Pity and Justice in Rousseau's Emile: Developing a Concern for the Common Good

Abstract

AbstractScholarly accounts of the training of pity in Jean‐Jacques Rousseau's Emile focus on how Emile's tutor activates the psychological mechanisms necessary for the feeling of pity in book 4 of the text. This account is inadequate, for it fails to show how Emile acquires the evaluative ability to make the judgment about who deserves pity as well as the willingness to adjudicate his own and others' interests. In this article, Wing Sze Leung argues that books 1 through 3 lay the foundation by developing in Emile the attitudes and dispositions that guide him in his judgment‐making about which kind of life he should pursue. Books 4 and 5 then develop Emile's ability to make interpersonal judgments of pity through habituated practice. By gradually cultivating Emile's sensitivity to the potential conflict between his self‐interests and others' well‐being, as well as the resolution to refrain from infringing on others' interests and to pursue the common good, Rousseau's long‐term educational project molds Emile's disposition to act as justice demands. The article concludes with a brief response to some criticisms about Rousseau's educational project.