et pourtant je crois en Dieu tout aussi fortement que je croie aucune autre vérité, parce
que croire et ne croire pas, sont les choses qui dépendent le moins de moi, que l’état de
doute est un état trop violent pour mon âme, que quand ma raison flotte, ma foi ne peut
rester longtemps en suspens, et se détermine sans elle; qu’enfin milles sujets de
préférence m’attirent de côté le plus consolant et joignent le poids de l’espérance à
l’équilibre de la raison.
Of course, one does not ‘believe’ in a truth, one knows it. Rousseau’s belief, even if sincere,
is by his own admission a belief founded on a hope that is, as he reveals earlier, a product of
human pride.
Rousseau leans toward the side of hope in weighing the question of the immortality of
his soul, but he offers such a teaching as a model because it is meant to have precisely the
consoling effect that he has complained Voltaire’s poem lacks. Reopening the metaphysical
debate over materialism and dualism, theism and atheism, Rousseau admits he recalls how he
was ‘frappé’ by the materialist position concerning the generation and orderly arrangement of
matter, as found in his old friend Diderot’s Pensées phiilosophiques,
position has a great deal of merit. Comparing the materialist position to its alternative, he
explains, ‘bien que l’une et l’autre me semblent également convaincantes, la dernière seule me
persuade.’
As with the question of theism or atheism, he admits that his choice is doubtful.
‘Je n’empêche pas que, ce que j’appelle sur cela preuve de sentiment, on ne l’appelle préjugé;
et je ne donne point cette opiniâtreté de croyance comme une modèle; mais, avec une bonne
33
Rousseau, Lettre à Voltaire, p.1070-71.
34
Denis Diderot, Pensées philosophiques, Oeuvres philosophiques (Paris 1964), xxi (p.21-23). In his analysis
of the Lettre à Voltaire, ‘Rousseau on providence’, Gourevitch puts a great deal of weight on Rousseau’s
mention of Diderot’s argument.
35
Rousseau, Lettre à Voltaire, p.1071. Rousseau discusses the question of arguments that ‘persuade’ rather
than ‘convince’ in the same terms in the Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont, OC, iv.955. See also Rousseau’s
discussion of legislator’s need to use persuasive rather than convincing arguments, including with relation to
religion: Du contrat social, OC, iii.383, and Essai sur l’origine des langues, OC, v.383. See Christopher
Kelly, ‘”To Persuade without convincing”: The Language of Rousseau’s legislator’, American Journal of
Political Science (1987), 321-35.
Prepared for the 2005 American Political Science Assocation meetings.
19
Convention