Jean-Jacques Rousseau - Part II

Rousseau was 37 years old when a single incident changed his life and he became the philosopher we recognize today. It was 1749. He was in Paris attempting to make a name for himself with a new system of musical notation he had devised. His best friend, Denis Diderot (who would soon publish Volume 1 of the famous Encyclopedia) was in jail in Vincennes, not far from Paris, for a recent publication. Rousseau was visiting his friend. He described what happened in a letter to a French civil servant called Malesherbes more than a decade later, at a time when both "Emile" and "The social contract" were at the printer's (in January 1762; he had published his "First discourse" in 1750, his "Second discourse" on inequality in 1755 and "Julie" in 1761). He further described this event in his "Confessions", written four years later (1766-1770). Below I quote from both works and allow Rousseau to tell the story in his own words:

From: "The confessions"([1766-1770]1782), Part II, Book Eight: "The summer of that year 1749 was excessively hot. Vincennes is some six miles (10 kilometres) from Paris. In no condition to pay for cabs, I walked there at two in the afternoon when I was alone and I went fast so as to arrive early. The trees along the road, always lopped according to the custom of the country, hardly gave any shade; and often I was so prostrated with heat and weariness that I lay down on the ground, unable to go further. In order to slacken my pace, I thought of taking a book with me. One day I took the "Mercure de France" and, glancing through it as I walked, I came upon this question propounded by the Dijon Academy for the next year's prize: Has the progress of the sciences and arts done more to corrupt morals or improve them? The moment I read this I beheld another universe and became another man".

From: Christopher Kelly, Roger D Masters and Peter G Stillman (editors), “The collected Writings of Rousseau”, Volume 5. Hanover: University Press of New England, 1995, Page 575: Letter to Malesherbes, 12 January 1762: In this famous letter (12 January 1762) to Malesherbes, Rousseau continued:

"If anything has ever resembled a sudden inspiration, it is the motion that was caused in me by that reading; suddenly I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights; crowds of lively ideas presented themselves at the same time with a strength and a confusion that threw me into an inexpressible perturbation; I feel my head seized by a dizziness similar to drunkenness. A violent palpitation oppresses me, makes me sick to my stomach; not being able to breathe anymore while walking, I let myself fall under one of the trees of the avenue and I pass a half-hour there in such an agitation that when I got up again I noticed the whole front of my coat soaked with my tears without having felt that I shed them. Oh Sir, if I had ever been able to write a quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, how clearly I would have made all the contradictions of the social system (be) seen, with what strength I would have exposed all the abuses of our institutions, with what simplicity I would have demonstrated that man is naturally good and that it is from these institutions alone that men become wicked. Everything that I was able to retain of these crowds of great truths which illuminated me under that tree in a quarter of an hour has been weakly scattered about in my three principal writings, namely that first discourse, the one on inequality ["Second discourse"], and the treatise on education ["Emile"], which three works are inseparable and together form the same whole. All the rest has been lost...That is how when I was thinking about it least, I became an author in spite of myself.”

Rousseau continued the story in "The confessions":
"(W)hen I reached Vincennes I was in a state of agitation bordering on delirium. Diderot noticed it; I told him the cause and read him Fabricius's soliloquay which I had written in pencil under an oak tree. He encouraged me to give my ideas wings and compete for the prize. I did so and from that moment I was lost. All the rest of my life and of my misfortunes followed inevitably as a result of that moment's madness.

My feelings rose with the most inconceivable rapidity to the level of my ideas. All my little passions were stifled by an enthusiasm for truth, freedom and virtue; and the most astonishing is that this fermentation worked in my heart for more than four or five years [1749-1754] as intensely perhaps as it has ever worked in the heart of anyone on earth" [To be continued]