ABSTRACT
Looking within myself and seeking in others the factors upon which these different states of being rested [tenoient], I discovered that they depended [dépendoient] to a great extent on the prior impression of external objects, and that, we, being continually modified through the agency of our senses and our organs, bore the effects of these modifications, without being aware of it, in our thoughts, our feelings, and even our actions. Numerous striking examples that I had collected put the matter beyond all dispute; and thanks to their physical basis they seemed to me capable of providing an external régime which, varied according to circumstances, could put or keep the mind in the state most conducive to virtue. From what errors would reason be preserved, and what vices would be choked even before birth, if one knew how to compel the brute functions to support the moral order which they so often disturb?…it seemed to me an easy task to put it into a book which would be as pleasant to read as it was to write. I made very little progress with this work, however, the title of which was The Morality of the Senses or The Wise Man’s Materialism. Distractions of which the cause will soon be clear took my attention away from it. (Conf IX.409/ 343-4)
Even if Rousseau abandoned the project of writing a book with that title, the theme of The Morality of the Senses runs throughout his work, though it is in constant tension with another equally important theme, that of the irreducible struggle between duty and inclination. The latter is an austere deontology, in which virtue is understood as a ‘state of war’ against the passions. The tension is one between a naturalistic morality of unity and a Kantian morality of division. Some commentators have argued that Rousseau resolved the tension by replacing naturalism by deontology, moving from a starting point close to the philosophes to an end point close to Kant. Against them I shall maintain that the tension between the two themes remains unresolved to the end of Rousseau’s life, and provides the dynamic of his most challenging work.
