[In the following essay, Simon-Ingram finds parallels between Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment and the philosophical thought of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.]

In their landmark study Dialectic of Enlightenment¹ Horkheimer and Adorno put forth a strikingly pessimistic interpretation of reason and enlightenment. They maintain that despite the advantages gained through reason's capacity to explain and ultimately to control nature, there is a dark side to the process of enlightenment. The cost of this process, they argue, is in the growth of domination.

Knowledge, which is power, knows no obstacles: neither in the enslavement of men nor in compliance with the world's rulers. … Technology is the essence of this knowledge. It does not work by concepts and images, by the fortunate insight, but refers to method, the exploitation of others' work, and capital. … What men want to learn from nature is how to use it in order wholly to dominate it and other men. … Power and knowledge are synonymous.

(p. 4)

Horkheimer and Adorno's portrait of the development of enlightenment stresses the emergence of bourgeois capitalist society and the concomitant emphasis upon equivalence and quantification (p. 7). Their analysis of mass culture highlights the increasing alienation in even the private sphere (pp. 120-30). What was once reserved as the bourgeois individual's sphere for self-expression is seen as an extension of the domination and alienation which individuals experience in the capitalist marketplace. Bourgeois individuals only believe that they express their individuality by selecting “customized” cars from Detroit or by seeing the latest film. In actuality, their consumer needs and desires are dictated by Madison Avenue, so that these desires may be “fulfilled” by General Motors or the Hollywood film industry.²

Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis ultimately points to the similarities between bourgeois ideology and totalitarianism. In defining enlightenment as increased technological domination, they draw frightening parallels between late industrial capitalism and fascism. Paradoxically, because of the emphasis on the individual in capitalist ideology, the alienated and atomistic members of bourgeois society are easily manipulated and dominated as a collectivity. Ideology permeates every aspect of their lives to the point that they “willfully” participate in their own domination. Individuality becomes “an illusion” (p. 154) perpetrated by the culture industry.

Much of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique thus focuses on the relationship between bourgeois conceptions of individuation and the forces of domination. They contend that in bourgeois society the ideal of equality and the constraints of the capitalist marketplace converge to produce an emphasis upon quantification. Following Marx and Weber, they maintain that everything becomes reducible to exchange value: “Bourgeois society is ruled by equivalence. It makes the dissimilar comparable by reducing it to abstract quantities” (p. 7). In this way the demands of capitalism combine with the power of instrumental reason to reduce bourgeois individuals to mere means to the end of production. Ironically, the bourgeois notion of the self, testimony to the importance of individual freedom in bourgeois society, aids in the domination and suppression of the very individuals it would seem to safeguard. Horkheimer and Adorno argue that the highly ideological bourgeois notion of the self relies upon domination:

Man's domination over himself, which grounds his selfhood, is almost always the destruction of the subject in whose service it is undertaken: for the substance which is dominated, suppressed, and dissolved by virtue of self-preservation is none other than that very life as functions of which the achievements of self-preservation find their sole definition and determination: it is, in fact, what is to be preserved. The irrationalism of totalitarian capitalism, whose way of satisfying needs has an objectified form determinated by domination which makes the satisfaction of needs impossible and tends toward the extermination of mankind, has its prototype in the hero who escapes from sacrifice by sacrificing himself. The history of civilization is the history of the introversion of sacrifice. In other words: the history of renunciation.

(pp. 54-55)

It is the bourgeois subject who dominates his desires by renouncing his own satisfaction. The industrious bourgeois works either for others (family, co-workers) or for the future (capital to reinvest). In either case, whatever satisfaction he derives from work, he believes to be generated by the system. In other words, his needs are met because he believes that the system satisfies his needs. Ultimately, the system demands that he satisfy his needs with what is available to him.³

The principle dictates that he should be shown all his needs as capable of fulfillment, but that those needs should be so predetermined that he feels himself to be the eternal consumer, the object of the culture industry. Not only does it make him believe that the deception it practices is satisfaction, but it goes further and implies that, whatever the state of affairs, he must put up with what is offered.

(p. 142)

In the final analysis, bourgeois ideology promotes domination under the guise of rationality. Rather than protect individual freedom, the emphasis upon equality and self-preservation ultimately ensures the self-domination of each individual. Thus, “enlightened” bourgeois rationality culminates in extreme alienation.

This dystopia bordering on totalitarianism which Horkheimer and Adorno describe as a result of the dialectic of enlightenment bears a certain resemblance to the dystopic effects of enlightenment on civil society envisaged by Rousseau. Both Rousseau and, some two centuries later, Horkheimer and Adorno interpret the advance of civilization and particularly the growth of enlightenment dialectically. Their analyses focus on the negative implications for the advancement of “reason.” By closely analyzing the Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes, I will demonstrate Rousseau's attempt to anticipate and avoid the difficulties presented by the dialectic of enlightenment. I will conclude with an examination of his proposed solution to the problem of alienated society and a critique of his highly ideological emphasis on individuation.⁴

1. INDIVIDUATION AND THE STATE OF NATURE

In the Discours sur l'inégalité, Rousseau posits the fictive state of nature as necessary for any understanding of civil society, or more precisely for understanding man as he ought to be. Rousseau writes,

Car ce n'est pas une légére entreprise de démèler ce qu'il y a d'originaire et d'artificiel dans la Nature actuelle de l'homme, et de bien connoître un Etat qui n'existe plus, qui n'a peut-être point existé, qui probablement n'existera jamais, et dont il est pourtant nécessaire d'avoir des Notions justes pour bien juger de nôtre état présent.⁵

(p. 123)

Whether or not the state of nature ever existed for Rousseau is an insignificant detail: what does matter is conceiving of “natural man” so that he may gain an understanding of natural law and natural right. Once he has a conception of natural law and natural right, he will have established grounds for criticizing contemporary society, “après avoir écarté la poussiére et le sable qui environnent l'Edifice, qu'on aperçoit la base inébranlable sur laquelle il est élevé …” (p. 127).

But the state of nature as conceived by Rousseau is far from utopian. First of all, man in the state of nature finds himself already in a state of inequality.⁶ Rousseau maintains that there are “natural,” physical inequalities which already distinguish men in the state of nature. These inequalities consist of “la différence des âges, de la santé, des forces du Corps, et les qualités de l'Esprit, ou de l'Ame” (p. 131). But these “natural” inequalities are inconsequential as long as men lead isolated existences in the state of nature. It is not until men live together in a collectivity that inequality poses any difficulty.

Rousseau's “hypothetical” state of nature already reveals certain biases which will become apparent in his diagnosis of the ills of contemporary society. Most prominent among them is his insistence upon the isolated existence of individuals in the state of nature. Collective existence, although responsible for the greatest joy imaginable for Rousseau—family life—also introduces the greatest obstacle to the attainment of happiness—property. Isolation in the state of nature ensures individuation and independence, but at the price of not testing that individuation. To maintain that isolated individuals are independent from one another is a tautology.

The isolation of the state of nature does, however, ensure individuation without requiring alienation in the form of self-objectification or reflection. Rousseau maintains that, “l'état de réflexion est un état contre Nature, et que l'homme qui médite est un animal dépravé” (p. 138). Thus, the isolationism of the state of nature guarantees independence without resorting to “dangerous” reflection. For Rousseau, reflection entails a doubling of consciousness or a folding back of thought on itself (pp. 155-56). He maintains that this kind of reflection is dangerous because it leads man to see himself as others see him. In other words, it engenders amour propre. Amour propre in turn is responsible for introducing vice (pride, greed, vanity, deception, etc.) into the otherwise innocent and happy life of man (pp. 169-70). Thus, any form of self-consciousness that entails reflection is dangerous because of its alienating effects. Self-conscious man judges himself on the basis of what others think and inevitably finds himself to be deficient in some way.⁷

Reflection of this kind leads to alienating self-objectification. Rather than experience himself as whole and sufficient to his own happiness, alienated man experiences himself as inadequate and insufficient. Thus, the negative evaluation of reflection does not imply a kind of anti-rationalism on the part of Rousseau. It may be read as distinguishing between alienating and non-alienating forms of rationality. As I shall demonstrate, in addition to isolationism two other essential aspects of the state of nature, namely the self-preservation instinct and amour de soi, also serve as a basis for individual identity without recourse to alienating reflection.

As Rousseau describes man in the state of nature, he is barely distinguishable from animals which are nothing more than “machine[s] ingenieuse[s]” (p. 141). “Natural” man spends most of his time attempting to remain alive.

Seul, oisif, et toujours voisin du danger, l'homme Sauvage doit aimer à dormir, et avoir le sommeil léger comme les animaux, qui pensant peu, dorment, pour ainsi dire, tout le temps qu'ils ne pensent point: Sa propre conservation faisant presque son unique soin, ses facultés les plus exercées doivent être celles, qui ont pour objet principal l'attaque et la défense, soit pour subjuguer sa proye, soit pour se garantir d'être celle d'un autre animal … Tel est l'état animal en général, et c'est aussi, selon le rapport des Voyageurs, celui de la plûpart des Peuples Sauvages.

(pp. 140-1: my emphasis)

But the self-preservation instinct of man in the state of nature, although it precedes reason (p. 126), does differ from that of other animals. Rousseau distinguishes man in the state of nature from animals by granting him a certain degree of freedom.

Je ne vois dans tout animal qu'une machine ingenieuse, à qui la nature a donné des sens pour se remonter elle même, et pour se garantir, jusqu'à un certain point, de tout ce qui tend à la détuire, ou à la déranger. J'aperçois précisement les mêmes choses dans la machine humaine, avec cette différence que la Nature seule fait tout dans les operations de la Bête, au-lieu que l'homme concourt aux siennes, en qualité d'agent libre. L'un choisit ou rejette par instinct, et l'autre par un acte de liberté. …

(p. 141: my emphasis)

His choice either to follow his instincts or not demonstrates his freedom while at the same time indicates that man in the state of nature has a pre-reflective understanding of himself as a free agent. His freedom is not dependent upon self-domination, which would entail self-objectification and alienation. On the contrary, the freedom which Rousseau ascribes to natural man acts as a principle of individuation and identity, without the alienating effects of reflection. Natural man's free will, although pre-rational, allows nonetheless for at least a glimmer of self-consciousness.

La Nature commande à tout animal, et la Bête obéït. L'homme éprouve la même impression, mais il se reconnoît libre d'acquiescer, ou de resister: et c'est surtout dans la conscience de cette liberté que se montre la spiritualité de son ame: car la Physique explique en quelque maniére le mécanisme des sens et la formation des idées: mais dans la puissance de vouloir ou plutôt de choisir, et dans le sentiment de cette puissance on ne trouve que des actes purement spirituels, dont on n'explique rien par les Loix de la Mécanique.

(pp. 141-2)

Like the isolationism of the state of nature, the self-preservation instinct enables the formation of individual identity without running the risk of self-objectification. Rousseau's self-correction from “la puissance de vouloir” to “plutôt de choisir” indicates the difficulty of articulating a conception of freedom which does not engage at least some notion of the will.⁸

I will return to this problematic conception of freedom in my discussion of pity in the state of nature. Suffice it to say that the self-preservation instinct provides for a rudimentary conception of self as free agent.

Finally, the distinction between amour de soi and amour propre, also distinguishes between degrees of self-objectification in principles of individuation. The “natural” amour de soi, Rousseau maintains, is nothing more than an extension of the self-preservation instinct. “L'Amour de soi-même est un sentiment naturel qui porte tout animal à veiller à sa propre conservation …” (p. 219, note XV). This “natural” love of self is also pre-reflective. Because man is ostensibly alone in the state of nature, he cannot compare his actions to the actions of others and judge himself based on these comparisons.

[J]e dis que dans nôtre état primitif, dans le véritable état de nature, l'Amour propre n'existe pas: Car chaque homme en particulier se regardant lui-même comme le seul Spectateur qui l'observe, comme le seul être dans l'univers qui prenne intérêt à lui, comme le seul juge de son propre mérite, il n'est pas possible qu'un sentiment qui prend sa source dans des comparaisons qu'il n'est pas à portée de faire, puisse germer dans son ame.

(p. 219, note XV)

His love of self allows him to see himself [le seul spectateur qui l'observe], and to judge himself [le seul juge de son propre mérite], without running the risk of feeling inadequate in comparison to others. He experiences nothing but “la douleur ou la joye d'un bon ou mauvais succès” (p. 220, nXV). But these feelings of pain or joy differ significantly from simple sense data. They are produced by the love of self which functions as a “primitive” form of self-consciousness. Isolated and guided by the self-preservation instinct, man in the state of nature does experience himself as a free agent capable of good and bad actions.⁹

In other words, Rousseau provides the rudiments of moral consciousness in the state of nature. He does not, however, conceive of moral consciousness as necessarily repressive and alienating. I would suggest that such a conception of “natural” man attempts to avoid the dominating effects of reason as diagnosed by Horkheimer and Adorno. Rousseau provides a pre-reflective conception of self-consciousness, and perhaps in so doing provides the grounds for a different conception of rational society.

2. PITY AND THE PROGRESSION TO SOCIAL LIFE

So far, my discussion of Rousseau's account of the state of nature has highlighted man's isolation, his self-preservation instinct and his amour de soi, but has not touched on the other of the two principles anterior to reason, namely pity. Rousseau writes,

Laissant donc tous les livres scientifiques qui ne nous apprennent qu'à voir les hommes tels qu'ils se sont faits, et méditant sur les premiéres et plus simples opérations de l'Ame humaine, j'y crois apercevoir deux principes antérieurs à la raison, dont l'un nous intéresse ardemment à nôtre bien-être et à la conservation de nous mêmes, et l'autre nous inspire une répugnance naturelle à voir perir ou souffrir tout être sensible et principalement nos semblables.

(pp. 125-6)

The “natural” feeling of pity serves as a pre-reflective principle of moral consciousness similar to the amour de soi. Man feels compelled to act “morally” (in accordance with “natural law”) not because of his capacity to reason, but because of his capacity to suffer and his awareness that other beings suffer.

Il semble, en effet, que si je suis obligé de ne faire aucun mal à mon semblable, c'est moins parce qu'il est un être raisonnable que parce qu'il est un être sensible; qualité qui étant commune à la bête et à l'homme, doit au moins donner à l'une le droit de n'être point maltraitée inutilement par l'autre.

(p. 126)

At first glance, the feeling of pity seems superfluous, given Rousseau's account of the state of nature. If, as Rousseau maintains, man leads an isolated life concerned primarily with his own preservation, and if, as he also maintains, man is not naturally prone to combat, but on the contrary is generally timid and fearful (p. 136), why is the feeling of pity necessary? Isolationism guarantees that men seldom run across one another. The self-preservation instinct ensures that they are fearful of one another when they do meet. The amour de soi provides a rudimentary self-concept without resorting to an alienating form of reflection such as self-objectification. So why does Rousseau include pity in his account of the state of nature?

Pity would seem to run counter to many of the principles established by Rousseau in the state of nature.¹⁰ In fact, pity suggests a capacity requisite for social life, rather than a capacity necessary for independent and free individuals living in a state of relative isolation. Moreover, pity also points to a capacity for identification with another being which would entail more reflection, and therefore a greater degree of self-objectification, than either the self-preservation instinct or the amour de soi. Ironically, Rousseau cites an example taken from literature to illustrate what he means by this “natural” feeling of pity.¹¹

On voit avec plaisir l'auteur de la Fable des Abeilles, forcé de reconnoître l'homme pour un Etre compatissant et sensible, sortir dans l'exemple qu'il en donne, de son stile froid et subtil, pour nous offrir la pathétique image d'un homme enfermé qui apperçoit au dehors une Bête féroce, arrachant un Enfant au sein de sa Mére, brisant sous sa dent meurtriére les foibles membres, et déchirant de ses ongles les entrailles palpitantes de cet Enfant. Quelle affreuse agitation n'éprouve point ce témoin d'un évenement auquel il ne prend aucun intérêt personnel? Quelles angoisses ne souffre-t-il pas à cette veüe, de ne pouvoir proter aucun secours à la Mére évanoüie, ni à l'Enfant expirant?

Tel est le pur mouvement de la Nature, antérieur à toute réflexion: telle est la force de la pitié naturelle. …

(pp. 154-5)

Anterior to reflection and purely natural, the feeling of pity nonetheless requires a physical separation between the spectator who feels pity and the victim whom he pities. What does this feeling of pity entail if not a certain degree of identification with the victim or the overcoming of this distance? Both pity and the natural law which arises from it based on the common capacity for suffering require projection on the part of the one who pities. Identification with the victim, based on projection, in turn necessitates a degree of self-alienation. But Rousseau maintains that this identification remains distinct from the alienating effects of reason.

Quand il seroit vrai que la commiseration ne seroit qu'un sentiment qui nous met à la place de celui qui souffre, sentiment obscur et vif dans l'homme Sauvage, développé, mais foible dans l'homme Civil, qu'importeroit cette idée à la vérité de ce que je dis, sinon de lui donner plus de force? En effet, la commiseration sera d'autant plus énergique que l'animal Spectateur s'indentifiera plus intimement avec l'animal souffrant: Or il est évident que cette identification a dû être infiniment plus étroite dans l'état de Nature que dans l'état de raisonnement. C'est la raison qui engendre l'amour propre, et c'est la réflexion qui le fortifie: C'est elle qui replie l'homme sur lui-même: c'est elle qui le sépare de tout ce qui le gêne et l'afflige: C'est la Philosophie qui l'isole: c'est par elle qu'il dit en secret, à l'aspect de l'homme souffrant: péris si tu veux, je suis en sûreté.

(pp. 155-6, my emphasis)

Identification with the suffering victim, although it does require a certain distance from the victim, paradoxically seems to entail the bridging of this distance. The feeling of pity produces a form of close identification which approaches the effacement of self-consciousness. Reason, by contrast, produces a more alienating experience involving self-objectification.

Rousseau's account thus seeks to avoid the interference of reason in the “natural” feeling of pity by sidestepping the issue of moral obligation.¹² His example distances the viewer from the scene in such a way as to highlight the feeling of pity without requiring any intervention. This distinction between the subjective feeling of pity and the intersubjective, moral obligation to act suggests that Rousseau's conception of pity, although it entails the degree of self-alienation necessary to identify with the object of pity, does not entail the alienation necessary for moral agency. In other words, Rousseau does not go so far as to maintain that pity requires the subject to compel itself to act. This distinction between the alienation requisite for identification and the alienation required for moral compulsion seemingly avoids the trap of defining freedom in terms of domination and repression, for which Horkheimer and Adorno fault Kant. Adorno specifically maintains that the linking of identification with a notion of the will leads to a conception of freedom defined paradoxically as a form of determinism.

The identity of the self and its alienation are companions from the beginning: this is why the concept of self-alienation is poorly romanticist. Identity, the condition of freedom, is immediately and simultaneously the principle of determinism. There is a will insofar as a man objectified himself into a character. Toward himself—whatever that may be—he thus becomes something external, after the model of the outward world of things that is subjected to causality.¹³

Rousseau's conception of pity does not require self-objectification in the form Adorno describes and consequently does not lead to a moral consciousness based on self-domination. By keeping his spectator “enfermé,” distanced from the spectacle he witnesses, Rousseau attributes a mere feeling of pity to man in the state of nature, but not a rational idea compelling him to act. Rousseau's “natural” man experiences himself as a feeling being and nothing more. In fact, the “subject” even momentarily loses himself in the feeling of pity because of his close identification with the victim. Returning to the passage cited above concerning the self-preservation instinct, the self-correction “la puissance de vouloir ou plutôt de choisir” (p. 142) further underscores Rousseau's attempt to avoid the paradox described by Adorno. Defining freedom as an act of choice as opposed to an act of will evades the paradox of understanding freedom as a form of determinism.¹⁴

In other words, Rousseau's man in the state of nature chooses to perform certain actions in order to prolong his existence. For example, he chooses to eat berries as opposed to roots, and in so doing he demonstrates his freedom. He does not, however, compel himself through an act of will to perform certain actions. Thus, Rousseau, in his attempt to establish forms of both freedom and moral consciousness distinct from any conception of obligation, seems to anticipate the problematic aspect of the bourgeois conception of freedom, based on a notion of rationality conceived as domination. The feeling of pity contributes to his development of a conception of a pre-reflective, independent consciousness capable of experiencing itself as a free agent but without recourse to the alienating rational function of self-objectification.

But the feeling of pity clearly serves another function in Rousseau's theory. Pity is only really necessary if men live in a collectivity. In effect, Rousseau also describes pity as a limit to individual amour de soi in its function as a self-preservation instinct of the species: “Il est donc bien certain que la pitié est un sentiment naturel, qui modérant dans chaque individu l'activité de l'amour de soi même, concourt à la conservation mutuelle de toute l'espéce” (p. 156). Rousseau's hypothetical state of nature in some sense presupposes a social existence for his independent and free natural men. But it is precisely in this social existence as Rousseau conceives it that inequality becomes problematic.

Perhaps the most paradoxical aspect of Rousseau's account of the development of civil society out of the state of nature in the second Discours is the simultaneous appearance of both the greatest evil and the greatest good known to man in what he terms the “first revolution” (p. 167). Property and love appear together in the first of a series of dialectical arguments which highlight the dark side of the “progress” of civilization. Close examination of Rousseau's dialectical critique of civil society reveals its similarity to the ideology critique of Horkheimer and Adorno. Specifically, the emphasis on increased dependence as a result of technological “progress” leads to a vision of “modern” alienated society which stresses the illusory nature of freedom and autonomy. Read together with the Discours sur les sciences et les arts, the Discours sur l'inégalité reveals a concern with the spread of enlightenment, and with it the growth of technological domination that threatens to produce a form of social life bordering on social totalitarianism.

At the moment Rousseau terms the “first revolution,” the introduction of property enables cohabitation of males and females, which in turn fosters the first feelings of love.

Les premiers développemens du coeur furent l'effet d'une situation nouvelle qui réunissoit dans une habitation commune les maris et les Femmes, les Peres et les Enfans; l'habitude de vivre ensemble fit naître les plus doux sentimens qui soient connus des hommes, l'amour conjugal, et l'amour Paternel.

(p. 168)

But Rousseau seems unable to conceive of cohabitation without simultaneously envisaging a form of dependence characterized by a division of labor.¹⁵ He continues:

Chaque famille devint une petite Société d'autant mieux unie que l'attachement réciproque et la liberté en étoient les seuls liens; et ce fut alors que s'établit la premiére différence dans la maniére de vivre des deux Séxes, qui jusqu'ici n'en avoient eu qu'une. Les femmes devinrent plus sedentaires et s'accoutumérent à garder la Cabane et les Enfans, tandis que l'homme alloit chercher la subsistance commune.

(p. 168: emphasis added)

Seemingly in contradiction with his first assertion that, “l'attachement réciproque et la liberté en étaient les seuls liens,” he goes on to maintain that male and female lose some of their ferocity and vigor, but that “si chacun séparément devint moins propre à combattre les bêtes sauvages, en revanche il fut plus aisé de s'assembler pour leur résister en commun” (p. 168). The loss of a certain degree of “savagery” due to cohabitation suggests that reciprocal attachment and freedom are not the only ties that bind the small community represented by the family. The man, woman and child are also bound together, and thus dependent on one another, for their common survival.

Rousseau would attribute this “bad” form of dependence not to the feelings of love but to the advent of property and the concomitant appearance of a division of labor. As he continually stresses, the appearance of property throws into relief the natural inequalities which were inconsequential in the state of nature. It also tends to lead to innovations which paradoxically complicate rather than simplify men's lives. Although appearing to “free” some individuals for leisure activities, the division of labor in actuality becomes another hindrance to “true” freedom. So-called labor-saving devices become indispensable commodities which require all the more work for their production and/or purchase.

Dans ce nouvel état, avec une vie simple et solitaire, des besoins très bournés, et les instruments qu'ils avoient inventés pour y pourvoir, les hommes joüissant d'un fort grand loisir l'emploiérent à se procurer plusieurs sortes de commodités inconnues à leurs Peres: et ce fut là le premier joug qu'ils s'imposérent sans y songer, et la premiere source de maux qu'ils préparérent à leurs Descendans: car outre qu'ils continuérent ainsi à s'amolir le corps et l'esprit, ces commodités ayant par l'habitude perdu presque tout leur agrément, et étant en même tems dégénérées en de vrais besoins, la privation en devint beaucoup plus cruelle que la possession n'en étoit douce, et l'on étoit malheureux de les perdre, sans être heureux de les posseder.

(p. 168: my emphasis)

As civilization advances, so the chains that bind men increase. In a series of dialectical reversals, commodities and leisure become a yoke: love produces jealousy and hatred (pp. 169-70): agriculture and metallurgy introduce new forms of slavery and dependence (p. 171). Ultimately, the mastery of new forms of knowledge forces men into a form of servitude to this knowledge (pp. 174-5). Men lose all their former independence until, “la Domination leur devient plus chére que l'indépendance” (p. 188).

Rousseau's account parallels in large measure Horkheimer and Adorno's assessment of the effects of the dialectic of enlightenment. They, like Rousseau, stress the bourgeois individual's increasing feeling of helplessness as the domination of nature leads to a form of self-domination characterized by objectification and alienation. Even self-preservation serves to constrain the bourgeois individual to perform a function assigned by the technico-economic system.

It is not merely that domination is paid for by the alienation of men from the objects dominated: with the objectification of spirit, the very relations of men—even those of the individual to himself—were bewitched. The individual is reduced to the nodal point of the conventional responses and modes of operation expected of him. … Automatically, the economic apparatus … equips commodities with the values which decide human behavior. … Through the countless agencies of mass production and its culture the conventionalized modes of behavior are impressed on the individual as the only natural, respectable, and rational ones. He defines himself as only a thing, as a static element, as success or failure. His yardstick is self-preservation, successful or unsuccessful approximation to the objectivity of his function and the models established for it. … [T]he more the process of self-preservation is effected by the bourgeois division of labor, the more it requires the self-alienation of the individuals who must model their body and soul according to the technical apparatus.

(pp. 28-30)¹⁶

The advance of technological domination spurred by enlightenment rationality ultimately enslaves the society which sought freedom from endless toil. Instead, “pour le profit de quelques ambitieux assujétirent désormais tout le Genre-humain au travail, à la servitude et à la misére” (L'Inégalité, p. 178).

3. FROM ALIENATION TO SOCIAL TOTALITARIANISM

If Rousseau's account of the rise of inequality in some sense anticipates much of Horkheimer and Adorno's critique of bourgeois rationality with its reliance upon domination, in combination with his other works it also provides the basis for a conception of utopia. Presumably, this utopia would be immune from many of the ills which he diagnoses in the two Discours. But his utopian model does not anticipate all the negative effects of the dialectic of enlightenment. In particular, in an effort to avoid the problem of alienation, Rousseau's emphasis on individual autonomy protected by the private sphere leads to a conception of civil society which borders on totalitarianism.¹⁷ Using Adorno's critique of bourgeois individualism in Negative Dialectics, I will demonstrate how Rousseau's model of the ideal society, although protected from the threat of technological domination, nonetheless falls prey to domination based on an ideological conception of individuation.

Rousseau's vision of the ideal community necessarily adheres to the principles of natural law as he develops them in the state of nature. As I have already outlined, his conception of the state of nature stresses the independence and freedom of individuals due to their isolation, self-preservation instinct, amour de soi and to a certain extent their capacity for pity. As I have also pointed out, Rousseau's account attempts to ground individual self-consciousness and freedom without resorting to self-alienation and objectification based on a dominating conception of reason. In addition, his claim that despite the evils that property introduces, the period of the “first revolution” represents mankind's happiest moment (p. 171), suggests that the ideal society would encourage the development of familial love. From these claims one must infer that Rousseau's ideal community would be composed of small family groups living in relative isolation from one another. They would be self-sufficient units, producing nearly all that is required for their subsistence.¹⁸ In this way, their independence and freedom are ensured in an atmosphere which still enables them to cultivate their “natural” capacity for pity toward its ultimate moral end. They would be loving, moral agents protected from the alienating effects of too much social contact or too much knowledge, which both would lead to the development of amour propre.

Certain aspects of the political structure described in Du Contrat social reinforce this vision of Rousseau's ideal community. In particular, his insistence on little to no contact between citizens in order to ensure the functioning of the general will, highlights the crucial role isolation plays in his conception of the ideal state: “Si, quand le peuple suffisamment informé délibére, les Citoyens n'avoient aucune communication entre eux, du grand nombre de petites différences résulteroit toujours la volonté générale, et la délibération seroit toujours bonne” (p. 371: my emphasis). Moreover, his emphasis on the need for social unanimity (p. 439), and his preference for a small state (p. 386), both suggest that, ideally, the isolated and autonomous families would all resemble one another as closely as possible in order to foster the smooth functioning of legitimate government.¹⁹

More and more, Rousseau's utopia approaches a nightmarish state in which social conformity is reinforced by the isolation of families. Rather than cultivate their “individuality” in the private sphere, families spend all their time working to stay alive in the only “sphere” they know. When they do come together to discuss matters pertaining to government, their unanimity is guaranteed by their identical interests. Paradoxically, each individual is subsumed under the “general will” of common, identical interests. Rousseau's account fails to recognize, as Adorno following Hegel correctly points out, that the principle of individuation is dependent upon a universal. “The universal by which each individual is determined at all, as one of his particular kind, that universal is borrowed from what is extraneous and therefore heteronomous to the individual as anything once said to have been ordained for him by demons.”²⁰ Adorno continues,

Guiding Hegel is the picture of the individual in individualist society. It is adequate, because the principle of the barter society was realized only through the individuation of the several contracting parties—because, in other words, the principium individuationis literally was the principle of that society, its universal. And the picture is inadequate because, in the total functional context which requires the form of individuation, individuals are relegated to the role of mere executive organs of the universal.

(pp. 342-43; my emphasis)

In an attempt to avoid severe alienation in the form of technological domination, Rousseau's emphasis upon the principle of individuation paradoxically produces an “ideal” community in which the “individual” becomes no more than an exemplum of the rule. Completely independent in one sense (they are self-sufficient), the units are wholly dependent on one another in another sense (for their “identities”). Their very isolation is necessarily mediated by their collective existence.

The general principle is that of isolation. To the isolated, isolation seems an indubitable certainty; they are bewitched, on pain of losing their existence, not to perceive how mediated their isolation is. … Stubbornly the monads balk at their real dependence as a species as well as at the collective aspect of all forms and contents of their consciousness—of the forms, although they are that universal which nominalism denies, and of the contents, though the individual has no experience, nor any so-called empirical material, that the universe has not predigested and supplied.²¹

In the final analysis, Rousseau's utopia bears a striking resemblance to one of Horkheimer and Adorno's descriptions of city housing projects.

Yet the city housing projects designed to perpetuate the individual as a supposedly independent unit in a small hygienic dwelling make him all the more subservient to his adversary—the absolute power of capitalism. Because the inhabitants, as producers and as consumers, are drawn into the center of work and pleasure, all the living units crystallize in well-organized complexes. The striking unity of microcosm and macrocosm presents men with a model of their culture: the false identity of the general and the particular. Under monopoly all mass culture is identical, and the lines of its artificial framework begin to show through.²²

The isolated individual believes that his “individuality” is protected by his own “independent unit,” in other words his family life. But isolationism serves to reinforce the power of the system to dominate these same “individuals.” The highly abstract political and social life, described by Adorno and Horkheimer as “well-organized complexes,” is in constant tension with the almost primitive conditions of daily life as Rousseau understands it. The tension between social interaction, which would be characterized by highly abstract and generalized, almost anonymous relations between citizens, and the particular, need-fulfilling, but also extremely “simple” quotidian existence, would inevitably pull the whole social fabric apart at the seams. The end result of the emphasis on individuation could only be extreme alienation.

Rousseau's independent and free individuals are destined to spend their lives in an endless process of reproduction: not only will they reproduce themselves and the necessary commodities for the satisfaction of their needs, they will also reproduce one another in a society composed ironically of identical, unique individuals. Free in one sense to pursue their immediate interests, their isolation and lack of social contact limit the scope of their interests as well as the possibility for their development. In an effort to avoid totalitarianism arising as a result of technological domination, Rousseau produces a vision of society where conformity is enforced by the principle of individuation. Ironically, instead of preserving individual identity and freedom, individuation serves to dominate and alienate the very bourgeois individuals it was designed to protect.

Notes

1. Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, The Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Continuum, 1972).

2. Cf. Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966) and One-Dimensional Man (Boston: Beacon Press, 1964). Following Freud, Marcuse maintains that repressive society demands the sublimation of the sexual instincts or the replacement of the pleasure principle with the reality principle (Eros and Civilization, pp. 12-16). The repression is never complete, however. The unconscious of both the individual and society continually struggles to return and disrupt rational domination. Marcuse contends that Freud's entire vision of culture is framed by “unfreedom” and “constraint” (p. 18) and represents a rationalization of repression (p. 17). In One-Dimensional Man, his analysis of what he dubs the “new conformism” highlights the way in which the system appears to gratify individual needs (pp. 84-94). In fact, mass culture serves to integrate and absorb opposition in advanced technological society through rationality. Individuals believe that their needs are being satisfied because they believe that the system satisfies their needs. Similarly, Horkheimer and Adorno read mass culture as a form of “mass deception” which attempts to overcome the opposition between universal and particular (an opposition which might produce a challenge to the system) by rendering them identical. See Dialectic of Enlightenment, pp. 120-67.

3. Cf. Max Weber's thesis in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1958) in which he argues that the demands of ascetic Protestantism combined with the exigencies of capitalism to produce “sober, conscientious, and unusually industrious workmen, who clung to their work as to a life purpose willed by God” (p. 177). By doing without certain material comforts, ascetic Protestants were able to amass more capital to reinvest in the system. Their visible prosperity was interpreted as a sign of Divine Providence (p. 177).

4. My choice to read the Second Discourse as opposed to the Social Contract in connection with Horkheimer and Adorno's analysis is designed to emphasize the dialectical implications of both enlightenment and individuation. Many commentators have focused on what they have seen as the totalitarian implications of the Social Contract, in particular the subsumption of particular interests under the general will which results in the absolute sovereignty of the state. Many of these analyses argue for an “individualist” reading of the Second Discourse in contrast to the “collectivist” Social Contract. My own reading attempts to demonstrate the “totalitarian” implications of “individualist” theory, given the dialectical framework that Rousseau establishes in both the Discourses. For an excellent review of the secondary literature concerning the individualist/collectivist debate, see Peter Gay's introduction in Ernst Cassirer, The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. and trans. Peter Gay, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1989).

5. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, ed. B. Gagnebin and M. Raymond. 4 vols. Paris: Gallimard, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 1959 ff.

6. Throughout this essay I will use the noun “man” and the masculine pronoun to refer to individuals in the state of nature. Although the state of nature is supposed to refer to both men and women, I find this assertion highly questionable at best. Clearly women with small children do not live in the extreme isolation which Rousseau describes. He tacitly acknowledges this in his account of the origin of language (pp. 146-7). For a discussion of gender differences in Rousseau and their implications for his political theory, see Joel Schwartz, The Sexual Politics of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1984) and my “Expanding the Social Contract: Rousseau, Gender and the Problem of Judgment,” Comparative Literature, forthcoming.

7. In Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques and certain passages of the Confessions and Les Rêveries du promeneur solitaire, it is evident that the alienating effects of public opinion in the case of Rousseau led to paranoia. In the Huitième Promenade of Les Rêveries he writes, “Je n'eus jamais beaucoup de pente à l'amour propre, mais cette passion factice s'étoit exaltée en moi dans le monde et surtout quand je fus auteur: j'en avois peut être encor moins qu'un autre mais j'en avais prodiqieussement. Les terribles leçons que j'ai reçues l'ont bientôt renfermé dans ses premières bornes: il commença par se revolter contre l'injustice mais il a fini par la dedaigner. En se repliant sur mon ame et en coupant les relations extérieures qui le rendent exigeant, en renonçant aux comparaisons et aux préférences il s'est contenté que je fusse bon pour moi; alors redevenant amour de moi même il est rentré dans l'ordre de la nature et m'a délivré du joug de l'opinion” (p. 1001). From this passage, it would seem that some forms of reflection are not dangeous, but are in fact healthy. In Rousseau's attempt to return to a state resembling the state of nature, his self-imposed exiles afforded him the luxury of contemplation and reverie. He claims that the state of reverie freed him from the nefarious effects of public opinion. But his late autobiographical writings are clearly haunted by the spectre of what others thought of him despite his attempts to deny being affected by it. For an illuminating discussion of the relationship between amour propre and alienation in Rousseau, see Bronislaw Baczko, Rousseau: Solitude et communauté, trans. C. Brendhel-Lamhout (Paris: Mouton, 1974), esp. pp. 13-56. Jean Starobinski, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: La Transparence et l'obstacle (Paris: Gallimard, 1971) also is relevant in this context.

8. It is important to distinguish between the conception of freedom in the state of nature and the conception of freedom in civil society. Rousseau maintains that in the social contract man loses his natural liberty, but gains civil liberty and moral freedom (pp. 364-5). Furthermore, in both the Contrat social and Profession de foi du vicaire Savoyard it is clear that freedom implies an act of will in the form of adherence to law, “l'impulsion du seul appétit est esclavage, et l'obéisance à la loi qu'on s'est prescrite est liberté” (CS 365: my emphasis), cf. Emile 600. For a clear discussion of the concept of freedom in Rousseau and its implications for Kant, see Cassirer, pp. 78ff.

9. According to Rousseau man in the state of nature is naturally good (p. 202, note IX), but because his capacity to reason is limited he is not moral. His needs are basic and there is no scarcity in the state of nature; therefore the questions of right, obligation, and duty are avoided, and thus the problem of self-domination and alienation. A “good” action under such conditions would most likely entail self-satisfaction and a “bad” action would probably amount to self-inflicted suffering. Interestingly, his account of self-satisfaction with regard to moral behavior in the Profession de foi does not differ significantly from this account and implies that self-satisfaction is necessary for any conception of self. “S'il éxistoit un homme assés misérable pour n'avoir rien fait en toute sa vie dont le souvenir le rendît content de lui-même et bien aise d'avoir vécu, cet homme seroit incapable de jamais se connoître …” (p. 601).

10. Rousseau's ambivalence on the question of man's “natural” sociability is well-known. In the Profession de foi he writes, “l'homme est sociable par sa nature, ou du moins fait pour le devenir, il ne peut l'être que par d'autres sentimens innés, rélatifs à son espéce; car, à ne considérer que le besoin physique, il doit certainement disperser les hommes, au lieu de les rapprocher” (p. 600: my emphasis). In the Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité the social impulse would seem to be a function of convenience (see pp. 164-6), and closer to other social contractarian conceptions of the practical advantages of social life in terms of promoting happiness.

11. See Suzanne Gearhart's intriguing discussion of this passage in The Open Boundary of History and Fiction: A Critical Approach to the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1984), pp. 261-71. As Gearhart points out, the scene is “staged” for “natural” man. In similar passages from the Lettre à d'Alembert and the Discours she demonstrates that “[t]he same examples, the same characters … even the same phrases can be used to illustrate both the irresistible power of natural pity over men and the sterility and perversity of pity, because pity itself represents both the natural foundation of morality and the last stage of depravity” (p. 269).

12. Ironically, although the natural law grounded on the capacity for pity “obligates” the subject who feels pity not to harm other feeling beings (126), the example given by Rousseau does not allow for moral action. The conception of natural law in general in Rousseau would seem to be problematic given the fact that any law entails a restriction of freedom and thus a degree of self-domination. I would argue against Cassirer's Kantian reading of Rousseau on this point insofar as “natural” freedom does not seem to entail willed adherence to a self-prescribed law as does moral or civil liberty. See Cassirer, pp. 78ff.

13. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, trans. E. B. Ashton (New York: Continuum, 1973), pp. 216-17.

14. It may be objected that even the idea of choice in the state of nature is problematic, given the fact that “natural” man has no sense of the future (pp. 166-67). What exactly would free choice entail if the one who chooses has only a dim awareness of himself as an agent and has no conception of the future? Would these “choices” be meaningful in any sense of the word? Could they constitute a ground for the claim that natural man is free? Ultimately, the attempt to ground freedom in choice rather than self-domination or determinism renders the conception of natural law highly problematic, if not altogether meaningless. Thus, the opening sentence of the citation from Adorno above, “[t]he identity of the self and its alienation are companions from the beginning; this is why the concept of self-alienation is poorly romanticist,” clearly applies to Rousseau.

15. John Charvet [The Social Problem in the Philosophy of Rousseau (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1974)] argues that it is Rousseau's attempt to redefine social relations without “freedom-destroying and corrupting dependence” which leads to “a paradox which lies at the centre of Rousseau's ultimate incoherence” (p. 2). His reading of Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Emile and Social Contract stresses, likes Talmon's, what he perceives to be “the systematic abolition of the other” (p. 145). He concludes, “[t]he absurdity and incoherence of Rousseau's theory lies precisely in the elaboration of a social ideal founded on a rejection of the right of individuals to live and value each other in their particularity” (p. 146). Consistent with Iris Marion Young's reading [in “Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory,” Feminism as Critique, ed. Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell (Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1987)] and to a certain extent Cassirer's Kantian interpretation of Rousseau, these analyses focus on the notion of independence in the Second Discourse and of autonomy in the Social Contract to read Rousseau as a precursor of Kant. I would like to distinguish between the notion of independence in the state of nature, and even in the period of the “first revolution,” and the concept of autonomy which one finds in the Social Contract. It is my contention that the notion of independence, clearly an extension of the amour de soi, provides for rudimentary self-consciousness without the alienating effects of adherence to self-prescribed limits, which would constitute “moral” autonomy.

16. Cf. Rousseau, Discours sur les sciences et les arts, “Aujourd'hui que des recherches plus subtiles et un goût plus fin ont réduit l'Art de plaire en principes, il régne dans nos moeurs une ville et trompeuse uniformité, et tous les esprits semblent avoir été jettés dans un même moule: sans cesse la politesse exige, la bienséance ordonne: sans cesse on suit les usages, jamais son propre génie. On n'ose plus paroître ce qu'on est: et dans cette contrainte perpétuelle, les hommes qui forment ce troupeau qu'on appelle société, placés dans les mêmes circonstances, feront tous les mêmes choses si des motifs plus puissans ne les en détournent” (p. 8).

17. I do not wish to invoke the criticisms of J. L. Talmon in this context. Talmon [The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Praeger, 1960)] argues that Rousseau's political philosophy, in particular the social contract, leads to a totalitarian form of democracy. While I would agree that certain aspects of Rousseau's social contract demonstrate his preference for social unanimity (pp. 386, 390-1, 405), I would not agree that the fostering of civic celebrations, for example, represents a totalitarian impulse in Rousseau (Talmon, p. 47). Talmon maintains that a sovereign people without any form of representation would inevitably lead to dictatorship (p. 46) and that the general will functions as a kind of ideological goal, or “preordained will” (p. 48) in the service of totalitarianism. I would suggest that Rousseau's utopia issues in a weaker form of totalitarianism characterized by social conformism and suppression of the individual similar to Horkheimer and Adorno's portrait of rational life under late capitalism. Furthermore, Talmon's reading, like many interpretations of Rousseau, addresses the individualist/collectivist debate in political theory, but fails to recognize their mutual implication. Dialectical criticism has the advantage of recognizing this mutual implication.

18. Cf. Rousseau's account of Clarens in Julie ou la nouvelle Héloïse, Quatrième partie, Lettre X; Cinquième partie, Lettre I. The description of Clarens in Julie, although it provides many of the specifics necessary to fill in Rousseau's conception of ideal family life, ultimately poses some very serious practical problems for his conception of utopia. Foremost among these is the problem of self-sufficiency: Clarens resembles a feudal domain more than it does a “typical” bourgeois family. It would seem to be impossible for a small family, or even an extended family, to produce the requisite food, clothing, tools, shelter, etc., necessary for a fairly comfortable life, and still have time to devote to moral and spiritual development.

19. Cf. Young's argument that the exclusion of considerations of affectivity, need, and desire from the public realm tends to lead to a conception of the state that homogenizes difference.

20. Negative Dialectics, p. 315. One might argue that the general will fulfills this function. But Rousseau fails to recognize that the general will in its function as a “universal” will necessarily be experienced as “extraneous and heteronomous,” as Adorno points out, and if not, can only serve an ideological function.

21. Ibid., pp. 312-13.

22. Dialectics of Enlightenment, pp. 120-21.