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Rousseau’s God
 Rousseau’s God
T h e ol o g y, R e l ig ion,
a n d t h e N at u r a l G o odn e s s
of M a n

John T. Scott

The University of Chicago Press Chicago and London

 The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2023 by The University of Chicago
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whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations
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Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St., Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2023
Printed in the United States of America

32 31 30 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 1 2 3 4 5

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-82548-9 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-82550-2 (paper)
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226825496.001.0001

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Scott, John T., 1963– author.

Title: Rousseau’s God : theology, religion, and the natural goodness of man /
John T. Scott.
Description: Chicago ; London : The University of Chicago Press, 2023. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022035681 | ISBN 9780226825489 (cloth) | ISBN 9780226825502
(paperback) | ISBN 9780226825496 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778—Religion. | Theology. |
Religion. | Philosophical anthropology. | Philosophy and religion.
Classification: LCC B2138.R4 S46 2023 | DDC 220.6—dc23/eng/20220909
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022035681

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992

(Permanence of Paper).
For Adrienne
 Con t en ts

List of Abbreviations ix

Introduction 1

Chapter 1
T r u t h a n d U t i l i t y 20
Chapter 2
The Theodicy of the
D i s c o u r s e o n I n e q u a l i t y 56
Chapter 3
Pride and Providence in the
L e t t e r t o V o lta i r e 85
Chapter 4
Psychic Unit y and Disunit y and
t h e N e e d f o r R e l i g i o n 108
Chapter 5
Introduction to the
“ P r o f e s s i o n o f Fa i t h ” 131
Chapter 6
The Theological Teaching of the
“ P r o f e s s i o n o f Fa i t h ” 149
 Chapter 7
T h e C r i t i q u e — a n d R e v i va l — o f
R e l i g i o n i n t h e “ P r o f e s s i o n o f Fa i t h ” 188
Chapter 8
O n C i v i l R e l i g i o n 201
C o n c l u s i o n 229

Acknowledgments 233
Notes 235
Bibliography 251
Index 259
 A bbr e v i at ions

For those writings by Rousseau on which I focus, I use the abbreviated

titles and do so parenthetically within the text. For other writings by
Rousseau, I use an abbreviated title and identify the edition from which
the work is drawn. All translations from primary and secondary sources
are my own unless otherwise noted. I sometimes alter translations with-
out so noting, using the Pléiade edition of the Oeuvres complètes unless
otherwise noted.

CC Correspondence complète. Ed. Ralph A. Leigh. 50 vols. Oxford:

Voltaire Foundation, 1965–91.
CW The Collected Writings of Rousseau. Ed. Roger D. Masters and
Christopher Kelly. 13 vols. Hanover: University Press of New
England, 1990–2010.
OC Oeuvres complètes. 5 vols. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade. Paris:
Gallimard, 1959–95.

Beaumont Letter to Beaumont. In CW, vol. 9.

Contract On the Social Contract; or, Principles of Political Right. In The
Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. and
ed. John T. Scott. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Emile Emile, or On Education. Trans. Allan Bloom. New York: Basic
Books, 1979.
Inequality Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality among
Men. In The Major Political Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
trans. and ed. John T. Scott. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2012.
Mountain Letters Written from the Mountain. In CW, vol. 9.
Reveries Reveries of the Solitary Walker. In CW, vol. 11.
x L i s t of A b b r e v i a t io n s

Sciences Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts. In The Major Political
Writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, trans. and ed. John T. Scott.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Voltaire Letter to Voltaire. In CW, vol. 3.
 Introduction

On the evening of June 8, 1762, Rousseau learned that an order for his
arrest had been issued. His recently published work, Emile, or On Educa-
tion, had been condemned by the Parliament of Paris, in large part for
the discussion of theology and religion contained in the separate section
of the work titled the “Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar.” The
author was then living in Montmorency, about ten miles north of Paris,
having retreated from the city to the countryside six years earlier to em-
bark on a personal reformation. His friends and sometime hosts there,
the duc and duchesse de Luxembourg, and other supporters gathered in
the night to confer and counseled him to flee to England. “Jean-Jacques
does not know how to hide,” he declared. Nonetheless, the next morning
Jean-Jacques fled. But he did not hide. After breakfasting, he climbed
into a borrowed cabriolet, insisting that the folding top remain down.
As he left the grounds of the estate, he passed the carriage carrying the
officials arriving to arrest him. Readily recognizable in his Armenian
costume of a caftan and tall fur hat, Rousseau defiantly drove straight
through Paris and then headed east toward his native Geneva. Ten days
later his fellow citizens condemned Emile, along with the Social Contract
for good measure, burning the offending books and ordering his arrest.
After canvassing his options, the fugitive headed on foot for the tiny
village of Môtiers, nestled in the mountains above Lake Neuchâtel.1 A
month later he learned that a pastoral letter had been issued by Chris-
tophe de Beaumont, archbishop of Paris, censuring Emile. Rousseau had
accomplished something of a trifecta of persecuted authors of the eigh-
teenth century, earning the wrath of secular and religious authorities,
Catholics and Protestants alike, with his controversial writings.
In his open reply to the archbishop of Paris, the Letter to Beaumont,
Rousseau defended the publication of Emile, and especially the “Profes-
2 I n t r odu c t io n

sion of Faith.” He explained the philosophical system of which Emile was

an expression. “The fundamental principle of all morality about which
I have reasoned in all my writings and developed in this last one with
all the clarity of which I was capable is that man is a naturally good be-
ing, loving justice and order; that there is no original perversity in the
human heart, and that the first movements of nature are always right”
(Beaumont, 28; see also Letters to Malesherbes, CW, 5:575; Dialogues, CW,
1:22–23, 209–13).2 The corollary to the natural goodness of man is his
corruption in society. Rousseau therefore claims that he has been able
to explain the source of our wickedness without resorting to the doc-
trine of original sin, admitting to the archbishop that his philosophical
system is directed against that gloomy doctrine. “Original sin explains
everything except its own principle, and it is this principle that has to be
explained. . . . Man was created good. We both agree on that, I believe.
But you say he is wicked because he was wicked. And I show how he was
wicked. Which of us, in your opinion, better ascends to the principle?”
(Beaumont, 31). As for the “Profession of Faith,” he makes an astonishing
declaration: “I will always consider it the best and most useful writing
in the century during which I published it” (46–47). His phraseology
here—that he “published” the “Profession of Faith” as opposed to ac-
knowledging that he wrote it—indicates the problematic relationship
between the “Profession of Faith” and the text of Emile, and indeed
Rousseau’s entire corpus.
Why did Rousseau publish the “Profession of Faith,” indeed publish
it at such considerable personal risk to himself? How are the theological
and religious teachings promulgated by the Savoyard Vicar related to
Rousseau’s philosophical system of the natural goodness of man? What
does Rousseau argue in his own name concerning theological and reli-
gious issues? The questions raised by Rousseau’s defense of Emile and
the “Profession of Faith” are the subject of this book.
Rousseau’s God offers a comprehensive interpretation of Rousseau’s
theological and religious writings, both in themselves and in relation to
his philosophy and political theory as a whole. The themes of theology
and religion run throughout Rousseau’s writings. In the prize essay that
began his career as the most famous writer of the time, the Discourse on
the Sciences and the Arts (1751), one of the central complaints against
the deleterious moral effects of the sciences and the arts was how they
undermined healthy religious sentiments. “But those vain and futile de-
claimers go about everywhere, armed with their deadly paradoxes, un-
dermining the foundations of faith and annihilating virtue. They laugh
disdainfully at those old-fashioned words ‘fatherland’ and ‘religion’ and
 I n t r o du c t i o n 3

consecrate their talents and their philosophy to destroying and degrad-

ing all that is sacred among men” (Sciences, 25). In the Discourse on In-
equality (1755) Rousseau proclaims the central tenet of his philosophi-
cal system, the natural goodness of man, and claims that this doctrine
serves to “justify nature,” making the work a theodicy or physiodicy.
He made the intention of his second Discourse manifest in his Letter to
Voltaire (1756), directed against Voltaire’s “Poem on the Lisbon Earth-
quake,” where he defended the natural goodness of man and of nature
itself. Rousseau turned more overtly to theological and religious themes
in Emile (1762), with its lengthy “Profession of Faith,” and the Social
Contract (1762), the longest chapter of which is “On Civil Religion.” He
defended the content of the theological and religious thought expressed
in these writings and explained his intentions in publishing them in the
Letter to Beaumont (1763) and Letters Written from the Mountain (1764).
Finally, the questions of God and providence, fate and hope, preoccupy
Rousseau in his last, autobiographical writings.
When I speak of Rousseau’s theological and religious thought I differ-
entiate between these two related subjects as theory is related to practice.
That is, theology is a branch of philosophy devoted to reasoning about
God, providence, and so on, whereas religion concerns the beliefs, doc-
trines, and practices involved in the worship of the divinity. Rousseau
writes on both subjects, sometimes separately and sometimes together.
Most notably, this division structures the two parts of the “Profession
of Faith.” The first part contains the Vicar’s theological reasonings based
on his understanding of nature and human nature, of the existence and
nature of the divinity, and of the human soul, freedom, and conscience
in relation to the divinity. The second part is devoted to a critique of reli-
gious beliefs and practices such as revelation, miracles, and scripture. By
contrast, whereas the “Profession of Faith” contains an extensive discus-
sion of theology, the chapter “On Civil Religion” in the Social Contract
limits itself to a single sentence on the positive doctrines necessary for
a civil religion and instead focuses on the utility (or lack thereof) of re-
ligious beliefs and practices from the perspective of politics. Since one
of Rousseau’s main strategies across his writings is to limit theological
doctrines to a minimum so as to maximize potential assent to them, and
this in order to make them practically efficacious, his theological and
religious views cannot be entirely separated.
The overall argument of my inquiry is that there is a complicated
relationship between Rousseau’s philosophy of the natural goodness of
man, on the one hand, and his theological and religious thought, on the
other, which revolves around what can be framed as two oppositions:
4 I n t r odu c t io n

first, between the attributes or needs of natural man and social or moral
man; second, between the criteria of truth and utility.
As for the first opposition, I argue that Rousseau’s solution to the
problem of evil and therewith his justification of God and nature ex-
tends only to natural man, that is, humans considered as physical beings
existing under the physical laws of nature, such as he portrays human
nature in the pure state of nature. I later add a caveat to this argument
by examining how in Emile Rousseau takes up the task of educating a
developed social or moral being in such a way as to maintain his natu-
ral goodness and psychic unity, if on another plane than that of natural
man, and thereby extend his theodicy and physiodicy beyond physical
man simplicitur. Yet this justification is insufficient for social man as he
ordinarily develops in society, that is, from the perspective of developed
humans who, in part owing to amour-propre, demand justification and
consolation for the internal divisions they experience and the injustices
they believe they suffer. Rousseau must therefore supplement the natu-
ral or physical providence that applies to physical man with a teaching
concerning divine particular providence required by social or moral man,
even though that teaching is at best doubtful in his view. This leads to
the second set of oppositions.
Rousseau argues that theological and religious doctrines must be
assessed by two criteria, truth and utility, criteria that he importantly
also insists cannot be assumed to be consistent with one another. The
theological and religious views he expresses throughout his writings,
whether in his own name or in the voice of the Savoyard Vicar or oth-
ers, are offered by him as less true than useful. They are presented as true
up to a point and with an eye to the limits of human knowledge, but
beyond that point as beliefs or opinions that fulfill our psychological
need for hope and consolation. They are advanced as useful in various
ways depending on the context: psychologically, morally, or politically.
In sum, I therefore see a consistency of substance and aim across his
theological and religious writings both in themselves and in relation to
his philosophy. Let me clarify that I am not arguing that the theologi-
cal and religious views he advances are “merely” useful, and that in two
respects. First, they are not “merely” useful, because under certain as-
sumptions they may also be true. For example, if Rousseau is a deist
who believes in the divinity, such a belief would from his perspective be
both true and useful. Second, whatever their truth value, they are not
“merely” useful in the sense of manipulative or simply instrumental, but
are instead intended to be salutary with regard to human virtue and hap-
piness, or one might say “truly” salutary.
 I n t r o du c t i o n 5

The Natural Goodness of Man and the Problem of Religion

Rousseau famously proclaims that a single principle unifies all of his
works and comprises a “system”: the natural goodness of man. But no
less important for understanding his philosophy, and especially his theo-
logical and religious writings, is the corollary of his “great principle”:
society makes men wicked. The juxtaposition of our natural goodness
and current wickedness is clear in Rousseau’s first assertion of his prin-
ciple, in the Discourse on Inequality: “Men are wicked; sad and continual
experience spares the need for proof. Yet man is naturally good—I do
believe I have demonstrated it” (Inequality, note IX, 127). Indeed, in
my own view, the power of Rousseau’s writings is most fully felt in his
diagnosis of the evils we experience in ourselves and in our relations
with others. He gives full-throated and eloquent voice to the corrupt-
ing effects of personal dependence, the psychic disunity we experience
as we are torn between our inclinations and duties, the perils of feeling
our existence through the opinions of others, the false veils of polite-
ness and civility with which we are swathed, the pains of unrequited
love and disappointing friendships, and so on.3 The psychic disunity
and the evils experienced by developed humans are what, according to
Rousseau, lead them to turn to religion to explain their predicament and
to offer consolation and hope. Or so I will argue.
Locating Rousseau within the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
debates over theology and especially the problem of evil, and the schol-
arly literature on them, helps bring out what is important and perhaps
unique about his theological and religious writings. Since my business
here is not to canvass these debates, my attention to this issue will neces-
sarily be brief. Fortunately, others have gone before me.
Particularly helpful is how Ernst Cassirer situates Rousseau within
Enlightenment debates over the problem of evil. According to Cassirer,
most Enlightenment thinkers, and particularly French thinkers includ-
ing Voltaire and the Encyclopedists, held a critical and skeptical attitude
toward religion, or at least toward superstition and religious authorities,
a stance captured by Voltaire’s battle cry, Écrasez l’infâme! In turn, they
tended to embrace or at least proclaim their allegiance to a deism that
led to a rather optimistic or even casual attitude toward the problem of
evil, whether on the level of the cosmos or the individual. Such thinkers
include Locke, Shaftesbury, Toland, and Leibniz, and the English among
them especially influenced the French thinkers of the eighteenth cen-
tury. According to Cassirer, and other scholars as well, it was the Lisbon
earthquake of All Saints’ Day 1715 that shook Voltaire, usually so urbane
6 I n t r odu c t io n

and insouciant about the problem of evil, with his optimism tumbling
down along with that of many of his fellow travelers.4 The intellectual
aftershocks of the Lisbon earthquake may be overstated, but it is an apt
place to dwell, since I devote a chapter of this book to Rousseau’s Letter
to Voltaire and their engagement over the problem of evil. The paradox of
Rousseau’s reply to Voltaire’s “Poem on the Lisbon Earthquake” is that
he defends a form of optimism against what he sees as Voltaire’s pessi-
mistic indictment of providence, while at the same time acknowledging
that the evils we suffer as human beings are all too real. This paradoxi-
cal combination of optimism and realism, not to say pessimism, runs
through Rousseau’s exposition of the system of the natural goodness of
man and his corruption in society throughout his writings.
Once again, Cassirer is helpful on this issue. When he turns in his
survey of the problem of evil in the Enlightenment to the “thoroughly
original trend of thought” seen in Rousseau, Cassirer repeats what he
has written in his study devoted to Rousseau’s thought concerning his
novel solution to the problem of evil—namely, by locating the source of
evil in society and thus in men themselves,5 an interpretation I take up
in chapter 2. But he also offers another helpful lens through which we
can see Rousseau’s unique place in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
thought. Cassirer says of Rousseau: “He is the first thinker in the eigh-
teenth century to take Pascal’s accusation against men seriously and to
feel its full force. Instead of softening it, instead of attributing it to the
self-torturing mood of a brooding misanthropist, as Voltaire had done,
Rousseau grasps its cardinal point.”6 Once again, this gets to the heart
of Rousseau’s thought: while he agrees with Pascal about the psychic
division, misery, and evil we experience, he denies the sublime misan-
thrope’s argument that this evil lies in original sin, and in fact proclaims
the natural goodness of man against what he will call that “gloomy doc-
trine” (Beaumont, 31).
Pascal is probably best located in the Augustinian tradition, so cast-
ing our eyes back to the bishop of Hippo will help situate Rousseau. In
book VIII of his Confessions, where he recounts the critical moment of
his conversion, Augustine relates how he was listening to man telling of
how he, too, struggled to understand the Scriptures and to abandon his
wicked ways. “But while he was speaking, O Lord,” he says, “you were
turning me around to look at myself. For I had placed myself behind my
back, refusing to see myself. You were setting me before my own eyes so
that I could see how sordid I was . . . but there was no place where I could
escape from myself.” He summarizes the condition of his soul: “My in-
ner self was a house divided against itself.” Augustine, needless to say,
traces the source of this division to original sin. Finally, shortly afterward
 I n t r o du c t i o n 7

comes the conversion scene when he hears a little girl repeating, “‘Take
it up and read, take it up and read,’” and picks up the Gospels to read: “If
you wish to be perfect, go, sell your possessions, and give the money to
the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me”
(Matthew 19:21 [NRSV]).7 And so was he converted. Of course, Rous-
seau, too, wrote his own Confessions. I note that book VIII of the work
is the occasion for him to tell a story parallel to Augustine’s conversion
narrative: a story of reading a very different text, the announcement of
the prize essay competition by the Academy of Dijon in the Mercure,
which marked his own conversion in the “Illumination of Vincennes” in
which he glimpsed the principle of the natural goodness of man and his
corruption in society (Confessions, CW, 5:294–95). In short, Rousseau
turns Augustine on his head.8
As for Pascal, he is eloquent on our house being divided against itself.
To take one example among many: “Be aware, proud men, what a para-
dox you are to yourselves. Humble yourself, powerless reason! Be silent,
foolish nature! Learn that humanity infinitely transcends humanity and
hear from your Master your true condition of which you are unaware. . . .
It is astonishing however that the mystery furthest from our understand-
ing is the transmission of sin, the one thing without which we can have
no understanding of ourselves.”9 Rousseau admits the effect, that our
psychic division make us a paradox to ourselves, but denies the cause,
original sin.
For Rousseau, or so I shall argue, the doctrine of the natural good-
ness of man does not suffice for developed human beings, at least only
with rare exceptions. Proclaiming to divided and wicked beings that
they are naturally good and unified offers little consolation, especially
if the potential remedies for our condition are as difficult and as fragile
as they seem to be. Rousseau therefore turns to salutary theological and
religious teachings to offer consolation and hope to the virtuous and
a check on the wicked. The question of to what extent these teachings
cohere with his philosophy of the natural goodness of man, that is, the
extent to which Rousseau holds them to be true as well as useful, is, of
course, the subject of this study. For the present, I limit myself to sug-
gesting that the tensions between his philosophy and these theological
and religious teachings explain certain inconsistencies or even contra-
dictions other interpreters have found in his thought.
The question of the unity of Rousseau’s thought has long been an
issue faced by interpreters. For the most part, the question has revolved
around the consistency of his various writings—for example, the sup-
posed individualism of the Discourse on Inequality as opposed to the
alleged collectivism of the Social Contract. Most of these debates have
8 I n t r odu c t io n

largely been settled or rendered stale over the past fifty years and more.
What questions remain largely open concern the metaphysical and epis-
temological basis of Rousseau’s thought, including with regard to his
philosophical and theological writings, but also with regard to such is-
sues as the status of the general will.10 I restrict myself to the metaphysi-
cal and epistemological issues.
A number of interpreters have been struck by the inconsistency be-
tween what they see as the philosophical commitments of the Discourse
on Inequality and his earlier writings in general and those of his later
writings, principally Emile and the “Profession of Faith” in particular.
On the one hand, they argue that the Discourse is naturalistic, monist,
or even materialist in its basis, while Emile and the “Profession” are dual-
ist.11 Or, as one scholar has framed the issue, Rousseau seems to move
from an early Epicureanism to a later Stoicism in his thought.12 Often
what is at issue in this debate, even if the participants in the debate do
not acknowledge it, is the question of whether the views concerning
metaphysical dualism, freedom, conscience, and the like, expressed by
the Savoyard Vicar in the “Profession,” represent Rousseau’s own views
on these matters. Of course, this is one of the main subjects of the pres-
ent study. By distinguishing what the Vicar says about these matters
from Rousseau’s own stated views, I find that Rousseau is consistent
across his writings about the metaphysical and epistemological basis of
his thought.
Let me conclude this review of Rousseau’s complex position within
seventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophical and theological
debates with what a recent and influential scholar of Enlightenment
thought has to say about Rousseau. Jonathan Israel finds Rousseau dif-
ficult to fit into his rubric of the radical versus moderate Enlightenment.
Part of his difficulty lies in squaring the deism, the immortality of the
soul, and so on, expressed by the Savoyard Vicar, which he takes with-
out comment to be Rousseau’s own views, with other elements of his
thought. He therefore speaks of Rousseau’s “hybrid status as a political
thinker who combined elements of radicalism with the moderate En-
lightenment, or rather Spinoza with Locke.”13 Indeed, Rousseau seems
to haunt Israel, who concludes his Radical Enlightenment by writing:
“What is especially remarkable about Rousseau’s thought is its Janus-
headed mixing of elements from both radical and mainstream Enlight-
enment.”14 We can all agree, I think, that Rousseau’s thought is, if any-
thing else, complex.
 I n t r o du c t i o n 9

Truth and Method

Here I offer some remarks on the interpretive commitments that guide
my study and differentiate it from other treatments of the subject. What
many studies of Rousseau’s theological and religious teaching have in
common is the assumption that he is expressing his own sincere views,
whether in his own authorial voice or through the “mouthpiece” of the
Savoyard Vicar in the “Profession” or Julie in the New Heloise. In con-
trast, I do not assume that the views he expresses in his writings are
necessarily the same as his own. Indeed, I suggest that it is something of
a fool’s errand to attempt to uncover his sincere religious beliefs. I will
explain my reasons for taking this approach below. Frankly, I do not find
the question of Rousseau’s own beliefs, whatever they may be, a produc-
tive one for understanding the substance and aim of his thought. Rather,
I am concerned with what he has to say about theological and religious
subjects in his writings, what aims he has as an author in addressing
these subjects, and how what he says on these subjects helps us better
understand his philosophy as a whole.
Admittedly, Rousseau makes it tempting to assume that the theo-
logical and religious views he expresses in his own name or otherwise,
indeed the views he proclaims on any subject, are truly and sincerely his
own. Central to his authorial persona is the stance of someone reveal-
ing the truth hidden from our eyes by the false appearances of society
and the machinations of those in power. “Where could the painter and
apologist of nature, so disfigured and calumnied now, have found his
model if not in his own heart?” (Dialogues, CW, 1:214). Voltaire was
fond of comparing Jean-Jacques to Diogenes, barking from his barrel,
but Rousseau might have embraced the comparison by taking up the
lantern in search of a man only to find that he and he alone, in fact, was
that man. He adopted as his motto Vitam impendere vero—“To conse-
crate one’s life to the truth”—and throughout his writings he insisted on
his truthfulness and especially his sincerity. Finally, he upped the ante
in his autobiographical writings. How could anyone who revealed he
enjoyed being spanked, stole ribbons, exposed himself to young women,
and abandoned his children not be telling the truth?
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psychoanalytically informed reading attends to “the emotional sources
and unconscious underpinnings of his thought,” especially as expressed
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