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Nationalism, Virtue, and the Spirit of Liberty in Rousseau's Government of Poland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Jeffrey A. Smith
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Abstract

According to Rousseau in The Government of Poland, the “love of liberty,” when properly cultivated, engenders the patriotism and virtue of citizens. The citizen's love of liberty, however, is not his enjoyment of liberty; it is his fiery longing or passion for national liberty, which has endured in the hearts of Poles owing to the constant threat posed by Russian imperialism. Unless the Poles continue to believe their liberty is threatened, they will begin to believe they can enjoy the luxury of possessing liberty; and then Poland will start down the familiar path of bourgeois corruption, culminating in despotism. Therefore, Rousseau's proposed “reform” of Polish institutions in fact aims to refine “the advantageous evils” of Poland's weakness and anarchy. His intention is to intensify and to orchestrate the defensiveness of all Polish citizens—against internal as well as external threats to liberty—for Rousseau understands that state of soul to be “the leaven” of the magnificent virtues of the ancients.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 65 , Issue 3 , Summer 2003 , pp. 409 - 438
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 2003

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References

For their comments on versions of this essay, the author would like to thank Patchen Markell, Tim Duvall, Eve Grace, Jonathan Marks, Jonathan Hand, Sean Anderson, Milena Hruby Smith, Harvey Flaumenhaft, and the Editor and anonymous reviewers of The Review of Politics.

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2. Editions of Rousseau's works used, and citation forms followed, are: The Government of Poland, trans. Kendall, Willmoore (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1985)Google Scholar (GP, Chapter Number, Page Number); On the Social Contract, trans. Masters, J. (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1978)Google Scholar (OSC, Book Number, Chapter Number, Page Number); Political Economy, also from the the Masters translation; Emile, or On Education (trans. Bloom, A., Basic Books, 1979)Google Scholar; Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality Among Men, i.e., Second Discourse, horn Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The First and Second Discourses and Essay on the Origin of Languages, trans. Gourevitch, V. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1986)Google Scholar (SD, Page Number); Discourse on the Arts and Sciences, i.e., First Discourse, also from the Gourevitch translation (FD, Page Number). Oeuvres Complètes, ed. Gagnebin, Bernard and Raymond, Marcel (Paris: Gallimard, 1959)Google Scholar (OC, Volume Number, Page Number).

3. For example, Cohler, Anne M., Rousseau and Nationalism (New York: Basic Books, 1970)Google Scholar. National character and nationalism are of course distinct: a people may have a prepolitical character that does not dispose individuals to identify with one another, each as part of a homogeneous whole. When he speaks of national character in Poland, however, Rousseau seems to have in mind a set of characteristics that gives rise to such total identification. Cf. Melzer, Arthur, The Natural Goodness of Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 195–97Google Scholar.

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8. “But keep yourselves reminded, whatever the method, of this: your serfs are men, even as you are; they have in them the capacity to become everything that you are; your first task is to set that capacity to work, and not to free their bodies before you have freed their souls” (GP, VI, 30, emphasis added). The italicized phrase provides succinct evidence that freedom for Rousseau is not merely, or even fundamentally, an extensive good. Cf. Grant, Ruth, Hypocrisy and Integrity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 105–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Johnston, Steven, Encountering Tragedy: Rousseau and the Project of Democratic Order (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), 91–92Google Scholar; Miller, , Rousseau, pp. 128–30Google Scholar.

9. As the institutional expression of Poland's principle of unanimity, the liberum veto was the right of any noble individual to veto legislative resolutions; the imperative mandate bound all local representatives in the national assemblies to carry out their specific instructions without variation or compromise. Both institutions tended to paralyze Polish legislatures. See Davies, Norman, Heart of Europe: A Short History of Poland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 333–36Google Scholar.

10. Ibid., p. 335.

11. It is not clear how much Rousseau knew about Polish affairs during the late 1760s. He identifies the Confederacy of Bar as the main reason Poland has remained independent to this point, though in fact the Barist nobles were unable to accomplish the one thing their fractious leadership could agree upon—namely, that Poniatowski, at that time widely viewed as Catherine's puppet, had to be removed from the throne. Barist guerilla attacks upon Russian troops were undermanned, sporadic, uncoordinated, and did little real damage; Russia was deterred from sending more troops into Poland owing mainly to the outbreak of war with Turkey in Fall 1768. Even the “Generality” government proclaimed by the Confederation of Bar in October 1769 was radically limited in its powers by the sovereign decisions of other confederations of nobles, which had been gradually established in locales across the Commonwealth since the initial uprising at Bar in late February 1768. See Lukowski, Jerzy, The Partitions of Poland: 1772, 1793, 1795 (London: Longman Press, 1999), pp. 44–51Google Scholar. Rousseau's “mistake” in praising the Barists as Poland's saviors may or may not be an accident. He claims to know Poland's situation mainly through the account provided him by Michal Wielhorski, Rousseau's Polish solicitor and himself a Barist diplomat (GP, 1, 1–2). Thus Rousseau's “mistake” may merely be the result of his being misinformed by a Barist coloring of events; or that mistake might have been made deliberately by Rousseau, in order not to alienate the reformers by informing them of his real assessment of their efforts and future prospects. In the latter case, the question must arise: But to what end? If he wishes confederations like theirs to continue, and yet knows that it is unlikely that such future confederations will be able to repel large nation-states, the advantage of preserving the confederations must be different than the advantage Rousseau extols on the surface of the text. Cf. Kendall, , “How to Read Rousseau's,” pp. ix–xiiGoogle Scholar.

12. Cf. Melzer, , Natural Goodness, p. 210Google Scholar.

13. Kendall, , “How to Read Rousseau's,” p. xiiiGoogle Scholar

14. Of course, Rousseau tells the Poles that that “[the love of liberty] will, if it keeps on burning in your hearts, burst into flame one day, rid you of the yoke, and make you free” (GP, XII, 87). But Rousseau is aware that “the most inviolable of all the laws of nature is the law of the strongest,” and he acknowledges the far superior strength of the Russians (GP XII, 80, 79). Indeed, Kendall suggests that “Rousseau must have known about the Partition before he submitted his manuscript to Wielhorski” (Kendall, , “How to Read Rousseau's,” p. xiiiGoogle Scholar). So why write Poland? The answer may simply be that though he knows Poland will eventually be subjugated, Rousseau is simply not sure when. Any state-building which the Poles might engage in during the calm before the final storm could only help to prolong their longing for collective liberty after their eventual subjugation. See also Shklar, Judith, Men and Citizens: A Study of Rousseau's Social Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969), p. 176Google Scholar; Kendall, , “How to Read Rousseau's,” pp. xvi–xviiGoogle Scholar. Beginning with the next section, my analysis considers only the Poland that Rousseau envisions and which he would create by means of his ideally appropriate prescriptions, not the Poland that most likely will be, i.e., the dispersed rebels under a Russian occupation, agitating for a free Poland.

15. Melzer, , Natural Goodness, pp. 217–225Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., pp. 220–25.

17. Though Rousseau does not use the phrase “individual rights” in Poland, he certainly criticizes the European culture of liberty and license and “the new man of liberal society” which it spawned; the quoted phrase is from Bloom, Allan, “Rousseau's Critique of Liberal Constitutionalism,” in The Legacy of Rousseau, p. 145Google Scholar. Cf. GP, II, 8, 9; XI, 67.

18. Rousseau's examples of this phenomenon are not restricted to modern European peoples. Alexander understood well the utility of promoting “a taste for the agreeable Arts and for superfluities” within a conquered people, and he kept the Ichthyophagi “dependent on him” by banning their fishing lifestyle and compelling them “to eat the foods common to other peoples” (FD, 5n). The republic of Thlascala, on the other hand, “saw the trap hidden beneath” the Mexican empire's offer to supply them with salt free of charge, and chose to do without it. Thus the Thlascalans, according to Rousseau, “preserved their freedom; and this small state, enclosed within this great empire, was finally the instrument of its ruin” (OSC, II, x, 74n).

19. I will not attempt to answer this very complicated question in this essay. Cf. GP, X, 63–64; SD, 132–33; OSC, II, xii, 76–77. For related analyses, see Strauss, Leo, Natural Right and History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953), pp. 270–74Google Scholar; Hall, John C., Rousseau: An Interpretation of His Political Philosophy (London: Macmillan and Co., 1973), pp. 25–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Masters, Roger D., The Political Philosophy of Rousseau (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), pp. 76–89, 158–65, 316–22Google Scholar; Horowitz, Asher, Rousseau: Nature and History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1987), pp. 36–49Google Scholar; Melzer, , Natural Goodness, pp. 120–49Google Scholar; Kaufman, Alexander, “Reason, Self-legislation and Legitimacy: Conceptions of Freedom in the Political Thought of Rousseau and Kant,” Review of Politics 59 (1997): 42–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cooper, Laurence D., Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life (University Park, PA: Perm State University Press, 1999)Google Scholar.

20. For example, Plattner, , “Rousseau and the Origins of Nationalism,” pp. 192–93Google Scholar; Parry, Geraint, “Thinking One's Own Thoughts: Autonomy and the Citizen,” in Rousseau and Liberty, ed. Wokler, R. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), p. 114Google Scholar.

21. Cf. Shklar, , Men and Citizens, p. 20Google Scholar; Melzer, , “Rousseau, Nationalism, and the Politics,” pp. 114–18Google Scholar.

22. For a general account of the relation between moeurs and self-interest in Rousseau's republican project, see Trachtenberg, Zev M., Making Citizens: Rousseau's Political Theory of Culture (London: Routledge Press, 1993), pp. 70–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a critique of Trachtenberg's argument, specifically regarding the case of Poland, see Gourevitch, Victor, “Recent Work on Rousseau,” Political Theory 26 (1998): 551–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23. Blum, Carol, Rousseau and the Republic of Virtue (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), p. 116Google Scholar.

24. By “equality” Rousseau here means equality of birth, not equality of merit. Cf. GP, IV, 20–21Google Scholar.

25. Cf. Parry, , “Thinking One's Own Thoughts,” p. 114Google Scholar. See also Trachtenberg, , Making Citizens, p. 283 n21Google Scholar, as well as the distinction between passive and active citizenship in Cullen, , Freedom, pp. 24, 110, 127–29Google Scholar.

26. Cf. Starobinski, Jean, Jean-Jaaques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971), pp. 16–21Google Scholar; Strong, Tracy B., Jean-Jacques Rousseau: The Politics of the Ordinary (Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications, 1994), pp. 59–64Google Scholar; Scott, John T., “Rousseau and the Melodious Language of Freedom,” Journal of Politics 59 (1997): 803–829CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Cf. Shklar, , Men and Citizens, pp. 14–16Google Scholar; Johnston, , Encountering Tragedy, pp. 89–95Google Scholar.

28. Jouvenal, Bertrand de, “Essai sur la politique de Rousseau,” in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Du contrat social (Geneva: Editions du Cheval Aile, 1947), pp. 1961–62Google Scholar; Shklar, , Men and Citizens, p. 161Google Scholar; Melzer, , Natural Goodness, pp. 265–66Google Scholar.

29. Cf. Bloom, , “Rousseau's Critique,” pp. 151–56Google Scholar; Melzer, , Natural Goodness, p. 175 n35Google Scholar.

30. Cf. Davies, , Heart of Europe, pp. 275–76Google Scholar; Melzer, , Natural Goodness, p. 144Google Scholar.

31. For example, Plattner, , “Rousseau and the Origins of Nationalism,” pp. 193–94Google Scholar; Miller, , Rousseau, p. 128Google Scholar.

32. Hassner, , “Rousseau and the Theory,” p. 208Google Scholar; on Rousseau's division of sovereign power, see Derathé, , Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 287–91Google Scholar; Fralin, Richard, Rousseau and Representation: A Study of the Development of His Concept of Political Institutions (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), pp. 43, 54Google Scholar.

33. Cf. Kendall, , “How to Read Rousseau's,” pp. xxxviii–xxxixGoogle Scholar.

34. Davies, , Heart of Europe, pp. 280, 331Google Scholar.

35. Cf. Kendall, , “How to Read Rousseau's,” pp. xxxvi–xxxviiGoogle Scholar.

36. Ibid., pp. xxiv–xxv; Lukowski, , The Partitions of Poland, pp. 44–51Google Scholar.

37. See the discussion of the failure of the Barists′ “Generality” government in note 11 above.

38. Davies, , Heart of Europe, pp. 302, 305, 310, 338Google Scholar. From the very first exercise of the right of confederation in 1606, “no one knew how to stop the right being invoked for trivial purposes. … and by the end of the century political factions were turning to armed confederation as a matter of first resort” (Davies, , Heart of Europe, p. 302Google Scholar). By the last half of the eighteenth century, Poland had reached “the nadir” of anarchy in “a state of civil war between the two confederated factions” of Catholics and Protestant dissidents (ibid., p. 310; cf. pp. 275–78).

39. See also OC, III: 542, quoted in the Masters′ 1986 edition of OSC, Editorial Note 46 (p. 140).

40. Davies, , Heart of Europe, p. 335Google Scholar.

41. Cf. Melzer, , “Rousseau, Nationalism, and the Politics,” p. 123Google Scholar.

42. Ibid., pp. 124, 125.

43. For example, Rousseau claims that the affections of burghers and serfs can be tied to the fatherland merely by helping them to fare better, not by making their inner experience of their lives and culture similar to that of the nobles (GP, XIII, 95–99).