Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Translated with preface, notes, and an interpretive essay by Charles E. Butterworth. Hardcover editions: New York: New York University Press, 1979. Softcover edition: New York: Harper and Row, 1982.
“[C]ompletely faithful to Rousseau’s manuscript,” according to translator and editor Charles E. Butterworth, this edition of the Reveries does justice to a philosopher in the best way most of us can: by letting him speak for himself. Rousseau insists on that—the first word of the Reveries is “I”—but as if to confirm its author’s blackest suspicions of men, even the French editions of this “final statement of his thought” (ix) contain numerous errors, errors uncorrected in the two centuries since its posthumous publication. Butterworth gives us the real text of the Reveries for the first time, albeit translated.
“I am now alone on earth,” Rousseau begins, “no longer having any brother, neighbor, friend or society other than myself” (1). Detached from others, “what am I?” he asks—posing the question of his nature so as to assume man’s natural asociality, while simultaneously courting men’s pity. If, as Rousseau asserts elsewhere in his writings, human nature is fundamentally asocial, then the Solitary Walker has returned to man’s natural state, despite being “the most sociable and the most lovable of humans” (1). Among the themes of the First Walk are hope and fear, sentiments often associated with religious faith. Resigned to his exile from human society, Rousseau has abandoned hope in his fellow men for tranquility. That exile has also banished his fears; no one can injure him any more than they have already done. He has undergone a kind of creation, falling from order to chaos to a new order, now “unperturbed, like God Himself” (5), beyond hope and fear—both created and Creator. The Solitary Walker does not walk with God, but as a sort of god. He “find[s] consolation, hope and peace only in myself” (5). He even offers a prayer to himself: “Let me give myself up entirely to the sweetness of conversing with my soul, since that is the only thing men cannot take away from me” (5-6). Modestly (and, it will prove, falsely) averring that this book is “only a shapeless diary of my reveries,” a mere “appendix to my Confessions” (6), he intends by writing it “to make myself aware of the modifications of my soul and their sequence” (7). “My enterprise is the same as Montaigne’s, but my goal is the complete opposite of his: he wrote his Essays only for others, and I write my reveries only for myself” (7). It so happens that Montaigne actually said that he wrote for himself alone, but Rousseau doubts him. We may then be permitted to doubt Rousseau. This notwithstanding, Rousseau’s “self” may indeed differ radically from that of Montaigne, which seeks, among other things to impress us with its erudition, to ‘socialize’ with poets, philosophers, historians of the past.
But is Rousseau entirely alone? In the Second Walk, he writes that “These hours of solitude and meditation are the only ones in he day during which I am fully myself and for myself, without diversion, without obstacle, and during which I can truly claim to be what nature willed” (12)—the obvious implication being that there are other hours of the day when he is not solitary. Be this as it may, to be alone and meditating proves that “the source of true happiness is within us” (13). The Solitary Walker tranquilly meditates on his memories, but the memory he recalls turns out to be a memory of an unusual sort: a memory of lost memory. Knocked over in a collision with a large dog, and rendered unconscious, as he regained consciousness he had the feeling of being born—born again, so to speak, a fortunate fall indeed. “I knew neither who I was nor where I was; I felt neither injury, fear, or worry,” only “rapturous calm” (16). The remainder of the Second Walk consists of less tranquil memories, memories of his persecutors, those who plotted against him to push him out of society. Most prominent among these was a woman, perhaps Eve-like in her betrayal?
Consistent with true wisdom acquired in his second birth, in the Third Walk Rousseau condemns the wisdom that comes with age. By the time we acquire it we are ready not for life but for death—a glance, perhaps, at the Socratic claim that philosophy teaches one to learn how to die. Nor is true philosophy social; thinkers who write for others do not know themselves but act out of “literary vainglory” (31)—a dart aimed again at Montaigne, among others. Nor will Descartes do. Reading the “modern philosophers” didn’t remove Rousseau’s doubts or end his irresolution but rather shook “all the certainty I thought I had concerning the things that were most important for me to know” (32). So much for the clear and distinct ideas offered by the Cartesians. Hope and fear determine the content of one’s faith, Rousseau argues, implicitly rejecting the concept of grace and also the Christian doctrine of divine punishment for erroneous faith. If, after consulting “one’s own feeling” and “choos[ing] it with all the maturity of judgment one can put into it,” we nonetheless “fall into error,” we “could not justly suffer the penalty, since we would not be at fault (34). This puts his own sense of justice against that of the Christian God. Butterworth observes that “the philosopher is necessarily something of a solitary walker,” separate from the religion that binds society (178).
Rousseau makes this separation even more apparent in the Fourth Walk, which he begins by announcing that Plutarch is “the author who grips and benefits me most,” and not (for example) Matthew, Mark, Paul, Luke, or John. On the question of truth and knowledge, his criterion is justice, as determined by “moral instinct,” not reason (48). Neither the divine Logos of the Gospels nor the logic of the philosophers reveals truth. Considering both self-deception and deception of others, Rousseau supplements his memory of his betrayal by a woman with a memory of having betrayed one, when he lied about a theft he committed and implicated an innocent chambermaid in the crime. But he immediately raises the question of whether we owe the truth to others. If one “gives counterfeit money to a man to whom he owes nothing, he undoubtedly deceives the man, but he does not rob him” (45). He concludes that we owe others the truth when it affects justice; a truth concerning something that does not affect justice, an “idle fact” (46), is not owed to another at all. “Truth stripped of every kind of possible usefulness cannot therefore be a thing owed, and consequently he who suppresses it or disguises it does not lie at all” (46). Conversely, “useful fictions” (including the stories in the Reveries?) are “true lies” (48). On this, Butterworth observes that Rousseau can prudently resolve to lie no more because he now lives in solitude (187)—or perhaps more precisely, lives in part-time solitude.
Rousseau’s newborn faith includes a paradise. As fortune would have it, it’s named St. Peter’s Island, and the Fifth Walk contains its description. This paradise exists in this life, not in the next, and it requires only an appreciation of “the sentiment of existence” to achieve (69), not any striving for a telos beyond ourselves, nor any filling of the soul by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, Rousseau teaches that “we are sufficient to ourselves, like God” (69). “I would like this instant to last forever” (68): an eternal present. Reverie consists of a “thorough conjunction” of fictions and realities, he also teaches. Butterworth observes that this “passively sensual” experience discards reason, traditional faith, and action. On this rock Rousseau builds his church. If philosophy consists of a rational ascent from the cave of public opinions and customs, and if the first political philosophers took this ascent to be the dialectical investigation of those opinions, then it is fair to say that philosophers beginning with Machiavelli took a different turn. Machiavelli advises the Prince not so much to engage the opinions and customs of his city but to withdraw from them—more, to withdraw from his own beliefs and feelings in order to consult his inner nerve of libido dominandi. Philosophers following in this Machiavellian line undertake a similar mental operation, whether it be Descartes’s cogito ergo sum or Hobbes’s fear of violent death or Locke’s “simple ideas” or sense impressions. Rousseau undertakes the same inner-looking quest, the same attempt to eschew public opinion in the search for a solid, custom-uncluttered starting point for thought, while playfully mocking his predecessors, philosophic and Christian alike.
And so, in the Sixth Walk, he asserts, “There is hardly any of our automatic impulses whose cause we could not find in our heart, if we only knew how to look for it (74). Having treated faith and hope in the Third Walk, he now turns to the third theological virtue, charity. His charity has a natural, not divinely inspired character; it is a sentiment that society corrupts by transforming into a duty. Rousseau prefers to treat men with “a universal and perfectly disinterested benevolence” (81), although he modestly declines to accept, even in fiction, the godlike power of the ring of Gyges to go with this godlike morality. Could one say that Rousseau’s literary skill is a sort of ring of Gyges, making him elusive if not invisible to many readers, while granting him near-creative power over others? Butterworth remarks Rousseau teaching his readers that “By nature, all men are good.” he makes this observation without explicitly contrasting it with the Christian teaching. While thus rejecting social duties (“I have never been truly suited for civil society where everything is annoyance, obligation, and duty” {83]), Rousseau also rejects what Aristotle calls the moral failing of democrats, namely, to define freedom as doing what one wants. “I have never believed that man’s freedom consisted in doing what he wants, but rather in never doing what he does not want to do” (84). This negative freedom permits a sort of virtue, a virtue animated by natural sentiments susceptible to corruption by society and its opinions. We are led to suppose that Rousseau never would have betrayed that chambermaid if he had not been so worried about what others thought of him, and what they might do to him. Such temptations can be resisted only if you walk away, in solitude, leaving servility to others behind along with the concomitant fearful need to dominate them. This is Rousseau’s reply to Machiavelli, Hobbes, and other, previous philosophic individualists, and it is his reply in advance to the philosopher who set out to ennoble their teachings, Friedrich Nietzsche.
Considering human nature sans custom will make members of a predominantly Christian society think of Eden. In the Seventh Walk Rousseau turns to considering the larger nature, outside civil society, which encompasses human nature. He makes this turn while leaving ratiocination behind. “I have always thought rather deeply, but rarely with pleasure, almost always against my liking, and as though by force” (91); thinking feels suspiciously like socially-imposed duties feel. “Reverie relaxes and amuses me; reflection tires and saddens me; thinking always was a painful and charmless occupation for me” (91). And so when the Solitary Walker explores his Edenic island, he botanizes in a way unlike that of Adam (charged with the duty of classifying plants) or of modern scientists (who search for their medicinal properties, often for material interest, profit). He instead appreciates their color and structure—what would soon be called their esthetic qualities. “My ideas are now almost nothing but sensations, and the sphere of my understanding does not transcend the objects which immediately surround me” (96); Rousseau soaks in Locke’s simple ideas without striving for the complex ones. Botany, the study of plants on the surface of the earth, avoids the unhealthy, effortful study of minerals in the earth and the bloody vivisection of zoology; it is “a study for an idle and lazy solitary person” (98), so long as he resists the temptation to put what he learns to some use, whether for material profit or worse, for fame, for the satisfaction of amour-propre. On the seventh day, Rousseau rests content.
He can do so because in his botanical study he tastes fruit supposed poisonous, which turns out not to be so. “No pleasant-tasting natural product” is harmful “to the body” (102). He is silent concerning the soul. Botany “recalls to me both my youth and my innocent pleasures” (103); one might call it the prelapserian science. Butterworth remarks, “Because [Rousseau] does not think it possible to explain the whole, he insists that all one can do is to enjoy being art of the whole” (211).
The Eighth, Ninth, and Tenth Walks are unfinished—unintentionally so, as far as anyone can tell. The Eighth Walk concerns fortune, which Rousseau calls the basis of public opinion, and which Machiavelli had adjured the Prince to conquer. “I no longer saw in [the public’s “interior dispositions”] anything more than randomly moved masses, destitute of all morality with respect to me” (114), mere products of passions and the prejudices those passions produce; “even when [people] judge well, these good judgment still frequently arise from a bad principle” (113). An “innocent and persecuted man” such as himself had better withdraw “into [his] own soul,” renouncing the “comparisons and preferences” that society with its instrument, amour-propre, wields so foolishly (116). “All other old men are worried about everything; I am worried about nothing” (117). “As soon as I find myself under the trees and in the midst of greenery,” away from society, “I believe I am in an earthly paradise” (119).
Insofar as public happiness or civil contentment is possible, it requires equality, according to the Rousseauian implication uncovered by Butterworth in his interpretation of the Ninth Walk. Inequality requires forceful, hurtful assertion of the superior over the inferior, and may provoke the forceful, hurtful rebellion of the inferior against the superior. As all atoms are created equal, one might add that this equality has a kind of justice to it. (If we become curious about what such a civil society might look like, that is what the Social Contract is for). For a Rousseau, of course, a different justice applies. He is sufficiently bold to tell us that he writes his Tenth Walk on Palm Sunday, the fiftieth anniversary of the day he first met his mistress, Madame de Warens. The Solitary Walker’s entry into the new Jerusalem coincides with his memory of his Eve. The final word of the Reveries, by intention or fortune, is “her”. This completes his reverie of paradise.
Butterworth concludes that what Rousseau embraces philosophically as his (as it were) spiritual mistress is a refined nihilism. Be that as it may, Rousseau does set out to annihilate previous religious and philosophic teachings, even as he follows the path of ‘individualism’ set down by Machiavelli.
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