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Seeing Like Sophie: Developing Judgment in Rousseau's Émile
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2022
Abstract
Scholars often assume Émile seeks to educate readers to become like Émile. However, I suggest that by calling upon his readers to act as judges, Rousseau's aim is not for readers to copy Émile, but to educate them to act as independent judges. The first section of this article argues that Émile's education fails to teach him this kind of judgment. He never learns to navigate the interdependent relationships created by property ownership or family life. Rather, as explored in the second section, Sophie's education offers a better style of judgment. The article concludes with a consideration of the reader's education as distinct from that of either Émile or Sophie. By emulating Sophie readers do not become like her. Rather, through comparing the characters and situations Rousseau presents in Émile and “Émile et Sophie,” readers learn to judge for themselves.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of University of Notre Dame
Footnotes
I am grateful to Jacob Levy for advising the project since its inception, to Matt Dinan for introducing me to Émile, and to the reviewers and editors at the Review of Politics for their constructive comments. I am especially grateful for my friends and proofreaders, Ryan and Jake.
References
1 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Émile, or On Education, trans. Bloom, Allan (New York: Basic Books, 1979), 41Google Scholar. All subsequent citations to this translation of Émile will be in-text.
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12 John Locke, Some Thoughts concerning Education, ed. John W. Yolton and Jean S. Yolton (Oxford: Clarendon, 2003), §110.
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14 Ibid., §156.
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21 Ibid., 472, 476; Ferguson, “Reading Morals,” 82–83. Papastephanou and Gregoriou track how the bean garden episode moves from framing Émile as the dispossessor of Robert, to assuming “the figure of the dispossessed ‘native’” since there is no fallow land for him. This characterization is only possible if one makes use of “the skillful deployment of ignorance,” following Ferguson's conclusion, to obfuscate the fact that Emile is child of a rich family, and that the partnership he forges with Robert is the result of a “forced encroachment” not unlike how colonial actors like Balboa imposed themselves on indigenous peoples.
22 Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment, 161.
23 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Émile et Sophie,” in Collection complète des œuvres, Genève, 1780–1789, vol. 5 (édition en ligne rousseauonline.ch, 2012), 497. This and all subsequent translations are my own.
24 Patrick Deneen, The Odyssey of Political Theory (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), 158–59; Thomas Kavanagh, Writing the Truth: Authority and Desire in Rousseau (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 78–101.
25 Shklar, Man and Citizen, 5–9.
26 Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment, 192; Nichols, Mary, “Rousseau's Novel Education in the Émile,” Political Theory 13, no. 4 (1985): 536, 553CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
27 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile ou de l’Éducation, Livre V, ed. Jean-Marie Tremblay (Chicoutimi: Classiques des science sociales, 2001), 107. Bloom translates this as “extravagant disinterestedness” (473). A more literal, though awkward, translation might be “exaggerated or excessive detachment from any personal interest.”
28 Rousseau, “Émile et Sophie,” 504.
29 Ibid., 513.
30 Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 3rd ed. (London: Johnson, 1796), 77, emphasis in the original. See also Eileen Hunt Botting, “Rousseau and Feminism,” in The Rousseauian Mind, ed. Eve Grace and Christopher Kelly (London: Routledge, 2019), 463–73, for an overview of criticisms levied at Rousseau by his feminist readers.
31 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 121.
32 Scholars who arrive at this conclusion include Schwartz, Sexual Politics, and Nicole Fermon, Domesticating Passion: Rousseau, Women, and Nation (Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1997).
33 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 137.
34 Tracy Strong, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Politics of the Ordinary (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2002), 44. See also Rosanne Terese Kennedy, Rousseau in Drag (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 19–23. Compare the emphasis on “without” here to when Émile departs Paris in “Émile et Sophie.” There is “nothing to” Émile because he refuses to compare himself to and enter into relationships with others, like humans in Rousseau's state of nature.
35 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 144.
36 Thomas, “Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sexist?,” 198; Susan Moller Okin, Women in Western Political Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), 131. Okin condemns Rousseau for denying women “the capacity for abstract reason and creativity”; however, Thomas observes it is Okin, not Rousseau, who values reason and creativity. What Rousseau values, and denies to women, is independence.
37 Weiss, Gendered Communities, 26, emphasis in original.
38 See Schwartz, Sexual Politics, 143; Melzer, Natural Goodness of Man, 248.
39 Weiss, Gendered Communities, 98.
40 Ibid., 100.
41 In a sense, the tutor is like the legislator in On the Social Contract, who also creates laws for a polity while not being a member of it. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, On the Social Contract, in Basic Political Writings, 2nd ed., trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 2011), 180.
42 Hunt Botting, Family Feuds, 18.
43 Ibid., 201.
44 For examples, see Schwartz, Sexual Politics, 96–97; Wingrove, Rousseau's Republican Romance, 88–90; Senior, Nancy, “Les Solitaires as a Test for Émile and Sophie,” French Review 49, no. 4 (1976): 528–35Google Scholar; Wirz, Charles, “Note sur Émile et Sophie, ou Les Solitaires,” Annales de la Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, no. 36 (1963–65): 291–301Google Scholar. While sympathetic to interpretations that frame Sophie's affair as adultery, since it affords her agency, I am persuaded by the secondary literature that suggests Rousseau intended for the affair to eventually be revealed to be rape. Wirz discusses Rousseau's intended plot resolution based on statements in his letters, and Wingrove supports this suggested conclusion through her analysis of the extant text.
45 Reisert, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 169; Scott, “Do You See What I See?,” 444.
46 Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment, 24.
47 Schaeffer, Denise, “Reconsidering the Role of Sophie in Rousseau's ‘Émile,’” Polity 30, no. 4 (1998): 626CrossRefGoogle Scholar, emphasis in original.
48 Hunt Botting, Family Feuds, 16.
49 Rousseau, “Émile et Sophie,” 491.
50 Ibid., 493.
51 Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment, 166, emphasis in original.
52 Rousseau, “Émile et Sophie,” 462–63.
53 Kennedy, Rousseau in Drag, 90.
54 See ibid.; Wingrove, Rousseau's Republican Romance, 88–90; Senior, “Les Solitaires as a Test,” 528–35; Wirz, “Note sur Émile et Sophie,” 291–301.
55 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, 141.
56 Ibid., 157.
57 Ibid., 157, 159.
58 Ibid., 160.
59 Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment, 147
60 See Bloom, Allan, Love and Friendship (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1993), 121–22Google Scholar; Schaeffer, Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment, 148–49. Bloom argues that the girl like Sophie demonstrates that women are more likely to be swept away by their imaginations and illusions, but Schaeffer challenges this view by further elaborating on the similarities between Émile and the girl like Sophie.