Rousseau and Revolution

Why Rousseau Mistrusts Revolutions 19
precaution, cowardice or inconsistency? Or, are we victims of a retrospective
illusion, deriving from the symbolic use of Rousseau by the French Revolution?
Does Rousseau have solid and substantial reasons to be wary of the idea
of revolution and to adopt, in spite of all his criticisms of existing regimes, a
conservative position, comparable to the one that Plato develops in Crito?
‘Short and Frequent Revolutions’: Force Against Force
The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Even if certain of Rousseau’s
arguments against revolution resemble those of Crito (notably in Émile 3 ), his
position is, in reality, quite complicated. He is undoubtedly situated within
a modern theoretical universe, which, following the monarchomachs,
Algernon Sydney or John Locke, desacralized positive law and political
authority, subjecting their legitimacy to the consent of the people. He turns
his back on all remnants of what Pascal, for example, called ‘a mystical basis
of the authority’ of law (Pascal, 1958, 294). In addition, he considers as
obvious and inevitable the imminent revolutions against the European
monarchies of his time. He writes in Émile: ‘The crisis is approaching, and
we are on the edge of a revolution’. In a footnote, he adds: ‘In my opinion
it is impossible that the great kingdoms of Europe should last much longer’
(Rousseau, 1993b, Book III, 188).
In this prophecy one could fi nd a justifi cation for the events which were to
unfold a little more than a decade after his death. But are such prophecies
justifi cations? Would Rousseau, if he had lived longer, have participated
enthusiastically in the revolutionary event? In order to attempt to resolve
these diffi cult questions, we need to examine carefully the way Rousseau
describes and analyses the phenomenon of revolution and to compare this
to the aforementioned John Locke. Well before Émile, Rousseau already
articulated a prophecy about future revolutions in a text which gives valuable
indications about his position with regard to this prophecy. This passage
is found near the end of the Discourse on Inequality. After having described
the rational foundations of power and of laws, Rousseau explains how legitimate
institutions can degenerate and how a justifi able inequality, based on
merit, gradually decays into an aberrant and unbearable inequality, degenerating
ultimately into despotism:
Here is the last stage of inequality, and the extreme point which closes
the Circle and touches the point from which we started. Here all individuals
become equals again because they are nothing; and Subjects no