Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Restless Genius Paperback – Illustrated, August 14, 2007

It took me too long to find this book. Being a devotee of Voltaire for many years while also devoted to the history and literature of 18th century France, I simply brushed aside the criticism of Rousseau by his contemporaries. A fault of mine to do so before investigation. This book has given me the full picture of the “Enlightenment” and now equipped with both sides of the story, I have drawn my own conclusion.Rousseau was taking courageous leaps into the inner world and was, as Mr. Damrosch suggested, the forerunner to modern psychology. The author has also taken a courageous leap to inform the reader of the total man, warts and all, and explained in depth the suffering Rousseau endured by breaking from the outwardly motivated thinkers of the Enlightenment. What Rousseau experienced through the portals of suffering was condemned and judged by those who did not understand his suffering to be their own. It is interesting Rousseau found Ovid’s words, “Barbarus hic ego sum quia non intelligor illus,” to be his belief. “I am taken for a barbarian here because they don’t understand me.” What is understandable is that for one to forge his way to individuality isolation is required. Isolation can sometimes cause paranoid states but, in the mid-18 century, this was not known, and many called Rousseau mad. I agree fully with Mr. Damrosch that Jean-Jacques was not mad. He kept writing, discovering, and finding his eternal moments. Reading this biography has allowed me to share a few of those moments.UpdateEighteen months after writing the above, I am ready to post my review. I have in that time read Confessions with scrutiny and I walk with Rousseau’s Reveries. I returned to the biography and reread my notes, especially the final pages where Leo Damrosch so eloquently describes those of us who, connected to the soulful and pioneering works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, are his friends. I have found this to be true.

Until Damros published this 2005 National Book Award finalist, there has not been a good single-volume biography of Rousseau in the English language. This is because Rousseau's own auto-biography, "Confessions" (1782), is so well done and the number of sources for Rousseau's first 40 years are otherwise so weak, that writing a new biography is mostly a retelling of what Rousseau has already said. The strength of Damros' biography is to summarize Rousseau's life, his evolving thinking and his major works, including historical significance and context, while weaving in some of the best scholarship available after two centuries of reflection.His personality can best be describe as immature and "sharp at the edges". He either loved a person with all his heart, or hated them as his worst enemy. Usually, it started with the former and ended with the later, fueled by his paranoia and over-active imagination. These are traits one normally sees in a child, a black and white world view of love and hate unable to deal with the ambiguities of human weaknesses - which makes sense given Rousseau's brilliant genius combined with his abusive child-hood; lacking a mother he needed to trust someone, but at the same time could trust no one because of his abusive past. This fueled his desire for self-sufficiency and subsequent rejection of dependent relationships - thus he was naturally conflicted in an 18th C French society which was based on hierarchies of dependencies, where everyone was either the master of someone, or mastered by someone (and usually both)--Rousseau found a way to both live and preach an isolated life of self-sufficiency and inward reflection, hallmarks of the modern man. The master of no one, mastered by no one, and completely isolated from everyone. All of this is directly reflected in his works and ideas, so it is possible to fully understand Rousseau's works by understanding Rousseau the person - this biography paints the full portrait and answers many questions.

The author is an unabashed admirer, adorer and worshipper of JJ-Rousseau, which is a pity because he knows a lot about the man that he glosses or skips over because it doesn't fit in with his theories. He sentimentalizes the author's relationship with his housekeeper-mistress, for example. It is well known that she was a shrew who dominated him completely and, given the man's indifference to sex, spent much of her time getting sturdier bucks into bed. The main crime held against Rousseau is having abandoned her five children at birth, which caused general outrage when it was revealed, long after he had become the luminary of modern education and child-rearing. It is my belief that none of the five children he abandoned were his, that she had them all by other men and he didn't want them for the same reason that many men wouldn't want to be responsible in such circumstances. This does not justify his action, of course, but it does mitigate it somewhat! He never denied they were his, at least not publicly, but this was because he was afraid of the ridicule which would be heaped on him, and perhaps also out of loyalty to the mother. The author makes no mention, also, of Therese's carrying on with village swains during the time they were in England, which was well documented at the time. I think that these sordid facts make Rousseau more interesting and understandable, and help us understand how much there is of myth in the image later generations formed of him. Apart from this and the oppressively laudatory tone, it is a colourful and entertaining book and I read it with pleasure. The author is a bit wet behind the ears, though - just like all Rousseau-freaks!