creating and saving your own notes as you read. [4], Rousseau portrays Geneva in a very romantic and positive light, where people are productive, happy and hard at work, but he also recognizes the extreme wealth and poverty in the city. See also Coleman, Rousseau's Political Imagination, 6466; David Marshall, Rousseau and the State of Theater, in Rousseau: Critical Assessments, edited by Scott, IV, 13970 (141, 144, 148); Mostefai, Le citoyen de Genve, 82. Renews April 25, 2023 He met Madame des Warens, a noted Catholic lady of leisure, in Savoy. For the next 7 days, you'll have access to awesome PLUS stuff like AP English test prep, No Fear Shakespeare translations and audio, a note-taking tool, personalized dashboard, & much more! In addition, the very foundation of Rousseau's concern for Geneva has a basis in Montesquieu's thought. For example, Rousseau in his Letter both adopts and adapts salient elements of Montesquieu's juxtaposition of French and English societies in Book 19. When Geneva was so threatened with the possibility of embracing such French mores, Rousseau engaged directly with the very authority whom d'Alembert invokes. When d'Alembert approached Montesquieu to contribute to the Encyclopdie, he volunteered to submit in lieu of d'Alembert's requested pieces on democracy and despotism a single entry devoted to Taste, and his corpus testifies to his sustained interest in art and aesthetics.Footnote15 Montesquieu focuses his attention on theatre in particular a handful of times in The Spirit of the Laws and once in the Persian Letters. The central character, Saint-Preux, is a middle-class preceptor who falls in love with his upper-class pupil, Julie. Thanks for creating a SparkNotes account! We thank Matthew Mendham who, as commentator, offered insightful remarks on that occasion. Rousseau remains resolutely opposed to the theatre in Geneva, however. 1 . Thus, an examination of Rousseau's discussion of theatre together with its relation to women and morality reveals that he is employing distinctly Montesquieuian terms and themes in order to engage and challenge his predecessor. [] Look at most of the plays in the French theater; in practically all of them you will find abominable monsters and atrocious actions, useful, if you please, in making the plays interesting and in giving exercise to the virtues; but they are certainly dangerous in that they accustom the eyes of the People to horrors that they ought not even to know and to crimes they ought not to suppose possible []. In both the Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu points to the theatre as a locus of sociability that has a transformative effect on its auditors. Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. Earlier in the same book of Emile, Rousseau provides a quotation from the Persian Letters, but names neither the work nor the author; see Rousseau, Emile, Book 5, 451. Marshall goes on to suggest that Rousseau's discussion of vanity, amour-propre, is inherently theatrical: the moment that people are aware they must present themselves for others, a theatrical consciousness is fostered such that the character and attributes that a person possesses become indistinguishable from what they seem to be.Footnote58 Rousseau laments that the introduction of theatre in an incorrupt society will induce people to substitute a theatrical jargon for the practice of the virtues.Footnote59 Of course, before Rousseau had offered this analysis, Montesquieu had comically depicted the tendency of social interactions to foster theatrical affectationseven theatrical masksin Rica's mistaken but understandable conflation of the actors and the audience in his description of the theatre in the Persian Letters. If you don't see it, please check your spam folder. Rousseau takes comfort in an allegiance to truth alone at the time of his break with Diderot and at which he becomes convinced that he must live without friends. 5 D'Alembert, Geneva, in Letter, 243. It is about people finding happiness in domestic as distinct from public life, in the family as opposed to the state. Mostefai describes in some detail how d'Alembert's essay bears the marks of Voltaire's influence by mimicking Voltaire's own literary approach of criticising French politics and religion through the praise of another society and furthering Voltaire's interests of establishing a theatre in his neighbourhood which may fulfil the substance of Rousseau's accusation; see, for example, Mostefai, Le citoyen de Genve, 1718, 31, 3435, 41, 56. 60 Spirit, 19.6, 311. To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. Moreover, the double entendre he deploys here should not be overlooked, as he also illustrates that men's social interactions with women unleash the power of commercial exchange: Fashions are an important subject; as one allows one's spirit to become frivolous, one constantly increases the branches of commerce [on augmente sans cesse les branches de son commerce].Footnote25 Thus, both women and commerce foster the communicability and nurture the adaptability of a given people.Footnote26. For example, when Aricia, Hippolytus's beloved, begs him to tell his father that Phaedra had deceived him, he responds: What more should I/ Have told him? dAlembert sur les spectacles (1758; Letter to Monsieur dAlembert on the Theatre) appeared in print, Rousseau had already left Paris to pursue a life closer to nature on the country estate of his friend Mme dpinay near Montmorency. For a more comprehensive discussion of Rousseau's relationship to Muralt, see Kapossy, Iselin contra Rousseau, 3976; Charles Gould, Introduction, in Muralt, Lettres, 997 (8795). Summary. It is not hard to excuse Phaedra, who is incestuous and spills innocent blood.Footnote53. Very many literate people in the eighteenth century read and responded to Rousseau, in France and elsewhere. 1758 marked a break with many of the Enlightenment philosophers; his Letter to d'Alembert attacked d'Alembert's article in the French Encyclopedia on Geneva. Save over 50% with a SparkNotes PLUS Annual Plan! Towards the end of the afternoon, everyone assembles and goes to perform in a sort of show [une espce de scne], called, so I have heard, a play [comdie]. The relation between art and society is . Rousseau initially declares at the beginning of the Letter that theatre only serves to intensify rather than change established morals, positing that drama would be good for the good and bad for the vicious.Footnote73 He ultimately revises his position, however, as he embraces Montesquieu's views both of the fundamental importance of mores in a given society and of the fact that different societies require different mores as well as different laws and institutions.Footnote74 This change of orientation occurs when Rousseau seems to adopt verbatim Montesquieu's formulation that mores and manners can be effectively changed not through direct legislation but less obtrusively through the introduction of other mores and manners, or via public opinion: matters of morals and universal justice are not arranged, as are those of private justice and strict right, by edicts and laws.Footnote75 This is nearly identical to Montesquieu's advice to the legislator in 19.14: when one wants to change the mores and manners, one must not change them by the laws [] it would be better to change them by other mores and other manners.Footnote76 Rousseau's discussion of the possible elimination of duels in France through the force of public opinion provides his readers with an example of spectacle appealing to amour-propre in such a way as to mitigate vice.Footnote77 Indeed, Rousseau declares in this context: I am convinced that we will never succeed in working these changes without bringing about the intervention of women, on whom men's way of thinking in large measure depends.Footnote78 Thus, not only does Rousseau confirm Montesquieu's teaching regarding the importance of mores, but he also expressly adopts Montesquieu's very conclusion regarding the importance of female society in effecting their change. He begins the first of these two chapters with a bold criticism of Plato, accusing him of promulgating laws that are against nature: If a slave, says Plato, defends himself and kills a free man, he should be treated as a parricide. From 1742 to 1749, Rousseau lived in Paris, barely earning a living by teaching and by copying music. Thus, consideration of Rousseau's Letter helps to establish the formative character of the elder's thought on that of the younger. Rousseau was the eighteenth-century's greateast admirer, even idolator, of Sparta. Down below there is a crowd of people standing up, who make fun of those who are performing above, and they in turn laugh at those below.Footnote18, Eventually everyone goes off to a room where they act a special sort of play: it begins with bows and continues with embraces. Youve successfully purchased a group discount. Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: Spectacles and Sociability: Rousseau's Response in His, Department of Political Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA and New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA, USA. In it Rousseau speaks to . He continues that a European spirit of gallantry that one can say was little known to the ancients grew out of this desire to please women. 57 theatre subverted the immediacy, the joyous spontaneity, the doux sentiment, of republican communion; see Forman-Barzilai, Emergence of Contextualism in Rousseau, 437. 0:00. Il cite ce pour quoi il crit. Through examining Montesquieu's commentary on the theatre in the Persian Letters, as well as his discussion of Phaedra in The Spirit of the Laws, it becomes clear that Montesquieu teaches that the theatrical art can have a positive effect on individuals and thus on society. Allan Bloom, "Jean-Jacques Rousseau," in History of Political Philosophy, ed. He reacted to the suppression of The Social Contract in Geneva by indicting the regime of that city-state in a pamphlet entitled Lettres crites de la montagne (1764; Letters Written from the Mountain). Her frustration with the lack of control she has over her passions drives her to perpetuate the calumny against Hippolytus so that he may be banished forever, and therefore beyond the reach of her uncontrollable lust. He explains that he terms prejudices not what makes one unaware of certain things but what makes one unaware of oneself.Footnote44 Through our feelingsthat is, through emotional responses to the actions on stage, the theatre reminds people that despite their integration into societies sustained by a multiplicity of political, civil, and religious codes, a natural human core still remains. His next works were less popular; The Social Contract and milewere condemned and publicly burnt in Paris and Geneva in 1762. Montesquieu's particular treatment of English women differs from Muralt's in several ways. [3] D'Alembert's article in support of the theatre was influenced by Voltaire, who not only was against censorship, but frequently put on theatrical performances at his home outside of Geneva. The Enlightenment was a diverse movement, represented in France by writers such as Voltaire, Diderot and the authors of the Encyclopdie. 26 Michael A. Mosher, The Judgmental Gaze of European Women: Gender, Sexuality, and the Critique of Republican Rule, Political Theory, 22 (1994), 2544 (42). 2 Jean-Baptiste le Rond d'Alembert, Geneva, in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Letter to d'Alembert and Writings for the Theater [hereafter Letter], in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, 13 vols (Hanover, NH, 19902010), X, 241. You'll also receive an email with the link. In a personal letter, Rousseau wrote that he was not ignorant that Voltaire had played a part in d'Alembert's entry, and indeed, he dedicates a substantial portion of the Letter to critiquing Voltaire's play, Mahomet.Footnote9 Thus, many scholars read his open letter to d'Alembert as a simultaneous response to Voltaire.Footnote10. Rousseau's depictions of the theatre as well as his discussions of the role of women in both French and English society reveal that the Letter bears a striking resemblance to, and, in fact, appears to be a response to, aspects of Montesquieu's thought. At the end of The New Eloise, when Julie has made herself ill in an attempt to rescue one of her children from drowning, she comes face-to-face with a truth about herself: that her love for Saint-Preux has never died. Use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please check your spam folder Social Contract milewere. 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