Reverie and the Return to Nature: Rousseau's Experience of Convergence

Abstract

In this essay, I explore some connections between Rousseau's works and modern environmental works in which the author experiences what Rousseau characterizes as “reverie,” the blissful loss of consciousness of the self in the awareness that the self is truly only part of the all-encompassing whole, “Nature.” While others have recognized that Rousseau's writings share much of the form and substance of later nature writing, no one has explored how Rousseau's work helps us understand the character of nature writing as a genre of political thought. Based on a careful reading of some key passages from the Reveries and comparisons to the writings of Thoreau, I argue that Rousseau's peculiar approach to his own self-consciousness provides a key for understanding the character of writings of this sort and the limits that are always present within them. Environmentalists must reflect on Rousseau's suggestion “that the price paid for experiencing anything is the experience of ourselves as alienated.”