# Wrapping up Rousseau

## October 12th, 2020

-   Okay, Wednesday at noon the 2nd exegesis assignment will be released, and you'll have until Friday at midnight to complete it
    -   Remember, Rousseau uses many words a particular way and his arguments should tie together, so be sure to review this
        -   "This semester does feel like it's moved pretty fast; we'll have a little more time for the 3rd book, but still"
    -   Also, DON'T FORGET you should submit an (optional) assignment that I STRONGLY recommend you do if you're planning to complete the final project: submit your proposed topic for the project, so I can give you feedback and let you know if that's appropriate
-   *Dr. Kirkman casually mentions that he's fiddle player*
    -   Dr. Kirkman apparently met someone at a fiddle concert, friended them on Twitter, saw them post something he thought "huh, that has some merit, but I'm not sure it holds up," asked a critical question, and found himself unfriended - "and that's why I don't go on Twitter anymore"
-   "I have almost nothing politically in common with my siblings - we can't even bring it up at Christmas, and we mutually don't understand how we can hold each other's views - but we're still human. We're still family - the difference between a community and a clique is that, in a community, you run into people you can't stand and you still have to live with them."
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-   Today, we have these kinda puzzling final chapters of Rousseau's book IV, and he's dealing with the functions of government, these people who've been charged to execute the law
    -   He describes the "Tribunate," which is a separate body that regulates between the executive and legislative powers (similar to our judiciary)
    -   He then talks about 2 terms that he uses in a technical sense VERY different from our everyday sense: dictatorship, and censorship
        -   By DICTATORSHIP in Chapter 6, Rousseau is talking about something similar to Locke's idea of "prerogative" - giving someone temporary, emergency powers to act contrary to the law when ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for the preservation of the state
            -   In section 11, Rousseau says this NEEDS a strict, unalterable time limit to prevent this from becoming a tyranny - "Rousseau's more strict than Locke about when this power can be used"
            -   "We tend to use dictator as synonymous with tyrant (partly because we have this prominent, recent example of Adolf Hitler seizing power in this way), but Rousseau makes them distinct; he sees this dictatorial power as liable to misuse, but not inevitably leading to it"
        -   By CENSORSHIP, Rousseau doesn't think this is something that should be done by some private board in the government, but instead to express the people's moral judgments; Rousseau assumes you have a fairly homogenous people that already has its moral opinions formed, and the censor is supposed to enforce that to maintain those morals
            -   If the censor oversteps and tries to go beyond what the public already agrees with, Rousseau thinks that's illegitimate - it's like making a law the Sovereign doesn't agree with!
            -   "For Rousseau, censorship isn't burning books or jailing people, but instead more subtly about shaming people who do things that public considers immoral and encouraging people who are praiseworthy; he doesn't think we should jail people"
                -   In America, we have a problem for Rousseau (not for Locke) in that we're culturally heterogenous, and so not everyone agrees about what's moral or good or best
                -   The closest thing we have to this is the "bully pulpit" of the President setting an example for the American people, e.g. FDR's "we have nothing to fear but fear itself," or Lincoln appealing to "the better angels of our nature" and urging people to "bind up the nation's wounds," or giving a Medal of Honor and saying that this person is worthy of emulation
            -   Rousseau thinks that people will laugh if you try to overstep your bounds and encourage things that the public doesn't already agree with (or vice-versa)
                -   Classic American example of this: Jimmy Carter's "Sweater" speech (or "Malaise" speech)
                    -   Carter was basically a decent human being, seeing the country through a really hard time right after Nixon and Ford, in the middle of an oil crisis (and the economic anomaly of inflation DURING a shrinking economy)
                        -   "In Ohio, I remember our school couldn't afford to heat our school every week in the winter, so we'd go to another school during the first half of the week"
                    -   Carter, in the middle of this, gives a speech saying too many people are self-indulgent, and people should just "have modest expectations, put on a sweater, and be content with less"
                        -   Carter was WIDELY mocked for this, paving the way for Reagan's optimistic promises of "Morning in American" to win him the presidency - Carter had mis-applied his censorship
                -   Maybe America (debatably) never had a broad moral agreement, and never really had a formal censorship office, but the presidency setting the moral tone is somewhat close
            -    How do you have a shared political life when there isn't one, unified American people that all agree on a single set of things? Politicians talk about what "the American people want" all the time, but it's kind of a political fiction
                -   As a side-note, Kant wrote a surprisingly accessible extension of Rousseau's ideas here to international politics called "The Perpetual Peace"
    -   Finally, Rousseau talks about "Civil Religion" in pretty blunt, unflattering terms, challenging the authority of the church
        -   At the time, this chapter got Rousseau in MAJOR hot-water with the Sorbonne in France - "Rousseau just sharpened his knife and started throwing shade all over this chapter"
            -   "If Rousseau was alive today, he'd be your classic 'spiritual, but not religious' kind of guy. He was raised Protestant in Geneva, but he practically lived as a Deist, and was intentionally cagey about his personal religion. He seems very suspicious of organized religions with priests."
        -   Rousseau attacks religions of the "priest" as making states unstable by dividing people's loyalty between the state and their religion (he's seemingly okay with private religion that DOESN'T come out in public life, as well as with a bare-bones shared "civil religion" with basic tenets that all people hold to)
            -   Rousseau thinks the state HAS to be the most important institution in your life because it "is" you: you ARE part of the Sovereign, you are an American, etc., and everything you do is part of being a citizen. If anything usurps the Republic, Rousseau thinks, then the republic becomes unstable.
        -   He has some particularly harsh stuff to say about Christians, but that's even more controversial and we'll skip over it for time

-   Okay, we'll talk on Wednesday!