The Voltaire-Rousseau Beef aka V v. JJ part III.

for @stars-in-the-night , @headsinsand and other great (and amazingly patient) readers

part 1 ; part 2 ; part 3 ; part 4

7. THE ORPHANAGE (to be read in Eliza Hamilton's voice)

The one thing from his personal life that Rousseau is probably best remembered for is the fact that he gave up all five children he had with his long-term partner, Thérèse, to a Parisian orphanage. One after the other, in what could be called a rapid succession, a simple case of salut and adieu.

The reasons he gave for his behaviour differ from ‘I have fallen with a bad crowd in Paris and this is just what people around me did’ and ‘I basically had no other option anyway’ (not true, he could have married Thérèse and try to make it work. Sure, money was tight, and someone could make a few snarky remarks about the first baby looking surprisingly big for a six-month old or whatever, but these things happened quite regularly. Also, Diderot married his working-class mistress despite his father’s stern disapproval. Just saying) to – now this comes up somewhat later in the Confessions and is significantly darker – ‘I really hated Thérèse’s family and thought it would be better to let my kids be raised by the state than be around them’.

If this was him trying to break a cycle of generational trauma though – perhaps one of the side of his own family as well –  I’d argue there were far better ways of going about it. There’s also potentially one even darker, quasi-psychoanalytical reason for this now infamous choice, but it’s probably best to steer clear of Freud. Nothing good usually comes out of it.

Of course, doing something like this would make anyone seem like a douchebag, but a guy famous for writing a treatise on how to best raise children?* Guy who repeatedly argued that the single purpose of a woman’s life is to be a mother? Now that’s a hypocrisy so deliciously juicy that one simply cannot resist sharing it with the world!

*interestingly enough, he insists in the Confessions that he wanted to reveal this information in his On Education (aka Emile), and that in one of the book's passages, he alluded to this episode in such a way that he ‘basically confessed to it already’. I haven’t found that part yet, and I remain somewhat sceptical about whether this is truly the case.

8. SECOND INTERMEZZO: VOLTAIRE THE AVID HATE-READER

*calling JJ ‘Diogenes’ was definitely a trend in the 1700s, and what seems like V’s go-to insult for him. Calling him a ‘lackey of Diogenes’ does potentially get a bit kink-shame-y though...

9. A MOUNTAIN AND AN AVALENCHE

The last post featured an earthquake in Portugal, now get ready for a distinctly Swiss natural disaster!

To be perfectly fair to Voltaire, although he was certainly not a person who was above spreading gossip, he did have a good reason to publish what he knew about Rousseau and let all hell break loose, since...

in Rousseau’s Letters Written from the Mountain published in 1763, JJ had exposed Voltaire as the author of the infamous Sermon of the Fifty, an anti-christian work that had the potential to get its author into serious trouble. Voltaire could not and would not let this slide – especially when he had the perfect weapon on his hands. Payback time!

Voltaire therefore went on to publish a short anonymous pamphlet titled Sentiments des Citoyens (aka How Citizens Feel – since JJ proudly called himself ‘citizen of Geneva’ in his works and he championed sentiments over reason – see, it’s all very clever!) in which he exposed details from Rousseau’s personal life. This of course included the most shocking, most hypocritical, and most memorable detail of all: Rousseau, Mr. Family First, Mr. Let’s-raise-precious-children-in-a-way-that-won’t-corrupt-their-natural-godness had dumped all of his offspring into a Parisian orphanage! Not so virtuous now, is it?

Interestingly, Rousseau never put two and two together and realised Voltaire was the real author of the fateful pamphlet. It would be interesting to see how he would react had he known.

That said, much like d’Alembert’s article on Geneva a couple of years earlier, the Sentiments des Citoyens led JJ to pick up a pen once again to do what he did best: to defend the poorest and most oppressed souls against the cruel and unjust world. Which usually just happened to be himself.

And thus, as Roger Pearson, an author of one of Voltaire's many biographies concludes:

(no, not like that @chaotic-history. Though now I cannot unsee it every time I read the quote)

->

Tune in next time for the (mis)adventure in Britain which will feature:

Thank you for the thought-provoking question!

In general, I'd say that I came to find out that both the historical periods and figures we collectively assume to be super stern and serious had complicated, often quite chaotic lives and were far from being immune to petty personal dramas.

I think that people who don't engage with history after high school often miss the fact that it has the potential to not only be fun, but also genuinely funny at times.

One of the big eye-opening moments for me was reading Cicero's Second Philippic. I vaguely remembered briefly learning about them in high school, but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that the accusations Cicero makes against Mark Antony were of that nature. (I recommend this extremely fun article for anyone who hasn't read it already and wants to find out more!). It definitely changed the way I see Cicero and, to some extent, the late Roman Republic in general.

Couple of weeks after I first read it, I went to a very formal university event during which someone quoted Cicero (because of course they did - they always do) and I remember that I had to keep smirking. The second philippic was all I could think of in that moment.

Same goes for a lot of famous 18th century figures (Frederick the Great, Voltaire, Rousseau...) which you kind of implicitly assume were all serious, respectable people - until you get your hands on their letters and realise that the level of drama and cattiness in the 1700s was just off the charts.

On a more serious note, I'd like to think that my view of the French Revolution has became more nuanced as I read more about it. I was certainly taught something along the lines of 'it started as a nice idea but then Robespierre turned into a bloodthirsty dictator and started executing everyone!' at school. It was not easy to shake this off at first.

On a basic level, I think people just like to believe that everything bad that happens can be ascribed to one or two people 'turning crazy' instead of realising that the real dark things often stem from a specific situation and circumstances rather than individual people.

The fact that it was not Robespierre alone running the country is hard to argue with, I mean that's just a historical fact. But I also think it is important to take into account all that was happening in France during the 1790s - the war, the near-famine, how much conspirators working against the revolution were a real threat and not just a product of someone's paranoid delusions...

No matter what specific conclusions you came to in the end, I think this is something you need to be aware of before you form any judgement of the Revolution. Without reflecting that, the discussion always feels rather pointless.

Oh, and I was delighted to find out just how wrong the view that women just lied on a sofa doing nothing for hundreds of years before feminism kicked off in the late 1800s. Finding out about all the cool influential women from history continues to surprise me in the best possible way!

Huge shout-out to my friend who lets me indulge my hyperfixations and somehow managed to track down a photo of my old high school history notes on the French revolution??

Some higlights!

Headline: The Impact of the French Revolution (on the Czech Lands) (which was part of the Austrian Empire back then, making it just a bit more spicy)

you also get to witness my horrible handwriting I guess~