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20.500.12657/24573

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-2012)

Abstract

While throughout 2012 the celebration fasts will have been able to give Romusseauist criticism the image of a rich and varied discipline, flourishing with fringes and virtuosity, this efflorescence of the tricentenary of the birth of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-2012) struggling to mask the crisis and the sometimes violent divergences that go through it. These would be of little importance if, among other crucial issues, they did not affect Rousseau itself and the understanding we can have of his work. In the past, driven solely by the desire to advance the knowledge of the citizen of Geneva, the inflation of the studies to which he is bound is no longer dictated by scientific reasons alone, but also by tacit competition between tenants of approaches viewed as radically different, tending to restore Rousseau to the integrity of his text in accordance with the requirements of traditional philology; to think about him from a historical perspective, intended for the emergence of the work in its century, its reception and its posthumous travels; or, on the contrary, to interpret it in a purely conceptual and speculative purpose trying to unify it and ensure its compatibility with subsequent ideologies and commonalities, whose ramifications extend to our time. For a long time opacified by the variety of their manifestations, such as a polygraphic work that touched on political philosophy, pedagogy, music, botanics, chemistry, cosmography, history, but also theatre, novel and academic iography, these differences were embodied, at the time of tricennial, in all rival projects, demonstrating the desire of everyone to take ownership, destitute and infeoder Rousseau into a unique reading, approach, method or discipline. This desire, which finds its sources in Rousseau’s special relationship between him and his readers (the hope that a generation of readers will rehabilitate her memory), is reflected in criticism itself by adopting characteristic postures, a certain poetic inspired by the work it is supposed to elucidate, and the panic proliferation of publications seeking, by number, to establish authority over the corpus, to undermine or discredit any dissent, and finally to be the master and defender of the thought that was initially sought to be understood. Where should Rousseau therefore be sought? Perhaps in these pages, which bring together seventeen studies carried out by researchers of all generations, specialities and nationalities, make the bold point that the encyclopaedic richness and the complementarity of Rousseau’s approaches are hardly in vain. Since they were launched in 1974, the Eleventh Century Studies had not yet devoted a full volume of their prestigious collection to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s work, life and ideas. With this publication, they finally give the citizen the most subtle tribute: anyone who denounces the blind self-celebration of his readers, returning in a very simple and unfettered way, on his own.

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