In recent weeks, I had the chance to study the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau through a course offered by the Yale Alumni College (YACOL), an Yale alumni-run organization with which I am actively involved.

As I studied Rousseau’s ideas, I began to recognize connections between his perspectives and my own thoughts on investing, ultimately inspiring me to share these insights in this post.

Self-Taught Genius

Rousseau was born in 1712 in Geneva.  His mother passed away shortly after giving birth.  His father abandoned him when he was only ten years old due to legal troubles.  During the 18th century, life expectancy in France was around 30 years.  By the time Rousseau reached his late 30s (before he gained fame), he had never held a job for more than two years and he only had roughly 18 months of formal education.

Despite all these, Rousseau became a great philosopher, best-selling novelist, and composer, all without any formal training in these fields. His successes came relatively late in life, especially considering that era’s life expectancy.

Today’s society places immense importance on an individual’s pedigree and track record, from school and job applications to the evaluation of investment managers by capital allocators. Rousseau, and some of the greatest investors like George Soros, would not have fared well in such assessments.

This observation raises thought-provoking questions:

• Are most people and institutions utilizing flawed methods for evaluating talent?
• Are too many people spending too many years in schools that are excessive and unnecessary, and is this doing more harm than good?  I ask this question for both the ones who are evaluating and the ones who are being evaluated. 
• If conventional methods are inadequate, how can we better identify talent and genius?

Power of Epiphany

One of the most intriguing aspects of Rousseau’s life is his experience of a sudden epiphany, which transformed him into the world-class thinker we know today. This enlightening moment occurred in his late 30s, when Rousseau was walking to visit a briefly-imprisoned friend.  Rousseau’s Letters to Malesherbes vividly describes the fierce intensity and the profound impact of this experience: 

“I was going to see Diderot, at that time a prisoner in Vincennes; I had in my pocket a Mercury of France which I began to leaf through along the way.  I fell across the question of the Academy of Dijon which gave rise to my first writing.  If anything has ever resembled a sudden inspiration, it is the motion that was caused in me by that reading; suddenly I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights; crowds of lively ideas presented themselves at the same time with a force and a confusion that threw me into an inexpressible perturbation; I feel my head seized by a dizziness similar to drunkenness.  A violent palpitation oppresses me, makes me sick to my stomach; not being able to breathe any more while walking, I let myself fall under one of the trees of the avenue, and I pass a half-hour there in such an agitation that when I got up again I noticed the whole front of my coat soaked with my tears without having felt that I shed them.  Oh Sir, if I had ever been able to write a quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, how clearly I would have made all the contradictions of the social system seen, with what strength I would have exposed all the abuses of our institutions, with what simplicity I would have demonstrated that man is naturally good and that it is from these institutions alone that men become wicked.  Everything that I was able to retain of these crowds of great truths which illuminated me under that tree in a quarter of an hour has been weakly scattered about in my three principal writings, namely, that first discourse, the one on inequality, and the treatise on education, which three works are inseparable and together form the same whole.  All the rest has been lost, and only the prosopopeia of Fabricius was written on the very spot.”

(Bolded emphasis is mine.)

Rousseau believed he experienced something that most other people had never experienced.  It was from that moment that Rousseau started producing the works that we are reading today.  For people who are skeptical, think about Rousseau’s life.  Rousseau is a late bloomer.  In his first 37 some years, he did not achieve anything material.  He produced all his significant works when he was already advanced in his age, living beyond the life expectancy of his era.

Rousseau’s sudden enlightenment resonates with me, as I believe that unusual insights often arise from unusual experiences. These moments can be transcendent and enlightening, enabling some individuals to envision events before they happen.  I have personally experienced such moments in my investing journey and I wrote about it before.  See my 2021 blog (source link) where I discussed the distinction between “when I see it, I know it” investors and “when I know it, I see it” investors.  

Additional Lessons from Rousseau

Authenticity:  Rousseau was critical of the superficial nature of French society during his time.  He made an observation and it goes like this:  People cannot just be themselves.  When they think about themselves, they think about how other people think about them.  When they think about other people, they think about how they themselves can take advantage of others for their own benefit.  Other people cannot prefer us more than we do, because that is what we do to ourselves.  Therefore, because we cannot be ourselves, we are always not happy.

Self-love:  Rousseau distinguished between two forms of self-love.  One is vanity — we live in terms of how others see us.  The other one is pride — we take pride in our own existence.  Many of us could well be trapped in the former, yearning to experience the latter.

A Higher Calling:   While not conventionally religious, Rousseau emphasized the importance of believing in a higher order.  He pointed out that without religion, virtue will not survive.  For justice to exist, it is important for humans to believe their souls will exist long after death for the souls to be compensated for the goodness and virtue they have done. 

All in all, I feel lucky to have found Rousseau.  His unconventional path to success invites us to question current methods of talent identification.  His insights into societal issues remain relevant today.  Furthermore, Rousseau’s experiences and arguments offer valuable perspectives for contemporary investors. 

(Special thanks to Professor Christopher Kelly, whose teachings of Rousseau helped me come to these understandings.)

(END)