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    The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes
    The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes
    The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes
    Ebook1,223 pages22 hours

    The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes

    By Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters and Peter G. Stillman

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    When Rousseau first read his Confessions to a 1770 gathering in Paris, reactions varied from admiration of his candor to doubts about his sanity to outrage. Indeed, Rousseau's intent and approach were revolutionary. As one of the first attempts at autobiography, the Confessions' novelty lay not in just its retelling the facts of Rousseau's life, but in its revelation of his innermost feelings and its frank description of the strengths and failings of his character. Based on his doctrine of natural goodness, Rousseau intended the Confessions as a testing ground to explore his belief that, as Christopher Kelly writes, "people are to be measured by the depth and nature of their feelings." Re-created here in a meticulously documented new translation based on the definitive Pléiade edition, the work represents Rousseau's attempt to forge connections among his beliefs, his feelings, and his life. More than a "behind-the-scenes look at the private life of a public man," Kelly writes, "the Confessions is at the center of Rousseau's philosophical enterprise."
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDartmouth College Press
    Release dateMay 14, 2013
    ISBN9781611682885
    The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes
    Author

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau

    Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) was one of the leading figures of the French Enlightenment. The author of popular novels such as Emile, or On Education (1762), he achieved immortality with the publication of philosophical treatises such as The Social Contract (1762) and A Discourse on Inequality (1754). His ideas would serve as the bedrock for leaders of both the American and French Revolutions.

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      The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes - Jean-Jacques Rousseau

      THE CONFESSIONS AND CORRESPONDENCE, INCLUDING THE LETTERS TO MALESHERBES

      JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

      THE CONFESSIONS

      AND CORRESPONDENCE,

      INCLUDING THE LETTERS

      TO MALESHERBES

      THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF ROUSSEAU

      Vol. 5

      EDITED BY

      CHRISTOPHER KELLY, ROGER D. MASTERS,

      AND PETER G. STILLMAN

      TRANSLATED BY

      CHRISTOPHER KELLY

      DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

      PUBLISHED BY UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND

      HANOVER AND LONDON

      DARTMOUTH COLLEGE

      Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH 03755

      © 1995 by the Trustees of Dartmouth College

      First University Press of New England paperback edition 1998

      All rights reserved

      Frontispiece: Jean-Jacques Rousseau at Montmorency 1757–1762, drawing by Houel; used by permission of Musée Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montmorency.

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778.

           [Confessions. English]

           The confessions ; and, Correspondence, including the letters to Malesherbes / Jean-Jacques Rousseau ; edited by Christopher Kelly, Roger D. Masters, and Peter G. Stillman ; translated by Christopher Kelly.

             p. cm.—(The collected writings of Rousseau ; vol. 5)

           Includes bibliographical references and index.

           ISBN 0–87451–707–9 (cl.: alk. paper).—ISBN 0–87451–836–9 (pbk.: alk. paper)

           ISBN 978-1-61168-288-5 (e-book)

           1. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778—Biography. 2. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778—Correspondence. 3. Malesherbes, Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoingnon de, 1721–1794—Correspondence. 4. Authors, French—18th century—Biography. 5. Authors, French—18th century—Correspondence. I. Malesherbes, Chrétien Guillaume de Lamoingnon de, 1721–1794. II. Kelly, Christopher, 1950–      . III. Masters, Roger D. IV. Stillman, Peter G. V. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778. Correspondence. English. Selections. VI. Title. VII. Title: Confessions. VIII. Title: Confessions ; and, Correspondence, including the letters to Malesherbes. IX. Title: Correspondence, including the letters to Malesherbes. X. Series: Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 1712–1778. Works. English. 1990 ; vol. 5.

      PQ2034.A3          1990 vol. 5

      [PQ2036]

      848′.509 s—dc20

      [848′.509]                                                  94-47021

      [B]

      Contents

      Series List

      Preface

      Chronology of Events Reported in the Confessions

      Introduction

      Note on the Text

      The Confessions

      First Part

      Book I

      Book II

      Book III

      Book IV

      Book V

      Book VI

      Second Part

      Book VII

      Book VIII

      Book IX

      Book X

      Book XI

      Book XII

      Appendix I: Letters Referred to in the Text of the Confessions

      Appendix II: Fragments

      Notes

      Index

      Publisher’s Note to Ebook Readers

      To accommodate the special requirements of flowing-text ebooks, this electronic edition differs slightly from this volume’s print version.

      • In both versions, each selection from Rousseau’s writings is keyed to the corresponding page numbers in the Pléiade edition of Oeuvres complètes. In this ebook, this information appears directly below the selection heading. In the print book, it appears in the text’s running heads.

      • In this ebook edition, two endnote number sequences appear. First, endnotes provided by the editors are indicated in both the print and ebook editions with superscript arabic numbers. They look like this.¹ Second, in this ebook, Rousseau’s own footnotes to the original text are indicated by superscript arabic numbers prefaced by the letter R. They look like this.R1 In the print edition, Rousseau’s notes are styled as footnotes keyed to the text with symbol characters.

      THE COLLECTED WRITINGS OF ROUSSEAU

      Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly,

      Series Editors

      Volume 1

      Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques: Dialogues

      Volume 2

      Discourse on the Sciences and Arts (First Discourse) and Polemics

      Volume 3

      Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (Second Discourse), Polemics, and Political Economy

      Volume 4

      Social Contract, Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero, Political Fragments, and Geneva Manuscript

      Volume 5

      The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes

      Volume 6

      Julie, or the New Heloise: Letters of Two Lovers Who Live in a Small Town at the Foot of the Alps

      Volume 7

      Essay on the Origin of Languages and Writings Related to Music

      Volume 8

      The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Botanical Writings, and Letter to Franquières

      Preface

      Although Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a significant figure in the Western tradition, there is no standard edition of his major writings available in English. Unlike those of other thinkers of comparable stature, moreover, many of Rousseau’s important works either have never been translated or have become unavailable. The present edition of the Collected Writings of Rousseau is intended to remedy this situation.

      Our goal is to produce a series that can provide a standard reference for scholarship that is accessible to all those wishing to read broadly in the corpus of Rousseau’s work. To this end, the translations seek to combine care and faithfulness to the original French text with readability in English. Although, as every translator knows, there are often passages where it is impossible to meet both of these criteria at the same time, readers of a thinker and writer of Rousseau’s stature deserve texts that have not been deformed by the interpretive bias of translators or editors. Wherever possible, existing translations of high quality have been used, although in some cases the editors have felt minor revisions were necessary to maintain the accuracy and consistency of the English versions. Where there was no English translation (or none of sufficient quality), a new translation has been prepared.

      Each text is supplemented by editorial notes that clarify Rousseau’s references and citations or passages otherwise not intelligible. Although these notes do not provide as much detail as is found in the critical apparatus of the Pléiade edition of the Oeuvres complètes, the English-speaking reader should nevertheless have in hand the basis for a more careful and comprehensive understanding of Rousseau than has hitherto been possible.

      Volume 5 contains the first English translation of the Confessions based on the definitive French edition, along with most of the variants contained in the different manuscripts of the work. In addition, it includes translations of the letters to and from Rousseau referred to in the body of the Confessions. Of special importance are the four letters to Malesherbes, which represent Rousseau’s earliest autobiographical effort. The Confessions has probably been Rousseau’s most consistently popular work in the two centuries since it was first published. It is responsible for giving impetus to the great wave of autobiographies that followed it and had a profound influence on the development of the modern novel. Along with its importance as a personal document and literary work, the Confessions is Rousseau’s attempt to illustrate the principles of his understanding of human nature by means of a concrete example. Finally, it explores in all their complexity the relations between the attempt to achieve psychological independence and wholeness on the one hand and the effort to live in a complex society on the other.

      The translator would like to thank the National Endowment for the Humanities for its support in the form of a summer stipend that assisted in the preparation of the final draft of the translation. Thanks are also due to Jeanne Kelly, Joel Schwarz, Elaine Wolfe, Michael Comenetz, and the anonymous readers for the University Press of New England for their detection of errors and suggestions for improvement as a result of their reading of early drafts. We are also grateful to Robert Thiéry, conservateur of the Musée J.-J. Rousseau in Montmorency for permission to reproduce the sketch by Houel that serves as frontispiece to this volume.

      June 1994

      C.K.

      R.D.M.

      P.G.S.

      Chronology of Events Reported in the Confessions

      Book I

      1672

      December 28: Birth of Rousseau’s father, Isaac Rousseau.

      1673

      February 6: Birth of Rousseau’s mother, Suzanne Bernard.

      1704

      Marriage of Rousseau’s parents.

      1705

      Birth of Rousseau’s brother, François.

      1712

      June 28: Birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

      1722

      October: Rousseau’s father leaves Geneva after his quarrel with Captain Gautier, and Rousseau is sent to Bossey to live with the Lamberciers.

      1724

      Rousseau returns to Geneva to live with his uncle, Gabriel Bernard. Rousseau is apprenticed to the city clerk, M. Masseron.

      1725

      April: Rousseau is apprenticed to the engraver, Abel Du Commun.

      1728

      March 14: Rousseau decides to run away from Geneva after finding the city gates locked.

      Book II

      1728

      March 21: Rousseau meets Mme de Warens in Annecy.

      April 12: Rousseau enters the hospice for the catechumens in Turin.

      April 23: Rousseau is baptized a Catholic.

      July: Rousseau enters the service of Mme de Vercellis.

      December: Death of Mme de Vercellis.

      Book III

      1729

      February: Probable beginning of Rousseau’s employment with the Gouvon family.

      Summer: Rousseau returns to Mme de Warens in Annecy.

      Summer-Fall: Rousseau studies at the Lazarist Seminary and then begins to study music with M. Le Maître.

      1730

      April: Rousseau abandons M. Le Maître in Lyon.

      Book IV

      1730

      July: Rousseau escorts Merceret to Fribourg and presents himself as Vaussore de Villeneuve, a French musician, in Lausanne.

      Winter: Rousseau teaches music in Neuchâtel.

      1731

      April: Rousseau becomes the interpreter for the fake Archimandrite of Jerusalem.

      June: Rousseau visits Paris for the first time.

      September: Rousseau travels to Chambéry by way of Lyon to rejoin Mme de Warens.

      Book V

      1731

      October: Rousseau begins work in the King’s survey.

      1732

      June: Rousseau leaves the survey and begins to teach music.

      1733

      July: Rousseau travels to Besançon to study with the Abbé Blanchard. (This might have taken place either a year earlier or a year later.)

      1734

      March: Death of Claude Anet.

      1736

      Probable date of Rousseau’s and Mme de Warens’s first stay at Les Charmettes.

      Book VI

      1737

      June: Rousseau is injured in an accident during a chemistry experiment.

      July: Rousseau returns to Geneva to receive his share of his mother’s estate.

      September: Rousseau leaves Chambéry for Montpellier to consult Dr. Fizes.

      1738

      February: Probable date of Rousseau’s return to Chambéry.

      1740

      April: Rousseau becomes tutor to the children of M. de Mably in Lyon.

      1741

      May: Rousseau returns to Chambéry.

      Book VII

      1741

      End of December: Earliest possible date for Rousseau’s arrival in Paris with his new system of musical notation.

      1742

      August 22: Rousseau reads his Project Concerning New Signs for Music to the Academy of Sciences.

      1743

      January: Publication of the Dissertation on Modern Music.

      July 10: Rousseau leaves Paris to begin working as secretary to M. de Montaigu, the French Ambassador to Venice.

      September 4: Rousseau arrives in Venice.

      1744

      August 6: Rousseau leaves the Embassy after a quarrel with M. de Montaigu.

      October: Rousseau arrives in Paris.

      1745

      March: Rousseau meets Thérèse Levasseur.

      July: Rousseau completes The Gallant Muses.

      Fall: Rousseau works on Ramirro’s Festival.

      1746

      Winter: Rousseau begins working as a secretary for the Dupin family. Birth of Rousseau’s first child, who is put in the Foundling Hospital.

      1747

      May: Death of Rousseau’s father.

      Fall: Rousseau writes The Reckless Engagement.

      1748

      Birth of Rousseau’s second child.

      1749

      January–March: Rousseau writes articles on music for the Encyclopedia.

      July 24: Diderot is imprisoned in Vincennes.

      Book VIII

      1749

      August: Rousseau meets Grimm.

      October: On the way to visit Diderot, Rousseau reads the essay topic proposed by the Academy of Dijon, Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals? and immediately begins to write the Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts.

      1750

      July: The First Discourse is awarded the prize by the Academy of Dijon.

      1751

      January: Publication of the First Discourse.

      February: Rousseau gives up his position with the Dupins and starts to work as a music copyist.

      Spring: Birth of Rousseau’s third child.

      October: Rousseau responds to the King of Poland’s attack on the First Discourse.

      November: Rousseau responds to Gautier’s Refutation with his Letter to Grimm.

      1752

      April: Rousseau responds to Bordes’s attack with his Response to M. Bordes.

      Spring–Summer: Rousseau composes The Village Soothsayer.

      Performance of The Village Soothsayer at Fontainebleau.

      December 18: Unsuccessful performance of Narcissus.

      1753

      January: Publication of Narcissus along with its Preface.

      November: Rousseau begins writing the Second Discourse. Publication of the Letter on French Music.

      1754

      June 1: Rousseau leaves Paris for Geneva.

      June 12: Rousseau dates the dedication to the Second Discourse from Chambéry.

      August 1: Rousseau regains his Genevan citizenship.

      October: Rousseau returns to Paris.

      1755

      April 24: Publication of the Second Discourse.

      Book IX

      1756

      April 9: Rousseau moves into the Hermitage near Montmorency.

      August: Rousseau sends his letter to Voltaire on providence, responding to Voltaire’s poems On Natural Law and On the Disaster at Lisbon.

      End of Summer: Rousseau begins writing Julie.

      1757

      March–April: Quarrel and reconciliation of Rousseau and Diderot over Diderot’s The Natural Son.

      Spring: Rousseau falls in love with Sophie d’Houdetot.

      End of August: Exchange of notes between Rousseau and Mme d’Epinay over his suspicions of her.

      October 10: Publication of Vol. VII of the Encyclopedia, containing the article, Geneva.

      October 25: Mme d’Epinay leaves for Geneva.

      November: Grimm breaks with Rousseau.

      December 5: Diderot visits Rousseau at the Hermitage.

      December 15: Rousseau leaves the Hermitage and moves into the house at Mont-Louis in Montmorency.

      Book X

      1758

      March: Rousseau finishes writing the Letter to d’Alembert.

      Spring: Diderot informs Saint-Lambert about Rousseau’s love for Mme d’Houdetot.

      September: Rousseau finishes writing Julie.

      October: Publication of the Letter to d’Alembert, along with an inserted announcement of Rousseau’s rupture with Diderot.

      October 29: Rousseau has reconciliation dinner with Saint-Lambert and Mme d’Houdetot.

      1759

      April: Rousseau makes the acquaintance of the Duc de Luxembourg.

      May 6: At the invitation of the Duc de Luxembourg, Rousseau moves into the Little Chateau while repairs are made on his house at Mont-Louis.

      July: Rousseau returns to Mont-Louis.

      1760

      July: Rousseau assists in obtaining the Abbé Morellet’s release from prison.

      Book XI

      1761

      January: Julie goes on sale in Paris one month after going on sale in London.

      November: Duchesne begins printing Emile.

      November: Rousseau expresses his fears of a Jesuit conspiracy against Emile.

      1762

      April: Publication of the Social Contract.

      May: Publication of Emile.

      June 9: A Warrant is issued for Rousseau’s arrest; he flees Montmorency.

      Book XII

      1762

      June 14: Rousseau arrives at Yverdon.

      June 19: Emile and the Social Contract are burned at Geneva.

      July 10: Rousseau is driven out of Yverdon and goes to Môtiers.

      July 29: Death of Mme de Warens.

      November 18: Rousseau dates the Letter to Beaumont.

      1763

      March: Publication of the Letter to Beaumont.

      April 17: Rousseau is made a citizen of Neuchâtel.

      May 12: Rousseau renounces his Genevan citizenship.

      1764

      May 18: Death of the Duc de Luxembourg.

      December: Publication of the Letters Written from the Mountain.

      December: Voltaire publishes the Sentiments of the Citizens.

      1765

      Spring: Rousseau is summoned before the Consistory at Môtiers.

      September 6–7: Rousseau’s house is stoned.

      September 12: Rousseau arrives at the Island of St. Pierre.

      October 16: Rousseau is expelled from the island.

      October 29: Rousseau leaves Bienne for Berlin (although he is eventually persuaded to go to England).

      1770

      December: Rousseau completes the Confessions and gives his first readings from them.

      1771

      Rousseau gives the last of his readings from the Confessions, which cease after Mme d’Epinay protests to the police.

      Introduction

      At nine o’clock in the morning one day late in 1770, seven guests assembled at the home of the Marquis de Pezay in Paris. Sometime after eleven o’clock in the evening (perhaps as late as two the next morning), Jean-Jacques Rousseau concluded his reading to them from his Confessions. Almost immediately after leaving, one of the listeners wrote a letter in which he said that he had been moved to tears by the noble frankness with which Rousseau admitted his faults. Another later commented on the extreme, or even mad, desire for notoriety that must be the source of Rousseau’s enterprise. Upon learning about this and subsequent readings, Rousseau’s former patroness, Mme d’Epinay wrote to the Lieutenant of Police Sartine to ask him to take action to prohibit future readings.¹ Profound emotion, wonder about Rousseau’s motives and sanity, and outrage have continued to mark the responses of readers of the Confessions since the publication of Part One in 1782.

      One thing that has changed since the original appearance of the Confessions is the sense of novelty of the enterprise of openly discussing one’s innermost feelings and most shameful deeds. Readers in an age when autobiographies proliferate are more likely to be bemused than shocked by Rousseau’s claim of novelty for his attempt to show a man inside and under the skin. Living in an age in which the genre of autobiography was not well established enough even to have a name, Rousseau’s contemporaries were shocked by his self-revelation. Rousseau was far from being the first person to discover that external manifestations of character such as words and deeds can be deceptive, but his emphasis on the internal life of feelings is surely unprecedented and epoch-making. Our unreflective acceptance of such a view is the result of the fact that Rousseau and his numberless imitators have won us over: we accept, as Rousseau’s contemporaries and predecessors did not, that feelings are what count, much more so than thoughts, words, or deeds.

      In spite of, or perhaps because of, our familiarity with a tradition of autobiography after Rousseau, many features of the Confessions are liable to misinterpretation. What follows is an attempt to clarify several of the most contentious issues for interpretating the work: truthfulness, goodness, the split between appearance and reality, and the alleged conspiracy against Rousseau. In each case the discussion will attempt to show the importance of these issues within both the Confessions and Rousseau’s other works. The goal is to provide a context for the approach to this work, but not to substitute for attempts to understand it on its own terms.

      Truthfulness and the Confessions

      Numerous aims converge in the writing of the Confessions. As was frequently the case for Rousseau’s works, the original impetus for it came from someone else. Over a period of years, his publisher, Marc-Michel Rey, asked Rousseau for an account of his life suitable to serve as an introduction to a collection of his writings. Rousseau had suddenly emerged out of obscurity into a widespread fame upon the publication of the First Discourse in 1751 and the round of disputes that followed this attack on the most universally admired aspects of modern European civilization.² Curiosity seekers were hungry for information about this man from the provinces who dared to make a learned and eloquent attack against the learning and eloquence of Paris. Their interest was all the more piqued when he reacted to his new fame by shunning Parisian society and returning to rural solitude. Thus, Rey importuned with a publisher’s instinct for what would stimulate sales, but Rousseau failed to commit himself until he decided that an account of his life could serve a larger purpose.

      There is considerable evidence that Rousseau discovered a number of different purposes that could be served by the Confessions and that their relative importance shifted over the time he worked on his autobiography, although none of them simply disappeared. These purposes can be divided into two apparently different categories. First, he concluded that by writing his life he could do something entirely new and useful: he could give the first accurate account of the genesis of the internal life of feelings in an individual that could subsequently help to lay the foundation for a science of human nature.³ Second, he decided that it was necessary to preserve an account of his side of his quarrels with his former friends. The Confessions, then, combines self-revelation in the service of a general goal with self-justification for reasons that are quite particular to Rousseau.

      On the surface, these two purposes have no necessary relation to each other, but after the persecution of Rousseau began with the censorship of Emile and the warrant issued for his arrest at the beginning of June 1762, they tended to converge. In mid-November of the same year Rousseau expressed the importance of his account of his life in a letter to Rey in which he says, Six months ago my life unfortunately became a work of importance that requires time and reflection.⁴ Almost from the beginning of his literary career, Rousseau had presented himself as the virtual embodiment of the principles contained in his writings, a living example of the truth of what he said.⁵ With the suppression of his books and his being persecuted, he concluded that his personal fate had become virtually identical to the fate of his teaching and that the vindication of his reputation was necessary for the preservation of his message. When he was able to begin his work in earnest a few years later, Rousseau wrote to Rey, I will do something unique, and I dare say something truly fine. I am making it into such an important object that I am devoting the remainder of my life to it.⁶ In the end, self-justification and presentation of the truth about human nature were indistinguishable from each other.

      In spite of their convergence, these two dimensions of Rousseau’s project raise the question of the truthfulness of the account given in the Confessions in rather different ways. The truth of this or that particular fact is not the same thing as the general truth of a fundamental principle of human nature.⁷ At times the goal of setting the record straight about the facts of his life in the face of many true and false rumors spread by his enemies makes the Confessions read like a legal brief. To counter the rumors, Rousseau attempts to introduce as much counterevidence as possible: he gives names, dates, and places; he appeals to the testimony of witnesses, and he tries to establish his own credentials as a witness by being as open as possible about his faults. Rousseau’s frequent appeals to the reader to attempt to verify the truth of his account constantly point beyond the text to the outside world.

      This emphasis on factual truth has led to a truly extraordinary scholarly effort over the past two centuries. Almanacs have been consulted for weather records, the registry of deeds in Chambéry has been searched, and police records in Venice have been combed through. As Rousseau himself predicts when he discusses the problems of relying on a faulty memory,⁸ many small errors have been found in his account. At the same time other points about which he was once thought to have been mistaken, lying, or exaggerating have been shown to be substantially accurate. By and large, Rousseau’s honesty and accuracy of memory are now, or at least deserve to be, more respected than they were 150 years ago. Nevertheless, if learning the factual truth of Rousseau’s life were the only reason to read the Confessions, the work would be superseded by numerous biographies that have made use of the investigations referred to.⁹ For all his insistence on setting the factual record straight, Rousseau was the first to suggest that the importance of his, or any, account of a life stems less from particular facts, about which total certainty is impossible, than from the way those facts relate to one another, the interpretation one gives them, and the lessons one draws from this interpretation.¹⁰ Furthermore, autobiography is not biography, and Rousseau’s claim for both the accuracy and importance of the Confessions rests much more on his account of his internal life than on his actions or the circumstances in which he found himself.

      As stated, Rousseau’s claim that people are to be measured by the depth and nature of their feelings is perhaps the most revolutionary aspect of the Confessions. Rousseau’s willingness to expose what he finds most ridiculous and shameful, along with what he finds most touching or most noble makes him into an entirely new sort of hero, diametrically opposed to the kings, generals, and statesmen whose lives he loved to read about in Plutarch.¹¹ Rousseau can argue that his life is more worthy of being recorded than that of the greatest king, not simply because he has thought about things a king has not thought about—an argument that philosophers have always used for justifying their activity—but also because he has felt what they have not felt.¹² It is perhaps not so strange as it might seem that Rousseau’s insistence on his own uniqueness in this respect has attracted readers to the Confessions. Anyone who has ever felt himself to be unique and believed that others did not appreciate his or her depths as they deserved to be appreciated finds a kindred soul in Rousseau. Furthermore, reading the Confessions has no doubt caused many people to feel this way for the first time. Thus, in addition to providing an account of the life of an extraordinary figure, the Confessions gives a new image of what is important about human life, an image with which apparently ordinary people who feel that they are extraordinary can identify.¹³

      Rousseau’s insistence that his life has more intrinsic interest than that of any king can be understood in two ways. First, the depth and complexity of his thoughts make his life of virtually unique importance as an example for learning about human nature. Second, these same things make him a model for imitation. If thoughts and feelings are what count, Rousseau is a model of human excellence, even though it is a very peculiar hero who admits and displays such a wide range of flaws.

      That Rousseau presents himself as an entirely new sort of hero in the Confessions indicates how hard it is not to read the work as a story, fable, or novel, albeit one that constantly beckons the reader beyond the bounds of the book. Rousseau had been perfectly willing to let his readers believe that his novel Julie was autobiographical. Frequently he writes his autobiography as if it were a novel. Incidents such as his infatuation with Mademoiselle de Breil in Book III have a formal structure that sets them apart from the rest of the book and makes them read like miniature novels. At particularly significant moments, such as the account of his life at les Charmettes in Book VI or the description of the events leading up to the breakup with his friends in Book IX, the order of his narration bears little resemblance to the actual chronology of events. Rousseau does not conceal this divergence from chronology and even takes the trouble to point it out. At times he comments on the resemblance between a story he is telling and a novel. It is clear that he has arranged his presentation of events to further this novelistic, if not precisely fictional, aspect of the book.

      The presentation of a concrete image of how a human life should be understood is connected with Rousseau’s goal of providing an example that can contribute to the understanding of human nature. Rousseau’s major philosophic works are devoted to the development of an understanding of human nature more than anything else. It should not be surprising, then, that he uses his comprehensive understanding of human nature to understand himself and that, in turn, he uses his description of his own life to embody his understanding of human nature.¹⁴ This side of the purpose of the Confessions can be seen by examining the role important features of this general understanding play in Rousseau’s account of his life and how he uses this account to oppose alternative understandings of human nature.

      Goodness in the Confessions

      The major principle of Rousseau’s understanding of human nature is his doctrine of natural goodness.¹⁵ The Confessions illustrates this doctrine with an exploration of the complex fate of Rousseau’s own goodness. The centrality of this issue within the autobiography is indicated by Rousseau’s emphatic challenge to any other person to dare to say, "I was better than that man."¹⁶ A proper understanding of the Confessions depends on the proper understanding of what it means to claim that no one is better than an individual as flawed as Rousseau admits he is.

      The most obvious target of the Confessions is its most famous predecessor, the Confessions of St. Augustine. At various times Rousseau referred to his autobiography as a memoir, a life, or a portrait, but his ultimate choice of a title indicates his intention to replace his predecessor and make his book into the Confessions. One of the features that Rousseau’s book shares with Augustine’s is its emphasis on childhood, but in these new confessions this emphasis is even greater than it had been in the old one. The reason for this is indicated in the Letter to Beaumont, written in 1762, that has an epigraph from St. Augustine. There, Rousseau attacks the doctrine of original sin as it is traditionally interpreted by Christianity and especially by Augustine.¹⁷ A major part of his attack consists in his claim that the traditional doctrine of original sin does not explain what it purports to explain: the origin of human wickedness. He says, Original sin explains everything except its principle, and it is the principle that is the issue to explain.¹⁸ While original sin offers an explanation of why we sin now, it poses the problem of how Adam and Eve came to sin since they were not affected by original sin in advance.

      In Rousseau’s view, then, a satisfactory account of the origin of human evil requires a genetic account, but one very different from that found in Genesis or its Christian interpretations. Such an account of the passions that make people wicked is what he claims to give in Emile.¹⁹ This book on education mainly offers a description of how to prevent these passions from arising or how to channel them in healthy directions once they do arise. Fundamental to this argument are the claims that these passions are unnatural and that humans are therefore in need of nothing beyond their own efforts to prevent their emergence. The Confessions offers a complementary account that shows how these same passions—most importantly anger, shame, vanity, and particular forms of sexual desire—first develop in one man.²⁰ The Jean-Jacques of the Confessions could be considered the anti-Emile. He is the exemplar of precisely the civilized corruption avoided in the natural education. Thus, the Confessions represents one further demonstration of the truth of Rousseau’s systematic understanding of human nature.

      This account of the natural goodness of humans and of the genesis of their wickedness is also closely related to the aim of self-justification in the Confessions. While Rousseau does present himself as an example of the consequences of the premature stimulation of anger, vanity, peculiar sexual desires, and other unnatural passions, he does not present himself as a wicked man. In some sense he is both a corrupt man and a good man at the same time. A failure to understand either the exact nature of Rousseau’s doctrine or the precise charges against which he is defending himself can lead to much confusion.²¹ This confusion can be avoided if one pays attention to certain distinctions Rousseau makes and that he follows, sometimes tacitly, but on the whole consistently. Rousseau’s distinctions among goodness, virtue, and vice are absolutely central to his thought and occur frequently in his writings. When these distinctions are applied to situations that are prominent in the Confessions, further fundamental distinctions emerge: between guilt and innocence, weakness and wickedness, and faults and wrongs. Some of them indicate clear oppositions, but others represent alternative sources of apparently similar behavior.

      In the Second Discourse Rousseau formulates what he calls the maxim of natural goodness: Do what is good for you with the least possible harm to others.²² The first part of the maxim, Do what is good for you, is primary. Natural goodness involves following one’s own healthy inclinations. In the best circumstances, the second part of the maxim, with the least possible harm to others, follows almost automatically from the first: in the absence of artificial passions (such as greed, vanity, or anger) that make people wish to harm each other, seeking one’s own good will involve harming others very little. In the Confessions Rousseau indicates that he has adopted this maxim as a principle for his own behavior. For example, he has refused to allow himself to be put in the position of profiting from a friend’s death by being named in his will.²³ As a result of this refusal, Rousseau keeps himself from being in a position in which what is good for himself would lead him to wish for what is bad for his friend.

      Of course, in some circumstances this maxim of natural goodness would not only allow, it would require that one harm other people. Very different things can cause this. For example, one’s desires can be corrupted so that they lead one to want things that require harming others. Alternatively, one can find oneself in circumstances in which even fundamentally good desires, such as the desire to stay alive, require harming others. In either of these cases natural goodness is compromised and something more than inclination to follow one’s own desires is necessary if one is to refrain from harming others. This something is virtue. Virtue can be regarded as a strength that allows one to overcome one’s desires rather than to follow them or as a strength that prevents one from forming harmful desires in the first place. Thus, when Rousseau does not follow his desire to continue his affair with Mme de Larnage in Book VI, he is inspired by virtue, or at least something that is very hard to distinguish from it.²⁴ In sum, however similar they might look in certain circumstances and although they can both be considered as opposites of vice and wickedness, virtue and goodness can be considered as very distinct complements to each other. Goodness allows one to follow one’s inclinations without (usually) harming anyone else. Virtue allows one to overcome one’s inclinations on those occasions when they would lead to harming someone else. While goodness is a natural quality, virtue is a moral quality made necessary by the complexity of social life.

      This distinction between goodness and virtue reveals the significance of Rousseau’s declarations of his own goodness. Although Rousseau does claim to be a good man in the Confessions, he does not often claim to be a virtuous one. He admires virtue, he loves it, for a while he is intoxicated by it, but he rarely practices it. Because he is good without being virtuous, he can be guilty of faults,²⁵ and it is the admission of his faults that makes up what could be called Rousseau’s confessions in the strict sense of the term. Among the major faults he admits are his false accusation of Marion in Book II, his abandonment of M. Le Maître in Book III, and putting his children in the foundling hospital in Book VIII.²⁶ In each of these cases Rousseau admits that he was guilty of doing something wrong and, by implication, that he was not virtuous.

      It is at this point that much of the confusion over Rousseau’s attempts at self-justification enters, because he generally follows his admission of guilt with an explanation that appears to be a more or less feeble attempt to exonerate himself from blame. The most noteworthy, and most noted, of these occasions concerns his false accusation of Marion when, after admitting that he falsely accused her of a theft that he committed, he insists that he had no intention of harming her and, in fact, had been very fond of her. The virtually simultaneous admission and explanation exemplify why some readers find the Confessions so morally repugnant while others find them so compellingly human. The former are struck by the thought that Rousseau is, in effect, retracting his admission of wrongdoing in the very act of making it, that he is asking for credit for sincerity while speaking in bad faith. Whatever might ultimately be said about Rousseau’s sincerity, it should be noted that in these instances Rousseau never claims that he is innocent either in some fundamental theological sense or of the particular wrongdoing that he committed. What he does claim in the case of admitted wrongdoing is that his lapses were cases of weakness rather than wickedness, that they were faults rather than wrongs.²⁷ In sum, Rousseau presents himself as a fundamentally good man, who, because he is not virtuous, commits faults out of weakness. He is not a fundamentally wicked man who commits crimes out of a willingness to harm. He never denies that he is guilty of committing misdeeds for which he deserves a measure of blame. In short, Rousseau’s excuses are frequently the consequences of the application of his doctrine of natural goodness rather than simple signs of bad faith. Judgment of his behavior must entail a judgment about his moral doctrine.

      Aside from Rousseau himself, the character in the Confessions who most fully embodies both goodness and its weakness is Mme de Warens. In each of Books III, V, and VI, Rousseau gives a description of her that emphasizes her decency, generosity, and lack of spiteful passions. But in each of these cases, he also says that she did commit faults. While in Rousseau’s false accusation of Marion, the artificial passion of shame played a major role in his misdeed, in the case of Mme de Warens it is not passion but false principles of morality that cause her to act badly on occasion. She is seduced by sophisms not by her passions.²⁸ Thus, when it is properly understood, her life, which is so scandalous when judged by the standards of either conventional propriety or strict morality, is a monument to her good heart.

      Misdeeds can be explained, but they are not entirely excused by weakness that makes one follow inclinations rather than duty or by false principles that make one follow an erroneous notion of duty. Once again, Rousseau makes no claim whatsoever that either he or Mme de Warens is a paragon of virtue or that either of them is innocent of wrongdoing. What he does claim is that their faults do not make them exemplars of wickedness or vice. The character in the Confessions who best exemplifies wickedness is Rousseau’s false friend, the master of duplicity and leader of the conspiracy against Rousseau’s reputation, Friedrich Melchior Grimm. Although Rousseau finds something unfathomable in Grimm’s behavior, he clearly presents it as unmitigated wickedness.

      Like Rousseau’s own behavior, Grimm’s is based on a single fundamental maxim. Rousseau says that Mme d’Epinay once informed him that Grimm’s compendium of morality consisted of the single article, The sole duty of a man is, to follow the inclinations of his heart in everything.²⁹ Strangely, Grimm’s declared maxim of behavior bears a strong resemblance to Rousseau’s maxim of natural goodness. How exactly does it differ and how does this difference qualify it as vicious? While in Rousseau’s account goodness must be considered as distinct from and (from a moral standpoint) inferior to virtue, Grimm’s maxim blurs this distinction by claiming that one actually has a duty to follow one’s inclinations in everything. Thus, on Grimm’s view there is no such thing as a genuine virtue that opposes one’s inclination in any circumstances. Any talk about such a virtue must be only foolishness or hypocrisy. Furthermore, Grimm’s maxim does not contain the qualification found in the maxim of natural goodness, with the least possible harm to others. Far from avoiding situations that would allow him to profit from harming others, Grimm follows a continuous course of profiting from his ability to take advantage of other people. Grimm’s wickedness represents a denaturing of natural goodness that refuses to acknowledge any claims that others might have.

      In sum, in the most primitive case, following one’s natural inclinations (which will consist solely of moderate desires for food, sleep, and sex³⁰) leads to goodness, that is, one’s own advantage at little expense to others. The situation is complicated in the case of someone who, living in a social world, has some artificial passions or is led astray by false principles. Those, like Rousseau or Mme de Warens, who preserve some, but not all, of natural goodness, are likely to be generous, compassionate, impulsive people who on occasion commit faults that harm others and themselves. They are good, but in one way or another they are weak. In the case of people like Grimm, the extreme artificial passions and wicked principles completely transform all natural inclinations into vices. Such people not only find themselves in situations in which they inadvertently harm others, they wish to do so. The good seek their own good without concern for others.³¹ The wicked seek to dominate others even at the cost of considerable effort on their own part. In the end they tend to define their own good largely in terms of their ability to have power over others, even if the attempt to acquire this ability does themselves no genuine good.

      Appearance and Reality

      The presentation of Grimm’s wickedness helps to illustrate the theme of goodness in the Confessions. How he practices wickedness helps to illustrate a related theme: that of the split between appearance and reality in the social world.³² More than anything else Grimm is the master of manipulating appearances. Ultimately Rousseau presents him as the orchestrator of a great conspiracy to destroy Rousseau’s good reputation and replace it with a false image, but his manipulation of appearances show itself in smaller ways also. Grimm acquires social success by coldly calculating how to present an image of himself as a suffering scorned lover or as a devoted friend.³³ Even more simply, he uses makeup to improve his appearance. Just as his wickedness completes a coherent picture of the moral world in the Confessions, his manipulation of appearances represents the culmination of Rousseau’s discovery of the ills of the social world. In fact, to the extent that the Confessions tells a coherent story, what it tells is how someone falls victim to the split between reality and appearance and how he comes to understand the nature of that split.

      This discovery proceeds through a number of stages which, broadly speaking, correspond to an account Rousseau gives of his intellectual development in the Letter to Beaumont. He says, As soon as I was in a position to observe men, I watched them act and I watched them speak; then, seeing that their actions bore no resemblance to their speeches, I looked for the reason for this dissimilarity, and I found that, since for them being and appearing were two things as different as acting and speaking, this second difference was the cause of the other and itself had a cause that I still had to look for.³⁴ The dramatization of these divergences between word and deed and appearance and being is one of the guiding threads of the plot of the Confessions. Rousseau moves from an initial bafflement and rage at his experience of these divergences, to a gradual immersion in the social world where they dominate, to a comprehensive discovery that explains his experience, and finally to the confrontation between his unmasking of the social system and of those, like Grimm, who profit from it.

      This development begins in Book I with the young Rousseau’s discovery of a literary world of romantic novels and Plutarch’s heros that gives him an image of the world that corresponds to no real experience, fills him with unattainable hopes, and prepares him to be deceived by anyone who appeals to the passions instilled in him by books. Also in Book I, he is accused by his tutors of a crime that he did not commit. He has his first experience of the feeling of injustice and sees himself as innocent and his tutors as people who torment him while claiming to be just. He cannot grasp the fact that they have made an innocent mistake because all appearances point to his guilt. As he gets older, he accumulates a range of experiences that teach him that people often present deceptive appearances either wittingly or unwittingly and that one of the ways to succeed in the world is to learn how to manipulate these appearances.

      As Rousseau explores the different ways being and appearance are opposed, he alternates between somber examples and ones involving humorous or moving aspects. He shows the consequences of his own ability to present a false appearance of angelic innocence when he accuses Marion, but he also revels in the comic absurdity of his attempt to pass himself off as a composer in spite of his utter ignorance of composition. While his wrestling with the split between what he feels himself to be and the way he appears to others forms the dramatic core of the Confessions, Rousseau also provides little vignettes of how this problem manifests itself in other people’ lives. Many of these case studies are so captivating that it is easy to ignore their significance for the general theme. It is hard to miss the political significance of the French peasant who must adopt the appearance of abject poverty to avoid ruin by an unjust system of taxation, but one should also pay attention to the touching and comical M. Simon, whose intelligent mind and sensitive heart are concealed by his dwarfish stature, and to the engaging libertine Venture de Villeneuve, who lives by his wits, pretending to know what he does not know and concealing his real talents in order to display them at opportune moments.³⁵ The opposition between being and appearance can work itself out in an infinite number of ways, and Rousseau’s self-education consists of his discovery of the pervasiveness of this split in the social world around him.

      The emotional crisis of this discovery occurs at Venice when Rousseau finds himself, not for the first or the last time, a victim of an unjust social order that rewards incompetence in the ascendant class at the expense of talented social inferiors. At the moment of his greatest resentment over his own low standing, Rousseau finds himself with the divinely beautiful courtesan, Zulietta, who lavishes her charms on him even though she has no way of perceiving his genuine merit beneath his status as a lowly secretary. Zulietta herself is a bewildering example of supreme beauty and social ostracism, an incomprehensible object of desire and repulsion. In a passage that Rousseau identifies as the most crucial in the Confessions, the encounter with Zulietta focuses the conflict between appearance and being, convention and nature, imagination and truth into a single example that prepares the way for Rousseau’s discovery of the principle that explains these oppositions.³⁶

      He finally grasps this principle clearly on the road to Vincennes while on the way to visit his imprisoned friend, Diderot. Even though the illumination on the road to Vincennes takes place well into Part Two of the Confessions, it clearly marks the turning point in Rousseau’s life. As such, it stands comparison with events such as Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus. Rousseau’s discovery happens as a result of reading the question proposed by the Academy of Dijon, Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals? Upon his contemplation of this question Rousseau says, I saw another universe and became another man.³⁷ Suddenly he is able to see that the ultimate source of the tension between action and speech, being and appearing, that has caused so much confusion in his life can be found in an unjust social order that tyrannizes over nature.³⁸

      Although Rousseau frequently refers to his discovery of this revolutionary principle as a sudden inspiration, it did not come out of nowhere. The experiences described earlier in the Confessions set the stage for this discovery by illustrating in a fragmentary or particular way the effects of the social order on individual life. In the Confessions Rousseau’s sudden emergence as an important thinker looks, as it did to many of his contemporaries, like the emergence of Athena fully armed from the head of Zeus. What is clear, although not dramatized so visibly, is that in the years leading up to this discovery Rousseau was engaged in an intensive intellectual development. In the years he spent at Chambéry, he devoted himself to studying philosophy, history, mathematics, astronomy, and other subjects. In addition, at the same time he was studying music history and theory leading to his invention of a new system of musical notation, which took him to Paris to try to make his fortune. While he was in Venice as the French ambassador’s secretary, he studied the history of diplomacy in order to learn his new profession. When he returned to Paris, he worked as a sort of research assistant for the Dupin family and took thousand of pages of notes and wrote hundreds of pages of drafts of manuscripts on questions of political economy, history, chemistry, and the role of women in society. Finally, during this same time he formed close ties to Diderot and the circle of intellectuals who were about to begin the Encyclopedia. In the dozen years before he wrote the First Discourse Rousseau had transformed himself from a failed apprentice and naive adventurer into someone with the intellectual resources to stun even an age that prided itself on its learning. The emphasis on feelings in the Confessions allows Rousseau to dramatize the emotional effect of the discovery of the source of the split between reality and appearance, while he gives only glimpses of the intellectual preparation for the discovery.

      The Conspiracy

      Just as the Confessions emphasizes the feelings and experiences that led Rousseau to his discovery of his system, it pays special attention to the effect of this discovery on his life. In a corrupt society, what is the fate of a man who to a large extent has preserved his natural goodness and has discovered both the principle of this natural goodness and the social origin of wickedness? The initial result of the publication of the First Discourse was to make Rousseau into a public sensation. This effect was multiplied when he composed a new opera containing pleasing tunes and glorifying rustic loves against urban sophistication. He also gained considerable notoriety from his decision to turn his back on the sophistication of Paris, which applauded him as he condemned it. With his adoption of simple dress and eventual move to the country, Rousseau self-consciously made himself into a sort of hero, the embodiment of the qualities praised in his writings.

      Rousseau claims that the outcome of all this success was the massive conspiracy formed against him that led to the warrant being issued for his arrest in France and to efforts to drive him out of each place where he sought refuge. Because of the extreme claims that Rousseau makes, the conspiracy is probably the most troubling theme in the Confessions. It cannot be denied that the form Rousseau’s accusations take is heavily influenced by the acute emotional distress caused by his stormy relations with his friends and the persecution he suffered. Nevertheless, one should also be aware of the fact that many of Rousseau’s specific charges, and among them some that appear delusional on their face, are solidly grounded in fact. It is unlikely that there will ever be a reliable diagnosis of Rousseau’s emotional or physical illnesses,³⁹ and the interpretation of the motives of Rousseau’s enemies is likely to remain a subject of partisanship among scholars. It is possible, however, to be fairly specific about the role the conspiracy plays within the Confessions.

      The part of the Confessions in which Rousseau’s belief in a plot against him is most prominent is the footnotes, which were late additions to the manuscripts.⁴⁰ It is in these footnotes that Rousseau makes the widest array of accusations against the greatest numbers of individuals. That the footnotes are so frequently inserted to contradict what is in the text indicates that the version of the conspiracy given in the body of the text is a considerably more moderate one.

      The assertion of the existence of a plot against Rousseau does not enter the body of the text of the Confessions in an unequivocal way until the beginning of Book X.⁴¹ In this context Rousseau attributes its origin to what appear to be purely personal factors involving his love for Mme d’Houdetot and his suspicions of Mme d’Epinay. Upon closer scrutiny the things that make the conspiracy possible turn out to be a mixture of purely personal and more broadly significant factors. In addition to petty jealousy and conflicts of personality, Rousseau mentions several things that laid the foundation for the conspiracy.

      The first thing he notes that caused a cooling off among his friends was the immense popular success of his opera.⁴² Rousseau had been supported in his literary endeavors by Diderot, who commissioned him to write articles on music for the Encyclopedia, encouraged him to write the First Discourse, and offered advice during the writing of the Second Discourse. It is clear that during this period, in spite of the increasing clarity of the differences between Rousseau’s views and those of his fellow Encyclopedists, they looked at each other as involved in a common enterprise.⁴³ Nevertheless, as Rousseau had argued as early as in the First Discourse, beneath the sense of a common intellectual enterprise lies a desire for personal fame and distinction that manifests itself in petty jealousy. Rousseau’s sudden success as a composer gave him a status quite independent of this shared literary life in which all men of letters could succeed and assist each other in succeeding. He claims that his musical success gave him a sort of celebrity that his friends could not hope to share or rival.

      If the reaction to Rousseau’s musical success reveals the self-interest lying beneath an apparent devotion to reason, the reaction to his moral reform and move to the country indicates another problem in the Enlightenment. Rousseau argues that his moral reform resulted from his attempt to put his conduct into accord with his principles. He also argues that his fellow intellectuals regarded this reform as an implicit reproach to them for following the life of competitiveness, engagement in high society, and currying favor with the powerful.⁴⁴ Thus, his very conspicuous stance as a new model for the relation between thought and life was understood and, perhaps even more important, felt as a threat to the prevailing model. Rousseau stands as the intellectual outsider who is the enemy of partisan activity and who insists on a certain moral purity. It is the general significance of his personal decision to abandon Paris that leads to such a personal hatred against Rousseau on the part of those who regard the conquest of Parisian society as the ultimate goal of their activity. In sum, Rousseau’s great ability to show himself as embodying fundamental intellectual and human problems is what makes the conspiracy against him such an odd mixture of personal grudges and serious intellectual disputes.

      There are a number of reasons for Rousseau’s emphasis on the personal side of his persecution. Most important of these is that this personal side was very real. The literary society of Paris in the mid-eighteenth century was a very small world filled with rivalry and intrigue in which everyone knew everyone else. Even the ability to be published could depend on whether a friend of a friend or a friend of a rival was appointed as the government censor of one’s book. In addition, however, by emphasizing that his persecution was the outcome of personal resentments, Rousseau can argue that it was not the result of the content of his works. By claiming that attacks on his works are personally motivated, Rousseau can urge his readers to ignore those attacks and pay attention to his thought.

      In short, the treatment of the conspiracy reflects the constant tendency of the Confessions. Rousseau focuses on the personal and the intimate, but in doing so he claims to gain access to general truths of ultimate significance. Early in the book he uses his very idiosyncratic responses to spankings to raise questions about the origins of sexuality and feelings about justice and injustice. He uses the fact of his father’s failure to pursue him beyond Annecy when he ran away from Geneva to reflect on the fundamental maxim of natural goodness.⁴⁵ Conversely he reveals apparently general discussions about the moral character of the theatre to be guided by personal desires to curry favor with the powerful and then shows that petty personal rivalries are connected with competing views about the proper place of an intellectual in society. In the Confessions every general issue is connected with a personal problem and every personal problem illustrates a general issue.

      The fact that the Confessions has probably been the most consistently popular of Rousseau’s works, maintaining its popularity as other works like Julie or the Social Contract come into and go out of fashion, indicates that the work stands very well on its own. Nevertheless, the preceding remarks are intended to show that this remarkable book appears even more remarkable if it is seen in the light of the major issues of Rousseau’s thought. While philosophers have always been concerned with the communication of their thought, no other approaches Rousseau’s attempt to show the connection between his philosophic thought and his feelings. In addition to being a behind-the-scenes look at the private life of a public man, the Confessions is at the center of Rousseau’s philosophic enterprise.

      Translating the Confessions

      The various purposes that converge in the Confessions are reflected in the great diversity of literary styles incorporated in the work. Rousseau says in the Neuchâtel Preface, For what I have to say it would be necessary to invent a language as new as my project.⁴⁶ This style is less a simple invention of something new than an artful use of a combination of classical French literary language, Genevan provincialisms, and other forms.⁴⁷ In broad terms the nostalgic account of Part One contrasts with the, at times, frantic tone of Part Two. Within the more polished earlier part, Rousseau moves fluidly from style to style, from the dramatic episode of the broken comb to the mock heroic epic of the aqueduct, from digressions taking the form of essays like the discussion of money in Book I to the idyll of the cherries in Book IV.

      Among his most striking devices are sudden shifts of tense in a narrative as he alternates between recreating a moment dramatically by writing in the present tense and commenting on it by describing it with a past tense. Rousseau sometimes also moves from addressing the reader in the second person to using an impersonal or passive construction. These sometimes sudden shifts in literary style, voice, and tense are often jarring in French and must become even more so in translation. Nevertheless, they are an essential part of Rousseau’s style and can be important indications of his emphasis. Accordingly, we have tried to preserve them even at the cost to elegance.

      The care Rousseau took in writing is shown by the minuteness of the changes from one manuscript to another. He changes the choice of a word or the order of terms in a series often apparently to give a poetic rhythm to a prose passage. No doubt some of these changes are connected with the fact that one of the complete manuscripts was intended for publication, while the other was to be used for Rousseau’s readings to select audiences. Many of the changes seem trivial, but others raise fascinating questions about important aspects of the autobiographical project. For example, what is indicated about the relation between memory and writing by the fact that in one manuscript the only defect of the beautiful Mlle de Charly is that her hair is too red, while in the other manuscript it is too blonde?⁴⁸ We have elected to err on the side of inclusiveness in indicating manuscript variants in the notes.

      There is one other area in which we have chosen to preserve Rousseau’s variations. That is in his spelling of proper names of people. These spellings vary, not only from manuscript to manuscript, but also within manuscripts. The failure to regularize the spelling may cause a few slight confusions, but these confusions reflect what Rousseau wrote. Efforts to correct the spelling of names would run into the problem that many of the people

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