Rousseau's Hero

In a short 1751 essay titled “Discourse on This Question: Which Is the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero and Which Are the Heroes Who Lacked this Virtue?” Jean Jacques Rousseau tried to identify a hero’s defining trait. Is a hero always just? Is he always prudent? What are his driving motivations? Does he always embody martial valor, or can heroes exist beyond the battlefield? How does a hero differ from a sage?

This essay is fascinating for several reasons, including its self-deprecatory “Notice,” which Rousseau must have added after he finished writing. The one that prompted the diagram below is Rousseau’s insistence one a hero’s incompleteness. A hero never possesses all virtues. Indeed, some virtues preclude heroism. Yet, Rousseau seems to suggest that heroes are essential—that a world without greatness would be disastrous for the “People,” about whose wellbeing the hero always cares, and for whom he is willing to fight resolutely, even though his ultimate objective is personal glory.

We all want to be heroes. We all yearn for recognition. We all dream of greatness. But Rousseau tells us that heroism requires, at one point or another, excess and disorder, be it manifest as a rash charge on the battlefield, a daring but ingenious polemical campaign against an opponent, or whatever else?

Are heroes necessary? Does heroism always undermine moral integrity? Is Rousseau’s notion obsolete, or can it still help us think about greatness, and maybe even display it in our lives?