Rousseau and Revolution

32 Rousseau and Revolution
the moral improvement of humankind. He famously challenged that such
work was most developed in societies that were not the most moral but the
most amply resourced to indulge their greatest vices. He suggested that most
men who undertook such work did so in idle pursuit of reputation and
rewards and could neither know if they had discovered truth nor discern how
it could be constructively put to use. Although he defended the work of a
small group of self-educated and uniquely gifted men including Verulam,
Descartes and Newton, who were satisfi ed to labor on uncompensated, quietly
discerning the secrets of nature, he urged most readers to consult their conscience
for the philosophical guidance they needed to be good, product ive
and public-spirited citizens. His index for measuring the value of arts and
sciences was whether or not they contributed to an increase in the virtue of
men and women. In his assessment, the opposite tended to be the case.
Rousseau’s Second Discourse or effort to theorize the origins of inequality
among human beings added subtlety to these initial claims. In it he emphasized
that the most useful and least advanced of human knowledge is that
of man and asked how we could understand inequality without knowing
human beings themselves. He began by cautioning his readers:
O man, whatever may be your country, and whatever opinions you may
hold, listen to me: Here is your history as I believe I have read it, not in
books by your fellow men, who are liars, but in nature, who never lies.
(Rousseau, 1992a, 19)
The aim of discerning a nature of man independent of culture, or of
upbringing, education and habits, was what Rousseau thought could reveal
the history of the species. Through so doing one could create a point of
view from which to assess one’s own times with regret if not despair and to
imagine whether they could be otherwise. This endeavour most essentially
required clarifying what constituted relevant questions rather than rushing
prematurely to resolve them. Rousseau famously stated:
Let us therefore begin by setting all the facts aside, for they do not affect
the question. The Researches which can be undertaken concerning this
Subject must not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical
and conditional reasoning better suited to clarify the Nature of things
than to show their genuine origin. (Ibid.)
For Rousseau, addressing what it means to be a human being cannot be
done through recourse only to facts all of which are gathered with reference
to guiding hypotheses that may be deeply fl awed. To get to the root of what