Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment

8. Judgment and Citizenship

The limits of the possible in moral matters are less narrow than we think. (SC, 189; 3:425) The success of the first foundation will make change necessary afterwards. (CC, 128; 3:906–7) I have argued that the ultimate purpose of Rousseau’s educational project as it unfolds in Emile is the cultivation of good judgment, the cornerstone of which he sees as the ability to discern the illusions that cloud our view of human relationships without becoming either thoroughly seduced or thoroughly disillusioned . As we have seen, Emile advocates a large dose of manipulation and deception in early childhood, but as his pupil reaches adolescence Rousseau introduces a shift, such that Emile is ultimately educated away from such contrivances and toward independent judgment and self-knowledge. This is reflected in Rousseau’s depiction of a form of love that does not rely on illusion and, more directly, in his education of the reader with regard to the illusory ideals that he presents in the book. Rousseau’s engagement of the reader consistently operates on two levels: first, he turns us away from the deceptions that surround us by seducing us with new ideals of happiness and freedom; and second, he weans us away from dependence even on these ideals by drawing attention to their limitations and showing why they are nevertheless necessary. Thus the same illusions that make self-rule possible, in Rousseau’s view, also 8 judgment and citizenship I Judgment and Citizenship M 175 make it necessary: they motivate us but cannot substitute for the judgment that is necessary to political life over the long term. My reading of Emile suggests that it is difficult, but not impossible, to achieve this partially detached perspective; Emile, Sophie, and Rousseau himself succeed in this to varying degrees—and it is possible also for the reader, whom Rousseau invites to judge both his fictional characters and himself. But is it conceivable that such a perspective could come into play in political communities , which Rousseau insists must be rooted in love of country? On the surface, there seems to be very little continuity between the education of judgment that we see in Emile and the civic education that Rousseau describes in such political works as the Discourse on Political Economy and Considerations on the Government of Poland. Whereas Emile is challenged to think his own thoughts, the citizens in these works are conditioned to be fervently patriotic. In the Political Economy, for example, Rousseau remarks, “Do we want people to be virtuous? Let us begin by making them love their fatherland” (PE, 152; 3:255), and then in the service of fostering this love recommends a program of civic education that relies heavily on manipulation and illusions. Similarly, in the Government of Poland, Rousseau prescribes a rigorous life-long program of civic education designed to produce citizens who are “patriotic by inclination, passionately, of necessity” (GP, 19; 3:966). Both works suggest the need for an educational authority resembling the godlike legislator of the Social Contract, that “supreme illusionist”1 who mythologizes the community’s origins and encourages citizens ’ reverence for an idealized political identity. We might see Rousseau himself as taking on this role when, in his “Dedication to Geneva” in the Second Discourse, he attempts to deepen the emotional attachment of the citizens of Geneva to their regime. That is, he presents such a highly embellished image of Geneva that we may wonder if he is trying to manipulate the people into feeling uncritical reverence for their fatherland. In each of these cases, passionate attachment seems to trump judgment as Rousseau’s foremost concern. There is nevertheless evidence that Rousseau is concerned with increasing the human capacity for judgment on the political level. In the Discourse on Political Economy, after extolling the virtues of a deeply nationalistic education , Rousseau remarks that citizens should one day become “the fathers of the country whose children they have been for so long” (PE, 156; 3:261). Of course, this raises a vexing question: how can children subjected to a rigorous, parochial civic education, trained to be utterly obedient to the “mother” state, suddenly stop behaving like obedient children and become like “fathers”? If they are to succeed in this transformation, they cannot simply be the products of such an 176 L Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment education. They must come to understand its principles and purposes in order...