"Above all, Rousseau is the explorer of that dark continent, the modern self. It is no surprise that he wrote one of the most magnificent autobiographies of all time, his Confessions. Personal experience starts to take on a significance it never had for Plato or Descartes. What matters now is less objective truth than truth-to-self – a passionate conviction that one's identity is uniquely precious, and that expressing it as freely and richly as possible is a sacred duty. In this belief, Rousseau is a forerunner not only of the Romantics, but of the liberals, existentialists and spiritual individualists of modern times."
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Academics from FrancePhilosophers from FranceAcademics from SwitzerlandPhilosophers from SwitzerlandBiologists from France
Original Language: English
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Sources
Terry Eagleton, "What would Rousseau make of our selfish age?", The Guardian (June 27, 2012)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jean-Jacques_Rousseau
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Jean-Jacques Rousseau
1712 – 1778
französisch-schweizerischer Schriftsteller und Philosoph
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