The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes

Notes

Notes Bloom Collected, Writings, I Collected Writings, II Collected Writings, III Collected Writings, IV Cranston, I Cranston, II Kelly Launay Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Entile. Edited by Allan Bloom. New York: Basic Books, 1979. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau, Judge of JeanJacques : Dialogues. Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. I. Edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1991. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. First Discourse and Polemics. Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. II. Edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Discourse on the Origins of Inequality (SecondDiscourse), Polemics, andPoliticalEconomy . Collected Writings ofRousseau,Vo\. III. Edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1992. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Social Contract, Discourse on the Virtue Most Necessary for a Hero, Political Fragments , and Geneva Manuscript. Collected Writings of Rousseau, Vol. IV. Edited by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1994. Maurice Cranston. Jean-Jacques: The Early Life and Work ofjean-jacquesRousseau, 1712-17S4. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990. Maurice Cranston. The Noble Savage: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 17S4-1762. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Christopher Kelly. Rousseau's Exemplary Life: The "Confessions" as Political Philosophy. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987. Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Oeuvres completes, Vols. 1-2. Edited by Michel Launay. Paris: Editions du Seuil [Collection L'Integrale], 1967-1971. S9S S96 Notes to Pages xviir-xxi Leigh Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Correspondance Edited by R. A. Leigh. Geneva: Institut et Musee Voltaire, i965fF. Pleiade Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Oeuvres completes, Vols. 1-4. Paris: NRF-Editions de la Pleiade, I959ff. Voisine Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Les Confessions. Edited by Jacques Voisine. Paris: Gamier, 1964. N O T E S T O T H E E D I T O R S 5 I N T R O D U C T I O N 1. On Rousseau's readings from the Confessions and their consequences, see Pleiade, 1,1611-1614. 2. The First Discourse and the polemical writings about it can be found in Collected Writings, II. 3. On this point, see 3. 4. Letter to Rey, November 16,1762 (Leigh, XIV, 55). 5. See Book VIII, 303-304. 6. Letter to Rey, April 27,1765 (Leigh, XXV, 189). 7. Rousseau's most important discussion of different types of truth occurs in the Fourth Promenade of the Reveries where he discusses the truthfulness of the Confessions in particular. For a discussion of the relation between general, philosophic truth and particular, factual truth, see Kelly, 1-47. 8. See, for example, the beginning of Book VII, 233. 9. The best of these biographies is Cranston, I and II. 10. On this point, see Entile, IV (Bloom, 237-240). 11. Even the confessional religious literature that existed before Rousseau and with which his title links his book is extraordinarily different because of its emphasis on the glorification of God. There is nothing in Rousseau's Confessions that vaguely resembles the concluding book of Augustine's Confessions with its turn away from Augustine to focusing attention on God's creation. Some indication of the difference between Rousseau and Augustine is given below. In addition, one should consult the excellent account given by Ann Hartle in TheModern Self inRousseau's "Confessions":A Reply to St.Augustine (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983). 12. See Appendix II, 586. 13. The best account of Rousseau, which uses the account of his feelings, or psychological development, as the key to his entire literary career is Jean Starobinski 'sJean-Jacques Rousseau: Transparency and Obstruction trans. Arthur Goldhammer [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988]). 14. For an interpretation of the Confessions that develops this argument, see Kelly. 15. For an excellent account of the working out of this principle in Rousseau's political thought, see Arthur M. Melzer, TheNatural Goodness ofMan: On the System ofRousseau's Thought (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990). For the assertion that this is the fundamental principle of Rousseau's system, seeRousseau, Judge ofjean-jacques {Collected Writings, 1,212-214). Notes to Pages xxir-xxx S97 16. See Book 1,5. 17. See Pleiade, IV, 938. 18. Ibid., 939. 19. Rousseau gives a comparable account on a more general level and from a historical perspective in Part Two of the SecondDiscourse, 20. See Kelly, 84-100. 21...