Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment

2. Learning to Move: The Body, the Senses, and the Foundations of Judgment

[Emile] gets his lessons from nature and not from men. . . . His body and his mind are exercised together. Acting always according to his own thought and not someone else’s, he continually unites two operations: the more he makes himself strong and robust, the more he becomes sensible and judicious. (E, 119; 4:361) The first three books of Emile are generally understood to constitute Emile’s “negative” (93; 4:323) education, that is, an education designed to preserve his natural wholeness while forestalling the development of prejudices and passions (especially amour-propre) by warding off all social influences. Rousseau states that this first, negative education “consists not at all in teaching virtue or truth but in securing the heart from vice and the mind from error.” One must “let childhood ripen in children” (94; 4:324) rather than hurry to fill their minds and souls with lessons and virtues that they are unprepared to acquire, and that are unnecessary in any case. He insists that children are not naturally inclined toward the vices we attribute to them. Those vices are the product of a faulty education. By nature, children are “little innocents” whose simplicity should be preserved for as long as possible. Rousseau prefers that children remain “ignorant and true” rather than “learn their lessons and lie” (102; 4:336). The task of the educator is therefore “to do nothing and let nothing be done” (93; 4:323). 2 learning to move The Body, the Senses, and the Foundations of Judgment I Learning to Move M 37 But Rousseau follows this general rule by raising “another consideration,” one that suggests an altogether different reason for “doing nothing” and invites us to reconsider the idea of a purely negative education. Rousseau advises the educator to observe the child closely and over a long period of time before beginning to educate—indeed, before saying “the first word to him.” His rationale is that “one must know well the particular genius of the child in order to know what moral diet suits him. Each mind has its own form.” The educator must let the germ of the child’s unique individual character “reveal itself freely” (94; 4:324). If childhood must be allowed to ripen, it is not simply to preserve a universal, original state as long as possible but to allow the development (unfettered, without distortion) of the child’s unique self, which is revealed over time. Thus, although Rousseau argues vehemently against turning children into miniature adults with a precocious pseudomaturity, he also conceives of growth and maturation within childhood. “Each age, each condition of life, has its suitable perfection, a sort of maturity proper to it” (158; 4:418). Is “doing nothing” sufficient to bring about this maturation? What exactly Rousseau means by the distinctive maturity of childhood, and how it is cultivated, complicates the notion of a purely negative education while bearing on several fundamental issues with regard to his views on the education of judgment. The mark of a child’s having reached “the perfection of his age” (161; 4:423) is precisely the development of a certain species of judgment, not simply physical maturation. While initially in book II Rousseau insists that children are incapable of judging, he later refers to their capacity to exercise good judgment, at least with regard to the physical world. And he concludes book II with an anecdote about a child whose judgment he praises as “incisive” (163; 4:425). This refers to a rudimentary form of judgment that is distinctly appropriate to children as children, but at the same time sets the stage for—and in some ways serves as a model for—good judgment at any age. “One must have a great deal of judgment oneself to appreciate a child’s” (162; 4:424). Rousseau’s admiration of the incisive child is matched by his admiration for the child’s father, who is able to perceive this trait in his child. This ability marks the father not only as a good father but as a wise man. Such wisdom is rare. “None of us is philosophic enough to know how to put himself in a child’s place” (115; 4:355). Time after time, in the course of explaining the limitations and characteristics of a child’s perspective, Rousseau offers parallel reflections on various adult figures and their good or poor judgment. Specifically , in order to achieve the distinctive maturity of childhood, children must be taught both to run...