Lessons on Rousseau. Louis Althusser

with regard to their common object, absolute monarchy, which had, accordingly, become their common philosophical problem.

      So it was that the problem of absolute monarchy became for all of them, pro or con, the philosophical problem of the origin of the state, setting out from the state of origin, the state of nature, and natural law: the problem, the transition from the state of nature to the nature of the state, which was resolved, as you know, by the social contract. I shall go no further for now; I would simply like to say that, in moving from Machiavelli to Rousseau, we change worlds. As we just saw, we change the object of reflection and, simultaneously, we change the form of philosophical thought.

      —————

      We know who Rousseau is. We know it officially, as it were. Why? Because he has been inscribed in the history of philosophy. And he has been inscribed in the history of philosophy by philosophy itself, which has thus inscribed him in its own history: for example, between Locke and Condillac on the one hand and Kant and Hegel on the other. Thus Rousseau occupies a well-defined place. This place has been accorded him on the basis of the observation of, and reflection on, a certain number of concepts which he put forward and which have been recognized as philosophy by the history of philosophy, by philosophy in its history: the concepts that Kant, for example, singled out in Rousseau.

      I would like to try to show that, beyond this official recognition of Rousseau, this inscription of Rousseau in the history of philosophy, there exists an aspect of Rousseau, there exist words of Rousseau’s and arguments of Rousseau’s which, like Machiavelli’s – this is why the comparison does not seem to me to be entirely arbitrary – have practically remained a dead letter. To put it differently, there exist words in Rousseau, and perhaps concepts and arguments as well, which were not registered by philosophy in its history when philosophy drew up the accounts of its history or settled its accounts with its own history. The philosophy that has inscribed Rousseau in its history for one or another merit has drawn up its accounts, and its tallies are accurate – but with the figures it has registered. The drawback, or the boon, is that a few figures, a few words, a few concepts have been left out of account, have been neglected. I would like to try to sketch not an exhaustive inventory of these Rousseauesque words and concepts left out of account by the history of philosophy, but an inventory of just a handful of them.

      To this end, I shall be focusing my lectures on the second Discourse, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality among Men. To pose the problem, I shall set out from the following aporia or contradiction. With Rousseau, we are quite obviously (since I’ve already discussed Machiavelli on the one hand and natural law philosophy on the other) in the same problematic and the same basic concepts as those of the whole natural law school, that is, the same concepts we have found in Hobbes and Locke.³ There are doubtless differences between Rousseau, Hobbes, and Locke, but there were also differences between Locke and Hobbes, between Grotius and Pufendorf, between Burlamaqui and Locke; ultimately, the difference between Rousseau and his predecessors is no greater than the differences between his predecessors themselves. If we were able to speak of a thought common to his predecessors, we have to extend it to Rousseau as well: for the basis is plainly the same.

      Let us put that more precisely. The form of thought which we see at work in Rousseau, and which commands everything, is the same form of thought as in his predecessors: it is the thought of the origin, the thought that has recourse to the origin. Rousseau very clearly says in several passages that we must go back to society’s origins to expose its foundations, that there can be no other way: this way is mandatory for everyone. He adds that this origin is man’s nature, man in the state of nature. He repeats, then, what his predecessors have said.

      Here, for example, is a passage from the second Discourse: ‘this … study of original man, of his true needs and the fundamental principle of his duties, is also the only effective means for doing away with the host of difficulties that present themselves regarding the origin of moral inequality, the true foundations of the body politic, the reciprocal rights of its members, and countless other similar matters whose importance is equalled only by their obscurity.’⁴ Elsewhere, Rousseau writes: ‘about [the state of nature] we should … have accurate notions in order to judge our present state properly’.⁵

      The procedure is thus perfectly clear. It is essential to go back to the state of nature, the state of origin, in order to discover man’s nature there: only on this condition can we come to know natural right [droit], natural law [loi], the foundation of societies, civil law, political institutions, and the inequality that reigns among men in our present state. Thus the general form of philosophical discourse remains the same. And, in the general form of recourse to the origin, we see the same major categories of thought come into play in Rousseau as in all his predecessors, namely: the state of nature, the state of war, natural right, natural law, the social contract, sovereignty, civil law. This is the obligatory arsenal of this thought of the origin in the field of law.

      These categories are grouped together under three basic moments of reflection that punctuate the manifestation of the essence of law. You know these three moments: the state of nature (the first moment), the social contract (the second moment), and the civil state (the third moment). In Rousseau, as in his predecessors, this originary genesis that sets out from the state of nature does not function like a historical genesis. Rather, in Rousseau, as in his predecessors, it functions like an analysis of essence grounded in the self-evidence of its original credentials, nature.

      You may recall that Hobbes proposed to consider society as ‘dissolved’, as he puts it, in order to discern its original elements. Rousseau, for his part, calls on a different image: that of foundations buried in dust and sand. ‘Human institutions’, he writes, ‘appear at first glance founded on shifting sands. It is only on closer examination, only after clearing away the dust and sand surrounding the edifice, that we perceive the unshakeable base on which it has been built and learn to respect its foundations.’⁶ If we compare this image of the foundations, ‘after clearing away the dust and sand’, with several other passages in the second Discourse, in particular the famous lines in which Rousseau says that the state of nature may never have existed, it seems quite certain that, in Rousseau, the originary genesis is not a real genesis, a historical genesis, but is simply, as in his predecessors, an analysis of essence that takes the form of a genesis which is not historical, but theoretical. Why? In order to justify the determinations of this essence in its origin as the foundation of right.

      There we have what strikes every reader of Rousseau. On this common ground, which leagues Rousseau with Hobbes, Locke, and the others, Rousseau is supposed, at best, to have elaborated certain variations of his own which distinguish him from his predecessors, yet are no more, in sum, than variations of one and the same invariant.⁷ In opposition to this view, which can be defended, but which can also be criticized, I would simply like to suggest one idea, just one, and then I would like to attempt to analyse and demonstrate it.