Abstract
As Simon Godart’s analysis of the status of fabula has shown, the fabulous aspect in Descartes’s concept of mundus is so crucial that much effort has been invested in superseding it in order to arrive at the Ego’s infallible certainty. In Godart’s reading, one could say that Descartes’s Ego ought to devour the lesson of the fable. But does the fable always allow itself to be devoured and digested into a moral lesson? Is the reader capable of doing that? This question pertains not only to Descartes’s appropriation of the narrative frame of the fable, but also to the conventional genre of the Aesopian fable. How well can the fable be reduced to a moral lesson by the reader? How general should this moral lesson be—should it pertain to humanity as a whole or to specific human beings? In this contribution, by discussing two passages from Phaedrus and Rousseau on the genealogy and use of the fable, we will see that these two authors frame the supposedly simple genre of the fable with paratexts, which assure the reader that they need not be personally concerned—the failure of which may be part of the genre’s success. As Phaedrus denies and Rousseau openly fears, the fable renders the reader suspicious that its moral is not an impersonal musing about human manners, but a personal invective against the reader.
As Simon Godart’s analysis of the status of fabula has shown, the fabulous aspect in Descartes’s concept of mundus is so crucial that much effort has been invested in superseding it in order to arrive at the Ego’s infallible certainty. In Godart’s reading, one could say that Descartes’s Ego ought to devour the lesson of the fable. But does the fable always allow itself to be devoured and digested into a moral lesson? Is the reader capable of doing that? This question pertains not only to Descartes’s appropriation of the narrative frame of the fable, but also to the conventional genre of the Aesopian fable. How well can the fable be reduced to a moral lesson by the reader? How general should this moral lesson be—should it pertain to humanity as a whole or to specific human beings? In this contribution, by discussing two passages from Phaedrus and Rousseau on the genealogy and use of the fable, we will see that these two authors frame the supposedly simple genre of the fable with paratexts, which assure the reader that they need not be personally concerned—the failure of which may be part of the genre’s success. As Phaedrus denies and Rousseau openly fears, the fable renders the reader suspicious that its moral is not an impersonal musing about human manners, but a personal invective against the reader.
Showing nothing but life itself
In Phaedrus’s Latin version of the Aesopian fables, the prologue to the third book reflects on how the fable was invented and who should be concerned by it:
‘Nunc fabularum cur sit inventum genus,
brevi docebo. Servitus obnoxia,
quia quae volebat non audebat dicere,
affectus proprios in fabellas transtulit,
calumniamque fictis elusit iocis.
ego illius pro semita feci viam,
et cogitavi plura quam reliquerat,
in calamitatem deligens quaedam meam.
quod si accusator alius Seiano foret,
si testis alius, iudex alius denique,
dignum faterer esse me tantis malis,
nec his dolorem delenirem remediis.
suspicione si quis errabit sua,
et, rapiens ad se quod erit commune omnium,
stulte nudabit animi conscientiam.
huic excusatum me velim nihilo minus.
neque enim notare singulos mens est mihi,
verum ipsam vitam et mores hominum ostendere’.
[Now I will explain briefly why the type of thing called fable was invented. The slave, being liable to punishment for any offence, since he dared not say outright what he wished to say, projected his personal sentiments onto fables and eluded censure under the guise of jesting with made-up stories. Where Aesop made a footpath, I have built a highway, and have thought up more subjects than he left behind; although some of the subjects I chose led to disaster for me. But if anyone other than Sejanus were the prosecutor, or anyone else the chief witness, or indeed if anyone other than Sejanus were the judge, then I should confess that I deserve my trouble, great as it is, and should not now be soothing my grief with such remedies as this. If anyone hereafter shall be deceived by his own suspicions, and, by rashly appropriating to himself the moral that belongs to all alike, shall expose his own bad conscience, nonetheless I hope that he will pardon me. For in fact it is not my intention to brand individuals, but to display life itself and the ways of men and women.]1The new Teubner edition Full reference in Zotero Library does not differ substantially from the one used in the LCL for this passage. Full reference in Zotero Library
In this short genealogy of the fable, the narrator attempts to explain that the fables have unjustly led to a prosecution by Sejanus, the much-feared commander of the Pretorian Guard and confidant of emperor Tiberius. But how does the history of the fable do this? By referring to Aesop’s (and, perhaps, the narrator’s) ‘invention’, the fable becomes the product of the slave’s ‘personal sentiments’ (affectos proprios), which are hidden in ‘made-up stories’ by the slave (referring to Aesop’s social status). Considering only this aspect, it would seem perfectly coherent to assume that the fable is an ideal genre for personal invective. It is a guilty pleasure for which one would be rightly punished—were it not Sejanus who has accused the fabulist for an unjust reason. However, the reader of the fable should know that the fable is not created ‘to brand individuals, but to display life itself and the ways of men and women’. Whoever fails to do so and takes the fable (or its lesson) personally, just shows a bad conscience (stulte nudabit animi conscientiam), and yet the narrator asks pardon for it.
This passage of the Prologue to the third book of Phaedrus’s fabulae couldn’t be more ambiguous. The declared purpose to show ‘life itself’ rather than individual beings fits oddly with the idea that the slave’s personal sentiment is hidden in a made-up story. Are the ‘ways of men and women’ (mores hominum) part of the slave’s own affects (affectus proprios)? Is the inventor of the fable a bad fabulist? Or is Sejanus justified in persecuting Phaedrus, who does not accord with his own standards? The claim that the fables should not be taken personally is in tension with the form of reception the fabulist himself suggests. Could it be that the mores hominum are precisely to take all manner of things personally, however they may be intended? It could be argued that Phaedrus shows that the fable is meant to be read without regard to a specific addressee. But such self-decontextualisation is understandable only against the hermeneutic suspicion that the moral of the story could pertain to the reader personally.
Sympathy with the fox
In the Émile, Rousseau heavily criticises the fable as an unsuitable genre for the education of the child according to his own nature (which, in Rousseau’s dichotomic understanding of gender, differs from the female), echoing the critique of the poets in Plato’s Republic.2The fable, however, plays a special role in the Full reference in Zotero Library as well as in the Full reference in Zotero Library. If rightly educated, the child would not understand the morally ambiguous message of La Fontaine’s fable on the raven and the fox.3Full reference in Zotero Library. Or would they understand too much of it? The child would sympathise with the fox and, therewith, develop a taste for flattery.4‘Suivez les enfants apprenant leurs fables, et vous verrez que, quand ils sont en état d’en faire l’application, ils en font presque toujours une contraire à l’intention de l’auteur, et qu’au lieu de s’observer sur le défaut dont on les veut guérir ou préserver, ils penchent à aimer le vice avec lequel on tire parti des défauts des autres. Dans la fable précédente, les enfants se moquent du corbeau, mais ils s’affectionnent tous au renard […]’ Full reference in Zotero Library. The danger Rousseau describes here is that the reader may not be guided by the fabula docet. Émile’s teacher is anxious that his pupil draws the right lesson from the fables. But the fable may incite the reader’s own possessive self-love (amour-propre); the reader may even devise this with their own interpretation. Rousseau fears that the fable might not be a general depiction of human nature detached from any context but a narrative that sneaks into the human heart and calls for imitation. If the child does take the fable personally, they may learn how to deceive and flatter. Fables are, therefore, according to Rousseau, only a matter for adults who can handle amour-propre with care.
In his last book, Rousseau presents himself as a fabulist. In the fourth walk of the Rêveries du promeneur solitaire Rousseau describes his own micro-genealogy of the fable. As much as for Phaedrus, the fable emerges out of a constellation of social pressure. The solitary promeneur, unwilling to lie in any situation, starts to tell fables in social situations in which conversation is unavoidable. Conversations, he fears, are moving quicker than his ideas. Here, fables are justified if they represent the ‘natural affects of the human heart’. The promeneur assures the reader that he only had recourse to fables (which he identifies with stories that need not be true) in rare (oral) occasions, and always with the intention of telling ‘contes moraux’ Full reference in Zotero Library. He doubts, however, that he will ever find an ‘impartial’ reader who will truly appreciate the veracity he has demonstrated in his Confessions Full reference in Zotero Library. In a world replete with ‘obstacles’, the human heart can never truly communicate with others. As a consequence, the rêveries claim to be no longer written for any audience, but as a monologue Full reference in Zotero Library. The reader is, ultimately, relinquished. Self-decontextualisation is brought to its extreme with Rousseau’s rêverie of a text without readers. Only if this were possible, Rousseau’s fables could turn into rêveries.
Like Phaedrus, Rousseau shifts the burden of proof that fables contain moral truths, and not only personal invectives, towards the reader. However, both Phaedrus and Rousseau imply that the reader who does not take the fable personally has yet to be found. The moral lesson of the fables is undermined by the reader’s inclination to feel directly concerned. In the end, the authors of the fable don’t know what’s wrong with you, who seem not to have learned the lesson about what human manners are.