Abstract

This text examines Rousseau's powerful crtitique of the idea that the self is a transparent, self-evident given. In all Rousseau's writings, the self plays a central explanatory role, but that role is always problematic, always in question. Rousseau kept his distance from his rationalistic predecessors and his materialistic contemporaries, and in that distance we encounter intimations of the post-modern. However, Rousseau is still a realist who criticizes the pretentions of scientists, not science itself, and in doing so offered the profoundest crtitique of the illustrations of his own age. The essays in this volume suggest that we have not yet exhausted the critical riches of his work.