Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam > Blaise Pascal Instituut > Girard Studiekring > COV&R 2007 > Abstracts Papers 

Jeremiah Alberg

My Trip through Hell or Forgiving Rousseau

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ABSTRACT

The Enlightenment aimed to free people from superstitious beliefs and to allow them to think for themselves. Most Enlightenment figures opposed religion and the Church. In contrast to this, Jean-Jacques Rousseau represents something both new and lasting. On the one hand, he did not just simply reject religion, in fact he explicitly claimed to be a Christian. On the other hand, he quite clearly denied the divinity of Christ, the resurrection, original sin and other central doctrines. In so doing, he incurred the condemnation of both the Protestant and Catholic Churches of his day, and yet it was precisely this condemnation that confirmed him in his faith. What is new here is that Rousseau was unwilling or unable to simply walk away from Christ and the Scriptures. What is lasting is the challenge that Rousseau presents to Christianity. He presents himself as the model rather than Christ; he proposes an alternative account of origins rather than Genesis; he professes a faith that is not the Apostles’ Creed. All of this, according to him, accord more closely to the true spirit of the Gospels. Many people, without knowing Rousseau explicitly, subscribe to his view of religion.

I think that we can say that what Rousseau grasped about Christianity was the centrality of the victim. His thought and his life revolved around this centrality. He would be the victim.

I argue in this presentation that Girard’s insight into scandal and the way that it can form rationality, gives a Christian a way of reading Rousseau such that one does not need to condemn him, nor to agree with him, and yet can take him with the utmost seriousness. This kind of reading – forgiving Rousseau – involves a real vulnerability on the part of the interpreter. One does not need this vulnerability if one condemns him, or if one simply agrees with his version of Christianity. This reading helps to unbind Rousseau from the double-bind in which he finds himself.

At the same time Rousseau has contributed mightily to the tendency for everyone to claim the status of being a victim as a way of also claiming innocence and privilege. People are now suspect of this claim and so suspicious of the notion of tolerance. The suspicion, in turn, often becomes the occasion of accusation against the one claiming the victim status and thus we are back into the vicious circle. I hope to indicate the road out of this. Rather than being scandalized by the claim to innocence, one looks beyond that to the deeper reality of our shared resistance to forgiveness, our common refusal to be in communion with the victim. In accepting forgiveness from the crucified one, we can extend it to the one claiming innocence. Further, one can learn to see in this refusal the crucified One, who is always and only present as the rejected one. It allows the reader to find in Rousseau or in the other, what he or she might least expect: the presence of the crucified Christ.

Jeremiah Alberg did his PhD at the University of Munich. He has taught philosophy at the Sophia University in Tokyo, Santa Clara University and Gonzaga University. He is presently the director of Philosophy Program at the University of West Georgia. His book, Interpreting Rousseau: A Religious System (Palgrave) with a “Foreword” from Rene Girard is due out this spring.