Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In his accounts of the bourgeois, Tocqueville accepts much of Rousseau's conceptual outline, but balks at the latter’s pessimism for freedom within modern civil society. Tocqueville accepts the failings of the bourgeoisie without accepting their social insolubility. His bourgeois man recognizes the ways in which society is useful, and Tocqueville indicates that this sort of instrumentalism can yield social cohesion. Tocqueville’s bourgeois can be gently coerced, to use a suggestive phrase, to take part in society and to discover how it can be beneficial to his interests. He is less a threat to pursue his own projects without the aid of others, because their relative equality makes them necessary to him, and vice versa. In contrast, Rousseau’s frustration with civil society charges his assessment of the bourgeois with radical distrust, even when he attempts to posit solutions. Tocqueville’s modern individual is more self-aware than Rousseau’s; he is attentive to the consequences of his actions and able to adapt to change. His is an individual who can manage the responsibilities of citizenry without needing the holism of the general will. In this paper, I also consider each thinker's approach to the liberty/equality problematic.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: We argue that the film Hannibal is at its core a story about the lure of misanthropy, and the struggle of idealism (in the sense of love for and pursuit of the 'best' in humanity, which we consider here as faith in humankind's capacity for goodness) against this lure. Accordingly, it provides a useful foil for considering the lure of misanthropy in political thought: in particular, the tensions and agreements between idealism and misanthropy in the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. In considering the above, we examine Rousseau's critique of bourgeois liberal society as a misanthropic critique that is both rooted in and set against Enlightenment idealism, and argue that this critique, and Rousseau's general attitude toward what he considers vice, reflects a broader, but nonetheless unique, misanthropic attitude. We then argue that Hannibal Lector, the title character of the 2001 film 'Hannibal, is a skeptical, or corrupted, misanthrope - that is, one whose hatred of viciousness has very nearly become a hatred of humankind generally - and that he therefore brings to life some of the core elements of Rousseau's misanthropy/misanthropic critique. We argue further that Clarice Starling can also be understood to be misanthropic and so too embodies some core principles of Rousseau's critique. We argue that in this case, however, the misanthropy lies at an opposite extreme from that of Lecter's: Starling's misanthropy is an idealistic misanthropy. Finally, we argue that the subtextual emotional struggle between the skeptically misanthropic Hannibal and the idealistic Clarice Starling reflects some important connections and tensions between idealism and misanthropy, and so allows us to consider the relation between idealism and misanthropy in the thought of Rousseau. In viewing Rousseau's misanthropic critique of bourgeois liberalism through the lens of the film Hannibal, we argue that Rousseauan misanthropy can be seen as a sort of continuum along which the important tensions of this critique - idealism versus skepticism, actual versus apparent virtue, natural goodness versus social goodness - play.

Publication Type: Proceeding

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Building on recent work on “governmentality”, this paper uses Foucault’s nuanced definition of government to explore how the work ethic operates as form of government in modern life. Beginning with Weber’s classic, The Protestant Ethic, I trace development of the work ethic as both a “technique of domination” and a “technique of the self,” from the Reformation to the present. This ethic, I argue, is an important element in the governmental operations of modern power, from its pastoral beginnings to more contemporary manifestation in scientific knowledges such as psychiatry.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper presents Rousseau's argument for family bonds being that which engenders and is the end of citizenship and individualism. The focus in modern politics on rights and wealth distracts us from the true barriers to human happiness.