Journal of the History of Philosophy

BOOK REVIEWS 133 requires "alienation totale," total renunciation of self and possessions, a claim apt to scare the respectable citizen ("den ehrbaren B(irger") with its equally ominous consequence of total equality? Stage thunder, says Vossler. The ghastly renunciation has already happened, and painlessly: the state is already there, the "alienation" is merely the citizen's free decision "to act simply out of honesty and decency" (p. 230), "an utterly familiar, harmless everyday affair" (p. 227). The formidable statement "La volont6 g~n~rale est toujours droite" is also "trivially right" since it merely states that "the idea or maxim of morality is always moral" (p. 245). No wonder that this philosophy of identity sounds suspiciously like Double-Think: Might is Right, Coercion is Freedom, Politics is Ethics, Ethics is Politics, Autonomy is Submission---vice becomes versa. Nonetheless the logic is inexorable. When the pure moral Will wills only itself, it transforms the dualisms into identitites. Only if it wills something substantive outside itself, do the dualisms reappear. But then the state is no longer state. Rousseau does say such tbings, but differently. For him, the magic wand of moral will does not transform the earth into paradise; it creates merely an island in the dirty flood, for man's will is weak. Man is by nature a drifter. His will needs to be strengthened by feeling and reason, by customs and social bonds, by extraordinary events impinging upon a community. Man's will can rise no higher than these supports allow. The individual can err in judging what constitutes the General Will, the citizen can and does confuse his private interests with the public one, there are in practice particular-interest organizations within the state. Rousseau therefore conceives democracy, not as a verbal identity or a moral harmony of interests, but as a process of adjusting, reconciling or overcoming conflicts of interest which are present in any articulated society. Beneath the flamboyant optimism of his political philosophy is a somber doctrine of will which, in the autobiographical writings, becomes a tragic one. This gives his political philosophy its profundity and its realism. Without it, Rousseau's doctrine of freedom would be what this book makes it sound like: a tranquilizer pill. GREGOR SEBBA Emory University Rousseau: A Study of His Thought. By J. H. Broome. (New York: Barnes & Noble [1963]. Pp. viii -b 231. $5.00.) This book is useful in two ways. It is first an introduction to all of Rousseau's major works from the Discourses through the Contrat Social, l~,'mile,Nouvelle H~loise to the autobiographical trilogy of the Confessions, Dialogues, and R~veries. It is also an original, interesting, often penetrating interpretation which the scholar will read with pleasure, whether he agrees or not. These works are well outlined and "covered"; but what concerns us here is the interpretation . Tbe approach is bold: "The surest way to kill Rousseau is to study him only in the parts" (p. 210). Broome sees unity, philosoptfical relevance, and cogency in the development from the first Discours to the last R~verie. But this unity is not one of consistency. Contradiction, paradox , absurdity are constitutive elements of Rousseau's thought, as they must be; for what he attempts to understand is man and society in a desacralized universe. Rousseau, influenced by the great opposing currents of his century, tries to combine and to reconcile them; but it is in his treatment of man's fall and redemption in purely immanentist terms that he rises to powerful originality. Rousseau's main problem is the problem of evil in a world without divine order or command, without original sin, eternal damnation, redeeming grace. Man is originMly innocent, this is Rousseau's basic belief; man is fallen, as observation shows. No God has cast man into his misery, no violation of an eternal law has ejected him from paradise: how can he in his innocence be responsible for his fall? Rousseau's "devastatingly simple" solution consists "in socializing sin, and transferring . . . the burden of guilt from men as individuals to men collectively in society" (p. 17). 134 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY The Discourse on Inequality explains the fall as an innocent drift out...