Berlin on Rousseau

Jean-Jacques Rousseau's role in the creation of romanticism has been exaggerated in some circles, says Isaiah Berlin.

In making this case, he says that there isn't as sharp a break between the canonical Enlightenment figures on the one hand and Rousseau on the other as is sometimes thought, at least if we look to actual content.

"If we consider what it is that Rousseau actually said, as opposed to the manner in which he said it -- and the manner and the life are what are important -- we find that it is the purest milk of the rationalist world....Rousseau's actual doctrine is not all that different from that of the Encyclopaedists. He disliked them personally, because temperamentally he was a kind of dervish from the desert. He was paranoiac, savage, and gloomy in some respects ... he did not have much in common with the people at Holbach's rather irreverent table or at the elegant receptions with Voltaire held at Ferney. But this was to a certain degree a personal or emotional matter."

One might sense a confusion here. If the 'manner' does represent a sharp break, if the life is that of a desert dervish, and the manner and life are what are important, then why does the (less important) issue of content make the case that his role should be downgraded? It might follow that our understanding of the mechanism of that role should be re-adjusted, but the case for a downgrade about its magnitude seems unmade.

In context, though Berlin has a theory that romanticism was an infection France caught from Germany. The German principalities after the 30 Years War were a political and cultural backwater. Their best minds felt inferior before the glittering lights from France, and they retreated into themselves in a way that allowed for the fermentation of proto-romanticism.

The real reason Berlin thinks Rousseau's significance overrated is that it doesn't fit this pattern. Romanticism is not to be an infection caught from Geneva.