At the root of subjectivity

That Rousseau’s philosophy can be interpreted as a phenomenology, that does not appear obvious at first. However, this is what Paul Audi tries to show in this original and stimulating book.

Everything starts from the identification that Rousseau is supposed to have made between nature and inner feeling. This is nothing other than the original affection of the soul which is the test it makes by itself, immediately. This is what P. Audi calls “ self-affection (P. 33). We are here at the root of subjectivity, in coincidence with oneself so perfect that one cannot even speak of presence to oneself (which already implies an objectivation of oneself), but rather of “ present », Or Iesseity. This primordial, deaf and impersonal self-sufficient, which is that of the self, is always present under the various and changing affections of the ego. What is more, it constitutes the condition of possibility.

However, it appears that social life constitutes the privileged place of an unhappy experience: that of the gap from self to self, even of self -forgetfulness. Ethics therefore consists in returning to oneself, becoming again ; It is the path opened by the philosopher whose mission of “ make the self to itself (P. 27). But each individual must take a particular path to find their center. We are the opposite of a morality, based on transcendent values, a set of duties from outside, and which we should, universally, conform. Everything is played out in immanence, since the particular nature of the individual who must seek the conditions of the strengthening and full expansion of his soul.

At the heart of the life of the soul

Rousseau, according to P. Audi, shows in his work how the interiority of being-in-vie is irreduciblely opposed to the exteriority of being-in-world. It is therefore in the folds of subjectivity that life is given to itself in the original self-affection which constitutes “ The first and primordial data of existence (P. 42). Life enjoys itself while falling out, and that is how it is necessary to understand the thesis so famous of the goodness of nature: goodness is “ The very substance of life (P. 59). As for the state of nature, which we always carry in the depths of our being, it is this place where life resumes possession of itself, when the exteriority of being-in-world is put in parentheses (p. 70).

But this joyful self -possession of life would be impossible without the strength of attraction that constitutes self -love, or the first principle of the soul. Now, self -love is a passion, the primitive passion of which all others are only phenomenalization. Through him, it is the “ suffer That Rousseau discovers at the heart of this self -test (without, moreover, for P. Audi, fully realizing it). This “ suffer “Is both” self -suffering ” And “ suffer with »: For it is well since the intimacy of the living self that the principle of pity takes shape.

An ethics of affectivity

The ethical end is none other than human happiness, residing in the pleasure of existing. To get there, it is towards himself that the sage must turn, and if virtue is his strength, it is what allows him to keep himself firmly in himself, “ as of a fortress or a strong place (P. 151). But for that, you have to get to know each other, and realize the agreement with yourself by adapting your will to your power, it is as true that it is in the excess of it on this one that all human misfortune is lodged.

We can therefore easily understand that this research finds its privileged field of investigation in so -called autobiographical writings. It is essentially a matter of turning to yourself to grasp the law of transformation of affects, so as to make itself capable of converting suffering to joy. This history of affective variations is in particular the object of Dreamed. Due to the particular situation of parentheses of the world, in which Rousseau is located at the end of his life, he will be able to look at himself either to find the effects generated by the events of the world, but the logic of self-generation of the feelings themselves. This situation of confinement in the sphere of subjectivity will allow it to benefit “to apply” The barometer to his soul ».

After a very enlightening distinction between daydreaming and meditation (p. 242) where he shows that in reverie-promeade, the walker is fully worn with himself, indissolubly body and soul, P. Audi pointed out to us how the absence of object of reverie and walking allows the subject to only enjoy his power to think and act, that is to say, of his own power.

If the ethical imperative consists of “ be yourself “, We must now understand this” self -exit », This contradiction from with oneself which makes man’s misfortune. However, it is in social life that man is lost. Governed by self-esteem, caught up in the game of distinctions, he only has a consistency in the eyes of others. He is no longer himself, but only “ the other of another (P.117). From then on, “ We no longer exist where we are, we only exist where we are not ». This is shown by the letter from Saint-Preux placed in highlight at the beginning of the book, which describes Parisian customs and thus makes a picture of the being-of the being-in-de-Soi. The consciousness then has the function, if it is heard, to bring back being lost to oneself.

P. Audi only remains to dig what is contained by this feeling of existing, a phenomenological principle and the ethical end of Rousseau’s philosophy. However, it will finally appear that this “ position »Of Self is at the same time test and love of” the unalterable order of nature ». Thus, the love of order is the necessary extension of self -love ; It is when the soul is fully found itself, in itself, that its expansive force allows it to join emotional to the whole of nature as life.

The real “ Jean-Jacques Rousseau problem »»

Paul Audi is obviously passionate about Reveries of the lonely walker. It seems to find intuition there, perhaps never entirely clear in the eyes of Rousseau, according to which feelings have its own dynamism and that in this sense, we have no need to get out of interiority to explain the variation of our affective tones. He shows how Michel Henry, much later, fully takes care of this idea by explaining its content, namely that suffering is nestled at the heart of the primordial test of oneself, that it is suffering from a being riveted to oneself, “ fate ». It is with this last author that the transition from one emotional tone to another, the transformation of suffering into joy in the immanence of an absolute subjectivity, is themed as such.

This thesis is paradoxical, since it goes against the primary and explicit principle, that one in Rousseau, according to which evil, and therefore suffering, always come outside.

If we want to draw the consequences of this principle, as regards his ethics, it must therefore be said that the happiness or the unhappiness of the individual are only the effect of the world, of the situations in which he is taken. Ethics could then essentially consist in modifying exteriority, in order to be affected in the most profitable way. More than a work exclusively focused on oneself, it is a negotiation with the world that should be hired. This is precisely the idea of Sensitive moralitytext that Rousseau had the plan to write. However, P. Audi does not give him the importance he deserves, claiming that he was abandoned because of his inconsistency, but without wondering if Rousseau had not implemented it elsewhere, especially in The New Héloïse.

In general, P. Audi sees in this thesis according to which suffering comes from outside a “ shift From Rousseau (p. 235), a psychological reaction of denial intended to preserve itself from the risk of discovering the origin of suffering in itself. It is allowed to advance reservations in the face of this type of explanation.

On the other hand, and this observation is linked to the previous one, by making Rousseau a thinker of absolute subjectivity, we run the risk of losing sight of the “ relationship », Relationship between interiority and exteriority, between individual and society, between morality and politics, of which he has never ceased to affirm the capital importance. In this regard, Rousseau’s thesis is that one cannot claim to understand individuals independently of the social and political context in which they register. It is indeed the individuals who make society, but in return it also makes them what they are (even if they are cut as is the case of the lonely walker, because being rejected by Society is still being related to it). Our lives are relative, and we cannot really know what we are by taking into account the relationships that constitute us. Hence the need to put the political problem in the foreground, including to account for the most intimate in the individual sphere. However, this necessity, it seems to me that the reading of P. Audi does not recognize it.

However, this book is surely less a book of history of philosophy, in the narrow sense of expression, than the book of a philosopher, developing his own thought from the reading of another philosopher. And we follow with pleasure P. Audi, nourished by the authors who inspired him, in this journey at the bottom of subjectivity and his living forces.