Beyond Struggle and Power: Heidegger's Secret ... - Interpretation

5 0 Interpretation
existence is divided, not whole, and that we must accept the “worthy challenge”
to affirm the dividedness of our modern souls (7, 188–89, 214, 231, 241).
The book has two main sections. In chapters 1–6, Cladis discusses
Rousseau’s “genealogy of modern alienation and misery” (155)—the
Second Discourse in other words. Cladis traces the development, stage by stage,
from nature to society (or what Cladis calls “From The Garden to The City”),
and argues that this movement was neither regrettable nor a departure from
our “humanity.” Whatever was lost in the way of wholeness was made up for
by a more “fully human” morality and happiness. In chapters 7–11, Cladis
looks at Rousseau’s potential solutions to modern dividedness: the extreme
public path (Government of Poland), extreme private path (Reveries of the
Solitary Walker) and a fragile combination of the two (Julie). Cladis argues that
these are merely “strategies for evading conflict” and not intended as true solutions.
Due either to fragility or extreme neglect of the private or the public,
none provides for “a full, flourishing human existence” (171). Taken as one big
reductio ad absurdum, these three works demonstrate why a life divided
between public and private is both inevitable and desirable. Cladis concludes
with a discussion of what he calls Rousseau’s “Middle Way,” a composite of
Emile and The Social Contract, which satisfies both sides of our being, to the
extent possible. Rousseau’s thoughts on religion constitute the core of the
“Middle Way,” for unlike citizenship, domesticity and reverie, religion is a private
good and a public good.
Though he does intend to make a contribution to Rousseau
scholarship (3), Cladis’s principal aim is not scholarly. Cladis leaves behind
what he doesn’t like about Rousseau (such as his thoughts on women and his
“essentialist” reliance on the concept of “nature”) and reshapes what is left for
his purposes. He considers such liberties justified and necessary due to the
urgency of the matter. The quality of private and public life are both in steep
decline, yet we fail to understand the significance of this fact because we do not
understand their relation to begin with (16, 31, 237, 244). This failure in comprehension
is due largely to a failure in speech. Our excessive reliance on
rights-discourse, for example, hampers our ability to understand the whole
social side of our being, and how integrally bound up with one another the private
and public are (4, 30). Cladis takes Rousseau’s philosophy and forges out
of it a typology, “a grammar” (229) that will enrich our speech and thought
about private vs. public by capturing the conflict in all its fullness. This set of
concepts, of “Weberian ideal types” (53, 236), are, in sum, “The Garden,”“The