The particular play that Montesquieu selects for praise in this regard is Racine's Phaedra, which enacts many of Montesquieu's teachings and elicits the very sentiments he finds valuable. The most important was his Confessions, modeled on the work of the same title by St. Augustine and achieving something of the same classic status. Because Montesquieu understands women as the judges and bestowers of a man's honour, when women are placed in the public sphere, men adopt mannerisms and behaviour to win their approval.Footnote63 Thus, women enhance the theatricality of public life, putting men (and themselves) on display for each other. Rousseau devotes many pages to explaining the methods the tutor must use. [4], Even if the theatre is morally innocuous, Rousseau argues, its presence is disruptive to potentially productive use of time. Listen on ); Episode details. In 1758, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert proposed the public establishment of a theater in Genevaand Jean-Jacques Rousseau vigorously objected. While he concedes that the exchanges and interactions which occur when men and women congregate in the theatre are often artificial and result in theatrical behaviour far from the stage, he refuses to criticise such a form of sociability. Recommended articles lists articles that we recommend and is powered by our AI driven recommendation engine. Updates? The work is famous for displaying Rousseau's charismatic rhetoric and digressive tendencies, all with his personal experience woven into the text. Because that praise exemplifies so much of what was fundamental in Rousseau's thinking, both it and the Letter as a whole are mandatory reading for anyone who wishes to understand him. Rousseau was the least academic of modern philosophers and in many ways was the most influential. 9 Letter, 27174, 35960. Letter to Monsieur dAlembert on the Theatre. She returns his love and yields to his advances, but the difference between their classes makes marriage between them impossible. In it Rousseau speaks to . Many scholars have identified the decisive influence of Montesquieu's treatment of the ancient city in Rousseau's thought more generally, but have not yet fully explored the role that Montesquieu's treatment of the theatre plays in Rousseau's Letter. For a discussion of those who opposed the theatre in France in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, see Jonas Barish, The Antitheatrical Prejudice (Berkeley, CA, 1981), 191220. He considered women, by virtue of their nature, to be the primary agents of moral reform, and that the success of the state depends on the harmony within private, domestic life. Politics and the Arts: Letter to M. D'Alembert on the Theatre (Agora Editions) Paperback - October 31, 1968 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Author), Allan Bloom (Translator) 11 ratings See all formats and editions Hardcover $45.00 Other used and collectible from $45.00 Paperback $18.95 Other new, used and collectible from $2.22 Rousseau '' Letter To D' Alembert''; Politics & The Arts [ Allan Bloom] Bookreader Item Preview Rousseau rarely acknowledges the extent to which Montesquieu's writings influenced his political and moral thought, but study of his Letter reveals the great degree to which Rousseau builds his case from and in response to Montesquieu's observations and ideas. Rousseau continues to say that actors coming to the town of Geneva will be indifferent to the town's morality, and will quickly corrupt it. Rousseau remains resolutely opposed to the theatre in Geneva, however. 15 For a fuller discussion, see Thomas, Negotiating Taste in Montesquieu, 7172. Subscribe now. Free trial is available to new customers only. Rousseau's dismay arose largely from d'Alembert's proposal that theatre be established in Geneva as it would form the taste of the citizens and would give them a fineness of tact, [and] a delicacy of sentiments, thus benefiting the already admirable city.Footnote7 In his Lettre d'Alembert sur les spectacles, Rousseau condemns this as the most dangerous advice that could be given us.Footnote8 Invoking his status as a citizen of that city, he argues that the theatre would only serve to corrupt the virtuous mores and manners of Geneva's citizens. And indeed, Rousseau does seem to have recovered his peace of mind in his last years, when he was once again afforded refuge on the estates of great French noblemen, first the Prince de Conti and then the Marquis de Girardin, in whose park at Ermenonville he died. When the hospitality of Mme dpinay proved to entail much the same social round as that of Paris, Rousseau retreated to a nearby cottage, called Montlouis, under the protection of the Marchal de Luxembourg. Because of the natural respect men have for the moral sense and timidity of women, for men to be amongst women as actresses will be a further threat to men's morality. Similarly, Susan Okin notes that Rousseau held to his ''reactionary'' ideas In Paris, as in Geneva, they ordered the book to be burned and the author arrested; all the Marchal de Luxembourg could do was to provide a carriage for Rousseau to escape from France. Cf. Rousseau's dismay arose largely from d'Alembert's proposal that theatre be established in Geneva as it would 5 D'Alembert, Geneva, in Letter, 243. In 1758, Jean Le Rond d'Alembert proposed the public establishment of a theater in Genevaand Jean-Jacques Rousseau vigorously objected. Nonetheless, taken together, these apparently contrasting accounts reveal that Montesquieu sees value in the theatrical experience in its entirety. [5] To have a prosperous state, Rousseau believed, people needed to work together and harmoniously. Il cite ce pour quoi il crit. This edition seeks to uncover the originality and complexity of Rousseau's argument in a text that seems to reprise traditional religious . $18.74/subscription + tax, Save 25% Rousseau initially declares at the beginning of the Letter that theatre only serves to intensify rather than change established morals, positing that drama would be good for the good and bad for the vicious.Footnote73 He ultimately revises his position, however, as he embraces Montesquieu's views both of the fundamental importance of mores in a given society and of the fact that different societies require different mores as well as different laws and institutions.Footnote74 This change of orientation occurs when Rousseau seems to adopt verbatim Montesquieu's formulation that mores and manners can be effectively changed not through direct legislation but less obtrusively through the introduction of other mores and manners, or via public opinion: matters of morals and universal justice are not arranged, as are those of private justice and strict right, by edicts and laws.Footnote75 This is nearly identical to Montesquieu's advice to the legislator in 19.14: when one wants to change the mores and manners, one must not change them by the laws [] it would be better to change them by other mores and other manners.Footnote76 Rousseau's discussion of the possible elimination of duels in France through the force of public opinion provides his readers with an example of spectacle appealing to amour-propre in such a way as to mitigate vice.Footnote77 Indeed, Rousseau declares in this context: I am convinced that we will never succeed in working these changes without bringing about the intervention of women, on whom men's way of thinking in large measure depends.Footnote78 Thus, not only does Rousseau confirm Montesquieu's teaching regarding the importance of mores, but he also expressly adopts Montesquieu's very conclusion regarding the importance of female society in effecting their change. It made the author at least as many friends among the reading publicand especially among educated womenas The Social Contract and mile made enemies among magistrates and priests. [3], D'Alembert himself was moved by the response, even intimidated. Rousseau is often characterized as the father of Romanticism, as he opposed modernity and the Enlightenment and glorified the heroic ethos of Ancient Rome and Greece. It is not hard to excuse Phaedra, who is incestuous and spills innocent blood.Footnote53. The free trial period is the first 7 days of your subscription. the morality of theatrical performances, Lettre dAlembert sur les spectacles (1758). Rousseau also describes the weather and geography of Geneva, and argues that it is not particularly conducive to supporting a theatre. 4. Towards the end of the afternoon, everyone assembles and goes to perform in a sort of show [une espce de scne], called, so I have heard, a play [comdie]. mile is a book that seems to appeal alternately to the republican ethic of The Social Contract and the aristocratic ethic of The New Eloise. Rahe explains that it is not simply the case that the two thinkers were opposedtheir thought is much more entwined: For the arguments that Rousseau deployed against enlightenment and commercial society and those that he presented on behalf of ancient Sparta [] were for the most part borrowed from Montesquieu's Spirit of Laws; see Rahe, Soft Despotism, 77. 63 See Spirit, 28.22, 56162, where Montesquieu declares that men's connection to women is related, in part, to the fact that women are quite enlightened judges of a part of the things that constitute personal merit. Rousseau; D'Alembert; Habitants de Genve; Les Montagnards; Rsum. Very many literate people in the eighteenth century read and responded to Rousseau, in France and elsewhere. [6] Rousseau's views on the theatre are also thought to echo current concerns with global entertainment, television and Internet taking over local customs and culture. In subjecting the type of sociability that a theatre engenders to finely-grained analysis, Rousseau offers examples and language remarkably akin to those that Montesquieu employs in The Spirit of the Laws, yet he uses Montesquieu's teaching in order to oppose some of the very assertions his predecessor makes. 4. From 174041, he worked as a private tutor for Monsieur de Mably, brother of the famous writer, the Abbe de Mably. It offered a critique of d'Alembert's article on Geneva in the Encyclopdie. He writes that the actor is someone who is artificial, performs for money, subjects himself to disgrace, and abandons his role as a man. 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