good kind, which Rousseau doesn’t call other-dependence at
all, involves the unity of a common project, even a “common
self.”26
Thus Rousseau is at the origin of a new discourse about
honor and dignity. To the two traditional ways of thinking
about honor and pride he adds a third, which is quite different.
There was a discourse denouncing pride, as I mentioned
above, which called on us to remove ourselves from this
whole dimension of human life and to be utterly unconcerned
with esteem. And then there was an ethic of honor,
frankly nonuniversalist and inegalitarian, which saw the
concern with honor as the first mark of the honorable man.
Someone unconcerned with reputation, unwilling to defend
it, had to be a coward, and therefore contemptible.
Rousseau borrows the denunciatory language of the first
discourse, but he doesn’t end up calling for a renunciation of
all concern with esteem. On the contrary, in his portrait of
the republican model, caring about esteem is central. What is
wrong with pride or honor is its striving after preferences,
hence division, hence real other-dependence, and therefore
loss of the voice of nature, and consequently corruption, the
forgetting of boundaries, and effeminacy. The remedy is not
rejecting the importance of esteem, but entering into a quite
different system, characterized by equality, reciprocity, and
unity of purpose. This unity makes possible the equality of
esteem, but the fact that esteem is in principle equal in this
system is essential to this unity of purpose itself. Under the
aegis of the general will, all virtuous citizens are to be equally
honored. The age of dignity is born.
good kind, which Rousseau doesn’t call other-dependence at
all, involves the unity of a common project, even a “common
self.”26
Thus Rousseau is at the origin of a new discourse about
honor and dignity. To the two traditional ways of thinking
about honor and pride he adds a third, which is quite different.
There was a discourse denouncing pride, as I mentioned
above, which called on us to remove ourselves from this
whole dimension of human life and to be utterly unconcerned
with esteem. And then there was an ethic of honor,
frankly nonuniversalist and inegalitarian, which saw the
concern with honor as the first mark of the honorable man.
Someone unconcerned with reputation, unwilling to defend
it, had to be a coward, and therefore contemptible.
Rousseau borrows the denunciatory language of the first
discourse, but he doesn’t end up calling for a renunciation of
all concern with esteem. On the contrary, in his portrait of
the republican model, caring about esteem is central. What is
wrong with pride or honor is its striving after preferences,
hence division, hence real other-dependence, and therefore
loss of the voice of nature, and consequently corruption, the
forgetting of boundaries, and effeminacy. The remedy is not
rejecting the importance of esteem, but entering into a quite
different system, characterized by equality, reciprocity, and
unity of purpose. This unity makes possible the equality of
esteem, but the fact that esteem is in principle equal in this
system is essential to this unity of purpose itself. Under the
aegis of the general will, all virtuous citizens are to be equally
honored. The age of dignity is born.
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