Prophet of Totalitarianism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, on This Day in History

 

This day in history: Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on this day in 1712. Rousseau was a sharp critic of inequality and private property, hence he may have influenced Karl Marx. He died before the failed French Revolution, but many held him responsible for it. As the evil tyrant Robespierre put it, 'Rousseau is the one man who, through the loftiness of his soul and the grandeur of his character, showed himself worthy of the role of teacher of mankind.'

 

He also taught guidelines on raising children, while abandoning his own five children to an orphanage. He was kind of a dick in many aspects.

"Rousseau eschewed conventional morality and replaced it with amoralism in his personal life. He was a liar, a cheat, and a whim-worshipper writ large. He once stole a ribbon from his then-patroness and allowed a maid to take the blame and be punished. When a friend with whom he was taking a walk had an epileptic fit, he took advantage of the crowd that then gathered to abandon his friend and disappear from the scene. In his writings he glorified as irreducible and admirable primaries the impulses of the 'Noble Savage' to whose way of life humanity ought to repair—at least to the extent feasible given the enormity of humanity’s backsliding from its original 'noble savagery.'"

"With Rousseau the individual has no rights at all to deviate from the general will, so this democracy is compatible with a complete absence of personal freedom. Here was the first formulation in Western philosophy of some of the basic ideas underlying the great totalitarian movements of the 20th century, Communism and Fascism—which likewise claimed to represent the people, and to have mass support, and even to be democratic, while denying individual rights; and which also allotted a key role to charismatic leaders; and which waged both hot and cold war against the Anglo-Saxon democracies who based themselves on Lockean principles."~Lindsay Perigo

"Rousseau, for all his emphasis on 'the general will,' left the interpretation of that will to elites. He likened the masses of the people to 'a stupid, pusillanimous invalid....Jacques Rousseau in the eighteenth century, whose depiction of 'the noble savage' served as a rebuke to European civilization." Thomas Sowell, Intellectuals and Society

"Voltaire, with whom Rousseau shared a long and violent animosity, caricatured him as a 'tramp who would like to see the rich robbed by the poor, the better to establish the fraternal unity of man.' During the Cold War, critics such as Berlin and Jacob Talmon presented Rousseau as a prophet of totalitarianism. Now, as large middle classes in the West stagnate and billions elsewhere move out of poverty while harboring unrealizable dreams of prosperity, Rousseau’s obsession with the psychic consequences of inequality seems even more prophetic and disturbing."

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/08/01/how-rousseau-predicted-trump

Paul Johnson, who's first chapter of "Intellectuals" featured Rousseau, concluded: "It is all very baffling and suggests that intellectuals are as unreasonable, illogical and superstitious as anyone else. The truth seems to be that Rousseau was a writer of genius but fatally unbalanced both in his life and in his views. He is best summed up by the woman who, he said, was his only love, Sophie d'Houdetot. She lived on until 1813 and, in extreme old age, delivered this verdict : 'He was ugly enough to frighten me and love did not make him more attractive. But he was a pathetic figure and I treated him with gentleness and kindness. He was an interesting madman.'"

Bertrand Russell said "Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, of Locke"?

Isaiah Berlin condemned Rousseau as “the most sinister and most formidable enemy of liberty in the whole history of modern thought.”

Rousseau was also a plagiarist. "He reproaches Mably with having borrowed, without acknowledgment, his philosophical systems; and the Benedictine, Don Joseph Cajot, brings a charge of plagiarism against Rousseau's 'Emile.' Nor is this all: the Abbe Du Laurens, known as the author of 'Compere Mathieu,' in a work published in 1788, asserts that Rousseau copied his 'Contrat Social,' word for word, from Ulric Huber's Latin work, 'De Jure Civitatis Libri III.' 'We shall be told,' adds Du Laurens, 'that M. Rousseau, like a second Prometheus, stole the sacred fire from heaven: our answer is, that he stole his fire, not from heaven, but from a library.'" 

https://thebookshelf2015.blogspot.com/2018/05/the-plagiarism-of-rousseau-voltaire-and.html