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Political Writings. Ed. Alan Ritter and Julia C. Bondanella. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988. 8-
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1977. 53-218.
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| 18 October 2000 | ||||||
| Philosophy is a unique field. While it relies on the scientific concepts of foreknowledge and observation and often even employs the scientific method for explanation, its precepts are rooted in the liberal arts. Philosophy concerns itself with abstract matters which cannot be tested and which are variable and arguable between almost every individual; there are few fundamental truths in philosophy. Caught between the two major fields of study, philosophers have had to come to terms with the criticism dealt it by such people as Sir Philip Sidney, who said that philosophy, while instructive, cannot keep the attention of more than a few old men who have no need of instruction. Both Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau combated the usual tediousness of philosophical discourse by employing various methods to demonstrate their ideas in a more palatable manner. Fortunately for the student of literature, these methods include written versions of their thoughts. It is these writings, namely Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men and Voltaire's Philosophical Dictionary, which give insight into the ways in which these great minds worked. By examining these works, particularly their styles, scopes, and the validity of the arguments employed within these areas, it is possible to determine the more empirical of the two philosophers. Based on the assessment of the works in question, Voltaire emerges as the writer who gives a more accurate portrayal of human motives and institutions. | ||||||
| To be fair, the styles employed by the writers of these particular pieces are a bit different than what they both normally used. For instance, though Rousseau commonly relied on the essay form to deliver his beliefs, the specific essay dealt with here was written to the Academy of Dijon as an entry in a contest sponsored by the Academy. Its audience was therefore limited to readers of higher education. By adopting the popular dictionary format, however, Voltaire was also responding to a prospective readership, though his was more much general and large. He had previously used the literary forms of letters, essays, plays, and satirical novels. In the Dictionary, however, Voltaire actually sets out to categorize and alphabetize certain concepts, stories, and opinions that were important to him and the general community. By organizing his work in such a systematic way, Voltaire exhibits the very empiricism he attempts to convey within his actual dictionary entries. He gives his work the veneer of method and order, leaving the reader with the idea that someone of sound mind and good logic composed the Dictionary. Additionally, the passages for each entry are concise and usually rather short; few are more than three pages in length. While this means that Voltaire does not go into much detail about his topics, what he does offer is often presented with resoluteness and certainty. A brief survey gives adequate support to this assertion: "All the fathers of the Church, without exception, believed in the power of magic" (205)...."No country has a good code of laws. The reason for this is evident" (142)...."The institution of religion exists only to keep mankind in order" (109). All of these statements are presented as being incontrovertible facts, enough so that Voltaire does not feel the need to expound on them or support them with more than a dozen or so paragraphs. Likewise, Voltaire often adopts a scientific way of writing that adds more credence to his overall empiricism. On page 127, he writes that "we are only cogs in the machine of the world," casting the workings of the world in a very mechanical light. Later, when considering truth, he writes, "From generation to generation skepticism increases, and probability diminishes" (217), as if these figures were from the latest study or poll. The most striking example is the entry "Man, General Reflection on" (160), in which Voltaire reduces the life of man to statistics. This is not the normal style of the average philosopher; by using the dictionary style and approaching his subject matter pseudo-scientifically, Voltaire achieves a certain air of reasonableness and logic. | ||||||
| Rousseau, as noted above, opts for the more conventional style of the essay for his Discourse. Once again, this is primarily because this particular work was his entry in a contest. While it is true that many scientific discoveries have been presented in the form of essays and treatises, the essayist is not generally noted to be a scientist or a scientific thinker. On the contrary, essays by nature tend to take a rambling, disarrayed approach to the subject matter. In Discourse, Rousseau often strays from his given subject matter, as when he launches into his idea that excesses in food and drink cause many of the health problems of his contemporaries (13) or when he devotes so much of the essay to the origins of language. Speaking of his contemporaries, Rousseau also takes the occasion to offer critiques of other philosophers' works. "Hobbes claims that man is naturally intrepid and only interested in attacking and fighting" (12) he writes, later refuting that claim. And then on page 26: "Let us not conclude with Hobbes that for want of any idea of goodness, man is naturally evil." Including these specific barbs does not enhance any feelings of scientific detachment to the subject. On the contrary, Rousseau's work appears to be little more than a vehicle for a few ideas on man and language, with a few snide remarks thrown in for good measure. Structurally, the work is strewn together, with the First Part dealing almost entirely with prehistoric man's countenance and lifestyle and the Second Part taking up the ideas of governance and society. The thread connecting the two is fine; the work lacks the cohesiveness of a logical argument. | ||||||
| One could argue, however, that Voltaire's Dictionary also lacks a logical argument. Consisting as it does of many small pieces that rarely seem to fit together in a clear picture, it is easy to overlook the broad image of mankind that Voltaire paints. After all, the topics of the Dictionary's entries vary widely (the first three entries are about the word "abbe," Adam from the Bible, and adultery). Yet almost all of the entries deal with concepts concerning human life or nature; in having such a large scope of topics, Voltaire does his best to reconstruct normal human life. Just as humans often concern themselves with trivial matters, so too does Voltaire: he has entries for the Ass of Verona, kissing, and novelties. More importantly, he covers an array of topics that deal most intimately with human life: religion, government, relationships between individuals, and human nature itself. Once again, Voltaire is almost classifying these aspects of life into tidy entries in his Dictionary. Many topics are dealt with more than once or in more than one entry; for instance, religion is directly covered in Adam (54), Adultery (58), Ass (72), Bishop (88), Climate (96), The Ecclesiastical Ministry (109), Expiation (116), Faith (120), Lent (144), Love of God (158), Mohammedans (163), Nakedness (165), Power, Omnipotence (173), Prayers (178), Prejudices, Religious (182), Religion (187), Sect (195), Superstition (205), Theist (207), Tolerance (212), and Truth (215). In short, the scope of Voltaire's Dictionary serves to better explain human nature and motivations than the more narrowly-focused work of Rousseau. | ||||||
| Rousseau's opening sentence of his Discourse begins as follows: "It is man that I am to discuss" (8). While he does discuss certain attributes of man, he rarely delves into the heart of mankind. Instead, he spends the entire First Part conjecturing what primitive Man must have been like before society formed and killed off his best parts. This Man that Rousseau creates in his mind bears little resemblance to present-day Man; his needs are only food, sleep, and procreation (11), he spends time "thinking little, sleep[ing], so to speak, whenever [he is] not thinking," (15), and he does not know the difference between wicked and good (27). The relevance of this unknown creature never really presents itself, as Rousseau jumps quickly through history to the present, failing to explain how or why Man in this pristine state would ever choose progress or be forced to change. In the Second Part, Rousseau has the opportunity to delve deeper into Man's psyche as he explains just how inequalities came to exist, yet he never strikes deeper than man's social interactions. While he does an admirable job of explaining that government was started by the rich people to trick the poor people into staying poor (44), he does not broach the topics of religion or different forms of government. He does not discuss the emotions that may drive humans to do the things they do beyond mentioning "vanity and contempt" (38), "consuming ambition" (42), and "avaricious, ambitious, and wicked" (43) behavior. All of the other complex motivations that people have are not examined. In fact, Rousseau makes the assertion that "this universal desire for reputation, honors, and preference, which consumes us all....causes defeats, successes, and disasters of all kinds" 53-4). Rousseau's work, dealing as it does first with his imaginary prehistoric Man and then with all the evils that society has wrought, strays from his original intention of discussing man and instead offers such a narrow scope that little can be gleaned about the true nature of man and his inequality. | ||||||
| The validity of each philosopher's arguments is the most difficult attribute of their works to assess, mainly because their arguments are not fact, as they would have the reader to believe, but mere opinions based on their ideas and observations. Still, since each one offers his findings in a way that more or less asks the reader to accept them as fact, they can clearly be judged on their success or failure to persuade the reader. | ||||||
| Strangely enough for men who maintained a bitter rivalry for over 20 years, the two had many of the same conclusions. For instance, both assume that humans have an innate capacity for compassion (Rousseau 28, Voltaire 143). They also both draw clear distinctions between the philosopher and the common people or vulgar (Rousseau 29, Voltaire 187), eventually concluding that these two types of humans are vastly, almost completely, different. They both also recognize the important role that self-interest plays in forming societal institutions such as government (Rousseau 44) and religion (Voltaire 143). Even with these similarities, Voltaire's ideas about human nature and institutions best reflect real life. First, he argues that the reason that government is often unjust or inefficient is because "men are rarely worthy of governing themselves" (203). In Voltaire's model of government, it is not the institution of government itself that is to blame for social ills but rather the people who run the show. He also uses the idea of morality as a way to distinguish between men. He does not say that men are rarely capable of governing themselves; he says they are rarely worthy. This distinction is important, since morality does not play a part in Rousseau's explanation of government. For him, "society and laws, which gave new fetters to the weak and new powers to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty" (44). Morality does not play a role in the primitive man's life until society is formed. From that point on, men and their institutions become evil. Thus Rousseau does not deal with morality in any kind of useful way; he merely says that everything humans have done in past 50,000 years or so was detrimental and wrong. | ||||||
| Voltaire also goes to pains to examine intolerance and prejudices. These characteristics are much more plausible explanations for the differences between men than Rousseau's counter assertion that difference arise because of man's "eagerness to be talked about" (54). Rousseau dismisses feelings of religious zeal and patriotism, chalking all of men's disagreements to the need to have rank and honor. His conception is one based on class; everyone wants to be the rich guy. For Voltaire, the world is a little more complicated than that. In his paradigm, being correct in his assumptions about God and government matter more to Man than just getting ahead. Man to Voltaire is more than just an entity concerned with economics; he has spiritual and emotional sides as well. This more complex conception reflects the real world more than Rousseau's simplified version. | ||||||
| In conclusion, Voltaire offers a more comprehensive view of human life, making him the better assessor of human motivations and institutions. He adopts a style of writing that makes him appear more scientific and logical; he covers a wider array of topics that deal more intimately with human life; and his conclusions are based more firmly in reality than Rousseau's. His understanding of the world, that it is "the theater of moral ill and physical ill" (174), is more suited to the common understanding of it than Rousseau's muddled idea of a primitive man losing his happiness and independence at the very moment he finds his humanity. Quite clearly then, Voltaire presents himself as an empiric thinker and lives up to this assertion; Rousseau tries hard to rise above the limitations of the inexact field of philosophy, but never quite reaches his mark. | ||||||
| Works Cited | ||||||
| Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. "Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among Men," Rousseau's Political Writings. Ed. Alan Ritter and Julia C. Bondanella. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1988. 8- 57. |
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| Voltaire. "Philosophical Dictionary," The Portable Voltaire. Ed. Ben Ray Redman. New York: Penguin Books, 1977. 53-218. |
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