Rousseau's Sophrosyne With Emile example essay topic

Physical Inoculation and Moral Invulnerability: Dipping Emile into the (French) Styx Presented at the 1996 A ESA Convention Montreal Gerald Pillsbury Dept. of Education Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, MI 49008 616-387-2979 Fax: 616-387-2882 email: The frontispiece of Emile shows Thetis dipping the infant Achilles into the Styx which, if you recall the myth, rendered him invulnerable to virtually all attack. The placement of the illustration suggests that invulnerability plays a central role in the education he provides Emile. Indeed in Book V (443), Rousseau tells Emile that whereas Thetis dipped Achilles' body in the Styx, he has attempted to do the same for his soul. That the invulnerability Achilles enjoyed protected his physical body points to an suggestive conjunction of historical events. The 18th century was a time of intense interest in the processes of inoculation and vaccination against disease. While the first decisive steps towards modern preventative medicine were certainly still a ways off when Rousseau wrote Emile in 1762, a primitive form of inoculation, however, had come to England and the continent of Europe from the East in the early 1700's and was gaining notoriety.

In fact, Lady Mary Worley Montague reported the procedure in 1718 and had herself and her children inoculated. Within a few years, most of the royal family in England was inoculated. Along with the frontispiece, the interest in vaccination at the time Rousseau wrote Emile raises a number of questions. What, if any, connection can we draw between the moral education Rousseau seeks to provide Emile and the popular practice of inoculation against small pox?

Might Rousseau be suggesting that we can inoculate the soul against vice and error in a way similar to inoculating the body against devastating diseases? Could the spirit be protected in a way analogous to that which affords protection to the body? Given that our everyday progressive conceptions of education owe a great debt to Rousseau's philosophy of education, to what extent do our conceptions of moral education rely on physical inoculation as a model? Rousseau says yes: we can develop a kind of immunity to error and vice.

His argument is a bit convoluted. Such a defense, he finds, comes about by learning the virtue of sophrosyne, a virtue central to Plato's vision of moral life but largely forgotten since. But for sophrosyne to offer such protection, Rousseau gives the ancient Greek virtue a new twist. In contrast to Plato who located this virtue in the soul, Rousseau locates it in the body.

A somatic sophrosyne will prevent all depravities from ever gaining the necessary hold within the person from which they might corrupt the body and mind. Despite the implausibility of this epistemology, current discourse about moral education recapitulates much of the somatic elements of Rousseau's approach. Ultimately, locating sophrosyne within the body alienates human beings from one another and precludes the possibility of community. My plan in this paper is to begin by looking at Rousseau's adaptation of sophrosyne, then examine how he came to locate this virtue in the body and finally explore the consequences of tying virtue to the body. Rousseau's sophrosyne With Emile, Rousseau sought to improve upon the vision of education presented in the Republic.

In that dialogue, Plato establishes the classical canon of four principal virtues: courage, wisdom, justice and sophrosyne. The last was a virtue that the 18th century as well as us in contemporary times have little understanding. Among the populace of ancient Greece, the common understanding of sophrosyne was roughly expressed as the combination of the twin Delphic dicta 'know thyself' and 'nothing in excess. ' For Rousseau, it was with this virtue as a shield that men were able to hold back the desiccating forces of civilization and the decline of this virtue greatly hastened the modern corruption of mankind. We can usefully read Emile as Rousseau's project to restore this virtue to a central place in our conception of a moral life. But to do so, he makes a key alteration in the conception of the virtue.

Whereas Plato's innovation was to locate sophrosyne in the soul, Rousseau returned it to the body. In The Republic, Plato began with a related popular understanding, then developed a more coherent accounting of the nature of this virtue and the implications it had for human nature and society. He began by first defining sophrosyne as obedience to authorities, and 'establishing one's own authority over the pleasures of drink, sex, and food. ' Sophrosyne here was a virtue of the soul which exercised control over the body. When Plato subsequently divided the soul into a rational, a spirited, and an appetitive part, sophrosyne became a kind of harmony between the three parts. Thus, sophrosyne in Plato's conception was both a virtue of the various parts of the soul and a virtue of the soul as a whole.

Of course, repeatedly through the dialogues, Plato defined virtue as a type of knowledge. Sophrosyne, then, was the knowledge that led to a state of concord throughout the soul and knowledge within each part of the soul that encouraged self-restraint. Such knowledge in the various parts came through habit or reason. Because Rousseau does not use the word sophrosyne in Emile, we must infer his claims about the virtue from other comments, particularly surmising from various examples he presents. This omission, of course, makes my claim that sophrosyne has a central place within Emile risky, perhaps suspect. Thus, I must ask for a momentary suspension of disbelief.

Let us look at the evidence to weigh my claim. In Emile, we find four elements of sophrosyne. First, Rousseau taught Emile to moderate and control his instincts, appetites, and desires. Second, he wanted him to learn to order his instincts, that is, see and observe the natural order of his impulses. Third, he had Emile develop an understanding of his own limits. Finally, Emile developed wisdom in the use of his senses which enabled him both to not be fooled by illusions, and to see through the deceptions of men.

When we look closely at how Rousseau described each of these lessons, we see the distinctive turn he gave sophrosyne, a turn which continues to echo in discourse about moral education today. We see the first aspect of sophrosyne, that of moderating and controlling passions, in the passage where Emile was first exposed to anger. Rousseau wrote, Impetuous passions produce a great effect on the child who is witness to them because their manifestations are such as to strike his senses and force him to pay attention... He sees an inflamed face, glittering eyes, threatening gestures; he hears shouts -- all signs that the body is out of kilter... Is it possible that from this idea, which is not false, he will not early on contract a certain repugnance to abandoning himself to the excesses of the passions, which he will regard as diseases. (96) Emile was to learn to balance his passions, i.e. to keep himself in kilter and reign in impetuous emotions.

Learning to do so required the tutor to carefully monitor the experiences Emile was exposed to. When the critical age approaches, furnish young people with sights which restrain them and not with sights which arouse them. Put their nascent imaginations off the track with objects which far from inflaming, repress the activity of their senses. (231). But the critical element for this argument was how he came to such control and balance.

His body learned it. Uncontrolled passion was a disease of the body and the body learned to correct it, as it cured itself of illness. Just as we saw with Plato, Rousseau sought more than just to limit or repress the passions. His sophrosyne allowed Emile to order passions from most acceptable and most useful -- what Rousseau calls in short 'most natural' -- to least. As a contrast, he pointed to the man enamored of knowledge, unable to stop himself from flitting from one to another source. Such a man he judges to be but a child (171).

The tutor's job was to make Emile feel natural desires, respond to natural instincts, satisfy natural appetites, to seek natural knowledge, i.e. 'the relations of men to things', but to prevent any socially created sentiments from ever arising. And by 'natural' in this instance, Rousseau meant bodily. Following Rousseau's prescription for upbringing will 'find him [the student] capable of perception, memory, and even reasoning. This is nature's order' (118). Emile was to gain a profound somatic knowledge of his body's capabilities and its limits. He would learn enough to never attempt any undertaking which was beyond his physical strength (160).

The tutor understood that he could not repress sexual urges. He simply tried to postpone them for as long as possible, but once they awakened, he helped Emile to discern which stemmed from the body, and which from foreign sources, that is sources from outside his body. Such foreign sources generate amour propre, the source of 'hateful and irascible passions' and all essential wick ness (214). This somatic knowledge of limits keeps Emile firmly centered within his body. While the tutor knows right from wrong intellectually and can express such knowledge in words, Emile knows through what feels comfortable to him. Both come to know that [w] hide the body grows, the spirits designed to provide balm for the blood and strength for the fibers are formed and developed.

If you cause those spirits, which are intended for the protection of an individual to take a different course and be used for the formation of another individual both remain in a state of weakness, and nature's work remains imperfect. (232) He does not try to extend himself outside the body, he is careful to circumscribe his needs and affiliations to those of the body for as soon as he has 'need of a companion, he is no longer an isolated being' (214); he will no longer live within his body and his ability to limit and order his passions will be compromised. The state of nature is formed in 'man who wanted to regard himself as an isolated being not depending on anything and sufficient unto himself' (193). When in early adolescence, Emile is tempted to extend himself, Rousseau reigns him in, circumscribing his attention to a 'a very small circle relative to the existence of things' (167). Emile's centering within his body and extensive knowledge of that body gives him more discerning sight than others have.

The clarity of his vision comes from not having the obstructing personal desires of vanity and egoism. Such precision of sight allows him to see through other men's deceptions so as to bring to light nature's intentions (202). He considers himself without regard to others and finds it good that others do not think of him. He demands nothing of anyone and believes he owes nothing to anyone.

He is alone in human society; he counts on himself alone. (208) Rousseau finds it vital that Emile's body be strong. Only through its strength can he be counted on to obey the callings of his soul, instead of the wanton desires of his body (54). 'All wickedness comes from weakness' (67) he says. Rousseau does not use weakness here metaphorically. He means physical weakness; resisting or redirecting the physical urges, particularly those of sex, takes physical strength.

The danger of adolescence is that these urges may become stronger than whatever ability the child has developed. 'Reflect that the passions are approaching, and that as soon as they knock on the door, your pupil will no long pay attention to anything but them. ' (172) The Role of the Body in Moral Development To understand why Rousseau locates sophrosyne in the body requires us to look at his epistemology which begins with Rousseau's views on religion. Rousseau articulated a form of deism in which God not only created the natural world but uses that world to make his will known. Civilization had created a veil of willfulness and deception and pettiness that left humans unable to perceive His Will. The goal of education had to be recovering that vision.

One must learn to discern the natural from the man-made and listen to the now-faint voice of god within every natural impulse and body. That natural world included the human body. The trick Rousseau wanted to teach was to watch its development carefully to detect how it developed naturally, that is, as shaped by natural forces within and without. Such development did not require human aid for its successful denouement, but it did require patience. It was a delicate process, one that could readily be misdirected or stunted. What this development depended upon was to be left undisturbed.

Thus, for Emile's first education, his tutor seeks to waste time; by which Rousseau means to grant the protracted interval needed for the natural forces of development, many of them internal to the body, to work without interference. One of the contributions Rousseau took from Locke was to view the child's brain as exceedingly supple. While not a tabula rasa in Rousseau's view because God's will was already lodged within it, the brain's tissue was certainly primed for further inscribing. The impressions of experience and beginning thoughts inscribed themselves there. From these initial impressions came higher level thoughts.

Ideas come from comparing and juxtaposing perceptions. Complex ideas arise from the conjunction of perceptions and the simple ideas which have emerged out of previous conjunctions. While easy to write initially, such impressions are exceedingly difficult or even impossible to erase afterwards. They act as germs or, to update the image, a cancer that grows distorting the inscription of subsequent ideas.

Thus, it is crucial that only 'clear and accurate' ideas be written originally. A primary reason that such non-interference was crucial early on in a child's life was to allow the natural forces of the body and the environment to inscribe God's will upon the child's brain. Rousseau hit upon idea of inoculation as the way to prevent the germs of error and vice from becoming inscribed upon the brain. He seeks to close off entrance to the body from the invader, thus error will never gets in. Arrange it, he says, so all ideas stop at his sensations (89). They are turned away while still in the arena of perceptions, before they enter the brain and can leave an indelible impression there.

And the way to keep them out is to harden the body, the skin, the muscles, the head. Harden the body for 'sensual passions lodge in infirm bodies' (54). Harden the skin 'for it defends all the rest' (139). Harden the muscles 'to stiffen his soul' (126). Teach him the sport of hunting for it hardens 'the heart as well as the body' to cruelty and blood. The hunt provides a needed preventative for 'the dangerous inclinations [are] born of softness' (320).

Thus, inoculation for Rousseau consisted of closing off all entry points into the body or at least restricting access through them. His conception was reminiscent of the nautical order, 'batten down the hatches. ' The portholes of the body include the pores of the skin, the mouth as well as the eyes, ears and nose which bring in the perceptions ultimately most connected to ideas. The hardening of the body that inoculated one often occurs through exposure to the elements. He will not have Emile wear headgear. Rather, he says, exposing him to the elements will make the bones of his head 'harder, more compact, less fragile, and less porous, the better to arm the brain not only against wounds, but also against colds, inflammations and all the impressions of the air' (128).

One may, at first, see Rousseau as advocating primitive medical advice, but he is clearly talking about moral development. To prevent vice, he argues, close 'tightly close all the gates of vanity' (160). The inoculation Rousseau envisioned differs significantly from the contemporary view of it and the difference becomes critical when it serves as a model for conceptualizing moral education. Our current medical sense of the term involves introducing the foreign substance or virus into the bloodstream where through exposure and defeat the body retains a 'memory' that enables it to more quickly defeat the invader in the future. In the case of morality, such a conception suggests the free interplay of discussion, the open expression of all ideas, the equal consideration of viewpoints. Further, it suggests that in some cases, the fall into vice is necessary for redemption to have any degree of vitality.

A limited controlled case of measles, chickenpox, or small pox leads to a measure of invulnerability in health later on. The prodigal son is subsequently more virtuous than his unsullied brother. But when moral judgment is seen, as Rousseau sees it, as needing isolation and protection in order to nurture its resolve and inner strength, one does not test one's mettle against temptation, nor engage in learning from one's mistakes, nor try on new ideas or perspectives. Any of these may leave marks, may spread germs. Or to change metaphors, because the path one must travel is straight and narrow, one must insist that the steps ahead of oneself be well-illuminated for one missteps at considerable peril. Consequences of tying Morality to the Body By locating morality in the human body, though, Rousseau reinforced the notion that morality was an individual affair.

Essentially, he told us, we are isolated beings autonomous creators of our own separated selves with independent futures. Community in such a view becomes a problem for it represents the convergence of differing selves and competing moralities, an often uneasy juxtaposition that at best engenders tolerance, and at worst, fosters the combative but irreconcilable sharing of the means to self-recognition and self-preservation that Hegel describes. We are bound together through a social contract, but not through the bonds which might transcend self-interest, foster self-sacrifice and true caring, social responsibility, generative intimacy, or pervasive, communal, transcending joy. Though we are not often aware of it, we continue to talk today about moral development using the images of instilling something within the body.

And such talk echoes Rousseau's conception of moral invulnerability. We talk about moral rectitude, integrity, instilling a moral backbone, examining someone's moral fiber, letting character saturate a person. We insist on volunteering because talk is not enough. In order to learn fully, to learn the lesson deep down in their heart or gut, students need to act. They need to practice the lessons; they need to enact and embody virtues. Let us consider the influence of the idea of moral inoculation on samples of moral talk from three contemporary writers, Kenneth Ryan, Robert Wuth now and Nel Nodding's.

(More to come) Certainly as Mark Johnson has shown, we cannot think without reference to the body. Metaphors stemming from our experience as embodied beings pervades our every use of language. Despite its inevitability, we need to pay attention to the assumptions we make about morality's place in and on the body.