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3.17 AVERAGE
3.17 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
informative
lighthearted
reflective
tense
fast-paced
There are many gems of thought throughout the text, but for the most part Rousseau is a whiny, pathetic, self-pitying sort of fellow.
I read this book intermittently over a number of years. Most of the Mesdames and Messieurs blurred together after a while. I enjoyed Rouseau's insights, though, and treated each time I picked the book up as a separate experience. I could vaguely imagine Rousseau's ghost haunting my book case, monologuing incessantly about his grievances and virtuousness. I used the receipt for another book I'd bought as the bookmark.
Honesty, which you can find in any tawdry internet ejaculation, is worthless when shameless. Shame is what makes Jean-Jacques Rousseau's honesty in this book brilliant, startling, and human. Not surprisingly, honesty is only one of many traits to adore in Rousseau -- the man, the writer, the character -- and his intriguingly layered voyage into the textual self.
Les Confessions de Jean-Jacques Rousseau est une autobiographie couvrant les cinquante-trois premières années de la vie de Rousseau, jusqu'à 1765.
I'd certainly recommend it if someone's looking for a good autobiography of a historical figure. This stands as second to Mill's Autobiography for me.
I think the best thing about Confessions is the context it gives, which then helps our understanding of Rousseau’s ideas. I think the lives of philosophers (and thinkers generally) are remarkably understudied, and I think it would be much more useful to us in understanding ideas if we gave as much thought to the social, political and emotional Milieus that gave rise to those ideas as to the ideas themselves.