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6 Epilogue: in the beginning was song And the light shineth in the darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not. (John 1.5) We have (rather deliberately) said very little about the subject of music, as this is not obviously a part of Rousseau’s social philosophy. Yet music was – though scholars have often forgotten this1 – Rousseau’s main passion, and this passion spilled over into his political writings in more ways than one. Rousseau, the musician and note-copier, was an accidental philosopher. Had he not seen the prize question from the Academy in Dijon on
– this time to create an awareness of ‘entanglement’ (the term now so prevalent for transnational history; the French equivalent is histoires croisées ) in a wider framework that will embed the Atlantic arena within global developments. I hope to engage these propositions by following a political theme that should seem urgent in light of political violence and even the recent electoral results in Europe and the United States: the passions of politics. Consider as an introduction a different evocation of the Atlantic. Almost a century ago William
1942, during the war, Keynes became the chairman of the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts; there, also, he was an advocate for presenting the arts to a wider British public. Keynes believed that cultivated people were more likely to embrace a higher moral vision and share a discourse and values not bound by personal gain alone. Through culture they could become personally elevated. Keynes was, therefore, in many respects a kind of utopian moralist. He admired socialist utopianism for three reasons: its passion for social justice, the Fabian ideal of
negotiation as the only means of eliminating its causes – all of which are anathema to Wahhabism. In the Saudi discourse, the causes of violence are sought in another logical sequence of steps beginning with religious ignorance ( jahil ), irrationality/passions ( ahwa’ ), deviation ( inhiraf ) and extremism ( ghuluw ), leading to political involvement ( hizbiyya ) and violence ( ‘unf ). In this discourse the believer is the central figure, and the concept of the ‘victorious sect’ ( al-ta’ifa al-mansura ), to which all Salafis/Wahhabis belong, is by definition unequal. It
the sensible is made apparent – to the supersensible. 23 Thus, Kant describes Schwärmerei as “overstepping the bounds of human reason”; 24 “the delusion of wanting to see something beyond the bounds of sensibility, i.e., of dreaming according to principles, raving with reason”; “comparable to mania”; “a deep-seated and brooding passion”; “it is rule-less.” 25
– but ultimately unsatisfactory – answer is that he was a genius – though not always a very attractive one. In Dictionaire de la Musique, one of his lesser known works, he described a genius almost poetically as: He who makes the silence speak, who restates thoughts through emotions, and emotions through subtle allusions, who wakes passions in the depth of the heart … [He who], even when depicting the horrors of death, instils into the heart a feeling of life, which never deserts him. (V: 915) In his more sublime moments, Rousseau did exactly this. Uniquely for a
The fury flies from face to face, and the disease is no sooner seen than caught … Such force has society in ill as well as in good passions, and so much stronger any affection is for being social and communicative. – Anthony Ashley Cooper
a necessary affective force, beyond the erroneous imaginary to which it was once so often relegated. 4 And yet, for all the seeming potency of recent public passions, it remains unclear whether or how enthusiasm might operate as a specific political affect in a continuing democratic project. Previous historical reflections on enthusiasm might make us suspicious of any such feelings in politics. 5
story the woman appears, in this sense, to be unfree: she is not in control of her own destiny, as she is failing to control a passion that she herself would rather be rid of and which is preventing her from realising what she recognises to be her true interests. One might say that while on the first view freedom is simply about how many doors are open to the agent, on the second view it is more about going through the right
it is another term for tamed passions. In transforming passions into ‘interests’, modern rational beings choose between Zweckrationalität and Wertrationalität (Weber 1978) or between acting rationally and instrumentally and acting according to their value compass. Hirschman (2013: 32–8) reported that interest’s reference changed from a general concern (as in the ‘national interest’ being represented by the ruler of the state) to a set of differentiated concerns held by various groups and individuals who were interested in advancing their power, influence and wealth