He dismisses it as “an attractive tale” noteworthy only for its vagueness: “Little explanation is given of why they wish to consider and be considered should emerge; nor of why once it has, it should come to dominate and shape the individual character and human relations so pervasively.”5 Tellingly, Dent reads being aristos right out of the passage and reduces it to a desire to “be considered.” Cooper’s analysis of the competition for esteem is brief and mostly addresses cognitive developments.6 Insofar as Cooper is interested in the link between talent, being aristos, and amour-propre, it is, following Dent’s lead, to demonstrate that Rousseau does not believe that aspirations for achievement necessarily lead to zero-sum competitions in which everyone wants to dominate others. Eager to capitalize on the positive aspects of amour-propre, he makes much of the pride and vanity distinction from Corsica and argues that there are nonrelational forms of amour-propre.7
Neuhouser is of two minds about this issue.8 In his first book, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love, he contends that being best is the most primitive expression of amour-propre and is its default setting. He also expresses reservations about reading Rousseau as a proto-Kantian, arguing that self-esteem and being recognized as worthy of equal rights are not the same thing.9 In his second effort, Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality, he appears to reverse his position. He rarely mentions the aristocratic language of being best and is most interested in the relational or positional aspects of amour-propre. He writes: “The relativity of amour propre contrasts sharply with the absolute, or noncomparative, character of amour de soi-même.”10 Elsewhere, directly citing the lines about being best, he downgrades it to a desire to be more esteemed than others.11 In addition, he moves closer to a traditional Kantian interpretation of Rousseau’s amour-propre by accepting Dent’s claim that equal social status can satisfy the urges for recognition born of amour-propre, though he is more interested in Joshua Cohen’s version of the argument.12 As evidence, he cites the paragraph immediately following the competition for esteem, in which Rousseau states that “as soon as men had begun to appreciate one another and the idea of consideration had taken shape in their mind, each one claimed a right to it, and one could no longer deprive anyone of it with impunity. From here arose the duties of civility … and from it any intentional wrong became an affront.”13 Consistent with his Kantian interpretation of amour-propre as a form of recognition, Neuhouser construes “duties of civility,” questionably I think, as referring to objective standards of respect that everyone ought to enjoy equally. They represent a form of self-esteem that is absolute rather than relative.14
Dent, Cooper, and Neuhouser in Rousseau’s Critique of Inequality are not wrong to focus on the relational nature of amour-propre. Being best is by definition comparative, and Rousseau often writes of amour-propre without mentioning the desire to be best. He even uses the term “consideration” as a descriptor for the passion. They are also on safe ground in arguing for nonrelational forms of amour-propre. Nonetheless, the aristocratic-laden language is eye-catching and prominent in the text. It should not be casually dismissed or ignored.
There is a second interpretative approach to amour-propre also common in the literature. Numerous scholars maintain that Rousseau develops the concept primarily to criticize commercial society. Some make general claims that Rousseau is addressing either the harmony-of-interests model popular with defenders of the emerging capitalist order or simply the inequality of conditions in modern Europe.15 One Rousseau scholar, Helena Rosenblatt, contends that amour-propre is partially designed to shed light on the political corruption of the patrician classes in Rousseau’s hometown of Geneva.16 In her novel interpretation, Rousseau takes the side of the bourgeoisie against the aristocracy of high birth. Other scholars, including Neuhouser, make analytic arguments to demonstrate that commercial economic activities themselves corrupt amour-propre. As a consequence of the competitive and zero-sum nature of commercial economies, they contend, the desire for recognition transforms into a desire for superiority.17
As with the Kantian-Hegelian approach, there is much to be said for these economic interpretations. In the Second Discourse, Rousseau links the innovations mostly commonly associated with the rise of commercial society, including division of labor and technological developments such as the use of metallurgy, to the bad forms of amour-propre. Furthermore, these economic interpretations rightly highlight the political critique underlying Rousseau’s anthropology. Whatever pretenses Rousseau has to providing an accurate natural history, his intention is to do social criticism.18 In addition to the “Preface,” in which he explicitly states that his natural history is designed to assist the reader in “judging our present state,”19 the final two paragraphs of the essay make clear that his comparison between natural and civil humans is designed to highlight the corruptions of his age. The discourse is plainly meant to be more than a naturalist screed against civilization.
The “commercial amour-propre” theorists, however, also wrongly ignore Rousseau’s reference to being aristos. In many of their accounts, amour-propre is downgraded from a desire to be best to a desire for praise and recognition.20 On the surface, it makes perfect sense that these scholars would disregard Rousseau’s aristocratic language. If Rousseau is criticizing Europe’s present state, then it would seem that condemnations of aristocracy are anachronistic. By the mid-eighteenth century, Europe was transitioning to democracy and capitalism. The courtly aristocracy was in retreat and slowly being supplanted by a new upstart class composed of men of commerce, legally trained administrators, and intellectuals—even if the nobles in some nations retained considerable power through World War I.21 Few, after all, would consider the eighteenth century the “Age of Aristocracy.” Furthermore, the commercial values of the age, at least upon first inspection, appear antithetical to aristocratic ones. The new moneyed and administrative classes subscribed to economic and bureaucratic values of profit and orderliness in place of honor, and they championed a form of equality premised on the idea that everyone ought to have equal opportunity to amass societal rewards. They viewed les grands as their chief rivals.
This surface dismissal of Rousseau’s aristocratic language only makes sense, however, if aristocracy refers to the aristocracy of high birth—the modern European feudal nobility defined by hereditary titles, taxing and hunting privileges, special political dispensations, and refined mannerisms. If aristocracy is conceptualized as being best in terms of merit and excellence, then Rousseau’s intentions become clearer. Indeed, the aristocratic language provides an essential clue as to how Rousseau wants the reader to judge “our present state.” In surveying the emerging commercial societies, as argued in the “Introduction,” he seems to think that important elements of the aristocratic value structure thrived. Rather than view Europe as transitioning from aristocracy to democracy, he sees a reassertion of classical aristocratic values. To prove the claim that the values of modern commercial life overlap with those of classical aristocracy, he makes use of rather unorthodox evidence. He analyzes the psyche of the new commercial, administrative, and intellectual classes and portrays it as similar to that of the heroes of epic poetry. Amour-propre, an emotion born of the desires for excellence and honor, is the lynchpin in his damning portrayal.
Although this interpretation may seem strange and counterintuitive, it is consistent with the philosophical analysis Rousseau offers of amour-propre, the political development of modern Europe, and his experiences of these political developments while living in Paris. That is, philosophy, politics, and biography all point to such a conclusion.
Philosophical Evidence: Sophocles and the Classical Aristocratic Personality
Sophocles provides an especially helpful analysis of the classical aristocratic personality in his tragedy Ajax. He was fascinated by Homer and, as Jennifer March claims, “was known in antiquity as ‘the most Homeric’ tragedian, and certainly the Ajax can justifiably be considered the most Homeric of his extant plays.”22 Among other things, Ajax is a about the political and social world, in particular the transformation in fifth-century Athens from an aristocratic worldview to a democratic one.23 To capture this change, Sophocles constructs a dichotomy between