Rousseau and Revolution

86 Rousseau and Revolution
investigations the greatest philosophers have made a priori, that is, by
wanting to take fl ight with the wings of the mind, have been in vain.
Only a posteriori, by unraveling the soul as one pulls out the guts of the
body, can one, I do not say discover with clarity what the nature of man
is, but rather attain the highest degree of probability possible on the
subject. (Mettrie, 1994, 30)
By asserting that knowledge arises from practical observation, the empiricalmaterialist
approach not only refutes the logical applicability of a priori theories
but, in so doing, refuses the possibility of a pure moral phil osophy that
is completely purged of physical experience. The divergence over a priori
and a posteriori thought which pitted the philosophes against the Catholic
apologists of the eighteenth century had also created a rift between them
and Rousseau. The latter’s belief, for example, that language could not
have possibly emanated from a historical and social progression of the natural
man, and his decision to place its invention in an immeasurable time
span shrouded in mystery, imply that the creation of language must have
required the presence of a metaphysical force. 3 Language is no longer the
logical and historical result of human progress and refi nement but rather
the latter’s inexplicable and fortuitous cause.
During the revolution, the Jacobins’ decision to elevate Rousseau to
national sainthood and to disparage his old philosophical rivals as vicestricken
atheists marked a setback for science and rational empiricism and
meant a sudden return to religious and essentialist a priori tropes. It is
within this context that we can understand how Rousseau proceeded to
write the revolution 11 years after his death. Since the religious dimension
of the French Revolution necessitated a structure where the effect could
become the cause, it had to embrace a philosophy that could allow such a
prospect.
Rousseau, Prophet of the Revolution
Despite the dechristianization measures of the French Revolution, people’s
faith, as signaled by the Declaration of the Rights of Man and the Citizen’s
deference to a Supreme Being, had not withered. If anything, rid of the
strictures of the Catholic edifi ce, it had only doubled in fervour. For
once, the people had a reason to believe. The revolution was carried out
on their behalf and under the banner of a new and less dogmatic God –
indistinguishable from the one worshipped by Rousseau’s Savoyard vicar.