19.This final reappropriation of presence is most often named by Rousseau as an
anthropological telos: “Let man appropriate everything to himself; but what is important for
him to appropriate is man himself” (Manuscript of Emile). But as usual this anthropologism
essentially comes to terms with a theology.
20.Other examples of the mistrust that everything operating through writing in social and
political life inspired in Rousseau:—In Venice: “Here one is dealing with an invisible
government and always in writing, which requires great circumspection.” 2. —“In popular
estimation the Platonic Institution stands for all that is fanciful and unreal. For my own part I
should have thought the system of Lycurgus far more fanciful [chimérique] had he merely
committed it to writing” (Emile, p. 1o) [p. 8] J. de Maistre will say: “What is most essential is
never written down and can in fact not be written down without exposing the state.”
21.This is the reason why Rousseau admits the necessity of representation even while
deploring it. See the Considérations sur le gouvernement de Pologne [The Govern-ment of
Poland, tr. Willmoore Kendall (New York, 1972) ]; there he proposes a very rapid turnover of
representatives in order to make their “seduction more costly and more difficult,” which is to
be related to the rule formulated by the Contract, according to which “often should the
Sovereign show himself” (p. 426) [p. 75]; cf. also Derathé, Rousseau et la science politique
de son temps (pp. 277 f.) .
What logic does Rousseau obey when he thus justifies the necessity of a representation that he
simultaneously condemns? Precisely the logic of representation; the more it aggravates its
disease, the more representative it becomes, representation restores what it takes away: the
presence of the represented. A logic according to which one must force oneself “to draw from
the disease itself its own remedy” (Fragment on L’état de nature, p. 479) and according to
which, at the end of its movement, convention rejoins Nature, servitude liberty, etc. (“What
then? Is liberty maintained only by the help of slavery? It may be so. Extremes meet.” The
Social Contract, p. 431 [p. 79]).
22.De l’état de nature, [Pléiade, vol. 3], p. 478. Cf. also, Emile, p. 70 [p. 49].
23.On the rebus, cf. supra, p. 136 [p. 90]. Vico who also distinguishes among three conditions
or steps of writing, gives as one example, among others, of primitive writing (ideographic or
hieroglyphic, “born spontaneously” and “not drawing its origins from conventions at all”) the
“rebus of Picardy” [p. 128]. “The second form of script is equally and completely
spontaneous: it is a symbolic or emblematically heroic script” (coats of arms, blazonry, “mute
comparisons which Homer calls semata, the signs in
((353))
which the heroes wrote” [p. 129]). “The third form of writing: alphabetic script” (Science
nouvelle, 3, 1, pp. 61—62, 181—82, 194, tr. Chaix-Ruy) .
24.This is Duclos’s thesis: “Writing (I speak of the writing of sounds) was not born like
language through a slow and imperceptible progression: many centuries passed before it was
born; but it was born all at once, like light.” After having retraced the history of pre-alphabetic
scripts, Duclos appeals to that “stroke of genius” among languages: “Such is Chinese writing
today, corresponding to ideas rather than to sounds; such are with us the signs of algebra and
Arabic numerals. Writing was in that condition, with no relationship with today’s writing,
when a happy and profound genius sensed that discourse, however varied and extended in
terms of ideas, is yet composed of only a few sounds, and the point was merely to give each
of the latter a representative character. If one reflects upon this, one will see that this art, once
conceived, must have been formed almost simultaneously; and it is this that exalts the glory of
the inventor. . . . It was much easier to count all the sounds of a language, than to discover that
they could be counted. One was a stroke of genius, the other a simple result of attention” (op.
cit., pp. 421—23) .
25.Emile, p. 218 [pp. 152-53]. There Rousseau presents a theory of the origin of money, its
necessity, and its danger.
26. Ibid. In the Fragments politiques also, one will read: “Gold and silver, being nothing more
than representative signs of the material for which they have been ex-changed, have properly
speaking no absolute value.” “Since money has no real value by itself, it takes a value by tacit
convention in every country where it is in use . . .” (p. 520) and in. the Government of
Poland: “Money, in the last analysis, is not wealth, but merely the sign for wealth; and what
you must multiply is not the sign but rather the represented thing” (p. ioo8) [p. 73]. It is
precisely at the opening of Chapter 15 on “Deputies or Representatives” that The Social
Contract (Bk. III) condemns money as the power of servitude: “Make gifts of money, you will
not be long without chains” [p. 77].
Cf. also Starobinski, La transparence et l’obstacle, pp. 129 f. and the editors’ note 3 on p. 37
of vol. I of the Pléiade edition of the Confessions.
27.Cf. also the Projet de constitution Pour la Corse, pp. 911-12.
28.Confessions, p. 237 [p. 245].
29.Garnier edition, p. 168 [p. 57]. Italics added.
30.Starobinski, La transparence, p. 119. I refer also to the entire chapter devoted to the fête (p.
114), which Starobinski opposes to the theatre as a “world of transparence” to a “world of
opacity.”
31.It is well-known that Rousseau ruthlessly denounced the mask, from the Letter to M.
d’Alembert to the
Nouvelle Hiloise. One of the tasks of pedagogy consists precisely in
neutralizing the effects of masks upon children. For let us not forget, “all children are afraid of
masks” (Emile, p. 43) [p. 30]. The condemnation of writing is also, as if self-evidently, an
ambiguous condemnation of the mask.
32.Among other analogies, by this distrust, with regard to the spoken text, of Corneille and
Racine who were nothing but “talkers” even though, “imitating the English,” they must
sometimes “place the stage itself within representation” (La Nouvelle Héloise, p. 253) [Eloisa
II., p. 62]. But surely these reconciliations must be effected with the greatest caution. The
context sometimes places an infinite distance between two identical propositions.
33.Page 226 [pp. 127—28]. One will relate to this the following passage from Emile: “but
when spring returns, the snow will melt and the marriage will remain; you must reckon for all
seasons” (p. 570) [p. 411].