Transcript for Rousseau's First Discourse Lecture

An introductory lecture summarizing the key ideas of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences

Some links to further guide your study:

• Companion lectures & interviews:

  • Rousseau on the importance of heroes

• Texts I referenced (affiliate):

  • Best translation of the First Discourse: https://amzn.to/3Xr4NyO

    • My book notes: https://www.johnathanbi.com/p/discourse-on-the-arts-and-sciences

  • Best reading companion to the First Discourse: https://amzn.to/4chZeXG

    • My book notes: https://www.johnathanbi.com/p/rousseaus-critique-of-science-by

  • Best overview of Rousseau's view on the role of authors: https://amzn.to/4bX9JQD

    • My book notes: https://www.johnathanbi.com/p/rousseau-as-author-by-christopher

0. Introduction

The Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, the First Discourse, has a thesis that is as simple as it is shocking. I quote to you Rousseau:

Our souls have become corrupted in proportion as our sciences and our arts have advanced.

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences)

The First Discourse is a philosophical attack on philosophy. It's a scientific refutation on science, and it's an artistic takedown of art.And it's precisely because how highly we value all three that we must engage with it. Rarely is there a culture like ours that so worships erudition, learning, curiosity, with so little reservation. Far are we from the lesson from Oedipus that knowing more could be dangerous. Far are we from Constantinople destroying its printing press. And far are we from the Caliph Omar who burned the Library of Alexandria. Rousseau's going to show that this anti-intellectual attitude and actions are a lot wiser than you think.

Because why, when science and technology are fulfilling all of its promises—alleviation from poverty, curing of disease, intelligent machines—are more and more people dissatisfied with modernity? Why, when the arts and culture has never been given more free reign, do we ourselves feel more constricted, lonely, and alienated? Why, in the midst of our luxury and our idleness, have we never felt more busy?

Rousseau's answer is that the very arts and sciences that we mistook to be the culmination of our civilization is actually not only the cause of our current ills, but leading us to collapse. This is not some speculative prophecy, but Rousseau reminds us it's the shape of concrete history.

Egypt once produced great kings and pharaohs. They became the birthplace of philosophy and arts in the West. And for 2000 years, they've only known foreign rulers. Greece, where once peopled by heroes like Achilles and Theseus, vanquished Asia twice, once with Troy, another time Persia, early 5th century BC. Then the Athenian Golden Age happened: Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, and by the 4th century, it fell to the Macedonian yoke. Rome began with a rustic republican virtue and became mortally corrupted by the very enlightened Greeks that they conquered, enslaved, and imported. I quote to you, Rousseau:

Ever since the learned have begun to appear among us, so [Rome's] own Philosophers themselves said, good men have been in eclipse. Until then the Romans had been content to practice virtue; all was lost when they began to study it.

(Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Arts and Sciences)

Everywhere Rousseau looks, he finds the same story: enlightenment finds an ignorant but virtuous people, it gives them talents, but it takes away their virtue and leaves them conquered, corrupt, and ignorant once more. Enlightenment in the West begins in Egypt, it goes to Greece, then to Rome. Enlightenment abandons Europe, leaving it to the Dark Ages. It brews and stews in Constantinople, and by Rousseau’s time, it makes a return to Europe. This is the slithering path of enlightenment that has left destruction in its wake, and understanding its nature will be the goal of our lecture.

• Part One: Why Rousseau thinks that arts and sciences corrupt?

• Part Two: What Rousseau's solution is to this corruption?

• Part Three: What does this mean for the technological society of the 21st century?