This thesis attempts to offer a comprehensive account of the problem of amour-propre in the works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is divided into two parts. In the first part (the Introduction and the first chapter), I first aim to refute the optimistic reading of amour-propre that mainly finds favour in the scholarship of Nicholas Dent, Joshua Cohen, Frederick Neuhouser and John Rawls by proving that this reading is incoherent in itself and based on misuses of the original text. I elaborate my explanation via an investigation of Rousseau’s historical anthropology, showing that far from an inherently benign or neutral desire for the recognition of one’s equal moral status as the optimistic reading wrongly holds, amour-propre in Rousseau is a passion that drives one to seek social recognition of one’s superiority. I give my own account, that this passion emerges when seeking superiority, or relative standing in the eyes of others, is the only form amour de soi can take when striving to recover the egocentric mode of existence under the pressure of cultural mechanisms. In the second part (chapters 2, 3 and 4), I offer a comprehensive analysis of the three remedies to amour-propre that Rousseau proposes. These include the political remedy, which channels amour-propre into socially beneficial activities, mainly presented in Political Economy and his project for both Poland and Corsica, as well as some of his writings on international relations; Emile’s education, that, for the forthcoming era of egalitarianism and democracy, requires the harsh strangulation of this passion while sublimating what remains into conjugal love via Emile’s courtship of Sophie; the life of the solitary walker, who not only dismisses the interference of amour-propre in his reverie and botany, but also does so through the composition of the Reveries. I also probe into the conditions and the limits of each remedy in order to show Rousseau’s vision of the possibility of men’s redemption.
Rousseau and the problem of
Amour-propre: citizen, Emile and the recluse
Dang, C. (Author). 21 Jun 2022
Student thesis: Doctoral Thesis › Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)