Disclaimer: None of what I am about to say is true.

One thing that struck me about Rousseau’s second discourse, and indeed what has struck me previously about other philosophic writings of the same era, is the inclusion of a paragraph to cover his back from religious criticism. This is what I refer to as his ‘disclaimer’. In the Second Discourse it falls at the end of the Preface:

‘The Inquiries that may be pursued regarding this subject ought not to be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasonings; better suited to elucidate the Nature of things than to show their genuine origin, and comparable to those out Physicists daily make regarding the formation of the World. Religion commands us to believe that since God himself drew Men out of the state of Nature immediately after creation, they are unequal because he wanted them to be so; but it does not forbid us to frame conjectures based solely on the nature of man and the beings that surround him, about what Mankind might have become if it had remained abandoned to itself’

It seems strange that Rousseau should include such a paragraph and then go on to write a whole discourse on the origins of human society that does not include Christian doctrine. It appears to be there for one of two reasons, either to escape religious persecution or to settle his own conscience. Rousseau professed to be a Calvinist, so it is possible that the latter was true. However modern scholars have described him as a ‘deist’, believing in God but not believing in Christian practices. Thus it seems the former is more likely, especially when the context of his writing and the frequency with which other authors were persecuted for their anti-religious beliefs are taken into account.

By placing his dicplaimer at the beginning of his Discourse Rousseau aims to ensure that his readers approach the text with the mind-set that it is purely theoretical. Perhaps this worked on Rousseau’s contemporaries, but personally I found his thought hard to maintain. It is impossible for me to believe that Rousseau did not believe what he wrote in the body of his Discourse at least to a small extent, as why would he bother reasoning his way through the complex origins of society if he thought that God created it. Furthermore, Rousseau’s claim in the quote above that the foundations of society he traces in the discourse are not their ‘genuine origin’ would completely undermine the purpose of the Discourse if we believe it to be true. Rousseau states the purpose of his discourse to be a search back to the origins of human inequality, in order to properly understand how civilization should be conducted. In the Discourse man departs from the state of Nature when the population becomes too large for the land to sustain, we invest in the land in the form of agriculture and acquire it as our property. If he did not believe this to be the ‘genuine origin’ of human society, it cannot shed any light on the proper order of government in the modern day. When he outright states that the foundation of the discourse is merely theory, Rousseau undermines the credibility of his discourse and removes any usefulness it might have. In fact, if he truly believed God took humans out of the state of nature and instituted society, he might as well have not written the discourse. The fact he did write it suggests to me that he did not believe his disclaimer, and included it only to cover his back from persecution.

Throughout his Discourse it is notable that Rousseau omits almost all religious beliefs. Although some parallels could be drawn between man in his natural state and Adam and Eve’s existence in the Garden of Eden, Rousseau pays no heed to the Christian teachings of the fall of man, and neither to his needing redemption through divine grace. What is more, he directly counters the doctrine of original sin by writing that in the state of nature man had no concept of morals, and thus was inherently good, or at least inherently not-bad. This belief may have been influenced by Rousseau’s deism, humans are created good because God is good, but is nonetheless contrary to his professed Calvinistic religiosity. A similar stance can be seen in his Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Vicar, in which he uses the speech of a priest to claim that there is no original sin in man.

There is even a nod towards the idea that man may not have been made in the perfect image of God;

‘I shall not examine whether, as Aristotle thinks, his elongated nails were at first hooked claws, whether he was hairy as a bear, and whether, walking on all fours, his gaze directed to the Earth and confined to a horizon of but a few paces’

By claiming that he ‘shall not examine’ the topic, and by citing Aristotle as the source of the ideas, Rousseau is able to place early ideas of evolution into the minds of his readers without claiming any ownership of the beliefs himself. Another careful side-step away from accusation, it seems.

When it comes to politics, Rousseau avoids the concept of divine rights of the monarchy, preferring instead his theory of a Social Contract, under which parties agree to dominate and be dominated. It is here that Rousseau mentions religion and the function it might play in society, which to him is strictly political.

‘Human Government needed a more solid base than reason alone, and how necessary for public repose it was that the divine will intervene to give to Sovereign authority a sacred and inviolable character which might deprive the subjects of the fatal right to dispose of it.’

The sudden intervention of divine will stands out in stark contrast to the lack of divine intervention throughout the rest of the development of human society. Rousseau’s choice to mention religion here suggests that he believes it performs a political function, however his claim that divine will ‘intervened’ seems like an attempt to veil his beliefs that institutional religions were created by man. He goes on to say that ‘If Religion had performed only this good for men, it would be enough for them to all have to cherish and adopt it’, furthering the idea that he believes institutional religion is important, but not divine. If this were to be the case, the church would have less grounding for its influence, and the king would have a far weaker claim to rule.

So did people buy Rousseau’s disclaimer? Did his contemporaries regard his one-paragraph claim that God created the world as adequate to excuse the power of his arguments against Christian doctrines? It seems for a small amount of time, yes. Rousseau did get in trouble for his writings, but this was not until after the Publication of Emile, or on Education in 1762, whereas his Discourse on the Origins was written in 1754. After Emile and A Profession of Faith of a Savoyard Priest were marked as anti-religious, so it followed that his previous works were found to be also. His books were banned, burnt and he was forced to flee to Switzerland under fear of arrest. Sorry, Rousseau you were smart, but not smart enough. But did Rousseau believe his own disclaimers? I do not see how this can be the case. Although he claimed to be a Calvinist, the amount of anti-established religious ideas he included in his works suggest that he cannot have been devout. Under the threat of banishment and even death, it seems that it was a cultural impetus that required him to undermine his argument and make claims he did not necessarily believe. However here comes my…

DISCLAIMER: One of frustrating things about history is that we can never be sure. We can never know what Rousseau believed, as we are not Rousseau. We cannot outright state that he was an anti-establishment deist because we can never know which aspects of his writing he believed and which he did not. However what we can be sure of is that Rousseau was prepared to challenge established religion through his writings, which suggests he at least recognised the importance of secular philosophy enough to risk his life publishing them.