Neohelicon
Volume/Issue:
Volume 28: Issue 2

Rousseau the Philosophe as Anti-philosophe: The Testimony of theCorrespondence

Author:
Arnold Ages 281 HillhurstBlvd. Toronto Ontario M6B 1M9 Canada 281 HillhurstBlvd. Toronto Ontario M6B 1M9 Canada

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Pages:
175–189
Online Publication Date:
26 Oct 2004
Publication Date:
31 Dec 2001
Article Category:
Research Article
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1013898526221
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Abstract  

Rousseau is generally associated with the eighteenth century French philosophes in what Peter Gay called “The Party of Humanity.”While it is true that Rousseau shared many of the progressive political and philosophical ideas of that group of enlightened figures, he parted company with them on basic issues of theology and religion. This is apparent in the reading of Rousseau's published works - where his religious instincts especially, separate him from the radical wing of the French Enlightenment. There is an enormous distance between his “Profession du vicaire savoyard”and Diderot's Penses philosophiques. It is in his great correspondence, however, that one may see just how Rousseau differed from his colleagues in the struggle against religious and political obscurantism. In his letters he discourses brilliantly on basic metaphysical questions and proposes intuition over reason as a more serious intellectual modality. Beyond even those philosophes such as Voltaire, who embraced a kind of vapid deism, Rousseau uses his correspondence to endorse a mystical conception of the universe in which emotion, imagination and feeling are inextricably bound up. In his survey of contemporary philosophical ideas Rousseau expresses as much scorn for intolerant religious dogma as he does for the extreme expressions of atheism. There are many letters in which he argues against the materialist interpretation of matter and demands of the atheist school convincing intellectual proofs for their theses. In the correspondence Rousseau has a great deal to say about his own conception of God, immortality and the soul. His eschatology is, of course, different from the conventional Christian one; he cannot or will not accept the idea of eternal damnation. In his discussion of religion in the letters Rousseau ranges far and wide; he considers, interalia, extra terrestrial life, the idea of free will, the purpose of rapture and theodicy. In this last arena, where a just God is seen to permit evil in the world, Rousseau waxes eloquent in trying to solve this age-old theological quandary. He does so by exploring definitions of the word evil and emphasizing the orderly nature of the universe. In this context, Rousseau, a master of the religious dialectic, reduces the problem of evil and death through an astute linguistic approach. Rousseau's final plea, as extracted from his correspondence, is that human beings must recognize the limits of reason as an instrument capable of solving all the metaphysical problems.

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Neohelicon
Print ISSN:
0324-4652
Online ISSN:
1588-2810

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Neohelicon
Language English
Size B5
Year of
Foundation		 1973
Volumes
per Year		 1
Issues
per Year		 2
Founder Akadémiai Kiadó
Founder's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
Publisher Akadémiai Kiadó
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Publisher's
Address		 H-1117 Budapest, Hungary 1516 Budapest, PO Box 245.
CH-6330 Cham, Switzerland Gewerbestrasse 11.
Responsible
Publisher		 Chief Executive Officer, Akadémiai Kiadó
ISSN 0324-4652 (Print)
ISSN 1588-2810 (Online)

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