The Confessions of JeanJacques Rousseau
“Judging by his own account, Rousseau must have been a difficult man to know. Irritable, paranoid, and egomaniacal, he is nonetheless portrayed on his own terms by narrator Jonathan Keeble…Keeble, however, simply takes the man as he was and as he attempts to present himself in this work. There is some question as to the absolute truth of what Rousseau wrote, but not of the truth of this performance.”
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Published four years after Rousseau’s death, The Confessions is a remarkably frank and honest self portrait, described by Rousseau as “the history of my soul.”
From his idyllic youth in the Swiss mountains, to his career as a composer in Paris and his abandonment of his children, Rousseau lays bare his entire life with preternatural honesty. He relates his scandals, follies, jealousies, sexual exploits, and unrequited loves, as well as the torrential events surrounding his controversial works Discourses, Émile, and The Social Contract, which led to his persecution and wanderings in exile.
The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau provides an invaluable window into the making of the man, the society he lived in, and the development of ideas that would have a profound influence on philosophers and political theorists to come.
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