First thought:
Rousseau starts the Second Discourse with a reference to the statue of Glaucus, whose appearance is so disfigured by time and weather as to be barely recognizable. What, Rousseau asks, can be perceived of the original Glaucus? It is within this framework that he introduces the idea of the Natural Man, a hypothetical prototype whose constitution has been permanently estranged from contemporary, or Civilised, Man. Acknowledging that this natural state is not only impossible to know accurately, but perhaps never existed [4, 125], Rousseau is determined on fixing a new archetypal idea of Man in the societal imagination, evidenced against that described by Thomas Hobbes in Leviathan a century earlier. Hobbes set out to formulate a social theory around a naturally selfish and aggressive primordial man; Rousseau does the same, using a thoroughly different prototype. For Rousseau, those who speak of “need, greed, oppression, desires and pride” as fundamentals of the state of Savage man, are wrongly transferring civilized evils onto a more innocent first nature. His view is a thoroughly hopeful one, a melancholy nostalgia for something utterly good in human nature that can serve as a reference and guide for humans to incorporate into their thinking of themselves and their social contracts. At the heart of his investigation is the origin of the inequality and corruption within civilized society, which he sees as products of property and amour-propre [vanity]. Going to what he finds to be the two principles “prior to reason” [9, 127], that of self-preservation and compassion, he finds Natural man to be solitary, healthy, and happy. This state exists prior to language, and thus prior to critical thought and serious self-reflection. Man, though, is (perhaps) lacking in certain instincts, which he makes up for in his capacity to imitate and self-perfect. This seems to be an inherent tension for Rousseau, who would like to separate a completely natural state (without turning man, who is free-willed, into a Beast) from the seeds of civilized man that are planted with sociability and language. Various contradictions intermittently reveal and dispel themselves as Natural Man advances towards his civilized self, accompanied by disease, unhappiness, avarice and sin. Regardless, Rousseau admits as conjectural the foundations upon which Natural man lies, though not the consequences which he deduces, for “no other system could be formed that would not give me the same results and from which I could not draw the same conclusions.” [52, 159] Language, beginning as “perceptions of certain relations” [5, 162], allowed communicability and thus sociability. In the forming of rudimentary family and communal bonds, co-dependency and property were established, leisure enjoyed and conveniences acquired. Here the source of evil was unknowingly sprung, as habits formed needs and ideas of status were established. Herein lies the transition from an “amour de soi” to an “amour-propre”. Amour de soi in the French translates literally “love of one”, a love that loves oneself in a direct relationship, as opposed to amour-propre, a love of one’s Own self, a relationship that depends on an outside view to define it. It is a kind of property that one owns, a view of oneself in relation to others, which leads, inevitably, to competition and inequality. Status contained within it “vanity and contempt on the one hand, shame and envy on the other” [16, 166] and as injury to the ego was measured and punished by the subjective standards of the recipient, Law was needed to control its effects. Man’s humble beginning ended in his Civilisation, “where slavery and misery were soon seen to sprout and grow together with the harvests.” [19, 167]
Another Thought:
To skip a few centuries to another French thinker, this same sentiment is echoed in Satre’s “Being for Others” as opposed to “Being for Oneself”.
If one strips away all aspects of Being for Others (one’s job, family, friends, society) one finds what is left of oneself at the end. This is not a Rousseau’ean reversal of time, but a present moment excision of all that is not Being for Oneself. There remain those few things that make themselves apparent as true interests, which one can imagine, outside of society, still being interested in. Philosophy is one of them, as well as music, and art in general.
Does that mean that we should abandon everything but the few things that we can take an interest in without being social? No, but I would argue that it is important for us to place an emphasis on them in our daily lives. What can one know about oneself if one finds being alone disagreeable? I often wonder if this is why we find trauma so compelling? It is a chance to vicariously live through a transcendent feeling of something completely beyond control. If we live only for others, we are continuously controlling and shaping ourselves to situations and people, consciously and unconsciously.
When I see black tyre traces on the road, I think, this is probably one of the most common incidents of an unintentional loss of control. I think of the inside of that moment, of the skid, of time expanding, of the feeling that seems emptied of everything and yet completely filled by something else. It is marked by an absence of control, of being near to the precipice. If we could walk around the mind of someone in that moment, what would it look like? What is this something else that exists inside these small moments? Is it the same for everyone? People who survive near-death situations often re-evaluate their lives, seeing everything from an “outside” perspective. It seems that being outside oneself belonged originally to the domain of religion and ritual, accessed via music, dance and art. Transcendence in a modern world seems to exert so great a pull that it is easy to see how religious experience develops in other forms, like drug and consumer culture. Obviously, the resurgence of religion, especially fundamentalist Islam and Christianity, is of great importance.
A quick summary of what interested me here:
Of primary importance to Plato was that the universal should contain the particular within itself. Being was distinguished in the categories of motion and rest, otherness and sameness. By its own intrinsic momentum the universal moves towards particularization, not by being “applied” to particular instances. If universals are seen as independent of the concrete particularity in which they originated, they become permanently removed from the real. In the modern principle of sufficient reason, everything must have a reason why it should be rather than not be. But the idea that the real is rooted in an ideal principle does not imply that the human mind is necessarily capable of justifying it. This is a distinctly modern thought and the imposing of abstract universals on practical life lead to distinctly modern problems. Think: the Terror of the French Revolution.
Do we see this in fundamentalist religion and consumerist culture, in created universal principles transposed into practice, within whose frameworks exist the opportunities to lose control, to be transcendent? It is this concept that I want to explore further.
There is another book that I am reading about nostalgia, described by the author as “the permanent condition of modernity”. Coming from the Greek nostos “return home” + algos “pain”, it meant homesickness. But more on that later.
Angelica Mesiti, an Australian media artist won the Blake Award, a religious art prize, for her work Rapture (pictured), filmed in slow motion from under the main stage at the Big Day Out.
