¹ Social Contract (hereafter SC), III, 461; 216. References to Rousseau are first to the Oeuvres complètes, by volume and page number, then to an English translation, as follows. References to Emile are to Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile; or, On Education, trans. Bloom, Allan (New York: Basic Books, 1979)Google Scholar. All other references are to the Collected Writings of Rousseau, ed. Christopher Kelly and Roger Masters, 13 vols. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1990–2010), as follows: First Discourse and Observations, vol. 2; Second Discourse and Letter on Providence, vol. 3; Social Contract, Geneva Manuscript, and “Political Fragments,” vol. 4; Confessions, vol. 5; Essay on the Origin of Languages and Levite of Ephraim, vol. 7; Letter to Franquières, vol. 8; Letter to Beaumont, vol. 9; Government of Poland, vol. 11.

² SC, III, 461; 217.

³ SC, III, 465–67, 469; 220–22, 223.

⁴ Waterhouse, Francis A., “An Interview with Jean Jacques Rousseau,” PMLA 37, no. 1 (1922): 114CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Waterhouse draws his account from Weisse's “autobiography,” pieced together from Weisse's papers by his son and his son-in-law after his death. Because Weisse himself did not publish the account, Waterhouse doubts that Weisse made up the interview with Rousseau to exaggerate his acquaintance with him.

⁵ Hertzberg, Arthur, The French Enlightenment and the Jews: The Origins of Modern Anti-Semitism (New York: Schocken Books, 1968)Google Scholar. For the only two major discussions of Rousseau and the Jews I know, see Baczko, Bronislaw, “Moïse, Législateur…,” in Reappraisals of Rousseau: Studies in Honour of R. A. Leigh, ed. Harvey, S. et al. (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1980)Google Scholar and Chisick, Harvey, “Community and Exclusion in Rousseau and Voltaire: The Case of the Jews,” in L'antisémitisme éclairé. Inclusion et exclusion depuis l'Epoque des Lumières jusqu'à l'affaire Dreyfus / Inclusion and Exclusion: Perspectives on Jews from the Enlightenment to the Dreyfus Affair, ed. Zinguer, Ilana Y. and Bloom, Sam W. (Leiden: Brill, 2003)Google Scholar. Chisick, who devotes half of his chapter to Voltaire, names only Baczko, whose study is limited to Moses, as a predecessor. Schechter, Ronald's Obstinate Hebrews: Representations of Jews in France, 1715–1815 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) has some insightful pages on Rousseau (54–56)Google Scholar.

⁶ Emile (hereafter E), IV, 619–20; 303–4.

⁷ E, IV, 618–19; 302–3.

⁸ E, IV, 625; 307.

⁹ E, IV, 619; 303.

¹⁰ Kochin, Michael S., “Living with the Bible: Jean-Jacques Rousseau Reads Judges 19–21,” Hebraic Political Studies 2, no. 3 (2007): 301Google Scholar. “I lost the ability to sleep in my youth. Since then I have acquired the habit of reading in my bed every night until I felt my eyes growing heavy. … My usual reading at night was the Bible, and I have read it through at least five or six times in a row in this manner” (Confessions, I, 579–80; 485).

¹¹ Damrosch, Leo, Rousseau: Restless Genius (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005), 53Google Scholar.

¹² Baczko usefully describes the state of opinion concerning Jews in the philosophic milieu Rousseau inhabited. While this description focuses on Moses, “the accusation against Moses is at the same time made against the Jews … as long as they remain faithful to Judaism” (Baczko, “Moïse, Législateur…,” 115, my translation). Adam Sutcliffe's careful and rich Judaism and Enlightenment documents the complex treatment of Judaism in European thought in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which includes some striking praise. But by the middle of the eighteenth century, “Judaism, widely derided as the epitome of irrational legalism and superstition, was dismissed by most Enlightenment thinkers more swiftly and intensively than any other contemporary religion” (Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press], 246). Schechter's chapter on “Jews and Philosophes” makes still more than Sutcliffe does of the favorable things French Enlightenment thinkers, including Diderot, had to say about the Jews. But on his reading, Rousseau alone praises the Jews without demanding that they become philosophers—Rousseau's contemporaries, even when they praise the Jews, “imagine a radical transformation in their beliefs and practices, and indeed in their whole worldview” (Obstinate Hebrews, 65). In this sense, Schechter is consistent with Baczko: the philosophes praise Jews only to the extent they imagine that Jews are prepared to break faith with Judaism.

¹³ Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, 237.

¹⁴ Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 54.

¹⁵ E, IV, 645–46; 321; Essay on the Origin of Languages, V, 376–77; 290–91; On the Government of Poland (hereafter P), III, 956–59; 171–74; “Political Fragments,” III, 499; 34. The Jewish law, along with the Mohammedan, is also praised as one of those “lasting establishments” over which a “great and powerful genius” must have presided (SC, III, 384; 157).

¹⁶ Rousseau does not call the people in this story “Jews” but uses “Israelites,” “children of Abraham,” and other alternatives instead. In this usage, he may be following Judges 19–21, which also does not refer to the children of Israel as Jews. The term “Jew” (Yehudi), though it is used to refer to the tribe of Judah, is not used to refer to a Jew as a member of the Jewish people until the book of Esther. It is possible that Rousseau thinks there is a distinction between the “Hebrew people” of Moses, who recognize gods other than the Jewish God, and “Jews” by the time of the Babylonian captivity, who “obstinately sought to recognize no other God than their own” (SC, III, 460–61; 216–17). Although I will, in agreement with modern usage, use “Jew,” “Jewish,” and “Judaism” to refer to the people in this story, it may be worth keeping in mind that Rousseau does not. I thank Michael Kochin for bringing this issue to my attention.

¹⁷ Sutcliffe, Judaism and Enlightenment, 116.

¹⁸ First Discourse, III, 9; 7.

¹⁹ First Discourse, III, 13–15; 9–11. See also the Essay on the Origin of Languages, in which Moses, whom Rousseau treats there as the author of the Bible, is said to reject the dangerous science of agriculture (Essay, V, 400; 309).

²⁰ Observations, III, 44; 44.

²¹ P, III, 960; 174–75. See also Constitutional Project for Corsica, 913; 133.

²² P, III, 956–57; 172. As high praise as this may be in the context of Rousseau's thought, it is not obviously high praise otherwise. As Ronald Schechter has observed, “the Jews' famed persistence in retaining their religion could indicate fidelity and courage or fanaticism and servility” (Schechter, Obstinate Hebrews, 64). Moreover, this persistence could pose an insuperable obstacle to improving the lot of Jews by integrating them into the nations they found themselves in (ibid., 55).

²³ Chisick takes Rousseau's considered preference for strong, particularized communities and his view that such communities are extraordinarily difficult to constitute and maintain to be perhaps the most fundamental reason Rousseau differs from Voltaire concerning the Jews (Chisick, “Community and Exclusion,” 91–93).

²⁴ Levite of Ephraim (hereafter L), II, 1212, 1214–15; 356, 358–59.

²⁵ L, II, 1219–21; 362–63.

²⁶ Baczko, “Moïse, Législateur…,” 126.

²⁷ P, III, 956; 171–72; Geneva Manuscript, III, 324; 110; Letter to Franquières, 1146–47; 270.

²⁸ Since all ancient religions, according to Rousseau, are characterized by a multitude of distinctive and exclusive ceremonies and practices, there is also a tension between Rousseau's praise of Rome and Sparta and the religion Rousseau seems to favor. The tension is more striking in the Jewish case only because Judaism, unlike Greek or Roman polytheism, is a living alternative to Christianity.

²⁹ SC, III, 468; 223.

³⁰ E, IV, 576, 578, 586–87; 273, 275, 281.

³¹ Bertram, Christopher, “Toleration and Pluralism in Rousseau's Civil Religion,” in Rousseau and l'Infâme: Religion, Toleration, and Fanaticism in the Age of Enlightenment, ed. Mostefai, Ourida and Scott, John T. (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), 139–40Google Scholar.

³² Bertram, “Toleration and Pluralism,” 143.

³³ SC, III, 465; 220.

³⁴ SC, III, 469; 222.

³⁵ SC, III, 465; 220.

³⁶ SC, III, 462; 217–18.

³⁷ SC, III, 462–63; 218.

³⁸ P, III, 958; 173.

³⁹ P, III, 964; 178.

⁴⁰ P, III, 962; 176.

⁴¹ It is true that the draft of the Social Contract recommends that the profession of faith be accompanied by “an august and simple cult” and that other cults that are compatible with this one can be practiced (Geneva Manuscript, III, 342; 122). But I do not think that “simple” here can mean “just a few.” In the Poland, simple is contrasted with “brilliant and frivolous,” and allied with “proud and republican.” The intent of such “simple” ceremonies is precisely the intent, as Rousseau understands it, of Jewish ones, to establish a people who feel distinct from other peoples, even to give them “a natural repugnance for mingling with foreigners” (P, III, 961–62; 176).

⁴² L, II, 1208; 352–53.

⁴³ First Discourse, III, 19; 14.

⁴⁴ Second Discourse, III, 203; 75.

⁴⁵ First Discourse, III, 9; 7.

⁴⁶ SC, III, 466; 220–21.

⁴⁷ A comparative indifference to earthly justice is one of several negative attributes Christianity and modern political thought, as Rousseau understands them, share. For the definitive treatment of the close relationship between Rousseau's critiques of Christianity and of Enlightenment modernity, see Melzer, Arthur, “The Origin of the Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau and the New Religion of Sincerity,” American Political Science Review 90, no. 2 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁸ Second Discourse, III, 189; 63. On Rousseau's “revolutionary simplification of the human problem,” which consists in supposing that all human evils “result from oppression,” see Melzer, Arthur, The Natural Goodness of Man: On the System of Rousseau's Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 84–85Google Scholar. On Rousseau's elevation of compassion, see Orwin, Clifford, “Rousseau and the Discovery of Political Compassion,” in The Legacy of Rousseau, ed. Orwin, Clifford and Tarcov, Nathan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ I think Melzer (The Natural Goodness of Man, 59–64) is right that it is hardly Rousseau's sole, or even primary, purpose to denounce injustice and that Rousseau's choice of Sparta and Rome as exemplary polities suggest that “health of soul” is what he is after above all. But Melzer agrees that the “most immediately intelligible and powerful of Rousseau's accusations against civilized humanity is that of injustice” (ibid., 59).

⁵⁰ L, II, 1220; 362.

⁵¹ L, II, 1220; 363, 364.

⁵² Although Rousseau praises sanguinary ancient republics, like Sparta, I cannot think of a place where he praises bloodshed or bloodthirstiness as such. His praise of Sparta is no more a praise of people who take pleasure in bloodshed than it is a praise of Sparta's practice of slavery.

⁵³ Rousseau's use of the Mohammedan example has also received scant attention, but Christopher Kelly, “Pious Cruelty: Rousseau on Voltaire's Mahomet,” in Rousseau and l'Infâme, ed. Mostefai and Scott, is a superb treatment.

⁵⁴ E, IV, 634; 313, SC, III, 385; 157.

⁵⁵ L, II, 1221; 364.

⁵⁶ L, II, 1221–22; 364.

⁵⁷ L, II, 1223; 365.

⁵⁸ To be sure, one could argue that Axa is a kind of Christ figure, but Rousseau certainly does not think there is anything distinctly Christian about sacrificing something much desired for the sake of one's people or of one's father. Indeed, Rousseau's foremost examples of the former sort of sacrifice are pre-Christian Romans and Spartans. Mira Morgenstern raises another difficulty for a proper account of Axa and her followers, namely, that the women's agreement to marry the Benjaminites parallels the sham political founding toward the end of the Second Discourse (Morgenstern, , “Strangeness, Violence, and the Establishment of Nationhood in Rousseau,” Eighteenth Century Studies 41, no. 3 (2008): 15–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar). I think that the nearest parallel is Emile's submission to his governor in Emile, since the governor, like Axa's father and unlike the rich in the Second Discourse, appeals to pity and (implicitly) gratitude to get willing consent. Nonetheless, Morgenstern is right that much in the episode is ambiguous, and my reading does not rule out the possibility that even the conclusion of the Levite is a cautionary and not merely a heroic tale.

⁵⁹ E, IV, 632–33; 312. Zev Trachtenberg observes that Rousseau is not always so explicit about fanaticism and especially about its connection to good citizenship. Strikingly, while the Geneva Manuscript, a draft of the Social Contract, uses the word fanatique three times, the term is absent from the Social Contract itself (Trachtenberg, “Civic Fanaticism and the Dynamics of Pity,” in Rousseau and l'Infâme, ed. Mostefai and Scott, 207–11). I am not persuaded, though, by Trachtenberg's explanation for Rousseau's care in this matter, namely, that Rousseau wished to “obscure the support for fanaticism within his political theory” (213). Rousseau is not at all coy about the tendency of the citizen of the classical republic toward inhumanity, or of citizenship to crush the sentiments of nature (E, IV, 248–50; 39–40). Christopher Kelly has emphasized the extent to which Rousseau, though he saw fanatical passion as “the indispensable basis for genuine devotion to a community,” also thought it possible “to combine the energy of fanatical believers with a degree of tolerance toward nonbelievers or believers in a different religion” (Kelly, “Pious Cruelty,” 184). If anything, it seems to me that this latter thought, not the former is underplayed by Rousseau, who seems all too willing to rub our faces in the extremism of classical citizenship.

⁶⁰ Nonetheless, the tension between Rousseau's use of religion to tighten the social bond and his theological tolerance has led at least one commentator to conclude that Rousseau composed the chapter on civil religion “with too-mingled sympathies and motives” (Hendel, Charles, Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Moralist (London: Oxford University Press, 1934), 2:243Google Scholar. I think that Rousseau's account of the Jews shows how he takes these two sides of the civil religion chapter to be compatible.

⁶¹ SC, III, 468; 223; P, III, 957; 172.

⁶² E, IV, 627–28; 308–9. See also Letter to Beaumont, IV, 977; 60. It is worth noting, however, that Rousseau does not think uniformity even in forms of worship can justly be imposed by the political sovereign when it comes to religions that are already “established and tolerated in a country.” Although uniformity of public worship is useful to a polity, what can be gained by that uniformity is fully outweighed by the “civil disturbances” that persecution of a well-established religion provokes: the “argument for public tranquility works completely against persecutors” (Letter to Beaumont, IV, 978; 61).

⁶³ Kelly, Christopher, Rousseau as Author: Consecrating One's Life to the Truth (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 36Google Scholar. Rousseau's position is odd mainly because his denial of the religious significance of particular ways of worshipping God is accompanied by a strong insistence on the political importance of distinctive national cults. Locke's version of toleration, for example, leans against those who think “ceremonies and other observances are of the essence of religion,” in much the same way Kelly notes that Rousseau's does. See Locke, John, A Letter Concerning Toleration, in Two Treatises of Government and A Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Shapiro, Ian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2003), 229Google Scholar.

⁶⁴ E, IV, 625; 307; SC, III, 467; 222.

⁶⁵ SC, III, 468; 223.

⁶⁶ Observations, III, 47–48; 46–47.

⁶⁷ Observations, III, 45; 45; Letter to Beaumont, IV, 970; 54.

⁶⁸ Letter to Beaumont, IV, 971; 55.

⁶⁹ SC, III, 469; 223. See also Letter on Providence, IV, 1073; 119–20.

⁷⁰ Letter on Providence, IV, 1072; 119. Rousseau is writing here specifically of this wish as it is pursued by the sovereign, but writes of the “sanguinary fanatics” who wish to exercise such control, though they do not always have the means to do so, shortly thereafter (ibid.).

⁷¹ For an argument that Voltaire sees Judaism as superior to Christianity in much the same way, see Arkush, Allan, “Voltaire on Judaism and Christianity,” AJS Review 18, no. 2 (1993): 231–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷² Letter to Franquières, IV, 1146; 44.

⁷³ P, III, 956; 171–72.