ABSTRACT
We have already glimpsed the importance of amour-propre in the Second Discourse and the Emile. In this chapter, I subject that elusive idea to a systematic examination. I begin obliquely, by comparing Rousseau to Hobbes:
in the nature of man we find three principall causes of quarrell. First, Competition; Secondly, Diffidence; Thirdly, Glory. The first, maketh men invade for Gain; the second, for Safety; and the third, for Reputation. The first use Violence, to make themselves Masters of other mens persons, wives, children, and cattell; the second, to defend them; the third, for trifles, as a word, a smile, a different opinion, and any other signe of undervalue, either direct in their Persons, or by reflection in their Kindred, their Friends, their Nation, their Profession, or their Name. (Hobbes, Leviathan, Chapter 13)
Those driven by Hobbes’s third cause, reputation, resemble those driven by a certain kind of amour-propre in Rousseau. But Rousseau distances himself from Hobbes in two respects. First he rejects the Hobbesian premiss that the three ‘causes of quarrell’ derive from ‘the nature of man’. For Rousseau all three are in different ways the result of disordered social conditions. The Second Discourse provides the causal story of their genesis. Second, he assigns to amour-propre a pivotal role in the formation of humanity, of the individual and of the citizen. The outcome of that formation, whether for good or for evil, depends on the correct channelling of amour-propre. At this level amour-propre is morally neutral. It is the vehicle of socialization, which takes place through the play of recognition, interaction and meaning, at all levels, from politics to love and sexuality.1 But Rousseau’s work alternates between extremes of pessimism and optimism about the possibility of realizing the conditions of the morality of the senses. Those extremes are reflected in the negative and positive moments in his thought about amour-propre.
