Rousseau as a Philosopher of Enlightenment and the Equality of Sophie and Émile Regarding Education

Abstract

J.J. Rousseau, while being an Enlightenment philosopher, is also known with his criticisms to the Enlightenment movement and basic ideas of modern philosophy. Rousseau, by rehashing the discussions brought upon by Descartes and his successors in the 18. century, pursued a social and political philosophy centered on the concepts of self and freedom. As the most controversial and paradoxical of the writers of the Enlightenment, Rousseau rejects both the Cartesian views, which reduces animals to a machine, a mere automaton with no feelings and also Ancient theses, which find the essence of humanity in the possession of reason. According to Rousseau, a human being defines oneself with both the power to squirm oneself out of the instinctual preprogramming, which means freedom, and also the power to have a history which has a priori, indefinite development. This human conception of Rousseau forms the foundation for not only for ethics but also for the politics and social life. Since, in the humanistic philosophy of Rousseau, human nature is not preprogrammed and there does not exist a single natural or social program that could compass a human being, each human being is free, who moves forward towards uncertainty and who has never been preprogrammed by the determinants related to race or gender. Rousseau argues that people who are educated according to the rules exerted by others, cannot be free; he outlines the main tenets of a freeing and perfective education in his influential work Emile with regard to the education of a boy named Emile. According to him, the question of “what a human being should do”, that is, the question of how one to act in his/her relationship with others contains the question of “what a human being is” and consequently leads us to the reformation of social institutions through education. In the fourth chapter of the book which is about the moral education of Emile, Rousseau puts forward the Sophie character in order to show how different a woman’s education should be contrasted to a man. Even though our human self is universally independent, Sophie is not quite as competent in theoretical issues as Emile; and Rousseau claims that the nature of the relationship between men and women stems from the fact that men are more powerful and independent. According to Rousseau, men are in need of women because they desire them, but women both desire men and also are in need of them. So, it seems that Rousseau’s universal human self is not valid for women. Mary Wollstonecraft, a contemporary of Rousseau, in her book A Vindication of the Right of Women advocates the view that the education Rousseau withholds from women is a necessary right for women as well as for any human being. Wollstonecraft discovers the only reason for women’s state is their lack of education. Relentlessly attacking Rousseau for limiting the education for active citizenship only to boys, consigning girls to a subservient “education for the body” alone, Wollstonecraft argues that even as mothers and nurturers, women require a much more substantial education. The aim of this paper is to investigate the faculties of freedom and perfection that Rousseau considers as necessary for a humanly existence and the idea of universality in terms of Sophie character by using Wollstonecraft’s views.