Jean-Jacques Rousseau en 2012: 'puisqu' enfin mon nom doit vivre' ed. by Michael O'Dea (review)

The various chapters of this book are of a very high order and represent some of the best recent work on Rousseau by distinguished experts. Commissioned to mark the tricentenary of Rousseau's birth, the content of the volume, as editor Michael O'Dea points out, coincides with two major ongoing editions of Rousseau's œuvre: by Slatkine-Champion and by Classiques Garnier. We are thus on the verge of a reassessment of Rousseau, and the volume is timely. O'Dea explains that contributors were given a relatively free choice of subject matter, and the chapters are grouped into relatively broad sections: 'Identités', 'Politique et société', 'Musique et beaux-arts', 'Réception et interprétation'. All of Rousseau's major works are explored here; if anything, only the Rêveries are comparatively underrepresented. Conversely, Rousseau, juge de Jean-Jacques is discussed in several chapters; and Rousseau's thinking on aesthetics and particularly music is now fully integrated into the critical landscape, as the third section shows. Among many fine discussions, several articles nevertheless stand out. Jean-François Perrin's detailed study of the notion of friendship in Rousseau's work around 1757-58 makes full use of the correspondence, triangulating it with Rousseau's published works, with intriguing results that show the variance between the two. Bruno Bernardi considers Rousseau's place in the genealogy of the concept of public opinion, between, and irreducible to, either a pre-Kantian and specifically early modern form of 'opinion', or the later, more critical sense of the term that we would more readily attribute to Burke and Kant. O'Dea examines the concept of intérêt, removed by Rousseau from an Augustinian context and operative both in Rousseau's aesthetics and in his moral philosophy, revealing interesting connections between the two. Philip Robinson considers the 'other Rousseau', a view of the creative artist that transcends the more narrowly defined doctrine of imitation, which Rousseau nevertheless needs and defends in his critical writings. Jacqueline Waeber's close study of Rousseau's work as a musical copyist suggests how this seemingly mundane activity is central to Rousseau's self-conception as a creative artist, as an antimodel to which he is nevertheless firmly attached. Rousseau's self-perception is crucial to Ourida Mostefai's chapter, which considers Rousseau's posture of failure; and the self-writings are well served by a discussion by Shojiro Kuwase and in Philip Stewart's more wide-ranging study of what he sees as a 'plénitude expansive', which is, paradoxically, 'ancrée en lui-même'. There are fresh readings and compelling insights in each one of the chapters, and the book is essential for all those with an interest in Rousseau.