Rousseau & Rashomon
One murder is more human than a hundred deadly tsunamis, earthquakes, and eruptions. We find human nature in the individual, not the collective. Rousseau presents the idea of “total alienation of each associate… to the whole community.” These noble words pose an elegant solution to the problem of human society. If only, Rousseau proposes, each person was utterly selfless, the Social Contract would construct a stable and constructive society that would benefit all its citizen components. But human beings are not components, and nor are they selfless. If men were angels, you wouldn’t need government in the first place - society would be a natural utopia. Rashomon shows us a very different picture of our nature, at once more disturbing and more human. It presents humanity without apologies; people who are deeply selfish. It is the human mind that perceives a greater or more evil intent in even our own actions. Yet behind this facade of egotism lies the human heart, the source of love and compassion which may sometimes shine through. Rousseau rests all his arguments on this small jewel of human nature, while Rashomon demonstrates how rare and precious it really is.
There are four stories in Rashomon. The fourth is presumed to be the truth, but the other versions tell the same story - except that each person telling it is presented as the murderer. The bandit, Tajomaru, kills the husband, Takehiro, after challenging him to an honorable duel; the wife, Masako, kills her husband while deliriously begging him to stop looking at with disgust; Takehiro himself commits honorable suicide after having been betrayed by his own wife. Why would they blame themselves? They speak the truth as they see it. None of them believe they are innocent, and so confess their guilt. Yet their versions distort the actual events to place themselves at the center. They each play the tragic hero, led by events beyond their control to a point of no return - led to do the only honorable thing left to do. Kill Takehiro. The reality is that all of their selfish decisions culminate in Takehiro’s death. None of them are honorable; not one stands against Takehiro’s greed, Tajomaru’s lust, or Masako’s hatred. They are all so weak and so selfish that they delude even themselves into believing their angst.
The drives of the characters are not animal emotions, but a deep-seated self-centeredness arising from our own self-consciousness. We are more aware of ourselves than anything else, and so we are the center of our own world. Descartes brought this concept, “I think therefore I am,” into such sharp focus that the West has hardly been able to get beyond it for hundreds of years. Rousseau, at the forefront of Enlightenment thinking, sought to displace this self-centeredness and turn it into “group-centeredness.” But this idea, although it would make for a great society, would reduce us to the state of ants - a hive mind with no individual thought. And that is what makes us human. What makes being human any good at all? It is our ability to ultimately rise above this egocentric thought process. Without abdicating the self, we can embrace others. We can understand others as ourselves, drawing them inward - not giving up the self as Rousseau proposes, but expanding it. Walking away from Rashomon, we see the honest smile of the woodcutter taking home the abandoned baby. This is the rare strength of human nature that makes life powerful even in the midst of selfishness.