Travel As Metaphor: From Montaigne to Rousseau

A detailed reading of Montaigne, Descartes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, underscoring the foundational and potentially liberating force of travel in early modern French philosophy. "Abbeele's study offers more than the title promises; it goes beyond a mere illustration of the common place of travel as a metaphor for critical thought in order to investigate the extent to which the metaphor of travel might actually limit thought. In a series of readings examining the figure of travel in the writings of Montaigne, Descartes, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, Abbeele argues that "each writer's discourse allows for the elaboration of a metadiscourse opening onto the deconstruction of the writer's claims to a certain property (of his home, of his body, of his text, of his name)" Philosophy and Literature