As an autobiographer, Rousseau's revolutionary project was to depict a man "dans toute la vérité de la nature" [in all of the truth of his being]. One is unclear as to whether he chooses to focus on himself because he of course knows himself the best and could only complete such a project with regard to himself, or because of his almost palpable immodesty. Even in its choice of title, Rousseau's text presents itself as a response to Augustine's Confessions, though R. claims he has "told of the good and the bad with the same honesty, not adding anything bad or good," perhaps in contradistinction to Augustine whose Confessions serve theological if not also political ends. Rousseau claims that any existing artifice in his text is due to "deficiencies of memory"[défaut de mémoire] and that he has "revealed his innermost being as if you [the reader] had seen it yourself."
As an assertion of an autobiographical project, Rousseau's rationale is compelling. However can one person ever relate his or her experience to another as if that other had himself seen it? The very paradox of the writing of the self is that one relates experiences that another has presumably not had in order for the other to experience them vicariously, perhaps sympathize, or occasionally even empathize. The practice of autobiography both widens the chasm between self and other as it stretches across that abyss, for in some instances when confronting certain experiences even in the writer's absence the reader can reach out from herself toward the event experienced by the writer, in some sense.
Do you think that Rousseau allows for such a bridging of the space between self and other in his piece, or is his goal more individualistic? He emphasizes his uniqueness as an individual while encouraging us to read his confessions. What is the paradox of such a project? Is there a paradox at all? How (if at all) do you see Rousseau as distancing his text from the work of Augustine with which it is clearly in dialogue?
