The Origin of the Counter-Enlightenment: Rousseau and the New Religion of Sincerity

Rousseau inaugurated the counter-Enlightenment—that attack on secular rationalism and quest for “re-enchantment” that has, in one form or another, been with us ever since (and which, if the postmodern age has really arrived, now enjoys its heyday). The crowning expression of this event was Rousseau's effort to revive (while transforming) Christianity. Yet, paradoxically, it is also in Rousseau that the polemical core of the Enlightenment—the critique of Christianity—reached its fullest development. This strange co-presence of Enlightenment and counter-Enlightenment suggests an unsuspected continuity between the two. Rousseau, by pursuing more radically the underlying goal of the Enlightenment critique of Christianity—the restoration of human wholeness—was led to extend that very critique to Enlightenment rationalism itself and thence to propose a return to religion, but to one that, rooted in sincerity, would not only avoid the dangers of traditional Christianity but also better fulfill the Enlightenment's own humanistic goal.