The Psychology of Inequality. Michael Locke McLendon
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the rising bourgeois classes strenuously asserted that only those who possessed talent, or more specifically, some form of intellectual ability, ought to be considered elite members of society. Thomas Paine may very well have summed up their line of attack with one acerbic quip: “Nobility equals no ability.”77
As has been well established, Rousseau had a front-row seat to this cultural skirmish through his experiences with the philosophes. Although he also is critical of the economic elite and employs amour-propre against the wealthy, he begins with the intellectuals.78 Like the administrators and bankers, the philosophes vigorously argued that they, the men of letters, were the most socially valuable members of society and hence ought to occupy the highest rungs of the social ladder. They had the most legitimate claim to being best. Many followed Voltaire in his “desire … to lift the status of the men of letters to the highest rank of society.”79 Rousseau was plainly aware of this project, complaining in “Preface to Narcissus” that his intellectual friends “cared more about the interests of the men of letters than about the honor of literature.”80
Rousseau, in fact, was a full-fledged participant in eighteenth-century aristocratic politics and was for a time probably supportive of his friends’ claims.81 In “Preface to Narcissus,” he concedes that he was “seduced by the prejudices of my century.”82 Like so many young provincials, his adolescent ambition, as detailed in The Confessions, was to become a celebrated man of letters.83 Rousseau also grew up with little love for the courtly aristocrats and was contemptuous of the humiliating relationship between the peasants and their so-called superiors. His father, after all, was chased out of Geneva after a tiff with a local aristocrat involving hunting privileges. Both attitudes encouraged a restlessness and an eagerness to climb the social ladder, which eventually drew him to Paris.84 Although he received little formal education and did not exhibit any intellectual ability during his childhood, he arrived in Paris aged almost thirty and ready to distinguish himself as both a musician and a playwright. In The Confessions, he describes his attitude as one perfectly consistent with those of his philosophe friends—talent was to be his ticket to a better life. He recounts thinking during his journey to the capital of the Enlightenment: “A young man who arrives in Paris with a passable appearance and who is heralded for his talents is always sure of being welcomed.”85 Moreover, Rousseau admits that he was driven by the desire to be aristos and would do anything and everything to earn fame. In reference to his attempt to become a chess master, he writes, “I said to myself, ‘Whoever excels in something is always sure of being sought after. Be first, then in anything at all; I will be sought after; opportunities will present themselves, and my merit will do the rest.’”86 It is easy to connect both of these recollections to the competition for esteem (or perhaps the “competition for excellence”) passage in the Second Discourse. The imagery of leisurely singing and dancing, of course, is clearly not a reference to Paris. Scholars think it refers to the village Maypole feast87 or the naturalistic works of Joseph-François Lafitau or John Brown, which took American Indians as the model.88 The competition aspect, however, arguably refers to Paris. Recall from the passage on competition for esteem that the two criteria by which people wish to distinguish themselves are talents and physical appearances: “The one who sang or danced best; the handsomest, the strongest, the most skillful, or the most eloquent.” Aside from “the strongest,” all of these refer to intellectual or musical abilities and good looks—the same two criteria Rousseau claims would help him find acceptance in Paris in The Confessions. The second passage, with its reference to “being first,” is even more remarkable, as it directly links his own attitudes to the “being best” language in the competition for esteem that is generally ignored by scholars.89
In any case, Rousseau eventually soured on Paris as it became clear that life as a man of letters was much harsher than he had supposed. His talents were not immediately welcomed, and he was never fully comfortable making them the core of his identity. His first try at fame, which came in the form of a submission of a musical notation system to the Academy of Sciences, revealed a spiteful side to him that seems almost unimaginable in his younger self. Although the committee ultimately rejected the system, he was congratulated for a fine effort and encouraged to pursue further study in the field. He managed, in short, to attract favorable consideration. Rousseau, however, saw no silver lining in the committee’s decision, and his reaction was bitter. Aside from one objection from the famous composer Rameau, Rousseau dismissed the criticisms of the committee members as nonsense and remained angry at them at least until he wrote The Confessions some twenty-five years later.90 If his goal was to be aristos, then any sort of failure must have been completely unacceptable. His experiences did not improve much in this regard, and the next seven years proved frustrating.
To be sure, Rousseau did have some positive experiences in Paris. He was accepted in the salons, where his rustic mannerisms and creativity were appreciated as colorful. He also managed to make several friends among the salonistes and contributed several articles on music and one on political economy to Diderot and d’Alembert’s Encyclopedia. Yet he was never comfortable in Paris and eventually succumbed to intense feelings of alienation and self-loathing. It was only a matter of time before he rejected the ideological claims of the philosophes to become the new aristocracy. By late 1740s, he had already emotionally divorced himself from Paris and expressed an irritation at its intellectual culture that began to show up in his writings. In a 1749 letter, he blasts Paris as an arrogant, snobby, inauthentic city that, tellingly, “crushes humble talents.”91
The First Discourse
The First Discourse gives philosophical expression to Rousseau’s discontent and systematically challenges the pretensions of the philosophes that they are the true aristocrats. In the essay, Rousseau makes three basic arguments. The first criticizes the philosophes on their own terms—that is, through an “Odyssean” or democratic category—by minimizing any possible social utility of the arts and sciences. Whatever social benefits that might be attributed to them are more than offset by the moral corruptions they induce. As he puts it in “Preface to Narcissus,” “A craving for distinction necessarily engenders evils infinitely more dangerous than all the good of letters is useful.”92 If it is possible to provide specific examples in which arts and sciences make genuine contributions to the well-being of society, and Rousseau plainly accepts that at least science is good at what it does,93 he nonetheless urges his audience to consider the disastrous cultural consequences of the Enlightenment. The old moral system, he insists, was fully discredited by the new arts and sciences. Religion and patriotism in particular suffered badly: “They [the men of letters] smile disdainfully at such old-fashioned words as Fatherland and religion.”94
Rousseau also attacks the most obvious benefit of the arts and sciences: their economic advantages. The Scottish theorists were particularly adept at identifying the processes by which this occurred. As David Hume observes in “On Commerce,” knowledge makes people more productive, which in turn leads to the creation of a manufacturing and luxury economy. Driven by the desire for new creature comforts, people work both harder and more shrewdly—they sweat and scheme to get their hands on the finer things in life, which leads to even more wealth and more production.95 Rousseau is unimpressed, however, arguing that this alleged virtue is really a vice that makes people more miserable. Luxury, he contends, sets in motion a perverse trinity of hypocrisy, effeminacy, and idleness.96 Appearance becomes all important, and people strive hard to remove labor as a condition of life and live in complete opulence. As a result, they become lazy and effete.97
In addition, Rousseau fires a warning shot over his fellow intellectuals that they would not fare so well in the commercial world. While Voltaire heaped praise on the English in his Philosophical Letters for financially rewarding the merit of its writers,98 Rousseau argues they are in a catch-22 situation. Either they are corrupted by the desire for success or they fail to profit from their endeavors. On the one hand, the desire for fame and glory encourages writers to dumb down their works and pander to public opinion.99 Truth does not easily find a home among these new intellectual