PART TWO

Desire and the Problems of Others in

Modernity

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 4 Desire and Will: The Sentient and
Conscious Self in Locke and Rousseau

vasiliki grigoropoulou

In Plato’s Philebus, Philebus argues that the good for us is the plenitude
of pleasure. Socrates in turn counters that ‘intelligence (nou~)’ is a far
better thing for a person’s life than pleasure. The dilemma that Plato’s
dialogue focuses on persists. Does a life that is a blend of intelligence
and pleasure owe its goodness primarily to the presence of reason, or
to the presence of pleasant feeling?1 Can the decisions of our will, in so
far as they are conditioned by our desires, be moral, or do they require
the fundamental intervention of reason, which means a way of life in
which the desires are strictly controlled for the sake of being ethical?
Plato’s Republic has bequeathed to us the model of a threefold division
of the soul, in which desires occupy the lowest rung, and the different
elements are ordered by reason. In the Christian tradition, the Augus-
tinian model and its Neoplatonic elements tended to encourage the di-
vision of the mind into a hierarchy of faculties. This fragmentation of
the mind was worrying to a number of seventeenth-century authors.2
In the seventeenth century, there was a re-examination of the rela-
tionship between the passions and reason, which for both scientific
and moral reasons was given a new basis and involved new syntheses.
While previously the relationship between the passions and reason was
of interest for theological reasons and for the determination of sin and
guilt, it became in the seventeenth century a concern for those seeking
autonomy and self-knowledge for the individual person and citizen.
In the modern context desire was elevated to a much more central role.
For many philosophers, such as Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, and Rous-
seau, desire came to be recognized as a productive emotional principle
and as the key to converting passions into active emotions. The up-
grading of desire went along with a modern emphasis on and support

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for the active citizen, who could and should possess self-control, so as
to be in a position to make right decisions. Furthermore, the relation-
ship between desire and the search for self-control was affected by the
emergence of the concept of consciousness. As the particularly modern
concerns with self-control and with the coherence of the desires of the
self intensified, so did discussions of the fragmentation of desires and
of the interjection of reason. In this chapter I will explore these issues in
the intellectual movement from Locke to Rousseau.
I will argue first that, for Locke, desire plays a crucial role in defin-
ing the freedom of the will and proper human action. The role it plays,
however, is subtle and complex. Locke distinguishes desire from will
and reason, and sees proper action as requiring mediation by reason.
He is interested in the consciously acting citizen, but he finds that hu-
man beings are not always conscious of their desires and do not always
act fully consciously. He therefore advocates the suspension of desire.
However, he also distinguishes between the scientific concepts of ‘con-
sciousness’ and ‘conscience,’ the latter being the moral dimension of
consciousness, a fruitful distinction, which however, as we shall see,
contains an inherent tension. Locke gives priority to the relationship of
the self to itself in consciousness, but it is doubtful whether this rela-
tionship can provide a solution to the fragmentation of the modern self.
Locke’s theory of the self also does not provide adequate explanation
for how an atomized individual achieves an adequate level of ethical
consciousness – i.e., conscience. What Locke does give us, and what
Rousseau inherits from him, is a vision of desire that generates a di-
vided self that is pervaded with unease.
In the second part of the chapter, I turn to Rousseau’s theory of sen-
timent and conscience. Rousseau maintains that sentiment is anterior
to reason and is to be distinguished from the passions. Sentiment is
a component of conscience. Consciousness in Rousseau is sentiment
intérieur, a term that has the capacity to convey moral judgment and
so dispenses with the tension between consciousness and conscience
found in Locke. Rousseau provides a more persuasive account of the
citizen’s capacity to have confidence in his or her feelings, one which at-
tends to the ethical dimensions of citizenship. Conscience in Rousseau
is not merely individual and private in character; it also has a collective
dimension whose goal is the common good.
Rousseau’s thought is in many ways a response indebted to Locke’s
theory of consciousness and political theory. As mentioned above,
Locke gives priority to the relationship of the self to itself. Furthermore,

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his political theory sees private property as an essential tenet of society.

For Rousseau this coupling of self-consciousness and private property
can provide no guarantee for the maintenance of social cohesion; rather
it is a threat to individual freedom and happiness, as outlined in the
Discourse on Inequality. Rousseau is nonetheless inspired by Locke and
in the Discourse he continues Locke’s critique of slavery and patriar-
chal society. He also agrees with the Lockean idea of private property
as grounded in labour. But for Rousseau what guarantees individual
liberty is popular sovereignty and it is for this reason that his methodo-
logical approach differs from that of Locke. Rousseau also endeavours
to give a more comprehensive and persuasive answer to the questions
of how the individual ought to be related to society and of what should
be the basis of social cohesion. The key to Rousseau’s answer lies in his
theory of the sentiments, for they bridge the gap between self and oth-
er and are a key element in maintaining social order. As John Duncan
suggests, Rousseau’s theory of sentiments seems to stand somewhere
between mechanistic and voluntaristic theories of the human.3 I will
argue that Rousseau introduces interior sentiment as a guarantee for
the autonomy of man and citizen, opening up a dialogue for the self
and the opportunity for self-assessment.

Uneasiness as Desire in Locke

While many other early modern philosophers examined man through

his passions, Locke is not known specifically as a philosopher of the
passions,4 although he certainly does recognize the power of desire.5
Desire, he says, ‘successively determines the Will and sets us upon ac-
tions we perform.’6 And at the root of desire is uneasiness:

The uneasiness a Man finds in himself upon the absence of any thing,
whose present enjoyment carries the Idea of Delight with it, is that we call
Desire, which is greater or less, as that uneasiness is more or less vehement.
Where by the bye it may perhaps be of some use to remark, that the chief if
not only spur to human Industry and Action is uneasiness.7

There is no desire whenever we are relaxed and contented, according

to Locke, and uneasiness spurs all human activity. Uneasiness appears
upon ‘the thought of a Good lost,’ and extends its role from the opera-
tion of thought to the process of willing and acting. Desire is a crucially
important kind of uneasiness, and as such it is a primary sentiment.

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What determines the will in voluntary actions is ‘the uneasiness of

desire.’8 Uneasiness ‘is the great motive that works on the Mind to put
it upon Action’9 because it generates a state of mind seeking an object.
For Locke, as Peter Schouls argues, the will is always determined,10 but
it may be determined by immediate desire for an apparent good, by
desire for the common necessities of our lives, or by the ‘fantastical
uneasiness, (as itch after Honour, Power, or Riches, etc.) which acquir’d
habits by Fashion, Example, and Education have setled in us, and a
thousand other irregular desires, which custom has made natural to
us.’11 Locke is well aware of the practical difficulties in choosing the real
good through a will motivated by desire, for people are preoccupied
with the satisfaction of their immediate desires, which appear to rank
higher than those that are more remote. Take, for example, the pleas-
ure of drinking,12 where, given that a man is acting in accordance with
strong immediate desires, the real and salutary desires for the more
remote better health that comes from moderation or abstinence fail to
determine the will.13 A common cause for an incorrect judgment of the
good is that ‘an object near our view appears to be greater than another
which is remote.’ A present pleasure, the desire for a near object, makes
us forget about the future, ‘and so forces us, as it were, blindfold into its
embraces.’14 Thus it is of the greatest importance to draw proper compari-
sons between ‘present Pleasure’ and ‘pain with the future.’15 Another
source of judging amiss is ‘to venture a greater Good for a less, upon
uncertain guesses, and before a due examination be made, proportion-
able to the weightiness of the matter.’16 Choosing the greater remote
good over the lesser near one requires due examination.
Locke’s aim is to provide firm ground for discriminating between
what is really and what is only apparently good, for instituting a proper
assessment of the value of things and actions.17 This firm ground is not
based on knowledge alone: it requires reflection on the power of will.
According to Locke, the mind generally possesses ‘a power to suspend
the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires,’18 a power which
allows for the redirection of the will and action, and as such is the true
source of liberty. During such a suspension, the mind is at liberty to
consider the objects of its desires, to examine them from all sides, and
weigh them against others.19
Suspending and examining desires, and also judging the good and
evil of our actions, means doing ‘our duty, all that we can, or ought to
do, in pursuit of our happiness.’20 For Locke, the suspension of desire
consists in holding our wills ‘undetermined, till we have examined the

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good and evil of what we desire.’21 We thus suspend our will in favour
of deliberation on the worth of the desire, so that suspension is not
a radical abnegation of all desires. Locke’s remedy, the suspension of
desire, can be seen as a therapy, a cleansing of confused ideas concern-
ing apparent goods from the mind,22 a process that can facilitate the
revaluation, correction, or reform of our ideas, giving them an order
and cohesion that is a prerequisite for any conception of a real good.
Suspension of desire is possible, given that ‘the mind has a power
to suspend the execution and satisfaction of any of its desires; and so
all, one after another, is at liberty to consider the objects of them.’23 If
the general desire for happiness can explain the emergence of desires,
it can also explain the capacity for correcting them. It can, according to
Locke, show that we are able ‘to raise our desires in due proportion to
the value of that good, whereby in its turn, and place, it may come to
work upon the will, and be pursued.’24
In Locke, desire is distinct from reason. Desire certainly has the
power to trump reason, and reason ought to direct and mediate de-
sire. However, reason’s goal is happiness and pleasure together, which
requires the attainment of an object that is both pleasurable and good.
Suppression of mere desire, which is an act of liberation in which the
will expresses self-control and restraint, is not empty of content but
aims at a future good. It is in this way that liberty is linked to happi-
ness. It should, however, be noted that although Locke acknowledges
the power of desire, he does not provide a sufficiently complete theory
of the sentiments. Moreover, he highlights the division of the self into
its various desires, and so legitimizes the intervention of reason. By
contrast, as we shall see, Rousseau was to give desire precedence over
reason, in addition to formulating a more complete theory of the senti-
ments. However, first let us examine the problem of the divided self in
the context of Locke’s theories of identity and consciousness.

Consciousness and Desire

Uneasiness and desire in Locke direct the will in such a way that they
require mediation by consciousness so that the will may steer the per-
son toward proper action. As a result, consciousness must orient itself
to desire and the problem for Locke is that human action is often guid-
ed by an inadequate understanding of desires and their consequences
in practical life. He argues that ‘the Soul may not always think’25 and
also that memory is interrupted by forgetfulness. He thus finds that we

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often act unconsciously, and consequently ‘we are not enough Masters
of our Minds.’26 In this, Locke is using a quite distinct account of ‘con-
sciousness.’ At the time, the term was a neologism in English, dating
from the publication of Ralph Cudworth’s True Intellectual System of the
Universe in 1678. It was formulated as a way of conveying the mind’s
specific awareness of itself. In Cudworth’s teaching, as in Locke’s, con-
sciousness is not mere awareness (of however private a nature); it is,
as Catherine Glyn Davies puts it, reflexive self-awareness.27 This self-
reflexive account of consciousness in Locke must be distinguished from
‘conscience,’ with its moral connotations and associations with guilt as
emphasized in Christian thought. The new fashion in which Locke and
his contemporaries were using the term consciousness posed problems
for Coste, Locke’s French translator, who rendered consciousness in a
number of different ways, such as ‘conviction intérieure’ and ‘sentiment
intérieur.’28 Indeed, the tendency to interpret consciousness in terms of
sentiment was of central importance in the French Enlightenment and
in Rousseau, as we shall see in the next section. What matters in Locke’s
account of consciousness is the divided nature of the reflective self. In
the second book of his Essay, Locke outlines his theory of personal iden-
tity. A person is his or her consciousness, not his or her body, and not
his or her soul as a thinking substance. Locke gives two definitions of
the person in the Essay. In the first one, he emphasizes that a person is

a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflexion, and can con-
sider itself as itself, the same thinking thing in different times and places;
which it does only by that consciousness, which is inseparable from think-
ing, and as it seems to me essential to it.29

Thus only a being with a consciousness, i.e., an intelligent being that

can consider itself as itself, may be called a person. As Yolton states,
there are ‘no moral overtones here, just the specification of intelligence,
reason, reflexion and the considering of self by self.’30 In addition, what
makes the person identical to himself is not his soul, but his conscious-
ness, which ‘unites Existences, and Actions, very remote in time, into
the same Person.’31 This is to say that the person is not a unity that
comes to be known, but rather a unity constituted by consciousness.
Locke goes beyond spiritualism and materialism, as neither pure a pri-
ori ideas nor pure material processes constitute the person. Instead, the
person is a consciousness that comes into being through the uniting of
thoughts and actions. Consciousness is ‘a perception of what passes

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in a Man’s own mind,’32 or a ‘reflex Act of Perception,’33 and as such

it is ‘inseparable from thinking and … essential to it.’34 Consciousness
can pertain to the present as well as the distant past through memory
of a past consciousness. However, a person cannot influence the past
through present actions, and so the present self cannot be the same as
the past self.
Locke does not stop there, but gives a second definition of the term
‘person,’ as

a forensic term appropriating Actions and their merit, and so belongs only
to intelligent Agents capable of Law, and Happiness and Misery. This per-
sonality extends it self beyond present Existence to what is past, only by
consciousness, whereby it becomes concerned and accountable, owns and
imputes to it self past Actions, just upon the same ground, and for the
same reason, that it does the present.35

In this second definition of the person, present and past actions are
linked through consciousness in a manner that has moral implications.
The self-reflexively constituted person sees himself as if through the
eyes of another and this has a bearing on his responsibility for rele-
vant actions. The person is the owner of himself, proprietor of his own
words and actions and accountable for them. Appropriation of past
and present experiences is enacted through self-reflection and memory
as if one were another being judging the self. The conscious person is
aware of his actions, thoughts, and words, given that he is possessed of
the ability to both distance himself from, and yet identify himself with,
them. Only such a person may be described as responsible. Self-aware-
ness, self-appropriation, and accountability are mutual preconditions.
An implication worth emphasizing here is that Locke’s account of
an morally responsible personal identity does not depend upon any a
priori ontology of personhood; rather, personal coherence and respon-
sibility arise with the consciousness of thoughts and actions. Locke
nevertheless concedes that we are not conscious of all our thoughts
and actions – we cannot always reconcile or appropriate them: ‘Since a
man Drunk and Sober is not the same person, why else is he punished
for the Fact he commits when Drunk, though he be never afterwards
conscious of it?’ However, the drunk acknowledges that a judge justly
punishes him ‘because the Fact is proved against him, but want of con-
sciousness cannot be proved for him.’36 Here we have three relevant
persons – the sober person, the drunk, and the judge – each being fully

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distinct. The drunk evidently cannot be defended by the sober person

but, as Locke says, the judge ‘justly punishes him,’ albeit without clear
proof of consciousness since the accused cannot remember his crime.
The sober person cannot defend himself because consciousness or its
lack cannot enter into the judgment. Judgment can only be made on the
basis of fact so that judgment concerning consciousness remains insuf-
ficiently justified. However, if a person cannot acknowledge authorship
of his actions, cannot defend himself, and cannot represent himself, can
he properly be acknowledged as a person? If we are to be capable of
judging ourselves, we must be able to judge our past actions across dis-
tinct states of consciousness. Personal identity consists in consciousness
which undertakes the duty of connecting (and judging) as an outsider
the thoughts, desires, and actions of the sober person and the drunk,
so to speak. This connection is not merely an epistemological problem;
it is also a moral one. Relying on one’s own consciousness, one has to
decide which thought and which desire one should give priority to. In
other words, one has to establish an order within one’s thinking pro-
cess. In this the role of the judge is vital. People evidently experience in-
ner conflict over conflicting notions of good: the happiness of the sober
person is not of interest to the drunkard and vice versa, so that in the
same person there are two different unrelated and conflicting worlds.
The dreadful prospect of a Hobbesian ‘state of nature’ necessitates the
viewpoint of the outsider, the ‘third person.’ Due to this third person,
or the judge, a normative stance can be adopted, essential for the pres-
ervation of the well-being of the integrated person.
The problem of personal identity, in brief, hinges on the autonomy
and the happiness of the agent, the person able to act, to represent
himself or herself, and who can reflect upon and suspend his or her
desires.37 Epistemologically, Locke defines the self in terms of con-
sciousness divided across past and present so that a reflective distance
is made possible. This epistemological definition, however, does not
suffice to ensure that a person will be moral in the sense of being ‘capa-
ble of Law, and Happiness and Misery.’38 Personhood is grounded not
only on consciousness, but also on moral conscience. On such bases a
person can put diverse desires in order and establish the connections
between them, can be his own lawyer and judge, and can have a capac-
ity for happiness. However, the difference between the epistemological
and the moral dimensions of consciousness is a critical problem. Ulti-
mately, the solution Locke advances to this epistemological and ethical
rift is divine intervention.39 In everyday life, an agent’s autonomy, as

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Locke sees it, is only partial. Reflectivity attains its highest level when
it is illuminated by divine judgment. Given Locke’s recourse to divine
intervention, it is questionable to what extent such an agent is really
capable of supporting and representing himself or herself rather than
being represented by someone else, by some other part of the self. Is the
decisive criterion upon which the cohesion of the self is based the self-
referential relationship, moral conscience, or the divine revelation that
illuminates a person and renders the self transparent? The answer to
this question remains open, which is attributable to Locke’s methodol-
ogy, which in turn takes as its starting point each self as an individual.
In his political theory, he also gives priority to private property over
civil society. Already in the state of nature, each human being is owner
of his person and his belongings. By contrast, for Rousseau – although
he was both familiar with Locke and shared his critical stance vis-à-vis
the origins of kingly and paternal power – private property, and the
development of reason do not predate the establishment of society, but
rather follow it. To the question of what the decisive factor is for the
cohesion of the self, conscience, and the community, he replies with a
theory of the sentiments, as I shall now show.

Rousseau: Sentiments as Principles and Conscience

As Mark Blackell points out, for Rousseau desire reveals itself as the
crucial middle term between individual and collective.40 Indeed, Rous-
seau gives a dialectical and critical account of the history of desire from
brute instinct in individuals to the desire for the common good. Rous-
seau’s political system, a revolutionary republicanism, derives from his
historical anthropology. Its constituent elements are the history of de-
sire and the history of labour. Our question is, within the ‘polyvalence’
of Rousseau, is his political theory as dynamic and coherent as his an-
thropology promises? How precisely do his accounts of the human be-
ing and the citizen cohere?
Rousseau draws a radical distinction between sensibility and reason.
In his Discourse on Inequality, he depicts love of self (l’amour de soi-même)
and pity as principles anterior to reason. It is only through the activity
of passions that our reason is perfected; ‘we seek to know only because
we desire to have pleasure; and it is impossible to conceive why one
who had neither desires nor fears would go to the trouble of reason-
ing.’41 It is from the conjunction and combination of these principles
that all the rules of natural right flow.42 Love of oneself ‘interests us

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ardently in our well-being and our self-preservation’ and pity ‘inspires

in us a natural repugnance to see any sensitive Being perish or suffer,
principally like ourselves.’43 These principles, being anterior to reason,
are interior impulses, immanent to human nature.
Love of self is assigned priority of place, followed by pity. Pity mod-
erates ‘the desire for self-preservation.’44 Pity, moreover, is ‘a feeling
that puts us in the position of him who suffers,’ and thus comprises a
basis for identification. But even though ‘this identification must have
been infinitely closer in the state of nature than in the state of reason-
ing,’45 it cannot have been absolute, given that it coexists, and com-
mingles, with love of self.
Practical reason and virtue are based on these two basic principles,
and together they generate the synthetic principle ‘Do what is good for
you with the least possible harm to others.’46 The two basic principles
have a mutually moderating effect, without there being any need for
intervention by reason, or for the suspension of desire, as in Locke. Of
course, the relationship between pity and love of self is not immune to
criticism as potentially contradictory. Katrin Froese identifies a para-
doxical element in Rousseau’s anthropology: on the one hand, the hu-
man being is centred on himself as a ‘windowless monad,’ and on the
other, he is open to others.47 However, this is a productive paradox or
tension for the history of philosophy. In the Discourse on Inequality, the
tension appears without the calculations of reason and it is abstractly
removed from the antagonistic relations of bourgeois society. An argu-
ment that appeals to sentiments prior to both reason and social antago-
nism allows Rousseau to exclude the need to account for destructive
human behaviour on the ground of natural sentiments. The argument
in favour of man’s natural goodness is, in turn, strengthened through
Rousseau’s experiment of drawing radical distinctions between sen-
timents and reason. The causes of destructiveness must therefore be
sought in civilization while the grounds of ethical social relationships
must be found in natural sentiment.
In Rousseau’s view, such virtues as generosity, clemency, human-
ity, benevolence, and even friendship are ultimately products of pity.48
Rousseau’s ethical theory is typically represented as antiintellectual, in
contradistinction to Socratic teachings. He writes: ‘Although it may be-
hove Socrates and Minds of his stamp to acquire virtue through reason,
the human Race would have perished long ago if its preservation had
depended only on the reasonings of its members.’49 His basic premise
could be formulated as follows: in place of the clear mind and clear

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ideas, the clear sentiment expresses principles of natural right. Even

though serious critical questions have been raised in relation to the
grounding and the character of morality in Rousseau, as Mark Blackell
notes, it could be argued that Rousseauian morality appears grounded
in natural right, which is expressed in sentiment and at a very basic
level demands protection of life and reciprocity between individuals.50
In the preface to the Discourse on Inequality, Rousseau argues that
‘reason is later forced to re-establish upon other foundations’ the prin-
ciples of love of self and pity ‘when, by its successive developments,
it has succeeded in stifling Nature.’51 This seems to prefigure his view
that when reason intervenes in established society it does not come into
conflict with sentiments but rather develops and restores natural feel-
ings. This becomes clear in Emile, where Rousseau further expounds
his views on pity and, as we shall see, arrives at conclusions in no way
contrary to those of the Discourse on Inequality.
In Emile, while endeavouring to determine the subject and object of
sentiment, Rousseau summarizes the characteristics of pity in three
maxims. According to the first, ‘It is not in the human heart to put our-
selves in the place of people who are happier than we, but only in that
of those who are more pitiable.’52 This maxim defines the object of pity,
limiting it to cases of misery. It does not expand indiscriminately to cov-
er all objects and people, but covers ‘those who are more pitiable.’ The
second maxim defines the subject of pity in such a way as to exclude
the upper classes: ‘One pities in others only those from which one does
not feel oneself exempt.’53 On the basis of this proviso, he who feels
pity perceives that he has something in common with the person who
suffers. Monarchs and the economically powerful are not recognized as
subjects of this sentiment: ‘Why are the rich so hard toward the poor?
It is because they have no fear of becoming poor.’54 In Rousseau, pity
reaches its highest point and attains truly moral expression in a stance
of critical distance toward the tribulations of others. According to the
third maxim, ‘The pity one has for another’s misfortune is measured
not by the quantity of that misfortune but by the sentiment which one
attributes to those who suffer it.’55 He adds the remark that ‘it is impor-
tant to mix the least possible personal interest with these emotions.’56
He also says that ‘to pity another’s misfortune one doubtless needs to
know it, but one does not need to feel it.’57
This analysis of pity removes from it all traces of passion and the
sense of absolute identification with the other. In the state of nature,
as depicted in the Discourse on Inequality, this identification must have

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been infinitely closer than in the state of reasoning,58 such that, not-
withstanding the cohabitation of pity with love of self, it must have
been difficult to avoid passive identification with the other. In Emile,
thanks to the process of proper upbringing, pity does not reach the
point of absolute identification with the other, given the intervention of
reflection and self-interest. What emerges, given that there has been an
evolution of imagination and reason, is a more moderate relationship
between self-love and pity.
The elaboration of pity in Emile presupposes the formation of a com-
munity where unequal social relations predominate, so that there is
a possibility of comparing different social situations. Clifford Orwin
maintains that Rousseau was ‘the first philosopher to teach the rich to
hate themselves.’59 Nevertheless, on the basis of our analysis, pity for
Rousseau cannot get to the point of hatred, as there is a moderation of
absolute identification with the suffering person and so of the passion,
averting intense emotions such as hatred.

Conscience as Sentiment

Love of self and pity are not merely sentiments. In the Discourse on
Inequality and in Emile they are principles of natural law and justice.
As Rousseau writes in Emile, ‘It is not true that the precepts of natu-
ral law are founded on reason alone. They have a base more solid and
sure. Love of men derived from love of self is the principle of human
justice.’60 Emile includes an elaboration of Rousseau’s theory of con-
science. As already mentioned, Coste translated Locke’s term ‘con-
sciousness’ with the French sentiment intérieur. This term was used by
Malebranche and denoted a private and inferior kind of awareness, to
be distinguished from knowledge.61 Rousseau interprets consciousness
as meaning interior sentiment, associates it with self-consciousness,
and situates it in time (as did Locke): strictly speaking, the life of the
individual begins’ relatively late,

[w]hen … he gains consciousness of himself. Memory extends the senti-

ment of identity to all the moments of his existence; he becomes truly one,
the same, and consequently already capable of happiness or unhappiness.
It is important, therefore, to begin to consider him here as a moral being.62

We have seen that in Locke the epistemological dimension of con-

sciousness is distinguished from moral conscience which, in accord-

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ance with Locke’s second definition of the person, results in persons

as ‘intelligent Agents capable of Law, and Happiness and Misery.’63 In
Rousseau, memory plays a role in self-awareness, thanks to which a
person may acquire possession of himself and his history over time. But
self-awareness appears to be associated with the moral dimension of
the actor, who is ‘capable of happiness or unhappiness.’ Identity com-
prises sentiment and consciousness and is analysed in terms of feelings,
as I shall try to show.
Following Descartes and Locke, Rousseau reintroduces the question
‘Who, or perhaps what, am I?’ His answer: ‘I exist and I have senses by
which I am affected.’64 This is the primary truth, he argues. But Rous-
seau’s ‘I exist’ is supplemented by another assertion suggesting that
the existing self is at the same time passive. What looks at first sight
like two different types of ego can coexist in the same mind, so that it
seems that a man is two persons simultaneously. The ego is not sim-
ply identical with itself, since it is also always being affected by sense
impressions and by its relations with others. In other words, Rousseau
subscribes to the Lockean notion that a man is more than one person,
that he is not identical with himself. Rousseau is very much concerned
with the divided self. The words of his Savoyard Vicar illustrate
this:

Constantly caught up in the combat between my natural feelings which

spoke for the common interest, and my reason which related everything
to me, I would have drifted all my life in this continual alteration – doing
the bad, loving the good, always in contradiction with my self – if new
lights had not illuminated my heart, and if the truth, which settled my
opinions, had not also made my conduct certain and put me in agreement
with myself.65

In Rousseau, the active thinking ego is not at the centre, for ‘not only do
I exist, but there exist other beings.’ Error can originate as much from
reason taken in isolation as from the senses taken in isolation. Thus
Rousseau believes, on the one hand, in the existence of a distinct and
active intelligence,66 and on the other, in the anteriority of sensibility:
‘To exist, for us, is to sense.’67 This is to posit a new kind of sensuous
ego emerging out of a balance between activity and passivity. While
these two different ‘voices,’ the active and the passive, are distinct,
they possess a channel of communication in the form of sincerity of
heart. Rousseau sees this as self-evidently the case: ‘an easy and simple

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 98 Vasiliki Grigoropoulou

rule.’68 The moral conscience Rousseau speaks of is something he sees

as ‘natural and innate.’
Above, we saw that the division of self postulated by Locke might
find its solution in the suspension of desires, but that division legiti-
mized both the intervention of the will and the need for the hypotheti-
cal outside arbitrator or judge to underwrite a person’s identity. In
Rousseau, the intrinsic conflict between inner sentiment and the empire
of passions finds its solution in conscience, comprehended as enlight-
ened religious sentiment. In the Confession of the Savoyard Vicar there is
acknowledgement of ‘a basic duality, two divergent principles in man,
one raising him to the pursuit of eternal truths, the other dragging him
downwards within himself, rendering him a slave to his passions.’69
Rousseau is also convinced that the universe cannot be sufficiently ex-
plained in terms of mechanical physics, but that it requires the tele-
ological explanation of ‘divine will,’ as in Locke.
Conscience for Rousseau is a sentiment, and indeed a divine senti-
ment: ‘Conscience, conscience! Divine instinct, immortal and celestial
voice, certain guide of a being that is ignorant and limited but intel-
ligent and free.’70 This consecration of sentiment becomes possible be-
cause of its being made distinct both from reason, as can be seen in
the Discourse on Inequality, and from the passions. Through this puri-
fication, sentiment is corroborated, acquiring the status of a principle.
Rousseau’s sentient ‘I’ is not science’s principle of certainty. It is an ethi-
cal principle. Through his method of purification Rousseau disproves
the notion that ‘conscience is the work of prejudices.’71
We perceive that the two ‘I’s, the active and the passive, coexist in
dialogue. The ‘I’ is not cut off from the community to which it belongs,
and from which it is in receipt of affections that it is in a position to
evaluate purely and simply on the basis of its sentiments. Rousseau
purges each sentiment of the admixture of passions (such as personal
interest, vanity, emulation, and glory).72 Thanks to this purge, the pure
sentiment is reliable and can provide a basis for judgment. There is a re-
quirement that passions be silenced so that the voice of conscience may
be heard as the proper guide to action. We perceive that the two ‘I’s’ sig-
nify the internalized relationship between judge and judged, and given
that a person has the ability to be his own judge, this makes possible the
preservation of his autonomy and his coherence as a person. As indicat-
ed, in Emile Rousseau seeks to refute the notion that ‘conscience is the
work of prejudices’ and to uphold the certainty that a person can trust
his conscience when it comes to behaving properly. Nevertheless, in the

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 Desire and Will 99

Geneva Manuscript, he voices the doubt as to the status and reliability of

conscience: ‘Will he listen to the inner voice? But it is said that this voice
is formed only by the habit of judging and feeling within society and
according to its laws. It cannot serve, therefore, to establish them.’73 At
first sight this seems to present a contradiction. Conscience is the basis
for ethical action by an individual, whereas the state must be founded
on a different basis, that of the general will, whose object is the common
good. The state cannot be established on the same basis as individual
ethics, because then it would be comprised of individual wills.
It is however possible to draw an analogy between conscience and the
general will. Conscience, as we have indicated, internalizes the judge,
so that a person includes the dimensions of both judge and judged. But
Rousseau’s social contract also presents the following innovation: there
is a questioning of the notion that the contract is concluded between
the people and the leaders it chooses.74 Each contract, as in Hobbes and
Locke, presupposes a contractual guarantor, a judge. Rousseau, how-
ever, revokes the distinction between the sovereign and the people: his
identification of the people with the sovereign amounts to an internali-
zation of the ‘third party,’ the judge and guarantor of the contract.
In the Social Contract, it is indeed the community as a whole that
takes precedence, but the inner voice or conscience of the citizen is re-
quired to be active: ‘In order for the general will to be well expressed,
it is therefore important that there be no partial society in the State, and
that each Citizen give only his own opinion.’75 Clearly, if the citizen
is to express a valid opinion, he must have faith in the dictates of his
conscience. As Katrin Froese argues, personal achievement of general
will gives the citizen a greater awareness and ensures greater securi-
ty for society.76 The general will, whose object is the common good,
is in no way counter to self-protection, individual well-being, and the
preservation of the species as manifested in the sentiments of love of
self and pity. Nevertheless, as indicated by Rousseau in the Discourse
on Inequality, ‘reason is later forced to re-establish’ these principles or
sentiments ‘upon other foundations.’77 Locke grounded politics in an
understanding of self-interest, but for Rousseau, republics demand vir-
tuous citizens, people with the capacity to link their own interests to the
public good. For Locke representative government is legitimate when
it is based on popular consent and it seeks the good of the members of
society.78 This involves the replacement of people’s capacity for judg-
ment by that of their rulers; in effect, their judgement is suspended in
political society and remains inoperative. In the Discourse on Inequal-

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 100 Vasiliki Grigoropoulou

ity, Rousseau makes a cogent critique of the contract on which civil so-
ciety is based and by means of which society is divided into rulers and
ruled – there is always the real threat of a return to the state of nature
as a state of war. As he formulates it more clearly in the Social Con-
tract, Rousseau explains that the only genuine form of consent is active
participation.79 Active citizenship is attributable, to a great extent, to
the unity of conscience, which successfully links personal interest, self-
love, and love of freedom with the common good; the citizen may thus
defend the common interest as if it were his own personal affair.
In his Essay, Locke posed a serious question: how can one human
being be many persons, play different roles, and also retain his coher-
ence? In our analysis of what should constitute his answer, we had to
link his epistemological to his moral sense of the person. The require-
ment that the two be linked is a crucial issue. In Rousseau’s view, a
person can retain his coherence and take proper decisions, in spite of
the influences to which he may be subjected, thanks to his inner senti-
ment. It is because of this that the judge and guarantor of the coher-
ence of a person can be internalized. This criterion is also of practical
importance in the face of instances of breakdown of personal identity.
In Rousseau, morality has priority with respect to knowledge. Thanks
to his moral sentiments, a person is able to maintain his coherence,
keep his promises, and make proper decisions. As I have tried to ar-
gue, Locke’s theory attributes priority to consciousness, to the epis-
temological dimension of the conscious self. Rousseau’s approach is
the opposite: he attributes priority to the sentient self, which is able to
interiorize the other. It thus seems that God, or the judge, is immanent
to moral sentiments.

NOTES

1 Taylor, Plato, 414. I am indebted to the editors of this volume. I am also

grateful to D. Garber and A. Nehemas for their remarks, to the Hellenic
Studies Program at Princeton University for supporting my research, and
last, but not least, to S. Virvidakis (University of Athens).
2 Descartes was one of its most notable opponents. See Gaukroger, The Soft
Underbelly of Reason, 6.
3 John Duncan, ‘Perfectibility, Chance, and the Mechanism of Desire Multi-
plication in Rousseau’s Discourse on Inequality,’ in this volume.

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 Desire and Will 101

4 Yolton, A Locke Dictionary , 161.

5 Ibid., 309.
6 Locke, An Essay Concerning Human UnderstandingII, xxi, § 31, 251.
7 Ibid., II, xx, § 6, 230 (emphasis in original).
8 Ibid., II, xxi, § 33, 252.
9 Ibid., II, xxi, § 29, 249.
10 Schouls, Reasoned Freedom, 133.
11 Locke, Essay II, xxi, § 45, 262.
12 See ibid., II, xxi, § 63, 275.
13 Locke provides an excellent description of the situation. Ibid., II, xxi, § 35,
253.
14 Ibid., II, xxi, § 64, 277.
15 Ibid., II, xxi, § 63, 275 (emphasis in original).
16 Ibid., II, xxi, § 66, 278.
17 Magri, ‘Locke, Suspension of Desire, and the Remote Good.’ 57–8.
18 Locke, Essay II, xxi, § 47, 263 (emphasis in original).
19 Ibid., II, xxi, § 47, 263.
20 Ibid., II, xxi, § 47, 263.
21 Ibid.
22 Both Epicurus and Lucretius were in agreement that reason can ‘cleanse’
and purify desires by revealing true happiness based on intellectual pleas-
ure. See Lucretius, De rerum natura, 5.43–5.51.
23 Locke, Essay II, xxi, § 47, 263.
24 Ibid., II, xxi, § 46, 262 (emphasis in original).
25 Ibid., II, i, § 18, 115.
26 Ibid., II, xxi, § 53, 268.
27 Davies, Conscience as Consciousness, 3.
28 See ibid., 32.
29 Locke, Essay II, xxvii, § 9, 335.
30 Yolton, The Two Intellectual Worlds of John Locke, 22.
31 Locke, Essay II, xxvii, § 16, 340.
32 Ibid., II, i, § 19, 115.
33 Ibid., II, xxvii, § 13, 338.
34 Ibid., II, xxvii, § 9, 335.
35 Ibid., II, xxvii, § 26, 346 (emphasis in original).
36 Ibid., II, xxvii, § 22, 343.
37 Ibid., II, xxi, § 52, 267; Ayers, Locke, 2:193.
38 Ibid., II, xxvii, § 26, 346.
39 Ibid., 347: ‘the Apostle tells us, that the Great Day, when everyone shall

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 102 Vasiliki Grigoropoulou

receive according to his doings, the secrets of all Hearts shall be laid open’ (em-
phasis in original).
40 Mark Blackell, ‘Rousseau, Constant, and the Political Institutionalization
of Ambivalence,’ in this volume.
41 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, Collected Works of Rousseau (CWR) III,
27; Oeuvres Complètes (OC) III, 142.
42 Ibid., CWR III, 15; OC III, 126.
43 Ibid., CWR III, 15; OC III, 126.
44 Ibid., CWR 36; OC III, 156.
45 Ibid., CWR III, 37; OC III, 155.
46 Ibid., CWR III, 38; OC III, 156.
47 Katrin Froese, ‘Openings that Close: The Paradox of Desire in Rousseau,’
in this volume, p. 00. <supply page of quote at proofs>
48 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, CWR III, 37; OC III, 155.
49 Ibid., CWR III, 38; OC III, 156–7.
50 Blackell, in this volume, p. 00. <supply at proofs>
51 Ibid., CWR III, 15; OC III, 126.
52 Rousseau, Emile, ed. Bloom, 223; OC IV, 506.
53 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 224; OC IV, 507.
54 Ibid., ed. Bloom.
55 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 225; OC IV, 508.
56 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 226; OC IV, 510.
57 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 229; OC IV, 514.
58 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, CWR III, 37; OC III, 156.
59 Orwin, ‘Rousseau and the Discovery of Political Compassion,’ 310.
60 Rousseau, Emile, ed. Bloom, 235; OC IV, 523.
61 See Davies, Conscience as Consciousness, 16.
62 Rousseau, Emile, ed. Bloom, 78; OC IV, 301.
63 Locke, Essay II, xvii, § 26, 346.
64 Rousseau, Emile, ed. Bloom, 270; OC IV, 570.
65 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 291; OC IV, 602.
66 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 272; OC IV, 573.
67 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 290; OC IV, 600.
68 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 267–8; OC IV, 570.
69 Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 719.
70 Rousseau, Emile, ed. Bloom, 272; OC IV, 573.
71 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 267; OC IV, 566.
72 Ibid., ed. Bloom, 226 and 287; OC IV, 510 and 596.
73 Rousseau, Geneva Manuscript: CWR IV, 80; OC III, 286.
74 Rousseau, Social Contract: CWR IV, 195; OC III, 432–3.

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 Desire and Will 103

75 Ibid.: CWR IV, 147–8; OC III, 372.

76 Froese, in this volume. <give page/s at proofs>
77 Rousseau, Discourse on Inequality, CWR III, 15; OC III, 126.
78 See Locke, Second Treatise, in Two Treatises of Government, § 87, 323–4, and
§ 171, 381–2.
79 See Horowitz, Rousseau, Nature, and History, 174.

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