Citizen of Geneva

Abstract

“ Vitam impendere vero .” The words are Juvenal's; the motto is Rousseau's. “To devote one's life to the truth.” My concern is with Rousseau's truth – with his attempt to discover his true self, and, in that self, “the first comparative base for the study of men.” But we must examine this attempt with some caution. In his account to Malesherbes of his illumination, and his consequent career as an author, Rousseau comments, “Thus perhaps it is a hidden return of amour propre that made me choose and deserve my motto, and attached me so passionately to the truth, or to everything that I took for it.” (CW5.576, OC1.1136) His comment reveals a double hesitation. He suspects the presence in himself of amour propre , the force that leads to the externalization of the self, to taking one's sense of existence from the opinions of others. And this leads him to suspect his vision, to speak of it as “everything that I took for it [truth]” (my emphasis). In the preceding chapter we examined Rousseau's construction of himself as the man made for love – a construction that will culminate in his last promenade. We shall need to question whether this is Rousseau's truth. But we must also examine a second self-presentation that may seem equally to represent Rousseau's true nature – Citizen of Geneva.