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Dialogues: Rousseau juge de Jean-Jacques - Le Lévite d'Ephraïm
Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques (better known as Dialogues) was one of Rousseau's later and most puzzling works. Never before available in English, this neglected autobiographical piece was the product of the philosopher's old age and sense of persecution. In it, Rousseau sought to justify his entire career and undertook his most comprehensive reflection on himself as an author, his books, and his audience.
Long viewed simply as evidence of his growing paranoia, Dialogues consists of three conversations between a character named "Rousseau" and one identified only as "Frenchman" who discuss the bad reputation and works of an author named "Jean-Jacques." The work demonstrates that all Rousseau's writings share in a coherent "system"--a statement made at the outset of his career.
Long viewed simply as evidence of his growing paranoia, Dialogues consists of three conversations between a character named "Rousseau" and one identified only as "Frenchman" who discuss the bad reputation and works of an author named "Jean-Jacques." The work demonstrates that all Rousseau's writings share in a coherent "system"--a statement made at the outset of his career.
- Genres18th Century
544 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1776
3 people are currently reading
75 people want to read
About the author
Jean-Jacques Rousseau
4,729 books2,981 followersGenevan philosopher and writer Jean Jacques Rousseau held that society usually corrupts the essentially good individual; his works include
The Social Contract
and
Émile
(both 1762).
This important figure in the history contributed to political and moral psychology and influenced later thinkers. Own firmly negative view saw the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, apologists for various forms of tyranny, as playing a role in the modern alienation from natural impulse of humanity to compassion. The concern to find a way of preserving human freedom in a world of increasingly dependence for the satisfaction of their needs dominates work. This concerns a material dimension and a more important psychological dimensions. Rousseau a fact that in the modern world, humans come to derive their very sense of self from the opinions as corrosive of freedom and destructive of authenticity. In maturity, he principally explores the first political route, aimed at constructing institutions that allow for the co-existence of equal sovereign citizens in a community; the second route to achieving and protecting freedom, a project for child development and education, fosters autonomy and avoids the development of the most destructive forms of self-interest. Rousseau thinks or the possible co-existence of humans in relations of equality and freedom despite his consistent and overwhelming pessimism that humanity will escape from a dystopia of alienation, oppression, and unfreedom. In addition to contributions, Rousseau acted as a composer, a music theorist, the pioneer of modern autobiography, a novelist, and a botanist. Appreciation of the wonders of nature and his stress on the importance of emotion made Rousseau an influence on and anticipator of the romantic movement. To a very large extent, the interests and concerns that mark his work also inform these other activities, and contributions of Rousseau in ostensibly other fields often serve to illuminate his commitments and arguments.
This important figure in the history contributed to political and moral psychology and influenced later thinkers. Own firmly negative view saw the post-hoc rationalizers of self-interest, apologists for various forms of tyranny, as playing a role in the modern alienation from natural impulse of humanity to compassion. The concern to find a way of preserving human freedom in a world of increasingly dependence for the satisfaction of their needs dominates work. This concerns a material dimension and a more important psychological dimensions. Rousseau a fact that in the modern world, humans come to derive their very sense of self from the opinions as corrosive of freedom and destructive of authenticity. In maturity, he principally explores the first political route, aimed at constructing institutions that allow for the co-existence of equal sovereign citizens in a community; the second route to achieving and protecting freedom, a project for child development and education, fosters autonomy and avoids the development of the most destructive forms of self-interest. Rousseau thinks or the possible co-existence of humans in relations of equality and freedom despite his consistent and overwhelming pessimism that humanity will escape from a dystopia of alienation, oppression, and unfreedom. In addition to contributions, Rousseau acted as a composer, a music theorist, the pioneer of modern autobiography, a novelist, and a botanist. Appreciation of the wonders of nature and his stress on the importance of emotion made Rousseau an influence on and anticipator of the romantic movement. To a very large extent, the interests and concerns that mark his work also inform these other activities, and contributions of Rousseau in ostensibly other fields often serve to illuminate his commitments and arguments.
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March 1, 2025
This is a strange book and I feel like I could've gotten more out of it. I didn't take any notes because I couldn't get such a solid grip on this text so the review is whatever.
The themes of authorship I commented on in my review of Reveries of a Solitary Walker were even more prominent here, all but confirming my conclusion that we do not actually know the authors of these books. Keeping that thought in mind, it's only natural that this book would be named as it is: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques. Already from the outset we are dealing with a creation of an author and not just a fictional character. Basically, the book outlines the qualities of an author named J.J. against ill opinions against him propounded by a sinister group of "Gentlemen", and this content unfolds through a dialogue between a character named Rousseau, who has not read the books attributed to J.J. but has made his acquaintance, and a character called Frenchman, who has never seen J.J. but has read the bibliography attributed to him. There is, then, an interesting correspondence between the reality the characters refer to in their dialogue and the names attributed to them by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the reality in which the dialogue itself exists. Rousseau is complemented by J.J. and Frenchman is complemented by "Gentleman".
To begin untangling the contents of this book, one might just as well begin with the fact that Jean-Jacques Rousseau gives an important interpretive clue in the epilogue of this book. In the epilogue, he uses a quote about how the tormentor of Job could learn a thing or two from the Gentlemen who tormented J.J. and it happens to be the same quote that the character Rousseau uses in the dialogue. This means that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the writer whom J.J. refers to(confirmable by referring to footnotes by J.J.R.), is identified in the dialogue with the character of Rousseau. This gives the dialogue an interesting tenor: one of the participants of the dialogue is also the writer of the whole dialogue which in turn is attributed to the subject of the dialogue, Jean-Jacques. This suffices to show that Rousseau's lines are multi-layered. On one hand, they communicate the subject matter of the dialogue and the sad story of the man of Nature victimized by the sadism of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques. On the other hand, though, in the light of this new information it also encodes the views of the author Jean-Jacques Rousseau pertaining to his own narrative about himself. Every time Rousseau says something it has relevance not only in terms of his commentary on the man J.J. he met but also in terms of this type of man as a subject of writing and object of attention.
J.J. is characterized in contra-distinction to the academics and philosophers who are among his tormentors. He represents the impulse that attempts to attain the good directly but is easily discouraged by obstacles which are extraneous to the teleology of the original intent. The world of Gentlemen, by contrast, exists completely in the realm of obstacles, their pleasures defined in terms of the hollowed forms that only act as obstacles rather than in terms of content. Ultimately, they only get pleasure from hurting others, making them jealous or seeing them as more inferior than they, which means that their valuations are all collectivistic, bound up with their esteem in the eyes of others. The annoying thing is that the Gentlemen, sensitive to the hollow nature of things, are more adept at virtue as a defined, separate thing because it appears as a duty against a horrible nature that is hated, much like J.J. With J.J., we can't talk of virtue because his description defines an automatic correlate of virtue that exists only in striving: in the world of hollowed out ghouls, it only exists to be defaced.
Clearly, the characterization of J.J. is on a higher level a characterization of Nature. This corresponds nicely to the structure of this text as mentioned before: in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of the dialogue, a character of the dialogue Rousseau and the subject of the dialogue and the object of their attention Jean-Jacques are united in a single entity. There's a singular will above the text while the inhabitants of the dialogue talk in terms of disparate interests, much like J.J. exemplifies a singular will over and above the tangles of obstacles that are valorized by the Gentlemen. The concept of nature is similar in that it is assumed to have a kind of purity that works by itself and often takes on paradoxical forms, primary among these the existence of both the predator-prey struggle and parents' caring towards the weak children, reproduction and death etc. It is the interpretations of the writers that give it various qualities that appear to be fixed even though the reality behind the union of opposites is practically unfathomable, which is why Rousseau has to meet J.J. face to face.
However, it's not a simple matter of commenting on the demonization of nature and this observation provides a key to another major tension in the text that can help in interpreting it. This is not your stereotyped subtle atheistic manifesto: in fact, the ascendancy of atheism, materialism and Spinozism is well acknowledged by this point. This is not what the Enlightenment esotericism is about here. Rousseau sharply criticizes the philosophers of his day of pontificating on Nature and managing only to provide a new system of oppression to displace the old Christian one. The materialistic enlightenment is depicted as a conspiracy even more sinister than whatever went on before it, a conspiracy based around falsification of history and forgery. If Christians knew how to do it, why wouldn't they who claim to speak in the name of Nature? And how absurd does it appear when those people will claim not to be priests but quite the opposite. At the same time, though, J.J. is valored by Rousseau precisely because of his reliance on natural impulses as opposed to the dictates of virtue. To settle this contradiction, we must assume that Rousseau from the dialogue himself belongs to the conspiracy of nature, since he claims to speak in the name of Nature in the manner which he criticizes in the writers of the day, exemplifying himself the false morality he claims to detest. Not only does this change the tone of the dialogue again to a more initiatory style but it also reflects on Jean-Jacques Rousseau through the structure of the text and constitutes the revelation that he is the member of the conspiracy that he claims to be a victim of. And since Jean-Jacques Rousseau is J.J, and J.J. is nature, it follows that the reification of the natural person is part and parcel of the reality of the hollow shells and of the conspiracy.
Throughout the dialogue, there appears a refrain of the Gentlemen barring J.J.'s access to any information regarding the accusations against him. Most obviously, this part is reminiscent of Kafka's famous book The Trial. But it also couples interestingly with the equally prominent depiction of the fearful of reality of the conspirators, reaching its apex towards the end of the text. Just as J.J., they can trust no-one. Rousseau depicts them as bound by iniquities and transgressions into a tightly knit group but this group only stays together due to the animosity of its members towards each other; due to the fact they are fearful of their brothers who are their enemies. In a sense, then, they exist in the world of J.J. precisely because they are afraid of being J.J., the bumbling fool. Obviously, the situation is problematic and Rousseau presents an interesting theory that atheism and materialism were invented so that they would not have to worry about exposure due to the spiritual regret of people close to death. The result of this doctrine of Nature, at least at first, though, is a mish-mash which does leave people in obscurity as regards to the source of their guilt, just like J.J. The teaching is: if only Nature is real, you can't trust anybody and you also can't trust Nature's interpreters. The concept of Nature itself creates the Hollowed World, circling around its innocent sacrificial counter-part. The result is the infernal state of mind well-depicted by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Group dynamics become incredibly volatile and this spreads the chaos of elite existence to the masses, the rotten basis being further and further revealed: whence the revolutionary development.
Rousseau remarks that people can say almost anything of J.J. and they will believe anything told to them about it, which translates to: people will believe anything you say to them about Nature. J.J. the Man is a blank, he is the Azoth of the alchemists, just as the concept of Nature is the Azoth of the directors of the conspirators (who may be distinct from ordinary conspirators living under tyrannical realities). But just as much as he is Azoth, he is a man from a different order of things, as he is called in the dialogues: a hypothetical resident of a kingdom where there is content and the content is of more importance than the obstacle on the way to achieve it. Maybe it can be imagined as a place where movement is instantaneous rather than cumbersome and where a movement in space corresponds perfectly with its concept so that movement in the desired direction instantly brings that direction close to you, eroding the structures of separation in the bliss of direct inspiration. There is a strange thought about the unity of opposites which lends itself to the concept of Nature, namely, that they unite in some kind of metanoia of irrationality, a mystical experience. The next step, though, is to note that the duality of struggles and altruism was never real but rather part of the same thing not really distinct and this thing is not defined through its lower-order components like Nature but rather through its motion-type. And if we compare Rousseau to his opponent in the dialogue, the Frenchman (corresponding to the Gentlemen), perhaps this is the source of the difference between them and between the "directors" and the "gentlemen", or orphans and tyrants.
I still need to read this book many more times.
The themes of authorship I commented on in my review of Reveries of a Solitary Walker were even more prominent here, all but confirming my conclusion that we do not actually know the authors of these books. Keeping that thought in mind, it's only natural that this book would be named as it is: Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Rousseau, Judge of Jean-Jacques. Already from the outset we are dealing with a creation of an author and not just a fictional character. Basically, the book outlines the qualities of an author named J.J. against ill opinions against him propounded by a sinister group of "Gentlemen", and this content unfolds through a dialogue between a character named Rousseau, who has not read the books attributed to J.J. but has made his acquaintance, and a character called Frenchman, who has never seen J.J. but has read the bibliography attributed to him. There is, then, an interesting correspondence between the reality the characters refer to in their dialogue and the names attributed to them by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the reality in which the dialogue itself exists. Rousseau is complemented by J.J. and Frenchman is complemented by "Gentleman".
To begin untangling the contents of this book, one might just as well begin with the fact that Jean-Jacques Rousseau gives an important interpretive clue in the epilogue of this book. In the epilogue, he uses a quote about how the tormentor of Job could learn a thing or two from the Gentlemen who tormented J.J. and it happens to be the same quote that the character Rousseau uses in the dialogue. This means that Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the writer whom J.J. refers to(confirmable by referring to footnotes by J.J.R.), is identified in the dialogue with the character of Rousseau. This gives the dialogue an interesting tenor: one of the participants of the dialogue is also the writer of the whole dialogue which in turn is attributed to the subject of the dialogue, Jean-Jacques. This suffices to show that Rousseau's lines are multi-layered. On one hand, they communicate the subject matter of the dialogue and the sad story of the man of Nature victimized by the sadism of the Enlightenment, Jean-Jacques. On the other hand, though, in the light of this new information it also encodes the views of the author Jean-Jacques Rousseau pertaining to his own narrative about himself. Every time Rousseau says something it has relevance not only in terms of his commentary on the man J.J. he met but also in terms of this type of man as a subject of writing and object of attention.
J.J. is characterized in contra-distinction to the academics and philosophers who are among his tormentors. He represents the impulse that attempts to attain the good directly but is easily discouraged by obstacles which are extraneous to the teleology of the original intent. The world of Gentlemen, by contrast, exists completely in the realm of obstacles, their pleasures defined in terms of the hollowed forms that only act as obstacles rather than in terms of content. Ultimately, they only get pleasure from hurting others, making them jealous or seeing them as more inferior than they, which means that their valuations are all collectivistic, bound up with their esteem in the eyes of others. The annoying thing is that the Gentlemen, sensitive to the hollow nature of things, are more adept at virtue as a defined, separate thing because it appears as a duty against a horrible nature that is hated, much like J.J. With J.J., we can't talk of virtue because his description defines an automatic correlate of virtue that exists only in striving: in the world of hollowed out ghouls, it only exists to be defaced.
Clearly, the characterization of J.J. is on a higher level a characterization of Nature. This corresponds nicely to the structure of this text as mentioned before: in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the author of the dialogue, a character of the dialogue Rousseau and the subject of the dialogue and the object of their attention Jean-Jacques are united in a single entity. There's a singular will above the text while the inhabitants of the dialogue talk in terms of disparate interests, much like J.J. exemplifies a singular will over and above the tangles of obstacles that are valorized by the Gentlemen. The concept of nature is similar in that it is assumed to have a kind of purity that works by itself and often takes on paradoxical forms, primary among these the existence of both the predator-prey struggle and parents' caring towards the weak children, reproduction and death etc. It is the interpretations of the writers that give it various qualities that appear to be fixed even though the reality behind the union of opposites is practically unfathomable, which is why Rousseau has to meet J.J. face to face.
However, it's not a simple matter of commenting on the demonization of nature and this observation provides a key to another major tension in the text that can help in interpreting it. This is not your stereotyped subtle atheistic manifesto: in fact, the ascendancy of atheism, materialism and Spinozism is well acknowledged by this point. This is not what the Enlightenment esotericism is about here. Rousseau sharply criticizes the philosophers of his day of pontificating on Nature and managing only to provide a new system of oppression to displace the old Christian one. The materialistic enlightenment is depicted as a conspiracy even more sinister than whatever went on before it, a conspiracy based around falsification of history and forgery. If Christians knew how to do it, why wouldn't they who claim to speak in the name of Nature? And how absurd does it appear when those people will claim not to be priests but quite the opposite. At the same time, though, J.J. is valored by Rousseau precisely because of his reliance on natural impulses as opposed to the dictates of virtue. To settle this contradiction, we must assume that Rousseau from the dialogue himself belongs to the conspiracy of nature, since he claims to speak in the name of Nature in the manner which he criticizes in the writers of the day, exemplifying himself the false morality he claims to detest. Not only does this change the tone of the dialogue again to a more initiatory style but it also reflects on Jean-Jacques Rousseau through the structure of the text and constitutes the revelation that he is the member of the conspiracy that he claims to be a victim of. And since Jean-Jacques Rousseau is J.J, and J.J. is nature, it follows that the reification of the natural person is part and parcel of the reality of the hollow shells and of the conspiracy.
Throughout the dialogue, there appears a refrain of the Gentlemen barring J.J.'s access to any information regarding the accusations against him. Most obviously, this part is reminiscent of Kafka's famous book The Trial. But it also couples interestingly with the equally prominent depiction of the fearful of reality of the conspirators, reaching its apex towards the end of the text. Just as J.J., they can trust no-one. Rousseau depicts them as bound by iniquities and transgressions into a tightly knit group but this group only stays together due to the animosity of its members towards each other; due to the fact they are fearful of their brothers who are their enemies. In a sense, then, they exist in the world of J.J. precisely because they are afraid of being J.J., the bumbling fool. Obviously, the situation is problematic and Rousseau presents an interesting theory that atheism and materialism were invented so that they would not have to worry about exposure due to the spiritual regret of people close to death. The result of this doctrine of Nature, at least at first, though, is a mish-mash which does leave people in obscurity as regards to the source of their guilt, just like J.J. The teaching is: if only Nature is real, you can't trust anybody and you also can't trust Nature's interpreters. The concept of Nature itself creates the Hollowed World, circling around its innocent sacrificial counter-part. The result is the infernal state of mind well-depicted by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Group dynamics become incredibly volatile and this spreads the chaos of elite existence to the masses, the rotten basis being further and further revealed: whence the revolutionary development.
Rousseau remarks that people can say almost anything of J.J. and they will believe anything told to them about it, which translates to: people will believe anything you say to them about Nature. J.J. the Man is a blank, he is the Azoth of the alchemists, just as the concept of Nature is the Azoth of the directors of the conspirators (who may be distinct from ordinary conspirators living under tyrannical realities). But just as much as he is Azoth, he is a man from a different order of things, as he is called in the dialogues: a hypothetical resident of a kingdom where there is content and the content is of more importance than the obstacle on the way to achieve it. Maybe it can be imagined as a place where movement is instantaneous rather than cumbersome and where a movement in space corresponds perfectly with its concept so that movement in the desired direction instantly brings that direction close to you, eroding the structures of separation in the bliss of direct inspiration. There is a strange thought about the unity of opposites which lends itself to the concept of Nature, namely, that they unite in some kind of metanoia of irrationality, a mystical experience. The next step, though, is to note that the duality of struggles and altruism was never real but rather part of the same thing not really distinct and this thing is not defined through its lower-order components like Nature but rather through its motion-type. And if we compare Rousseau to his opponent in the dialogue, the Frenchman (corresponding to the Gentlemen), perhaps this is the source of the difference between them and between the "directors" and the "gentlemen", or orphans and tyrants.
I still need to read this book many more times.
March 12, 2019
Wow. A very interesting read, although at times it felt a little over stated. The editors make the suggestion of reading the Dialogues prior to Rousseau’s other works... I on the other hand had read all his major works, including the Confessions (but excluding the Solitary Walker) prior to reading the Dialogues. I wonder how my views and opinions of his work would have changed had I read this first. Rousseau appears to have a level of paranoia that having no knowledge of his personal life outside of his own writings, I was unaware of... I am interested to learn more about what was happening in his life that made him write this work, outside of his own reflection.
Rousseau is a fascinating individual on so many levels and this certainly was a worthwhile read though I believe reading it after his major works makes much more sense.
Rousseau is a fascinating individual on so many levels and this certainly was a worthwhile read though I believe reading it after his major works makes much more sense.
June 15, 2023
Ötletem sincs miért is kezdtem olvasni ezt a könyvet, de így befejezve rájöttem pár dologra Rousseauval kapcsolatban.
Pl., hogy több maradt volna belőle az utókorra ha ezt a giccses önfényezést, idegesítő önsajnálkozó könyvet nem írja meg. Mindenféle anakronisztikus megbélyegzés nélkül kimondható, hogy Rousseau se volt szent és már a maga korában is hitványságnak minősült, ahogy pl. a nőkkel, vagy a gyerekeivel (fattyaival) bánt (értsd: előbbiekkel megalázóan, utóbbiakkal sehogyan sem...).
De mindegy is értékeljük az embert eredményei alapján, ami Rousseaut a pantheonba emelte, és biztosra veszem, hogy ez megtörtént volna akkor is, ha ezt a kötetet nem írja meg.
Pl., hogy több maradt volna belőle az utókorra ha ezt a giccses önfényezést, idegesítő önsajnálkozó könyvet nem írja meg. Mindenféle anakronisztikus megbélyegzés nélkül kimondható, hogy Rousseau se volt szent és már a maga korában is hitványságnak minősült, ahogy pl. a nőkkel, vagy a gyerekeivel (fattyaival) bánt (értsd: előbbiekkel megalázóan, utóbbiakkal sehogyan sem...).
De mindegy is értékeljük az embert eredményei alapján, ami Rousseaut a pantheonba emelte, és biztosra veszem, hogy ez megtörtént volna akkor is, ha ezt a kötetet nem írja meg.
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