Niko Kolodny
Assistant Professor
Department of Philosophy
University of California, Berkeley

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Living in the Opinion of Others: Rousseau on the Origin of Amour-Propre

Rousseau arrives at famously arresting conclusions about human nature and it political consequences.  On the one hand, he paints a dark portrait of present human motivations.  Men, as they now are, have inflamed amour-propre: a lust for superiority that renders them incapable not only of social peace and justice, but also of individual freedom and happiness.  On the other hand, he insists that they might be, or at least might have been, otherwise.  Under different conditions, which we, his readers, have not experienced, men would develop a psychology that makes peace, justice, freedom, and happiness possible.  It is no simple thing, however, to articulate a conception of human nature that explains Rousseau’s thesis.  Past interpretations of Rousseau have not fully engaged with the difficulty.  In “Living in the Opinion of Others: Rousseau on the Origin of Amour-Propre” (draft), I try to articulate such a conception.  This conception has at its core a tendency to base our evaluations of ourselves on others’ evaluations of us.  Whatever else might be said of this conception, it is, I argue, Rousseau’s.  It explains why the moral education proposed in Emile seeks so unremittingly to counteract this tendency to defer to the evaluations of others.  And it makes almost literal sense of the climax of the second Discourse: “This, indeed is the genuine cause of all these differences: the Savage lives within himself; sociable man, always outside himself, is capable of living only in the opinion of others and, so to speak, derives the sentiment of his own existence solely from their judgment.”