Autor: Manent, Pierre

Buch: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Titel: An Intellectual History of Liberalism

Stichwort: Rousseau 2; R., Hobbes: Christentum als Übel; Kritik Rs. an H.: Trennung zw. Christ und Bürger -> Trennung zw. Individuum u. Gesellschaft; Absolutismus, Liberalismus - R.: amour-propre - armour de soi; Montesquieu - R.

Kurzinhalt: Absolutism and liberalism have the same central element: the individual ... What Montesquieu considers as a long-sought political system capable of protecting human nature, Rousseau sees as the institutionalization of human debasement.

Textausschnitt: CHAPTER VI
Rousseau, Critic of Liberalism

65a It seems anachronistic to present Rousseau as a critic of liberalism. After all, the first target of his indignation was the social and political order of the France he knew, which cannot be called liberal; the second was "society" as such, regardless of its political regime. But the fact that Rousseau criticized the ancient régime like everyone else in the second half of the eighteenth century must not lead us astray. In his eyes, the verdict was already in: the absolute monarchy was odious, and was already dead inside. If he crossed swords several times with "absolutism" or despotism, it was without particular anger. Besides, like Montesquieu before him, he was sure that a revolution would soon bring it down. What mattered to him was what was going to replace the monarchy, something that was already present in France and had already substantially transformed it. France was no longer characterized by the king's absolute power; it was ruled by opinion. Whose opinion? Society's. And what is society? It is inequality. (Fs; tblStw: Politik)

65b For Rousseau the king's favor no longer determined men's credit and thus their position. It was opinion, an authority with no specific organ and no specific place apart from "Paris," which had replaced Versailles. The credit that opinion conferred was attributed by no one in particular, but it was recognized and obeyed by all. This credit of opinion was directly related to credit in the financial sense of the term: one lent only to the wealthy, and those who had credit, for whatever reason, became wealthy.1 Consequently, men were ranked not on the basis of their power, birth, competence, or even riches, but rather on the basis of this imperceptible credit of which wealth was only the outward or measurable sign. The society Rousseau was contemplating was not characterized by powers attributable to persons or institutions, but by an inequality relating only to itself, with no content or meaning other than itself. Men looked at each other "from above" or "from below" according to a point of view which had been that of power, but which power had deserted. The relationships of power had become simply that, "relationships." They were relationships of inequality. Therefore, the spirit of society was inequality. (Fs) (notabene)

65c This is where liberalism comes in. To repeat, the foundation of liberalism is the distinction between civil society and the state: the latter is the representative instrument of the former. Civil society tends to be self-sufficient. Within it, members are governed neither by political power nor by other members; each of them is the source of his actions. They freely exercise their talents to ensure their preservation and even the most comfortable preservation possible—they seek to "better their condition." They also want to gain recognition for their merits, in particular intellectual and artistic merits, from their equals. As for the state, by representing and serving the individuals' instinct for self-preservation it promulgates laws that guarantee to each person security and free pursuit of happiness as he conceives of it. These are the principles. But how do they function in fact? (Fs) (notabene)

66a In such a system, the individual is, hypothetically, the unique source of his actions. He obeys only himself. But what are the motives or ends of these actions, which are supposedly his own? He necessarily enters into relations with other individuals for his education, business, and pleasures. He depends on them without ruling them or being ruled by them. How are these individuals, in principle independent but in fact dependent, going to relate to each other? The answer is contained in the question: they are going to compare themselves to each other. (Fs) (notabene)
66b Comparing oneself to others is the misfortune and original sin of men in our societies. The misfortune is that the man who compares himself with others is always unhappy. There will always be someone richer than me, and even if I am the richest, I will not be the most handsome or most intelligent. The sin is that the man who compares himself is always corrupted or on the point of being so. Not only does the desire to be first lead him to commit the everyday mischief that the moral code condemns, it also obliges him to give others a pleasing image of himself, to flatter himself and flatter them. His exterior will never be in harmony with his interior and his life will be a permanent lie. Moreover, comparing oneself with others is paradoxical. For the man who lives by comparison is the one who, in his relationships with others, thinks only of himself, and in his relations with himself, thinks only of others.2 He is the divided man. (Fs) (notabene)

Kommentar (29/10/14), zu oben: Desto mehr das soziale Gewebe zerfällt, desto mehr ist der Einzelne gezwungen, sich im Vergleich zu anderen zu definieren. Die Folge ist, dass das Mitläufertum in einer Gesellschaft universalen Verlgeichs stärker sein wird, als in einer wohl differenzierten.

66c In such a society based on universal comparison of all with all, it is natural that society place importance on the outcome of the comparison. The terms of the comparison being varied—power, birth, wealth, talents—this permits the comparison of comparisons, so to speak. And the inequality that sums up all the others, into which all the others can be converted, is that of money. Hence the importance of denouncing the rich more than the powerful in Rousseau's work. But for him, the rich man is not an economic category: he epitomizes a society founded on comparison, that is, on inequality among men who no longer govern themselves. (Fs)

66d In Rousseau's eyes, this inequality, and the behavior of which it is both cause and effect, are not only to be found in the French society of his time. He simply happens to live in that society, and therefore know it best; it may be also that inequality and its consequences are more visible in that society. But fundamentally, the behavior was that of modern man in modern society: it was the same in Paris and London, Edinburgh and Naples. Modern man had become a bourgeois; he had ceased to be a citizen. The contrast between the bourgeois and the citizen, and the denunciation of the bourgeois as a degraded human type, are first found and best expressed in Rousseau's work. Consequently, the difference between the English liberal regime and the French absolutist regime was secondary. Rousseau had some kind words for English liberty, he also had some cruel ones. What mattered was that the motivating spirit of social life was identical in the two nations. The same human type tended to prevail: the bourgeois, the man who by withdrawing into himself distinguished his own good from the common good. But to find his own good, he needed others, on whom he was dependent while seeking to exploit them. (Fs) (notabene)

67a Yet, between France and England there was an incontestable difference. Hobbes and Locke formulated the principles of liberal or bourgeois individualism; the English founded the political regime destined to be inhabited by the bourgeois, who found it eminently suitable. But to carry out this political task, the bourgeois had to become citizens, at least for a certain period; by Rousseau's time this was undoubtedly over. The English had temporarily imposed on themselves the burdens of citizens so as subsequently to become bourgeois. Hence a certain equivocation in their political and social character, and Rousseau's apparent hesitation to make a political judgment concerning them. The French on the contrary became quite plainly bourgeois under the oppressive aegis of the absolute monarchy, which successfully prevented them from becoming citizens. (The English had for a time been citizens, though in a confused way in the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century.) It was thus in the French absolute monarchy that the psychology of modern bourgeois man developed and revealed itself most completely, while the English kept several traits of civic virility. For Rousseau, the very different place of women in the two societies attested to this fact. (Fs)

67b What Rousseau leads us to see by his very revolt is the homogeneity of European history, the homogeneity of what he calls the "modern peoples." The author who best summarizes European history is Hobbes; he decisively substituted the bourgeois for the citizen and thus became Rousseau's principal modern interlocutor, in approval as in criticism. The French body politic developed continuously, without rupture, according to Hobbes's prescription. But the English body politic modified that prescription according to Locke's corrections. Absolutism thus produced the bourgeois which liberalism only imagined. (Fs)

68a The time has come to listen to Rousseau's own voice. Here is how, from a genealogy of the goods and evils of society in general, he characterizes the bourgeois man of modern society. (Fs)
If this were the place to go into details, I would easily explain how, even without the involvement of government, inequality of credit and authority becomes inevitable between individuals as soon as, united in the same society, they are forced to make comparisons between themselves and to take into account differences they find in the continual use they have to make of one another. These differences are of several kinds; but in general wealth, nobility, or rank, power, and personal merit being the principal distinctions by which one is measured in society, I would prove that the agreement or conflict or these various forces is the surest indication of a well- or ill-constituted state. I would show that of these four types of inequality, as personal qualities are the origin of all the others, wealth is the last to which they are reduced in the end because, being the most immediately useful to well-being and the easiest to communicate, it is easily used to buy all the rest.... I would point out how much that universal desire for reputation, honors, and preferences, which devours us all, trains and compares talents and strengths; how much it stimulates and multiplies passions; and making all men competitors, rivals, or rather enemies, how many reverses, successes, and catastrophes of all kinds it causes daily by making so many contenders race the same course.3

68b I have pointed out that Rousseau's principal modern interlocutor was Hobbes. We must take a brief look at their relationship. They have one fundamental point in common: all the political misfortunes of European peoples come from Christianity, more precisely from the constitution of a Christian religious power distinct from and in rivalry with the political power: "This double power," says Rousseau, "has resulted in a perpetual conflict of jurisdiction that has made any good polity impossible in Christian states." He continues: "Of all Christian authors, the philosopher Hobbes is the only one who correctly saw the evil and the remedy, who dared to propose the reunification of the two heads of the eagle, and the complete return to political unity, without which no state or government will ever be well constituted."4 But their agreement ends here, because the political unity constructed by Hobbes is despotic and Rousseau adds immediately afterwards that it is "horrible and false." (Fs)

68c Rousseau thinks that it is possible to assure political and social unity without despotism, a possibility that was revealed by the ancient city-state (Sparta in particular) and by republican Rome. In these city-states, free from despotism, real citizens were closely united in a common interest, that of the city-state. It is by comparison with such citizens, with Plutarch's heroes, that the modern bourgeois reveals his contemptible character. In his patriotism, the ancient citizen's own interest merged with that of the city-state. He was not divided, he was whole; and because he was whole, he was both happy and virtuous. (Fs)

69a Hobbes sees in the prestige of the ancient city-states the second major motive, after the Church's claims, for the disorders that led to the English Civil War; the prestige of the idea of civic liberty stirs up the spirit of disobedience, and the spirit of disobedience causes civil war (see chapter 3). In his eyes, civil peace has two great enemies: the enthusiastic reader of the Bible, who believes that he feels the infusion of God's grace in his soul, and the enthusiastic reader of Plutarch who believes that he feels the beating heart of a new Epaminondas in his chest. Rousseau readily admits that ancient liberty and civic virtue made little of the individual's desire for self-preservation. What mattered to the citizen was the preservation and glory of his city-state, not his individual preservation; and for his own glory, what could be more glorious than dying for the homeland? In some of his most eloquent passages, Rousseau calls into question the modern and bourgeois Hobbesian ideal of peace: "Long ago, Greece flourished in the midst of the crudest wars. Blood flowed freely, and the whole country was covered with men.... A little agitation gives vitality to souls, and it is not so much peace as freedom that makes the species truly prosper."5 (Fs)

69b What Rousseau especially criticizes in Hobbes's doctrine is not the state-controlled "superstructure"; of course, he criticizes it, too, for absolutism, and on this point he agrees with the liberals. It is rather the individualistic civil "infrastructure" that he criticizes, and which is the basis of all modern politics, absolutist as well as liberal. For him, the condition of the modern individual is contradictory: too independent, given his dependency on others, he is also too dependent. Modern man is forced to collaborate with others yet he is thinking only of himself. The division between the political and religious powers that Hobbes overcomes at the level of state control, and at the price of despotism, is found again in civil society. The division between the Christian and the citizen becomes the division between the individual man and the member of society, social man. The conflict between the Christian and the citizen becomes the conflict between the individual and society. (Fs)

69c It is now possible to characterize the three fundamental positions that define respectively absolutism, liberalism, and Rousseau's thought. Absolutism and liberalism have the same central element: the individual. For the former, individuals can be held together only by a power that is external to and sovereign over them, because of their proud and rebellious nature. For liberalism, on the other hand, individuals are much less naturally rebellious than absolutism thinks, and spontaneously form peaceful relationships, giving rise to a society which, if not entirely self-sufficient, at least needs no absolute government to hold it together. The foundation of this confidence lies in the conviction that each person's pursuit of his personal interest leads to the promotion of the public interest. The specific arena for this harmony between the personal and public interests is economic life. The pursuit of his private interest leads each producer to increase the productivity of his work; in turn, this increase raises the quantity of values available in society, so that the poor in an acquisitive society live more comfortably than the wealthy in a society where the acquisitive instinct is undeveloped. The agricultural laborer, according to Locke's example, is better off than an Indian king in America. Added to the direct economic effect of the emancipation of the individual's acquisitiveness are the no less important indirect moral effects. One of the major themes of Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws is that the development of commerce leads to a relaxing of mores, in a twofold sense. On the one hand, by multiplying their relationships through commerce, the members of different civil societies get to know each other and thus progressively lose their prejudices that nourish aggressiveness and so often lead to war; on the other hand, once commercial life has definitely gathered speed, brutal interventions in society by political power become detrimental for the power itself.6 According to Montesquieu, the expansion of commerce in Europe was obliging the princes and states "to be cured of Machiavellism."7 Developments in the sciences, arts, and commerce matched the progress in peace, security, and freedom: this is the liberal diagnosis of the evolution of the modern world, this is the foundation of its optimism or progressivism. It is against this optimism or progressivism that Rousseau directs his cutting criticism. (Fs)

70a Rousseau asks: what happens to the soul of someone who lives according to the maxims of such a society? Everybody is obliged to live by them, since all the citizens are dependent and competitors. Since they are dependent, they are obliged to do no harm to each other. As competitors, they are obliged not to do good, or at least not to want to do good to each other. None of the great human passions can emerge in such a society. Instead of the active love of fellow citizens and active hate of enemies, which unfurl simultaneously in the soul of the ancient citizen and give him his vigor and grandeur, we find that self-love (amour-propre) is the unique passion of modern man. Self-love is not genuine love for oneself (amour de soi), it is even contrary to it in a way. Self-love lives by comparison; it is the desire to be esteemed by others as highly as one esteems oneself. It is condemned to be thwarted because everyone has the same self-love and experiences the same desire. Self-love knows that it cannot be satisfied, and it hates others for their own self-love. It nourishes in the soul the miserable taste for oneself and impotent hatred for others. In such a society, man lives only for the gaze of others, whom he hates. (Fs)

70b It is very important to note that this description of the principle of modern social life in no way contradicts the brief sketch of English life drawn by Montesquieu. "All the passions being unrestrained, hatred, envy, jealousy, and an ambitious desire of riches and honors, appear in their extent; were it otherwise, the state would be in the condition of a man weakened by sickness, who is without passions because he is without strength."8 As can be seen, Montesquieu even admits that these moral phenomena are not superficial or accidental, but that they constitute the basis of English life. Here then are two great philosophers, almost contemporaries, who describe the principle of modern life very similarly. But one does it very briefly and soberly (it is the price to pay for liberty), while the other deploys a dazzling subtlety and bewitching eloquence to denounce self-love in all its aspects, in all its ramifications and consequences. How can one speak of liberty, Rousseau asks, when no individual will can get what it wants, when those who seem to command are in fact slaves to opinion—when, in a word, the freedom of all is only the impotence of all? What Montesquieu considers as a long-sought political system capable of protecting human nature, Rousseau sees as the institutionalization of human debasement. (Fs)