Conclusion

The conclusion summarizes the reasons for Locke’s and Rousseau’s turn against absolutist congruence theory and toward a defense of authoritarian families in liberal states. They saw that the absolutists had failed to adequately grapple with the power of public opinion to undermine the sovereign authority that was supposed to control it, and they understood the enormous influence of opinion over our ideas and its potential to foreclose intellectual freedom. To defend that freedom for adults, they leaned on the family and its domestic education of children as a buttress and counterinfluence against the power of fashion and opinion. Recognizing this pedagogical role of personal authority in the foundations of liberalism may help us to resolve our own inability to find a place for the basic but private experience of personal authority, which, however much we wish it away, remains central to forming liberal public life

Locke and the Authority of Opinion

This chapter describes how Locke came to reject sovereignty theory, along with the logic of congruence, in favor of a much more limited account of political authority. It traces his transformation from a young Hobbesian who accepted that an absolute sovereign could manipulate public opinion in its favor, to a skeptic about anyone’s ability to control public opinion. This shift in his view of the possibilities of political authority grew out of his increasing fear of the intellectual tyranny of public opinion. It resulted in his mature turn in the Two Treatises toward an anti-sovereignty politics and to his limited account of parental power designed to maximize the possibility of liberty under modern social conditions.

Rousseau and the Authority of Opinion

This chapter considers how Rousseau’s thinking about authority differs from Locke’s. Rousseau did not reject the possibility of sovereignty, but like Locke, he concluded that sovereign power could never extend to the government of public opinion, which could not be controlled by the impersonal, indirect form of government necessary to preserve liberty and equality. Even in virtuous republics, only highly personal authorities like the Lawgiver, the censors, and public educators can regulate opinion. But in modern, commercial societies, such public authorities are impotent or even dangerous. Under such conditions, the private authority of parents and especially mothers was the last hope for fortifying children against the social and intellectual corruption that modern political arrangements had created.

Rousseau’s Authoritarian Education

Rousseau’s account of authority over children in Emile brings to light his quarrel but also his agreement with Locke on the question of private authority. The education of Emile is a direct objection to Locke’s characterization of the will and the nature of adolescence. However, while Emile has mainly been read by scholars as a rejoinder to Locke’s Education, this chapter uncovers the extent to which Rousseau’s account of Sophie’s education is actually Lockean, and it demonstrates that even Emile’s education culminates in Lockean conclusions about the use of the private, inward-oriented family as an antidote to the predations of fashion and opinion. It explores why Rousseau presents both anti- and pro-Lockean arguments about the role of authority in education and concludes by emphasizing the previously unnoticed agreement between Rousseau and Locke on these questions in the context of modern, liberal societies.

The Rise of Sovereignty and the Logic of Congruence

This chapter locates the origins of the logic of congruence in modern thought. This logic turns out not to be historically liberal in origin but rather arose out of the arguments for absolute sovereignty advanced by Jean Bodin and his followers. Bodin was the first modern thinker to model the power of fathers on that of absolute monarchs and to claim that fathers wield absolute authority over their children. This model goes so far as to demand the reinstatement of the long-discarded Roman right of life and death over children. For Bodin, the family became a vehicle through which his novel conception of absolute power could be demonstrated and legitimated. Total submission under absolutist fathers was necessary to correctly educate and accustom children to their political duties as subjects of absolute sovereigns.

Introduction

The introduction sets out the central concern of this book: in a liberal regime, what is required to bring children from dependence to freedom? Children are not immediately capable of freedom or even of consent to government, so liberalism must always find some way to account for the authority that must be exercised over them until they are. The dominant contemporary approach has been one of “congruence”: modeling the family and school on the authority structure of the liberal state to allow children to practice liberty and equality in these protected settings to prepare them for their civic roles as adults. However, congruence was originally the aim of absolutists like Bodin, Hobbes, and Filmer, while early liberals like Locke and Rousseau rejected it as tyrannical. What was the reason for their rejection? Understanding where contemporary liberalism falls short requires returning to this early modern debate over education and authority.

Hobbesian Sovereignty and the Denaturalization of Authority

Hobbes embraced Bodinian sovereignty but rejected the naturalness of the family to preempt any threat that natural fathers could pose to the artificial sovereign. But Hobbes also introduced a new concern: the power of public opinion to undermine the sovereign’s authority. He sought to align public opinion behind the sovereign by using the logic of congruence to reject the competing patriarchal and natural models of the state. Children ought to be taught to regard their fathers as absolute authorities, not because they are model sovereigns but because this demonstrates how dangerously unstable “natural” authorities are and proves that only the artificial and impersonal office of the sovereign can adequately manage men’s passions to ensure the internal peace they sought in forming a commonwealth in the first place.

Locke’s Authoritarian Education

Locke’s pedagogy follows from his political and epistemic theory, counterposing an authoritarian pedagogy against limited formal parental authority. In light of his fears about the power of public opinion, Locke argued that personal authority in childhood was necessary for intellectual independence in adulthood, and the personal authority of parents was required to shield children against competing authorities in society. Locke’s account of human development reveals that the intervention of a unitary, personal authority to direct the will at the beginning is necessary for the will to be self-directing afterward. The inward-directed Lockean family forms a counterforce against the prevailing fashions outside. The private guidance of familial and pedagogical authority in childhood is a fence against the potential dangers of Locke’s political philosophy. His pedagogy argues that a state grounded in equality and individual liberty requires a hierarchical, authoritarian family to sustain itself.