Keats, Urn, and Rousseau's First Discourse

Rousseau’s First Discourse and Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” both focus on Beauty as the sole arbiter of Truth and the only guide through life that society really needs. Yet each work is different because they both come to different conclusions: Rousseau’s treatise is a work of philosophical speculation that essentially rejects beauty and truth (justifying this rejection by referencing the words of Socrates no less), while Keats’ work is a poetic affirmation of the power of Beauty and Truth as guideposts for mankind. Rousseau spends much of the Discourse disabusing his contemporaries of the notion that the work of civilization (i.e.—the arts and sciences) is in any way conducive to happiness, progress or greatness. He literally extols “ignorance” (Rousseau 10) and essentially promotes the concept of the “noble savage”—that man in his natural state is sublime and beautiful and good and that it is society with its codes and moral parameters displayed through the arts and sciences that keeps man enslaved and from achieving his perfect state of happiness (i.e.—from embracing of his nature). Thus, Rousseau rejected the moral and traditional codes (especially of the Church, which taught that human nature was fallen and that man, suffering from the consequences of Original Sin, was in need of saving grace to reach a state of perfect happiness—possible only through union with God). Rousseau was for the Self. Keats differs in that he sings of Beauty, adopts a more spiritual and less philosophical tone in his poem and asserts that Beauty is indeed good for society (and in this sense he is more in line with the traditional Western, religious creed). His work is not based on rejecting the teachings of the past so much as it is on accepting the limitations of the rational mind. Rousseau also rejects the “rational” to the extent that he embraces the primal mystery of feeling—but with Keats, there is a sense of respect that the poet has for the kind of Truth that the Old World philosophers, poets, and teachers would also have respected. At least, it is not dismissed by Keats. This paper will compare and contrast the two works by these two Romantics and show how they are similar yet different as they approach the theme of Beauty and what it means.
In 1750, when Rousseau penned his First Discourse, France had not yet shuffled off the mortal coil of its Catholic hierarchy. The monarchy was still in existence and the Revolution was still some years off. The same could not be said for Keats’ England. It had thrown off its attachment to the Catholic See under Henry V a few centuries earlier. For Rousseau, the attack against civilization (arts and sciences) was more or less an attack on the Western Tradition, the faith of the Church, and a rebuke to the Rational Enlightenment that had assumed a Church-like authority on parts of the Continent. Rousseau was not for promoting more of the kind of rationalistic dogmas that had already had their day. He was for promoting a self-centered theology—a theology of the Self—a philosophy that supported a new concept of Nature (or rather a pre-Christian one) in which Sin and Fall had no place. Keats, on the other hand, being part of a culture that had already thrown off its heritage and erected something new in its place, was not so keen on rebuking his culture and society as he was on reaching back to those old ways of looking at things that helped give meaning to life in the first place. Both poets, were appealing to the words of the ancients (in particularly Socrates)—yet both were drawing different conclusions from that appeal. Rousseau was saying, see, even Socrates said not to hold up the One, the True, the Good and the Beautiful as ideals (because no one in reality knows what they are)—so take that Western Civilization. Keats, contrarily, was saying, Beauty is Truth (and you certainly can know what it is)—and that is the only ideal that one needs to live by. Rousseau asserted that man was ignorant and should embrace his ignorance; Keats was reminding man that he still had his senses, and his senses could indeed inform him of Beauty and therefore of Truth. Rousseau appealed to Socrates in order to state, “So there you have the wisest of men in the judgment of the gods and the most knowledgeable Athenian in the opinion of all of Greece, Socrates, singing the praises of ignorance” (Rousseau 10). Keats appealed to Socrates as well—but not in defense of ignorance. Is it safe to say that the two men were interpreting the philosopher in two different ways? Quite. Rousseau was taking the philosopher out of context—for Socrates never affirmed that it was impossible to know Truth or Beauty but only that many men said they knew these ideals when, in fact (and upon closer examination of their words and actions), they often revealed that they knew next to nothing of them. Keats appears to have understood Socrates’ lesson in its larger context, which is why that lesson informs his poetry—which in and of itself serves as a reminder to the reader to not forget that “‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’ – that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” (Keats 49-50).
Rousseau’s point was that the Self was the only truth that was needed. He called the sciences “vain” (Rousseau 10) and dismissed the vain efforts of the men of the science and letters who meant to “educate” others by likening them to the sophists and orators dismissed by Socrates in the passage cited by Rousseau. Rousseau goes on to ask, “If the progress of the sciences and the arts has added nothing to our true happiness, if it has corrupted our morality, and if that moral corruption has damaged purity of taste, what will we think of that crowd of simple writers who have removed from the temple of the Muses the difficulties which safeguarded access to it and which nature had set up there as a test of strength for those who would be tempted to learn?” (Rousseau 22). He likens the Enlightenment thinkers and writers (as well as those of the time before) to men who had no business attempting to get so near the Muses with their writings. He calls them “simple” and implies that Western Civilization has given its rule over to such “simple” men who have merely been passing themselves off as inspired (by the Muses) writers and thinkers. He blasts them as being frivolous and as being responsible for the corruption of man. He identifies “nature” as working together with the Muses and as having an interest in safeguarding the “temple of the Muses” from “that crowd of simple writers.” He blames the men of the arts and sciences of the Continent for having defiled the temple and reduced its glories to cinders. He laments that so many people today think themselves to be following in the footsteps of Bacon, Descartes and Newton when in reality they have none of the genius or energy required to be like them. Those philosophers, he asserts have already overcome obstacles and manifested their own genius by being true to themselves and allowing their own natures to correspond with the Muses sent to them. Men today, he laments, do not attempt to overcome obstacles or to push forward and advance the philosophies put forward by these giants; instead, they lull and stagnate and destroy the discoveries: thus, the arts and sciences were becoming an obstacle in and of themselves that would have to be overcome—and Rousseau himself (alone!) was prepared to be the next great genius to overcome them.
If Rousseau was proud in his proclamations as he looked inward to himself and discovered a great deal of energy that he could direct towards those who were offering up nothing new or original in terms of thought or content, Keats was humble in his verses (looking outward at the Grecian Urn—the symbol of death yet also of the undying truths taught by the ancient pagan philosophers). Keats praises the arts and in particular the artwork of the urn and the stories it tells. The urn itself is a symbol of so much—a container vessel of the ashes of the past but also a container vessel of the spirit of the past and the spirit that enlivens all creation. Keats is mesmerized by this spirit that flows through the urn itself and into his mind as he corresponds with it directly, inviting the reader along for the phenomenon. “Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness!” he says to one of the urn’s artworks—yet he could equally be speaking to the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, which helped spawn the philosophical foundations of Western Civilization. Keats could, in effect, be saying to the West that in spite of everything that men have tried to do, the past is still with us and still speaking to us from the grave—only, it is speaking in silence, and we must be quiet to hear it. Thus, he says, “Thou foster-child of silence and slow time / Sylvian historian, who canst thus express / A flow’rey tale more sweetly than our rhyme…” (Keats 2-4). Keats is not calling for the noise of creative revolution that Rousseau is implicitly calling for; he is already the child of revolution: he is calling for silence and quiet reflection. He is calling to the past and asking questions of the ancients in hopes of hearing a response. And, of course, the response he finally hears is that beauty is truth—and that the two can indeed be known and understood.
In conclusion, Rousseau and Keats present works that both appeal to the same concepts yet take two different lessons from them. Rousseau takes from Socrates the lesson that ignorance is the natural state of man and that true genius should be creative in how it works to overcome that ignorance. Keats suggests that man is a seeker—and that the ideals of the one, the good, the true and the beautiful can indeed be known and knowing them should be the aim of men of good will—i.e., the “friend to man” who continues to pass on the eternal truths even in death.

Works Cited
Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Web.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn
Rousseau, J. “First Discourse.” Web.
https://www.stmarys-ca.edu/sites/default/files/attachments/files/arts.pdf