Emile the citizen? A reassessment of the relationship between private education and citizenship in Rousseau’s political thought
| Published date | 01 April 2018 |
| Date | 01 April 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1474885115589587 |
| Author | Bjorn Gomes |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
European Journal of Political Theory
2018, Vol. 17(2) 194–213
!The Author(s) 2015
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885115589587
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EJPT
Article
Emile the citizen?
A reassessment of the
relationship between private
education and citizenship in
Rousseau’s political thought
Bjorn Gomes
Columbia University, USA
Abstract
It is often said that the claims of man and citizen are irreconcilable in the philosophy of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau. This view, most famously articulated by Judith Shklar, holds that
the making of a man and the making of a citizen are to be understood as rival enter-
prises or competing alternatives. This reading has recently been challenged by Frederick
Neuhouser. He argues that one can make a man and a citizen, but only if the education
of each is performed in the absence of the other. In his view, Emile is raised to be a man
first (Books I–IV) before his subsequent instruction in citizenship (Book V). This paper
challenges both views. I argue that the making of man and citizen are, in principle,
neither rival enterprises nor competing alternatives, and that although Neuhouser is
indeed correct to argue for a successive system of education, the making of a citizen is
not completed in Emile, but extends into the Social Contract. His account diminishes
the crucial role the Lawgiver plays in the fashioning of citizens capable of discerning the
general will. I show that although raising individuals under a system of private instruc-
tion does not preclude their transformation into citizens but makes such a transform-
ation possible, it is on its own incapable of making citizens.
Keywords
Rousseau, citizenship, Emile, general will, Lawgiver
The claims of man and citizen are often considered irreconcilable in Rousseau’s
philosophy. According to Morgenstern (1996: 154), for example, ‘political and
personal authenticity will admit of no divided loyalties’; individuals in
Rousseau’s philosophy ‘can be either individual men or citizens, but not both’.
Similarly, Gourevitch (1997: xxix–xxx) writes that being a man and being a citizen
Corresponding author:
Bjorn Gomes, Columbia University, 420 West 118th Street, New York, NY 10027, USA.
Email: bwg2107@columbia.edu
‘make for fundamentally different economies of the soul, and fundamentally dif-
ferent ways of life’. The ‘competing claims of the two ways of life and the tensions
between them’, which Rousseau illustrates in one way through the distinctive edu-
cations for man and the citizen, ‘is the central theme of his work, and it is the
organizing principle of his writings’.
Likewise, Shklar (1969: 5) argues that a ‘strikingly novel’ aspect of Rousseau’s
thought lies in ‘his insistence that one must choose between the two models’ of man
and the citizen if one ‘is to escape’ from the ‘disorientation and inner disorder’
caused by living in modern society. These afflictions partly result from ‘our mixed
condition, our half natural and half social state’, which attempts to harmonise two
incompatible modes of existence. Natural man is a ‘numerical unity, the absolute
whole which is relative only to itself or its kind’. The citizen, in contrast, is ‘only a
fractional unity dependent on the denominator; his value is determined by his
relation to the whole, which is the social body’ (EI, 164/OC 4, 249). To forestall
the development of discord within, one must decide between a private education
directed ‘against society, in isolation from and rejection of all prevailing customs
and opinions’ and a public education that allows one to ‘lose oneself in a collect-
ivity’ (Shklar, 1969: 5).
1
In short, one can make a man or a citizen, but never both.
This view has recently been challenged by Neuhouser (2008: 20–24, chapters 5,
7). He points out that Rousseau’s most explicit statement on this issue contains an
important but often overlooked qualification. In that statement, Rousseau rejects
not the possibility of reconciling man and citizen in a single individual, but the
simultaneity of educating an individual to be both. As he describes it, when one is
‘forced to combat nature or the social institutions, one must choose between
making a man or a citizen, for one cannot make both at the same time’(EI, 163/
OC 4, 248, emphasis added).
The reconciliation of man and citizen is possible, but only if the education of
each is performed in the absence of the other. Neuhouser (2008: 20, 172) suggests
that ‘Rousseau alerts us to the existence of ‘‘two contrary forms of instruction’’ not
with the purpose of identifying Emile with one of the alternatives – an education
that produces hommes’ – but rather to ‘define its aim as the overcoming of that
opposition’. Such an overcoming finds its solution in the creation of a successive
system of education that proceeds first with the ideal of man and later with the
ideal of the citizen. This, Neuhouser asserts, corresponds to the education of Emile,
who is raised to be a man (Books I–IV) before his subsequent instruction in citi-
zenship (Book V).
Put differently, the final goal of Emile’s education
is to produce a ‘man-citizen’, an individual who possesses the capacities required to
embrace the general will of his polity as his own – the virtue essential to citizenship –
while at the same time embodying a certain version of the ideal of self-sufficiency that
defines men: the freedom to ‘see with one’s own eyes’, to ‘feel with one’s own heart’, to
be governed only by ‘one’s own reason’ rather than being compelled always to con-
duct oneself, or to judge, as others see fit (Neuhouser, 2008: 20–21).
Gomes 195
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