subjectivity of the prejudices and opinions to which we are unreflectively attached, nor elevated to a realm of detached scientific objectivity.
My attempt to elucidate this middle ground is not without its difficulties, for Rousseau does not address it directly or provide a straightforward account of it. It emerges only indirectly, out of the collision of the various extremes in Rousseau’s work and the juxtaposed episodes in Emile’s education. By this I do not mean that Rousseau’s indirectness veils a straightforward claim in order to make it obscure and accessible only to an enlightened few, which is one way of understanding philosophical esotericism. Rather, Rousseau suggests that the very nature of what he seeks to convey compels him to convey it indirectly. If, instead of providing one definitive lesson, he offers parallel episodes that revisit an issue in order to transform a simple lesson into a more complex one, it is because the moment of collision or transformation would be lost in a more direct account, which would then fail to do justice to the phenomenon in question. For it is precisely the experience of returning to a simpler “whole” with an altered perspective that produces the necessary insight; any attempt to jump directly to an explicit statement of that insight will inevitably distort the essential feature of what he seeks to convey. In other words, if (in part) the “lesson” is that the formation of ideal “wholes” is both necessary and dangerous, which suggests that a middle state between enchantment and disenchantment is necessary, then turning that middle state into yet another idealized whole would undermine the most essential part of the lesson. This middle state can be fully appreciated only in juxtaposition to the extremes that it lies between, not abstracted from them or as a separate “third way.” Otherwise, the effect is not an illuminating demystification of Rousseau’s lesson that increases its accessibility but rather a re-mystification, insofar as the “third way” becomes yet another oversimplified, static, and ultimately misleading ideal—an obfuscating chimera.
I admit that this difficulty necessarily haunts my reading of Rousseau as much as it haunts Rousseau’s own work, but I hope to address the problem head on instead of leaping over it. In striving to do justice to what Rousseau shows rather than limit myself to what he says, I will have to do my own share of showing. But this is thoroughly consistent with a widely shared insight about the nature of judgment: that it is primarily taught by example, experience, and narrative rather than by discursive inquiry. Judgment “can in one sense be taught and in another sense not.”38 If by teaching we mean the discursive transmission of knowledge about judgment, then judgment itself cannot be taught. Because judgment itself occurs only in the absence of universally applicable principles (which would render judgment superfluous), education in judgment cannot be a matter of acquiring a set of universal principles or rules of judgment. It must proceed, rather, by way of example.39 In other words, good judgment is not a discursive product to be transmitted but is, as Aristotle insisted, cultivated only by experience. “We gain such indirect experience from listening to, reading, and reflecting upon stories.”40 In other words, we must reflect on exemplary narratives and experiences in order to glean from them the insight they have the potential to convey.
Rousseau not only confirms this point by weaving together narrative and commentary upon that narrative, but also, in his commentary, raises important questions about the nature of such reflection. Throughout Emile he contends that examples are most likely to speak to (and be correctly interpreted by) those who, on some intuitive level, already understand what is being imparted, and are likely to be misunderstood by those who most need to be instructed by the example. This suggests that the sort of reflection that moves one from a complete lack of receptivity to the force of the example toward that very receptivity is not detached reflection “on” or thinking “about” the meaning of the example. What is fundamental to the development of the capacity for judgment is a form of engagement that is neither wholly absorbed by nor utterly detached from the object of reflection. For Rousseau, this is as much the case for self-reflection as it is for reflection on the particulars of the world we inhabit. In Emile, he explores how this complex stance toward oneself and one’s world develops over time, and the internal and external conditions that strengthen and weaken it. As such, Emile is an important resource for our own thinking about the nature of judgment, and how it is learned.
JUDGMENT AND THE STANDARD OF NATURE
It is not philosophers who know men best. They see them only through the prejudices of philosophy, and I know of no station where one has so many. A savage has a healthier judgment of us than a philosopher does. (E, 243; 4:535)
Whatever else good judgment means for Rousseau, it is certainly grounded in his understanding of nature, which provides a standard against which civil society is to be judged. To what degree, and in what sense (i.e., whether substantively or as a formal standard of
