Rousseau on Inequality and Free Will

There is likely no canonical figure who generates both such passionate and disparate readings as Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Only a brief encounter with his texts suggests the reasons. Rousseau was himself remarkably impassioned on nearly every subject he treated—education, ethics, metaphysics, economics, the arts, botany, the soul, and even his own pets. “Feeling,” he wrote, “comes to fill my soul quicker than lightening.” ¹ The same would be true of his most impassioned interpreters. Most infamous among them was Robespierre, who emoted in his Dedication to the Spirit of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Divine man, you taught me to know myself.” ² Of course, the passion of this particular interpreter reminds readers that Rousseau has been read so disparately. Immanuel Kant was an equally passionate reader of Rousseau—in his own fashion—yet arrived at remarkably different conclusions from Robespierre, insisting Rousseau taught him to respect the humanity of all people. Beyond this, what often fuels the impassioned readings of Rousseau’s works is the sense in each subsequent epoch that his texts are somehow speaking directly to the readers and their own sets of concerns. While much insight is to be gained from contextualizing his works, as can be expertly found in the work of Helena Rosenblatt and James Miller, ³ there is a nearly inescapable sense that he speaks to everyone in his wake. He, of course, aimed for precisely this outcome, as he writes in his Reveries that “I was . . . counting on the future, and I had hoped that a better generation . . . would finally see me as I am.” ⁴

None of this is new to seasoned readers of Rousseau. These perpetually impassioned and combative interpretive landscapes, and the immediacy of his ideas, are precisely what excite successive generations about returning to his works with the sense that we will be the ones who finally see Rousseau as he was and employ his writings to make better sense of our own predicaments. Along these lines, two recent contributions seek to get Rousseau right, such that subsequent generations might make greater use of his insights. In The Free Animal: Rousseau on Free Will and Human Nature, Lee MacLean engages a heavily contested element of Rousseau’s philosophy—the question of whether or not he earnestly embraced the doctrine of free will. In Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality: Reconstructing the Second Discourse, Frederick Neuhouser offers an extensive interpretation of the Discourse on Inequality with the declared aim of applying Rousseau’s thoughts to the pressing problem of economic inequality. Both are largely successful in their aims and offer numerous insights to make them well worth careful study.

Neuhouser’s book is clearly an extension of his previous Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love (2008), in which he—building on the work of Nicholas Dent and Laurence D. Cooper ⁵ —portrays a Rousseau consumed with the problem of amour propre, but not defeated by it. Rousseau scholars have traditionally read his concept of amour propre as the pursuit of public esteem that tends to pit citizens against one another in diseased competition for praise. Rousseau himself is eager to describe the malevolent capacities of amour propre as “a relative sentiment which inclines every individual to set greater store by himself than by anyone else, [and] inspires men with all the evils they do to one another.” ⁶ The achievement of the new generation of amour propre scholars culminating in Neuhouser has been to explain that this passion is not entirely destructive. Following the just-cited passage from the Second Discourse, Rousseau continues that despite its function as the source of all evils, it is also simultaneously “the genuine source of honor.” The great trick for legislators—whether of constitutions or statutes—is to direct citizens to honoring those things truly meriting praise, while eliminating, wherever possible, the cancerous competitions for esteem fatal to the general will. This is the task Rousseau takes on for himself, for example, in his constitutional projects for Poland and Corsica. Neuhouser’s Rousseau in the Theodicy of Self-Love is thus more optimistic than the one portrayed by many previous generations. His Rousseau seeks to harness amour propre “so that it contributes positively to the achievement of freedom, peace, virtue, happiness, and unalienated selfhood.” ⁷

Neuhouser’s previous efforts in amour propre turn out to be essential to his new book on the Discourse on Inequality. This book is a kind of commentary on the Second Discourse, but one with a particular—and justifiable—focus on inequality itself. This is not the commentary to which a student might turn for insights on Rousseau’s engagement with Buffon or even Hobbes and Pufendorf, for example. Nor does it seek to situate Rousseau’s Second Discourse in the context of a growing bourgeois and merchant class emerging as Continental Europe uneasily transitions from feudalism to capitalism. It rather expressly defines itself as a “substantive philosophical” (1) reading of one of Rousseau’s most important and enduring works. Beyond this, Neuhouser seeks to mine the Second Discourse for insight into one of the most pressing economic, political, and social issues of the moment: economic inequality. In doing so, he claims—reasonably so—to be guided primarily by the Academy of Dijon’s questions that inspired Rousseau’s work: (a) what is the source of inequality, and (b) is that inequality justified by the natural law?

With regard to the Academy’s first question, Neuhouser dedicates a full chapter to what is not the source of inequality: nature. As even casual readers of the Second Discourse can readily discern, Rousseau offers a largely optimistic account of natural human beings. They are far more physically capable than Rousseau’s eighteenth-century contemporaries, and more importantly, they are largely free from the countless neuroses and pathologies that came to plague socialized peoples. Neuhouser’s analysis in these pages is solid and largely uncontroversial. Notably in these pages, he emphasizes more than many interpreters the importance of Rousseau’s metaphysical account of free will in the Second Discourse for the purposes of his larger goals—namely, of freeing God and nature from responsibility for society’s downfall, “shift[ing] the responsibility for reforming the world we inhabit onto us, the free creators (or re-creators) of the very features of the world that the critique of social inequality tells us ought to be changed” (51). If humanity possesses the faculty of free will, then it is not necessarily fated to accept the inequalities that have come to dominate it. It can employ its freedom to choose different, more amenable, social institutions and arrangements.

If nature is not the source of inequality, then Neuhouser rightly reasons, it must be some mode of artifice. He aptly quotes Rousseau from early in the Second Discourse, “most of our ills are of our own making” (61). ⁸ This artificial source of humanity’s downfall is none other than amour propre—hence relevantly connecting to his earlier work on Rousseau. Although Neuhouser is among the most optimistic interpreters of Rousseau’s concept of amour propre, he does not shy away from characterizing it as the source of “the endless pursuit of wealth, ostentatious consumption, the relentless drive to compete and outdo, scurrying to ‘keep up with the Joneses’” (79)—since all such pursuits represent various modes, at least in contemporary society, of distinguishing oneself from others and acquiring precious recognition from others. Important in his treatment of amour propre and inequality is that amour propre must interact with other conditions to become fully activated and dangerous. Namely, it is most combustible when combined with leisure, luxury, individual differentiation, the division of labor, private property, and particular political institutions (90).

Rousseau’s critique of inequality, for Neuhouser, is informed by what he calls the “normative conception of human nature,” outlined in the Second Discourse. This includes freedom, recognition, and the development of capacities. Prominent among these is freedom, defined as the “absence of domination” (124–37), ⁹ a freedom described, in Rousseau’s phrases, as “obeying only oneself” (125) and “not being subjected to the will of others” (125). ¹⁰ To be sure, readers here will note the resemblance to contemporary republican theory, found in Pettit, Lovett, and others. ¹¹ Neuhouser acknowledges that his interpretation of Rousseau is informed by this tradition with one very important exception—that most republicans accept some variant of paternalism, whereby “a person or law that regularly commands or compels other persons to act in ways that in fact promote their interests . . . does not qualify as a violation of their freedom” (127). By contrast, Neuhouser’s Rousseau insists upon an “absence of domination . . . more closely connected to the ideal of free agency—determining oneself what to do, or obeying only oneself” (128). Along these lines, he rightly observes that for Rousseau, some forms of express consent to authority fail to establish self-rule, as illustrated in the unfortunate social contract in Part II of the Second Discourse.

Chapter 4 seeks to clarify Rousseau’s answer to the second question posed by the Academy of Dijon: whether inequality is authorized by the natural law. Neuhouser reads this question broadly as an invitation to ask, what is wrong with inequality? Elaborating on his earlier thoughts on freedom as non-domination, he explains that inequality creates “dependent individuals [who] will have to compromise their freedom in order to satisfy the needs that impel them to cooperate with others” (169). To be sure, basic biological needs fall into this category, insofar as impoverished individuals would gladly trade their “freedom” for a loaf of bread. Along these lines, Neuhouser cites Adam Smith—an increasingly appreciated student of Rousseau ¹² —who worried that hungry members of the labor pool are rarely in a position to win labor disputes (137, 175). ¹³ But in some ways more fundamentally and existentially, inequality—particularly wealth inequality—inhibits the social recognition that all citizens crave. Because the demands of amour propre can by definition only be satisfied by those at the top of the social and economic hierarchies, most will suffer frustrated desires and unmet needs (178). ¹⁴ Poverty is experienced not merely as deprivation of physiological needs, but as humiliation. As such, life in commercial societies, in particular, fosters general social enmity, where the “desire for reputation . . . makes all men competitors, rivals, or enemies” (181). ¹⁵ Not only does this make for generally poor social relations, but it further means that “I must constantly be engaged in enhancing my own standing” (181). There is no time to enjoy what we have; we must continually be investing all our energies in satisfying our expanding desires.

Turning to the Academy’s second question, then, what, if any, inequality is authorized by the natural law? It is authorized when, “and only when, it does not result in any of the social ills described above” (190). It should result from conventions, but only legitimate ones, rather than those resembling the contract of the Second Discourse where one wealthy party leverages its advantages to gain further concessions of the poor.

Neuhouser’s book concludes with some reflections on the contemporary relevance of Rousseau’s critique of inequality. Specifically, he is interested in understanding John Rawls on inequality through the prism of Rousseau’s critique. Like Rousseau, Rawls is concerned about inequality, particularly economic inequality, insofar as it fosters political domination. But Neuhouser criticizes Rawls for not taking Rousseau more seriously on the deeper effects of inequality—including social and psychological modes of domination.

There is no question that Neuhouser’s book will play a role in discussions of Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality for generations to come. And this will be richly merited. There is much to admire in his amour-propre centered, analytic approach to reading the text. He addresses the questions that Rousseau himself engaged and places an appropriate emphasis, I think, on the problem of economic inequality, which, while not the exclusive focus of the essay, is clearly a persistent target of his impassioned critique. Neuhouser writes lucidly, and the book is well organized. He offers numerous sound insights on various threads of Rousseau’s argument and does so in a coherent, helpful fashion. It is a book that all Rousseau scholars should read.

All this being said, the book misses some opportunities that might have made it even better. First, although it expressly defines itself as philosophical and not historical, the book’s arguments could have benefitted from greater efforts in historical contextualization. For example, Rousseau’s arguments against economic inequality would register more when understood in the context of the growing inequality characterizng his beloved home city of Geneva, which saw the conflict of rich and poor manifested in the political institutions of its Small and General Councils. That this weighed on his mind in writing the Second Discourse is evident in its Epistle Dedicatory, where he expressly sides with the poorer General Council. ¹⁶

Further, along historical lines, while Neuhouser rightly identifies economic inequality as “humiliating” for the poor (178), this observation would have greater impact in historical context. Rousseau is writing, as was Smith, in the relatively early days of the market economy, in the long and often painful transition from feudalism. It would be worth elaborating that poverty was not “humiliating” for peasants under feudalism in the same way it was for Rousseau’s contemporaries. Peasants simply inherited their poverty. It was not a reflection of their talents or efforts. In that economy, there was no moral blame to be assigned for poverty. In market economies, there is a palpable sense among many, if not most, that poverty is the result of moral failings—primarily laziness—or lack of talent. This is one of the most important moral and existential legacies of this market transformation and it plays a significant role in provoking Rousseau’s critique.

This matters not only in understanding Rousseau in the broad context of a history of economic systems. It also matters very specifically for his circle of Parisian interlocutors. The Philosophes had embraced this new culture of achievement—celebrating the talented (themselves!) and mocking others. The rich, like Voltaire, should be praised for their achievements. The poor should be scorned for their lack of talent and sloth. Or at least this is how Rousseau read the opinions of his contemporaries. As such the Second Discourse genuinely builds on the arguments of the First—contemporary society has come to value talent above and at the expense of virtue. And although Rousseau himself would intimately understand the seductive appeal of being praised for one’s talents, he shunned it upon reflection as a bargain that sacrificed virtue in favor of celebrating talent. ¹⁷

Second, this reader wished for something more substantial in Neuhouser’s discussion of solutions to the problem of economic inequality (see 201–202). While it is fair in a book on the Second Discourse to focus on this text, Rousseau has much to say in other texts, such as his Discourse on Political Economy. Neuhouser too quickly dismisses the relevance of this text in a footnote (“Rousseau’s [Political Economy] is not very relevant to modern, market-based economies” [207n42]), but that scarcely seems adequate. After all, The Wealth of Nations is only slightly younger than Rousseau’s work and it is frequently cited as an authority for understanding and coping with “modern, market-based economies.” The Political Economy understands the problem of economic inequality as foundational to government itself: “What is most needful and perhaps most difficult in government is a strict integrity to render justice to all, and above all to protect the poor against the tyranny of the rich.” ¹⁸ Along these lines, Rousseau emphasizes there that the burden of taxation ought to fall overwhelmingly on the rich: “taxation of someone who has superflux may, if need be, go up to the full amount that exceeds his necessities.” ¹⁹ He emphasizes there that taxes should be especially steep on luxuries, which “relieve poverty and burden riches, [and] are the way to forestall the ever-widening equality of fortunes.” ²⁰ More ambitiously, in later writings on Corsica and Poland, Rousseau seeks to eliminate currency or at least the public honor attached to it. To be sure, one may find such solutions “irrelevant” to the modern economy, but in exploring them, one surely would learn a great deal more about Rousseau’s conception of economic inequality and simultaneously gain the potential insight of a “true outsider” to the modern economy, which is not without value. If our contemporary problem of economic inequality demands anything, it is the benefit of external perspectives.

Finally, Neuhouser’s interpretation of inequality in Rousseau might have benefitted substantially from understanding it in relationship to the general will. To be sure, the term never occurs in the Second Discourse, which might justify its exclusion from Neuhouser’s study. But many readers nevertheless take seriously Judith Shklar’s counsel that it “conveys everything he most wanted to say.” ²¹ That Neuhouser never raises the term other than a few times in passing (e.g., 166–67) is a bit surprising, given that Rousseau himself defines the general will as a preference for equality: “the particular will tends, by its nature, to partiality, and the general will to equality.” ²² That is, the Rousseau’s critique of inequality is not merely critique. It is a deconstruction that paves the path to his constructive politics. In rejecting inequality, his embrace of equality—including substantial economic equality—becomes a necessary foundation for his ideal republic. Rousseau makes this abundantly clear throughout the Social Contract and other constructive works: “Do you want to give the State stability? Bring the extremes as close together as possible; tolerate neither very rich people nor beggars. These two states, which are naturally inseparable, are equally fatal to the common good.” ²³ Neuhouser could have made good use of such passages and their attending arguments had he pursued the logic of Rousseau’s critique to its positive applications.

Lee MacLean’s The Free Animal: Rousseau on Free Will and Human Nature argues for what Neuhouser largely takes for granted (e.g., Neuhouser, 46)—that Rousseau’s embrace of metaphysical freedom is sincere and integral to his normative philosophy. For some readers of Rousseau, the necessity of such an effort will be a surprise. This is because Rousseau himself clearly and repeatedly declares his faith that humanity is in large part defined by its “metaphysical” or “moral” freedom. As he observes in his Second Discourse, for example, “Nature commands every animal, and the Beast obeys. Man experiences the same impression, but he recognizes himself free to acquiesce or to resist; and it is mainly in the consciousness of this freedom that the spirituality of his soul exhibits itself.” ²⁴ Such claims are liberally dispersed throughout the Discourses, Emile, The Social Contract, Julie, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, the “Letter to Franquières,” and elsewhere. It is not only casually assumed—it is often argued for with great passion and at some length.

Given this, one might wonder, as Frederick Neuhouser has in his own review of this book, “why is such detailed scrutiny of the interpretive question called for?” ²⁵ Neuhouser is right to suspect that Leo Strauss and his students play a role, although the tradition begins earlier. It extends as far back, at least, as Irving Babbitt, who argued that Rousseau’s doctrine of natural goodness leaves no room for the struggle between impulse and will necessary for a robust doctrine of free will. ²⁶ Leo Strauss would advance this interpretation in his Natural Right and History, where he opined that Rousseau, as someone who “abandoned himself to modernity,” was all too eager to embrace the mechanistic philosophy of his scientifically inclined contemporaries. Hence while he exoterically embraces the doctrine of free will to satisfy the authorities, Strauss’s Rousseau’s arguments are “characterized, not by freedom, but by perfectibility.” ²⁷ This Rousseau conforms neatly to Strauss’s doctrine of esoteric writing and his “Three Waves of Modernity” narrative, in which the modern period is defined by its retreat from ancient metaphysical notions, especially as they bear on political philosophy.

Strauss’s reading of Rousseau as a modern determinist would play a significant role in subsequent Straussian interpretations. Roger D. Masters, for example, would accept Rousseau’s metaphysical claims—including the doctrine of free will—as sincere, although decidedly “dubious” by virtue of its claims that could not be substantiated by modern science. Yet he also advocates a “detachability thesis,” in which Rousseau’s metaphysical views are determined to be irrelevant to his political philosophy. ²⁸ Arthur M. Melzer, by contrast, would argue the contrary, doubling down on Strauss’s esoteric reading ²⁹ —that Rousseau’s arguments for the metaphysical elements of his philosophy were insincere but entirely necessary. For Melzer’s Rousseau, the doctrine of moral freedom is necessary to constrain citizens where statutes and necessarily spotty enforcement fail to constrain. Citizens must be made to believe that they are free and that their worth as human beings hinges upon a proper use of that freedom in relation to other citizens. ³⁰ Yet despite the political value of citizens holding such beliefs, Melzer’s Rousseau “clearly implies that men are not self-determining and free but creatures of their environment.” ³¹

Perhaps the most extensive case—and the one subject to the most extended scrutiny in MacLean’s book—is Marc Plattner’s Rousseau’s State of Nature. ³² Plattner employs the Straussian approach to free will in Rousseau. Like Strauss and especially Melzer, he explains Rousseau’s advocacy for a non-existent free will as necessary exoteric text to (a) protect himself against potential persecution, and (b) support the broader political system. ³³ Among other bits of evidence to buttress this reading, he points to the fact that the most extensive argument for free will in Rousseau’s texts comes in the mouth of the Savoyard vicar, rather than in his own authentic voice.

Reading Rousseau in this fashion to be free from a metaphysical commitment to free will has been accompanied by general skepticism about many of Rousseau’s metaphysical claims—including about the existence of God, the soul, and especially an immaterial and transcendent conception of justice, existing independent of human convention. ³⁴ On especially this latter front, there remain several prominent advocates. ³⁵

All of this is to suggest that MacLean is not fighting an interpretative war with ghosts. The tradition of denying the sincerity of Rousseau’s express metaphysical commitments is extended and very much alive. A book dedicated to countering these claims with specific regard to free will was probably inevitable and necessary. Given this background, MacLean’s book has two primary agendas: (a) demonstrating the sincerity of Rousseau’s commitment to a metaphysical account of free will, and (b) exploring the implications of a doctrine of free will operating in his moral and political philosophy (4). MacLean’s goals, however, are very much intertwined—since it is difficult to proceed otherwise with the intended audience. That is, readers inclined to read Rousseau esoterically as a determinist will quickly dismiss Rousseau’s frequent protestations that he embraces free will. It is merely, to their minds, exoteric text. The success of MacLean’s arguments with this audience, then, rests on demonstrating the necessity of that doctrine to his larger philosophy.

In defending the book’s first objective, of course, there is ample text in Rousseau’s corpus from which to draw. MacLean appropriately draws upon his most extensive accounts—in the Discourse on Inequality and the Savoyard vicar in Book 4 of the Emile. In the Second Discourse, as already mentioned, Rousseau presents the doctrine of free will as one of the defining attributes of humanity. In the Emile, the Savoyard vicar offers this third article of faith: “man is . . . free in his actions and as such is animated by an immaterial substance” (105). ³⁶ There is no question that Rousseau’s own express words overwhelmingly support MacLean’s thesis. Little more needs to be said on this subject.

The remaining task for MacLean is to demonstrate the necessity of free will for Rousseau’s larger project. For MacLean, Rousseau’s arguments for free will are not only sincere—they represent an essential component of his political philosophy. In other words, she means to challenge Roger Masters’s detachability thesis. She does this in multiple ways. With regard to the Second Discourse and Emile, she argues that free will plays a vital role in the development of amour propre (65–74). Succinctly summarized, amour propre only becomes problematic because human beings freely choose to be led by it. They experience an inclination to distinguish themselves above others—but it only becomes pathological once they choose to act on it; and this requires freedom (70). Beyond this, MacLean argues, the very consciousness of freedom for Rousseau is a necessary stage of human development—“Morality is introduced once men acquire the idea of consideration and perceive the hurt of voluntary wrongs” (79). Thus, moral development for Rousseau requires not only that human beings are free, but also that they perceive it in themselves and others (81).

In defending these arguments, MacLean confronts Rousseau’s infamous Fourth Reverie, in which some have argued that he expressly justifies lying in the service of greater truths. ³⁷ “Particular and individual truth,” he writes, “is not always a good thing: sometimes it is a bad thing, very often it is an indifferent thing” (143). ³⁸ The esoteric readers of Rousseau sometimes employ this passage to suggest that he has here justified his deception of a broader reading public—lying, in effect, about the “particular and individual truth” of free will and determinism in service of a greater truth of public order. MacLean emphasizes, however, that Rousseau’s definition of acceptable falsifications, even in this context, is demanding: it requires that there is no conceivable way in which any harm might come of it (147). MacLean finds that by this standard, “Rousseau could only justify diffusing some of his most dangerous teachings because he thought they were true” (149). Among other things, this would include his implication in the Second Discourse and Social Contract that all existing regimes are illegitimate. MacLean posits that the doctrine of free will might also be analogously dangerous—and hence only justifiably confirmed publically if it were true. Her description of free will in Rousseau as potentially “dangerous” is not as thoroughly developed as one might hope. One can, in fact, argue that the opposite doctrine of determinism is far more dangerous—indeed, Rousseau himself characterizes the arguments of the determinists, Hobbes and Spinoza, as specifically “dangerous” in the First Discourse. ³⁹ But this does not mean there are not other arguments available to defuse the “Rousseau qua liar” thesis. Most obviously, given the importance of the free will question to Rousseau’s contemporaries—on both sides of the argument—it hardly seems that it can be described as a “particular and individual truth” or “an indifferent thing.” It is obviously a matter of great interest and consequence. And as such, it would seem Rousseau’s own standard would demand a faithful accounting.

As with Neuhouser, MacLean misses an opportunity to connect the focus of her study to the general will. ⁴⁰ As the general will expressly includes a “will” [volonté], it is especially important for Rousseau to maintain a doctrine of free will to protect the legitimacy both of the social contract and the will that governs the state it establishes. ⁴¹ For Rousseau, it seems, that if the social contract and the general will are to be legitimate, they must be freely chosen, instead of resulting from coercion or trickery. This is precisely the problem burdening the social contract of the Second Discourse. The poor are either too desperate to refuse the contract offered by the rich or they are simply duped by a clever wealthy class all too eager to consolidate its gains at the expense of the poor. In either case, it is difficult to characterize that contract as resulting from the exercise of free wills—hence its illegitimacy. This, it seems, is one of the most important motivating forces for him adopting a general will as the primary normative standard in his constructive politics.

MacLean’s larger claims are sound, however, as is generally her strategy of defending it. This is a fine and important book. But I wonder about the extent of its impact. For those, like Neuhouser, who already accept Rousseau’s sincerity regarding free will, they are already among the converted. The real question is whether the more skeptical readers might be persuaded. And there it is hard to speculate. One of the great allures of the esoteric reading of texts is that it is difficult to refute. It is by its very nature often speculative and resistant to counter-claims. It is possible that such readers will be unmoved by MacLean’s efforts here. And further, in the spirit of Rousseau’s own infamous ambiguity, perhaps there is just enough space to plausibly float such claims. But this scarcely implies the book represents wasted efforts. It is well written, well defended, persuasive, and it engages a view that would do well to hear it out. The esoteric readers of Rousseau, if they hope to win converts, are obliged to take it seriously.