Rousseau as Philosopher

Abstract

Rousseau seldom gets a mention as a philosopher in the conventional histories; if he appears at all it is in connection with that strange and rather suspect discipline ‘political philosophy’. Even then there is a tendency to look upon him as an unsystematic thinker, as a ‘philosophe’ rather than as a genuine philosopher. His ideas are held to be interesting, but the connections between them are thought to be emotional rather than logical. Again, Émile is read by students of education, but not by those studying philosophy. This is both because the ‘philosophy of education’ is thought not to be of great importance and again because of Rousseau’s lack of logical rigour. Now it is true that Rousseau himself was an emotional figure, and from reading his Confessions it is easy to get the idea that there is no point in looking for interesting philosophical points in his works. However, not all philosophers have held this view; one of the more striking stories about Kant is that he only once was late for his regular afternoon walk, and that was when he was reading Émile. Nor was this an accidental absorption in an interesting but non-philosophical book; Kant gives Rousseau high intellectual praise:

Newton was the first to discern order and regularity in combination with great simplicity, where before him men had encountered disorder and unrelated diversity.