Letter to Beaumont, Letters Written from the Mountain, and Related Writings

Notes

Notes Bloom Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Emile. Edited by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1979. Collected Writings Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Collected Writings of Rousseau, Volumes I–VIII, Edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1991– . Launay Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, Vols. 1–3. Paris: Editions du Seuil [Collection L’Intrégale], 1967V. Pléiade (or Pl.) Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Oeuvres complètes, Vols. 1–5. Paris: NRF-Editions de la Pléiade, 1959V. editors’ introduction 1. See Confessions, Collected Writings, V, 508 and 521. 2. Ibid., 430. 3. Ibid., 473. 4. Ibid., 503. 5. Ibid., 522. 6. The most complete account of these events, along with the best edition of the Vision, can be found in Fréderic S. Eigeldinger, “Des Pierres dans mon jardin”: Les années neuchâteloises de J.J. Rousseau et la crise de 1765 (Paris-Genève: ChampionSlatkine , 1992). We have followed Eigeldinger’s numbering of the verses. 7. These responses and the attacks to which they respond can be found in Collected Writings, II. 8. See Collected Writings, II, 84–85 and 110–129. 9. See pp. 21 and 133 below. 10. See p. 227 below. 11. See p. 16 below. 12. See p. 14 below. 13. See pp. 55 and 66 below. 14. See p. 26 below. 15. See pp. 46–47 below. 16. Certain objectors have complained that “this frankness is misplaced with the public” and that “not every truth is good to state.” (See p. 51 below.) In his last work, Rousseau agrees with this last objection; the “sacred” truth which he claims he has always tried to tell is that which is useful for the “moral order.” Reveries, Collected Writings, VIII, 28–34. 17. Emile, Bloom, 40. 18. Reveries, Collected Writings, VIII, 23. 315 19. Emile, Bloom, 313–314. 20. Cf. p. 54 below. The version of this statement cited here is from the Wrst draft of the Letter. 21. Confessions, Collected Writings, V, 342. 22. See p. 59 below. 23. See p. 61 below. 24. See p. 57 below. 25. See p. 57 below. 26. Rousseau attacks the French policy of civil tolerance combined with theological tolerance in the Social Contract (Collected Writings, IV, 223), arguing that it is impossible to live with people whom one believes to be damned. 27. Second Discourse, Collected Writings, III, 19. 28. See p. 77 below. Throughout the Letter Rousseau seems to take the side of the “reasoner” in the Profession, whom the Archbishop qualiWes as an “unbeliever”: “And who are you to dare tell me that God contradicts Himself, and whom would I prefer to believe—Him who teaches me eternal truths by reason, or you who proclaim an absurdity on His behalf?” (Emile, Bloom, 300). 29. See p. 5 below. 30. Emile, Bloom, 280. 31. See p. 68 below. 32. See p. 68 below. 33. See p. 70 below. 34. See p. 77 below. 35. See p. 74 below. 36. See p. 45 below. 37. See pp. 43–44 below. 38. See pp. 44–45 below. 39. See p. 44 below. 40. See p. 42 below. 41. See p. 43 below. 42. See p. 75 below. The second time Rousseau discusses only the sublimity of the Gospel’s “author.” 43. Emile, Bloom, 282. 44. See p. 46 below. 45. Emile, Bloom, 282–283. 46. This is also one of the themes of the Letter to Voltaire, Collected Writings, III, 108–121. 47. See p. 46 below. 48. See p. 75 below. 49. Reveries, Collected Writings, VIII, 24. 50. See p. 4 below; Second Discourse, Collected Writings, III, 27, 86. 51. Emile, Bloom, 81–82. 52. See p. 5 below. 53. See p. 4 below. 54. See p. 4 below. The argument that the simultaneous misery and greatness of the human soul is unintelligible to philosophy, but explained by Christianity, is 316 Notes to Pages xiii–xxii made most powerfully by Pascal. This part of the Letter can be taken as Rousseau’s most direct response to Pascal. 55. See p. 32 below. 56. See p. 46 below. 57. See p. 154 below. 58. See p. 155 below. 59. See p. 311 below. 60. See p. 174 below. 61. See p. 178 below. 62. See p. 166 below. 63. Rousseau does concede that “other passages present a meaning contrary” to the ones he cites (p. 172 below). 64. See...