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Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Philosopher of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Ronald Grimsley
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Extract

From the very outset of his literary and intellectual career Rousseau saw himself as an uncompromising critic of contemporary society. As he has vividly related in his personal writings, the famous moment of ‘illumination’ when he was on the way to visit his friend Diderot imprisoned in the Chateau de Vincennes not only gave him a vision of ‘another universe’ but transformed him into ‘another man’. An overwhelming ‘enthusiasm for truth, freedom and virtue’ made him henceforth reject the corrupt values of the society he saw around him; ‘to be free and virtuous and above fortune and opinion’ seemed a greater and nobler attitude than servile acquiescence in the ‘maxims of his age’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 12 , March 1978 , pp. 184 - 198
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1978

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References

NOTES

1 All references, indicated solely by volume and page-number, are to the Oeuvres completes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, edited by Gagnebin, B. and Raymond, M., Bibliothfeque de la Pleiade, Paris, Vols. I–IV, 1959–1969 Google Scholar (to be completed in 5 volumes). As the Lettre a d'Alembert sur les Spectacles has not yet been included in this edition, all references will be to the critical edition by Fuchs, M. (Lille and Geneva, 1948). Translations are my own.Google Scholar