Rousseau and Revolution

Summary

Rousseau and Revolution is the tenth volume of The Story of Civilization, published in 1967 by Will and Ariel Durant and awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction in 1968. Its subtitle describes an unusual double frame: the history of France, England and Germany from 1756, and of the rest of Europe from 1715, to 1789. The volume thus finishes the eighteenth century begun in The Age of Voltaire and brings every region of Europe to the threshold of the French Revolution. Its organizing figure is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whom the authors treat as the decisive voice of feeling against the reason of the philosophes. The book opens with a long biography of Rousseau: his Genevan childhood and early wanderings, his years with Madame de Warens, his arrival in Paris, his life with Thérèse Levasseur and the abandonment of their children to the foundling hospital, the prize discourse of 1750 on the arts and sciences, the Discourse on Inequality, the Letter to d'Alembert, Julie, or the New Héloïse, and the twin works of 1762, Émile and The Social Contract. The condemnation of those books in Paris and Geneva begins a period of flight to Môtiers, to England as David Hume's guest, the bitter quarrel that followed, and the return to France, where he wrote the Confessions and the Reveries and died at Ermenonville in 1778. The Durants then move across the continent, surveying Italy and its music, art and scholarship, Pombal's Portugal, Charles III's Spain and the young Goya, the Austria of Maria Theresa and Joseph II with Gluck, Haydn and Mozart, Frederick the Great's Prussia, Catherine the Great's Russia, the partitions of Poland, and Gustavus III's Sweden. A substantial English section covers the age of Samuel Johnson and Boswell, Reynolds and Gainsborough, Wesley's revival, Adam Smith, Burke, Gibbon and the early industrial changes. The German chapters follow Lessing, Herder, Kant's critical philosophy, and the young Goethe and Schiller of the Sturm und Drang. The volume ends in France under Louis XV and Louis XVI: Turgot's and Necker's attempts at reform, Marie Antoinette, the cost of intervention in the American war, the deaths of Voltaire and Rousseau, and the fiscal crisis that forced the summoning of the Estates-General. The authors present Rousseau as a man of genius, self-pity and moral seriousness whose books outran his conduct, and they credit him with reviving religious feeling, reshaping education and supplying a political vocabulary of popular sovereignty to the revolutionaries. They are sympathetic to the reforming monarchs while noting how much power they kept, and they treat the Old Regime as exhausted rather than simply wicked. As with the earlier volumes, this is a synthesis of printed sources for general readers; it should be used to place Rousseau, Johnson, Smith, Burke, Kant and Goethe in context before reading their own works.

Plot or Argument

• The life and books of Jean-Jacques

  A biographical study of Rousseau from Geneva to Paris, with analysis of the two Discourses, the Letter to d'Alembert, Julie, Émile and The Social Contract, and of the reasons those works provoked both enthusiasm and official condemnation.

• Exile, suspicion and the Confessions

  Rousseau's flight from arrest in 1762, his refuge at Môtiers, his stay in England with Hume and their public rupture, his return to France, the writing of the Confessions and Reveries, and his death in 1778.

• Southern Europe from 1715

  Italy's cities, music and scholarship, Portugal under Pombal after the Lisbon earthquake, and Spain under Charles III, with the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Iberian kingdoms and the beginnings of Goya.

• Enlightened monarchs of the north and east

  Maria Theresa and Joseph II in Austria, Frederick II in Prussia, Catherine II in Russia, the partitions of Poland, and Gustavus III in Sweden, together with the Viennese music of Gluck, Haydn and Mozart.

• Johnson's England

  London society and letters around Johnson and Boswell, painting from Reynolds to Gainsborough, the Methodist revival, the economic thought of Adam Smith, the politics of Burke and George III, and Gibbon's history.

• German awakening

  Lessing's drama and criticism, Herder's philosophy of history, Kant's critiques, and the storm and stress of the young Goethe and Schiller.

• The last years of the Old Regime in France

  The reigns of Louis XV after 1756 and Louis XVI, the reform ministries of Turgot and Necker, court, salons and Church on the eve of crisis, the American war's debt, and the road to the Estates-General of 1789.

Characters

• Will and Ariel Durant, authors and narrators

  Historians who treat Rousseau with a blend of admiration, exasperation and pity, and who write the book's surveys in their familiar epigrammatic voice.

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau, philosopher, novelist and autobiographer

  Genevan-born writer whose praise of feeling, nature and the general will makes him the volume's central figure.

• Thérèse Levasseur, Rousseau's companion

  The laundress who lived with Rousseau for decades and whose children by him were left at the Paris foundling hospital.

• David Hume, Scottish philosopher and historian

  Rousseau's host in England in 1766, whose kindness ended in a famous public quarrel.

• Frederick the Great, king of Prussia

  Soldier-king and patron of philosophes, one of the enlightened monarchs the volume surveys.

• Catherine the Great, empress of Russia

  German-born ruler who corresponded with Voltaire and Diderot while extending Russian power.

• Joseph II, Holy Roman Emperor

  Austrian reformer whose rapid decrees on Church and state provoked resistance across his lands.

• Samuel Johnson, English critic and lexicographer

  Moralist and conversationalist at the center of the English chapters, known through Boswell.

• Immanuel Kant, German philosopher

  Königsberg professor whose critiques the authors present as the great philosophical event of the 1780s.

• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German poet and novelist

  Author of Werther and leader of the storm and stress, whose mature career continues in the next volume.

• Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, king and queen of France

  Well-meaning but irresolute king and his Austrian queen, whose reign closes the volume on the eve of revolution.

Lessons

• A teacher of virtue who left his own children

  Rousseau wrote Émile, a treatise on raising a child according to nature, after sending his five infants to the foundling hospital. The Durants report both facts and Rousseau's later remorse. Students can ask how far a writer's conduct bears on the truth of his teaching, and what the Confessions reveal about self-examination without repentance before God.

  • What reasons did Rousseau give for abandoning his children, and how do the Durants judge them?
  • Does his conduct weaken the arguments of Émile, or only his authority to make them?
  • How does Augustine's confession of sin differ from Rousseau's confession of his feelings?

• Feeling against the philosophes

  The authors present Rousseau's break with Diderot, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists as a revolt of sentiment and conscience against a confident, often irreligious rationalism. His Savoyard vicar defends a religion of the heart without dogma. Students can trace both what this recovered (reverence, simplicity, the dignity of ordinary affections) and what it surrendered (revelation and the Church's authority).

  • Why did Rousseau's Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar offend both Catholic authorities and the philosophes?
  • Is a religion grounded in feeling stronger or weaker than one grounded in argument or revelation?
  • Which Romantic writers in later volumes show Rousseau's influence most clearly?

• Reform from the throne

  Frederick II, Catherine II, Joseph II, Charles III and Pombal each attempted reform by royal command. The Durants weigh their tolerance, legal codes and schools against their wars, partitions and police. The comparison helps students ask whether good laws imposed from above can form a people, and why Joseph II's haste failed where more patient reform held.

  • What did the enlightened monarchs borrow from the philosophes, and what did they refuse?
  • Why was the partition of Poland possible among rulers who praised reason and law?
  • Compare Joseph II's reforms with Turgot's in France. Why did both meet resistance?

• Why the Old Regime could not reform itself

  The closing chapters show Turgot and Necker trying to fix French finances against the resistance of parlements, court and tax-exempt orders, and debt mounting from the American war. The Durants present the Revolution as arising from a government that could neither tax nor change. Students should distinguish this fiscal and institutional account from the claim that Rousseau's books caused the Revolution.

  • What reforms did Turgot propose, and who opposed them?
  • How much weight do the Durants give to ideas, and how much to money, in explaining 1789?
  • Was Louis XVI's weakness a personal failing or a structural problem?

Context

Published in 1967, when Will Durant was in his early eighties, the volume completed the authors' treatment of the eighteenth century and was followed by The Lessons of History (1968), a short reflection drawn from the whole series. Its Pulitzer Prize in 1968 recognized the series as much as the single book. The period it covers, from the Seven Years' War to 1789, saw enlightened absolutism, the British industrial beginnings and the German literary revival, and the volume reads all of them in the shadow of the coming revolution.

Composition

The volume reverses the usual chronological plan of the series: for France, England and Germany it starts at 1756, where The Age of Voltaire left off, while for Italy, Iberia, Austria, Russia, Poland and Scandinavia it reaches back to 1715 to fill regions the previous volume had passed over. The Rousseau biography relies heavily on his own Confessions and correspondence and on standard French biographies, and the authors acknowledge that Rousseau's account of himself must be read with caution.

Reception

The book was widely read and admired by general readers and won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. Specialists continued to treat the series as synthesis, and later scholarship on Rousseau, on enlightened absolutism and on the origins of the French Revolution (notably the revisionist debate over its social causes) has moved beyond several of its interpretations.

Comparisons

• Confessions

  The Durants' biography leans on the Confessions while warning against its self-justification; reading Rousseau's own account of the stolen ribbon, Madame de Warens and the foundling hospital shows how the historians weigh his testimony.

• The Social Contract

  The authors summarize the general will and civil religion and connect them to Jacobin politics; the treatise itself lets students decide whether that line of influence is fair to Rousseau's argument.

• Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

  The 1755 Discourse is the source of the natural-man argument that the Durants treat as Rousseau's first great provocation, and Voltaire's mocking reply to it is part of their story of the quarrel with the philosophes.

• The Life of Samuel Johnson

  Boswell is the main witness behind the book's English chapters; his record of Johnson's talk, including Johnson's low opinion of Rousseau, gives the English counterweight to French sensibility.

• The Wealth of Nations

  The authors treat Adam Smith's 1776 book as a turning point in economic thought; reading its chapters on the division of labor tests the summary and adds the Scottish moral philosopher's own voice.

• Reflections on the Revolution in France

  Burke appears in the volume as a parliamentary orator and defender of the American colonists; his Reflections, written in 1790, shows how he turned against the revolution that the book's last chapters approach.

• The Old Regime and the Revolution

  Tocqueville's 1856 study of centralization and the failure of reform under the monarchy offers a sharper analytical account of the same French decades the Durants narrate.

• The Age of Napoleon

  The next and final volume begins in 1789 and follows the Revolution that this book's last chapters anticipate, testing the authors' claims about Rousseau's influence on the revolutionaries.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• How the authors handle Rousseau's own testimony. Notice where they quote or paraphrase the Confessions and where they correct it from letters or other witnesses.
• The foundling hospital. Mark what Rousseau did with his children, the reasons he later offered, and the way the Durants set this beside the argument of Émile.
• The break with Hume in 1766. Follow the sequence of misunderstandings and ask whether the authors find either man at fault.
• The enlightened monarchs. For each of Frederick, Catherine and Joseph, list one reform the book praises and one action it condemns.
• The final French chapters. Note every cause of the Revolution the authors name, and sort them into ideas, money, institutions and persons.

Key terms and names

General will

Rousseau's term in The Social Contract for the common good as willed by the whole sovereign people, distinct from the sum of private interests.

State of nature

The hypothetical condition before society that Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality describes as solitary, peaceful and free of the vices bred by property and comparison.

Savoyard Vicar

The country priest in Book IV of Émile whose profession of faith rests religion on conscience and nature while setting aside revelation and dogma.

Enlightened absolutism

Rule by monarchs who kept unchecked power but justified reforms in law, religion and education by the ideas of the philosophes.

Physiocrats

French economists, including Quesnay and Turgot's circle, who held land the only true source of wealth and urged free trade in grain.

Sturm und Drang

The German literary movement of the 1770s, storm and stress, that exalted passion, genius and nature; the young Goethe and Schiller are its best-known writers.

Estates-General

The assembly of clergy, nobility and commons, unsummoned since 1614, whose convocation for 1789 ends the volume.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension Which two books did Rousseau publish in 1762, and why were they condemned?
2. Comprehension Why does the subtitle start the history of France, England and Germany in 1756 but the rest of Europe in 1715?
3. Comprehension What reforms did Turgot attempt as controller-general, and why was he dismissed?
4. Interpretation The Durants name the volume after Rousseau. What evidence do they give that his influence was greater than Voltaire's or Kant's?
5. Interpretation How do the authors account for the Methodist revival in England, and do they treat it as religion or as social history?
6. Interpretation In the authors' telling, did the Old Regime fall because of what it did or because of what it could not do?
7. Big Question Rousseau taught that humans are naturally good and corrupted by society. If that is false, what follows for education and politics, and if it is partly true, what part?

Faith Connections

• Jeremiah 17:9-10 (Scripture)

  The prophet's warning that the heart is deceitful above all things answers Rousseau's trust in the heart as a guide, and frames a discussion of the Savoyard Vicar's religion of conscience.

• Psalm 27:10 (Scripture)

  The psalmist's confidence that the Lord takes up the child whom father and mother forsake gives a scriptural lens on the foundlings of Paris, including Rousseau's own children.

• Augustine, Confessions (Church Fathers)

  Rousseau borrowed Augustine's title for a very different act: self-justification before readers rather than confession of sin before God, and students can compare how each writer narrates his own wrongdoing.

• Samuel Johnson, Rasselas (Great Conversation)

  Johnson's tale of a prince who leaves a happy valley in search of contentment offers a Christian moralist's skepticism about schemes of natural happiness, written in the same year as Candide and a few years before Émile.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Rousseau, more than any rationalist philosophe, changed the feeling of the late eighteenth century by exalting conscience, nature, sentiment and the sovereign people; across Europe reforming monarchs tried to apply enlightened ideas from above without surrendering power; England grew in wealth and letters through its own path; Germany found its literary and philosophical voice; and in France a monarchy unable to reform its finances or its institutions reached bankruptcy in 1789, so that Rousseau's language became available to a revolution with deeper fiscal and institutional causes.

Rhetorical device: biographical frame. By opening with Rousseau's life and ending with the convocation of the Estates-General, the authors make one man's career the frame for a continental survey, implying a link between his books and the revolution that the intervening chapters must justify.

Debate: Resolved: The Durants are right to make Rousseau rather than Voltaire the key to the generation before the French Revolution.

Writing Prompts

Essay: The Durants call Rousseau a genius whose life contradicted his teaching at several points. Choose one such point and argue whether the gap discredits the teaching, citing both the authors and Rousseau.

Comparison with The Life of Samuel Johnson: Set Boswell's portrait of Johnson beside the Durants' portrait of Rousseau and argue which man's way of facing his own faults is wiser, and why.

Medical Lens

The volume touches medical history through biography more than through a dedicated chapter. Rousseau's lifelong urinary complaint and his later conviction that a conspiracy surrounded him, especially after the quarrel with Hume, are discussed by the authors and by many later writers; any retrospective label, such as paranoia, is a reading of the evidence and not a diagnosis. Rousseau's mother died soon after his birth, which he describes as the first of his misfortunes. Samuel Johnson's melancholy, scrupulosity and fear of madness, as recorded by Boswell, enter the English chapters. Smallpox, which killed Louis XV in 1774, and the spreading practice of inoculation belong to the period's medical background. Mesmer's animal magnetism in Paris and the royal commission of 1784 that examined it are standard episodes of the 1780s and may be treated in the French chapters. Locators below are by subject and need checking against the printed text.

• Rousseau chapters, childhood and early years

  Rousseau's mother's death following his birth in Geneva, and the bladder ailment that troubled him through his life.

  Childbirth Maternal Physicians Doctors
• Rousseau chapters, exile and the quarrel with Hume (1762-1770)

  Rousseau's growing belief in a plot against him, which the authors and later commentators have read in psychological terms.

  Madness Psychosis Psychiatry History
• English chapters on Samuel Johnson

  Johnson's recurrent melancholy, physical tics and dread of losing his reason, known chiefly through Boswell.

  Melancholia Depression Hypochondria
• French chapters on Louis XV's last years and the 1780s

  Louis XV's death from smallpox in 1774, and the vogue for magnetic cures in Paris before the Revolution.

  Plague Epidemic Quackery Charlatans

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation that might have taken place in London in 1766 between Rousseau and Samuel Johnson, each defending his idea of how a child should be brought up.

• Essay

  The Durants argue that Rousseau did more than any other writer to shape the mood of the Revolution. Using their account and one of Rousseau's works, argue whether that influence was mainly political, religious or emotional.

• Classroom

  Assign each student one of the reforming monarchs in the volume and hold a council in which each defends one reform he or she imposed and answers for one war or partition.

• Fiction

  Tell the story of a Viennese copyist who works for both Gluck and the young Mozart, drawing on the book's chapters on music in Maria Theresa's Austria.

Further Reading

• Jean-Jacques Rousseau (3 vols.), Maurice Cranston

• Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• Émile, or On Education, Jean-Jacques Rousseau

• The Old Regime and the Revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville

• The Coming of the French Revolution, Georges Lefebvre

• The Lessons of History, Will and Ariel Durant

  The Durants' 1968 summary reflections drawn from the series.