Keywords

Introduction

Jean-Jacques Rousseau is regarded as one of the most important figures of educational theory. Mainly, this is to be traced back to his work Émile ou de l’Edcation (1762b), which had a huge impact already in his lifetime. In Paris, it was immediately banned shortly after publication and in Geneva it was burned. The same happened to Du Contrat Social, which had been published the same year. The close connection of politics and pedagogics is central to the understanding of this voice from the past of philosophy of education. To this day, the ongoing discussion about Rousseau’s work is inexhaustible, already fuelled in his lifetime by both the radicalness and contrariness of his writings. Rousseau’s sharp criticism of the foundations of the Enlightenment movement, presuppositions he at the same time shared, contributed as much to the controversiality of his work as his unsteady life – amongst others as a music copier, private secretary, tutor and writer – as well as his many discords with friends, supporters like Diderot or Hume.

Rousseau was born the son of a clockmaker (his mother died shortly after his birth) in the Republic of Geneva, which he turned his back on very young after two quit apprenticeships. Through the acquaintance with his motherly friend as well as lover Mme de Warens, he converted to Catholicism (and returned to Calvinism in 1754). He long lived in Paris (since 1742) where he initially kept company with the Encyclopaedists Diderot and d’Alembert. He styled a theory of notation of his own and composed pieces of music. However, he soon fell out with Diderot and the other Enlighteners, who he contemptuously called Philsophes. For 23 years, he lived with Thérèse LeVasseur in cohabitation before marrying her civilly in 1768; they gave their five children to a foundling hospital. In later years, Rousseau dressed and lived in a simple manner, e.g. in Armenian costume and spent his last years after his expatriation from Paris and Geneva at various places. He died in 1778 shortly after having moved to Ermenonville. Acclaimed by Robespierre and the French Revolution as a paragon and authority, his remains were transferred to the Panthéon in 1784. The distribution and process of reception of his writings began – also because of the conflicts around his writings – already in his lifetime and has been continuing since.Footnote 1

Rousseau and the Enlightenment Movement: Society, Anthropology, Alienation

In the Paris of his time, Rousseau became famous overnight by answering the question of the Académie de Dijon, whether the progress in science and arts had contributed to moral betterment. In his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (Discours 1, Rousseau 1750), Rousseau rejects the belief which was then held as common sense of the flourishing Enlightenment movement, namely to achieve improvement in the human affairs by science and arts. The academy awarded him the prize. Rousseau criticises – in Enlightenment manner – the depravity of society of which he recognises as pretence and vanity – refined by science and arts. But Rousseau does not stop with this cultural criticism of his contemporary society. Out of his ‘Non’, he develops a radical criticism of society as such. For, Rousseau regards the set out decay not as a momentary state which could be overcome by the advance of reason-based insights. He rather assumes that society always alienates humans from themselves. Social relationships cause humans to see themselves in the light of other people’s assessments, leading them to stage, pretend and compete. In Rousseau’s view human misery is not to be enhanced by means of social civilisation but conversely results from it. All struggles about subjection and domination, all inequality between humans originate in social relationships which withdraw the humans from their self-identity (cf. Oelkers 2008).

Against this background Rousseau relates to an abstract ideal of the human being, which he describes as ‘state of nature’ and is elaborated in his second Discours ‘Discours sur l’Origine et les Fondements de l’Inégalité parmi les hommes’ (1755). As opposed to the understanding of his already then existing deriders, Rousseau with this figure of the ‘noble savage’ did not echo the ‘back to nature’ call. On the contrary, neither did Rousseau take the possibility of a historic state of nature for granted nor did he consider its future existence to be empirically probable. The ‘noble savage’ is as a constructed ideal figure in the strict sense a non-social being that is closer to the animal, because he does not require the other. His existence is not determined by the wishes of others. Even though Rousseau’s approach is similar to a Platonic position, as it shows the social conditions as aberrancies, Rousseau does in contrast not aim at the reference point of the eternal or divine good order, which is withdrawn from the human existence. Whereas for overcoming the ‘wrong’ social conditions a Platonic point of view will seek for realisation and internalisation of the eternal or divine order, Rousseau goes ahead in a radically modern way. He sets the human being – the non-socialised human being (l’homme naturel) – as the transcendent point of reference for judging and criticising social conditions.Footnote 2

Rousseau’s criticism of science and arts in the first Discours is primarily also a problematisation of Enlightenment’s optimism. In the second Discours Rousseau develops this problem further by identifying the appearance of private property as the origin of all inequality between humans and of the resulting dependencies. Rousseau sees the origin of dependence and superiority already laid out in the first acts of property and barter. However, Rousseau does not criticise this against the background of an egalitarian concept of human rights or from the point of view of a just form of social conditions. Rousseau’s criticism is related to the imbalance of needs and abilities that is imminent in barter and dependence.Footnote 3 Rousseau’s criticism of civilised society is not related to a specific form but to the social in general – as a danger for human’s self-identity, for human’s humanity as such: “Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains” (Du Contrat Social P, III, p.352: “L’homme est né libre, et par-tout (sic) il est dans les fers”).

Rousseau’s anthropology is in a way an abstract anthropology, since it has an ideal point of reference: Only if there is an equilibrium of desires and abilities the human being can be truly human and free: “The truly free man wants only what he can do and does what he pleases. That is my fundamental maxim” (Émile: 84). In the light of this figure of identity – correspondence of volition and ability – rational agreements as well as imagination can be problematised: Mere ‘rationalizing’, as Rousseau calls it sarcastically, cannot guarantee, that the gained understanding will achieve obligingness. Against the background of an equilibrium of desires and abilities as a reference point Rousseau adds the role of the sentiment to Enlightenments orientation on rationality and reasonable understanding, whereby Rousseau helps to prepare the ground for the romantic counter-movement against Enlightenment: Not only argument but also sentiment – in particular conscience respectively – can distance the human being from the social struggles about subjection and domination. To Rousseau, with imagination there is ambivalence, too: Through imagination wishes and needs may arise which exceed human abilities and thus lead to his misery.Footnote 4

The correspondence of desires and abilities is at the same time the point of reference for Rousseau’s concept of freedom: Freedom means independence from social relationships. Therefore, Rousseau neither sketches an alternative or utopian society in a narrower sense nor does he refer to a ‘lost paradise’. His concept of freedom pre-eminently works as a measure of criticism of civilisation and social relations as such. This measure can effectively be laid out as independent of the respective concrete form of society. From there, Rousseau opens the discussion, how the human being can achieve identity with himself under social conditions and how, thus, human alienation from himself can be avoided.Footnote 5 Rousseau radicalises the modern question about the shaping of a good society by the human being (as opposed to divine order or also to Platonic orientation on truth) by binding the question about justice to a human measure. Rousseau’s work is focussed on human inner independence, which is permanently endangered by social ties. To maintain inner freedom under the conditions of the civilised social is, therefore, the core as actually the cause of educational influence.

Rousseau on Education

This background of a fundamental criticism of social relationships, which corrupt true humanity instead of encouraging it, is radically continued in his work Émile (1762b). Right at the beginning one can read: “Everything is good as it comes from the hands of the author of things: everything degenerates in the hands of man” (Émile: P, IV, 245; “Tout est bien, sortant des mains de l’auteur des choses, tout dégénére entre les mains de l’homme”).With this sentence Rousseau breaks with the doctrine of original sin precisely by not ascribing moral decay, the possibility of human lapses and the – in Rousseau’s eyes – inevitable tendency to misery to human sinfulness but to the social conditions under which humans are obliged to interact. It is against this background that Rousseau sketches out an educational course that rests on the premises of Perfectibilité and Éducation naturelle entailing four phases of education.

Perféctibilité: The Ability of Becoming Human

In his second Discours, Rousseau introduces a figure which is decisive for modern philosophy of education: Perfectibilité. The point of reference for perfecting – in contrast to perfection – does not lie in a concrete anthropology nor in social values and norms or in a religiously orientated salvation. Perfectibilité refers to the accordance of volition and ability, which is always on the verge of being upset, but which is the prerequisite of human inner independence and self-identity. Thus, Rousseau forgoes any kind of content-related measure or norm, which could serve as an educational goal. Rather, education is to ensure human’s development which is orientated on the formal criterion of achieving identity with himself.

Thus, the element of uncertainty is introduced into educational thinking, in fact in two ways: Firstly, there is the openness of human development stated by Perfectibilité, which does not stake the educational core in a certainty about future necessities that precedes the educational process. The educational course is, therefore, not guided by the rehearsal of social norms and necessities but, instead, is open – it aligns itself with the inner freedom of the individual from all social expectations. Rousseau does precisely not aim at a different future society as an utopian projection of true human existence. He concedes that societies will change, which is why they can be no reference point for current education. Rousseau has indeed developed the concept of a truly human form of society mainly in his contemporaneously published Du Contrat Social (1762a), which has its point of reference in the volonté generale. But this can – in sharp contrast to the will of all, volonté de touts – only come about inasmuch as it rests on the identity of volition and ability of every individual. Volonté generale is, therefore − Rousseau saw its enabling only realisable in smaller, and especially not in his contemporary forms of government – in itself ‘good’ and ‘right’, because it does not represent the majority of particular interests (as in democracy) nor a general good as against particular volition (as in the polis). Instead Rousseau puts forward the entity of law, which – if orientated towards the volonté generale – is a truly human and more just form of government, because it does not produce social dependencies through representation and obedience. Inasmuch as the volonté generale only comes about by authentic accord on the basis of the self-identity of every individual, there can be – theoretically – no conflict of particular interests. It would be inappropriate to accuse Rousseau at this point of, in an utopian way, negating the empirical existence of particular wishes. In Rousseau’s outline, volonté generale is a consequential possibility, if one takes its foundation into account: The self-identical human being cannot develop individual interest which would cheat or disregard others, because after all the development of self-identity is – according to the author’s concept – carried out through the education process.

Secondly, Rousseau introduces with perfectibilité a dimension of uncertainty into educational theory, because it marks a potentiality. Self-identity does not – especially not under the conditions of social civilisation – come by necessity. It is permanently in danger of being failed. To avoid this failing of self-identity and to ensure inner independence of the human education comes at stake. Although education is embedded in the political dimension of another society, it is not staked about the alignment of education along the necessities of civic society – unlike for the later reception of Rousseau’s work especially by Pestalozzi and the German Enlightenment pedagogy. Rousseau rejects this education to the bourgeois and juxtaposes education to the citoyen. In Rousseau’s view the core as well as the measure of educational processes is to be humanity under the conditions of civilised society, the inner independence of social norms and relationships. This independence can only be achieved if the human being is self-identical and does not follow social expectations, which means desires and abilities must be brought into accordance.

Rousseau therefore vehemently opposes the educational concepts of the Enlightenment movement about the reason-based conveyance of rational understandings and judgements, as he finds it in Locke’s Some Thoughts concerning Education (1693). Rousseau problematises rationalisation and argument as the basis for reasonable judgement on two levels with regard to education: Firstly, Rousseau doubts that reasonable ratio can carry out the obliging of judgements. Explanations and arguments always open up the space for dissent and dispute as they only will occur if there is a different view of things possible. Explanations and arguments always might lose bindingness by counter-arguments. Reasonable arguing, therefore, can hardly be the orientation and method of educational practices. In contrast Rousseau emphasises the role of emotional insight. Understanding facts and arguments requires direct experience of their truth. Thus, Rousseau introduces an individual-centred and holistic view into educational thinking – which was taken up by the later nineteenth-century reform pedagogy – comprising the senses, body and mind.

Secondly however, it is according to Rousseau’s view – and he thereby prepares the ground for a fundamental shift in modern pedagogical thinking – useless to reason with children. Children are not able to follow the logic of an argument. They are no ‘little adults’. Their thinking, their feeling and consequently their understanding proceeds in a completely different way than that of adults. Rousseau, therefore, limits in a way the mightiness of knowledge and social norms: The adult perspective is fundamentally different from that one of children. Reasons do not reach them, for children think, recognise and comprehend in a way that is unique to them and radical different to adults. In Rousseau’s educational theory children are not an end on the way to good civic society, yet, they have an end in themselves. With this argument educational theory is entrusted with a completely new task and starts in a way as epistemological project: The mere foreign or unknown childhood initiated the still continuing issue of gaining knowledge about childhood and educational addressees.

Èducation Naturelle: Negative Education

Inasmuch as social relationships and social norms are to be put at a distance, the educational relationship must not be in shape of a social condition. The character of Émile grows up in the countryside and in more or less social isolation. Émile is removed from parental care and encounters only a few people of the rural household who are selected by the fictive educator whose role is taken in his treatise by Rousseau himself. Though, the ‘natural’ of education does not refer to the supposedly untouched nature. Rather it depends on the medium and style of education. In order to avoid the social influence of obedience, power and cheat, all chances for experience must be learned as natural and out of human control. For this reason, Rousseau opposes mere instruction and impartation of knowledge. This mode of ‘positive education’, as Rousseau sees it advocated by his Enlightenment contemporaries, is to be rejected as instruction adds something to children’s comprehension, which does not come from within themselves and must inevitably be beyond their understanding. Instead, Rousseau figures with his ‘natural’ education a negative education method, which can also be described as indirect education. “The first education then ought to be purely negative. It consists not at all in teaching virtue or truth but in shielding the heart from error and the mind from vice” (Émile (P, IV, 245; “La prémiére (sic) éducation doit donc être purement negative. Elle consiste, non point à enseigner la vertu ni la vérité, mai à garantir le Coeur du vice et l’esprit de l’eurreur”).

One would misinterpret éducation naturelle by understanding it as a form of teleological self-unfoldment which would proceed without educational activity – as later advocated by Montessori and other reform pedagogues. In fact, Rousseau sketches out educational influence – in opposition to the knowing position of ‘positive education’ – rather to be orientated towards the vital support of perfectibilité and preventing the failure of self-identity. The educator does not impart knowledge he has found right and valid regardless of whether and in what way it can be of meaning to the child. He refrains himself and his educational practices are guided by the task to enable his educatee’s inner freedom. Any convenience for domination and submission must be avoided. In this manner, the true and authentic speech is of an important role. Émile has to be taught the meaning of things without any ambiguity or ambivalence: The human being speaks in clear, unmistakable and unambiguous language. He is authentic in his words and does not disguise, because he by virtue of his education is incapable of doing so (cf. Starobinski 1988). The human being – this is the central point of criticism of Derrida’s reading of Rousseau (1977) – is his language, language presents him.Footnote 6 The educational relationship, therefore, must not be experienced as part of social relations. The educator’s appearance and performance have to be as immutable as things are. Learning and experience are mediated through things and environment, which are as well as human encounters arranged in an absolutely pedagogical ‘learning environment’ around Émile. The power of educational influence completely disappears in this arrangement, which Émile is to experience as natural and not as socially conveyed. “Do you see what a new empire you are going to acquire over him? How many chains have you put around his heart before he notices them!” (Émile: 233).

The Development of Childhood and the Education of Émile

It is against this background that Rousseau drafts a course of development which is orientated towards the premise of human inner independence. His phase model is, however, not based – unlike present-day developmental psychology – on empirical research on children’s development levels. In Émile, human self-identity marks the differentiation criterion between different levels (cf. Schäfer 2002). Insofar as in each phase, which Rousseau divides in four – infancy, childhood, prepubescence, adolescence – the relation of desires and abilities is changing, new balancing is needed every time: “Each age, each condition of life, has its suitable perfection, a sort of maturity proper to it” (Emile: 158). The developmental stages are, thereby, not aimed with a deficit-orientated perspective at the not-yet-existence of a future final state like the completed adult. Rather, the fundamentality of the ‘unknown child’ notably comes to the fore: Each phase has its own value in regard to the respective achievement of self-identity as equilibrium of desires and abilities.

Rousseau assumes that education begins with birth. Infancy is the first phase of human development. The crying and babbling of the infant are to him already pre-language forms of communicative expression – thus, the stark contrast to Enlightenment’s reasoning education comes into view. In this phase, desires and needs predominate, without there being an adequate repertoire for their satisfaction. That is why the educator is an extension of the infant’s body; he must enter into interaction with, and understand his or her needs in lieu of, the infant. Doing so is not about fulfilling all needs. This would, according to Rousseau, only signal to the infant the option of dominating others. The educator’s task is to distinguish representative for the infant between needs that must be satisfied and needs that merely serve for subjection or manipulation of the environment. The educator is inasmuch a ‘tool’ for the infant’s needs as he puts them into accord with the adequate form of satisfaction and, thus, makes it possible for the infant to experience a feeling for the harmony of desires and abilities. It is against this background that Rousseau vigorously pleads for an extension of the infant’s movement space by turning against the in his time common wrapping-up of babies and by advocating both more infant’s mobility and breastfeeding, which was also rather frowned upon.Footnote 7

With 3 years of age phase two begins, the phase of childhood. Caused by the speaking of the child there is a change in the relation of desires and abilities. Although in this phase, too, desires outweigh the possibilities of their fulfilment, there is also a developing stronger independence and a form of self-awareness as an individual being through the disposability of language. Rousseau assumes that in this phase actual education begins and with language the child gains cognitive faculty. The educator in his influence must, therefore, especially be concerned to the child’s wishes remaining correspondent to the conditions of their fulfilment. According to Rousseau, all situations and Émile’s experiences must, therefore, be characterised by the experience of necessity, instead of letting the social character of the pedagogical relationship in the form of command and obedience become focal. The situations arranged by the educator must appear to Émile’s experience as opposition of the world limiting the child’s volition. Thus, Émile is to learn to adjust his desires to the possible.

Phase three – prepubescence – begins between the ages of 12 and 15 and is characterised by a prevalence of powers over desires. To Rousseau, this is a decisive time because in this phase knowledge can be imparted to the child. However, this knowledge is related to a new criterion, which occurs in this phase for the first time – utility. Knowledge can only be introduced in this phase in order to compensate for the imbalance between abilities and desires. The abundance of powers is canalised by learning crafts, which Émile and the educator perform simultaneously. For the purpose of directing the increased abilities Rousseau recommends reading, especially Plato’s Politeia and Robinson Crusoe. Knowledge acquisition is, thus, always orientated towards necessary utility.

The fourth phase of adolescence is characterised by a fundamental change, in which the social dimension of Émile’s relationship to the world emerges. Especially sexuality and bodily desire, which develop at about the age of 15, again alter the balance between desires and abilities. Since sexual passion is to a great extent related to others, Rousseau therein sees the founding stone of moral insight. Due to his previous education Émile now is able to understand that others also feel and that he is part of a social context. This allows him to gain insight into his social connection to others. Now, everything in education depends on guiding the feelings to the right path: Compassion is to be evoked instead of envy, pity is to be cultivated instead of presumptuous pride, friendship instead of strategic calculation, self-love (amour de soi) instead of selfishness (amour-propre).Footnote 8 This needs carefully planned encounters, in which Émile’s orientation towards other people leads to the appropriate attitudes.Footnote 9

At this point the educational relationship changes in a decisive way: Whereas so far experienced by Émile as natural or non-social respectively, since the words, actions and encounters were laid out by the educator as immutable like mere things or laws of nature, the educator now discloses the social character of this relationship to Émile. The educator changes the mode of his address and reveals himself as Émile’s lifelong companion so far, he discloses his duty with Émile’s education and, thus, speaks to Émile’s heart. In Rousseau’s hypothetical experiment, Émile is touched by the insight into the educator’s sacrifice and recognises the necessity of this relationship. Following this, Émile asks for a contract in order to ensure further education by the educator. On this new basis the educational relationship between the two is continued, they travel various countries in order to acquaint Émile with politics, language and culture.

Émile marries Sophie, who is chosen by Émile on the basis of the clear conception of a wife prepared by the educator. Although Rousseau anticipates the sprouting romantic ideal of love as a precondition of conjugal union, he, however, depends on the difference of the sexes between the public and the private entailing the anthropological argument of female inferiority. Sophie’s course of education is outlined in the fifth book of Émile, and it is thoroughly guided by the notion that women are not able to achieve inner independence. Sophie’s education is directed at preparing her for being a wife and mother. In Rousseau’s view women will never be able to take an independent position towards the expectations and judgements of others. With that, Rousseau’s anthropology figures out to be cleft concerning the possibility of being human which was characterised by self-identity, autonomy and inner independence.

That the educational relationship – and, thus, the indirect, all the more effective power of the educator over the educatee – is indispensable is shown by the lifelong lasting relationship between them (cf. Cooper 2004). Émile will permanently stay in contact with the educator and ask for his advice.

Conclusion: Rousseau’s Voice in Philosophy of Education

Listening to Rousseau’s voice in philosophy of education means literally to listen to a voice from the past, though no voice could be less present than his one. Rousseau’s pedagogy is radically modern insofar it seeks for an appropriately human existence and education, which stakes a radical difference between the individual self and social conditions. With it, the ongoing debate arises, how an adequate pedagogical answer can be found in the light of human openness to the future on the one hand and social contingency on the other hand. Yet, Rousseau’s answer is, considering its radical orientation towards individual happiness in a mere eudaimonian sense, a rather a pre-modern answer. Despite transforming the Platonic good into plain humanhood the religious traces oriented towards the transcendental are evident in Rousseau’s criticism of society.

Rousseau’s work is, however, radically modern, insofar as his criticism of society positions the human being as the absolute reference point for truth, freedom and justice.Footnote 10 Particularly, Rousseau’s thinking can be regarded as a crucial point in the history of modern educational thinking: By introducing the concept of perfectibilité as the human condition Rousseau alters the foundations of pedagogical perspectives. Educational principles and practices are now to be proven and regarded in the light of their social and powerful conditions which are contrary to the individual. Further, by the notion of human Perfectibilité, which by Herbart has been introduced into pedagogical terminology as Bildsamkeit, the central role of uncertainty in educational processes is highlighted. By his conviction that educational influence – in particular under the auspices of Enlightenment-style impartation of knowledge – can certainly cause harm to the goodness of the human being Rousseau as one of the first has limited educational optimism.

The impact of these shifts entailed a different view on intergenerational relationships. Certainties and knowledge are untied from their unquestioned validity and must be orientated towards their adequacy with regard to the abilities and desires of the educatee instead of those of the educator. The introduction of the difference between children and adults, the resulting ongoing effort for insight and understanding of educational addressees as well as the distancing of a deficit-striven perspective on the child became fundamentals of educational theory (cf. Wain 2011). The notion of a gradual human development has influenced modern developmental theory, romanticism and the child-centred concepts of reform pedagogy at the end of the nineteenth century with its biologistic view on the self-evolvement of the child as well as progressivism (cf. Oelkers 2008).

In the lens of this the role of power came to view within the educational relationship, which with Rousseau takes the shape of an exclusive dyad of a privileged relationship between humans. In Rousseau’s Émile the problem of the intersubjective relation in educational processes comes to the fore: Whereas the child is no longer limited in his or her purely receptive role but treated as an independently acting being provided with his or her own dignity, the power of the educator as well as within educational relationships is nowhere shown and at the same time deproblematised more clearly than in the fictive course of education like Émile’s. The manipulative role of the educational influence and Émile’s lifelong indispensability of guidance and supervision by the educator contradict the premise of independence which Rousseau claimed to be the core and measure of human being and education. Rousseau’s impact in philosophy of education might not at least arouse from the contradictions within his work which radical elaborate the consequences of fundamental issues of modern educational theory and practice.