Extract
[...] On what foundations does the critique of modern civilization rely in Rousseau? Critique of Modern Civilization in Rousseau To fully understand the reasons that motivate Rousseau to draw a deeply critical portrait of modern civilization, that is, the social and political organization that is contemporary to him, we must go back to the principles of his political and moral philosophy. Let us begin by highlighting that in the state of nature, according to Rousseau, man is not a social being, men live in a free and independent way, isolated from each other as long as they are able to meet their individual needs in an autonomous manner, without seeking to appropriate the resources of others. [...]
[...] Rousseau also establishes that the economic-civil causes of the dissolution of the political are themselves effects of causes that are political. The economic causes of depoliticization are themselves the effects of a deficient policy. The quality of the political causes citizen participation, whose quality of the political depends itself, according to a virtuous or vicious circle. It is from this quality of the political that will depend, among citizens, the relative but also absolute importance of the concern for the private. [...]
[...] This ruin therefore has a very strong qualitative sense, since in all cases, to submit the common to the private, is to make the State the organ of a partial will, and therefore to deny the State as a political body. Rousseau highlights the reversal of this economic logic of profit into a political logic of subjugation. We change from money to iron, and the iron is that of the slave, since by abandoning the political terrain, the citizen leaves the field open to a particularization of the will of the State. [...]
[...] It is in this sense that Rousseau opposes the classism of modern civilization. This preeminence of logics of self-love and class domination is also the object of a more deeply political critique of Rousseau against his contemporaries. In fact, in Rousseau (in the Social Contract), The citizen's concern for the political is the mark of the state's health. A healthy state necessarily arouses the interest of its citizens, that is, it produces what it depends on, it is the virtuous political circle. [...]
[...] For it is the most common arts, those that provide the raw material for all other arts, that should benefit from the most important social consideration. It is the logic of self-love, the one that always seeks to distinguish, that leads to this erroneous valuation of what should be considered anecdotal. It is in this sense that, in theÉmile, Rousseau favors an education that is the opposite of traditional education: an education that seeks to maintain and strengthen the principles that are proper to the Natural Man, an education that values what the elites usually disdain. [...]
