On Rousseau's "Confessions": A Life in the Camera Obscura

Podopticon

In December of 1770, Jean-Jacques Rousseau completed his Confessions and gave his first reading of the book to a group of seven or so gathered at a Parisian home for the occasion. Rousseau started at nine in the morning and for the next 14 to 18 hours, he let it all hang out.

Those who first heard the Confessions read were equally stunned but variously effected, you could say. From “how beautiful and profound that an individual could be so nobly forthright” to “what’s wrong with this whimpering psycho?” Those are paraphrases.

But why would someone, especially someone so well-known, want us to know even more? Why so openly admit his most embarrassing and personal flaws and acts, as he did in this book? The spankings, the exposures, the courtesans; the five children out of wedlock, each dumped at a foundling home; the betrayal of innocent people and friends; the paranoia and conspiracy; all that laid bare by the subject himself!

So I wanted to talk to Laura Field about these and other things, and she didn’t disappoint. I say that even after she laughed at me for asking “what’s wrong with modern society?”

Laura is a political theorist who’s lately been on the fascism and authoritarianism beat, where she’s among the most penetrating analysts. She’s worked on everything from Xenophon to Nietzsche and contemporary politics. Her work on the Confessions, especially, has shown me a lot, and I’m so glad she took the time to have a chat with me about it and the wily and elusive Jean-Jacques.

Her work on the "Confessions" is “Rousseau’s Confessions: A Pattern for Living," which you can find in this volume.