‘S’éclairer en dedans’: Rousseau and the Autobiographical Construction of Truth
Abstract
The objective of this article is to shed light on how Rousseau’s autobiographical writings—not only the Confessions, but also the Dialogues and the Rêveries—bring out the peculiar conception of his philosophy of truth, which, far from counterpoising itself to the philosopher’s autobiographical narrative, finds in it its preferred means of expression. The point of departure for the analysis is the fourth Promenade in the Rêveries. In addition to presenting an important taxonomy of lies, this work takes shape ‘negatively’—that is, through a defensive attitude from Rousseau— a true theory of autobiographical fiction. At the heart of this theory is an unprecedented distinction within the notion of truth. Alongside effectual truth, exalted by other philosophes and inevitably opposed to fiction, is a moral truth. The autobiographical narrative represents Jean-Jacques’ preferred means of access with respect to the second type, which the philosopher dedicated his entire existence
studying—as indicated by his favourite motto, vitam impendere vero. Here resides the intrinsic philosophical dimension of autobiographical narration: in it fiction does not only give access to truth, but has the function of constructing it.
Keywords
Jean-Jacques Rousseau; Fiction; Truth; Lies
Rousseau’s autobiographical works—not only the Confessions, but also the Dialogues and the
Rêveries—seem, at first blush, to present an insurmountable challenge for his philosophical
reflection on truth. How is his philosophical thought, which is indisputably centered on the exaltation of the sincerity and the transparency of interpersonal relations, to be married with an autobiographical narrative that has been partly built on fiction and the manipulation of events, as Rousseau himself admits more than once?
The objective of this article is to shed light on how Rousseau’s autobiographical writings bring out the peculiar conception of his philosophy of truth, which, far from counterpoising itself to the philosopher’s autobiographical narrative, finds in it its preferred means of expression. The point of departure for my analysis is the fourth Promenade in the Rêveries, a piece that is openly centered on the question of lies. My hypothesis is that, in addition to presenting an important taxonomy of lies, this work takes shape ‘negatively’—that is, through a defensive attitude from Rousseau— a true theory of autobiographical fiction.
I. Fiction Between Truth and Lies
The third and fourth Promenades of the Rêveries are traditionally considered to be the most strictly philosophical part of Rousseau’s final literary endeavors. The first of the two texts draws inspiration from a citation by the beloved essayist Plutarch, according to which ‘growing older, I continue learning’ (Rev3, OC I, 1011)1, to develop a reflection on knowing oneself, wisdom and
philosophical truth, all of which seem mockingly accessible to a human being only when, due to old age, he is no longer able to apply what he has learned. The melancholy conclusion of this
examination is the intention, ‘to leave life, not better, for that is impossible, but more virtuous than when I entered it’ (1023). The fourth Promenade, which, together with the third, constitutes a sort of diptych, relates to the problem of knowing oneself, once again under the aegis of Plutarch.2 The
use my walk the following day to examine myself on the subject of lying, setting about it firmly committed to the opinion that […] the Know Thyself of the Temple at Delphi was not such an easy maxim to follow as I had believed in my Confessions’ (Rev4, OC I, 1024). Prompted by this resolution is the epigraph from a pamphlet by the Abbé Rosier: vitam vero impendenti. This expression was read by Jean-Jacques as a repartee to his already-famous motto vitam impendere
vero,3 resulting in the urgent need for an examination of his conscience. These reveries unfold
throughout the description of a varied taxonomy of the act of lying,4 marked by autobiographical
memories, among them the famous episode of the stolen ribbon. The young Rousseau stole a ribbon belonging to Madam de Vercillis — a woman who took Rousseau under her wing, and with whom he was living in Turin — after she died. When caught with the ribbon, he blamed the theft on a poor young girl, Marion, the house servant. This episode, which has been elevated to an emblematic moment (just as Mademoiselle Lambercier’s broken comb5), was sure to have sparked within him
an instinctive and enduring horror regarding any involved lie: ‘Never has a premeditated lie come near my mind, and never had I lied to my own advantage’ (1033). Once again, philosophical
reflection is combined with a pro domo sua exhortation—another constant in the Rêveries. Just as in the third Promenade, his intimate conviction allows Jean-Jacques to exculpate himself through the hypothesis whereby the philosophical system he elaborated in good faith might be marked by error, in the same way that in the fourth Promenade the (subjective) absence of remorse is elevated to an objective proof of innocence.
In light of these premises, the fourth Promenade has always played a privileged role, in the
nouvelle vague of Rousseauian criticism (that is, in the interpretive hypothesis centered on the
inseparability of thought and writing),6 with respect to reflections on sincerity. Various interpreters
who have focused on this question (in addition to Jean Starobinski, we might mention Alessandro Ferrara, Christopher Kelly and, recently, Kenneth Wain and Jason Neidleman) have, from time to time, emphasized different aspects of the Rousseauian doctrine of truth: his ethical perspective, his relationship with justice, his interlocking with the intimist and political dimensions, etc. All, however, agree and underscore that this doctrine represents a cornerstone of the Genevan philosopher’s morality.
Nevertheless, the fourth Promenade illustrates both how for Rousseau there is no
constitutive incompatibility between truth and (autobiographical) fiction but, rather, a potentially fruitful synergy, which is manifested in both the more strictly anthropological and moral realms— an aspect that has not received due attention from critics.7
II. Fiction and Factual Truth
At the heart of the fourth Promenade Rousseau provides what is almost certainly the only explicit definition of ‘fiction’ to be found in his work: ‘To lie without benefit or harm to oneself or to others is not to lie: it is not a lie, but a fiction’ (1029). Based on a similar definition—one that does not appear to be ‘demanding’ at a philosophical level—it is possible to reconstruct, across the pages of reveries, the complex dialectic between truth and lie that is established through fiction, and that allows for the emergence of the possibility of conferring fiction a moral function:
Fictions which have a moral aim are called apologues or fables, and since their aim is or should be simply to disguise useful truths in affecting and pleasing forms, in such cases there is hardly any attempt to conceal the factual lie, which is simply the disguise of truth, and the person who tells a fable simply as a fable is in no way lying. (1029)
This passage reveals the multiplicity of elements that are intertwined in the Rousseauian theory of moral fiction.8 Here originates the intrinsically ambiguous statute of the fictional dimension, which
poles. The distinction between lie and fiction is clear and linear: since falsehood is characterized primarily by its self-interest component, while the distinctive trait of fiction is its disinterested character, it is clear that there can be no identification between the two realms, even without the exclusion of a partial overlapping. This last aspect emerges, for example, in Rousseau’s judgement of the Temple de Gnide, a poem in prose centered on the opposition between bucolic love and civic love, published anonymously by Montesquieu in 1725: ‘If The Temple of Cnidus is a useful work, the story of the Greek manuscript is but a very innocent fiction; it is a blameworthy lie, if the work is dangerous’ (1032). In this case the connection between fiction and a lie can only be established a posteriori: if fiction leads the reader to believe in incorrect messages (for example, passion’s superiority over virtue) then it encroaches upon the realm of a lie; conversely, fiction preserves an impartial—or morally neutral—character.
Decidedly more ambiguous is the relationship between fiction and truth. While, on the one hand, its intrinsic disinterest saves the fictional dimension from the accusation of being a lie, its ‘unreality’ would seem to impede its access to the territory of truth, at least if understood—in following the definition given by the Encyclopédie, that reflects the oldest and most widespread philosophical concept of truth9—as the ‘conformity of our thought with its object’ (Enc. XVII,
Vérité, 68). The subsequent distinctions introduced throughout the course of the Promenade
demonstrate how the relationship maintained between truth and fiction is much more profound and constitutive than what a superficial analysis might lead us to believe.
In accordance with his usual argumentative technique, which is centered on contrasts, Rousseau proposes that at the origin of reveries is the contraposition between ‘people who are known in society to be truthful’ (gens qu’on appellee vrai dans le monde) and ‘the truthful man’ (homme vrai) (Rev4, OC I, 1031). This dichotomy sheds light on the notion of truth understood as corresponding to the facts, sometimes defined by Rousseau as ‘the truth of things’. This truth is inextricably tied to the society: the idea of truth as corresponding to facts implies being able to undergo an intersubjective verification. It is not by chance that ‘people who are known in society to be truthful’ associate truth with a narrative that is faithful to facts only when the facts are in a condition of neutrality with regard to it. In circumstances in which their interests are at stake, they are quick to adopt a ‘weaker’ definition of truth that, by associating it with something that entertains a relationship of non-contradiction with facts, justifies and legitimizes a series of behaviors
(omission, allusion, etc.) that are typical of mundane life. In this case, truth colludes with half-truth: ‘Their truthfulness is squandered on […] denying any fiction […]. As long as their own interests are not at risk, they are scrupulously truthful in the account that they give. But when it comes to dealing with some matter that concerns them or narrating some fact that is close to them, […] if a lie is useful to them and even if they refrain from telling it themselves, they contrive to promote it’ (1031).
Standing opposite to this entirely negative and utilitarian view of factual truth is the attitude of the ‘truthful man’, namely Rousseau himself:
In perfectly petty matters, the truth which the other man respects so much concerns him very little […]. But any words which may produce for somebody advantage or harm, respect or scorn, praise or blame, in spite of justice and truth, are a lie which will never come near his heart, his lips, or his pen. (1031)10
Thus emerges a legitimate initial use for fiction, which coincides with the condition of neutrality (or disinterest) of the homme vrai concerning truth, making it independent from a correspondence to facts. This idea of fiction finds is clearly expressed in the first Préface of the Nouvelle Héloïse, which is centered, not by chance, on the condemnation of mundaneness: ‘Although I bear only the title of Editor here, I have myself had a hand in this book, and I do not disguise this. Have I done the whole thing, and is the entire correspondence a fiction? Worldly people, what matters it to you? It is surely a fiction for you […]. As for the truth of the facts, I declare that having been several
times in the country of the two lovers, I have never there heard mention of the Baron d’Étange or his daughter […]’ (Nouvelle Héloïse, OC II, 5).
Nevertheless, this verification of a legitimate use of fiction does not lead to a depreciation of the notion of truth understood as a correspondence to facts. This equivalence not only endures in the case in which the interests of the homme vrai happen to be at stake, but it becomes significantly more rigorous with respect to the equivalence adopted by the homme du monde in the same situation. While the latter is ever faithful to truth only when he is indifferent to it, the former is more faithful to truth the more he must sacrifice for it: ‘He is decisively truthful, even when it is detrimental to him […]. This man is truthful in not seeking to deceive anyone; he is as faithful to the truth which accuses him as he is to that which does him credit, and he never deceives for his own advantage or to harm his enemy’ (Rev4, OC I, 1031).
III. Fiction and Moral Truth
The distinction between the truth of the homme vrai and the truth of the homme du monde—or, better yet, the distinction between the truth of ‘Jean-Jacques’ and that of society—even with the constructive role assigned to fiction in sight, still fails to represent its philosophical justification. For Rousseau, alongside the realm of the factual truth, which is inevitably dependent on intersubjective verification, is a second, more important, typology of truth which he defines as ‘moral truth’ (1031); this truth is less manifest, but more important than factual truth. While factual truth ‘is not always a good thing: sometimes it is a bad thing, very often it is an indifferent thing’, it is exclusively thanks to moral truth that ‘man learns how to behave, to be what he ought to be, to do what he ought to do, and to strive towards his true purpose’ (1026). The difference between these two types of truth was already suggested, albeit covertly, in the third Promenade, which opens with the painful contrast between ‘the pathetic truth’ and ‘sweet illusions’ (Rev3, OC I, 1011).11 The balance of power
between fiction and truth—understood as being in conformity with reality—appears to be entirely inverted here: ‘The state for which my heart longed’ cannot in fact be reached in the real ‘vortex of the world’, but only in the fictive realm: ‘My fiery imagination leapt over the whole span of the life that I have barely begun, as if it were unfamiliar territory to me, and sought instead to settle in a quiet resting place where I could make my dwelling’ (Rev3, OC I, 1012).
This ‘quiet resting place’, this ‘planet of self’ 12 from which Rousseau feels exiled, is
precisely the dimension of moral truth, which has no relation to factual truth, but must be searched for within. The ‘illumination of Vincennes’13, which in the personal mythology of Rousseau
indicates the beginning of philosophical speculation, allows him to intuitively understand truth: If anything has ever resembled a sudden inspiration, it is the motion that was caused in me by that reading; suddenly I felt my mind dazzled by a thousand lights; crowds of lively ideas presented themselves at the same time with a strength and a confusion that threw me into an inexpressible perturbation […]. If I had ever been able to write a quarter of what I saw and felt under that tree, how clearly I would have made all the contradictions of the social system seen. (Letters to Malesherbes, OC I, 1135)
This is the aspect that marks the fundamental qualitative difference between Jean-Jacques’
reflection and the empty metaphysical speculations of the other philosophes: ‘They studied human nature in order to be able to speak skillfully about it, but not to grasp its essence themselves; they worked to instruct others, but not for their own inner enlightenment (s’éclairer en dedans)’ (1013).
The originality of Rousseau’s position therefore consists of removing the question of truth from the canonic dimension of intersubjective recognition, only to transport it to the intimist and infra-subjective dimension of self-knowledge, which is intrinsically foreign to any type of
these ‘facts’ are subjected to an exclusively subjective and intuitive knowledge that is not objectively verifiable by others.
This theoretical move represents the philosophical crux of Rousseau’s autobiographism. In fact, the man who Rousseau calls sincere corresponds to himself—with ‘poor Jean-Jacques’—who, condemned to solitude from the rest of humankind, was able to remain fully himself, as confirmed by his experience with his reveries: ‘These hours of solitude and meditation are the only time of the day when I am completely myself […] and when I can truly say that that is what nature intended me to be’ (Rev2, OC I, 1002). While, throughout the course of all of the Rêveries, the homme vrai identifies with the promeneur solitaire, the homme du monde finds his own exemplification in the ruthless portrait of the Parisian society of philosophes, in which ‘there was nothing but lies and falsehood’ (Rev6, OC I, 1056).
The notion that ‘Jean-Jacques’, who was persecuted and rejected from all social orders, is also the only model upon which to build a legitimate human order, had already been long-illustrated in the Dialogues. Here Rousseau wishes to show the Frenchman how, while preserving the
innocence of a child (and therefore, by analogy, a man of nature), Jean-Jacques can become the model for a new ‘man of men’ who is able to remain faithful to nature while living in society: ‘He [Jean-Jacques] is what nature made him. Education has changed him very little. If his faculties and strengths had developed all at once right after his birth he would have been found then to be just about the same as when he reached maturity […]. Until the end of his life, he will not cease to be an elderly child’ (Dialogues, OC I, 799–800). In order to demonstrate this theory, Rousseau proposes to his skeptical interlocutor a sort of mental experiment which makes explicit use of fiction, and not of objective reality, to attain the delineation of a truthful moral portrait of Jean-Jacques: ‘Let’s set aside all the facts for a moment, let’s suppose that the only thing known is the temperament I described to you; and let’s see what would naturally result from that in a fictional being about whom we would have no other idea’ (820).
Upon closer inspection, the portrayal of this être fictive, of this ideal character, is the
principle objective of Rousseau’s autobiographism, understood through its dual purpose of knowing oneself for what one truly is and of making oneself known for what one truly is.14 The ‘true
Rousseau’ of his autobiographical writings—with their showy distinctiveness15—stand opposite to
not only the dishonest image divulged by his enemies (Rousseau the misanthrope, Rousseau the monster, Rousseau the idiot, etc.), but especially to other men, whose (false) distorted nature is the result of a process of moral and political degeneration.
The most significant consequence of this assumption is, in the sphere of moral truth, the extension of the legitimacy of the role of fiction with respect to what occurs in the sphere of factual truth. While in the latter territory the legitimacy of fiction is limited—even from the perspective of the sincere man (that is, of Jean-Jacques)—to the condition of neutrality or banality, in the domain of moral truth it extends to reality, which from this perspective does not find any objective
correlation in facts.
The relationship between truth and fiction is thus both—and with no contradictions— conflicting and supportive. If the term ‘truth’ is meant to indicate factual truth, then fiction inevitably stands opposite to it. Yet, as we have already had a chance to ascertain, factual truth cannot fully become an object of philosophical reflection in that it is often morally indifferent and, what is worse, it can be manipulated. To use an example taken from the Rêveries, we might consider the well-known episode of the Great Dane incident in the second Promenade, which Rousseau’s enemies use as an expedient for spreading the news of his death: ‘This is a trustworthy account of my accident. Within a few days the story spread across Paris, but it was changed and disfigured so much that it became quite unrecognizable’ (Rev2, OC I, 1006–7). For this reason, when recalling his writing of the Confessions, Rousseau candidly admits that he manipulated factual truth without having lied in any way: ‘When I have spoken against the truth as I knew it, it has only ever been in trivial matters, and all because of the difficulty I have in speaking or the pleasure I take in writing, and not because of my own self-interest or for the good or harm it could do to others’
(Rev4, OC I, 1038).16 It follows ‘that my professed truthfulness is based more on feelings of justice
and rectitude than on the reality of things, and that I have followed in practice more the moral dictates of my conscience than abstract notions of truth and falsehood’ (1038).
Yet, if the notion of a ‘factual truth’ (intersubjectively contingent and verifiable) substitutes that of a ‘moral truth’ (universal and unchanging, but at the same time removed from any potential verification of objectivity) then the relationship between truth and fiction changes radically, shifting from an oxymoron to a hendiadys. The fictional dimension, in fact, represents the favored—or even only possible—means of access to this type of truth. Only fiction, as the third Promenade reminds us, allows us to understand ‘my immoral nature’ and ‘the corresponding moral order’, in opposition to ‘physical order’ (Rev3, OC I, 1018), a limited dominion of the objectivity of facts. While factual truth can lead to ‘useful knowledge’, moral truth allows us to access the ‘virtues necessary for my situation in life’ (1023). For this reason, the former is at the heart of ‘the rootless, fruitless morality that they [the philosophes] arrogantly expund in books’ (1022), while the latter represents the essence of Rousseau’s intimate philosophy, centered entirely on self-knowledge and on the ‘sincerity of heart’ (1023). This integral tie between fiction and moral truth is brought to light in a statement in the fourth Promenade, which can be considered a programmatic declaration of intent: ‘What I should like to do in telling them is at least to substitute a moral truth for factual truth, that is to depict accurately the human heart’s natural affections and to draw from them some useful lesson’ (Rev4, OC I, 1033).
IV. A Fictional Anthropology
The will to examine ‘the human heart’s natural affections’ through fictional dynamics represents the central idea that unifies Rousseau’s stylistically heterogeneous and consciously asystematic
philosophical production. In fact, upon closer inspection, fiction (in its moral declination, of course) and philosophy share the same object of inquiry; that is, the study of the future of human nature which, as the famous Lettre à Christophe de Beaumont reminds us, comprises the core of the ‘Theory of man’ (OC IV, 941). Seeing as though the social man—the only one we are able to get to know in the dimension of ‘factual truth’—is in reality an irremediably anti-natural being, the sole instrument that we have available to revisit original nature—an element invested with a strong normative valence—is to imagine ourselves as natural; that is, to fictively reconstruct the primordial union between man and nature that has been forever lost. From this perspective, fiction is a heuristic instrument used to examine, through mental experiments with precise rules, that which we are not able to understand through experience (and is impeded by factual truth), but that can nevertheless be shared by other reasonable beings.
As recently reaffirmed by André Charrak, this fictional dynamic dominates Rousseau’s entire ‘theoretic’ production, starting at the earliest with his Discours sur l’inégalité. After
programmatically dismissing recourse to factual truth (‘Let us begin therefore, by laying aside facts, for they do not affect the question’, OC III, 132), Rousseau organizes the entire argumentative structure of the work around the fictive working hypothesis of the state of nature, ‘a state which no longer exists, has perhaps never existed, and probably will never exist’ (123), but which, for this very reason, becomes a fundamental frame of reference for understanding the current condition of civilized man. The same heuristic centrality of fiction—whose relevance is openly acknowledged in the second Préface of the Nouvelle Héloïse17—is found in the figure of the meta-legislator of the Contrat social, whose objective is to consider ‘men as they are and laws as they could be’ (OC III,
351) and, with even greater patency, in the figure of the pedagogue and ideal pupil in Émile. As meticulously demonstrated by Laurence Mall,18 the entire pedagogical doctrine cannot exclude a
refined intertwining between truth and fiction, which is found both in the description of Emilio’s characteristics and in the introduction of his social and sentimental ties. Even the refraction of the self in the alter egos of ‘Rousseau’ and ‘Jean-Jacques’, which characterizes the Dialogues—as we
have already affirmed—appears to be attributable to a clear theory of fiction (which elevates Jean-Jacques to a normative model of a new ‘man of men’) rather than to a pathological form of psychological dissociation, as has been suggested in the past.
The fictional inquiry is thus necessarily actualized in a ‘narrative anthropology’ (Rueff 575), based on the conviction that, due to the unbridgeable gap between the man of nature and the social man, the deduction of truth cannot be logical, but only chronological. The theory of man, in other words, cannot be reconstructed through demonstration, but only through (fictive) narration that demonstrates its development or, to use an expression in Rousseau’s vocabulary, ‘genealogy’ (Lettre à Ch. de Beaumont, OC IV, p. 936). This unique method of inquiry is insightfully described in a note in Émile dedicated to the uselessness of the history of events exalted by Voltaire. Seeing as though it is impossible to faithfully reconstruct the facts of the past in order to understand it (this is, once again, a question of the limitations of the ‘factual truth’), history is useful only when it is read based on its moral content. In other words, it should be seen as fiction: ‘Sensible men ought to regard history as a tissue of fables whose moral is very appropriate to the human heart’ (Émile, OC IV, p. 415).19 Only the metahistorical dimension of fiction, therefore, is truly able to showcase to an
individual the atemporal understanding of interiority,20 which, as the memorable incipit of the
Discours sur l’inégalité reminds us, is the only object worthy of philosophical reflection: ‘The most
useful and the least developed of all the sciences seems to me to be that of man, and I venture to suggest that the inscription on the Temple of Delphi [Know Thyself] alone contains a precept which is more important and more challenging than all the heavy tomes of moralists’ (Discours sur
l’inégalité, OC III, 122).
As is often the case with Rousseau, an integral ambivalence presents itself in the relationship between fiction and moral truth. On one hand, as confirmed by an analysis of ‘narrative
anthropology’, fiction is invested with an important heuristic function that consists of understanding and sharing that which is not objectively knowable at the level of factual truth. Though it was developed by Rousseau with impetus, the notion that fiction can give access to truth reflects a typical tendency of the Enlightenment, also found in other schools of thought: from Juris
Naturalism to the Philosophy of History, to Sensistic and Materialistic reflection (we might consider of the famous mental experiment of the living statue of Condillac21). From this perspective, fiction
has a relationship of asymmetric parallelism with philosophy: if it is true that not every fiction is necessarily philosophical, then it is equally true that any philosophical reflection that strives to study ‘moral truth’ in order to reconstruct the theory of man cannot help but make use of the
fictional element. This is why, for Rousseau, ‘fiction and philosophy must be interchangeable, must be made reversible and able to permeate one another’ (Mall 318).
Nevertheless, Rousseau goes the extra mile and examines—with an unprecedented
profoundness—the role that fiction assumes in the intimist and subjective analysis which, contrary to the ‘theory of man’, concerns a personal experience that is not and cannot be shared. Here resides the intrinsic philosophical dimension of autobiographical narration: in it fiction does not only give access to truth, but has the function of constructing it.22
V. The ‘Reality’ of Fiction
Fiction for Rousseau, then, is not only true, but also ‘real’. 23 In keeping with the taxonomy of truth
formulated in the Encyclopédie, fiction is characterized by an element of ‘veracity’, or by ‘the conformity of our discourses with our thoughts: it is a virtue contrary to a lie’ (Enc. XVII, Véracité, 45).24 Thanks to its unique dimension of ‘activity’,25 which allows it to forge what is real, fiction can
provide humans with one of the most precious means of access to happiness—something young Rousseau already demonstrates to be perfectly aware of in his Nouveau Dédale:
The author of nature was not content with giving us a quantity of real goods, but rather permitted us to find in the weakness of our spirit, and also in our frivolous imagination, the beginning of thousands of other paths that, albeit in our imagination, are no less real. If all fantasies were to be destroyed, with them we would lose an infinitude of real pleasures. (Le
nouveau Dédale, 80)
This faith in the ‘reality’ of the fictional dimension finds its most profound philosophical expression —as well as most successful literary expression—in the Rêveries du promeneur solitaire. Though unable to entirely leave aside the physiological dimension,26 reveries are able to transport the
subject to a spiritual dimension that completely transcends the sensorial perception from which he draws his strength. Thanks to this mechanism, the promeneur solitaire, who evidently finds himself in a desperate situation of unhappiness, can enter the condition—so poetically evoked in the fifth
Promenade—of ‘a sufficient, perfect, and full happiness, which leaves in the soul no vacuum
needing to be filled’ (Rev5, OC I, 1046).
The inseparableness between fiction and the quête du bonheur—a central aspect in Rousseau’s thought and, more generally, in all of eighteenth-century philosophical-literary reflection27—is
extensively illustrated in the eighth Promenade, one of the most dramatic passages of the entire collection. Just when persecution and conspiracy seem to permanently prevent Rousseau from accessing happiness, it is restored to him in the fictional dimension: ‘Following my inclinations and indulging the affections which attract me, my heart still feeds on the feelings for which it was created, and I enjoy them with imaginary beings who produce them and share them with me, as if these beings really existed. They exist for me, since I created them, and I do not worry about their betraying or abandoning me’ (Rev8, OC I, 10). This idea was already revealed in the second
Dialogue:
Happy fictions take the place of real happiness for him. And what am I saying? Only he [Jean-Jacques] is securely happy […]. Oh Sir, these visions may possibly have more reality than all those apparent goods about which men make so much ado, for they never bring a true feeling of happiness to the soul. (Dialogues, OC I, 814)
While the fictive world in which the promeneur solitaire finds refuge is unarguably chimeric, the experience he has when immersing himself in it (it is no coincidence that plonger is the preferred verb for describing the relationship between subject and object in reveries) is absolutely real: ‘The happiness that they [the reveries] produce in him is very real’ (Burgelin 169).28 Rousseau describes
this sort of transmutation in various passages of his work: ‘Carrying out such a touching tableau in myself, the image of a felicity that does not exist at all will make me savor a genuine one for several moments’ (Écrits sur l’abbé de Saint-Pierre, OC III, 563).
The function of the ‘reality’ that fiction assumes in the intimist investigation is still not free of tension. First off, the fiction justified in the self can also be extended to external facts, leading to the interpretation of factual truth with the criterion of fiction. Furthermore—and this is the thornier matter—fictive creation (as confirmed by the description of the interior and personal happiness of the promeneur solitaire) openly involves the world of moral values, which, by definition, require an intersubjective confirmation. As is known, Rousseau resolves the question in an axiomatic manner by turning to the intrinsic normativity of the natural dimension (created by God) which, as we have seen, is accessible only in the (fictive) dimension of moral truth and not in the (empirical)
dimension of factual truth.
For this reason, far from being a merely instrumental and suppletive dimension, but born from the inability to confront effective existence, fiction represents a true original reality, which is inhabited by the self before its fall into the social world, dominated by falseness and lies. From this point of view, it is possible to understand the well-known and surprising affirmation of Julie, according to whom ‘the land of chimeras is on this earth the only one worth living in, and such is
the void of things human that […] the only beauty to be found is in things that are not’ (Nouvelle
Héloïse, OC II, 693). ‘Things that are not’ are not for this reason less real than that which we are
able to know within the dimension of objective truth. While, as Rousseau warns, ‘the facts are nothing but occasional causes’ (Ébauches des Confessions, OC I, 1150)—that is, related to the passing of time and to the inconstant historical stride—the ‘happy fictions’ possess an ideal reality and an affective solidity that elevates them morally.
***
In light of the inseparable tie between philosophical reflection and autobiographical narration, it becomes possible to affirm that the theoretic valency of the fourth Promenade goes well beyond that of a canonic reflection that moralizes falsehood, further spoiled—as Paul de Man would put it—by ‘a strange unbalance between the drift of the argument […] and the drift of the examples, which do not quite fit their declared intent’ (De Man 290). Beyond some tension and ambivalence—which in the eyes of Rousseau reflects human nature and are as such ineradicable— reveries allow us to found a true philosophical theory of fiction, characterized by an innovative dialectic between moral truth and the fictive dimension. The authentic element of interest in the
Promenade, aside from the extraordinary taxonomic and systematic effort that enlivens it, can be
found in the awareness that the world of values for Rousseau is the world of necessary fictions—of non-existent yet constructive ideals that are absolutely indispensable in guiding human action in the world.29
In conclusion, thanks to his doctrine of moral truth, which finds its expression in interiority and is accessible by virtue of introspection, Rousseau is able to steer the relationship between philosophy and life writing in an entirely new direction, transforming it into a hendiadys. In fact, after Rousseau, autobiographical reflection is no longer simply instrumental to philosophical reflection, it becomes coessential to it, as confirmed by the fact that the autobiographical gesture par excellence—the desire to s’éclairer en dedans—is also an inescapably philosophical gesture.
2 ‘Among the few books that I still sometimes read, Plutarch is the author whom I enjoy most and
find most useful. I first read him as a child, and he will be what I read last in my old age’ (Rev4, OC I, p. 1024). On the influence of Plutarch on Rousseau, see Morel; and Pire.
3 The motto ‘Dedicate one’s life to truth’ is taken from Juvenal (Satires, IV, 91). On the meaning
given to that motto by Rousseau, see Villaverde; Starobinski 2001; and Berchtold.
4 The taxonomy of lies (imposture, fraud, slander, etc.) in the fourth Promenade was reconstructed
in detail by Perrin 1997; and Gourevitch.
5 During his stay in Bossey, a ten-year-old Rousseau is accused of breaking Mlle de Lambercier’s
comb, when in fact he was innocent. He puts forth a heated self-defense, but is not believed by his accusers and is punished. The importance of the scene lies in the extraordinary value Rousseau accords it: it demonstrates to the child the existence of injustice in the world.
6 This tendency is systematically expressed in the work of Jean Starobinski (1972) and, more
generally, in the reflections of the ‘Geneva School’.
7 One exception can be found in Citton 2006.
8 In the following pages, we will always use the notion of fiction as a synonym of “moral fiction” or
“philosophical fiction”, knowingly leaving aside all other implications of Rousseauian insight regarding the fictional dimension. For a deeper analysis of this perspective, see Menin 2015.
9 Consider the famous definition of true speech offered by Plato: ‘That speech which says things as
they are is true, and that which says them as they are not is false’ (Cratylus, 385 b). A similar definition is that of Aristotle: ‘To say of what is that it is not, or of what is not that it is, is false, while to say of what is that it is and of what is not that it is not is true’ (Metaphysics IV, 7, 1011 b 26 ss).
10 This passage brings out—albeit indirectly—the problem of truth in the political realm. As is
known, according to Rousseau, a legislator can lie for the greater good. For more on this complex matter, which we purposefully leave aside in this article, consecrated to autobiographism, see Margel 2007.
11 On the positive value attributed to the dimension of illusions and chimeras, see Sosso; and Sozzi 2007, 136–41.
12 The image of the planète étrangère is found in the first Promenade: ‘I am on earth as though on
a foreign planet onto which I have fallen from the one I inhabited’ (Rev1, OC I, 999).
13 In 1749, Rousseau became a writer by a fortuitous event: as he was walking from Paris to
Vincennes to visit the imprisoned Diderot, he stopped to rest beneath a tree when he noticed in the October issue of the Mercure de France the subject of a prize essay announced by the Academy of Dijon. It read: ‘has the advancement of civilization tended to corrupt or improve morals?’ He then experienced fifteen minutes of ecstasy during which ideas flashed through his mind and he perceived with clarity the development of the theme. This experience is referred to as the ‘illumination of Vincennes’.
14 For more on the relationship between the Dialogues and autobiographical truth, see Jones; and
Knee and Allard.
15 The sensational beginning of Confessions highlights this aspect: ‘Here is the only portrait of a
man, painted exactly according to nature and in all its truth, that exists and that will probably ever exist’ (OC I, p. 3).
16 For more, see the opening pages of the seventh book of the Confessions (OC I, pp. 277–78). 17 ‘N. My judgment depends on the answer you are going to give me. Is this correspondence real, or
is it a fiction? R. I don’t see that it matters. To say whether a Book is good or bad, how does it matter how it came to be written?’ (Nouvelle Héloïse, OC II, 11).
18 On the centrality of the fiction in the Émile, see also Still; Citton 1994; and De Negroni. 19 For more on the relationship between history and fiction, see Hakim.
20 For more on the ‘atemporality’ of human nature, see Poulet 158–93; and Sozzi 2004, 234–47. On
by one.
22 According to Rousseau, ‘truth (his truth) does not exist outside of fiction, which transmits it (and
therefore identifies with it)’ (Mall 318).
23 This is the principle theory by Eigeldinger.
24 On the relationship between truth and veracity in Rousseau, see Gagnebin.
25 In addition to the already mentioned works of Sosso and Sozzi, see Farrugia, 27–50.
26 On the centrality of the physiological dimension for the deployment of reverie, see Perrin 2008;
and Menin 2013.
27 On the topic of happiness, see the classic study of Robert Mauzi.
28 The same concept is at the heart of Crogiez’s interpretation of the Rêveries: ‘The Rêveries
reverberate this happiness, which is undoubtedly dreamt, but for this very reason real, lively and enduring’ (Crogiez 29).
29 For more on the figure of Rousseau as a supporter of the “fruitful illusion” and for a comparison
with the notion of “transcendental illusion” in Kant, see Sozzi 2007, 351–52. References
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