The origins of modern love

The Origin of Modern Love: Rousseau's Confessions (Part 1)

Even Rousseau's opponents would not deny that Rousseau was a thoroughly modern man and did not belong to his own era. Rousseau did not live like his contemporaries, but like us. This is not because Rousseau has advanced thinking, but because the secular way of life of our modern people is fundamentally shaped by Rousseau. In other words, each of us is imitating Rousseau to live. But how is this possible?

Rousseau's "Confessions" is divided into two parts. In fact, they deal with the two major themes that Rousseau values most: love and friendship. What we are asking is, to what extent did Rousseau shape modern life through love and friendship?

You must know that before Rousseau, love was a matter of God, not within the reach of man, as it is said in the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Bible, "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that all Whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life." In the European continent that has experienced thousands of years of Christian indoctrination, in people's concepts, only God can understand love. As God's creatures, people do not understand what true love is. Therefore, people can only go to the church to feel the love of God, and without the church, love no longer exists. In such an atmosphere of faith, love in worldly life is unimaginable.

It was Rousseau who, in his love for Madame Warren, sublimated himself and distinguished between two kinds of love, selfish love (amour-propre), which depends on the response of others, and true love of the self (amour de soi), thus discovering what is true love in the world. It can be said that it was this historic breakthrough in Rousseau's thought that brought God's love to the world. From then on, "love" may enter the secular life of modern ordinary people.

Rousseau is known as the "Father of Romanticism". What does the word "romantic" mean? Although many scholars find it difficult to define, and even more and more unclear, if we really go back to the Confessions, in the autobiography of the father of romanticism, in the conflict of his thoughts on the theme of love, it is not It is difficult to come up with a new definition to cover the controversies, namely: Romance is called romance when man does what only God could do before.

There are six volumes in the upper part of "Confessions", which tells about Rousseau's experience from birth to the period of thought formation. The six volumes revolve around one theme, which is love.

Among them, the first volume is the story of Rousseau before the age of sixteen, we can call it childhood, the second volume is devoted to the year of sixteen, the year he met Madame Warren, the third volume The four volumes describe Rousseau's growth experience before he became Madame Warren's lover. The fifth and sixth volumes tell the story of the two falling in love. Rousseau finally made a breakthrough in his agonizing love for Madame Warren. The first book reached its climax at the same time. , the modern concept of love, appeared for the first time in human history.

Rousseau called Mrs. Warren "Mama", nominally adopted by Mrs. Warren. It is conceivable that such a love affair is an indecent love, and cannot be easily understood and tolerated by the world. For this reason, starting from the first volume, Rousseau defends his unique love. At that time, Mrs. Warren was far from appearing. Rousseau started from his parents' childhood. Rousseau repeatedly emphasized that his father was a lover since he was a child, and his mother was a lover since he was a child, and he was still ten years old. , the two friends are already inseparable. So, long before Jean-Jacques Rousseau was conceived, he was destined to be a lover!

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born in Geneva on June 28, 1712, and a few days later, on July 4, his mother died, which brought a lifetime of pain to his father. Even forty years after his mother's death, the grief of his amorous father has not diminished. When Rousseau was ten years old, his father chose to leave Geneva because of a lawsuit, and he was entrusted to relatives to raise him. When he was nearly sixteen, he was playing outside the city once, missed the closing time, and was locked out of Geneva. Because he did not want to be punished, Rousseau decided to leave and bid farewell to his childhood.

As soon as Rousseau left Geneva, the first thing he faced was religious conflict. Although the teenage Rousseau was still very insensitive to this, he was glad that he had gained independence, that he had gained freedom, that he could be his own master, and he fantasized about entering the vast world to show his skills, and he was invited everywhere to go. Feast, wealth is at your fingertips.

At that time, the city of Geneva was Protestant territory, but outside the city was Catholic territory. Rousseau wandered outside the city for a few days and was warmly received by the peasants, and soon he ran into the home of a Catholic priest. In order to persuade Rousseau to convert, the priest introduced Rousseau to Annecy to meet Madame Warren, who had recently converted to Catholicism.

On April 12, 1728, Rousseau, who was less than 16 years old, met for the first time Madame Warren, the founder of the future thinker Rousseau. Mrs. Warren's outstanding demeanor immediately fascinated Rousseau. The scene of that day, even in his twilight years, Rousseau is still very emotional: "This day is Palm Sunday in 1728. I ran after her; I saw her, I went to her and said to her... I will always remember the place where I met her, and I went there many times to shed my tears and kiss the ground there. I really want to enclose that happy place with a golden railing so that the whole People all over the world come to look at it! I am convinced that no matter who he is, as long as he has always respected the building that commemorates the salvation of mankind, he will come here and worship it."

Is it too exaggerated to label this encounter as the salvation of mankind? In 1928, on the 200th anniversary of Rousseau and Mrs. Warren's meeting, later generations really used a golden railing to surround the place where they met for people to look up to. It can be seen that Rousseau's assertion is still convincing. If modernity is marked by people's understanding of themselves in the sense of "individual", then the task of postmodernity is that people try to build a combination of "individuals" on the basis of "individuals": "whole". Just as modernity is marked by "individual", postmodern is marked by "whole". Correspondingly, "love" and "friendship" are the two themes of Rousseau. Rousseau let modern man find himself as an individual in his true self-love, and tried to establish a union of individuals in his brand new friendship. Therefore, Rousseau is not only the implementer of modern life, but also the founder of postmodernity. The depth of his thought is not only unparalleled in his contemporaries, but even represents the peak of the European Enlightenment. And all this started from the encounter between Rousseau and Mrs. Warren. In this sense, the encounter between Rousseau and Mrs. Warren is indeed a landmark event that saves modern man.

Mrs Warren was a very thoughtful aristocratic woman. At the time, Mrs. Warren was 28 years old, out of an unhappy marriage, living alone in Annecy, living on an annuity gifted by a Catholic king. There is no suspense, the kind and kind Mrs. Warren took in Rousseau. The first thing she thought about Rousseau was his future. Mrs. Warren hoped that Rousseau could find a job in the church, so through the church, he was sent to Turin, Italy today.

As soon as he arrived in Turin, Rousseau entered a religious correctional institution, which was a mandatory "upbringing" for him, a pagan, to "reform". As we mentioned earlier, the young Rousseau became insensitive to religious conflicts. As he himself said, he became Catholic only to make a living. But this time, as soon as he entered the correctional facility, the big iron gate behind him was immediately closed and locked. This gave Rousseau a sense of compulsion and a sense that freedom was threatened. Until this time, Rousseau did not seriously consider the question of religion. His parents are Geneva citizens, believe in Calvinism Protestant, of course, Rousseau was a Protestant since childhood. Now the grim reality suddenly made him feel that no matter which religion, once he joined it, he betrayed the original religion, deceived the Holy Spirit deep in his heart, and should be condemned. This made him deeply disturbed, but it was too late to regret it, and he was not brave enough to escape.

The religious understanding that originated in Rousseau's heart at this time, especially the sense of compulsion, was later regarded by him as an insurmountable boundary between people.

After more than two months of "upbringing", Rousseau converted to Catholicism through a rather humiliating ceremony. While Rousseau waited for them to give him a religious position, they gave him twenty francs and sent him out of the gate. The freed Rousseau, with these windfalls, wandered the city of Turin. Here, he met the most fascinated first love in his life, and also wrote the first principle for modern love.

When looking back on his love with Madame Warren, Rousseau asked himself: "Where in the world can there be a lover who is neither concerned about gain or loss but has no passion? (I admit that I am lustful) Don't people all want to know who they love? Don't you love them?" At that time Rousseau was able to answer definitively: "I never thought of asking her this question in my life; I only asked myself whether I loved her, and she never asked me. Tested my attitude in this regard."

The so-called worrying means that you want to get what you cannot get; the so-called worrying and losing means that you have obtained something, but you are afraid of losing it. Worrying about gain and loss has always been the anxiety of suffering in ordinary people's love, but in Rousseau's view, this is not a problem, he has surpassed this level. How did Rousseau do it? To understand this, go back to Rousseau's love affair with Madame Basil when he was in Turin.

One morning, Rousseau passed by a shop, and through the glass window, he saw a lady boss who was "dignified and charming". Unconsciously, he was drawn into the shop. After some self-recommendation, Rousseau was taken in by the female boss as a buddy. The lady boss was called Mrs. Basil, and Rousseau was about five or six years old, so she should be twenty-one or two years old, and she was in full bloom. Although Rousseau couldn't hide his admiration, and usually kept his eyes from Mrs. Basil's side, Mrs. Basil was unmoved, as if she had never noticed it, and was always calm and self-controlled, which made Rousseau more and more fascinated. By chance, Rousseau entered Madame Basil's room. Madame Basil was embroidering flowers in front of the window with her back to the door. She had a graceful posture, a few flowers were inserted into her upturned hair, and her slightly drooping head and neck showed white tenderness. Skin, Rousseau couldn't help himself, he actually knelt behind her on both knees and stretched out his arms excitedly. Rousseau thought she couldn't see it, but he didn't expect the mirror on the fireplace to reveal his secret. Madame Basil, still as calm as ever, motioned for Rousseau to sit down, pointing to the cushions at her feet, without saying a word. Rousseau became mute and froze there. The passion of worrying about gains and losses is filling his body, "both wanting to be favored by the people it loves, but also for fear of making the people it loves unhappy". Madame Basil also panicked, neither welcoming nor refusing, but pretending not to see Rousseau kneeling there, staring at the needlework in her hands in a bewilderment. At this juncture, footsteps came from the stairwell. Madame Basil gestured to Rousseau to hurry up in a panic, and Rousseau took advantage of the situation to get up, while holding her outstretched hand and kissing her twice. The moment of truth came, and in the second kiss, Madame Basil gave Rousseau's lips a light and hard press with her tender hand.

In this regard, Rousseau commented, "I have never experienced such a sweet moment in my life." Although this lost opportunity never came back, Rousseau's first love ended there. But for Rousseau, this first love gave him the most precious thing in love: love, and it must be obtained.

Many years later, recalling this scene, Rousseau sighed: "In the future, even if I possess many women, it will not be as sweet as the two minutes I experienced in her presence, even though I don't even have her dress. Touch. Yes, there is no enjoyment as intoxicating as that given to me by this decent woman I love; it is a grace to be by her side; what her fingers have done to me A small gesture of his, his hand pressed lightly on my lips: all these are the graces that Mrs. Basil gave me. These little graces, I still feel ecstatic when I look back on them today fan."

Yes, this is Rousseau's incurable romanticism. The love affair with Madame Basil made Rousseau, who pursued perfection, understand that perfection does not mean getting it, or not getting it. It was Mrs. Basil's tiny action that ended Rousseau's first love, and also kept him from worrying about gains and losses in front of love throughout his life.

Soon, Mr. Basil heard the wind, returned home from the field, and threw Rousseau away. After that, Rousseau sometimes served as a servant, sometimes as a secretary, and sometimes wandered around. During this period, he did a lot of absurd and bad things, and he also invented the way of traveling when you say you want to go. By the way, he became a pioneer of modern hiking. . Until one day he finally walked from Italy to Chambéry, not far from Madame Warren's house.

At this time, Rousseau suddenly found that Mrs. Warren was the only relative he could trust in the world, and he decided not to wander any longer. When he entered Mrs. Warren's house again, the latter, without any surprise, accepted him calmly and let him live at home. Unlike the previous absurdity, in the motherly love of Mrs. Warren, Rousseau has turned back into a well-behaved young man with good behavior. He lived happily, loved to learn, thought hard, and began to pay attention to his talents.

His interests are wide-ranging and mixed, and even if he is very attentive, he has not really learned any skills. After an escort mission during the period, and returning to Annecy, Mrs. Warren had traveled far away from home. At that time, no one could know her exact location. This year, Rousseau was 18 years old. While waiting for Mrs. Warren to come home, he made friends with all kinds of people and traveled around, adding a lot of experience. He even met a fraudster who pretended to be a bishop and followed him all the way to the French embassy in Sorell. be detected. The French ambassador thought that he was young and talented in writing, so he introduced him to a job opportunity in Paris. Rousseau "swayed and walked all the way", and spent two weeks to complete this pleasant journey full of hopes and fantasies. But the reality is unpackaged, the streets of Paris are dark and narrow, and the smell is high, the people he visits are indifferent, there are many people who praise him, and no one really helps him.

Rousseau was starving and poor in Paris. Fortunately, Madame Warren knew this and sent him travel expenses, and Rousseau was able to return to Madame Warren's home in Chambéry.

It was 1732, when Rousseau was twenty years old. Mrs. Warren found a regular job for Rousseau as a land census clerk, and her life became relatively stable. At first, Rousseau spent all his time with his mother, Madame Warren, with all his love. Obviously, in order to penetrate into the soul of Mrs. Warren, Rousseau, who has not yet been finalized, loved what Mrs. Warren loved, read what Mrs. Warren read, lived the life of Mrs. Warren, and fanatically pursued everything he was interested in, And for the first time in my life, I care about national affairs and read newspapers. He found that "when the French suffered defeat", "the honor of the French who had been tarnished by the soldiers depended on French writers and philosophers to save them." Perhaps because of his admiration for the elegant French literature and beautiful words, Rousseau, the Genevan, gradually fell in love with France.

The deeper the attachment to Madame Warren, the more suffering it brings to Rousseau. why? You must know that Mrs. Warren is a very assertive woman. For her, restraining her lust is an easy thing. It is not a virtue, and naturally she does not need to care. Rousseau once pointed out that Madame Warren "could sleep with twenty men a day without having a troubled conscience; she had scruples in this respect, but she had not as many scruples as her passions". Rousseau knows that there are many pious women who have no more scruples in this matter than Mrs. Warren, but the difference is that others are tempted by lust, while Mrs. Warren is misguided by sophistry.

Just think, who can bear, a beloved woman sleeps with twenty men a day? What a pain this is! But Rousseau had no choice. As the adopted son of Mrs. Warren, he could not ask for anything from Mrs. Warren. Love and infatuation are all Rousseau's own will, not forced by others. He has the right not to love Mrs. Warren, and he has the right to accept Mrs. Warren's kindness, even more love than kindness, but he can't limit Mrs. Warren. Love for other people, because Rousseau did not possess her.

During that time, Rousseau often thought about the meaning of "possession". He found that love is the deepest and truest only when he does not want to possess a woman. If it is said that this is just self-consolation under helplessness, then trying to understand the essence and connotation of "possession" and understand Mrs. Warren's "sophistication philosophy" can be regarded as a positive response. However, with his knowledge at the time, rather than being able to understand clearly, it is better to say that all his thinking was torment. Perhaps because of excessive suffering, in Rousseau, melancholy and sadness gradually replaced enthusiasm, and his health deteriorated. Finally one day, Rousseau fell ill. He was so ill that he thought he was dying. Madame Warren turned her attention entirely to Rousseau, taking care of him "more thoughtfully than any mother takes care of her own son". Rousseau felt unprecedented happiness, and felt that even if he died, his life would continue to live on Mrs. Warren, so he lived even though he died.

It is not difficult to imagine that in such a happy care, Rousseau gradually came to life. For Rousseau, this was the moment of his new life, and he became the work of Madame Warren. It was from this time that Rousseau and Madame Warren became true lovers.

At Rousseau's suggestion, the two avoided the noise of the city, rented a house on the mountainside called Chamet outside Chambéry, moved there, and built their love nest.

The days of Chamet were, for Rousseau, a "precious period" that "had a decisive influence on his life", and until his later years he "did not remember the good times all the time". Rousseau decided that the years in Chamet were not only the only happy times in his life, but even then he really lived.

Chamet's house is located between two mountains, halfway up the valley, quite quiet, giving Rousseau and Madame Warren plenty of solitude. They lived on the second floor of the house, in two different rooms, looking out from the window sill of Rousseau's room, opposite the Alps. Now, in the depths of the mountains, on those mountains that are covered with snow all year round, one after another ski resorts have been built. In France, skiing is almost a national sport. The ski resorts are always bustling with people. People line up in long queues, take the cable car to the top of the mountain, and take a leap on the snow track, so that the passion of life can be freely released in the rapid decline. Before the Enlightenment, such activity not for the continuation of the race, but for the release of personal passions, was immoral. After the Enlightenment, it was largely because of Rousseau, the sensual desires of the individual, that morality was recognized. Therefore, we enjoy a colorful sensory life today, and we cannot but thank Rousseau.

For Rousseau, Chamet's isolated environment enabled him and Mrs. Warren to fully occupy each other, but it could not change Mrs. Warren's "sophistication philosophy". Mrs. Warren was a devout Christian, and as long as she thought it was moral, "she did whatever the church prescribed; she did the same even if it wasn't expressly prescribed", but this was limited to something insignificant thing. As for her social activities and her children's personal relationships, she believes that every sensible person can make their own decisions based on specific circumstances, without offending God. Rousseau did not agree with this, but there was no effective way to refute it. For Rousseau, Mrs. Warren's "philosophy of sophistry" was the most difficult puzzle to solve.

Due to poor health, Rousseau could not do things that required physical strength, so he switched to thinking with his brain and embarked on the path of learning. He thought that his time was short, but he was calm in his heart and only wished to learn until the end of his life. Fortunately, he survived. At this time, Rousseau was about to be twenty-five years old. The more he read, the more he realized that he knew nothing, so he became more diligent and enthusiastic. He read the works of Locke, Malebranche, Leibniz, Descartes, and others, and soon discovered that the doctrines of these authors were always in conflict with each other. At first, he drew up a vision of domination of the world, wasted a lot of energy, but achieved nothing. He then abandoned this method and invented his own unique way of learning. That is, every time he reads an author's work, he makes up his mind to fully accept and follow the author's own thoughts, neither incorporating his own or others' opinions nor arguing with the author. In this way, Rousseau first stored in his mind the thoughts of his predecessors, no matter whether it was correct or not, as long as the arguments were clear, and after the mind had stored quite rich and comprehensive arguments, he would then compare and choose. In this way, after several years of accumulation, Rousseau can gradually think independently without resorting to others. Any time he is alone, whether it is a journey or an inn, he can turn out the things stored in his mind, compare and sort out repeatedly, and generate his own insights. In this way, even if Rousseau takes a nap in the woods, it is possible that a steady stream of original ideas will emerge.

Once, Rousseau went away for treatment, and when he returned home, he felt that everything had changed, and his mother no longer had passion for him. It turned out that Mrs. Warren couldn't bear the loneliness, so she found another young butler. Rousseau is no longer Madame Warren's only lover, he not only has a competitor, but also becomes the second choice. Mrs. Warren's sophistication philosophy finally turned from an idea into a reality, which happened in her relationship with Rousseau.

Mrs. Warren calmly told Rousseau the truth, and let Rousseau understand that her love for Rousseau has not changed in the slightest, and as long as she is alive, her love will not end. All Rousseau's rights are the same as before, although they need to be shared with others, they will not be reduced. Mrs. Warren's calm, nonchalant tone drove Rousseau mad.

Is it to have or to lose? If love is not possession, Rousseau still has Mrs. Warren's love, and if love must possess, then Rousseau loses it. At this time, over the years, the accumulation of knowledge, the tempering of ideas, and the awareness of the problem arising from the confusion about Mrs. Warren's "sophistication philosophy", under the stimulation of passion, united to update Rousseau's concept of love and realized Sublimation of love.

Rousseau threw himself at Madame Warren's feet, hugged her knees, and cried uncontrollably. He said excitedly that his love (including his disapproval of Madame Warren's indulgence) was to give Madame Warren a good name , not to possess her. Mrs. Warren's own affairs, let her decide.

This is what we say today, "Love her, set her free". The so-called "God so loved the world" of Christianity is that God gave mankind the most precious thing: freedom . This used to be the infinite love that only God was capable of giving to man. When Rousseau decided to give freedom to his beloved, God's love was brought to the world by him. The concept of modern love appeared for the first time in the history of human civilization.

Later, Rousseau distinguished between "selfish love" and "true love of the self" in "Emile". The so-called "selfish love" is relative to the love of others, the love that asks for others, without the response of others, this kind of love does not exist; while the "true love of self" has nothing to do with others, only with one's own. freedom of choice. After the "love" explained by Rousseau, the possibility of mutual control between people is removed, so it is even more unacceptable to control others in other names. Therefore, people are independent of each other, no one is the vassal of others, each person is his own master, freely chooses and acts voluntarily, and no one can possess and control him. Each individual is independent of both others and groups, including those formed in the name of love, such as the church. Rousseau's "true love of the self" marks a peak of this Enlightenment thought. This concept was expressed by Kant as "self-consciousness", and the European Enlightenment in the eighteenth century was completed, and history entered modern times.

In all pre-modern societies, people do not understand themselves in the sense of "individual", "individual" is disreputable, "collective" is moral, and selflessness is virtue. Under this concept, people are like sheep, and everyone is just a member of a class. The life and death of a class member is meaningless, and the continuation of the population is meaningful. Modern man surpasses the members of the class, everyone's life is equally precious, and the reason why man has such a high value is precisely because of freedom. In the same way, "love" makes people no longer bond only because of desire, then desire is no longer important. Therefore, lust, and even various sense pleasures, are no longer important for maintaining collective morality, and are no longer immoral. Everyone can have them at will. This is our secular life today.

Rousseau, not in a metaphysical way, but in the sensual desire that everyone has, in the love that everyone desires, achieves this breakthrough. It is in this sense that we say that Rousseau is a modern man.

As a best-selling author, Rousseau passed on the theme of "love" as he understood it to the world through his love novels. In the past, what was possible only by God, now, through Rousseau, can be done by man, and the foundation stone of romanticism has been completed.

Although Rousseau understood true love, it was not easy to practice it, and the measure was especially difficult to grasp. Between him and Mrs. Warren, it was not because they found true love that they were like glue and one body again. Just as modern people are independent from each other, they are also alienated. In fact, "love" can make everyone know and find themselves, but it cannot make people unite with others, because the "love" that is always there with others is not true love, but only selfish love. Therefore, in the second volume of the Confessions, Rousseau will deal with a more important theme, which is also more relevant to today's world: friendship. That is, what Tocqueville later said, the art of combining people with each other.

(Notes omitted)