Buy this book

Aidan Campbell
posted 6 November 2006

This book is a study in fear. Not the fear of a virus or a natural disaster but of strongly expressed opinions. More 'Reservoir Dogs' than 'Rousseau's Dog', this account of bickering between a couple of long-dead philosophers insinuates that intellectual acrimony should always be regarded with foreboding.

Rousseau's Dog narrates the tale of a kindly philosopher from a semi-democratic country rescuing an intellectual colleague from clerical persecution during the 18th century European Enlightenment. No harm done there, you may think. But wait - is the latter philosopher appreciative of this assistance? Not a bit of it. Doglike, he bites the hand that helped, thereafter denouncing his saviour as some sort of rabid cur. The charitable one, shocked by this response, stoops to retaliate. Polite society is fascinated as these toasts of Parisian salons and London coffee houses stage a public dogfight. Siding emphatically with the ungrateful man of letters, Edmonds and Eidinow, a BBC journalist and a former BBC journalist, have elevated this spat into a much scarier 'war' to call into question Enlightenment claims to epitomise Reason.

The amiable pup was the Scot David Hume (1711-1776). The neurotic diva was Swiss romantic Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). In its entirety, their clash was over trifles: travel arrangements, funding, and who wrote what or said what to whom. So what did cause the break up? Edmonds and Eidinow point out that each of these characters possessed quite different personalities:

While Hume's outlook was unadventurous and temperate, Rousseau was by instinct rebellious; Hume was an optimist, Rousseau a pessimist; Hume gregarious, Rousseau a loner. Hume was disposed to compromise, Rousseau to confrontation. In style, Rousseau revelled in paradox; Hume revered clarity. Rousseau's language pyrotechnical and emotional, Hume's straightforward and dispassionate. (p163)

Edmonds and Eidinow also explain that the terrible twosome were divided in their attitude towards the environment. Rousseau glorified nature and an isolated rural life, holding that urbane luxury made men soft. He associated the black vapours of the city with blackness in men's hearts. On the other hand, 'Hume unequivocally promoted the benefits of civilisation. He was convivial, a city-lover' (p174). He stood for 'the study of beauties', both in the arts and in the sciences. He regarded 'a perfect solitude as perhaps the greatest punishment we can suffer'.

Inconsistencies exist in the characterisations presented by Edmonds and Eidinow too, however. Rousseau, the original rebel without a cause, displayed in his home the portrait of King George III - tyrant of the American rebel colonists - after that British monarch graciously offered him a pension for life. Rousseau later became an idol for the French revolutionaries because of his essay 'Of the Social Contract' (1762) which famously commenced 'Man is born free; and everywhere he is in chains'. Hume, often described as the first Tory philosopher, was a bit of a dark horse too. He had been blacklisted from important posts throughout his life because of his alleged atheism. Shortly before they were denounced by the Revolution as diehard reactionaries, we also have the odd sight of most of Europe's monarchs and aristocrats scrambling over each other to subsidise Rousseau, Hume and other stalwarts of the progressive Enlightenment like the Encyclopaedists.

Denis Diderot, joint editor of the Encyclopaedia, was patronised by the Tsarina of all the Russias and enslaver of the serfs, Catherine the Great. Hounded out of his home by the local clergy, Rousseau was protected by the French court, Frederick the Great of Prussia, as well as sponsored by King George III. Depending on the administration in London, Hume from time to time served in several governmental positions. He met up with Rousseau in January 1766 as he was leaving Paris after spending two years there as secretary to the British ambassador. Even Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France who was later executed by the revolutionary guillotine, came under Rousseau's influence when she had a pristine farm built within the grounds of Versailles Palace where she could play at being dairymaid. Why did the degenerate ancien regimes of Europe grovel with such alacrity before the brightest lights of the Enlightenment, whose progressive philosophy eventually brought about their blood-spattered downfall?

Edmonds and Eidinow do not pose this question, and their shaggy dog story of personal antagonisms and confusing discrepancies signifies that they have no idea why our heroic duo ever cooperated in the first place. Edmonds and Eidinow cannot conceive that there might be a more potent developmental element underlying their personal histrionics. Philosophical accommodations and deviations are not susceptible to extrapolation either from individual intimacies or lovers' tiffs. Hume and Rousseau had in common a belief in human progress which made them recognised figureheads of the Enlightenment, as well as embryonic philosophical disparities. Significantly, however, the full development of their ultimately weighty differences did not emerge until decades after they were both dead. Hostilities between a French revolution inclined towards Rousseau and a Tory Britain predisposed to Hume later gripped Europe for well over a generation. Yet the two scholars scarcely engaged any theoretical wrangles in their correspondence.

Edmonds and Eidinow do have the advantage of historical hindsight, however. Nevertheless, perhaps because they are journalists, they don't see the point in deliberating at length over the various meanings attributed to 'Civilisation' and 'Nature' by Enlightenment thinkers, and they skate over our sages' diverging approaches to them. Indeed it is probably indicative of their media training that they take Hume and Rousseau's nascent ideological discrepancies at their face value, assessing them only as contradictory lifestyles. Consequently the authors are obliged to make a mountain out of a molehill by arguing that a stressful relationship triggered the decline of Reason's hegemony. In their eyes, Hume's deliverance of Rousseau from the mob was no more than a conventional courtesy, an act of gentlemanly politeness. And, as all misanthropes know, formal graciousness is just a cover for beastliness. So they furiously denounce Hume for his 'persistent mendacity - his utter falsehoods, his economies with the truth, his deviousness' (p338).

In an age of satire, an acquaintance of Hume, one Horace Walpole, son of the former Premier Robert Walpole, penned a spoof that made a skit of Rousseau's paranoid anxieties. Hume was held responsible for that caricature too. Edmonds and Eidinow's overreaction to Hume's alleged dishonesty and flippancy speaks volumes about their failure to grasp the bigger issues at stake. To them, Hume's rescue of Rousseau was simply a gesture and precious little else. Why? Because the Scot had failed to commit himself to be Rousseau's poodle for the rest of his days. The frivolous rogue had dragged Rousseau over to England, dumped him in the luxurious Staffordshire stately home and gardens of Wootton Hall and then, bold as brass, simply went about his own business without as much as a 'by your leave' (albeit while arranging for a life pension for Rousseau from the King). The scoundrel!

From phoney rages against tittle-tattle and trifling spoofs, we now follow our authors by descending into the realm of pure fancy. The book is called 'Rousseau's Dog'. Why? Rousseau's actual pooch was a mongrel called Sultan. However Edmonds and Eidinow suggest that Rousseau possessed a second mutt, an imaginary one that constantly growled at him to be on his guard against betrayal, and especially from duplicity by his so-called friends. Though they don't have a shred of evidence to substantiate this wacky conceit, Edmonds and Eidinow pontificate that friends should be as dogged in their loyalty as Sultan apparently was to Rousseau: 'Rousseau expected his friends to be entirely straight with him, to open their heart, to be motivated purely by love' (p340). Hume didn't fit this bill and so they believe he deserved all he got.

Must friends be so devoted to one other? Perhaps, but this insistence on absolute respect under threat of character assassination is surely only one step away from the primitive version of camaraderie, where breaches of honour are dealt with by bloody vendetta. No civilised friendship would place such onerous stipulations on a voluntary partnership. At the end of the day, Edmonds and Eidinow feel that Hume deserves to be vilified after all these centuries have past because he chose to follow one version of good manners (traditional aristocratic) as opposed to another one (Rousseau's novel romanticism). How pathetic. Fortunately we don't need to pursue Edmonds and Eidinow's pet fantasy that mixes lapdog love with a snarling Rottweiler any further to comprehend why Rousseau and Hume really didn't click.

Hume did deserve Rousseau's retribution, but not for the puerile reason of inadequate amiability that Edmonds and Eidinow propose. By disengaging Isaac Newton's cause from effect, the sceptical Scot gave unwarranted credence to the nervous Swiss intellectual's outbursts of irrationality. Since Hume held reason to be amoral, as 'perfectly inert', he contended that ''tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger' (p167). Or the scratching out of Hume by Rousseau, one could add for good measure. For Hume, humane compassion is an instinct that can be found in all from 'the most ignorant and stupid peasants' to 'brute beasts'. Moreover:

The experimental reasoning itself, which we possess in common with beasts, and which the whole conduct of life depends, is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power. (p168)

Thus, Edmonds and Eidinow observe, mechanically-minded Hume 'dragged man down towards his fellow animals'. He believed that dogs and humans could both be trained in the same way, through a system of rewards and punishments. Sultan was Rousseau's beast and yet Hume somehow managed to resist joining in that critter's fawning adoration of his celebrated owner. Hume preferred to demarcate himself and his refined associates off from the peasantry and their livestock by aphorising that 'Reason is and ought to be the slave of the passions'. To him, it was the latter that defined humanity. Ardour was an attribute that Rousseau possessed in spades. Yet, still, Hume steadfastly refused to wag his tail for the fervent Rousseau.

Hume's thinking corroborated Rousseau's own philosophical stance. But while Rousseau took to dressing up as an Armenian mountaineer and living in rusticated surroundings (though more often than not within the artificial boundaries of a landscaped park), the temperate Scot strenuously opposed pursuing his relativism to its logically nihilistic conclusion. Why not? Because the canny Scot realised that a reckless descent into unalloyed uncertainty could drive a person insane. So Hume indulged in wildly speculative theories, but only to resurface and live as modestly and placidly as before. He provided philosophical sustenance for Romanticism but preferred to draw back from the same primitive lifestyle that Rousseau adopted with alacrity. Contrary to the conclusions of Rousseau's Dog, it was this minor atavistic accord between Hume and Rousseau against the rational current of the Enlightenment which then prompted their petulant bout when Hume subsequently refused to emulate Rousseau's noble savagery.

These days we tend to view Rousseau and Hume as straightforward champions of the Enlightenment. And it's true that Mister Hume and Monsieur Rousseau both made important contributions that advanced the cause of human emancipation. So why did this pair also set such store by more rebarbative emotions? Because it was only an intellectual project, the Enlightenment remained shackled to a bulky heritage of manners and formal codes which would have been extremely impolite to toss into history's rubbish bin without a care. Rousseau and Hume were unduly influenced in different ways by this dog's breakfast of absurd protocols and deportments, which stretched from primeval taboos to refined aristocratic 'courtesies'. The burden of these illogical mannerisms was only shaken off thanks to the insurgencies of America and France later on that century. After all, if they are anything, revolutions are rude. During these epic struggles, the elegances, friendships and charmingly inconsistent loyalties that afflicted the gentile Age of Reason were ruthlessly cast aside as contest and rivalry increasingly came to the fore. Eventually the forces of progress lined up to challenge the forces of reaction, and calm classicism and sweet romance turned darkly Gothic. The ghastly consequences of 'noblesse oblige' were made plain for all to see.

The flattering obsequiousness of monarchs and aristocrats was exposed as the sham it had always been. As a result, the Victorian era was so much better than the Enlightenment because it had junked a lot of romantic reverence for historical precedence. From being bosom buddies, the intellectual successors of Hume and Rousseau strictly demarcated themselves from each other as scientists and as artists. Art could now be freer because politicians were no longer as reliant on superstition to run society, and the public superiority of the scientist over the fantasy-driven artist had become the consensus.

Underlying Rousseau's Dog is the baleful premise that intellectuals must always exercise respect for each other. Any dispute among them, no matter how trivial, may escalate until it threatens to disturb the peace. Edmonds and Eidinow's faith in social harmony is exposed here as being wafer thin. Nothing must be allowed to disturb Pax Academica, not even a petty argument over who pays a cab fare. Even if one person in the world feels offended, everything must stop until their self-esteem is restored.

You have to be barking to empathise with the alarm of Edmonds and Eidinow at this expression of trenchant views. When politeness is prioritised in this way, social progress is viewed more as a breach in etiquette rather than as material enhancement or original insight. It is demonstrating disrespect, not technological progress or grand ideas that really rattle Edmonds and Eidinow. If there's one lesson to be learnt by their apprehensive response to the paltry squabble between Rousseau and Hume, it is that by itself the refined exchange of reasonable opinions will never change the world.