Abstract

The goal of this dissertation is to understand how the rhetoric used by Rousseau in his works about the origin of human language (the Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men and the Essay on the Origin of Languages) is compatible with the philosophical meaning of these texts. This will only sound tautological to readers unfamiliar with the inherent difficulties in Rousseau’s writing. The difficulties are rhetorical because the ambiguous character of his writing raises the question of whom Rousseau wants to persuade about what. Some interpreters have dismissed Rousseau’s mode of writing as simply problematic or contradictory, refusing to acknowledge the existence of a double teaching hidden in his rhetoric, probably under the impression that such a thing would be incompatible with his democratic politics. Others have perceived the ambivalent character of his texts, but have taken that ambivalence to be a goal in itself, interpreting Rousseau’s rhetoric as a merely diffusive linguistic artifice. The interpretations put forward in this dissertation will show that both these positions are wrong. We will claim that the ambivalences found in Rousseau are subservient to the different “philosophical” views that he offers to the different types of readers he addresses. The study of Rousseau’s rhetorical strategy is, therefore, propaedeutic to the study of his politics, particularly in what concerns the questions of freedom and inequalities in the relation between rulers and ruled. Half of this work will be dedicated to the elucidation of the difference between his philosophical and his political views on the nature of human freedom and inequalities, which will happen through the interpretation of the connection between his mode of writing and the nature of his political principles. The complexity of Rousseau’s rhetoric lies in the mélange between what is persuasion and what is argument in his texts. To unravel this mélange is to articulate his philosophical discourse or, what we prefer to call, his philosophical rhetoric.