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Rousseau on Education, Freedom, and Judgment. Denise Schaeffer
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isbn 9780271064451
Автор произведения Denise Schaeffer
Жанр Философия
Издательство Ingram
In book I of Emile, however, Rousseau does not cover over the problem of origins but rather draws attention to the difficulties that inhere in his attempt to resolve it. For example, he draws attention to the problem of time. By raising the question of the proper age for a governor, Rousseau acknowledges that the wisdom that confers legitimacy can be developed only over time, but meanwhile time passes, conditions change, and it may be too late to begin anew. Wisdom lends legitimacy to rule but exacerbates inequality, while youthfulness creates the appearance of equality but limits the degree of wisdom that can be expected, and therefore undermines the legitimacy of any authority that is exercised. The younger the governor is, the less likely he is to have had any previous teaching experience. Rousseau tries to narrow the inevitable gap between the governor and the student by insisting that they be as close in age as possible. He acknowledges the paradoxical nature of this requirement, however, when he states that the governor should be “as young as a wise man can be” (E, 51; 4:265). With this comment, along with his remark that it would be “too much to wish for” an educator to have already educated someone (ad infinitum), Rousseau points to the impossibility of the very conditions of legitimacy he has invoked.10 It is by simultaneously appealing to them and questioning the appeal that he models an intermediate standard of “authorial” authority that avoids the twin extremes discussed above. Book I of Emile both makes a beginning and draws attention to the problem of making a beginning. In light of this, we must pay careful attention not only to how the precepts laid out in book I provide a foundation for the project as a whole, allowing these to condition our reading of the subsequent chapters, but also to how these precepts are revisited, qualified, and refined as Rousseau’s project in Emile unfolds.
A pattern has emerged: the tender and foresighted mother requires that someone else draw the circumference for her as she builds a fence around her child’s soul; the existence of a suitable governor requires that a suitable governor already exist in order to raise the child; moreover, that governor needs to have already educated a pupil before he is fit to educate another one. And yet all of these double requirements must be met somehow simultaneously; the ideal mother both is natural and knows how to think. Finally, and most important, we must know nature in order to preserve it, but we must preserve it if it is to be available to us as an object of knowledge. Even as Rousseau claims to begin with nature, he suggests that the question of what nature is cannot be answered before the project (which nature supposedly guides) is completed, and hence cannot function as a direct or unmediated source of universal rules or standards that can be applied to all particulars. This, again, is what calls for judgment and also makes judgment possible. Rousseau’s opening claim that everything is good in the hands of the “author” of things and degenerates in the hands of man (37; 4:245) points indirectly to the need for a realm between natural perfection (which denies freedom and makes judgment superfluous) and utter deformity (in which our judgments are indistinguishable from corrupt prejudices and in which we are thus also left fundamentally unfree in a different way). Rousseau’s exploration of the question of a “natural education” aspires to locate the genuinely human somewhere between these two poles in order to preserve both human freedom and the possibility of judgment.
The Body, the Senses, and the Foundations of Judgment
[Emile] gets his lessons from nature and not from men. . . . His body and his mind are exercised together. Acting always according to his own thought and not someone else’s, he continually unites two operations: the more he makes himself strong and robust, the more he becomes sensible and judicious. (E, 119; 4:361)
The first three books of Emile are generally understood to constitute Emile’s “negative” (93; 4:323) education, that is, an education designed to preserve his natural wholeness while forestalling the development of prejudices and passions (especially amour-propre) by warding off all social influences. Rousseau states that this first, negative education “consists not at all in teaching virtue or truth but in securing the heart from vice and the mind from error.” One must “let childhood ripen in children” (94; 4:324) rather than hurry to fill their minds and souls with lessons and virtues that they are unprepared to acquire, and that are unnecessary in any case. He insists that children are not naturally inclined toward the vices we attribute to them. Those vices are the product of a faulty education. By nature, children are “little innocents” whose simplicity should be preserved for as long as possible. Rousseau prefers that children remain “ignorant and true” rather than “learn their lessons and lie” (102; 4:336). The task of the educator is therefore “to do nothing and let nothing be done” (93; 4:323).
But Rousseau follows this general rule by raising “another consideration,” one that suggests an altogether different reason for “doing nothing” and invites us to reconsider the idea of a purely negative education. Rousseau advises the educator to observe the child closely and over a long period of time before beginning to educate—indeed, before saying “the first word to him.” His rationale is that “one must know well the particular genius of the child in order to know what moral diet suits him. Each mind has its own form.” The educator must let the germ of the child’s unique individual character “reveal itself freely” (94; 4:324). If childhood must be allowed to ripen, it is not simply to preserve a universal, original state as long as possible but to allow the development (unfettered, without distortion) of the child’s unique self, which is revealed over time. Thus, although Rousseau argues vehemently against turning children into miniature adults with a precocious pseudomaturity, he also conceives of growth and maturation within childhood. “Each age, each condition of life, has its suitable perfection, a sort of maturity proper to it” (158; 4:418). Is “doing nothing” sufficient to bring about this maturation?
What exactly Rousseau means by the distinctive maturity of childhood, and how it is cultivated, complicates the notion of a purely negative education while bearing on several fundamental issues with regard to his views on the education of judgment. The mark of a child’s having reached “the perfection of his age” (161; 4:423) is precisely the development of a certain species of judgment, not simply physical maturation. While initially in book II Rousseau insists that children are incapable of judging, he later refers to their capacity to exercise good judgment, at least with regard to the physical world. And he concludes book II with an anecdote about a child whose judgment he praises as “incisive” (163; 4:425). This refers to a rudimentary form of judgment that is distinctly appropriate to children as children, but at the same time sets the stage for—and in some ways serves as a model for—good judgment at any age. “One must have a great deal of judgment oneself to appreciate a child’s” (162; 4:424). Rousseau’s admiration of the incisive child is matched by his admiration for the child’s father, who is able to perceive this trait in his child. This ability marks the father not only as a good father but as a wise man. Such wisdom is rare. “None of us is philosophic enough to know how to put himself in a child’s place” (115; 4:355). Time after time, in the course of explaining the limitations and characteristics of a child’s perspective, Rousseau offers parallel reflections on various adult figures and their good or poor judgment.