Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la religion de Genève (review)

256 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY band, to have been unostentatiously generous, and to have been called by Barr~re, his intimate friend, "a model of tolerance and good deeds." None of this throws any light on the substance of his philosophy nor explains his wide influence. For two more examples of typical argumenta ad hominem, the reader might see what is said of the Socidtds de pensde (p. 234) and of German metaphysics (p. 375). If this is not enough to have justified revision before going to press, what of the opinion that the "American spirit" was averse to idealism (p. 565)? One has only to think of the debates which arose over the New Realism and Pragmatism in an atmosphere which was thoroughly impregnated with idealisms of one sort or another to wonder how a national spirit could change so quickly. The philosophic generation which came of age at the eve of the First World War knew of little else than idealism. This error is to be charged not against M. Rivaud but rather against M. A-L. Leroy who wrote the sketch of American philosophy. It is true that American idealism stemmed from the Germans rather than from Berkeley and it is possible that this is all that M. Leroy meant to say. One of the best features of this volume is the bibliographies which are unusually complete. But in them too one finds curious omissions. Philip Hallie 's article, "Hume, Biran and the 'M~ditatifs int~rieurs,' " is cited under Maine de Biran but not his book on Biran; Schneider's Puritan Mind is listed in the bibliography of American philosophy but not his History of American Philosophy. But this may be because these items are not available in France. The bibliographies on the whole are copious with a great number of authors represented, and, were one trying to constitute a collection of philosophical works in French, they would be a great help. Rivaud's volume then should be read with a clear idea of its limitations. The book is very uneven and the author, had he lived, would no doubt have smoothed it out. Its main use to American readers will be that of a list of eighteenth-century French thinkers both in the center and on the edges of the philosophical circles and the brief biographical sketches which, one may assume, are correct. G~ORG~ BOAS The Johns Hopkins University Jean-Jacques Rousseau et la religion de GenOve. Par Pierre Burgelin. (Gen~ve: l~.ditions Labor et Fides, 1962. Pp. 60 [1].) Professor Burgelin's rich, short essay sets forth Rousseau's bewildering thoughts on religion in merciless clarity, an effect which the author could hardly have intended. For this account is sympathetic and faithful to Rous- BOOK REVIEWS 257 seau; its philosophical viewpoint, applied with penetration and authority, illuminates without distorting. But Burgelin presents Rousseau's thought as it is, without allowing criticism and analysis to come to its aid; and this laudable objectivity ruins everything. This is of course not a book on Calvinism. For Rousseau, "la religion de Gen&e" was merely the religion of his country and, for this reason, his own: cuius regio, eius religio. He called Geneva's religion very simple and very saintly, the morally purest of all, and the one most acceptable to reason. But this was a compliment beyond the call of duty. Simple, saintly Geneva answered it by burning his books and ordering his arrest. A misunderstanding on Rousseau's part, says Burgelin: Rousseau had made himself a false image of the Reform because he did not want to have the right one. La Gird et la religion, Religion and Order, is Burgelin's first main theme. He shows Rousseau getting into some trouble on the issue of natural versus civic religion. The suggested solution may look like a somersault. The social contract "denatures" nature, to bring into being a new mode of existence in a new order, a new man with a new ethics in whom "nature will rise above nature to find fulfillment in virtue." And so, "natural (or civic) religion becomes the essence and measurement of all authentic religion" (our italics). But authentic religion is...