Summary
Rousseau opens his Discourse by dedicating it to the republic of Geneva, in Switzerland. He says that, of all of the places he knows, Geneva is best. It is large enough to require a government and administration, but small enough without that government becoming unwieldy. The people are all of one creed, are all from one place, so there can be no conflict between them. Everyone is equally subject to the law, and the government is stable. Geneva has never had any military ambitions, but it is strong enough to defend itself from outside attack. A council of magistrates is able to propose laws on behalf of the people, so Geneva is able to avoid the most destabilizing aspects of democracy. Rousseau praises his father as an ideal citizen of Geneva, and yet just like every other citizen of Geneva.
Analysis
Before entering into an analysis of the first part of Rousseau’s Discourse, it is worth noting the lengthy preface in which Rousseau praises Geneva. Rousseau was born in Geneva, but left as a young man to find work, at which time he, by his own account, converted to Catholicism because a local seminary would pay a small sum to new converts. Geneva was hardly a democracy. In fact, it was a Calvinist theocracy, and the conversion to Catholicism meant that he could never be a citizen there again. Rousseau later converted back to Protestantism, and was allowed citizenship there, though he never took it. But the praise for Geneva as Rousseau was living in France, a country from which he would soon be exiled after the publication of his novel Emile, gives us two crucial insights into Rousseau, as a person and a political philosopher.
It first shows us that Rousseau is already thinking beyond the question of inequality to imagine an ideal social arrangement. This is a question that he would tackle in his next book, The Social Contract, and it naturally complements the thinking of the Discourse. Given that we can’t go back to this state of nature, what social arrangement is best? And it also suggests the tendency that we will encounter in the discourse itself to imagine idyllic, utopian alternatives to his present circumstances. Rousseau's autobiography—one of the first of the genre—is filled with such paths not taken.
The mention of Rousseau's father is also a significant one. Isaac and Jean-Jacques had something of a troubled relationship, with his father more or less abandoning him as a young teenager. Rousseau tended to idealize his father, and to associate him with patriotic feelings. In his Letter to D'Alambert on the Theater, Rousseau would recall watching a small troop of Genevan soldiers spontaneously celebrate. The elder Rousseau pointed to them and said, Jean-Jacques, love your country!" Rousseau frequently stressed the biographical roots of many of his views.
Rousseau's idealization of the women of Geneva, "chaste" and "honorable," "the fairer sex that rules ours," gives us something of his sense of women, which plays a major role in his autobiographical and literary works. Rousseau tended to idealize women—he thought that an idealized image of women could teach men to rise above the tyranny of their own sexual desires. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he also regarded women with great suspicion, and showed a deep discomfort with sexuality of any kind.
