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Tainted by Society

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In the novel Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, there are instances where Frankenstein illustrates and revises aspects of Emile by Jean Jacques Rousseau. For instance, Shelley touches upon what Rousseau mentioned in his fifth book, where he discusses about Sophy, the ideal woman and perfect match to Emile. Rousseau stated, “The man should be strong and active; the woman should be weak and passive and it follows that woman is specially made for man’s delight” (35). Rousseau is clearly stating that men are superior to women and women exist merely to please men. Shelley revises Rousseau’s perfect ideal man, Emile, by introducing her own character, Felix. Felix’s face was “melancholy beyond expression” and observes that he has an “air of melancholy” (Shelley 11). However, it is until the arrival of Saphie where Felix “seemed peculiarly happy and with smiles of delight” (Shelley 12). Shelley is showing that Rousseau’s natural man is not sufficient in just himself. He needs a woman to be with him as his equal, not just to please him. Therefore although Shelley illustrates Saphie, she revises women’s role in men’s life that differs from Rousseau’s views.

Another example where Frankenstein illustrates aspects of Emile is when Victor created the monster. Rousseau stated, “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil” (1). When Victor first created Frankenstein, he was absolutely horrified and disgusted with his creation. Frankenstein was grotesque-like and “his yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath” (Shelley 40). As a result, he was shunned by everyone, including his creator himself. Frankenstein encountered a beautiful child who he wanted to befriend because he was so lonely. However, the child called him an “ugly wretch of a monster” (Shelley 11). All this alienation and misconception accumulated to all the monster’s hatred towards Victor and the society. He responded by lashing out and murdered Victor’s little brother. Therefore Rousseau’s quote as stated earlier is supported. At first, Frankenstein did not have all these malicious intentions but after his encounter with society and man, he became evil.

 

 

 

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In the text “Emile” by Jean Jacques Rousseau the relationship between isolation and individualism is described. “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil.” This quote from the text supports the argument of nature vs. nurture. Isolation (nature), supports the idea that one should not be corrupted by society and will learn right from wrong without parent interference. Individualism (nurture), supports the idea that parents should encourage their children to choose what they like not make decisions for them, as well as allowing them to find their mistakes on their own without being corrected. These ideas go hand in hand with one another. Rousseau also expresses that “education comes to us from nature, from men, or from things. With isolation, he wants us to learn directly from the environment/surroundings, whereas with individualism it comes from both the environment and the encouragement of parents with them finding their own solutions rather than being told. “We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected in various ways by our environment.” This supports the argument of nature vs. nurture. Isolation relates to individualism in the fact that both want one to learn from oneself rather than be told or shown. “True happiness consists in decreasing the difference between our desires and our powers, in establishing a perfect equilibrium between the power and the will.” What one learns from the environment is just as important as what one learns on their own through their mistakes. He states that nature does everything best, showing the importance of learning from it (isolation). Finding equilibrium between both isolation and individualism leads to happiness. With individualism imagination becomes your true self, which overpowers everything else good or bad. Imagination feeds the desire to satisfy therefore linking the two ideas. Again he shows the difficulties between what you want vs. what is deemed acceptable by society (isolation vs. individualism). “A man must know many things which seem useless to a child, but need the child learn, or can he indeed learn all that the man must know?” This shows that man can learn from child and child can learn from man. Therefore, this shows that one can learn from the environment (isolation) and from another (individualism).

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Nature Is An Open Classroom

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Rousseuau presents an interesting perspective on self-education in Emile: or A Treatise on Education. In this text, he uses Emile as an example of how a child should be brought up. He says “they retain sounds, form, sensation, but rarely ideas, and still more rarely relations.” (Rousseau, 11). Rousseuau believes that childhood is a time of happiness and joy, it is a time when physical education is most important. It is during the teenage years that a child should start to begin “formal” education.

Rousseuau mentions that although education is important, it should be accomplished through self-education. “…if every man’s fortune were so firmly grasped that he could never lose it, then the established method of education would have certain advantages; the child brought up to his own calling would never leave it, he could never have to face the difficulties of any other condition. (Rousseau 2)” Formal education is good when there are no problems but when something arises, formal education fails.

Rousseuau’s major point is that childhood is a time of physical education while older years require a form of self-education through curiosity. Learning through ones own means is most effective and will help solve problems that arise.

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DIFFERENT THEORIES OF EDUCATION

After reading John Locke’s”experience “Rene Descartes’s”book of the world” and Jean Jacques Rousseau”book of nature”. I found how they were looking at education at a different perspective.

Rene Descartes stated that school isn’t the only way of learning education, people should always get out of what can only see, go outside of school, have the freedom of gaining education of what people really need. Descartes believed that everything has an answer but in order for him to believe the answer is to proved the answer by himself. And that is the reason Descartes did’t believed in school systems, he did not like the way of school educate students, which is giving out an answer without proving it. Which i found is similar to John Locke’s “experience”, John Locke believed everything that we learned from life are from experience. He states that, “children and idiots have not the least apprehension (Locke, page 2)” proving that knowledge isn’t something we are born with. Locke also questions, “Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge?” and answers with, “in one word, from experience (Locke, page 5).”

On the other hand Rousseau more focus on nature and education, he stated that men are naturally good, is the society change people, the way of how people thinks, and how people learn. Rousseau also stated that children should be taught differently by age, and nothing against their will.

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Nature, Experience, and the World

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Nature, to Rousseau, is the most valuable aspect of the development of a person.   Nature, simply defined as “habit” on the second page of the text, is the default experience, something instilled in us since birth.  He goes on to state that education through nature is the one thing that keeps a person consistent, no matter where life takes him or her.  On the contrary, a formal education keeps someone stationary, and leaves them unable to adapt to the ever-changing conditions of life.  On page 15, he goes on to say that following nature will make a pupil unbiased in their social interactions, and that “he will ask it of a king as readily as of his servant; all men are equals in his eyes” (14).
Rousseau’s reference to the “book of nature” parallels Descartes’ “book of the world”, and Locke’s stance on “experience”.  Descartes’ presents the world as the ultimate teacher, and Locke says that experience is the ultimate medium of learning and education.  Descartes discusses how the “book of the world” granted him with not only a different kind of knowledge, but more of it in the most general sense.  Rousseau, like Descartes, implies that being well versed in the “book of nature” allows one to be more flexible and better off, regardless of their ability to process the burdens of the education system.  Locke, like Rousseau, believes that naturally we are better off, and that society shapes our experiences too much, making us too biased.

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Rousseau’s Perspective on Learning

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Rousseau has a very interesting perspective on education and learning. In Rousseuau’s Emile: or A Treatise on Education, it is evident that he believes the best way for children to become educated is for them to grow up in a state of nature. He believes that instead of raising children with strict discipline and giving them formal education, they should be allowed to go explore the world and learn things on their own. He states that formal education is the wrong way to teach a child because of always-changing circumstances.

Rousseau states that a true scholar is one who can learn to adapt to many different circumstances. “We must therefore look at the general rather than the particular, and consider our scholar as man in the abstract, man exposed to all the changes and chances of mortal life. ” (Rousseau 2).  He also says that formal education is only suitable in cases where everything is perfect. “…if every man’s fortune were so firmly grasped that he could never lose it, then the established method of education would have certain advantages; the child brought up to his own calling would never leave it, he could never have to face the difficulties of any other condition.” (Rousseau 2). He is saying that a formally educated child can have a good life, only if no other problems ever arise.

I feel that Rousseau is basically trying to say that there is a difference between learning about the world from someone else inside closed walls and experiencing the real world and learning about it by yourself. Rousseau states that the best way for children to learn something is to show it to them rather than just telling them about it. “As a general rule–never substitute the symbol for the thing signified, unless it is impossible to show the thing itself, for the child’s attention is so taken up with the symbol that he will forget what it signifies” (Rousseau 16). It is evident that Rousseau believes that experience is the best teacher.

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State of nature

John Locke, Rene Descartes and Jean Jacques Rousseau have some similar and different conceptions of state of nature and education.

John Locke believed that humans begin as a blank slate and gradually acquire knowledge through experience. Everyone is equally endowed with nature because God made them so. For Locke, everyone obeys the laws given by God in order to create a safe society. In a similar way, Descartes admires God, he thinks God is perfect. According to Rousseau, “God makes all things good; man meddles with them and they become evil” (1).

The idea of nature penetrates throughout Emile, it is the ultimate goal of education. He says “The inner growth of our organs and faculties is the education of nature” (Rousseau, 1). Children should use this growth as tools for education. Rousseau believes that the state of nature has unlimited freedom. It is unspoiled; everyone starts out perfect. Anyone can find happiness in his natural state. Children, unlike adults, are naturally good and uncorrupted by the influences of society and traditional schooling. The job of educators is to stay out of the way of spoil them and let their nature blossom. Compare to Locke, Rousseau take a more hands-off approach of education. He proposed that “freedom, not power, is the greatest good. That man is truly free who desires what he is able to perform, and does what he desires” (Rousseau, 5). Rousseau thinks that children have complete freedom of what and when to learn. Educators should only give children information when it’s meaningful to them, that way they’ll learn much effectively when they want it themselves. In contrast, Descartes believes in deductive reasoning, that knowledge is built from a simple foundation. He says “with the examination of the simplest objects, not anticipating, however, from this any other advantage than that to be found in accustoming my mind to the love and nourishment of truth” (12).

Rousseau sees the artificial “habit” as bad. He is very pleased with Emile for that “His body is healthy, his limbs are supple, his mind is accurate and unprejudiced, his heart is free and untroubled by passion” (Rousseau, 23). Similarly, Descartes says “a man of good sense using his natural and unprejudiced judgement draws respecting the matters of his experience” (8).

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Understanding Nature

The precept of nature in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s point-of-view is the ability of humans to visualize and make sense of the things around us. In accordance to this maxim, his treatise entitled Emile: or a Treatise on Education makes an outline of how an individual, starting from birth, incorporates different sensations about a variety of things. Furthermore, Rousseau commentates that, “We are born sensitive and from our birth onwards we are affected in various ways by our environment. As soon as we become conscious of our sensations we tend to seek or shun the things that cause them…” (Rousseau 2). Rousseau continues with this train-of-thought by stating that children should learn by things of nature; that they should figure things out on their own and adults should, “watch his [or her] actions without speaking, consider what he [or she] is doing and how he [or she] sets about it” (Rousseau 14).

Rousseau’s concept of learning through sensations and ideas has similarities to Rene Descartes’ book of the world. In particular, both philosophers believe that seeing and experiencing things have more value that just merely believing what is either said or stated in text. For Descartes, he believes that, “…I could not do better than continue in that in which I was engaged, viz., in devoting my whole life to the culture of my reason, and in making the greatest progress I was able in the knowledge of truth, on the principles of the method which I had prescribed to myself” (Descartes 8). As such, touring the world by himself and making a final conclusion of such experiences gives him a sense of fulfillment of his accomplishments. For Rousseau, experience in regards to children should be concentrated on their ability to perceive and make sound judgments on their own rather than having to forcibly accept something when it is of no use to them, or if it is too difficult to comprehend.

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Rousseau’s Ideal Upbringing

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In Emile: or A Treatise on Education, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Rousseau talks about how one should be brought up through their childhood all the way to adulthood through his fictional character Emile. Rousseau’s view on how one should be brought up is that during childhood, it should be enjoyed, and not worrying about being taught through education what is right and what is wrong. “Love childhood, indulge its sports, its pleasures, its delightful instincts. Who has not sometimes regretted that age when laughter was ever on the lips, and when the heart was ever at peace?” (Rousseau 4/5). Childhood is when one should have no worries or stress in life, but rather just nothing but happiness and joy.

Rousseau goes on to talk about that when one enters their teenage years, they should become more educated. However, they should not become more educated by being taught, but rather by teaching themselves based on their curiosity.

“Teach your scholar to observe the phenomena of nature; you will soon rouse his curiosity, but if you would have it grow, do not be in too great a hurry to satisfy this curiosity. Put the problems before him and let him solve them himself. Let him know nothing because you have told him, but because he has learnt it for himself. Let him not be taught science, let him discover it.” (Rousseau 15).

What Rousseau is saying is that one needs to become educated in what they are interested about. If one is presented with a problem before themselves and they don’t know how to answer it, they must teach themselves what the answer is on their own. Self educating based on curiosities will lead to one to be more educated about life.

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