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The past is replete with revolts against sweet reasonableness, and even practical, rational individuals have sometimes waged war against it in the privacy of their minds. John Locke, 1632-1704, was the philosophical protagonist of reasonableness and common sense. Jean Jacques Rousseau, 1712-1778, often considered the founder of the Romantic Movement, stressed the feeling portion of the human makeup. He emblazoned humanity's irrational side. These two mentalities are still locked in combat, locked in a virtual struggle between good and evil.

John Locke was not a closeted philosopher. His practical counsels were sought by the English Whigs, that portion of the English aristocracy most wedded to constitutional government, religious toleration, and economic progress in a capitalistic sense. These three were linked together in the 17th and 18th centuries, a very precious linkage indeed.

Constitutional liberty was rare in those days. Nearly every government was an absolute monarchy. England was an exception which John Locke helped fortify.

Locke, like other political thinkers of his day, believed in a mythical state of nature before the coming of coercive governments throughout the world. Individuals in this condition conducted their affairs without external control. They protected their property and pursued and punished alleged evildoers on their own initiative. They were their own policemen. They possessed a moral sense according to Locke. but lamentably a subjective one designed to suit themselves.

The inconvenience of such absolute liberty led to the formation of governments or political societies whose officials, legislators, kings, etc., were elected by the people and were responsible to them. Thus each member of a political society was relieved of the constant grind of protecting his property. Governments carried much of the load. Locke adds that any government which fails to preserve property may rightly be overthrown by the people who created it. Just as a master has the right to dismiss his servant, so do a people have the right to topple despotic government.

What did Locke mean by property? His definition included not only land and movables, but life and liberty as well.[2] His definition therefore comprehended the basic concerns and rights of individuals. Modern liberal and leftist commentators have made themselves oblivious to Locke's definition of property. They have glibly assumed that Locke was noncompassionate, exclusively concerned with the preservation of real estate. Locke actually considered one's body to be a form of property.

It is obvious that Locke regarded government as a mere mechanism designed to increase the ease with which we run our private affairs. Government simply ends a state of nature in which dangerous self-judgment is the rule. Government is the humble servitor of freedom. The worship of that concocted divine ground called the state is excluded.

Locke's stress on the private doings of individuals eliminates blanket condemnation of selfish interests as sinful. Legislatures in free countries are besieged by hosts of lobbyists trying to propagate selfish interests. And why not? Selfishness may teach us to understand and make compromises with the selfishness of others. Cold, above-party impartiality is often a ruse for the attainment of excessive power. True respect for individuality should include respect for individual interests.

Religious tolderation is another consequence of Locke's orientation toward the private individual. Religion becomes a private practice just as peacefully pursuing a trade is a private practice. The conclusion is that all religions should be tolerated so long as they do not endanger public order by becoming violent.

The practical Locke stressed religion as an instrument designed to inculcate ethical behavior. The tendency of the wealthier and more enlightened in England was to follow Locke. They were indifferent to salvation and heady spirituality, simply accepting religion for the sake of ethical and moral improvement. This meant a decline in religious ardor since those not so religious or not religious at all are as moral or more moral than the deeply religious.

A reaction was inevitable, especially among the less wealthy and enlightened. Anti-rational, emotional and revivalistic religion attained immense popularity in England and America and has, at least in America, endured to this day. It comprises an appreciable number of primitives who really do not believe in "live and let live." They are collectivists, anxious to regulate the conduct of everyone. They are eons removed from Locke's individualism. However, let us steer our way to Jean Jacques Rousseau, whose outwardly democratic but inwardly totalitarian philosophy has been far more unsettling than the spiritual junk food of the preachers currently in our midst.

Rousseau was born in 1712, in Calvinistic Geneva. He failed to assimilate the Calvinistic work ethic, not thoroughly learning any trade in his youth ind wandering from job to job. He converted to Catholicism for the sake of the economic support the clergy might offer him. A cultured and kindly lady. Madame de Warens, also a Catholic convert, took Rousseau into her household in Annecy, Savoy. She sheltered him for more than a decade and he eventually became one of her lovers. Sometime later he cohabitated with a former servant girl, which became a lifelong attachment. They had five children all of whom were sentenced to death at birth when the couple transferred them to the Paris Foundling Home. Neither Rousseau nor 18th-century France was as yet committed to birth control.

Much of the above and more is recorded in Rousseau's famous work The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rouseeau. Confessionalism goes at least as far hack as St. Augustine. The habit of revealing sins or shortcomings to the outside world appears to be a widespread mental illness, perhaps a subconscious urge to succumb to a collective. It is not essential for society to he acquainted with most of our personal proclivities, our idiosyncrasies or, to use a popular expression, our hangups.

Rousseau, like Locke, posited a state of nature prior to the coming of government. The similarity ended there. Locke's state of nature was not without the amenities of civilization. Private property, which was to be protected once government came into being, existed. With Rousseau, the state of nature lacked the slightest tincture of civilization. Individuals wandered without property, without foresight, without morality except for the quality of pity. They possessed few or no tools, depending on bodily strength for survival. They lived by instinct in a state of equality. Rousseau regarded his state of nature as idyllic, his noble savages being unencumbered by the necessities and conveniences of his own day. His thinking inclined toward asceticism. It was a far cry from John Locke, who favored material progress and prosperity. Much of modern liberalism and socialism has an ascetic base, a preference for the life minimal.

What caused this idyllic state of nature to decline and cease to exist? Rousseau's answer was the curse of privale property, the stimulant to corrupt civilization. He was no socialist, but he condemned private property with such vehemence that socialists and communists have given him an honorable place in their hagiography. He stated:

The first man who, having enclosed a piece of ground, bethought himself of saying 'this is mine', and found people simple enough to believe him, was the real founder of civil society.[3]

Private property, thought Rousseau, results in the exploitation of the propertyless by the propertied. It is, moreover, a triumph of brains over brawn, the propertied possessing the former and the propertyless the latter. This idea punctuated the ancient feeling that the intellect is evil, a product of the devil. How medieval Rousseau really was! It is noteworthy that those who cherish brawn or force are constantly waging war against intelligence. The 20th century may be viewed as the counterattack of the bully boys, whether clerical-fascist, Nazi, Communist, Christian, Jewish or Islamic fundamentalist, corrupt unionist, or whoever else comes to the mind of the reader. The Reign of Terror in France, 1793-1794, was conceived and engineered by admirers of Rousseau.

Rousseau realized the impossihility of returning to a state of nature. The alternative he chose was psychologically close, specifically, direct democracy with an ultimate totalitarian twist. Since the state of nature was one in which all were equal, Rousseau declared that all adults should participate in the determination of the affairs of any community. This sounds reasonable to Americans, especially Californians, who generally favor initiatives, recalls and referendums. But hold on! Rousseau, fearful of the influence of selfish or special interests, propounded the undemocratic idea of the general will or the mystical voice of the people. This voice may dispense with the inclinations of the majority and yet express that which the people really desire. Rousseau's general will concept nullified democracy. Any party rising to supremacy by force can dictatorially tell the people what constitutes the will of the people.

What Rousseau really wanted was the fusion of individuals into an undifferentiated social mass whereby individluality dies and selfish strivings are no longer apparent. He wanted us to be "part of the whole and only conscious of the common life."[4] The uniqueness of each human temperament was apparently not as important to him as claimed hy his partisans.

Rousseau's conception of society, since its composition is hidden from view, is akin to a spiritual mass. It is like God stationing himself on earth, possibly a more oppressive phenomenon than God apart from us in heaven.

Unconscionable cruelty is inevitable in such a society. How can life be respected when we are encouraged to view individuals as melted into the mass? They are no longer adequately seen as discrete entities and are consequently dispensable. Conscience no longer plays a role when humankind is shorn of individuality. This is firmed by the bloody events of 20th century.

Bertrand Russell in 1945 very sensibly classified Rousseau as:

... the inventor of the political philosophy of the pseudo-democratic dictatorships. Ever since his time those who considered themselves reformers have been divided into two groups, those who followed him and those who followed Locke. Gradually the incompatibility became increasingly evident. At the present time Hitler is the outcome of Rousseau, Roosevelt and Churchill of Locke.[5]

One may summarize Rousseau's outlook as medieval. His negative view of private property and worldly goods, his state of nature or Garden of Eden psychosis, his hankering to confess, his distrust of intelligence and approval of instinct, his preference for an essentially spiritual society excluding individuality and individual interests, all these are reactionary sentiments reminiscent of the Middle Ages. The religiously inclined should not ignore him, nor should the skeptical secularist regard him as an ally.

Rousseau, rather unstable in his younger days, became salve to an extreme sense of persecution when older. He thought that nearly all were after him, including David Hume, one of the kindliest of philosophers and men. Were Rousseau alive today, he would be subjected to expensive psychiatric treatment. His 18th century contemporaries, in perhaps a wiser course, simply let him be. The harm he did to himself was as nothing compared to the harm committed by those attracted to his ideas.

One turns to John Locke as to a breath of fresh air. His writings influenced the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Rill of Rights, and various state constitutions. May his "Sweet Reasonableness" endure!

Footnotes:

1.An expression by Richard Hooker, 1554-1600, a moderate Anglican high in Locke's esteem.
2. See Locke, Two Treatises of Government, Cambridge 1988. Section 87, p. 323.
3. See Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, contained in the volume Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, 1990, p.84.
4. See Rousseau's Emile, Everyman's Library, 1995, p.10.
5. See Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, 1945, pp. 684-685.

Suggested Reading:

Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy, Simon and Schuster, 1945. Incomparably clear and readable.

John Locke, Two Treatises of Government, edited by Peter Laslett, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1988.

John Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, Everyman's Library, London 1990.

John Jacques Rousseau's Emile, Everyman's Library, London, 1995.

Alvin Bernstein is a scholar and former teacher of European history. He is retired and lives in Paradise, California.