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A review by millennial_dandy
Reveries of the Solitary Walker by Jean-Jacques Rousseau
challenging
emotional
reflective
3.75
<b> 3.5 rounded up to 4</b>
<i>"I, detached as I am from them and from the whole world, what am I? This must now be the object of my inquiry."(p.27)</i>
What a funny little gem of a book. Considering how unapproachable philosophy can feel, particularly if it's coming from as far back as Rousseau's day in the mid to late 18th century, 'Reveries of the Solitary Walker' does a lot to pull the veil back on what can otherwise be very dense, esoteric ideas.
'Reveries' isn't really a pure work of philosophy, but even as short drabbles resulting from thoughts an older Rousseau had while on his daily walks over a period of time, they offer some of the broad strokes of the bigger ideas he gets into in 'The Social Contract.' Moreover, it gets you inside the head of a real person rather than reducing a person's creative output to sterile words on a page.
Rousseau of 'The Solitary Walker' era is miserable, lonely, paranoid, and tired. He constantly refers to himself as a good, moral person who, for no adequately explored reason, has been kicked around his entire adult life to the point where he's been forced to retreat into the wilderness to live out the rest of his life alone. Which he's quite happy about, thank you very much.
Indeed, many individual quotes from his essays wouldn't have been out of place in an emo kid's diary circa 2008. The feelings of having been misunderstood, of being too sensitive for this cruel world certainly would have resonated with anyone using VampireFreaks.com back when it was a social networking site. IYKYK.
But although some have decried 'Reveries' as the ramblings of a sad old man (which they are), there's something I found to be almost whimsical about them. Though I'm sure in person he was miserable to be around, in describing his isolation and how it allowed him to find joy in the natural world around him, sparking a late in life passion for herbology, describing in detail his expeditions to nearby meadows to identify the smallest plants growing there provided some very ahead of its time cottagecore sensibilities that the girlies would still enjoy now.
He pushes back against the need to monetize your hobbies, pointing out that his interest in plants is in what they <i>are</i> not what they can produce. He goes a little off the rails with this on occasion, sliding into anti-intellectualism in places, but there is something that resonates about 'art for art's sake; in the capitalist hellscape in which we currently live.
Each chapter reflects his 'reveries' from a different walk, and they really do run the gamut from his musings on what makes a lie and whether it's ever morally acceptable to do to angry tirades towards those he perceives to victimize him, to long, dreamy passages describing the wild countryside where he'd row out into the middle of the lake and let himself be dragged gently along by the current on balmy summer afternoons.
It's readable, and there's probably something in it for everyone, just as there's probably something in it for anyone to dislike, but it certainly makes very human, and brings closer to the reader someone that otherwise gets relegated to the austere name on the spine of a lofty academic text.
If anything would either prompt someone to attempt something like 'The Social Contract' or fling away the nearest copy of it, it's probably 'Reveries of the Solitary Walker.'
<i>"I, detached as I am from them and from the whole world, what am I? This must now be the object of my inquiry."(p.27)</i>
What a funny little gem of a book. Considering how unapproachable philosophy can feel, particularly if it's coming from as far back as Rousseau's day in the mid to late 18th century, 'Reveries of the Solitary Walker' does a lot to pull the veil back on what can otherwise be very dense, esoteric ideas.
'Reveries' isn't really a pure work of philosophy, but even as short drabbles resulting from thoughts an older Rousseau had while on his daily walks over a period of time, they offer some of the broad strokes of the bigger ideas he gets into in 'The Social Contract.' Moreover, it gets you inside the head of a real person rather than reducing a person's creative output to sterile words on a page.
Rousseau of 'The Solitary Walker' era is miserable, lonely, paranoid, and tired. He constantly refers to himself as a good, moral person who, for no adequately explored reason, has been kicked around his entire adult life to the point where he's been forced to retreat into the wilderness to live out the rest of his life alone. Which he's quite happy about, thank you very much.
Indeed, many individual quotes from his essays wouldn't have been out of place in an emo kid's diary circa 2008. The feelings of having been misunderstood, of being too sensitive for this cruel world certainly would have resonated with anyone using VampireFreaks.com back when it was a social networking site. IYKYK.
But although some have decried 'Reveries' as the ramblings of a sad old man (which they are), there's something I found to be almost whimsical about them. Though I'm sure in person he was miserable to be around, in describing his isolation and how it allowed him to find joy in the natural world around him, sparking a late in life passion for herbology, describing in detail his expeditions to nearby meadows to identify the smallest plants growing there provided some very ahead of its time cottagecore sensibilities that the girlies would still enjoy now.
He pushes back against the need to monetize your hobbies, pointing out that his interest in plants is in what they <i>are</i> not what they can produce. He goes a little off the rails with this on occasion, sliding into anti-intellectualism in places, but there is something that resonates about 'art for art's sake; in the capitalist hellscape in which we currently live.
Each chapter reflects his 'reveries' from a different walk, and they really do run the gamut from his musings on what makes a lie and whether it's ever morally acceptable to do to angry tirades towards those he perceives to victimize him, to long, dreamy passages describing the wild countryside where he'd row out into the middle of the lake and let himself be dragged gently along by the current on balmy summer afternoons.
It's readable, and there's probably something in it for everyone, just as there's probably something in it for anyone to dislike, but it certainly makes very human, and brings closer to the reader someone that otherwise gets relegated to the austere name on the spine of a lofty academic text.
If anything would either prompt someone to attempt something like 'The Social Contract' or fling away the nearest copy of it, it's probably 'Reveries of the Solitary Walker.'