# Rousseau the Romantic

## October 7th, 2020

-   Dr. Kirkman is on-campus today, since he's having some remodeling done at his house right now
-   There's a checkpoint assignment due NEXT WEDNESDAY for you to confirm your final topic for the final project, and for Dr. Kirkman to make sure our topic is appropriately scoped for this semester
    -   Next Monday we'll finish up Rousseau, then have our workshop on Wednesday, and then, finally, we'll have an exegesis on Rousseau due next week on Friday
-   "I've been here for 18 years, having the whistle right outside my office, and I've gotta say...I haven't missed it at all. I kind of hate the thing."
    -   "DM Smith is a wonky, weird building too, but it has character unlike some more modern buildings on campus; it was paid for in 1924 by Andrew Carnegie personally and hasn't been significantly renovated since, it has a temporary ADA ramp that's been there for 20 years...and it has my office"
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-   "Rousseau talks about censorship, but doesn't use it in the same way we do today - his definition is much broader"

-   So, we read the first 4 chapters of Book IV today, including this odd, complicated chapter about the Roman republic ("I sometimes have to look up organizational charts for Rome when I read this chapter")
    -   Rousseau, while not uncritical of the Roman system, appears to admire how well it worked for so long
        -   "I've characterized Rousseau here as both an Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment thinker, where confidence in human reason was at a peak, but Rousseau began contributing to the counter-force of romanticism (not just kissy-kissy love stuff, but as in 'looking back to classic traditions' and the Roman idea of the corrupting influence of the city v.s. the simple purity of nature)"
            -   This wasn't just an intellectual movement, but a HUGE artistic movement as well; look up Beethoven's 6th symphony (the pastoral one) for a great example of this
            -   "Even today, environmentalism has a HUGE romantic element in it of adoring nature and indigenous cultures"
                -   Rousseau often gets credit for this idea of a "noble savage" who's more pure because they live close to nature; Rousseau doesn't really say this explicitly in his works, but you can see how people would see elements of that in his ideas
                -   "Pilgrim at Tinker Creek" is a modern counter-reaction to this, focusing on the jarring, dark, indifferent parts of nature (e.g. parasitic wasps)
            -   There's another chapter in a different book talking about J.R.R. Tolkien, talking about how racial and blood-and-soil politics plays into those works, because the most interesting, purest characters are these nature-loving hobbits, and the more industrialized nations are seen as forces of evil, and the rightful kings are these tall white "Men of the West" guys
                -   "...I know I'm going to upset Tolkien fans here, because I loved LOTR as a kid and now I can't read it the same way after that critique I read of it"
                -   Not to pile on Tolkien here, but just to point out that his works do contain some of these Romantic tropes

-   So, with ALL this intellectual context, look at Book IV, Chapter I: Rousseau praises simple peasants "working under an oak, acting wisely." Rousseau thinks simple, virtuous people, living in a pastoral setting, will naturally lead to a well-governed republic without many laws
    -   In contrast, Rousseau thinks the more "sophisticated" nations are made up of schemers and complicated laws that decent country-folk, giving their honest opinions, would see through right away; in IV.I.4, he tries to paint a picture of how these selfish notions can become corrupting
        -   Rousseau likely doesn't think any nation was perfectly like this, but he's trying to set up an ideal system for how things *should* be, in an ideal government
        -   "I don't want to force you to agree with Rousseau, but I want to make sure he's understood on his own terms"
    -   In IV.I.6, though, Rousseau says that people KNOW what the public good is and what the general will is, they just avoid it when they choose to act in their own interest
        -   "It annoys me that what passes for 'political analysis' these days; for probably terrible reasons I have my alarm set to some radio station like NPR, and their political analysis segment is NOT policy analysis (i.e. 'Is this a good thing for the country?') - instead, it's them talking about 'Will this play well with the voters? Is it good for the democrats?'"
        -   What Rousseau (and, frankly, I) would want to hear is NOT that, but the straightforward question: "Is this policy good for us? What ends is it serving, and are those ends good?"

-   So, I talked a lot today, but I thought Chapter 1 of Book IV was really rich and connected in interesting ways to romanticism ("Even the word for 'novel' in French is *Roman*")
    -   So, we'll finish the rest of the book for Monday - especially his extraordinarily controversial chapter on civil religion