Rousseau’s Second Discourse

The last paragraph of the prelude to the Second Discourse is an impassioned appeal whose scope transcends the boundaries of time and space alike, calling for readers to pay attention to the history of man and society that Rousseau is on the verge of putting forth. Beginning with this authorial intrusion—a form of literary apostrophe—the essay adopts historical writing as its primary narrative mode. This method stands in direct contrast with the approach Thomas Hobbes takes in his Leviathan, in which the Englishman sets out to prove propositions as one might do geometrically, by preceding from valid arguments and sound premises. Rousseau’s rejection of philosophy, at least as he understands it in the Second Discourse, embodies the emphasis on nature and emotions for which he advocates, and as such, his work aims not only to answer the question posed by the Academy of Dijon but also to criticize his predecessors’ attempts to systematize the social contract through reason.

Modes of writings have several characteristics—including their objects and methods as well as their other underlying philosophical premises—that are integral to their successful implementation in a given context. The Second Discourse uses history both to convey and to give meaning to its criticisms of social contract theory, and its success derives from the suitability of history to such an attack because of its own characteristics. All historical writing is made with the goal of understanding the past more carefully. The first form of understanding in this context is concerned with relations among past events alone. Closely tied to this notion is also a belief that past events, over time, have contributed to present affairs. These two alternative timeframes of un...

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...s at best shaky, Rousseau decided to leave untouched the natural ambiguity that arises as a result of language. When the most persuasive of us try to persuade others of our points, we provide examples rather than laws, real-world images rather than abstract concepts, intuition rather than reason. It is not to say they have no place in such arguments; on the contrary, they must: Rousseau himself tacitly acknowledged this when he wrote the Social Contract. Yet for the intents and purposes of his original argument—that social contract theorists were flawed and that man must relearn to value feeling over reason—the structure of his Second Discourse is brilliant—a reminder that only by understanding the past can we come to understand the present.

Works Cited

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, and Donald A. Cress. Basic Political Writings. Indianapolis: Hackett Pub., 1987. Print.