The French government ordered that Rousseau be arrested, so he fled to Neuchatel in Switzerland. [5] Ecclesiastical groups as well, namely the Jansenists, harshly condemned the theatre due to it being incompatible with Christian morality. Though the actor is not necessarily malevolent with his talents of deception, Rousseau goes on, the seductive, manipulative nature of acting could potentially be used by actors to do harm in society outside of the theatre. Their exchange, collected in volume ten of this. 10 See John N. Pappas, Rousseau and D'Alembert, PMLA, 75 (1960), 4660 (48); Fonna Forman-Barzilai, The Emergence of Contextualism in Rousseau's Political Thought: The Case of Parisian Theatre in the Lettre D'Alembert, History of Political Thought, 24 (2003), 43564 (436). The years at Montmorency had been the most productive of his literary career; The Social Contract, mile, and Julie; ou, la nouvelle Hlose (1761; Julie; or, The New Eloise) came out within 12 months, all three works of seminal importance. The key historical context of Discourse on Inequalitywas the complex phenomenon known as the Enlightenment. Register a free Taylor & Francis Online account today to boost your research and gain these benefits: Spectacles and Sociability: Rousseau's Response in His, Department of Political Science, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA, Tufts University, Medford, MA, USA and New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, MA, USA. For example, Rousseau in his Letter both adopts and adapts salient elements of Montesquieu's juxtaposition of French and English societies in Book 19. A theatre in Geneva would cause the hardworking people to be distracted and pre-occupied if they were to develop a taste for it. Rousseau rarely acknowledges the extent to which Montesquieu's writings influenced his political and moral thought, but study of his Letter reveals the great degree to which Rousseau builds his case from and in response to Montesquieu's observations and ideas. From 174041, he worked as a private tutor for Monsieur de Mably, brother of the famous writer, the Abbe de Mably. 1 Ronald Grimsley, Jean d'Alembert (London, 1963), 5277. Rousseau's word choice here is borrowed from Montesquieu, not Muralt. He accepted the Scottish philosopher Hume's offer to take refuge in Britain, only to quarrel with Hume as well and soon return to France. In other words, it is easier to not have to deal with corrupted morality and have to change the laws accordingly. While he surely discerns the vices of commercial peoples, he also points out the positive transformative power of commerce in bringing peace and understanding among peoples; see Spirit, 20.1, 338. for a customized plan. But after quoting a passage from D'Alembert's letter, Rousseau writes that it is imperative to discuss the potential disasters that a theatre could bring. Members will be prompted to log in or create an account to redeem their group membership. Ace your assignments with our guide to Discourse on Inequality! 18 Charles-Louis Secondat de Montesquieu, Persian Letters, translated by C. J. Betts (London, 2004, first published in 1979), letter 28, 79 (1:172). (one code per order). See also Coleman, who discerns the same influence, but who maintains that Rousseau's view of what Montesquieu calls l'esprit general is [] much less accommodating than that of the constitutional jurist; see Coleman, Rousseau's Political Imagination, 4445, note 6. 30 Montesquieu's view was quite common at this time; see Mostefai, Le citoyen de Genve, 4763. Wed love to have you back! For me, in the 'Letter to d'Alembert' Rousseau is on the side of prejudice, with his vehement moralising, and also a type of violence, always bordering on an exaggerated aggressiveness that is almost useless. SparkNotes PLUS In the process, he adopts Montesquieu's notion that the laws of a body politic must coincide with and be born from the mores and manners of that particular society. Il ne peut pas se taire aprs ce qu'il a dj fait, il faut parler au public. Spirit, 6.2, 74. 34546). [1], Rousseau believed that public morals could be created not by laws or punishment, but simply by women, who have access to their senses and largely control the way men think. Jean-Jacques Rousseau In 1758, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert proposed the public establishment of a theater in Genevaand Jean-Jacques Rousseau vigorously objected. Listen on ); Episode details. Purchasing In 1756, Rousseau left Paris. Even if the play happens to portray moral ideals well, the awareness of the audience that it is a fiction does not do the ideas justice. Rousseau too offers this very contrast in his treatment of the theatre in his Letter to d'Alembert, but in the case of English society, where Montesquieu raises objections, Rousseau offers praise. Therefore, theatres are of little use. At one point, Rousseau states his concern simply as this: in a state as small as the republic of Geneva, all innovations are dangerous and [they] ought never to be made without urgent and grave motives.Footnote79 This passage mirrors Montesquieu's teaching throughout The Spirit of the Laws, which he encapsulates in its preface: changes can be proposed only by those who are born fortunate enough to fathom by a stroke of genius the whole of a state's constitution.Footnote80 Thus, with an inflection borrowed from Montesquieu, Rousseau warns any would-be proposer of improvements to Geneva that even seemingly small and well-intentioned, but ill-considered, changes can have significant deleterious consequences. [4], The Letter starts off with a more grim and urgent tone, then shifting at the end to a brighter and optimistic one when the community oriented solution to the problem of the theatre is discussed. [3] D'Alembert's article in support of the theatre was influenced by Voltaire, who not only was against censorship, but frequently put on theatrical performances at his home outside of Geneva. Nonetheless, taken together, these apparently contrasting accounts reveal that Montesquieu sees value in the theatrical experience in its entirety. An earlier version of this essay was presented at the Northeastern Political Science Association Conference in Philadelphia in 2013. Described by the author as a treatise on education, it is not about schooling but about the upbringing of a rich mans son by a tutor who is given unlimited authority over him. Further, he praises the type of morality that can be conveyed through theatrical spectacle, claiming that moral lessons are more effective in this form because they speak directly to the passions. We're sorry, SparkNotes Plus isn't available in your country. Cf. Though a theatre can work to distract the masses of the cities from crime, it is of no use to a smaller city like Geneva, which is relatively innocent. As soon as they are elected, it is a slave, it is nothing; see Rousseau, Social Contract, in Collected Writings, IV, 3.15, 192. Therefore, by examining first Montesquieu's treatment of theatre in the Persian Letters and The Spirit of the Laws, and then Rousseau's parallel treatments in Letter to d'Alembert, one discerns the degree to which Rousseau employs his predecessor's means in order to undermine his ends. 4. Allan Bloom makes the claim that Voltaire persuaded d'Alembert [] to insert a passage (which Rousseau insists Voltaire himself wrote) in an otherwise laudatory presentation suggesting that Geneva should have a theatre; see Allan Bloom, Introduction, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theater, translated by Allan Bloom (New York, NY, 1960), xi-xxxiv (xv). 3099067 Overall, the population of Geneva agreed with the Letter. Of course, none of this establishes that Montesquieu was not familiar with the work, given his wide reading and the work's wide circulation. In this different context religion plays a different role. Marshall goes on to suggest that Rousseau's discussion of vanity, amour-propre, is inherently theatrical: the moment that people are aware they must present themselves for others, a theatrical consciousness is fostered such that the character and attributes that a person possesses become indistinguishable from what they seem to be.Footnote58 Rousseau laments that the introduction of theatre in an incorrupt society will induce people to substitute a theatrical jargon for the practice of the virtues.Footnote59 Of course, before Rousseau had offered this analysis, Montesquieu had comically depicted the tendency of social interactions to foster theatrical affectationseven theatrical masksin Rica's mistaken but understandable conflation of the actors and the audience in his description of the theatre in the Persian Letters. Not by chance, one of his "potpourris" includes a copy of the letter, rewritten by Voltaire's Secretary J.-L. Wagnire (BV 11- 208). 9 Letter, 27174, 35960. Leo Strauss and Joseph Cropsey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), 559-80. Radica's article does not treat the Letter. [5] As an alternative to the theatre, Rousseau proposed open-air republican festivals, with a rich community atmosphere. 1758 marked a break with many of the Enlightenment philosophers; his Letter to d'Alembert attacked d'Alembert's article in the French Encyclopedia on Geneva. Montesquieu's own partiality to the gaiety of French society in particular becomes manifest when he defends it against anyone who would propose that it be restricted and reformed: One could constrain its women, make laws to correct their mores, and limit their luxury, but who knows whether one would not lose a certain taste that would be the source of the nation's wealth and a politeness that attracts foreigners to it?Footnote27. Muralt does not use the verb attirer to describe France's effect on foreigners as do both Montesquieu and Rousseau. Ourida Mostefai offers the most current and exhaustive treatment of the letter and its context that we know, while Patrick Coleman presents a highly instructive and provocative textual analysis that explores among other themes the manner in which Rousseau offers himself as an actor and his text as his own public stage; see Ourida Mostefai, Le citoyen de Genve et la Rpublique des Lettres: tude de la controverse autour de La Lettre d'Alembert de Jean-Jacques Rousseau (New York, NY, 2003); Patrick Coleman, Rousseau's Political Imagination: Rule and Representation in the Lettre d'Alembert (Geneva, 1984). 2023 The Foundation for Constitutional Government Inc. All rights reserved. Rousseau began to write whilst living with her. 43 Montesquieu, of course, acknowledges that a variety of factors can affect how any given people responds to a theatrical work; see, for example, Spirit, 14.2, 233. for a group? Scholars have pointed to Montesquieu's influence on Rousseau's work generally. In the early 1750s, Rousseau had a string of successes. 48 Letter, 270. He reasons that even if comedy writers write a play that is morally acceptable, the audience will not find it funny. Rousseau worked as a clerk to a notary, and then was apprenticed to an engraver. Emphasis added. Rousseau refers to ancient Sparta, where the most virtuous and appreciated women were those who were modest and generally not spoken about. Contents nen Preface vii Chronology of Works in Volume 10 ix Note on the Text xiii Introduction xv Operas, Plays, and Ballets 1 Iphis 3 Translated and Edited by Christopher Kelly We use cookies to improve your website experience. Many scholars have identified the decisive influence of Montesquieu's treatment of the ancient city in Rousseau's thought more generally, but have not yet fully explored the role that Montesquieu's treatment of the theatre plays in Rousseau's Letter. First, Montesquieu describes them as timide, a term which Rousseau adopts. Rousseau's letter was widely known in Europe. The principle of the theatre is to please, it is not, Rousseau argues, functional because the characters are always distant from man. 74 Various scholars have touched upon aspects of one or both of these points: see Mostefai, Le citoyen de Genve, 5, 8082; Forman-Barzilai, Emergence of Contextualism in Rousseau's Political Thought, 45556, 442; Jensen, Rousseau's French Revolution, in The Challenge of Rousseau, edited by Grace and Kelly, 231, 238, 245; Rahe, Soft Despotism, 97; Michael Sonenscher, Sans-Culottes: An Eighteenth-Century Emblem in the French Revolution (Princeton, NJ, 2008), 15455. Montesquieu makes the Parisian theatre a setting in his Persian Letters when his character Rica, a young Persian, describes his outing to this hub of French sociability. Whereas The Social Contract is concerned with the problems of achieving freedom, mile is concerned with achieving happiness and wisdom. Through examining Montesquieu's commentary on the theatre in the Persian Letters, as well as his discussion of Phaedra in The Spirit of the Laws, it becomes clear that Montesquieu teaches that the theatrical art can have a positive effect on individuals and thus on society. 4. He reacted to the suppression of The Social Contract in Geneva by indicting the regime of that city-state in a pamphlet entitled Lettres crites de la montagne (1764; Letters Written from the Mountain). on 2-49 accounts, Save 30% [2], The theatre in relation to what is performed in it, The theatre considered in relation to the stage and actors, Last edited on 23 February 2019, at 20:12, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Letter_to_M._D%27Alembert_on_Spectacles&oldid=884754743, This page was last edited on 23 February 2019, at 20:12. Both furious with his father's accusation and passionately in love with Aricia, Hippolytus nevertheless resists immoral action on behalf of those passions. He sought to distance himself philosophically from the views that the universal use of reason, science, uninhibited freedom of thought, and increasing appreciation for the fine arts would make society a better place. [4], In this section, Rousseau expresses his belief that actors and actresses themselves are people of an undesirable lifestyle and potentially weak moral foundation. 20% In 1758, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert proposed the public establishment of a theatre in Geneva - and Jean-Jacques Rousseau vigorously objected. Evidence suggests that the feminist consensus on Jean-Jacques Rousseau "misogyny" is breaking down.New studies are emerging that bring to light the many sympathetic portrayals of women in Rousseau's works and the important role he ascribed to women within the family. THINKERS. 5 D'Alembert, Geneva, in Letter, 243. Once again, the morality of Ancient Rome and Greece is frequently referenced as an ideal that should be aspired to. Voltaire's propensity to organise theatrical performances at his residence in Les Dlices, just outside the city but within Geneva's territory, had occasioned concern among the pastors and the Consistory in 1755; see Graham Gargett, Jacob Vernet, Geneva, and the Philosophes (Oxford, 1994), 11520. He became friends with the Enlightenment figure Diderot, who commissioned him to write articles for the famous Encyclopdie. Widely known in Europe 's effect on foreigners as do both Montesquieu Rousseau. Condemned the theatre due to it being incompatible with Christian morality clerk to notary! Il a dj fait, il faut parler au public use the verb attirer to describe 's... Il faut parler au public, 1963 ), 559-80 morality of ancient Rome and is... Should be aspired to to be distracted and pre-occupied if they were to develop taste! The problems of achieving freedom, mile is concerned with the Letter with father! 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