320 Eighteenth-Century Studies 42 / 2

and priorities that shaped knowledge, lies at the heart of our understanding of how
collections were created, shifted, organised, and then reorganised” (Chambers,
Joseph Banks and the British Museum, 138). Change explains change? How do
we get to Darwin and Wallace from there?

SOPHIE BOURGAULT, University of Ottawa

The Many Faces of Jean-Jacques Rousseau

John C. O’Neal, ed. The Nature of Rousseau’s Rêveries: Physical, Human, Aes-
thetic (Oxford: Voltaire Foundation, 2008), Pp. xi, 281. £60.00.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau on Philosophy, Morality, and Religion.

Edited by Christopher Kelly (Hanover: University Press of New England, 2007).
Pp. xxxv, 277. $25.95.

David Lay Williams, Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment (University Park: Penn-

sylvania State University Press, 2007). Pp. xxxiii, 306. $55.00.

A first-time reader of Jean-Jacques Rousseau could be forgiven for being

baffled when perusing the ever-growing secondary literature on the citoyen de
Genève. Among many others, the labels of “liberal,” “totalitarian,” “ancient,”
“modern,” “Christian,” “deist,” “individualist,” “communitarian,” “existential-
ist,” “Romantic,” and “Enlightenment philosophe” have variously been attached
to him. What seems to drive the political theorist David Lay Williams in his Rous-
seau’s Platonic Enlightenment is the wish to refute the label of “modern” attached
to Rousseau by Leo Strauss. Strauss argued for Rousseau’s modernity partially by
appealing to the latter’s affinities with Thomas Hobbes. Contra Strauss, Williams
insists that Rousseau’s entire intellectual life was devoted to “correcting, amend-
ing or refuting the teachings of Hobbes” (1). Furthermore, Williams argues that
Rousseau was committed to defending a forceful (even if “implicit”) Platonism
(116).
Williams’s point is not that Rousseau’s ties with Plato make the former
solely an “ancient” figure; rather, Williams insists that we ought to refrain from
painting the Enlightenment simply as an anti-Platonic moment in the history of
ideas. Through a quick survey taking us from Ficino to Bernard Lamy, en passant
par Descartes, Leibniz, Fénélon, and Malebranche (all of whom influenced Rousseau
to a degree), Williams claims that Platonism was “a widespread mode of thinking
in modern Europe” (28). As such, this book enters ongoing debates about the “real
zeitgeist [sic] of the Enlightenment” (27).
Though some may contest Williams’s labeling of Hobbes as a moral relativ-
ist (xvi) or his excessively comprehensive (hence diluted) definition of Platonism,
many readers will appreciate the refreshing boldness with which Williams confronts
us with a “choice” (a choice we have to make not only as interpreters but also
as human beings more generally) between Plato and Hobbes (xxviii). The grand
narrative lurking behind this book is that the history of thought can be roughly
 Reviews 321

summarized as a contest between two perspectives, Hobbesian materialism and

Platonism, and, more importantly, that only Platonism is fit for guiding our ethi-
cal and political lives. Hobbesian materialism/positivism is unfit because it lacks a
“stable, noncontingent substance” (xxvii), which makes it an inadequate basis for
judging injustices great and small (from genocide in Sudan to student plagiarism
[xxx]). Williams argues not only that politics without transcendent standards can
be potentially tyrannical, but also that moral philosophy without such norms is
less forceful—if not, in fact, impossible (274).
But let us take a step back to look more closely at the evidence provided
in chapters 3–6 (the heart of the book) to support the thesis that Rousseau is a
Platonist. Drawing most importantly on the “Profession of the Savoyard Vicar,”
chapter 3 locates Platonism in four main elements of Rousseau’s thought: his
belief in the existence of God, the idea of free will, the immateriality of the soul,
and transcendent ideas. More specifically, Williams argues that Rousseau’s justice
is a clear transcendent standard and thus, contra Strauss, that it is not purely
conventional (85–86). Chapter 4 develops this argument further, showing that
this standard of justice is prior to the general will and thus serves as an ideal “by
which to judge all norms” (93). In chapter 5, Williams attempts to draw out a
number of similarities between Rousseau and Plato all the while acknowledging
their different views regarding sociopolitical institutions. Chapter 6 argues that
there is an often overlooked notion of “checks and balances” in Rousseau, an
observation used by Williams to challenge the “totalitarian” interpretation of
Rousseau. The last two chapters (on Kant and on Marx and Foucault, respec-
tively) seem at first glance to take us away from Platonism, but they in fact tie
in well with Williams’s argument about the necessity of transcendent standards
for political judgment.
While creative, some of the similarities drawn between Plato and Rous-
seau in chapters 3–5 are a bit strained. That Rousseau’s metaphors of “chains,”
“cave,” and “slaves” in the Social Contract and elsewhere were largely inspired
by Plato’s cave is somewhat doubtful (see particularly 130 and 150), as is the sug-
gestion that there is a revealing analogy between Rousseau’s usage of the words
“sophisms”/“sophists” to refer to Hobbes and other materialists, and Plato’s own
relation to sophists and materialists (92). After all, we know that Rousseau used
the words “sophists”/“sophisms” in a wide range of situations (including when
referring to his own unconvincing arguments). What is also problematic in this
book is the excessively ascetic Rousseau we are offered at times—which may be
the result of an overly ascetic reading of Plato (e.g., 164). It is fair for Williams to
point out that Rousseau and Plato shared misgivings about the reliability of human
senses, but the Rousseauian “turn inward” to sentiment may not have that much
in common with Plato’s own rationalist solution to the “problem” of the senses.
Socrates’ daemon aside, it seems to me that the truth written on a Rousseauian heart
or conscience is dramatically different from the (external) Platonic truth attained
via dialectic—a difference that Williams is aware of but understates.
Although the book as a whole succeeds in making a good case for Rous-
seau’s objections to materialism, a few parts of it need additional fine-tuning. For
instance, even though Williams never denies that Rousseau had some respect for
materialists (e.g., 56 and 126), he nevertheless sets aside a little quickly the appeal
of materialism and Lockean empiricism for Rousseau—providing, for instance, a
mere footnote on the question of Rousseau’s “matérialisme du sage” (126). Also,
the passage Williams cites frequently to support his Platonic Rousseau (“the most
profound metaphysics” are found in “Plato, Locke, Malebranche” [see Rousseau,
322 Eighteenth-Century Studies 42 / 2

Oeuvres complètes, vol. I, Gallimard, 1111, my italics]) could be used to paint a

different Rousseau. Can one be a true Platonist and a Lockean at the same time?
Williams’s answer is yes—he argues that Locke was a lot more Platonist than is
commonly acknowledged by scholars. But the question arises: did Rousseau see
Locke as a Platonist? Even with these caveats, this is a clear and carefully argued
book that should be of interest to both Rousseau specialists and eighteenth-century
scholars interested in questions of ontology and epistemology.
If Williams’s book aims at showing the affinities of Rousseau with Plato, the
collection The Nature of Rousseau’s Rêveries: Physical, Human, Aesthetic (based
on the proceedings of the 2005 colloquium of the Rousseau Association) presents
many more stories of kinship. Rousseau is presented—among other things—as a
kind of Don Quixote (by John T. Scott), a Marquis de Sade (by Sylvie Romanowski),
a partial Thoreau (by Zev Trachtenberg), and a Dancourt (by Jacques Berchtold).
The variety of Rousseaus we get here is testimony to the “richness and complex-
ity” (7) of the Rêveries and of Rousseau’s conception of nature. If anything, these
essays remind us of how difficult it is to provide impatient undergraduate students
with a one-sentence definition of “nature according to Rousseau.” In these essays
we learn that nature may be envisioned as a therapeutic escape (O’Neal, Mall,
Trachtenberg), a means to scientific discovery (Cook), a tool for self-knowledge
(Scott, Lee), a means to (forced) freedom (Miller), a standard by which to judge
existing practices and institutions (Inston, Trachtenberg)—or even, as most authors
argue, a mixture of many of these things at once. As the title of the collection sug-
gests with its deliberate ambiguity, the twofold ambition of these essays is to reflect
not only on the “kind of nature” Rousseau deals with in the Rêveries (physical,
human, or both), but also on the character or style of the book itself (hence the
“aesthetic”).
These seventeen essays were written mainly by scholars of literature and
French studies (with the exception of one from art, three from philosophy, and two
from political science). Opening with a series of essays discussing the significance
of physical nature in the Rêveries (Cook, Johnson, O’Neal), the volume then brings
us a little closer to human nature by drawing out some of the connections between
the physical and psychic realms (Perrin, Guichet, Lee). After a lengthy third part
exploring the perennial question of human nature according to Rousseau (Berch-
told, Miller, Scott, Mall, Romanowski, Stewart, Inston, Mostefai, Trachtenberg),
the collection ends with a few reflections on the genre of the Rêveries (Swenson,
Martin).
For our purposes here, we can read at least three papers as (unwittingly)
engaging with David Williams’s Platonic Rousseau. The essays of Jean-François
Perrin, Fiona Miller, and Natasha Lee depict the Rêveries as a text in which Jean-
Jacques is exceedingly close to physical nature and the senses. Whereas Miller
argues persuasively that this Rousseauian “materialist turn” ought to be read as a
conscious joke made at the expense of Enlightenment philosophes, Lee highlights the
regrettable “cost” of this turn to physical things: an atomized, isolated self (113).
Several of the essays convincingly underscore the Rêveries’ potent criticisms—of
modern science (Perrin, Scott), of luxury and “le galant” (Berchtold), of corrupt
and authoritarian institutions (Inston), and of stressful modern life (O’Neal). A
number of very different Rousseaus emerge from this collection: a radical individu-
alist, a proto-ecological thinker, an existentialist, and a Romantic. Debate about
Rousseau’s true nature won’t end any time soon, it seems, a fact heartening to us
in the Rousseau industry.
 Reviews 323

Finally, Rousseau scholars should take joy in the recent publication of

Christopher Kelly’s Rousseau on Philosophy, Morality, and Religion. While this
anthology of eleven short works of Rousseau is not based on new translations (all
pieces are taken from The Collected Writings of Rousseau, with minor adjustments
and fewer endnotes), it will prove useful in teaching advanced seminars on Rous-
seau’s thought. Indeed, this anthology offers a great selection covering the entire
span of Rousseau’s most active years as an intellectual (1751–69), which gives
readers the opportunity to answer for themselves the perennial question of the
unity of Rousseau’s thought. The editor’s position on that question is presented in
an insightful introduction, which argues that, despite the apparent contradictions
of these works (largely resulting from the different audiences they address), they
hold a considerable “unity of vision” (xiii). Professors interested in assigning this
anthology to their students should note, however, that two works of Rousseau can
serve only as “companion pieces” (the Preface to Narcissus is published without
the play, and the Observations by Rousseau on the Reply Made to His Discourse
without the actual first discourse).
The anthology contains a few well-known and popular pieces (e.g., the
Essay on the Origin of Languages), and it offers numerous shorter pieces unduly
neglected by students of Rousseau (e.g., the Discourse on the Virtue Most Neces-
sary for a Hero and the Fiction or Allegorical Fragment on Revelation). Apart
from the works already mentioned, this book also includes the important letters
of Rousseau to Beaumont, to Voltaire, to Philopolis, to Sophie d’Houdetot (the
Moral Letters), to Malesherbes, and to Franquières. Although the purist may la-
ment the increasing availability of Rousseau’s work in English, others will express
gratitude to Kelly for offering a relatively inexpensive and wide-ranging selection
of Rousseau’s work.