IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB255556673

Genealogical narrative and self-knowledge in Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and the Foundations of Inequality among Men (2016)

Griswold, Charles (Author)

History of European Ideas
Volume: 42
Issue: 2
Pages: 276-301

URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01916599.2015.1115223

DOI: 10.1080/01916599.2015.1115223

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Why did Rousseau cast the substance of the Second Discourse in the form of a genealogy? In this essay the author attempts to work out the relation between the literary form (genealogical narrative, as the author calls it) of the Discourse's two main parts and the content. A key thesis of Rousseau's text concerns our lack of self-knowledge, indeed, our ignorance of our ignorance. The author argues that in a number of ways genealogical narrative is meant to respond to that lack. In the course of his discussion he comments on Rousseau's puzzling remarks in the Second Discourse about his expository method. Further, given the thesis that we lack self-knowledge, Rousseau owes us an account of his genesis as self-knowing genealogist. He attempts to do so in part through his narrative of the ‘illumination of Vincennes’. The author examines that narrative as well, reading it and the Discourse in light of each other. Can Rousseau resolve the problems of self-reference that the philosophical use of genealogy often leads to? The article discusses this complex metaphilosophical problem, along with views about the value of genealogical accounts, in light of recent work by Robert Guay, John Kekes, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Frederick Neuhouser, among others.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB255556673/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Martina Reuter; (2017)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Mary Wollstonecraft on the Imagination (/isis/citation/CBB767524470/)

Article Hormigón Blánquez, Mariano; (2000)
La venta del aire. Las ciencias en Rousseau (/isis/citation/CBB000340227/)

Article Célia Abele; (2021)
Rousseau's Herbaria: Leaves of Self, Books of Nature (/isis/citation/CBB600182325/)

Article Sonenscher, Michael; (2009)
Ideology, Social Science and General Facts in Late Eighteenth-Century French Political Thought (/isis/citation/CBB001030362/)

Chapter Thompson, Helen; (2012)
The “Fair Savage”: Empiricism and Essence in Sarah Fielding's The History of Ophelia (/isis/citation/CBB001200745/)

Article John J. Callanan; (2017)
Kant on the Spontaneous Power of the Mind (/isis/citation/CBB320829578/)

Chapter Cambi, Franco; (2003)
Rousseau filosofo teoretico (/isis/citation/CBB000430305/)

Book Guichet, Jean-Luc; (2006)
Rousseau, l'animal et l'homme: L'animalité dans l'horizon anthropologique des Lumières (/isis/citation/CBB000954571/)

Thesis MacLean, Lee Margaret; (2002)
The Free Animal: Free Will and Perfectibility in Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (/isis/citation/CBB001562239/)

Article Nicholas R. Baima; (2018)
Playing with Intoxication: On the Cultivation of Shame and Virtue in Plato’s Laws (/isis/citation/CBB840474327/)

Article Emily A. Austin; (2016)
Praising the Unjust: The Moral Psychology of Patriotism in Plato’s Protagoras (/isis/citation/CBB560401349/)

Article Jaffro, Laurent; Maurer, Christian; Petit, Alain; (2013)
Pathologia, A Theory of the Passions (/isis/citation/CBB001201212/)

Article John P. Wright; (2017)
Custom and Habit in Physiology and the Science of Human Nature in the British Enlightenment (/isis/citation/CBB850981173/)

Article Maurer, Christian; Jaffro, Laurent; (2013)
Reading Shaftesbury's Pathologia: An Illustration and Defence of the Stoic Account of the Emotions (/isis/citation/CBB001201193/)

Article Ossa-Richardson, Anthony; (2013)
Possession or Insanity? Two Views from the Victorian Lunatic Asylum (/isis/citation/CBB001201306/)

Article Fernando Calderón Quindós; (2021)
Los "Caractères de Botanique" de Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ensayo de braquigrafía botánica (/isis/citation/CBB554628640/)

Article Simon, Julia; (2012)
Diverting Water in Rousseau: Technology, the Sublime, and the Quotidian (/isis/citation/CBB001201885/)

Chapter Goldschmidt, Victor; (1980)
Le problème de la civilisation chez Rousseau (et la réponse de d'Alembert au Discours sur les sciences et les arts) (/isis/citation/CBB000014596/)

Book Cook, Alexandra; (2012)
Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Botany: The Salutary Science (/isis/citation/CBB001252489/)

Article Cook, Alexandra; (2007)
Botanical Exchanges: Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Duchess of Portland (/isis/citation/CBB000760672/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}