Educating Émile: Jean-Jacques Rousseau on Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Rousseau tries to show that civic patriotism is compatible with genuine moral cosmopolitanism as well as republican cosmopolitanism (the compatibility thesis). I try to clarify these concepts, and distinguish them from other types of cosmopolitanism, such as moral, cultural, economic, and epistemological cosmopolitanisms. Rousseau winds up with a form of rooted cosmopolitanism that tries to strike a balance between republican patriotism and republican as well as thin moral cosmopolitanism, offering a synthesis through education. A careful reading of Émile shows that this is a book about the formation of a moral and cognitive cosmopolitan who avoids the deformations of a commercial society influenced by processes of globalisation.

Notes

An earlier version of this essay, entitled “Concentric Circles: Patriotism, Cosmopolitanisms, and Cosmopolitan Education,” was presented at the Annual Conference of the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain, in New College, Oxford, England, April 2009. The essay is part of a larger project on modern cosmopolitan ideas. See me Imperfect Cosmopolis: Studies in the History of International Legal Theory and Cosmopolitan Ideas (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2011).

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2. Bernadette Baker, “(Ap)pointing the Canon: Rousseau's Émile, Visions of the State, and Education,” Educational Theory 51 (2001): 1–43; Tzvetan Todorov, Frail Happiness: An Essay on Rousseau (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); Hartmut von Hentig, Rousseau oder Die wohlgeordnete Freiheit (München: Beck, 2003); Barbara Schneider, Jean-Jacques Rousseaus Konzeption der ‘Sophie’. Ein hermeneutisches Projekt (Bonn: Universitätsdruckerei, 2005); Danilo R. Streck, Erziehung für einen neuen Gesellschaftsvertrag (Oberhausen: Athena, 2006); Jürgen Oelkers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (London: Continuum, 2008).

3. Francis Cheneval, “Education nationale, education cosmopolitique: regards sur Rousseau et Kant,” in Pour une éducation postnationale, ed. Jean-Marc Ferry et Boris Libois (Bruxelles: Editions de l“Université de Bruxelles, 2003), 55, 60; Yossi Yonah, “Ubi Patria—Ibi Bene”: The Scope and Limits of Rousseau's Patriotic Education,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 18 (1999): 366–67, 385.

4. Ove Korsgaard, “Giving the Spirit a National Form: From Rousseau's Advice to Poland to Habermas’ Advice to the European Union,” Educational Philosophy and Theory 38 (2006): 231–46; see also Anne M. Cohler, Rousseau and Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 1970) and F. M. Barnard, Self-Direction and Political Legitimacy: Rousseau and Herder (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988).

5. Cheneval, “Education nationale,” 59f.

6. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, “Considerations on the Government of Poland and on Its Projected Reformation,” in The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 189.

7. Andrea Albrecht, Kosmopolitismus. Weltbürgerdiskurse in Literatur, Philosophie und Publizistik um 1800 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), 22–61; Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents, and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 133; Patrick Hayden, Cosmopolitan Global Politics (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 3; Pauline Kleingeld, “Six Varieties of Cosmopolitanism in Late Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of the History of Ideas 60 (1999): 505; Pauline Kleingeld and Eric Brown, “Cosmopolitanism,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2002/entries/cosmopolitanism, accessed 23 November 2007.

8. Georg Cavallar, “Cosmopolis. Supranationales und kosmopolitisches Denken von Vitoria bis Smith,“ Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 53 (2005): 49–67; Kleingeld, “Six Varieties,” and David T. Hansen, “Curriculum and the Idea of Cosmopolitan Inheritance,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 40 (2008): 292.

9. Kleingeld, “Six Varieties,” 515, 518.

10. Hansen, “Curriculum,” 293, and Amartya Kumar Sen, Development as Freedom (New York: Knopf, 1999).

11. Ulrich Beck, The Cosmopolitan Vision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and Steven Vertovec; Robin Cohen, Conceiving Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context, and Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 13.

12. Samuel Scheffler, “Conceptions of Cosmopolitanism,” in Boundaries and Allegiances (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 115.

13. Troy Jollimore and Sharon Barrios, “Creating Cosmopolitans: The Case for Literature,” Studies in Philosophy and Education 25 (2006), 365–70.

14. Rousseau, “Considerations,” 184; Helena Rosenblatt, “Rousseau, the Anticosmopolitan?” Daedalus 137 (2008): 60–61.

15. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on the Sciences and Arts or First Discourse,” in Gourevitch, The Discourses and Other Early Political Writings, ed. and trans. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 18; Rousseau, “Considerations,” 226; Rosenblatt, “Rousseau,” 62; Georg Cavallar, The Rights of Strangers: Theories of International Hospitality, the Global Community, and Political Justice since Vitoria (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 287.

16. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “From Of the Social Contract or Essay about the Form of a Republic (Known as the Geneva Manuscript),” in Gourevitch, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 155; Iring Fetscher, Rousseaus politische Philosophie. Zur Geschichte des demokratischen Freiheitsbegriffs, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1980), 122f., 185.

17. Rousseau, “Considerations,” 179, 196f., 224f.; Cheneval, “Education nationale,” 56f., Maurizio Viroli, For Love of Country: An Essay on Patriotism and Nationalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 93–94.

18. Rousseau, “Considerations,” 192, 219; Nicholas Dent, Rousseau (London: Routledge, 2005), 9, 84; John Greville A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975).

19. Rousseau, “Considerations,” 179, 183, 221, 238f.; David P. Fidler, “Desperately Clinging to Grotian and Kantian Sheep: Rousseau's Attempted Escape from the State of War,” in Classical Theories of International Relations, ed. Ian Clark and Iver B. Neumann (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1996), 130; John T. Scott, ed., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Critical Assessments of Leading Political Philosophers, Volume 3: Political Principles and Institutions (London: Routledge, 2006).

20. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “Discourse on Political Economy,” in Gourevitch, The Social Contract and Other Later Political Writings, 11; Grace G. Roosevelt, Reading Rousseau in the Nuclear Age (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990), chap. 5; Oelkers, Rousseau, 161–57; Robert Spaemann, Rousseau. Mensch oder Bürger. Das Dilemma der Moderne (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 2008), 122–23.

21. Fetscher, Philosophie, 65–75; Dent, Rousseau, 39–40, 61, 68–72.

22. Richard White, “Rousseau and the Education of Compassion,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 42 (2008): 35–48; Fetscher, Philosophie, 75–78.

23. Rousseau, “Political Economy,” 15.

24. Fetscher, Philosophie, 78.

25. Dent, Rousseau, 71f., 104–6; see also Yonah, “Ubi Patria—Ibi Bene,” 370.

26. Francis Cheneval, “Der kosmopolitische Republikanismus erläutert am Beispiel Anacharsis Cloots,” Zeitschrift für philosophische Forschung 58 (2004): 373–96.

27. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “‘Abstract’ and ‘Judgment’ of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace,” in Early Notions of Global Governance: Selected Eighteenth-Century Proposals for ‘Perpetual Peace,’ ed. Esref Aksu (Cardiff: Wales University Press, 2008), 95, 123–25. For a short introduction, see my “Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778),” in The Oxford Handbook of the History of International Law, ed. Bardo Fassbender and Anne Peters (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

28. Olaf Asbach, “Staatsrecht und Völkerrecht bei Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Zur Frage der völkerrechtlichen Vollendung des Contrat social,” in Vom Gesellschaftsvertrag oder Prinzipien des Staatsrechts, ed. Reinhard Brandt und Karlfriedrich Herb (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2000), 241–69; Stanley Hoffmann, “Rousseau on War and Peace,” in Scott, Rousseau, 42–43.

29. Rosenblatt, “Rousseau,” 67.

30. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Émile (Teddington, UK: Echo Library, 2007), 184.

31. Rousseau, “Geneva Manuscript,” 160; cf. Fetscher, Philosophie, 138f.

32. Richard Boyd, “Pity's Pathologies Portrayed: Rousseau and the Limits of Democratic Compassion,” Political Theory 32 (2004): 540.

33. Dent, Rousseau, 103; cf. Rousseau, Émile, 174–76.

34. Rousseau, Émile, 203.

35. See the discussions in White, “Rousseau,” 36–47; Yonah, “Ubi Patria—Ibi Bene,” 385f.

36. Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Cosmopolitan Patriots,” in Cohen, Love of Country, 22.

37. Rousseau, “Of the Social Contract,” in Gourevitch, Social Contract, 147. The passage is directed against certain exclusive religious groups. See also Hoffmann, “Rousseau,” 40, 44.

38. Rosenblatt, “Rousseau,” 65.

39. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 220.

40. Rousseau, Émile, 388.

41. Richard H. Popkin, “The Philosophical Bases of Modern Racism“ and “Hume's Racism,” in The High Road to Pyrrhonism (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993), 79–102, 267–76; Cavallar, Rights of Strangers, 355f.

42. Rousseau, Émile, 145.

43. See for a brief introduction Cavallar, Rights of Strangers, 46–59.

44. Rousseau, Émile, 237; see also 85f., 239, and 409; Dent, Rousseau, 114f.; Laurence D. Cooper, Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999).

45. Rousseau, Émile, 393; see also Rosenblatt, “Rousseau,” 64.

46. See Rousseau, “‘Abstract’ and ‘Judgment’ of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre's Project for Perpetual Peace.”

47. Derek Heater, World Citizenship: Cosmopolitan Thinking and Its Opponents (London: Continuum, 2002), 44–52.

48. See White, “Rousseau,” 36–39, for an extensive analysis.

49. Rousseau, “Second Discourse,” 174.

50. See Rebecka Lettevall, “The Idea of Kosmopolis: Two Kinds of Cosmopolitanism,” in The Idea of Kosmopolis: History, Philosophy and Politics of World Citizenship, ed. Rebecka Lettevall and My Klockar Linder (Huddinge: Södertörns, 2008), 23; Gerd van den Heuvel, “Cosmopolite, Cosmopoli(ti)sme,” in Handbuch politisch-sozialer Grundbegriffe in Frankreich 1680–1820, ed. Rolf Reichardt and Eberhard Schmidt (München: Oldenbourg, 1986), vol. 6, 45–46.

51. Rosenblatt, “Rousseau,” 66.

52. Michael W. McConnell, “Don’t Neglect the Little Platoons,” in Cohen, For Love of Country?, 81.

53. Martha C. Nussbaum, “Kant and Stoic Cosmopolitanism,” The Journal of Political Philosophy 5 (1997): 23.

54. For a subtle analysis, see Schneider, Rousseaus Konzeption.

55. Rousseau, Émile, 8.

56. See Spaemann, Rousseau, 129–35.

57. Dent, Rousseau, 164, 164–66.

58. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Confessions,” in The Collected Writings of Rousseau, trans. Christopher Kelly (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995), vol. 5, 153.