Politique du renonçant: Le dernier Rousseau des "Dialogues" aux "Rêveries" (review)

Jean-François Perrin attempts to show how Rousseau managed to overcome his position as an "écrivain maudit" who was caught up in the philosophical and political discourse of his century. Simultaneously, Perrin demonstrates how Rousseau tries to communicate to his readership his convictions about relating directly and not being affected by the turmoil and influences of developments in the arts and letters of his time. To implicate oneself in the public discourse is, for Rousseau, to be alienated: "la structure du discours public est telle qu'y dire un mot, y faire un geste, c'est s'y retrouver toujours-déjà aliéné" (240). For Perrin, then, by choosing the dialogue as a mode of discourse, Rousseau succeeds in presenting himself as an uninvolved writer while offering his theory and educating the reader and general public (and of course, the "Frenchman") about the pitfalls of public opinion and the dangers of getting trapped in the hegemonic philosophical, political, and judicial discourses of pre-Revolutionary France and Enlightenment Europe.

In addition, looking at the Dialogues from the perspective of the Rêveries, where Rousseau becomes an observer, a detached narrator, Perrin tries to show how on one hand Rousseau manages to shift the emphasis from his reputation and position as a sometimes penitent writer (as in his Confessions) trying to rehabilitate himself in the eyes of the public or posterity, while on the other hand he communicates directly to people about how to know oneself by using a method of transposition and observation of the effects of the natural automaton in him, triggering spontaneous recognition, as also happens in the case of "J.J." in the Dialogues, the true embodiment of the social, natural man whose constitution can be understood via direct observation.

Rousseau's original theme of amour de soi as presented in his second Discourse (Rousseau's uninvolved meditations, which are offered as conversational reflections not destined automatically for the reader), his staging of the assumed fictitious predicament of "J.J." in the Dialogues, and the "scientific" study and scrutiny of "J.J." by the other (see chapter 3, "Le Cas 'J.J.': Ethnographie d'un sauvage éclairé") combine to encourage Rousseau's readers to try to gain a more comprehensive knowledge of "oneself." Critical to gaining that awareness is incorporating the perspective of the other so as not to limit one's knowledge of the self to sheer projection, but to include in it the revelation that results from interacting with the other. Perrin would call this "une éthique explicite de l'observation" (85). Thus, Perrin writes about Rousseau's project, "Connaître un autre et soi pour se connaître soi, telle est la méthode [de Rousseau]" (254).

Rousseau's obsession with the reception of his writing and the corruption of his words by his philosophical adversaries, and with the influence these philosophes had on the public at large, makes the Dialogues, according to Perrin, a great practical and theoretical hermeneutic work, addressing closely what the Enlightenment saw as a possibility of understanding an author better than the author himself could, should one stay close to the intentions of the writer. Rousseau's preoccupation with posterity was not limited to him or his time alone, of course; it is, to use Diderot's words, the inherent problem of the "malentendu constitutif de la communication" (cited in Perrin, 143) as well as, more contemporaneously, the position of Hans-Georg Gadamer: "comprendre c'est nécessairement comprendre autrement parce que toute compréhension est liée à l'historicité de notre existence" (Perrin, 142).

According to Perrin, the Dialogues, far from being a failed work as Rousseau and the critics thought, needs to be rehabilitated. The Dialogues, says Perrin, must be recontextualized and reactualized, since it is highly representative of our time, in that it deals with the phenomenon of the importance of the media and the power...