The Psychology of Inequality. Michael Locke McLendon
d’Alembert: “And that posterity, while raising to immortality the names of those who will bring man’s knowledge to perfection in the future, will perhaps not disdain to remember our own names.”144 While he assures his readers that the editors and contributors are self-sacrificing humanists who want to better humankind, his frank acknowledgment of his own vain ambitions and his explicit reference to the Homeric honor culture seem designed to mollify Rousseau by conceding his criticisms.145
The Philosophes Strike Back
Nonetheless, no matter how heartfelt these concessions, there were limits to how far Diderot and d’Alembert would go in ameliorating Rousseau’s concerns.146 D’Alembert in particular refuses to concede Rousseau’s argument that knowledge undermines virtue, contending that vice is much more dangerous when combined with ignorance.147 Moreover, both d’Alembert and Diderot denigrate the mechanical arts in the very same essays in which they defend them. D’Alembert contends that the mechanical arts require little ability, as most have been simplified to a “routine” that most people can easily master.148 As a consequence, jobs in the mechanical arts usually attract individuals from impoverished backgrounds. For his part, Diderot argues that progress in the mechanical arts is hampered by an irrational, almost superstitious, obsession with guarding trade secrets, which hampers progress. The mechanical arts, he thinks, also need the assistance of the natural sciences if they are to progress and develop. So, even as they go out of their way to defend the mechanical arts, d’Alembert and Diderot cannot help but belittle them. In other writings, they can be downright contemptuous of provincials and the working classes. In defending Voltaire’s attempt to establish a theater in Geneva, d’Alembert condescendingly asks: “Why begrudge men, destined almost exclusively by nature for crying and dying, some recreational diversions that help them bear the bitterness or the insipidity of their existence?”149 Diderot likewise was not above making mean-spirited comments. In one of his nastier remarks, he wrote in a letter to his lover Sophie Volland that “mediocre men live and die like brutes.”150 “The sense of the inequality of men,” one commentator observes, “… was deeply rooted in him.”151 Even some of his sympathizers concede that when Diderot tries to be complimentary toward the peasants in his plays, his portrayals are less than compelling and betray “a wide gulf between observer and observed.”152
Beyond their deep-seated contempt for ordinary Europeans, the philosophes refused to back down from their insistence that they were the true aristocracy. Like the leading men of the Renaissance, they constructed a narrative in which they were the most important social class in modern Europe.153 As Darnton has established, they defined knowledge such that the whole of human history was a product only of great kings and great geniuses.154 Naturally, they had no doubt that they belonged in the latter category and believed that they alone were responsible for the progress of the species.155 Mere months before Rousseau wrote the Second Discourse, d’Alembert penned an essay, entitled “Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands,” that specifically tried to make this case. Early in the essay, he beseeches the courtly aristocracy to recognize the superiority of the men of letters and encourages his fellow intellectuals to assume their rightful place at the top of the social and cultural ladder (though he sternly advises them to avoid politics).156 At times, d’Alembert aggressively challenges the status of the courtly aristocracy. He was particularly incensed at the paternalistic relationship between the men of letters and the nobles, and followed his good friend Voltaire by reminding the aristocrats they were not superior to the men of letters but, indeed, were indebted to them. He writes: “The wise man does not forget that if there is an external respect which talents owe to titles, there is another and more real one which titles owe to talents.”157 Moreover, in the preface to volume three of the Encyclopedia, d’Alembert mockingly informs princes and nobles that they will find themselves included in the Encyclopedia only if they earn inclusion, “because the Encyclopedia owes everything to talents, nothing to titles, and that is the history of the human spirit and not the vanity of men.”158 The other philosophes fully embraced this project. Voltaire echoes d’Alembert’s call in a 1755 entry for the Encyclopedia, “Men of Letters,” in which he repeats the narrative from the Preliminary Discourse that the philosophes were anointed successors to the Renaissance and were charged with instructing and refining the species. Diderot, Rousseau’s best friend among them, also repeatedly calls for the elevation of the intellectuals in French society.159 Furthermore, in a famous passage of Le fils naturel, he links this glorification of the talented to civic virtue, arguing that the talented have a unique obligation to serve society. In the play, Constance tells Dorval: “You have received the rarest talents, and you must render them to society. Let the useless move about without object, embarrass society without serving it, and distance themselves from it. They can. But you, I dare say, cannot without it being a crime.”160 Notably, Dorval is instructed to serve society, not the government. His responsibility to humanity is much more important than formulating public policy and executing laws.
As with their view of the mechanical arts, however, the men of letters were of two minds in their aristocratic aspirations. If they wished to become a predominant class, they at times were respectful of the courtly aristocracy and sought some sort of fusion with it.161 Toward the end of his “Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands,” d’Alembert accepts that the nobles should still govern political life, and occasionally he less aggressively asserts the social value of the men of letters vis-à-vis the nobles. In one concessionary line, he proclaims that “a man of letters, full of probity and talent, is without comparison more worthy than an incapable minister or a dishonored aristocrat.”162 Presumably, the men of letters cannot claim such superiority over the better specimens of noble stock. One reason for d’Alembert’s softer stance is that many of the men of letters believed that the upper classes, crowned heads of Europe included, would be much more receptive to the message of the Enlightenment than the masses.163 D’Alembert was increasingly frustrated “with the apathy and indifference of the masses who are interested in neither toleration, freedom, nor enlightenment.”164 In this attitude, he follows Voltaire, who believed that 90 percent of humanity did not merit enlightenment.165 In addition, some philosophes, most notably Voltaire, plainly enjoyed the status and luxury that attended life in polite society (though he too could be sharply critical of Paris, as evidenced by chapter 22 of Candide). Nevertheless, in the basic narrative of the philosophes, the nobles were the bad guys and were supposed to be supplanted. The truce suggested here is offered only as a matter of practicality and amour de soi-même.
The most systematic and detailed philosophe response to Rousseau is probably Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew, which was written a few years after the contretemps had run its course. In the dialogue, geniuses are defended as socially beneficial and often virtuous, while the ordinary masses are portrayed as overwhelmed by amour-propre and completely vice ridden. The only silver lining for the masses is that they are driven to their behavior by the nobles, who preside over a cruel economy that forces people to behave poorly to meet their needs. Diderot’s dialogue, in fact, can be read as a point-by-point rejection of the narrative of intellectual life Rousseau laid out in two discourses and his concerns about the overvaluation of talent. Diderot addresses a number of themes and concepts prominent in Rousseau’s early writings, such as the relationship between virtue and talent, amour-propre and amour de soi-même, economic inequality, the plight of the poor, and the moral depravity in Paris. Given that the dialogue is rarely interpreted as a reply to Rousseau, it is worth analyzing in detail.166
The first substantive discussion of the dialogue is about the social value of genius and talent.167 Although Diderot never mentions his name, several arguments by Rousseau are subjected to careful scrutiny and do not hold up particularly well. They come out of the mouth of the knavish nephew, who ironically represents everything Rousseau hates about Paris, and are decisively refuted. The nephew-lui begins the dialogue by trying to make the Rousseauian case that genius is both useless and dangerous—useless because no true social good results from it and dangerous because geniuses are responsible for much of the evil in the world.