Letter to Beaumont, Letters Written from the Mountain, and Related Writings

Introduction

Introduction In a sense the works contained in this volume, all of which were written between the end of 1762 and the middle of 1765, represent the conclusion of Rousseau’s career as an author. Although he went on to write his three great autobiographical works (the Confessions, Dialogues, and Reveries) as well as the important Considerations on the Government of Poland, none of these was, or was intended to be, published during his lifetime. The only work Rousseau published through his own initiative after 1765 was his Dictionary of Music (1767), which he had substantially completed Wve years earlier.1 In fact, in the Confessions, Rousseau says that by 1759 he “had been forming the plan of leaving literature altogether and above all the trade of Author.”2 He had just published the Letter to d’Alembert, and Julie was in press. Moreover, he was nearly Wnished writing Emile, his “last and best work,”3 and had decided to extract the Social Contract from an unWnished larger work, the Political Institutions. The money he expected from these last books was to Wnance his life of retirement. Thus, when they Wnally appeared in 1762, Rousseau “had given up literature completely” and “no longer thought of anything but leading a tranquil and sweet life as far as it depended on me.”4 As it happened, this possibility no longer depended on him. The storm that broke out after the publication of Emile and the Social Contract deprived Rousseau of tranquillity and ultimately caused him to resume “the trade of author” for several more years. Each of the works written during this period was a response to a speciWc attack on either his character or his recent publications. Rousseau had Xed France in June of 1762 to avoid arrest after the condemnation of Emile by the Parlement of Paris. Shortly thereafter both Emile and the Social Contract were burned in his native Geneva, and a warrant was issued for his arrest. As a result, he settled at Môtiers, near Neuch âtel, which was under the control of Frederick the Great of Prussia. In August Emile was attacked in a pastoral letter by the Archbishop of Paris, Christophe de Beaumont. Believing that he owed it to himself to reply, Rousseau responded with the Letter to Beaumont, dated November 18, 1762, and published the following March. Two months later he renounced his Genevan citizenship because of the failure of the government to xiii reverse the warrant it had issued against him. This dramatic gesture led to a wave of controversy in Geneva, including a pamphlet war in which the partisans of the government were represented by the Procurator General Tronchin’s anonymously published Letters Written from the Country, a work that Rousseau undertook to refute with his Letters Written from the Mountain, composed in secrecy during 1764. It was published at the end of the year and quickly burned in numerous cities, although in Geneva itself it was declared to be “unworthy of being burned by the Hangman.”5 In addition to the furor it caused throughout Europe, the work had consequences for Rousseau’s eVort to live his tranquil and sweet life at Môtiers. The local minister, Montmollin, who had been praised in the Letters, began proceedings to excommunicate Rousseau and stirred up the populace against him with sermons comparing him to the Antichrist. This culminated with the stoning of Rousseau’s house in September of 1765. In the midst of these events, which forced him to leave Môtiers, Rousseau wrote the Vision of Pierre of the Mountain, Called the Seer to poke fun at one of his local enemies, Pierre Boy de la Tour, a relative of his landlady who apparently had urged her to evict Rousseau on the basis of a revelation he said he had received from God.6 The circumstances of the composition of these works give a clear indication of their themes. They are defenses of both Rousseau’s character and the substance of Emile and the Social Contract. They use the occasion of very speciWc attacks to present his thoughts on the general issues of censorship , religion, and politics, issues that had always been at the center of his concern. Although Rousseau’s focus on these issues was continuous from the beginning of his literary career, it is important to keep in mind the polemical context of his treatment of them here. Evaluating the relation between the positions he takes in these works and...