Polynesia: Fiction, Film, and Culture

Prof. Bruce Harvey

Rousseau Lecture/Discussion Summary Sheet

--Rousseau's main purpose is to critique the failings of modern civilization.

--we become so other directed (envy/prestige) that we lose any sense of native, natural, authentic desires/goals

--we no longer live in the moment:

--chase others' good opinion (see 13L)

--or want more and more luxury/comfort to the point of satiation (see 12R) or inequity of property possession: some consume more and others less

--also makes point on 14L and, somewhat negatively, on 10R

--language (his argument goes on for several pages and is tangled) is necessary for social interaction (which he seems to hate) to exist; so, from a certain perspective, language is the apple that leads to the Fall

--ultimately, though, the "savage" doesn't really interest him

--either those that he might see as contemporaries in, say, America

--or in the past in "cave man" time as it were

--rhetorically R. needs to posit a relatively "happy" precursor to anxiety-ridden modern society, but his treatise is not really historical or anthropological

--could say the same of Typee, which is more anthropologically factual: Melville is not so much enchanted by Edenic, pastoral society of Typees, as disenchanted by coercive laws

--and clearly the "savage" or "natural" state (as Rousseau describes it) could never really exist.  When could humans live and not "require the joint labour of several hands" (14L)?  Humankind has "fallen" from page one, as it were, of human history

--it would be easy to call Rousseau a discontent whiner; but you could also view him as offering a profound critique of modern society. Traditionally, in intellectual history, Rousseau is seen as either contributing to nature/nurture debates, the notion of the "noble savage," or speculation on the role of the civil State (i.e., the government) in protecting liberties/property or coercing behaviors and legitimizing property inequalities (for what it's worth the other great document to read in the latter regard, more fundamental than virtually any other piece of paper in respect to understanding U.S./capitalism ideology, is John Locke's "Second Treatise on Government" written in 1697 or so). However, a different way of looking at Rousseau is to ponder his reflections on how our identities (out of the state of nature) are hopelessly mediated by envy, prestige needs, and so on.  To put it crudely, Rousseau in essence says we are not ourselves once we enter into "civil" society.  That may be trite... or it may not be.