Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. Zachary Davis: Rousseau pioneered new ways of thinking about education, politics, and the human personality that still resonate in modern society.ĭavid Bell: So, this notion of the corrupting effects of society, as we understand society, the notion of the effect of childhood experience on the formation of adult personality, the influence of personality upon, upon the written word and upon writing-I think these are all enormously powerful examples of the way that Rousseau influences people. I'm a specialist in French history, particularly the history of the 18th century, the early 19th century, which is to say the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and Napoleon. I'm a professor of history at Princeton University.

The book just, you know, invented so much of, of the modern, of the modern mindset, if you want to call it that. This autobiography was called Confessions.ĭavid Bell: It's such a, a book that seems to be at the, at the starting point for so much of modern culture, for so much of, not just of modern culture, but of the way we, we think today in Western societies.

In his later years, he wrote a detailed account of his life to help explain how his own experiences shaped his personality, views, neuroses, and imperfections. Rousseau believed that society has an enormous influence on human development and behavior. He was a philosopher, writer, and music composer in the 18th century. The two opening volumes of the Confessions, presented in this inevitably censored edition of 1903, deal with the author’s childhood and callow adolescence.įor further information, including links to online text, reader information, RSS feeds, CD cover or other formats or languages (if available), please go to the LibriVox catalog page for this recording.įor more free audio books or to become a volunteer reader, visit Davis: Jean-Jacques Rousseau led an interesting life. Others may recall the compulsive self-searching of the narrator of Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu, who also rather dwelt on the co-existence in the individual of the vile and the virtuous.

Some readers may be repelled by his tendency to revel in embarrassing accounts of humiliation and fiasco, as if he were striving too hard to achieve an ultimate nakedness, a nakedness of the soul perhaps. Rousseau’s lengthy and sometimes anguished dossier on the Self is one of the most remarkable and courageous works of introspection ever undertaken. “Thus I have acted these were my thoughts such was I.” LibriVox recording of Confessions, volumes 1 and 2, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

Confessions jean jacques rousseau