prior probability

Continued from yesterday: What was the Voltaire-Tronchin conspiracy, and why did these two leading denizens of Geneva decide to conspire to ruin Rousseau’s reputation and expose him as an intellectual and moral fraud? (And where does Adam Smith, who was in close contact with both conspirators during his sojourn in Switzerland, fit in?) In short, this conspiracy was not an imagined plot or feigned intrigue. It involved a deep secret about Rousseau’s dark past, about acts so shameful and deplorable that their disclosure to the public would all but destroy Rousseau’s reputation.

According to one Rousseau scholar (Matthew D. Mendham), Voltaire’s doctor, Théodore Tronchin, became aware of the Swiss philosopher’s shameful secret through one of his most glamorous private patients, Madame Louise d’Epinay, a wealthy salonnière and woman of letters who had been Rousseau’s patroness — she had furnished Rousseau a cottage called “the Hermitage” in the valley of Montmorency — and it was this same Dr Tronchin who then divulged Rousseau’s secret to Voltaire. [See, e.g., Matthew D. Mendham, Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau: The Jean-Jacques Problem, (2021), pp. 170-171 n.25 & p. 129. See also R. A. Leigh, “Review: Jean-Jacques Rousseau”, Historical Journal, Vol. 12, No. 3 (1969), pp. 549-565.]

So, did Madame d’Epinay, in fact, reveal Rousseau’s dark secrets to Dr Tronchin during one of her visits to Geneva, and did Tronchin then conspire with Voltaire to air Rousseau’s dirty laundry? Here is what we know for certain. First off, we know that Madame d’Epinay had been under Dr Tronchin’s personal care and attention during a visit to Geneva in 1757 — in fact, it was Rousseau who had introduced his patroness to Tronchin in the spring of 1756 (see Cranston 1991, pp. 22-23, cited in our previous post) — and we also know that “Dr Tronchin was by this time [i.e. 1757] on fairly intimate terms with Mme d’Epinay, addressing her as ‘ma bonne amie‘” (again, see Cranston, op. cit., p. 41 & p. 368 n.98, citing “BPUG, Archives Tronchin, 204, p. 29”).

In addition, we know that Dr Tronchin was in close and frequent contact with his lifelong friend and patient Voltaire. [Indeed, the earliest known letter written by Voltaire to Theodore Tronchin is dated 20 February 1741! See Theodore Besterman, “An Unpublished Voltaire Letter to Theodore Tronchin, and Some Notes on Dates”, Modern Language Notes, Vol. 67, No. 5 (May, 1952), pp. 289-292.] Moreover, Tronchin and Voltaire had also been in regular correspondence with each other — as well as with Rousseau — on various matters since the summer of 1756 (see Cranston, cited above, pp. 29-31). And third and last, we now know that it was none other than Voltaire (with information provided by Tronchin) who wrote up a devastating exposé of the Swiss philosopher’s misdeeds. [See generally Chapter 5 of Mendham’s 2021 book, cited above, as well as Chapter 4 of Robert Zaretsky and John T. Scott, The Philosophers’ Quarrel: Rousseau, Hume, and the Limits of Human Understanding, Yale University Press (2009).]

To the point, Voltaire’s anonymous pamphlet, titled The Sentiment of the Citizens, was published on 27 December 1764 (see Mendham 2021, op. cit., p. 206 n.6). [For reference, Voltaire’s pamphlet is reprinted in Frédéric Eigeldinger, editor, Voltaire: Sentiment des citoyens, Champion (2000), and as a further aside, Rousseau’s reply to Voltaire’s anonymous pamphlet is reprinted in Volume 12 of Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, editors, The Collected Writings of Rousseau, University Press of New England (2007), pp. 45-49, available here.] Among other things, Rousseau’s shocking crimes and salacious secrets are put on full display for all posterity:

Is [Rousseau] a scholar who is disputing against scholars? No, [he] is the author of an opera and of two comedies that were hissed at. Is [he] a good man who, deceived by a false zeal, is making indiscreet reproaches to virtuous men? We admit, blushing and with sorrow, that this is a man who still bears the marks of his debaucheries, and who, dressed up as a street-swindler, drags with him from village to village, and from mountain to mountain, the unfortunate woman whose mother he killed, and whose children he exposed at the door of a hospital, rejecting the cares that a charitable person wanted to provide them, and renouncing all the feelings of nature, as he casts off those of honor and religion.

As it happens, the allegation that Rousseau somehow killed his putative mother-in-law is pure fabrication; the other major revelations, however, are not: the Swiss philosopher had not only fathered several children out of wedlock (five in all!); he had also forced the unfortunate unwed mother to discard her own children on the cold doorstep of an orphanage, never to be seen or heard from again. Alas, although the abandonment of unwanted babies was an accepted practice in many places at the time (for a survey, see Roberta Wollons, “Abandonment and Infanticide” in Richard A. Shweder, editor, The Child: An Encyclopedic Companion, University of Chicago Press (2009), pp. 1-4, available here), the damage was done; Rousseau’s darkest skeletons were now out of the closet. The Swiss philosopher was no scholar; he was a heartless rogue who had abandoned his own children!

Postscript: What is Adam Smith’s part in this sordid affair? Although Smith was in close contact with both Dr Tonchin and Voltaire during his sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765 and early 1766, he could not have played a direct role in the plot to tarnish Rousseau’s reputation, for Voltaire had already published his withering exposé in late 1764, when Smith was still in the South of France. That said, however, Tronchin and Voltaire’s backstabbing machinations may have shaped Smith’s priors when the Hume-Rousseau affair exploded in 1766.

Continued from yesterday’s post — footnotes and references are below the fold:

The correspondence between Dr Theodore Tronchin and Jean-Jacques Rousseau resumed in the spring of 1759, when the Swiss philosopher wrote to the doctor in Geneva asking for medical advice on behalf of two neighbors in Montmorency, France, where Rousseau was residing at the time. [1] Dr Tronchin dutifully replied to Rousseau on 17 April 1759. Among other things, the medical doctor reproaches the Swiss philosopher in a playful tone for not writing more often, ending his letter by asking, “How is it that the friend of humanity is hardly any longer the friend of men?” [2]

Alas, as Dr Tronchin — and later, the world during the Hume-Rousseau debacle — was about to discover, Rousseau was one of the most megalomaniacal, thin-skinned, and touchy moral and political philosophers of all time, an insecure introvert quick to take offense at the slightest perceived provocation, for Rousseau replied to Tronchin on 28 April 1759 as follows:

You accuse me of indifference to men, and you use the sweetest of words to name me. In order to answer you, Monsieur [note: Rousseau does not refer to his interlocutor as “doctor”], I must ask you in turn by what standards you judge me. Your manner of questioning me resembles that used in the interrogation of the wretched victims of the Inquisition. If I have secret accusers, tell me who they are, and of what they accuse me; then I will answer you. In the meantime, of what do I accuse myself? [3]

It gets worse, for Rousseau not only blows Tronchin’s playful reproach (“how is it that the friend of humanity is hardly any longer the friend of men?”) out of all reasonable proportion; he then goes on to say in a most scathing and sarcastic tone:

I congratulate you heartily on your good life, on your health, on your friends, and if I have none of these things, it is a misfortune and not a crime. Such as I am, I complain neither of my fate nor of my condition. I am the friend of the human race, and men are found everywhere. The friend of truth also finds ill-wishers everywhere, and I do not need to come far to meet them…. I prefer to live among the French rather than seek out enemies in Geneva. In a place where smart wits [i.e. Voltaire] are fêted, J.-J. Rousseau will hardly be fêted, and if he were, he would hardly glory in it. [4]

In some ways, the Swiss philosopher’s swift but indignant reply would foreshadow the more famous “philosophers quarrel” between David Hume and himself that would occur a few years later in 1766. He not only refers to himself in the third person — a true sign of a megalomaniac — he also sees “enemies in Geneva” as well as “ill-wishers” and imagined conspiracies “everywhere.” [5] Rousseau also concludes his missive by raising the stakes of their dispute in melodramatic fashion: “O worthy Tronchin. Let us both stay where we are. You may still honour your country. For me, it remains only to weep for it.” [6]

For his part, Dr Tronchin promptly replied to Rousseau’s accusations on 7 May 1759, and he (Tronchin) did not pull any punches: “You have wounded my soul, and my soul did not deserve the least injury from you.” [7] Furthermore, he called out Rousseau’s self-righteous indignation as unworthy of the Swiss philosopher and fought back with these words: “the most profound humility is the only state suited to man: the philosophers are absurd.” [8] But Dr Tronchin saved his most biting reply for last: “I pity clever men.” [9]

The back-and-forth between Rousseau and Tronchin would continue for several more rounds, but to make a long story short, it turns out that Rousseau did indeed have a valid reason, after all, to suspect Tronchin of engaging in a mean-spirited and nefarious smear campaign behind the scenes in Geneva, for at that very moment in time Dr Tronchin and Voltaire were, in fact, conspiring together to ridicule Rousseau and ruin his reputation … [10] (To be continued.)

One aspect of Rousseau’s thought that may have piqued Adam Smith’s admiration, curiosity, and intellect, even before his travels to Geneva in 1765-66, was the Swiss philosopher’s Lettre à M. d’Alembert sur les spectacles, first published in 1758, the original cover page of which is pictured above. (For reference, see Allan Bloom’s translation of Rousseau’s classic 1758 letter-essay in Politics and the Arts; Letter to M. d’Alembert on the Theater, Glencoe, Illinois: Free Press (1960), available here.) Although this work by the famed “Citizen of Geneva” is addressed directly to the French mathematician and philosophe Jean le Rond d’Alembert (Rousseau was writing in reply to an article published in the famed Encyclopédie in which d’Alembert proposed the establishment of a theater in Geneva), the letter-essay was written for a general audience. In fact, a copy of Rousseau’s celebrated letter-essay on the theater found its way into Adam Smith’s library. [See Hiroshi Mizuta, Adam Smith’s Library: A Supplement to Bonar’s Catalogue with a Checklist of the Whole Library, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1967), p. 53, available here.]

Moreover, one of the Lumières who received an initial copy of Rousseau’s 1758 letter-essay was none other than Dr Théodore Tronchin, the scholar-medical doctor who would later be Smith’s key contact in Geneva. [See Maurice Cranston, The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1754-1762, University of Chicago Press, 2nd edition (1991), p. 140.] Writing to a friend in Geneva (pastor Jacob Vernes), the Swiss philosopher had singled out Dr Tronchin among the citizens of Geneva and other prominent persons who were to receive presentation copies of Rousseau’s letter-essay. (In addition to Dr Tronchin, Rousseau asked his agent in the Swiss city-state to distribute copies to the great Voltaire, who at the time lived nearby in Les Délices; to two of Geneva’s syndics or chief magistrates, Jean Antoine Saladin and Pierre Mussard; as well as to several professors of the Académie de Genève. See ibid.)

As it happens, Dr Tronchin had not only read Rousseau’s 1758 letter-essay; he also corresponded with the Swiss philosopher directly in November of 1758 to share his thoughts with him. Tronchin, however, was highly critical of Rousseau’s arguments. Maurice Cranston sums up Tronchin’s eloquent critique of Rousseau’s 1758 letter-essay thus:

Dr Theodore Tronchin wrote [to Rousseau] suggesting that the morals of the Genevese were less pure than Rousseau realized, but also to suggest that the cultural activities Rousseau had proposed in his Letter to M. d’Alembert as an alternative to a theatre would only make things worse. In particular the men’s clubs, which once seemed good, had become a source of dissipation and wasted time, and were injurious to family life. He reminded Rousseau that the Genevese were not Greeks; they were a people of artisans, not warriors, and Rousseau’s idea of imitating Sparta and introducing state education, gymnastics, and military training was unsuited to children destined to earn their living in trades and industries. Moreover, if Rousseau’s policy of separating the sexes was adopted, Dr Tronchin pointed out that children would spend all their time with their mothers, and be deprived of the discipline of a father’s hand. ‘Geneva no more resembles Sparta,’ he continued, ‘than the white glove of an opera girl resembles the gauntlet of an athlete.’

[Cranston 1991, pp. 145-146. Dr Tronchin’s 3 November 1758 letter to Rousseau is reprinted in Volume 5 of R. A. Leigh, editor, Correspondance complète de J.-J. Rousseau, p. 734. See Cranston 1991, p. 375 n.67, citing “3.11.1758. MS R303, ff.62-3 (CC, V, 734)”.]

For his part, Rousseau wasted no time in writing up a point-by-point reply to Dr Tronchin on 26 November 1758. According to Maurice Cranston, Rousseau tried to find common ground with Tronchin: “He [Rousseau] noted with pleasure that Tronchin shared his views on the drama and expressed the hope that ‘your authority and your wisdom will prevent both the introduction of a theatre into the city and the continued existence of one at its gates’, the latter being … a reference to the theatre at Carouge, which Tronchin and others were trying to have closed”. [Cranston 1991, p. 147; Rousseau’s 26 November 1758 reply letter to Tronchin is reprinted in Volume 5 of R. A. Leigh, editor, Correspondance complète de J.-J. Rousseau, p. 743. See Cranston 1991, p. 375 n.70, citing “26.11.1758. BPUG, Archives Tronchin 165, ff.9-10 (CC, V, 743)”.]

Before proceeding, however, two important points are now worth noting. One is that the Geneva theater controversy — specifically, what effect does the theater, and popular entertainment more generally, have on morals? — was a question that Adam Smith no doubt must have cared about. Why? Because Smith himself had once served on a university committee to thwart the construction of a new theater in Glasgow. [On this peculiar chapter of Smith’s life — peculiar, given Smith’s love of theater during his grand tour years in Paris — see generally Ryan Patrick Hanley, “From Geneva to Glasgow: Rousseau and Adam Smith on the theater and commercial society”, Vol. 35 (2006), pp. 177-202, available here.] The second point is that the Tronchin-Rousseau correspondence would resume — and then come to an abrupt end — in April of 1759. (To be continued …)

Pictured above is Dr Théodore Tronchin (1709-1781), one of the most celebrated — in some quarters, despised — medical doctors of the Age of Enlightenment. In this post, Alain Alcouffe and I will discuss what we like to call “the Adam Smith-Théodore Tronchin connection“. Simply put, Dr Tronchin would turn out to be the single-most important Lumière that Adam Smith would have the pleasure of meeting during his (Smith’s) sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766, for it was most likely the Swiss doctor who introduced the Scottish philosopher to Turgot’s muse, the duchess d’Enville; who opened the doors of Voltaire’s country estate at Ferney to Smith; and who informed Smith of the latest developments involving Voltaire’s nemesis, Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

At the time, Théodore Tronchin was Europe’s most famous médecin or medical doctor. [For an excellent overview (in French) of Dr Tronchin’s fame — or notoriety, depending on one’s opinion of Tronchin –, see generally Giacomo Lorandi, “Les dynamiques d’une célébrité transnationale: Théodore Tronchin et l’inoculation de l’Infant Ferdinand de Parme en 1764”, Gesnerus, Vol. 74, no. 2 (2017), pp. 240–267.] Tronchin’s main claim to fame was an innovative method of inoculation against smallpox he had developed, refined, and perfected over the years. Among his most celebrated deeds, for example, Tronchin had successfully inoculated the sons of the Duke of Orléans in 1756 and published a highly-acclaimed research article on the topic of inoculation for the famed Encyclopédie. Yet it was a serendipitous triple-coincidence that would fate Adam Smith and Dr Tronchin to finally cross paths in the fall of 1765.

One set of coincidences was Dr Tronchin’s residence in Geneva and his elite circle of celebrity patients: Voltaire, the duchesse d’Enville, and the Stanhopes, among others. As a result, Smith would have ample opportunities to meet and interact with Tronchin and with the members of his inner circle during Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland. Another significant coincidence was that one of Smith’s students during his Glasgow days was Dr Tronchin’s youngest son, François Louis Tronchin (1743-1785). [See F. E. Guerra-Pujol, “Adam Smith through the Eyes of Horace Walpole”, SSRN, p. 65 n.268, available here.] According to Smith’s biographer John Rae, Tronchin had sent his son to Scotland in 1761 in order to enroll him in Smith’s foundational philosophy lectures at the University of Glasgow. [See John Rae, Life of Adam Smith, London: Macmillan (1895), p. 59; see also Francis W. Hirst, Adam Smith, London: Macmillan (1904), p. 127.] In the words of Rae (1895, p. 59):

Tronchin, the eminent physician of Geneva, … sent his son to Glasgow in 1761 purposely “to study under Mr. Smith,” as we learn from a letter of introduction to Baron Mure which the young man received before starting from Colonel Edmonston of Newton, who was at the time resident in Geneva. It was of Tronchin Voltaire said, “ He is a great physician, he knows the mind,” and he must have formed a high idea of the Theory of Moral Sentiments to send his son so far to attend the lectures of its author.

But perhaps the most important coincidence of all was Dr Tronchin’s connection to the great Jean-Jacques Rousseau. As it happens, it was Tronchin’s younger brother, Jean-Robert Tronchin (1710-1792), “Procurator General” or chief prosecutor of Geneva, who first condemned Rousseau’s works in 1762. [See generally Chapter 4 of Matthew D. Mendham, Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (2001).] A few years prior to this prosecution, however, Dr Tronchin was a friend of Rousseau’s and was in regular correspondence with him. But by the time Smith arrived in the Swiss city-state in the fall of 1765, Dr Tronchin and Rousseau had had a serious falling out. In fact, Dr Tronchin would end up siding with his brother and concluding that Rousseau was a rogue: “The miserable Rousseau, who had the black project of overthrowing his fatherland in order to avenge himself, is currently the object of contempt and public hatred.” [See Letter of 15 February 1765, quoted in Raymond Trousson, Jean-Jacques Rousseau au jour le jour, Paris: Honoré Champion (2000), p. 588, and cited in Mendham 2001, p. 99, p. 202 n.131.]

In our next two posts, Alain Alcouffe and I will describe the chain of epistolary events that led up to the final rupture between Rousseau and Dr Tronchin, and we will also show why Adam Smith might have taken a keen interest in this state of affairs.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) descended from a long-line of Genevan watchmakers, for his father Isaac Rousseau (1672–1747) and his grandfather David Rousseau (1641–1738) — as well as his great- and great-great grandfathers! — were master clockmakers in the city-state of Geneva. The beautiful 17th-century Geneva miniature clock pictured above, for example — which is now part of the Met’s fine art collection [see Clare Vincent & Jan Hendrik Leopold (with Elizabeth Sullivan), Highlights of the Collection of European Clocks and Watches in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Yale University Press, 2015), pp. 70-73, available here] — is believed to be the product of the master clockmaker (maître horloger) Jean Rousseau the Younger (1606–1684), the great-grandfather of none other than the famed man of letters.

More relevant than Rousseau’s clockmaker family pedigree to someone like Adam Smith — who visited Geneva in late 1765-early 1766 — is the fact that the celebrated Swiss philosopher’s forefathers most likely belonged to the old Watchmakers Guild of Geneva, which was established as early as 1601 in order to curtail competition under the guise of quality control. Among other things, mass production of clocks and watches was banned, the number of apprentices kept artificially low, and entry into the guild (and thus permission to make watches) strictly controlled. [See generally David S. Landes, “Watchmaking: A Case Study in Enterprise and Change”, Business History Review, Vol. 53, No. 1 (1979), pp. 1-39.]

So, why did Jean-Jacques Rousseau not follow in his forebears’ footsteps and become a watchmaker himself? Instead, according to his best-selling but posthumously-published autobiography The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (available here), he was an engraver’s apprentice before running away from Geneva at the age of 15 and becoming a man of letters. In any case, was Adam Smith aware of the protectionist apprenticeship policies of the Watchmakers Guild of Geneva? How could he not be, for the Scottish philosopher-economist has this to say about apprenticeships in the watchmaking industry in Book 1, Chapter 10, Part 2, paras. 16-17 of The Wealth of Nations (Glasgow edition, pp. 139-140):

Long apprenticeships are altogether unnecessary. The arts, which are much superior to common trades, such as those of making clocks and watches, contain no such mystery as to require a long course of instruction. The first invention of such beautiful machines, indeed, and even that of some of the instruments employed in making them, must, no doubt, have been the work of deep thought and long time, and may justly be considered as among the happiest efforts of human ingenuity. But when both have been fairly invented and are well understood, to explain to any young man, in the completest manner, how to apply the instruments and how to construct the machines, cannot well require more than the lessons of a few weeks: perhaps those of a few days might be sufficient. ***
It is to prevent this reduction of price, and consequently of wages and profit, by restraining that free competition which would most certainly occasion it, that all corporations, and the greater part of corporation laws, have been established.

So, was Adam Smith speaking from his own personal knowledge when he wrote this scathing critique of watchmaker apprenticeships — as an aside, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose; compare our oppressive and outdated rules of “occupational licensure” today — and was this personal experience based on his 1765/66 sojourn in Switzerland? For his part, it is worth noting that Rousseau himself confirms in passing in Book 1 of his autobiographical Confessions that “it required no very extraordinary abilities to attain perfection as a watchcase engraver” (my translation). [Cf. Texte du manuscrit de Genève (1782), pp. 30-31: “… le talent du graveur pour l’horlogerie est très-borné …”, available here.] Rousseau’s autobiography, however, did not see the light of day until 1782, while Smith’s magnum opus was published six years earlier in 1776, so it is safe to say that Smith was indeed writing from his own personal knowledge when he condemned watchmaker apprenticeships in The Wealth of Nations.

Thus far, Alain Alcouffe and I have explored Adam Smith’s possible motives for visiting the Swiss city-state of Geneva in the fall of 1765 (cf. the map of Geneva below, circa 1760). Among other things, we established a possible connection between Smith and the syndic Marc Turretin, one of the leading patricians of the Genevan Republic, as well as between Smith and Voltaire, who lived nearby in the village of Ferney and who was embroiled in two disputes at the time of Smith’s visit, one with a young English aristocrat, Charles Dillon; the other with Dillon’s tutor John Needham. But what else is there to say about Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland? As it happens, a lot! Below are some additional topics that we have been busy researching this fall:

• The “Watchmakers’ Guild of Geneva”: a case study of Adam Smith’s scathing critique of watchmaker apprenticeships in The Wealth of Nations.
• Dr Théodore Tronchin, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the Geneva theatre controversy.
• Geneva as an English enclave: the case of Lord and Lady Stanhope.
• L’égérie des philosophes (“the philosophers’ muse”) — Smith, Turgot, and the duchesse d’Enville.
• Salon society and the “Republic of Letters”: the Charles Bonnet-John Needham-Duchesse d’Enville connection.
• Pinning down Adam Smith’s arrival and departure dates and retracing his travels to and from Geneva.

Although Christmas and New Year’s Day are around the corner, rest assured we will share our preliminary results regarding these sundry aspects of Smith’s Swiss travels in the days ahead …

Alain Alcouffe and I have been researching Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland. More specifically, we have posed a number of questions about this chapter of Smith’s life. Did he, for example, take an interest in the whereabout of Jean-Jacques Rousseau or in the suppression of his works by the syndics of Geneva, and if so, whose side was Smith on, Geneva’s or Rousseau’s, the censoring syndics’ or his fellow philosopher’s?

The answer to our first question is clear enough, for if Smith’s 1756 letter-essay to the Edinburgh Review is any indication, the Scottish moral philosopher took notice of Rousseau long before his (Smith’s) subsequent sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766. Simply put (as Alain Alcouffe and I have previously conjectured; see here and here), it is reasonable to assume that it was Rousseau’s celebrity, if not his notoriety (especially after a warrant for his arrest was issued in his native Geneva in 1762), that motivated the Scottish philosopher’s visit to Geneva in the first place!

Furthermore, we know for certain that Smith later took a keen interest in Rousseau’s quarrel with David Hume and that he (Smith) took Hume’s side in this matter. (See, for example, Adam Smith’s 6 July 1766 letter to David Hume; Corr. #93.) Even after this great literary affair had run its course, the future economist continued to inquire about Rousseau’s whereabouts. In a letter to David Hume dated 7 June 1767 (Corr. #103), Smith asks, “What has become of Rousseau? Has he gone abroad, because he cannot continue to get himself sufficiently persecuted in Great Britain?”

Likewise, in a letter addressed to Smith from one of his grand-tour contacts in Paris–the Comte de Sarsfield (1718–1789), a French military officer of Irish ancestry–his interlocutor volunteers information about Rousseau’s whereabouts: “They say Rousseau is in St Denis.” (Corr. #109) Why would Count Sarsfield bother revealing this detail to Smith unless he thought it would be of interest to him? And in another letter from Adam Smith to David Hume–this one dated 13 Sept. 1767 (Corr. #109)–Smith writes, “I should be glad to know the true history of Rousseau before and since he left England.”

It is therefore reasonable to assume that Rousseau’s whereabouts–as well the real or imagined persecutions against him–were important topics of conversation during Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765/early 1766, but what did Smith think of his fellow philosopher? Did Smith side with the syndics of Geneva, who censored Rousseau’s works in 1762 and issued an arrest warrant against the offending author, or did the future economist and champion of “natural liberty” defend Rousseau’s right to express his ideas, however radical those ideas might be?

Alas, neither Alain Alcouffe nor I have found any direct or contemporaneous evidence of Adam Smith’s position on Rousseau’s troubles in his native Geneva, but what should we make of Smith’s silence? On the one hand, the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, especially considering that most of Smith’s private papers and correspondence were destroyed at Smith’s own request on the eve of his death in July 1790, but at the same time, the Scottish philosopher’s few subsequent references to Rousseau provide us some clues. Specifically, whatever his views of Rousseau were in the fall of 1765 (when Smith was residing in Rousseau’s hometown of Geneva for several months), Rousseau–like Voltaire–must have lost whatever luster he had prior to Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland, for just a few months later (July 1766) Smith would update his priors, so to speak, and conclude that Rousseau was a “rascal” (cf. Corr. #93). We therefore think it is safe to say that Smith, like Hume (cf. Corr. #96), saw Rousseau either as a “villain” or a “madman” (ibid.). Either way, Smith must have concluded that Rousseau’s martyr complex was the result of his own pride, vanity, and lack of self-command.

Note: Alain Alcouffe and I will resume our series on Adam Smith in Switzerland next week …

In this post (and our next one), Alain Alcouffe and I will address the following questions: Why did the leaders of the Republic of Geneva try to suppress The Social Contract, and what role, if any, did Marc Turretin — one of the magistrates or “syndics” of Geneva that Adam Smith met during his sojourn in the Swiss city-state — play in this sordid affair? Also, did Adam Smith take notice of this controversy during his visit to Geneva, and if so, whose side was he on, the Syndics’ or Rousseau’s?

By all accounts, the main reason the authorities in Geneva (including syndics like Marc Turretin) had for censoring The Social Contract and issuing an arrest warrant against Rousseau himself was his chapter on civic religion. (See Book 4, Ch. 8 of The Social Contract.) Among other things, Rousseau presents a scathing indictment of organized religion and concludes that Christianity and democracy are incompatible (emphasis in the original):

But I’m wrong to speak of a Christian republic—those two terms are mutually exclusive. Christianity preaches only servitude and dependence. Its spirit is so favourable to tyranny that it always profits by such a régime. Genuine Christians are made to be slaves, and they know it and don’t much mind: this short life counts for too little in their eyes. (The Social Contract, Book 4, Ch. 8)

At the time, however, the Republic of Geneva presented herself as a bastion of religious and political liberty (a reasonable assessment given the prevalence of absolute monarchies in the rest of Europe), and many Genevans prided themselves on their Calvinist and republican traditions. [See generally Pamela A. Mason, “The Genevan political background to Rousseau’s ‘Social Contract'”, History of Political Thought, Vol. 14, no. 4 (1993), pp. 547-572.] Rousseau’s Social Contract, however, not only questioned this conventional wisdom; it threw a metaphorical grenade into an already volatile political situation. To put Rousseau’s dangerous diatribe against Geneva’s faux democracy into historical context, some background information about Geneva’s 18th-century constitutional system is in order.

In brief, the power to make and enforce laws in Geneva was divided among three corporate entities or political bodies, a constitutional arrangement going back to the days of John Calvin: (i) a general council consisting of all the male citizens of Geneva aged 25 or older, (ii) a legislature called the Grand Council or Council of the Two Hundred (as its name implies, this body contained 200 members), and (iii) a quasi executive-judicial body called the Small Council or Council of Twenty-Five. (See, e.g., Mason 1993, p. 551.) The small council, in turn, was led by four magistrates called “syndics”, whose appointments were rubber-stamped by the general council from pre-approved slates (ibid.).

But the one aspect of this constitutional arrangement that must have infuriated someone like Rousseau the most was the utter political impotency of Geneva’s general council. It could not deliberate on any matters not previously approved by the grand and small councils; it lacked the power to impeach or recall the syndics; and to make matters worse, it played no role in the election of the grand and small councils (Mason 1993, p. 555). Indeed, the most odd aspect of Geneva’s constitution was that the Grand Council and the Small Council formed a “closed loop”: the Small Council chose the membership of the Two Hundred and the Two Hundred chose the membership of the small council (ibid.).

During the 18th century, however, a group of reformers calling themselves the Représentants began to question these arrangements and rebel against the syndics. Their struggle would culminate in the so-called “Geneva Revolution of 1782” (see here, for example), a precursor to the great French Revolution that began in 1789. [See generally Richard Whatmore, Against War and Empire: Geneva, Britain, and France in the Eighteenth Century, Yale University Press (2012).] But at the time of the publication of Rousseau’s “Social Contract” in 1762 and Adam Smith’s sojourn in Switzerland in late 1765, the Geneva Revolution of 1782 was still decades away. Nevertheless, although this decades-long constitutional struggle in Geneva had yet to be fully resolved in the 1760s, Rousseau’s radical critique of Geneva’s morally and politically corrupt constitution — corrupt because the general council did not represent the true will of the people given its limited power and the closed loop between the grand and small councils — no doubt struck a raw chord among the syndics and defenders of the status quo and must have been a topic of conversation in Adam Smith’s Geneva circle during his sojourn in Switzerland.

Assuming the Scottish philosopher did take notice of this constitutional controversy during his visit to Geneva, what did he make of it? Specifically, did he openly defend the marketplace of ideas in true classical liberal fashion (i.e. did he champion Rouseau’s freedom to criticize the system without fear of legal prosecution), or was he complicit in Rousseau’s predicament and in the censorship of the syndics through his esoteric silence? Alain Alcouffe and I will turn to these all-important questions in our next post …

As Alain Alcouffe and I mentioned in our previous post, the rather mysterious-sounding “Syndic Turretin” is mentioned in passing in John Rae’s biography of Adam Smith (Rae 1895, p. 191). According to Rae, this particular individual was one of the many leading lights whom Smith met and befriended during his extended sojourn in Switzerland, but who was this “Syndic Turretin”, and what might Smith have learned from him?

In summary, he was most likely Marc Turretin (1712–1793), a career politician who was appointed to Geneva’s Conseil des Deux-Cents (Council of the Two Hundred) in 1746 and who would eventually rise to the highest ranks of power in the Swiss city-state, elected one of four “syndics” or chief magistrates of the Republic of Geneva, a powerful legal-political post going back to the days of John Calvin. Turretin was also a husband and a father — he wed Françoise Boissier (1716–1797) in 1733 and had one son, Jean Alphonse Turretin [Jr.] (1735–1779), who predeceased him in 1779 — and was descended from a distinguished Swiss-Italian brood, the Turrettini family (see generally Tripet 2012). The syndic was the son of Jean Alphonse Turretin [Sr.] (1671–1737), one of the leading “enlightened orthodox” public intellectuals in Geneva during his day (Klauber 1990, p. 328).

Among other things, his father Jean Alphonse was a professor of theology at the Academy of Geneva (appointed in 1705 to replace his mentor, Louis Tronchin), had led the movement to abrogate the formulaic and outdated Formula consensus ecclesiarum Helveticarum (see here, for example) in 1706, and “was also instrumental in building a more secular curriculum at the Academy through the addition of a Chair of Mathematics in 1704 and a special two-year humanities course in 1722” in order to make the Academy more competitive with other more secular universities to draw more foreign students (Klauber 1990, p. 327). Jean Alphonse [Sr.] was also a prolific scholar; among his most important works are his Cogitationes et dissertationes theologicae on the principles of natural and revealed religion (2 vols., Geneva, 1737; in French, Traité de la vérité de la religion chrétienne). (See Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed. (1911), Vol. 27, p. 483, available here; see also Gargett 1991.) In short, given his father’s theological background and scholarly credentials, it is safe to assume that Marc Turretin was brought up in a pious and highly-educated household.

But what did Adam Smith and Marc Turretin, the Scottish moral philosopher and the Swiss statesman, discuss during their encounters in Geneva in late 1765/early 1766? (Alain Alcouffe and I assume they met more than once given the length of Smith’s sojourn in Geneva and the small size of the Swiss city-state.) Several possible topics of conversation come to mind. Perhaps they talked about the Dillon Affair of December 1765, for Turretin himself, in his capacity as syndic, might be called on to decide the legal dispute between Voltaire and Charles Dillon. Possibly, they compared notes on a much-discussed essay that must have hit close to home for Turretin, d’Alembert’s controversial entry for “Genève” in the 7th volume of the Encyclopédie (available here, by the way), an article that according Friedrich Melchior Grimm had “caused much uproar” (Grimm 1758). Or maybe Turretin filled Smith in on the latest developments in the ongoing political tug-of-war over taxation among Geneva’s main factions (see, e.g., Whatmore 2012).

But the one topic that could not have escaped their attention was the whereabouts of Geneva’s most famous native son, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It was, after all, the syndics who just three years earlier (1762) had condemned one of Rousseau’s most recent works, The Social Contract, and issued a warrant for his arrest! What was Turretin’s role in this affair, and whose side was Adam Smith on, Turretin or Rousseau’s? Rest assured, Alain Alcouffe and I will address these questions and revisit the troubled Rousseau and his relationship to the Republic of Geneva in our next post.