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forced "always to ask others who we are, never daring to ask our–
selves"; to be "happy and satisfied with themselves on the testimony
of other people, rather than on their own"; to "live constantly out–
side themselves," so that the individual "depends on the judgment
of others for the very sense of his own existence." The amour propre
which the bourgeoisie defined and celebrated as "self-love" was ac–
tually an inner emptiness, a total poverty and bankruptcy of self.
Modernization had indeed developed the spirit to "almost the high–
est point of its perfection" ; but the embourgeoisment which animated
modernization had alienated it radically from actual human feelings
and needs.
I think we can find in Rousseau a strategy that may be even
more fruitful in our time than it was in his. It is to appeal to modem
men on the basis of their own sensibility and awareness of life. Rous–
seau believed such an appeal was possible because modem society
had developed in its men and women a mode of consciousness cap–
able of transcending it.
If
this consciousness could be developed fur–
ther, into
self-consciousness
and into
social
consciousness, then mod–
ern people - people who were intensely "ardent, avid, ambitious,"
who strove constantly to turn their thoughts into actions, their fan–
tasies into realities- might be able to resolve their personal and
their political problems together, to reform radically their society
and themselves from within.
Rousseau's strategy was profoundly dialectical: it was to
((draw
from the evil itself the remedy that can cure it."
The first step was
negative: to show modern man, "who thinks he's happy, how miser–
able he really is." This was the purpose of Rousseau's most probing
and penetrating psychological and political writing. The next step
was positive: "to illuminate his reason with new ideas, and warm
his heart with new feelings, so that he'll learn that
he can best multi–
ply his happiness and expand his being by sharing them with his fel–
low-men."
Even the most avid egotist could be made to understand
"how
his own personal interest demands that he submit to the gen–
eral will."
Then, "with a stout .heart and a sound mind,
this
enemy
of mankind would give up his hatred with his fallacies;
the very
reason that drew him apart from humanity would lead him back
to it.
Then he would become a good, virtuous, sensitive man.
In-
