The Philosophy Club: Rousseau

In my ongoing series with Derek Guy, going chapter by chapter through The Rise Of Fashion https://www.abebooks.com/9780816643936/Rise-Fashion-Reader-Purdy-Daniel-0816643938/plp?ref_=ps_ggl_17730880232&cm_mmc=ggl-_-US_Shopp_Trade_10to20-_-product_id=-_-keyword=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19153802837&gbraid=0AAAAAD3Y6gtDuA-soLx7kQOGxDo0cmN0e&gclid=CjwKCAjwgJHXBhBGEiwAHohJq2iHp-kDJiy8VoZgMcZSsI5tadtddTfDgOTCtgZ9twx_edaQL5fyEhoCKpUQAvD_BwE, we get to philosophy's original rebel without a cause: Jean Jacques Rousseau. To listen to full episodes of The Philosophy Club with no ads on the pod player of your choice, become a paying subscriber and head to https://articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Avery Trufelman?

  Man, I don't know about you, I really don't like this guy. I really. And it was so funny because it was right after we read Voltaire. And I was like, oh, it'll be so interesting to see his adversary in like Team Voltaire. Team Voltaire all the way. I really like Voltaire. I really do not like this guy. Do you feel the same?

• 0:15Speaker 01

  The funny thing is, is when I was young, I had a few years where I was really interested in anarchism and anarchist philosophy. I read like Bakunin and Emma Goldman, Noam Chomsky.

• 0:25Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 0:25Speaker 01

  And that was like stretched over a period of time, but I fairly quickly became a statist, a person who believes in the power of the state to do good. And Rousseau, when you read him, he is in some ways a precursor to this idea of anarchism, that society is bad in some way. I mean, if we situate him into the texts we've read so far, many of the texts that we've been reading are basically people who were pro-enlightenment. They thought that it was better to form a more rational society. Science was good, the arts were good. And Rousseau was a skeptic. So he's an important counterweight in that discourse. I think he's principally known for two things, even for people who have never read Rousseau.

• 1:10Speaker 01

  He's known for the social contract in which he writes, "Man is born free and everywhere he's in chains." And then he's also known for the idea of the noble savage.

• 1:19Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20Speaker 01

  I think if you just know those two lines, noble savage and man is born free and everywhere he's in chains, that's basically Rousseau, the idea that man was more pure, more free, more virtuous. I don't know if virtuous is really the right word because there are parts of-

• 1:36Avery Trufelman?

  Right, we can get into this. He talks about like goodness versus virtue.

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:40Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah. More good, the noble savage was more good.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  Yes. He thinks that was a better way of living. I don't think he actually believes that the framework he set up ever really existed. He's just doing a mental exercise.

• 1:54Avery Trufelman?

  But it's interesting, like in the same way that you said he's the foundation for so many anarchist thinkers, Bertrand Russell also said that Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau. Like, he's the wellspring from which many different philosophies come.

• 2:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. And reading the first discourse, which I hadn't read before this pod, that was his first work that caught a lot of attention. And I think if you read it and you're hoping to get some scholarship from it or some historical research, you'll be very disappointed. It rests on very shaky scholarship.

• 2:26Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 2:26Speaker 01

  And so that was frustrating for me to work through.

• 2:30Avery Trufelman?

  Yes. But in terms of like what he actually thinks, I had this visceral like nuh-uh, no reaction to it. He just struck me as so arrogant, in a way. Like Voltaire is obviously arrogant, but he's like, I know it. I'm a snob, you know? I'm always more partial to people who wear their faults up front rather than Rousseau, who put himself on a pedestal of his own ideals, but like no one can live up to that. I don't know. I just, I didn't-

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Well, Rousseau definitely comes off as, I mean, a bit of the irony is that so much of his writing is largely about the trappings of pride, of comparison, and of feeling inadequate to other people. But the little bit I read of his private life, he actually seemed like a very prideful person, someone who was intensely jealous of his contemporaries.

• 3:23Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 3:23Speaker 01

  He was intensely jealous of Voltaire. There was a jab at him in the first discourse, saying that you're not this noble aristocrat that you try to pretend yourself to be. And so I think when you read a bit of his, of his actual life, he's actually full of the same pride that he puts down. I mean, not to, you know, that doesn't mean that his arguments aren't meaningful.

• 3:42Avery Trufelman?

  Meaningful enough. After the break, Derek Guy and I will get into who Jean-Jacques Rousseau was and what he believed. A little quick pause, though.

• 3:54Speaker 02

  Hey there, it's Robyn from PRX. If you're a longtime listener of Radiotopia, you may know that we had a podcast that ran from 2016 to 2020, discussing every episode of the show The West Wing. Well, I'm excited to tell you The West Wing Weekly is back. Joshua Molina, who starred on The West Wing as Will Bailey, and Rishi Kesh Hirway, creator and host of Song Exploder, have reunited to discuss the hit Netflix political thriller, The Diplomat. Just as they did in their original run, they're discussing each episode of the series in sequence, joined by special guests from the show and from the real world of diplomacy. Rishi and Josh will be wrapping up the first season with a special live taping at Union Chapel in London on November 14th. Subscribe now to The West Wing Weekly wherever you get your podcasts.

• 4:40Avery Trufelman?

  The glasses are green, the color of sea glass, you could say. They are exactly my husband's prescription. They have blue light blocking technology for his computer time, and they were $30. I got them at Zenni. Zenni is an online eyewear shop with so many stylish glasses, prescription and sunglasses, and customizable lens options, all starting at under $30. And Zenni's virtual try-on lets you preview how a frame is gonna look on you before you buy it, so it doesn't feel like a shot in the dark. I feel like most people trying on glasses take pictures of themselves anyway to see how it'll look from the outside. Zenni's tool will help you figure out the right pair effortlessly. I just got my husband these Zenni glasses, and then lo and behold, they have become his everyday pair, arguably his signature. Give the gift of Zenni this holiday season.

• 5:25Avery Trufelman?

  Glasses, sunglasses, whatever they need. Go to zenni.com/podcast and use code PODCAST15 for 15% off, plus free shipping over $65. Styles sell out, so don't wait. That's Z-E-N-N-I.com/podcast, promo code PODCAST15. zenni.com/podcast, code PODCAST15. I always thought that brands like Prada and Louis Vuitton and Tiffany were way beyond my pay grade, but they're actually not, because at The RealReal, you can get all of these name brands that you know and niche designers you don't yet at up to 90% off retail. And The RealReal is so serious about authentication, you know that every single thing is guaranteed

• 6:09Avery Trufelman?

  authentic. The RealReal is the most trusted name in authenticated luxury resale. With over 10,000 new arrivals daily, no one does resale like The RealReal. And now, get $25 off your first purchase when you go to therealreal.com articals. That's therealreal.com articals to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at therealreal.com articals. Okay, can I do, can I do the biography thing?

• 6:40Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 6:41Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, so Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva in 1712. And this is really important because Geneva wasn't part of Switzerland yet. It was like the city-state. He was part of this micro-state. And I think he was raised to think of it as a modern Rome. And so I think this formed a lot of his ideas of what it means to be a citizen. And so he has this fond memory as a boy of watching the militia end their practice, or whatever, what do they call it, military drills? They were ending their drills. And people came out and like drank and sang together. And his father took him in his arms and was like, "You must love your country, son." His father was a watchmaker. His mother died shortly after his death, and I think he always felt guilty about that for the rest of his life.

• 7:26Avery Trufelman?

  And then, according to Harvard professor Leo Damrosch, his father was way more interested in dancing and drinking than actually watchmaking. And he got in trouble for insulting someone who was of higher status than him. And so he left, he was kicked out of Geneva when Rousseau was 10. And so he was sent to board with a clergyman. And something that's really important here is that Rousseau, he really prided himself on this. He was self-taught. He didn't go to school. He was an autodidact. He just read a lot. And at 16, he ran away from Geneva, went to a part of Europe that would become France. And he lived with this

• 8:07Avery Trufelman?

  woman who kind of took him in and took care of him. And he started calling her mama. And she was older, she was 30. She was a mother figure to him and kind of-

• 8:17Speaker 01

  This is where it gets weird.

• 8:18Avery Trufelman?

  This is where it gets weird, because one day she puts the moves on him and tries to seduce him, and he's really shocked. Then they, they do just kind of live as lovers for a little while until she takes up with someone else and then he leaves. But the whole thing is that he, he kept a number of different jobs. He was sort of lost. He was a tutor in Lyon. He tried to become a musician in Paris. He was a secretary to the French ambassador of Venice. Then he returned to Paris. And he was like a secretary and a research assistant for a well-to-do family. And then, in 1749, when he was 37 years old, never too late to start, writers, he opened up a newspaper and saw that there was an essay prize that was hosted by the Academy of Dejean. And anyone could enter

• 9:02Avery Trufelman?

  this competition by writing an essay on the subject, "Have the arts improved morality?"

• 9:07Speaker 01

  The science and the arts.

• 9:08Avery Trufelman?

  The science and the arts. Yes. The question was, "Has the re-establishment of the sciences and the arts contributed to purify morals?"

• 9:17Speaker 01

  Can we, can we clarify just for a second?

• 9:19Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Sciences here means general knowledge. And arts here means skills, like tailoring would be an art. And the study of engineering or typography would be considered part of the sciences. As knowledge has increased and our skills increased, have we become a more virtuous society, essentially?

• 9:37Avery Trufelman?

  And as the Harvard professor Leo Damrosch says, "It was a trite question, practically taking for granted an affirmative answer. But when Rousseau suddenly saw a new way of arguing in the negative, he, quote, 'beheld a different universe and became a different man.'" But this really was just like, what if I said the opposite? And he wrote, it almost reminds me of like Siddhartha sitting under the tree achieving enlightenment. He does sort of, Rousseau achieves a sort of enlightenment. What does he say? He says, "Suddenly I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights. A crowd of vivid ideas suddenly appeared in front of me with a force and confusion that threw me into an indescribable disturbance.

• 10:19Avery Trufelman?

  I felt my head go giddy as if I was drunk." And then he kind of like writes this thing in a daze. And he wrote this essay from the imaginary perspective of the ancient Spartan looking at society today, saying, "What have you done? Luxury is bad. Social conventions are bad. Intellectual fashions are bad." And so he was saying like, no, art and science has not made us better.

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:42Avery Trufelman?

  And after he won the Dejean Prize, and he got so much renown, then, and I think this is what's important- Then he wanted to bring his life in line to these principles that he outlined. And so he gives up his job as a secretary for this rich family. He got a menial job copying music. He said, "I put down my sword and sold my watch, saying to myself, 'Heaven be praised, I will no longer need to know the time.'" And then he said, "The reason for all this is to have the right to despise the rich. You must be economical and prudent yourself, so as to never need wealth." So he wanted his work to have the moral authority and he wanted to put his whole back into it. He really wanted to live this way.

• 11:26Avery Trufelman?

  And then, you know, he wrote some really pivotal texts. Like, I only knew of Rousseau before because I did, actually, the very first episode of Articles of Interest was about children's clothes. And Rousseau came up over and over again because his book, Emile, really changed modern child rearing, this idea that the child needs to be free to explore and learn and discover themselves. I mean, we used to put kids in corsets, essentially. We used to restrict them to very strict schooling and learning. And this sort of free childhood that we value today, he created that. He created so much of the modern world. However, his dismantling happened when it was revealed. Do you know this part?

• 12:04Speaker 01

  No.

• 12:04Avery Trufelman?

  Okay. He had this pretty deep, dark secret that he and his partner, Therese, who was a servant and his true love, they had five children together. And he gave them, he dropped them all off at the orphanage.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:25Avery Trufelman?

  Every single one of them. And...

• 12:29Speaker 01

  Bit of a bad guy.

• 12:30Avery Trufelman?

  Like, really, really bad. I mean, granted, this practice was not uncommon in that period, as many of a third of the children born in Paris were dropped off at the orphanage. But this really does not account for all of his children being abandoned. It's kind of insinuated that he did this against his partner's wishes. And it's wild because when interrog-- he gave really flimsy excuses. When interrogated about this, he was like, "I have no money. I don't want the children to grow up in poverty." And it's like, isn't that your whole thing? And he also was like, "I'm not gonna live very long." He had like, a urethra condition where he was like, constantly getting kidney infections and sex was very painful for him. And he has a lot of excuses.

• 13:14Avery Trufelman?

  But to give up all five of your children to the orphanage and keep it a secret for 20 years and paint yourself as this authority on child rearing and authority on the goodness of humanity and loving humanity, that's bonkers. And so it was revealed, basically because he told a priest and then the priest gave a sermon condemning him. And then Voltaire really ran with it. Voltaire was like, "Ha, ha, ha," and published a lot about this. And he was essentially canceled. Like, it was a very modern sort of cancellation process. And he wrote all these books trying to defend himself. They were all sort of flimsy. And then he was killed by a Great Dane.

• 13:58Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, a collision in the street with a galloping Great Dane resulted in a concussion and lasting brain damage. And he died of a cerebral hemorrhage in 1778 at the age of 66.

• 14:09Speaker 01

  I mean, when you read his life, he just does not sound like a very good person, morally and just in terms of temperament. So there was a time when all, many of the Enlightenment thinkers were trying to recruit him to be another cheerleader for Enlightenment values and progress. He obviously failed on that mission. He explicitly said that "the arts and sciences are to our detriment and this is not good." But then he also insulted, I believe, the Church.

• 14:37Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  And so he may have believed in God, but he was not a fan of the institution of the Church. And so by insulting the Enlightenment thinkers and then also the Church, he basically had no friends and was driven into exile. By all kind of accounts and by all measures, he seemed just not a very pleasant person, essentially.

• 14:57Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah. Voltaire called him "a charlatan, a hypocrite, and a criminal." Dr. Johnson, presumably Samuel Johnson, thought him "one of the worst men, a rascal who ought to be hunted out of society, as he has been." Immanuel Kant loved him. Immanuel Kant called him "a Newton of the moral order." He's just, he's so polarizing.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think of him as secularizing the idea of Abiniv and the fall of man through knowledge. I think of him as, you know, in the Garden of Eden, man was able to just pluck food from the trees. And he essentially had, had no problems. And all of a sudden, when he ate the fruit of knowledge, he all of a sudden became aware of all of these things, the idea of shame, covering yourself, clothing. Rousseau has the same views, essentially, but he secularizes. He, he makes it in terms of the savage man versus the civilized man. I mean, savage nowadays holds obviously negative connotations, but he sees him as like, a noble character, the noble savage. And he has a passage of how there are essentially no problems in the savage man.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  There are no problems and problems only arise once you start to reason. He believes that in our natural state, if you were to put man in his original condition, that person would be driven by two things. One is self-love.

• 16:14Avery Trufelman?

  Self-interest, yeah.

• 16:15Speaker 01

  Self-interest, but in a good way. The type of self-love that compels you to seek shelter when it's raining, to seek food when you're hungry, to run away if a predator is chasing you. He thinks that that is a good form of self-love and it's a natural form of self-love. And then that person would also be motivated by pity. But he says that animals exhibit pity and therefore it's reasonable to think that humans then will exhibit pity.

• 16:39Avery Trufelman?

  While, while you're on the topic of, you know, the difference between humans and animals, a point that Rousseau raises is that man is the only animal that can make him self-ill from thinking. You know, like, you can get stressed out and you can really harm yourself.

• 16:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:57Avery Trufelman?

  And I was like, "Oh, that's actually a really good point." It was like, too much thinking is bad for you. You know, this is, this is a good example of how it corrupts our morality and it actually physically hurts us.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  Yes. Not only once you start to reason, but also when people start to gather. So, so he thinks of the natural man as going through the wild alone, picking food off of the ground. And then every once in a while, he would bump into another human being. And they would figure out, "Oh, well, sometimes if we cooperate, we can solve problems. We can reach fruit that's a little bit higher up on the branch." Or we could, I don't know, fend off an animal or something. And as more and more people start to gather, then society starts to form and people start comparing themselves to other people. Is that person more handsome than me? Is that person more agile than me? Is that person stronger than me? Does that person have more esteem?

• 17:54Speaker 01

  And once the idea of esteem and status comes in, all of the corrupt behaviors begin. There's jealousy, there's rampant lying all over the place. People lie about their abilities, people boast, people talk badly of other people to lower their esteem. And that's where all the corruption begins. And so Rousseau's premise is that people are essentially pretty good. And if, in their original state, in the kind of wild state, they are very, very good. Because Rousseau is setting up that the world is like, abundant and you can just pick food off of the ground. I don't think that's actually how the world is.

• 18:32Avery Trufelman?

  No.

• 18:33Speaker 01

  So I did not agree with any of it. But there's a particular section that I thought was amusing, where he says that sentimental love is only a problem in modern society. That back in the original savage man, there is no idea of sentimental love. And he attributes sentimental love to women, saying that women have the idea of sentimental love, like, like, "Oh, I found my soulmate."

• 18:55Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  "You're my one and true love." And he says, "This is a womanly behavior," which is, again, that Garden of Eden of like, women seduce this man to do something bad. He thinks that only women have sentimental love and men, in their original state, only care about the physical act of sex. And so...

• 19:15Avery Trufelman?

  Speaking from all of his urethra problems, honestly. No one should take anything this man says about sex seriously.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. He sets this up because he says, "In this original state, if we don't have sentimental love, if we are essentially just satisfied by the physical act of sex, you can have sex with any woman and then you would never feel jealousy, you would never feel envy, you would never feel spurned, you'd never feel hurt." I don't think that's true. I think sentimental love is pretty natural.

• 19:47Avery Trufelman?

  Wouldn't people have natural sentimental love for, I don't know, their five children that they had? Isn't that something that people kind of do?

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Right. Right. I suppose a man like that would not recognize the naturalness of sentimental love. But he thinks it's only something that comes out of society and therefore this kind of corruption in our behavior. Since I don't buy his view of human nature, then I don't necessarily buy all of his entire arguments.

• 20:14Avery Trufelman?

  It seems like he thinks about Sparta a lot more than he thinks about the Garden of Eden.

• 20:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:20Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 20:21Avery Trufelman?

  That's the thing. He's not just talking about Edenic man and nature. He's imagining a past society, Sparta, and saying like, "This was better. Everyone was happier in Sparta." Which is insane.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Can we, can we, can we just, what is his core argument?

• 20:39Avery Trufelman?

  Okay, okay. So his core argument is that overthinking things, society, um, actually, the best way to put it is his definition of like, goodness and virtue. That goodness is something we're all born with. We are fundamentally good, but virtue is something that comes in society and we're expected to sort of earn points with each other and we have to put on this mask with each other and conform and we can't really be free in our souls to, to be who we, we want. I mean, he doesn't put it this way, but it seems like he's saying society is kind of emasculating.

• 21:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I think that's a very good way of putting it. Emasculating is a very good way of putting it. Because he frames virtue in terms of strength, in terms of austerity, independence, endurance, courage. He thinks that is virtue. And everything else, enjoying music, enjoying the arts, all of that is not only corrosive to your soul, but it's also a waste of time. Because all the time that you spent reading about philosophy and learning about art history and listening to this podcast, for example, on, on fashion and philosophy...

• 21:52Speaker 01

  Instead of listening to this podcast on fashion and philosophy, you should be going out and doing pushups and doing, I don't know, pull-ups from a tree. I mean, like, I don't know.

• 22:03Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah, he should be enjoying nature. I mean, he talks all about observing the singing of a nightingale. He said, "Our musicians have imitated its highs and lows, its runs and capricios, but what characterize it? Its prolonged piping, its sobs, its sighing sounds that go to the soul and pervade its song. That is what no one has been able to capture." He's like, "Nature is pure and all art is poor artifice."

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Right. So if Mandeville thought that we naturally had corrupt behavior, we were naturally full of vice, Mandeville thought that those vices, when correctly channeled, could produce a thriving, prosperous, strong society. And Voltaire thought that certain kind of virtues could also produce a very good society. Rousseau thought that the original state of nature, the kind of more animalistic state of being was more, was better. And that, once you go into society, you then learn all of these vices. It's a very weird argument because he sets up historical examples. He also says, you know, "This is also just a thought experiment. It doesn't really matter if these things actually existed.

• 23:10Speaker 01

  So it's not quite clear if we're treating the historical examples seriously or not."

• 23:15Avery Trufelman?

  That's what I mean. It's just like something he did to win a contest. He didn't really think about it.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yes. He says himself that this was his first essay that got any real fame, and he also feels it's his worst piece of work.

• 23:28Avery Trufelman?

  That makes sense. He knows what he did. Yeah.

• 23:30Speaker 01

  If you view it as a piece of rhetoric, it is a very interesting piece of rhetoric. If you view it as scholarship, it's not that great. All of the scholarship that he does, if you can even call it that, one, it's secondhand. It all kind of depends on other people's work, essentially.

• 23:45Avery Trufelman?

  Boy, what's wrong with that? Isn't that just scholarship? What's wrong with him using other sources?

• 23:50Speaker 01

  There's nothing necessarily wrong with relying on secondhand scholarship, but the actual scholarship is not real historical scholarship. His picture of Germans comes from Tactis Germania. Tactis Germania was setting up a kind of moralized view of Germany to contrast against what the author thought was a kind of corruption of Rome. His picture of Rome comes from early Roman scholars who were essentially trying to romanticize Rome. To give another example, Sparta and Athens. So he sees Sparta as a really great society.

• 24:21Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 24:21Speaker 01

  Everything that we were talking about earlier, this kind of like warrior class. They dedicate all their time to strength and Athens.

• 24:28Avery Trufelman?

  And they protect themselves, you know, they don't rely, there's not like a leisure class, you know, everybody, everybody chips in in this way.

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Yes. And so to the strong sense of citizenship. Everyone basically exercises all the time, engages in military training to defend Sparta. And then Athens, he contrasts that to Athens, which is a very learned society. People are paying attention to the arts and music and philosophy and all that. And he says, "That is a much worse society because people are, do not have this sense of nationhood. They're not spending their time exercising and all these things." But what he misses is that Sparta, in reality, is not this completely virtuous society because it depends on this whole system of helots, which are people that have been conquered by Spartans and then forced, at the point of a blade, to till the soil and give a portion of their harvest to the Spartans.

• 25:20Speaker 01

  So the Spartans never had to do things like farming and they could just take the food from helots and then train all the time. And I bring that up partly because there's a really beautiful line in the first discourse. Can I read it to you?

• 25:34Avery Trufelman?

  Please.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  "While government and law take care of the security and well-being of men in groups, the sciences, letters, and the arts spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh men down and make them love their servitude by turning them into what we call civilized people." So that's-

• 25:52Avery Trufelman?

  I underlined that too.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Beautiful line, "Spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh men down." His idea is essentially, once we enter into society, we all naturally see why we like society. I can speak to you right now through the power of telecommunications. We're recording this podcast. There's all this technology.

• 26:13Avery Trufelman?

  We're wearing cool clothes. Life is great.

• 26:15Speaker 01

  There's a light next to me. I have shelter. So if someone said, "Derek, just leave society," be like, "No way. Like, I have so many comforts. Like, this is actually pretty sweet."

• 26:24Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  He's saying that, one, you're a weak person to care about these comforts, but it's the desire for these comforts that then puts you in a state of subjugation, not only to a government of representatives, who sometimes are not voting in your interest, but also to go into a system of private property, which he also believes is the source of all inequality.

• 26:48Avery Trufelman?

  I think that is a way better, more viable argument than whatever the fuck he's saying. I'm willing to hear the argument, this like retroactive useless argument about like what should have happened in human evolution and the abolishment of private property into that. But like, what? Like, getting rid of society? What are you talking about?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:06Avery Trufelman?

  As Voltaire said to Rousseau, "Thank you for your new book Against the Human Race. You make one want to walk on all fours."

• 27:15Avery Trufelman?

  In Voltaire.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. So he says, you know, "Spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains which weigh men down." So in this line, I think of, when he's bringing up Sparta, I think, well, they had, we're not talking about figurative chains. We're talking about actual people who were essentially enslaved.

• 27:33Avery Trufelman?

  That is exactly what I said. Yes.

• 27:35Speaker 01

  Till fields.

• 27:36Avery Trufelman?

  Yes, exactly.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  So all of the societies that you described were not as virtuous as you claim.

• 27:44Avery Trufelman?

  Definitely. And also, yeah, I underlined that part of the throwing garlands of flowers over the iron chains. But also, it's so wild that in that same paragraph, he talks about how it makes us in love with our slavery.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:01Avery Trufelman?

  And he says, "Ye civilized nations cultivate and improve them, happy slaves." And it's like, my guy, you are living in a time of actual slavery. Like, you can look around and there are like people being sold at markets and you make this analogy? Not only is he ignoring the past and the reality of Sparta, he's ignoring the current, he is living in a time of open slavery.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:27Avery Trufelman?

  It is so bananas to be like, "We are not free."

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:32Avery Trufelman?

  Because of the arts. But we will get into the necessity of Rousseau's very insensitive, a little bit ridiculous argument after the break. I love to plan an outfit that'll really stun. And sometimes I want to take a risk and try out something new, but I don't really want to commit to buying it. But you can soft-launch an experimental new style with a rental, and it's never been easier than with Newly. Newly is a subscription clothing rental service that lets you pick six styles for $98 a month. I have so many weddings coming up this fall, and now I get to rent a new dress for all of them. Like, for this black tie wedding I have coming up, I am renting an Anasui velvet dress that's so beautiful. And would I ever wear it again?

• 29:16Avery Trufelman?

  No, but it doesn't matter. And they have extremely inclusive sizing with options for plus, petite, tall, and maternity. There are no late fees, damage fees, or fees to pause or cancel. And if you really like something, you can buy it at a great discount. Newly is a great value at $98 a month. But right now, you can get $28 off your first month when you sign up with code OFINTEREST. Just go to N-U-U-L-Y.com and enter the code OFINTEREST at signup to get $28 off your first month. Learn more at newly.com. That's newly with two U's. I always find that whenever I invite people over,

• 29:59Avery Trufelman?

  I suddenly realize all the things I need. Like, oh, I need an ice bucket, or a cake server, or a punchbowl. Don't wait until after the party to figure out what would have been useful. For all things hosting, Wayfair delivers high-quality, customer-trusted products for your home so you can host and celebrate without the stress. Wayfair has thousands of products across every style and budget. Whether you're upgrading an appliance or transforming your home in a new style, or just really getting into the holiday spirit, there's something for everyone. Products are hand-vetted by product specialists using a 10-point quality inspection system, and there are more than 20 million verified five-star reviews from users, featuring customer photos and honest reviews,

• 30:43Avery Trufelman?

  so you can truly find what's the right fit for your home. Wayfair has literally everything imaginable. I recently purchased a cocktail shaker from Alessi, which is so chic and stylish. When refreshing your home this holiday season, Wayfair delivers exactly what you need. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.

• 31:09Avery Trufelman?

  I first heard about The RealReal, I think, a decade ago. Suddenly, it was this place where you could get Prada pumps and Burberry jackets and Gucci handbags for a song. Like, I recently got this vintage 90s Yoji Emamoto skirt that I wear constantly. The RealReal is adding thousands and thousands of items every single day, so it really does still feel like a treasure hunt, even though it has all the convenience of shopping online. And I periodically use it to clean out my closet. They make it so easy. The RealReal sends a representative to my tiny apartment to pick up my things and assess them for me, and then it's done. Money just appears in my account. The RealReal is the most trusted name in authenticated luxury resale.

• 31:51Avery Trufelman?

  With over 10,000 new arrivals daily, no one does resale like The RealReal. And now, get $25 off your first purchase when you go to the realreal.com articals. That's the realreal.com articals to get your $25 off. Start shopping now at the realreal.com articals.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  There are a couple of problems, not only with his treatment of history, but also his selection bias, because the original idea that he's proposing is that unsophisticated society is good and a sophisticated society is bad. But actually, one, you relied on a bunch of secondhand research, which may not be historically accurate, but also you can think of plenty of unsophisticated societies that are very brutal, that have-

• 32:41Avery Trufelman?

  Oh, totally.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  Rape is common, slavery is common.

• 32:45Avery Trufelman?

  Disease. That's another thing. He was really not into doctors. He had his own ideas of health, whatever.

• 32:51Speaker 01

  And then he has also this idea that these kind of more primitive societies, everyone cares about the homeland and is basically exercising all the time to-

• 33:00Avery Trufelman?

  Right, he's thinking about Geneva. Yeah.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. He values community to some extent because he values the idea of the nation.

• 33:06Avery Trufelman?

  Right. He loves the community of Geneva, yes.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yes, yes. So he does like community to some extent.

• 33:14Avery Trufelman?

  I saw a really great, I forget if it was like a tweet or on Substack or something, but someone said, "Being annoyed is the price of community." And it's true. Like, that's being in community, you know? Like, getting annoyed at people. There's no such thing as a community where it all works perfectly and harmoniously, and it feels like he wants the community feeling without all the infighting and bickering and the drama, which-

• 33:39Speaker 01

  And the status games and all that.

• 33:40Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  There's this one particular quote that I think essentially sums up his entire argument. Can I read you the quote?

• 33:46Avery Trufelman?

  Please.

• 33:47Speaker 01

  "As long as men were content with rustic huts, as long as they limited themselves to stitching their clothes of skin with thorns or fish bones, to deck themselves with feathers and shells, to paint their bodies various colors, in a word, as long as they did not occupy themselves except with tasks which one man could do by himself and to arts which did not require the coordination of several hands, they lived free, healthy, good, and happy lives. But from the moment a man had need of someone else's help, equality disappeared, property was introduced, work became necessary, and the vast forests were changed into smiling fields." I think that essentially sums up his entire worldview of both clothes, of fashion, and the degradation of man once they introduced themselves to society.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  I think that society that he describes, where people are stitching their clothes of skin with thorns or fish bones, deck themselves out with feathers and shells, and paint their bodies various colors, those were essentially markers of hierarchy and status.

• 34:45Avery Trufelman?

  Right.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  So a person who was able to wear the garment with fish bones, that person had domination over the other person, or they were allowed to have property, or they were allowed to have multiple women and nobody else could. Those are the forms of inequality and comparison that he says is bad. And I still think that back then, people still compared themselves, so.

• 35:08Avery Trufelman?

  I guess that is the thing about Rousseau, is, of course, he hates it. I mean, I hate it. It's easy to be like, "Yeah, Rousseau, we all hate the status jockeying and the games." But maybe we did need someone historically to come out and say it.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  I had a problem with his work because I didn't necessarily agree with his framing of virtues. I don't necessarily think that courage is necessarily better than literacy, or legal protections, or equal opportunities for all groups.

• 35:35Avery Trufelman?

  Right. And it should be clear that he didn't actually believe in equal opportunities for all groups. He hated women. He really believed their roles in the home. He really believed in a stratified society. He's not really a completely democratic guy.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, so when I was going through it and I was thinking of this podcast, I thought maybe the more useful thing is to think of, why was Rousseau important? And I think he was important principally because he was a counterweight to the Enlightenment thinkers of the time. This assumption that increasing knowledge and arts, or we can say, knowledge and skills, leads to a virtuous society. Rousseau was saying, not necessarily, just because you're more sophisticated doesn't necessarily mean that you're morally better. And you can have someone who presents themselves as very learned, very educated, very sophisticated, very cultured. They might know all of the classical musicians and artists, they know the Western canon, but they're morally bankrupt.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  And that person never helped the poor. And not only do they not help the poor, but they make justifications for not helping the poor, that their reasoning, their education allows them to create these elaborate excuses. You pass by a poor person, you say, "Oh, well, according to everything that I've learned, if I give this person a dollar, they can then go buy drugs, or I'm teaching them a bad lesson, they're not going to get a job," and, you know, capitalist reasoning.

• 37:01Avery Trufelman?

  Too much thinking overrides the goodness that you were probably born with.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 37:07Avery Trufelman?

  Your childlike goodness.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  That part, I will say, I don't completely buy. I don't believe that people in the state of nature that he created would necessarily be these good people. So the idea that he's a counterweight is that he's looking at people like Voltaire and saying that, once you become this kind of Voltaire person, all you're ever interested in is essentially one-upping other people. If you're a writer, you're jealous of the other writers that are near your skill level, and therefore, you talk badly about them, and then you work harder to create, you know, better writing, and therefore, you get more praise, and then that inspires other people to do better writing. He thinks that all of this is bad. This is, the self-love, this comparative self-love, both makes you unhappy, it makes you do pointless things.

• 37:53Speaker 01

  He thinks there's no real benefit to building this prosperous society because it just makes people justify the existence of society, and that this posturing of sophistication is actually just a sign that you're a weak person who spends all their time doing pointless things. And I think that is, my feeling is that is why Rousseau is important in this specific discourse, because I do think there is something to that. There is something to be said that, just because someone presents themselves as a gentleman, doesn't necessarily mean that they're morally good.

• 38:27Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 38:28Speaker 01

  They could be morally corrupt and actually just a kind of pitiful person.

• 38:31Avery Trufelman?

  I mean, I don't know. I feel like that's something that you definitely could have gotten from Mandeville and from Lord Chesterfield. You know, I feel like people were talking about the relationship of vice and virtue for a while now.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  I also think that this particular observation is not particularly hard to come by in 2026 because it's pretty much the dominance.

• 38:51Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah. Yeah. I see what you mean, though. If I'm feeling more charitable towards Rousseau, I do think you're right in kind of all the other philosophers we've read. It is very like, rah rah, progress, and we do need someone to sort of stop and question everything. Like, are we developing in the right way? Is this good? Should we maybe develop a different way? It's true, we do need someone making the big critiques. I just feel like Rousseau is sort of taking his machine gun to everything and being like, everything was better in the past. And there's this great story where Rousseau was at a friend's house, and he took a peach from the bottom of a pyramid of fruit, and then the whole thing came tumbling down.

• 39:33Avery Trufelman?

  And his friend said, "That's what you do with all of our systems. You pull down with a single touch, but who will build up what you pull down?" And this is a common critique of anyone who throws a stone at the big system, like, "Well, what are you going to do about it? Do you have ideas? Like, any ideas?"

• 39:50Speaker 01

  Well, I think it's important because Voltaire explicitly connects these things. Voltaire explicitly believes that free trade, greater liberty, and a society run on reason rather than superstitions or obscure terrorism or the Dark Ages, he thinks that all of these things are self-reinforcing and produce a better society. So he thinks that trade, knowledge, reason, all these things will make us more virtuous. And I think Rousseau is just saying that technological progress and wealth do not necessarily make for better people.

• 40:26Avery Trufelman?

  Yes.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  That you can have the United States build drones and then use those drones for bad aims, essentially.

• 40:34Avery Trufelman?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Speaker 01

  That is a reasonable statement, but I think the general critique that technology and wealth do not necessarily make for better people is reasonable. And that is essentially like, that's like the role of the Catholic Church, essentially, at this point, is often talking about, you can have very wealthy societies. You know, the Pope has been recently criticizing AI, saying that this is a very powerful technology, but we have to think morally, what does this make us as beings? Rousseau is doing that kind of thing, essentially, to remind everyone that technology and wealth are not necessarily linked to better citizens.

• 41:12Avery Trufelman?

  The question is, if we want to change society fundamentally, how should we all dress? Derek and I get into the role of fashion and take a detour into the so-called ugly clubs in the second half of our conversation. To listen to episodes of The Philosophy Club in full, ad-free, on the pod player of your choice, become a paying subscriber at articlesofinterest.substack.com/listen.