Rousseau's objection to the bourgeois is that he is a bit of a low character. His main goals are to improve his financial situation and move to a nicer neighborhood. The bourgeois wants to look good, smell clean, and have regular bowel movements. Medical checkups are a big thing with him; he wants to postpone death as long as possible. The bourgeois is far more concerned with his portfolio than with his soul. He spends all day doing corporate accounts or selling pest-control products, yet he is satisfied in his work. But how can one derive satisfaction from recording transactions all day, or from killing rats and cockroaches? The bourgeois is a man of limited horizons. However picayune his function, he is proud of his "work ethic." But as Oscar Wilde once noted, to have to do laborious work like sweeping floors and adding up numbers is depressing enough; to take pride in such things is absolutely appalling.
Rousseau's strongest complaint against the bourgeois is that he professes to be moral while acting like a mercenary. His virtues are entirely based on selfish calculation: he treats other people well in order to make a bigger profit. The bourgeois man doesn't care about being good; he only wants to appear good. His overriding concern is with his reputation. And in his social life, the bourgeois is obsessed with foolish vanity. Even his opinion of himself is derived from how he is perceived by others. His personality is so shaped by convention that he no longer knows who he really is. He is estranged from his own nature. He is a faker and a hypocrite. Even worse, he is not free because all his priorities and indeed his very identity are dependent on others. The conformity of the bourgeois is the mark of his unfreedom. Rousseau's charges are precisely the ones that the young people of the 1960s launched against their parents.
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