The Theatre is the Opium of the People: A Voice of Dissent from Waldow’s Reading of Rousseau

ABSTRACT

This paper questions Waldow reading of Rousseau’s ‘Letter to M D’Alembert’ [Letter]. It claims that Waldow fails to address the social and political argument that lies behind Rousseau’s critique of the theatre and, as a result, her conclusions are misplaced. First, Rousseau does not seek to quench critique rather his aim is to show that the theatre distracts us from our real concerns in life and thus quells discontent and, indeed, the possibility of dissent. Second, Rousseau does not refer to the naturally intact morals of the Genevans but argues that the Genevans are closer to the state of nature and thus less corrupt. Finally, his account of the state of nature in the Letter is not at odds with his own views about the state of nature. Just as in his other writings, he uses the state of nature as a heuristic device to justify his claim that social relations give rise to vice and virtue. It is a necessary fiction that provides us with the principle of hope that things could be otherwise.

KEYWORDS:

• Rousseau
• theatre
• state of nature
• vice and virtue
• general will
• amor propre

I should like to begin this paper by thanking Anik Waldow for drawing my attention to a debate between Jean Jacques Rousseau and the philosophes about the proposal to build a theatre in Geneva, with which I had not been familiar. When I read Waldow’s book I was taken by surprise by the way she depicted Rousseau, and the citations she provided did not resemble the Rousseau I knew. In view of this, I too began reading Rousseau’s Letter to M d’Alembert¹ but only to arrive at an interpretation that is quite different from that of Waldow.

As a result, this discussion will not comment on Waldow’s fascinating account of how experiential learning was central to both Enlightenment and so-called Counter-Enlightenment thinkers, but I will limit myself to showing why I believe Waldow misunderstands Rousseau’s Letter.

Waldow reads Rousseau’s turn against the theatre as an attack on the Enlightenment project, as an attack on tolerance and, even more alarmingly, as a defence of a form of ‘protectionism’. Waldow contends the Letter undermines the importance Rousseau attributes in other writings, especially Emile, to experiential learning for the formation of the self. Indeed, according to Waldow, the debate about the theatre brings to light a picture that is diametrically opposed to the one we tend to associate with the Enlightenment and Counter-Enlightenment insofar as it shows that the philosophes acknowledge how affects and the passions cultivate reason.² Indeed, I believe one can go even further than this and argue that when it comes to the theatre, it seems that it is the philosophes, the advocates of reason, who make room for the passions, whereas it is Rousseau, the sentimentalist, who fears them.

There are two aspects that concern Waldow. The first is that Rousseau is advocating a form of protectionism which stifles critical thinking and tolerance. Rousseau’s main concern seems to be that the theatre can destabilise and corrupt the Genevan way of life. Indeed, on the face of it, Rousseau’s attack against the theatre is reminiscent of the charge against Socrates. While Socrates – the philosophe par excellence – was charged with corrupting the young (i.e. innocent), Rousseau charges the theatre (proposed by the philosophes) with corrupting the Genevans. Waldow’s second concern is that Rousseau’s tirade against the theatre is based on a fictious idealisation of the Genevans. When he argues what is good for the Parisians may be harmful for Geneva, he presents Genevans as morally superior to the Parisians and justifies this claim by referring to ‘the naturally intact morals of the Genevans’ (Waldow 2020, 140). This strikes Waldow as odd, if not disingenuous, as this claim is in blatant contradiction with Rousseau’s own views about the state of nature. Rousseau throughout his writings emphasises that vice and virtue are not natural but only come about with the formation of society. So it seems misleading, to say the least, to refer to ‘naturally intact morals’ (Waldow 2020, 140). Moreover, to attribute them to a society, considering that natural man is solitary and neither social nor moral. It thus seems that Rousseau invents a fiction when he refers to the natural morals of the Genevans in order to defend his protectionism or conservatism (see Waldow 2020, sect. 4.2).³

I want to look at both of these points in turn. While I believe that Waldow is not mistaken in her observations, I think the problem with her account is that she interprets Rousseau on the lines that interest her – namely, how experiential learning turns us into fully fledged human beings. But she fails to read Rousseau for what he is: he is not only a moral psychologist but also a social political thinker, who believes that our social relations give rise to virtue and vice. By my lights, Waldow thus fails to address the social and political argument that lies behind Rousseau’s critique of the theatre and as a result her conclusions are misplaced. To put it in another way: I do not believe that the voice in this Letter is trying to quench critique; on the contrary, Rousseau remains true to his reputation. The Letter echoes the voice of dissent, criticising the three great pillars of the Enlightenment civilization: science, progress, and commerce.

Before looking at exactly what Rousseau finds so objectionable about the theatre, it is important first to set the stage. Although from the outside Rousseau’s Letter reads like a viral diatribe against culture, this is far from it. First, it should be noted that Rousseau is by no means a philistine. On the contrary, no one knew the theatre and the arts better than him. Rousseau was not only a fervent and informed theatre goer but, moreover, the author of a number of plays and comedies and even of two operas: Iphis et Anaxarète (1740) and Le Devin du Village (1752). Moreover, he was by no means ‘conservative,’ seeking to maintain the status quo, but constantly eager to develop new genres. At the end of his life he wrote Pygmalion (1762), a play where music and speech were separate, inventing what he called 'scene lyrique’ and what we today call ‘melodrama’. Indeed, Rousseau was extremely critical of the French theatre and opera, which he regarded as too stylised. So Rousseau’s impact on the arts should not be underestimated. From the outset we thus need to note that the critique against the theatre is not from a voice from the outside but from a voice that is deeply entrenched in the theatre and the arts as such.⁴

Second, we need to understand the context of the Letter. When Rousseau says what is right for Paris may not be right for Geneva, the Letter partly expresses his indignation and rage that he – not only, a, or better the connoisseur of the arts, but, moreover, a citizen of Geneva – had not been consulted about the project to institute a theatre in Geneva. Instead it is Paris (the philosophes) which dictates what should happen not only in its own provinces (indeed, this remained the pattern certainly within France until André Malroux became cultural minister in 1958) but, moreover, in the ‘provinces’ outside its jurisdiction. In modern terms, it is the colonial attitude that incenses Rousseau. The way the Letter is addressed already expresses his rage. While Rousseau signs it as ‘J. Rousseau Citizen of Geneva’, he addresses it to M. d’Alembert, listing all his honorary titles, in particular his membership of esteemed international academies from London to Sweden. This should not be mistaken for a display of modesty, reverence or respect for the aristocrat d’Alembert; rather it illustrates what Rousseau seeks to attack. For those familiar with Rousseau know that for Rousseau – as it was the case for Michel de Montaigne – it is the most civilised who are in the end the true barbarians (see De Montaigne 2003, 231).

As so often with Rousseau’s writings, the Letter reflects his own personal dramas, indignations and turmoil. The virulent attack on women is informed by his pain at being betrayed by his closest friend and lover Madame D’Houdetot who immediately broke with him when Diderot, the philosophe, had spread the word that she had an affair with Rousseau. Rousseau’s attack is less on women per se but more on the aristocrats and the salons. This is not to question or justify his blatant misogynism, which, as Waldow rightly notes, informs his tirade against the theatre (and which I leave undiscussed), but to contextualise it.

Having set the context of the Letter, it is time to turn to the actual criticism raised: What Rousseau criticises is the philosophes’ view that the theatre plays a moral educational role. Rousseau does not question the theatre per se or for that matter the plays, but doubts that the theatre provides the platform for what Waldow calls ‘experiential learning’. His argument is that the theatre does not purport to achieve anything moral whatsoever but, if at all, exemplifies the bourgeois, the ’despicable’new type of individual that emerges with civil society.

For Rosseau the bourgeois is the chief villain that gives rise to our moral and psychological inequalities in civil society. What defines the bourgeois is the desire to appear to be someone other than we actually are. The bourgeois is driven by what Rousseau calls amor propre. Rousseau distinguishes between amour de soi meme, the love of one’s self, which refers to our natural sentiment to be vigilant for self-preservation, and amor propre, where our concern for our self is turned outward. Amor propre, the judgments of others, defines the bourgeois’ understanding of self. What marks the bourgeois is that she thinks only about herself when she is with others and thinks only of others when she is alone.

In the Letter, Rousseau now argues that the theatre does not promote moral learning as the philosophes claim, but that it advances instead the bourgeoisie’s three vices: vanity, utility and alienation. Let us look at these in turn.

First, vanity: the theatre exemplifies amor propre’s passion to be seen and esteemed. ‘The business of actors is to appear’ (Letter, 95). What drives them is not moral concerns but vanity. They want to be seen, celebrated and applauded. Rousseau believes the same holds for the audience. We go to the theatre to see and to be seen (Letter, 63) and fall ‘asleep promptly when the curtain has gone up’ (Smith 2016, 196). The theatre is the spectacle of wealth and illustrates material inequalities. We go to flaunt our wealth and status. Only the rich can afford to go and have the leisure time for entertainment. Indeed, much of the argument against the theatre centres around the costs of building it which fosters the inequalities amor propre has brought about.

Second, utility: Rousseau argues that the theatre and its performances are driven by mercantile and not moral interests. The theatre wants to put on what we nowadays call ‘block busters’. As Waldow rightly notes: ‘Plays are written for a market: they are intended to please the spectator and, for this reason, have to target the sentimental dispositions that vary across different times and places’ (Waldow 2020, 339; see Rousseau, Letter, 21). The only sentiment it seeks to foster is the effect to ‘bring us back more often’ (Letter, 22). So what irks Rousseau is what we today call ‘the commodification of the arts’.

Finally, and most importantly, alienation. This is the most significant aspect of Rousseau’s critique, which I believe Waldow misses. One of the aspects that troubles Waldow is that Rousseau fails to see the positive role the imagination can play. The imagination, for Voltaire, educates the audience – it provides what Waldow is looking for: experiential learning. The theatre confronts the audience with the unfamiliar. This, the philosophes argue, brings the spectator to question their established opinions and to broaden their outlook. It makes them more tolerant and allows them to understand people and cultures that are different to their own. As with Hume, the claim is that our sympathetic engagement is diverted away from our concern for our nearest and dearest so that we become capable of judging virtue in an impartial way (see Waldow 2020, 153).

Rousseau clearly advocates the opposite. He believes we should ‘focus on what matters to one’s life in the here and now’ (Rousseau, Letter, 153). Waldow’s worry is that Rousseau thus quenches critique. As she rightly observes Rousseau believes that the theatre ‘should … evoke emotions also taught and supported by the social practices in the spectators’ real lives’ (Waldow 2020, 141). This leads her to conclude that for Rousseau, the theatre should ‘contribute to the strengthening of sentimental patterns conducive to the smooth functioning of the state’s laws and social and political institutions’ (Waldow 2020, 141). But I think Waldow draws the wrong conclusion: Rousseau does not argue that theatre should quell any kind of dissent. On the contrary, he contends that it is the theatre that quells ‘real’ discontent and, indeed, the possibility of dissent.

This is why Rousseau rails against the passions. The passions the theatre stirs are futile. There is nothing good in the fact that they divert our attention away from our nearest and dearest. On the contrary, that is the problem. They detract us from what truly matters in our ‘real’ lives. They make us apolitical. As Rousseau says: ‘ People think they come together in the theatre, and it is there that they are isolated. It is there that they go to forget their friends, neighbors, and relations in order to concern themselves with fables, in order to cry for the misfortune of the dead or to laugh at the expense of the living’ (Rousseau, Letter, 17). What Rousseau thus attacks is what Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer later call the ‘culture industry’ (see Adorno and Horkheimer 2002 [1947]). The theatre is nothing other than, to borrow an expression from Marx, the ‘opium for the people’ as it stifles dissent. It ‘detract[s] from, rather than enlarge[s] life’ (Cassirer 1989, 28).

Contrary to Waldow, and the philosophes, the argument is thus that the theatre does not provide the space for moral education. It does not facilitate critique. If anything, it diverts our attention away from morality. It does not make us act virtuously but it provides us with a ‘feel good factor’ instead. The passions the theatre stirs, be it indignation, sympathy or pity, all spin in a void. They do not ‘produce the slightest acts of humanity’ but, if anything, they satisfy ‘our vanity without obliging us to practice it’ (Letter, 57). Hegel later calls this the ‘beautiful soul’ (Hegel 1977, 383f; cf Rousseau, Letter, 25). Rousseau thus believes that the passions stirred by the theatre are useless when it comes to action and, moreover, harmful as they make us believe that we are sufficiently good and that we have done good just by the mere fact that we have wept or shown compassion while sitting on our seats by ourselves ‘immobile in silence and inaction’ (Rousseau, Letter, 13 cf. 57). In a word, the theatre diverts our attention away from the true concerns in society.

So the main critique of the theatre is that the passions taken by themselves have no moral function as they spin in a void. Indeed, when Rousseau says ‘what is right for Geneva may not be right for Paris’, this claim needs to be read tongue in cheek. The theatre may be right for Paris but only insofar as it detracts the depraved, corrupted and vicious from more evil pleasures and crime (see Rousseau, Letter, 59). It is positive insofar as it is preventative (see Rousseau, Letter, 65, 67). But do not confuse this with a moral education.

We should not read the Letter as an attack against the theatre, but we should see it as questioning the philosophes’ view that the theatre can play a role in moral education (see Osipovich 2004). The theatre does not enrich and diversify ‘the audience’s capacity for critical thinking by provoking moral emotions, imaginative perspective taking, and role-play’ (Waldow 2020, 130). But it does the opposite. It alienates us by diverting our attention away from what truly matters in life. Rousseau’s criticism only sounds provincial and narrow minded because he is being misunderstood. It is the theatre, and not Rousseau who stifles critique. As Rousseau says elsewhere: ‘Here I am a barbarian because they do not understand me.⁵

But this leaves us with the question whether a theatre can be a model for moral education at all? Rousseau addresses this at the end of the Letter when he suggests that festivals, and not the theatre, can provide a moral education. For festivals bring us together and provide us with a sense of recognition. They teach citizens to be active participants in the life of their city, as opposed to theatrical spectacles, which teach them to sit quietly and watch others act. Rousseau’s critique of the theatre, in other words, is a critique of representationalism. His endorsement of the festival, in turn, is I believe the endorsement of the political order he advocates, a society that is egalitarian, without inequality and truly free.

As we know from his political writings, the political order he advocates is a society that is not ruled by the will of a few but by the general will instead. The festivals that Rousseau promotes, I believe, in many ways, exemplify the ideal of a general will. In festivals we are no longer impartial spectators, we do not experience the division between being and appearance, there is no audience and spectator, no elite and inequality but we are all equally spectators and performers in one. As he says:

Plant a stake crowned with flowers in the middle of a square; gather the people together there, and you will have a festival. Do better yet; let the spectators become an entertainment to themselves; make them actors themselves; do it so that each sees and loves himself in the others so that all will be better united. (Rousseau, Letter, 22)

Rousseau here alludes to form of association he advocates:

One which defends and protects the person and goods of each associate with the full common force, and by means of which each, uniting with all, nevertheless obey only himself and remain as free as before (Rousseau 2019, Book 1, ch. 6, sect. 4, 51–2)

Rousseau believes that I am only free if I give myself over entirely to the social contract (equality). It is only then that I am not beholden to private interests, interest groups or other particular wills but see myself subjected to the general will instead (the only legitimate sovereign), which reflects nothing other than my will.

Rousseau thus tells us what entertainment should foster (if it has a moral imperative) is freedom (i.e. recognition) and not the toleration of other viewpoints (i.e. individualism). As Goethe observed: ‘to tolerate is to offend’ (Goethe 1998, Par 875). It is recognition that we need.

We now gain a better understanding of Rousseau’s critique of the theatre. Theatres are representational. They alienate us and turn us into spectators who are ruled by others. Festivals, in contrast, overcome divisions, they are egalitarian and open to all. They occupy the political space of the agora where all citizens can gather and are seen and recognised as equal.

This leads me to the second concern that irks Waldow. How can Rousseau refer to the ‘naturally intact morals of the Genevans’ and assume that there are ‘social practices unspoiled by the fetters of society?’ (Waldow 2020, 161). The problem, as she sees it, is that his attempt to specify a natural way of life must fail, as Rousseau imbues the

natural with genuinely unnatural attributes. He thereby simply advocates a type of society he deems most valuable without clarifying what a natural lifestyle is … . It is not nature that determines what a good or bad way of life is, it is the other way round: a specific social setting – in our case the institutionalised practices of the community of Neuchatel is used to define what ‘naturally’ pertains to humans. (Waldow 2020, 161)

Waldow thus complains that ‘With this in mind, we can see that before we can ask which kind of emotional dispositions ought to be cultivated … We need to know which kinds of political and social institutions count as desirable’ (Waldow 2020, 161).

Waldow is both right and mistaken. She is right that Rousseau creates a fiction to make his critique intelligible. But she is wrong in assuming that this fiction is that Genevan society is naturally moral. Rousseau never questions that moral and social relations are essentially artificial. As Rousseau states throughout his work, the savage man is both isolated and has no idea of vice or virtue.

I think Waldow is thus mistaken when she claims that Rousseau argues that Geneva or Neuchâtel represent the state of nature. If anything he argues that they are closer to nature insofar as they are less advanced or civilized than Paris (see Rousseau, Letter, 60–1) and are thus less corrupt. Indeed, Rousseau upholds the claim, that informs his entire work, that social relations give rise to vice and virtue. It is precisely for this reason that he prefers the small cities like Geneva and Neuchatel as they give rise to another kind of political order and thus human being.

But nonetheless Waldow is right – Rousseau’s critique is based on a fiction and, indeed, it is only on the basis of this fiction that his criticism is intelligible. But the fiction is not Geneva but the idea of the state of nature itself. While Waldow wishes to question the distinction between nature and culture by showing the natural is historical and malleable (see Waldow 2020, 98), I believe she fails to see that Rousseau questions the very concept of nature itself. For Rousseau there is no state of nature, everything is artificial.

Although Rousseau refers throughout his writings to the state of nature and, moreover, spends an entire book trying to describe it (Rousseau 1997), he acknowledges, from the outset, that it is a fiction. This is why in the opening lines of The Origin of Inequality provide the reader with the following analogy:

How shall man hope to see himself as nature made him, across all the changes which the succession of place and time must have produced in his original constitution? How can he distinguish what is fundamental in his nature from the changes and additions which his circumstances and the advances he has made have introduced to modify his primitive condition?

Like the statue of Glaucus time, sea and storms had so disfigured that it less resembled a God and a ferocious Beast, the human soul altered in the lap of society by a thousand forever recurring causes, by the acquisition of a mass of knowledge and error, by the changes that have taken place in the constitution of Bodies and by the continual impact of the passions, has, so to speak, changed in appearance to the point of being almost unrecognizable. (Rousseau 1997, Preface, 124)

Here Rousseau acknowledges that it is impossible ever to know what the state of nature was like. No one can know what preceded the social contract.

For it is by no means a light undertaking to disentangle what is original from what is artificial in man’s present Nature, and to know accurately a state which no longer exists, which perhaps never did exist, which probably never will exist, and about which it is nevertheless necessary to have exact Notions in order accurately to judge of our present state. (Rousseau 1997, 125)

Not only does he express his ignorance but, more importantly, he acknowledges that it is a fiction:

It did not even enter the mind of most of our philosophers to doubt that the state of Nature has existed whereas it is evident, from reading the Holy Scriptures … [that] Men were ever in a pure state of Nature. (Rousseau 1997, 132)

Rousseau thus concedes that it may well be that the state of nature never did exist and probably never will exist. Without doubt we are referring to a fiction. But Rousseau would respond to Waldow that this should not be a cause of concern as it makes room for hope. The concept of nature is a necessary heuristic device that allows us to make sense of the present. For it is only by postulating the state of nature, that we can argue that social relations are artificial and can give rise to virtue and vice. This should not be a cause for despair but hope. For once we realise that those characteristics which Hobbes and Locke regard as natural are actually artificial, we realise that things could be otherwise. If a particular set of social relations has created a particular kind of human being, the bourgeois who is the source of vice and inequality, then it is possible that another set of social relations can provide another kind of human being. As Rousseau said so tellingly in the ‘Geneva Manuscript’: we can ‘derive from the evil itself the remedy which will cure it’ (Rousseau 2019, Book 1, ch. 2, sect. 18, 163). The state of nature thus provides us with the principle of hope that things could be otherwise, it is as Kant realised: only too well a necessary fiction without which we could not live.

To conclude, the Letter echoes Rousseau’s overall view: the source of all evil is not nature but society. In view of this, experiential learning can only achieve that much. We cannot as Waldow claims become fully-fledged human beings by focusing on the self-formation through experiential learning alone, as the problem is not nature but society. In a nutshell, to become a fully-fledged human being we require recognition and not tolerance. This can only be achieved through a new type of social relations and not by ‘cultivating our own garden’ (Voltaire 2000, 70, my translation).

Acknowledgment

I should like to thank Ruth Boeker for organising the conference on Anik Waldow’s book. I am also grateful to Jim Grant for reading the first draft of this paper and to Ruth Boeker and Graham Clay for their editorial comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. References to Rousseau, Letter to M d’Alembert are to Rousseau (1960), hereafter cited in the text as ‘Letter’, followed by the page number.

2. This leads Waldow to question Isaiah Berlin’s claim that there is a Counter-Enlightenment that is informed by irrational passions which we should set in opposition to the reason-based approach of the philosophes. In its stead Waldow proposes a ‘continuity thesis’ by showing how affects and the passions cultivate reason (Waldow 2020, 131)

3. Waldow reads Rousseau as seeking to protect the ‘“natural” fit between the citizens’ moral sentiments and existing institutionalized social practices protected by the laws of the state’ (Waldow 2020, 133). As a result she believes his primary aim consisted in ‘stabilising society from within, rather than cultivating the capacity for critical thinking’ (Waldow 2020, 133).

4. It should be noted that Rousseau believes that the theatre can play a moral political role. With his opera Devin du village, he for example, tried to reform the morally jaded Parisians. The opera was meant to be a model for French opera composed in the Italian style. The aim was to reform the corrupted trying to inspire in the audience, (who listened to the opera at Fontainebleau), a yearning for the simple and virtuous life of the countryside. But, as indeed Waldow shows, Rousseau believed that such endeavours are only successful if they are directed to specific audiences tapping into their sentiments (see Waldow 2020, 140).

5. Rousseau here cites the epigraph from Ovid with which he prefaces the Origin of Inequality (Rousseau 1997, 3).