Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment

Introduction

The general will is always right, but the judgment that guides it is not always enlightened. It must be made to see objects as they are, or sometimes as they should appear to be. . . . From this arises the necessity for a legislator. (SC, 154; 3:380) The idea of democracy presupposes that human beings are capable of exercising judgment, since it requires citizens who are capable of making judgments about a shared public world. The question of how to foster this capacity in individuals is thus a fundamental question for political philosophy. Yet the process by which the ability to exercise good judgment is acquired and nurtured remains somewhat mysterious, despite a rich intellectual history of the subject.1 This indeterminacy has to do with the very nature of judgment. As Ronald Beiner states in his landmark book Political Judgment, “Judgment is a form of mental activity that is not bound to rules, is not subject to explicit specification of its mode of operation (unlike methodical rationality), and comes into play beyond the confines of rule-governed intelligence.”2 Because the operation of judgment is detached from the realm of universal reason and absolute standards , yet is at the same time distinguishable from the realm of merely subjective opinion, judgment seems to rest upon “an elusive and ineffable faculty of sense,” as Peter J. Steinberger puts it.3 In seeking to understand judgment, scholars rarely look to Rousseau,4 at least not when the inquiry is bound together with the question of democratic politics.5 In fact, Rousseau is often presented as suspicious of the very idea that citizens are capable of exercising good judgment,6 and is often depicted as willing to sacrifice judgment (and therewith genuine democratic freedom) for the sake of social cohesion and republican virtue. Rousseau certainly leaves himself open to this charge insofar as his defense of popular sovereignty in On the Social Contract entails the following qualification : the general will, though always legitimate, is unenlightened and tends to lack good judgment (SC, 154; 3:380). This deficiency in judgment is precisely what creates the need for a godlike legislator, who mythologizes the origins of introduction 2 L Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment the city and its laws, creates ennobling spectacles, and appeals to divine sanction —all in order to foster the underlying psychology that is necessary to facilitate the proper expression of the general will. Rousseau seems less interested in creating citizens who are capable of exercising independent judgment than in producing citizens who are conditioned to be unreflectively patriotic: “by inclination, passionately, of necessity” (GP, 19; 3:966). To the degree that Rousseau seeks to guarantee good judgment in this way, he seems to undermine democratic judgment insofar as the general will becomes an effect of external manipulations rather than an autonomous expression of popular will.7 In short, it can appear that Rousseau is perfectly willing to substitute deep, nonrational conditioning for the genuine and independent exercise of judgment—except perhaps for the exceptional, solitary philosopher (an unlikely model for democratic politics). On the level of the individual, similar concerns can be raised with regard to Rousseau’s model of an allegedly free individual: the imaginary pupil whose education toward freedom Rousseau depicts in Emile. Many have raised questions about Emile’s alleged autonomy in light of the veiled manipulations of his tutor.8 Even those who evaluate the figure of Emile positively on the question of his capacity for autonomy recognize limitations when it comes to the issue of judgment specifically.9 On this view, Rousseau’s educational project, like his political project, seems to consist in the substitution of new (healthy, salutary) prejudices for existing, corrupt prejudices. To be sure, these salutary prejudices may produce better judgments than those based on corrupt ones. But a nagging question nevertheless remains: if those judgments are conditioned reflexes, and if one never learns to reflect critically on those (new) prejudices , however salutary they may be, what are the implications for human freedom? Are we left with an unbridgeable gap between the few who are wise and the rest who remain the product of their indispensable prejudices? If so, then Rousseau’s idealized models of political freedom (e.g., the general will) and individual freedom (e.g., Emile) are little more than seductive but illusory chimeras that mask the deepest operations of power. What this leads us to see is that the question of Rousseau’s position on the possibility of genuine self...