Love from Simone: Epistolarity and the love letter. 90 Cf. In it Rousseau speaks to . Second, while Muralt does comment on the debauchery of Englishmen, he does not describe such an asocial and austere climate between men and women as Montesquieu depicts, which Rousseau then adopts. If it did not exempt him from persecution, at least it ensured that his persecution was observed, and admiring femmes du monde intervened from time to time to help him so that Rousseau was never, unlike Voltaire and Diderot, actually imprisoned. Montesquieu on the French Theatre and Sociability in the, 3. Yet in the Letter his encomia cross from enthusiastic to the fervid. [2], Rousseau believed that the theatre took people away from the community, and replaced any patriotic, unifying spirit with artificial emotions. But after quoting a passage from D'Alembert's letter, Rousseau writes that it is imperative to discuss the potential disasters that a theatre could bring. It is about people finding happiness in domestic as distinct from public life, in the family as opposed to the state. Arguably its greatest influence was as one of the first attempts to write a rigorous philosophical history of mankind. They eventually became lovers, and des Warens persuaded him to convert to Catholicism. However, tragedies are not as dangerous as comedies, because the characters more closely resemble French citizens. In his Notes on England, Montesquieu somewhat comically speaks from personal experience: The women here are reserved, because Englishmen see little of them. In the early 1750s, Rousseau had a string of successes. The years at Montmorency had been the most productive of his literary career; The Social Contract, mile, and Julie; ou, la nouvelle Hlose (1761; Julie; or, The New Eloise) came out within 12 months, all three works of seminal importance. Earlier in the same book of Emile, Rousseau provides a quotation from the Persian Letters, but names neither the work nor the author; see Rousseau, Emile, Book 5, 451. In this different context religion plays a different role. 6 Rousseau authored many of the entries related to music in the Encyclopdie as well as the article Economie, in Encyclopdie, ou dictionnaire raisonn des sciences, des arts et des mtiers, etc., edited by Denis Diderot and Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert; see University of Chicago, IL: ARTFL Encyclopdie Project (Spring 2013 Edition), edited by Robert Morrissey, http://artflsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.4:599.encyclopedie0513 [accessed 18 June 2014]. Maloy follows Eric Nelson in reading Montesquieu as favourable to the ancient republics generally and to their land reforms particularly. Those methods involve a noticeable measure of deceit, and although corporal punishment is forbidden, mental cruelty is not. 3 Rousseau, Correspondance gnrale, ed. [4], The trend of the Enlightenment among philosophers, since Descartes and Spinoza, was to move towards a society with minimized restrictions. Towards the end of the afternoon, everyone assembles and goes to perform in a sort of show [une espce de scne], called, so I have heard, a play [comdie]. However, it is important to consider the diverse concerns of the Enlightenment as a background to Rousseau's work. Register to receive personalised research and resources by email. In such a case, theatre is useful [] for covering the ugliness of vice with the polish of forms; in a word, for preventing bad morals from degenerating into brigandage.Footnote88 In speaking somewhat sarcastically about the positive role of theatre in such a corrupt society, Rousseau reveals that he would not recommend the proscription of the theatre in Paris and thus he is not such a one as to venture to constrain its women, make laws to correct their mores, and limit their luxury.Footnote89 Here, Rousseau acknowledges that theatre may, in fact, at least prevent what he sees as the debaucheries of Parisian society. 26 Michael A. Mosher, The Judgmental Gaze of European Women: Gender, Sexuality, and the Critique of Republican Rule, Political Theory, 22 (1994), 2544 (42). He was friendly with Enlightenment figures such as Diderot, and even wrote articles for the Encyclopdie, but later quarreled with them. He continues that this French vivacity is corrected by the politeness it brings us, by inspiring us with a taste for the world and above all for commerce with women [commerce des femmes].Footnote24 He accepts the fact, apparently without regret, that the society of women spoils mores and forms taste [socit des femmes gte les murs, et forme le got]. 45 For Rousseau's association with Geneva both before and after the composition of the Letter, see Richard Whatmore, Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century (New Haven, CT, 2012), 5497. on 2-49 accounts, Save 30% Did you know you can highlight text to take a note? Because that praise exemplifies so much of what was fundamental in Rousseau's thinking, both it and the Letter as a whole are mandatory reading for anyone who wishes to understand him. Registered in England & Wales No. He begins the first of these two chapters with a bold criticism of Plato, accusing him of promulgating laws that are against nature: If a slave, says Plato, defends himself and kills a free man, he should be treated as a parricide. Though a theatre can work to distract the masses of the cities from crime, it is of no use to a smaller city like Geneva, which is relatively innocent. When, in 1728, Rousseau found himself locked out of Geneva at night, he decided to travel abroad to seek his fortune. Jean-Jacques Rousseau's passionate attack on inequalities political, social, and economic, his critique of reigning governments in the name of democracy, and his questioning of the authority of science or philosophy in defense of moral virtue shook the century of Enlightenment and the aftershocks are still felt today. Rousseau remains resolutely opposed to the theatre in Geneva, however. From 1742 to 1749, Rousseau lived in Paris, barely earning a living by teaching and by copying music. Geneva, which already has a large degree of inequality, does not need any more. Rousseau and D'Alembert managed to maintain their friendship after the response, though somewhat at a distance. SparkNotes Plus subscription is $4.99/month or $24.99/year as selected above. Renew your subscription to regain access to all of our exclusive, ad-free study tools. Catherine Larrre notes that although Montesquieu grants that the ancient republics needed to restrict the female presence in the public sphere so as to preserve their mores, in modernity, and especially in monarchies, feminine tastes are the spring of the commercial activity that results in a thriving public sphere: the positive effects of commerce are global ones, however much it turns individuals to self-interest, depriving them of virtue; see Catherine Larrre, Montesquieu on Economics and Commerce, in Montesquieu's Science of Politics, edited by David W. Carrithers, Michael A. Mosher, and Paul A. Rahe (Lanham, MD, 2001], 33574 (347, cf. Rousseau is, however, reluctant to engage this discussion in depth.[3][6]. Rousseau also describes the weather and geography of Geneva, and argues that it is not particularly conducive to supporting a theatre. When d'Alembert approached Montesquieu to contribute to the Encyclopdie, he volunteered to submit in lieu of d'Alembert's requested pieces on democracy and despotism a single entry devoted to Taste, and his corpus testifies to his sustained interest in art and aesthetics.Footnote15 Montesquieu focuses his attention on theatre in particular a handful of times in The Spirit of the Laws and once in the Persian Letters. The theme of The New Eloise provides a striking contrast to that of The Social Contract. No way do I wish, they say, to give to him encouragement; see Charles-Louis Secondat de Montesquieu and Iain Stuewart, Montesquieu in England: His Notes on England, with Commentary and Translation, translated by Iain Stewart (Oxford, 2002), http://ouclf.iuscomp.org/articles/montesquieu.shtml [accessed 12 June 2014], note 114. Montesquieu takes a particular interest in such judicial proceedings throughout The Spirit of the Laws, declaring that the knowledge already acquired in some countries and yet to be acquired in others, concerning the surest rules one can observe in criminal judgments, is of more concern to mankind than anything else in the world.Footnote32 Criminal judgements can bring down the full power of the state against individuals, depriving them of their property, liberty, homeland, or very lives.Footnote33 Given this import, Montesquieu advises gentleness in punishing, declaring that people must not be led to extremes; one should manage the means that nature gives us to guide them and explaining that nature [] has given men shame for their scourge. Rousseau too offers this very contrast in his treatment of the theatre in his Letter to d'Alembert, but in the case of English society, where Montesquieu raises objections, Rousseau offers praise. TO CANCEL YOUR SUBSCRIPTION AND AVOID BEING CHARGED, YOU MUST CANCEL BEFORE THE END OF THE FREE TRIAL PERIOD. The volume also contains Rousseau's own writings for the theater, including plays and libretti for operas, most of which have never been translated into English. He propelled political and ethical thinking into new channels. His reforms revolutionized taste, first in music, then in the other arts. In 1758, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert proposed the public establishment of a theater in Genevaand Jean-Jacques Rousseau vigorously objected. [4], He goes on to criticize women's social activity in public and private venues in Paris and Geneva, suggesting women produce the only gossip, and the moral decay of men, women and children. They appreciate the routines of country life and enjoy the beauties of the Swiss and Savoyard Alps. Please wait while we process your payment. As soon as they are elected, it is a slave, it is nothing; see Rousseau, Social Contract, in Collected Writings, IV, 3.15, 192. Rousseau proceeds to explore the effect of theatre when decency is lost. In the Social Contract he credits Montesquieu by name in his discussions of the power of the legislator, the effect of climate, and his characterisation of democracy; see Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract, in Collected Writings, IV, 2.7, 3.8, 4.3. An example is how the Letter itself is open and expressive in style, while the content of the Letter is about this openness. As David Marshall points out, Rousseau explores throughout his works, and most explicitly in the Letter, theatrical relations enacted outside as well as inside the playhouse by people who face each other as actors and spectators. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. The letter attracted remarkable attention; over four hundred articles and pamphlets were written in response to it. Therefore, by examining first Montesquieu's treatment of theatre in the Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws, and then Rousseau's parallel treatments in Letter to d'Alembert, one discerns the degree to which Rousseau employs his predecessor's means in order to undermine his ends. [4], Rousseau continues to say that though Greek and Roman society functioned well with tragic and violent content in theatres because it was part of the traditions specific to the time and place, putting these plays in a French context would be far more dangerous. Rousseau's essay critiqued the immorality of the Parisian theater and argued that a theater in Geneva would have a similarly corruptive effect on their society. Renews April 25, 2023 Many scholars have identified the decisive influence of Montesquieu's treatment of the ancient city in Rousseau's thought more generally, but have not yet fully explored the role that Montesquieu's treatment of the theatre plays in Rousseau's Letter. The most important was his Confessions, modeled on the work of the same title by St. Augustine and achieving something of the same classic status. Elizabeth Fallaize - 1999 - Sartre . [4], Rousseau portrays Geneva in a very romantic and positive light, where people are productive, happy and hard at work, but he also recognizes the extreme wealth and poverty in the city. For example, when Aricia, Hippolytus's beloved, begs him to tell his father that Phaedra had deceived him, he responds: What more should I/ Have told him? 50 Kapossy, Iselin contra Rousseau, 39. Mostefai quotes this letter; see Mostefai, Le citoyen de Genve, 41. This awareness of presenting oneself to be viewed and judged by others fosters politeness, manners, and the joie de vivre that Montesquieu speaks so highly of in France.Footnote64. [3], Rousseau generally opposed the Enlightenment thrust that was occurring during his lifetime. One of Rousseau's pivotal points in the Letter is that customs, opinions and priorities which are common and well-accepted among all citizens should be those that make accepting laws in favour of respect, equality and harmony a pleasurable and natural experience. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (born June 28, 1712, Geneva, Switzerlanddied July 2, 1778, Ermenonville, France), Swiss-born philosopher, writer, and political theorist whose treatises and novels inspired the leaders of the French Revolution and the Romantic generation. While he concedes that the exchanges and interactions which occur when men and women congregate in the theatre are often artificial and result in theatrical behaviour far from the stage, he refuses to criticise such a form of sociability. Because of the natural respect men have for the moral sense and timidity of women, for men to be amongst women as actresses will be a further threat to men's morality. After he had been expelled from France, he was chased from canton to canton in Switzerland. 1758 marked a break with many of the Enlightenment philosophers; his Letter to d'Alembert attacked d'Alembert's article in the French Encyclopedia on Geneva. Letter 28 humorously depicts Rica conflating the actors and the audience of the scene he describes, thus confusing the spectacle on the stage with the spectacle of Parisian social life: Yesterday I saw something rather odd [assez singulire], although in Paris it happens every day. Coleman's insight is intriguing in part because Montesquieu's discussion of duelling occurs in Spirit, 28.22, where Montesquieu declares that women are quite enlightened judges of a part of the things that constitute personal merit; see Spirit, 28.22, 561. This work made final Rousseau's public break with most of the philosophes. Among them, Le Devin du village was the most popular French opera of the eighteenth . An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Northeastern Political Science Association Conference in Philadelphia in 2013. He continues that a European spirit of gallantry that one can say was little known to the ancients grew out of this desire to please women. 10 See John N. Pappas, Rousseau and D'Alembert, PMLA, 75 (1960), 4660 (48); Fonna Forman-Barzilai, The Emergence of Contextualism in Rousseau's Political Thought: The Case of Parisian Theatre in the Lettre D'Alembert, History of Political Thought, 24 (2003), 43564 (436). The main letter is divided into three general areas: "A) The Theatre in Relation to What Is Performed in It"; "B) The Theatre Considered in Relation to the Stage and Actors"; and "C) The Establishment of a Theatre in Geneva". The basic argument of the book, as Rousseau himself expressed it, is that vice and error, which are alien to a childs original nature, are introduced by external agencies, so that the work of a tutor must always be directed to counteracting those forces by manipulating pressures that will work with nature and not against it. In addition, Montesquieu's treatment of the theatre seems to have been a fitting topic for Rousseau's engagement. Marshall goes on to suggest that Rousseau's discussion of vanity, amour-propre, is inherently theatrical: the moment that people are aware they must present themselves for others, a theatrical consciousness is fostered such that the character and attributes that a person possesses become indistinguishable from what they seem to be.Footnote58 Rousseau laments that the introduction of theatre in an incorrupt society will induce people to substitute a theatrical jargon for the practice of the virtues.Footnote59 Of course, before Rousseau had offered this analysis, Montesquieu had comically depicted the tendency of social interactions to foster theatrical affectationseven theatrical masksin Rica's mistaken but understandable conflation of the actors and the audience in his description of the theatre in the Persian Letters. Contact us 32 Spirit, 12.2, 188. Rousseau takes comfort in an allegiance to truth alone at the time of his break with Diderot and at which he becomes convinced that he must live without friends. Despite laws and historical examples that attempt to overcome or deny those natural feelings, theatre offers the assurance that they continue to exist or can be recalled. It develops the Romanticism that had already informed his writings on music and perhaps did more than any other single work of literature to influence the spirit of its age. By focusing on his belief in the natural order and harmony of traditional sex roles and community, Rousseau writes to convince D'Alembert, and the public of Geneva, that a theatre is a threat to an ideal, natural way of life. . How she smirched their marriage-tie?/ How could I, by disclosing everything,/ Humiliate my father and my king?Footnote37 Later, Theseus expresses regret for the hasty and ill-considered judgement and punishment when, learning of the true worth of the son he had so recently reviled, he laments: O bring me back my son, and let him clear/ His name! Down below there is a crowd of people standing up, who make fun of those who are performing above, and they in turn laugh at those below.Footnote18, Eventually everyone goes off to a room where they act a special sort of play: it begins with bows and continues with embraces. Allan Bloom makes the claim that Voltaire persuaded d'Alembert [] to insert a passage (which Rousseau insists Voltaire himself wrote) in an otherwise laudatory presentation suggesting that Geneva should have a theatre; see Allan Bloom, Introduction, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theater, translated by Allan Bloom (New York, NY, 1960), xi-xxxiv (xv). The French government ordered that Rousseau be arrested, so he fled to Neuchatel in Switzerland. If the play is a comedy, for example, the content is undermined, and if it is tragic, the heroic ideals are exaggerated and placed out of the reach of man. Rousseau describes them as scandalous, hedonistic, and compares them to jesters, who were more blatantly indecent and obscene. 9 Letter, 27174, 35960. 77 Rousseau proposes an alternative to the tribunal Louis XIV established to settle conflicts regarding honour without recourse to violence, which he argues would be much more effective as it would harness honour to quell the violence arising from perceived dishonour; see Letter, 6774. For me, in the 'Letter to d'Alembert' Rousseau is on the side of prejudice, with his vehement moralising, and also a type of violence, always bordering on an exaggerated aggressiveness that is almost useless. [3] D'Alembert's article in support of the theatre was influenced by Voltaire, who not only was against censorship, but frequently put on theatrical performances at his home outside of Geneva. Ace your assignments with our guide to Discourse on Inequality! If he'll but speak, I now will hear.Footnote38 Thus, Racine dramatically reinforces Montesquieu's teaching regarding criminal proceedings by staging the pain inflicted on particular individuals by flawed procedures. For example, he condemns a law of the Visigoths that permitted the children of an adulterous wife to accuse her of that crime and to torture the family's slaves in order to extract evidence: This was an iniquitous law that, in order to preserve the mores, overturned nature, in which the mores have their origin.Footnote40 At this point, Montesquieu turns to Racine's play and presents it as an appealing contrast to such civil laws that are contrary to natural law.Footnote41 Indeed, Montesquieu concludes his discussion of Phaedra with a reflection on the relation of pleasure and nature: The accents of nature cause this pleasure; it is the sweetest of all voices.Footnote42 Racine's tragedy displays for its audience Hippolytus's admirable decisions rooted in his unconditional respect for his kin, even in light of his father's failure to distinguish between guilt and innocence. 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