The Confessions and Correspondence, Including the Letters to Malesherbes

Abstract

When Rousseau first read his Confessions to a 1770 gathering in Paris, reactions varied from admiration of his candor to doubts about his sanity to outrage. Indeed, Rousseau's intent and approach were revolutionary. As one of first attempts at autobiography, Confessions' novelty lay not in just its retelling facts of Rousseau's life, but in its revelation of his innermost feelings and its frank description of strengths and failings of his character. Based on his doctrine of natural goodness, Rousseau intended Confessions as a testing ground to explore his belief that, as Christopher Kelly writes, people are to be measured by depth and nature of their feelings. Re-created here in a meticulously documented new translation based on definitive Pleiade edition, work represents Rousseau's attempt to forge connections among his beliefs, his feelings, and his life. More than a behind-the-scenes look at private life of a public man, Kelly writes, the Confessions is at center of Rousseau's philosophical enterprise.

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