LEADER 04199oam 2200517 450 001 9910813466803321 005 20230124200844.0 010 $a0-8122-9780-6 024 7 $a10.9783/9780812297805 035 $a(CKB)4100000011748185 035 $a(MiAaPQ)EBC6469798 035 $a(DE-B1597)573149 035 $a(OCoLC)1237399351 035 $a(DE-B1597)9780812297805 035 $a(EXLCZ)994100000011748185 100 $a20210629d2021 uy 0 101 0 $aeng 135 $aurcnu|||||||| 181 $ctxt$2rdacontent 182 $cc$2rdamedia 183 $acr$2rdacarrier 200 10$aHypocrisy and the philosophical intentions of Rousseau $ethe Jean-Jacques problem /$fMatthew D. Mendham 210 1$aPhiladelphia, Pennsylvania :$cUniversity of Pennsylvania Press,$d[2021] 210 4$d©2021 215 $a1 online resource (x, 230 pages) 311 0 $a0-8122-5283-7 320 $aIncludes bibliographical references and index. 327 $tFront matter --$tContents --$tAbbreviations and Conventions --$tIntroduction --$tChapter 1. I Could Never Have Been an Unnatural Father: Explaining the Discarded Children (ca. 1746?1778) --$tChapter 2. I Became Another Man: Reforms, Relapses, and the Soul of the Author (ca. 1749?1762) --$tChapter 3. It?s a Very Peculiar Citizen Who?s a Hermit: The Question of Civic Devotion (ca. 1754?1762) --$tChapter 4. A Lover of Peace or a Vile Insurgent? Confronting the Genevan Patriciate (ca. 1762?1768) --$tChapter 5. Excursus: The Revenge of Voltaire and the Autobiographical Turn (ca. October 1762? February 1765) --$tChapter 6. Only the Vicious Person Lives Alone: Social Duty and the Varieties of Solitude (ca. 1756?1778) --$tConclusion --$tNotes --$tIndex --$tAcknowledgments 330 $aWhy did Rousseau fail?often so ridiculously or grotesquely?to live up to his own principles? In one of the most notorious cases of hypocrisy in intellectual history, this champion of the joys of domestic life immediately rid himself of each of his five children, placing them in an orphans' home. He advocated profound devotion to republican civic life, and yet he habitually dodged opportunities for political engagement. Finally, despite an elevated ethics of social duty, he had a pattern of turning against his most intimate friends, and ultimately fled humanity and civilization as such.In Hypocrisy and the Philosophical Intentions of Rousseau, Matthew D. Mendham is the first to systematically analyze Rousseau's normative philosophy and self-portrayals in view of the yawning gap between them. He challenges recent approaches to "the Jean-Jacques problem," which tend either to dismiss his life or to downgrade his principles. Engaging in a comprehensive and penetrating analysis of Rousseau's works, including commonly neglected texts like his untranslated letters, Mendham reveals a figure who urgently sought to reconcile his life to his most elevated principles throughout the period of his main normative writings. But after the revelation of the secret about his children, and his disastrous stay in England, Rousseau began to shrink from the ambitious philosophical life to which he had previously aspired, newly driven to mitigate culpability for his discarded children, to a new quietism regarding civic engagement, and to a collapse of his sense of social duty. This book provides a moral biography in view of Rousseau's most controversial behaviors, as well as a preamble to future discussions of the spirit of his thought, positing a development more fundamental than the recent paradigms have allowed for. 606 $aPHILOSOPHY / Individual Philosophers$2bisacsh 610 $aCultural Studies. 610 $aLiterature. 610 $aPhilosophy. 610 $aPolitical Science. 610 $aPublic Policy. 615 7$aPHILOSOPHY / Individual Philosophers. 676 $a194 686 $aMC 5182$qSEPA$2rvk 700 $aMendham$b Matthew David$01707671 801 0$bMiAaPQ 801 1$bMiAaPQ 801 2$bUtOrBLW 906 $aBOOK 912 $a9910813466803321 996 $aHypocrisy and the philosophical intentions of Rousseau$94096102 997 $aUNINA