Page 40 - GALIET ILLUSION: Rousseau IV

utopia presupposes a citizenry of noble, rational men seeking the common good expressed in their General Will, history shows otherwise. Humans are tragic beings, torn between the Apollonian and Dionysian will,103 rational and the irrational, mastery and slavery, the ideal and the ideal. Rarely is every citizen and every magistrate a philosopher king capable of altruism and self-governance. Rarely is every member of Rousseau’s Social Pact eager to adopt a non- luxurious, virtuous way of life. Rarely is every citizen committed to a rational Socratic education aiming at turning everyone’s gaze towards the ideal Form of the Good. And rarely is there unanimous consent to inculcate at least the four classical virtues of justice, temperance, wisdom and courage of Plato’s wise and experienced Republic.104 Without a sincere commitment towards a genuine commonwealth, Rousseau’s General Will cannot liberate, but lawfully imprison the Minority Will.
Thus, the Social Contract can easily transgress. It can metamorphose into an abysmal illicit pact: one of absolute dominion, disadvantage and subjugation to minorities. In so doing, it becomes a mise en abyme105 of the very Suzerain Covenant Rousseau declared nullified.
103 Nietzsche. The Birth of Tragedy. Chapter 16. Briefly, humans are torn between the rational and the irrational, which is expressed best in the tensions between the Apollonian and the Dionysian wills. Apollo is the deity of lyric poetry, of beauty, of healing; while Dionysus, his half-brother is the deity of dithyrambic poetry, of theatre, and of revelry and the grotesque and the irrational. Both share the same temple at Delphi at different times: Apollo in the Spring; Dionysus in the winter.
104 Plato. The Republic. Book IV.
105 A mise en abyme, a literary device coined by Andre Gide, is a mirroring narrative or structure that suggests the abysmal in infinite regressions, inter-textuality, and self- referentiality. Kafka’s The Trial reflects abysmally and infinitely, the Book of Job’s trial narrative unto the narrative of humanity’s trials torn between omnipotence and impotence. Both are woven with inaccessible Judges, unjust accusations, persecutions, dispossessions, alienation, and lack of genuine vindication endured by their innocent victims Joseph K and Job. See J.A. “Mise en Abyme.” The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London: Penguin, 1977. 513
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