Rousseau and Revolution

Reverse Revolution 87
The new spiritual context required a prophetic fi gure that could intercede
on behalf of the converts, and Rousseau seemed to be the obvious choice.
Robespierre raised him as its unique ideologue because unlike the rationalists,
the materialists and most of the distinguished philosophes of his century,
Rousseau unabashedly believed in a higher power and thus offered an
inspiring spiritual dimension to the ideals of the revolution. Edgar Quinet,
signalling this univocal outcome, criticized the revolutionaries for losing
sight of their original goal and resorting to the same logic they had been
combating. As he writes in La Révolution, the revolution was bound to shoot
itself in the foot,
As soon as the revolutionaries grew tired of waging war against their
enemy, that is, the system they inherited from the Middle Ages, and following
J.-J. Rousseau’s footsteps, they pursued what they termed philosophisme,
atheism, materialism, it was apparent that under these different names,
the Revolution had to kill the Revolution. Under this logic, modern spirit
as a whole should have ended at the scaffold. (Quinet, 1866, 171)
Although its objective was to fi ght the tyranny of the monarchy and the
Church, the revolution ironically brought to life the same authoritarianism
it had sought to kill. Faith in the revolution was not just a faith but a
zeal fanatically fi lling the void left by the Catholic Church. Quinet adds:
With the word of philosophisme, we see the Girondins sentenced; with
naturalism, the Dantonists; with atheism, the Commune of Paris. There
was no new form of thought, no boldness of spirit, no conception of modern
intelligence that was not condemned in Robespierre’s system, and
what is more, through the same name-calling that the ancient religion
had used in its excommunications. The curse cast by Catholicism against
modern spirit broke out again in Robespierre, blinded by Rousseau.
All that which went beyond the bounds of the Savoyard Vicar had to be
cut out by the sword. Thus, Leibnitz had to be rooted out as a visionary,
Spinoza as an intolerant atheist and a fanatic, Descartes as a builder of systems
who troubled the peace of the good people of the countryside; all the German
philosophers who destroyed even the idea of the supreme being had to be
sacrifi ced.
After Robespierre had thus struck at what he called philosophisme, he
took away his own justifi cation for existing. At the end, he came upon
Catholicism, as if nothing had changed (ibid., 171–2). 4