Ferguson, of course, is not a full-fledged Rousseauian. Despite this glum portrait of commercial life, he remains committed to commercial capitalism. Still, the similarities between his analysis of the psychological effects of inequality in commercial life and Rousseau’s are striking. Both men view inequality as not merely an economic problem but a psychological and existential one that touches on people’s sense of their innate self-worth.
A Hesitant Debate
In any event, given the success of the First Discourse and the widespread attention it attracted, it was inevitable that Rousseau found himself in a spirited debate with his then friends. It took a while, however, for the debate to get off the ground, as both parties to the dispute had good reason to avoid it. The philosophes were surprised and disappointed by their friend’s apparent rejection of the Enlightenment after willingly contributing several entries to their Encyclopedia, and they had every reason to think they were innocent of the charge that they denigrated the working classes. Had they not, after all, made a special effort to afford the mechanical arts a prominent place in the Encyclopedia? Accordingly, they spent as much time downplaying their disagreement with Rousseau as they did defending their alleged aristocratic ambitions. Rousseau had his own problems. He very much wanted to remain an author yet had potentially undermined his literary credibility through his aggressive takedown of the arts and sciences in the First Discourse. Critics immediately seized on this paradox, noting that the great critic of the arts and sciences was himself an intellectual who used a public competition to make his case. Rousseau had tensions that had to be relaxed. He needed to distinguish himself from his Parisian friends, which required carving out some social space for arts and sciences that did not demean the lower classes.
It did not take much effort for Rousseau to solve his problem. All he had to do was to construct a new model of authorship that avoided all the perversities characteristic of urban intellectual life.123 He did so by identifying a variety of traits that transformed writing books into a virtuous activity. According to Christopher Kelly, this included publishing material that promotes the common good and taking responsibility for what one publishes—writing in a manner that involves both discretion and openness.124 Robert Darnton makes a similar point, though he argues that Rousseau also attempts to transform the nature of reading so that his audience would not be corrupted by intellectual values.125 To read his novel Julie and glean its truths, Rousseau contends in its “Preface,” it is necessary to adopt the standpoint of a provincial, a foreigner, or a child.126 And, with this problem out of the way, he was free to fully engage his former friends and challenge everything they stood for.
The issue of Rousseau’s apparent heresy raised in philosophe circles proved more difficult to resolve. D’Alembert, Diderot, and others employed several rationalizations and strategies to deescalate the conflict between them and their supposed fellow traveler. First, they denied Rousseau was repudiating the Enlightenment. As several scholars have noted, d’Alembert argues in his Preliminary Discourse that Rousseau’s very participation in the Encyclopedia confirmed he was a friend of the project and did not mean to include it in his critique of the arts and sciences.127 More generally, the philosophes just assumed that Rousseau was being clever in an attempt to win a contest. Diderot, in fact, boasted that he provided Rousseau with the insight that the arts and sciences were corrupting and insisted it was merely an attempt to distinguish his essay from the essays of competitors.128 He also encouraged his friend to use the discourse as a springboard to attain the fame all the philosophes sought by publishing it. When this happened and the discourse catapulted Rousseau into Europe’s collective consciousness, Diderot eagerly congratulated his friend: “It is succeeding beyond the skies; there is no precedent for a success like it.”129 Some scholars, such as Rousseau biographer Raymond Trousson, interpret such congratulations as evidence that the philosophes were not threatened by Rousseau’s essay and did not “take offense neither at the thesis of the Discourse nor the responses.”130 For his part, Rousseau was mildly irritated at the eagerness of his friends to explain away the First Discourse as well as their claims that he did not believe a word he wrote.131 This annoyance, however, did not immediately lead to breaking off his relationships.
Second, both Diderot and d’Alembert cast themselves as defenders of the artisan classes. In the Preliminary Discourse, d’Alembert goes out of his way to criticize the low esteem in which artisans are typically held: “But society, while justly respecting great geniuses for enlightening it, ought not to degrade the hands by which it is served.”132 At the end of the discourse, moreover, he chastises Ephraim Chambers, whose Cyclopedia was the model for his and Diderot’s own project, for his mediocre entries on the mechanical arts and his failure to take them as seriously as the liberal arts.133 Diderot, whose father was a successful cutler, likewise calls on society to hold artisans in higher regard in some of his Encyclopedia entries. In “Art,” he laments that the distinction between liberal and mechanical arts has degraded people who are “estimable and helpful,” and “has given a low name to people who are worthy and useful.”134 Such sympathies are also evident is in some of Diderot’s literary works and “bourgeois tragedies.”135 Granted, d’Alembert and Diderot’s concerns about the dignity of the laboring classes were not unique among the philosophes and cannot with certainty be attributed to Rousseau’s criticisms of their elitism. The issue was in the air before Rousseau penned his dissident discourse. For example, in his 1747 Man a Machine the provocateur Julien Offray de La Mettrie, who can hardly contain his pride in his talents as a scientist and doctor, encourages “those on whom nature has piled her most precious gifts” to “pity those to whom these gifts have been refused.”136 To avoid wounding the less talented, he counsels against false modesty, as it would only inflame their resentment. Still, given the developing tiff between Rousseau and Diderot, and others, it is sensible to interpret the aforementioned passages as attempts to assuage their friend’s fears of the Enlightenment.
Third, d’Alembert and Diderot’s defense of the mechanical arts includes concessions to Rousseau’s contentions that the arts and sciences could be corrupting and that intellectual achievement is motivated by a desire for glory and public esteem. In his Preliminary Discourse, d’Alembert grants that “letters certainly contribute to making society more amiable; it would be difficult to prove that because of them men are better and virtue is more common.”137 And in a private letter to Rousseau, he accepts the argument that artists and scientists are driven by vanity: “Public esteem is the principal goal of every writer.”138 He knows intellectuals can be foolish, self-important, and prone to unproductive factious rivalries. Again from his Preliminary Discourse: “Men of letters ordinarily have nothing in common, except the lack of esteem in which they hold each other.”139 Poets, for example, think little of engineers, and vice versa. Diderot takes a similar tack in his Encyclopedia entry on encyclopedias from the fifth volume, entitled, appropriately enough, “Encyclopedia.” He too accepts that enlightenment and virtue are not perfectly compatible. The Encyclopedia should thus aim to teach humans to be virtuous as well as provide accessible knowledge, “because,” he writes, “it is at least as important to make men better as it is to make them less ignorant.”140 To that end, he encourages people to record all the great deeds of virtuous behavior and inscribe them on a publicly displayed marble column to inspire virtuous behavior. He proposes that as the old monarchs are immortalized through public effigies, statues, or busts, private individuals should be honored in a similar way if they perform extraordinary acts of virtue. If there is any lingering doubt as to whom Diderot is addressing, he makes clear his audience by naming names: “Oh, Rousseau, my dear and worthy friend! I have never been able to refuse the praise you have given me, and I feel that it has increased my devotion to truth as well as my love of virtue.”141
Furthermore, Diderot acknowledges that the scholars who populated France’s various intellectual academies and societies were driven by glory.142 Tellingly, he describes them in unmistakably Homeric terms. Authors,