Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [253]
Marie-Jean de Condorcet (muh-REE-ZHAHNH duh kohn-dor-SAY) (1743–1794), another French philosophe, made an exaggerated claim for progress. Condorcet was a victim of the turmoil of the French Revolution and wrote his chief work, The Progress of the Human Mind, while in hiding during the Reign of Terror (see Chapter 19). His survey of human history convinced him that humans had progressed through nine stages of history. Now, with the spread of science and reason, humans were about to enter the tenth stage, one of perfection, in which they will see that “there is no limit to the perfecting of the powers of man; that human perfectibility is in reality indefinite, that the progress of this perfectibility … has no other limit than the duration of the globe upon which nature has placed us.” Shortly after composing this work, the prophet of humankind’s perfection died in a French revolutionary prison.
ROUSSEAU AND THE SOCIAL CONTRACT No one was more critical of the work of his predecessors than Jean-Jacques Rousseau (ZHAHNH-ZHAHK roo-SOH) (1712– 1778). Born in Geneva, he spent his youth wandering about France and Italy holding various jobs. He went back to school for a while to study music and the classics (he could afford to do so after becoming the paid lover of an older woman). Eventually, he made his way to Paris, where he was introduced into the circles of the philosophes. He never really liked the social life of the cities, however, and frequently withdrew into long periods of solitude.
Rousseau’s political beliefs were presented in two major works. In his Discourse on the Origins of the Inequality of Mankind, Rousseau began with humans in their primitive condition (or state of nature—see Chapter 15), where they were happy. There were no laws, no judges; all people were equal. But what had gone wrong?
The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, thought of saying, This is mine, and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. How many crimes, wars, murders; how much misery and horror the human race would have been spared if someone had pulled up the stakes and filled in the ditch, and cried to his fellow men: “Beware of listening to this impostor. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to everyone and that the earth itself belongs to no one!”6
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. By the late 1760s, a new generation of philosophes arose who began to move beyond and even to question the beliefs of their predecessors. Of the philosophes of the late Enlightenment, Rousseau was perhaps the most critical of his predecessors. Shown here is a portrait of Rousseau by Maurice-Quentin de La Tour.
Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, Geneva//© Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY
To preserve their private property, people adopted laws and governors. In so doing, they rushed headlong not to liberty but into chains. “What then is to be done? Must societies be totally abolished? … Must we return again to the forest to live among bears?” No, civilized humans could “no longer subsist on plants or acorns or live without laws and magistrates.” Government was an evil, but a necessary one.
In his celebrated treatise The Social Contract, published in 1762, Rousseau tried to harmonize individual liberty with governmental authority. The social contract was basically an agreement on the part of an entire society to be governed by its general will. If any individual wished to follow his own self-interest, he should be compelled to abide by the general will. “This means nothing less than that he will be forced to be free,” said Rousseau, because the general will represented a community’s highest aspirations, whatever was best for