The Confessions of Jean Jacques Rousseau — Volume 12

Volume 12 finds Rousseau in his final reckoning, a man besieged by the very civilization he helped reshape with his ideas. The work of darkness he describes the past eight years to have inhabited is not mere metaphor but the grinding weight of exile, public condemnation, and the relentless attacks on his character and writings. Here, the great apologist for feeling turns his unflinching gaze upon the relationships that sustained and wounded him: the loyal Theresa who stood beside him, the shifting fortunes of friendships that rose and crumbled under the pressure of his notoriety. This is Rousseau at his most exposed, neither the triumphant philosopher nor the pitiable wanderer but something far more unsettling: a man fully aware of his contradictions, determined nonetheless to render himself naked before the reader. The volume pulses with the anguish of one who changed European thought forever, only to find himself hounded from city to city, his books burned, his name a byword for dangerous honesty. Those who have followed his journey from the engraver's bench to the heights of intellectual celebrity will find here its devastating, unresolved conclusion.