Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Genevan-French philosopher (1712–1778), author of Discours sur l'origine et les fondements de l'inégalité parmi les hommes (1755), Du contrat social (1762), Émile, ou De l'éducation (1762), Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse (1761), Les Confessions (composed 1765–70, published posthumously 1782–89), Rêveries du promeneur solitaire (posthumous 1782). On the wiki Rousseau appears through BS-I Sessions 3–4 in his single most consequential role for the seminar's argument: he is the philosopher who explicitly opposes Hobbes's homo homini lupus in Du contrat social (against the animalization of the political) AND who names himself "werewolf" (loup-garou) three times in Confessions. Rousseau is the seminar's primary werewolf-text. The English Penguin translation (J. M. Cohen 1953) renders loup-garou as "outlaw" — making structurally visible the topological identity between werewolf-criminal and sovereign-as-above-the-law. Rousseau, in this register, is the philosopher of the werewolf-position as much as the philosopher of the social contract — and the two registers structurally connect through the sans foi ni loi topology. BS-I S3 pp. 63–66; S4 pp. 98–101.

Key Points

  • Confessions book 1: "I lived like a real werewolf [loup-garou]" — Rousseau's first werewolf-passage. Context: Rousseau retreating from sociality into book-reading at age 15–16. "My humor became taciturn, savage; my head was beginning to spoil, and I lived like a real werewolf." Becoming-werewolf as becoming-asocial via books. The Penguin (Cohen 1953) translation: "I lived like an outlaw..." The translator already reads loup-garou as outlaw. BS-I S3 p. 63.
  • Confessions book 9: the religious civil war of wolves. Rousseau in the polemics around the Encyclopédie: "The two parties [Christians and philosophes]... rather resembled enraged wolves fiercely trying to tear each other to pieces." Rousseau positions himself as the non-wolf arbiter — the just accuser who would resolve the war. (He fails; his attempt fails.) BS-I S4 p. 99.
  • Confessions book 12: pursued like a werewolf. After Émile, Rousseau is hunted across Europe — "an impious man, an atheist, a crazy person, ferocious beast, a wolf." The Journal de Trévoux accuses him of lycanthropy. Switzerland: "I was preached against from the pulpit, called the antichrist, and pursued across the countryside like a werewolf." The Pléiade footnote cites the 1762 Académie Dictionnaire on lycanthropy: "mental illness in which the patient imagines he has turned into a wolf." BS-I S4 pp. 100–101.
  • The three werewolf-passages converge on the sans foi ni loi topology. In all three, the werewolf is without faith or law — outside-the-law and outside-the-religion. This is structurally the sovereign's position (above-the-law). Rousseau therefore lives, accuses, and is accused as the werewolf-figure that the seminar identifies with the sovereign — both occupying the topology of being-outside-the-law.
  • Rousseau as anti-Hobbesian on the wolf. Du contrat social and the Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité both oppose Hobbes's homo homini lupus as a projection of post-civilization corruption onto a fictive natural state. Rousseau's natural man is not a wolf; he becomes wolf only through the social contract's degeneracies. BS-I notes this opposition (S3) but does not dwell — the more philosophically consequential register for the seminar is Rousseau's own werewolf-self-naming in Confessions.
  • Émile on stupidity and animality. Rousseau in Émile (Garnier-Flammarion 1966 p. 149): "you will see him a hundred times more stupide and more bête than the son of the most coarse peasant." This is the BS-I-cited Rousseau on the bête / stupide distinction — the lexical heterogeneity that becomes load-bearing for betise. BS-I S6 p. 168.
  • Émile on Plutarch's "On Eating Flesh" — Rousseau cites Plutarch on carnivory as cruelty; this is engaged at BS-I S1 (in the broader fable-and-cruelty register). The wiki's engagement is brief.
  • The Du contrat social opening "L'homme est né libre, et partout il est dans les fers" is in the structural background of BS-I's sovereignty-and-liberty double-bind (S11). Derrida does not cite this opening directly but the question "how is sovereign liberty possible?" descends from the Rousseauian formulation.

Role on the Wiki

Rousseau is BS-I's primary werewolf-text — the philosopher who self-identifies as werewolf in three distinct senses and so makes the sans foi ni loi topology visible from inside the philosophical-confessional voice. The wiki's wolf-and-werewolf concept page anchors several entries in Rousseau:

  • The three Confessions werewolf-passages (S3, S4)
  • The Penguin (Cohen) translation of loup-garou as "outlaw"
  • The lycanthropy footnote (Pléiade) on cruelty and ferocity-like-a-wolf

Rousseau is engaged secondarily via BS-I's bêtise analysis (the Émile passage on stupide and bête). The wiki's betise concept page does not heavily lean on Rousseau but cites him as part of the lexical-cluster mapping.

Rousseau-as-political-philosopher (the Contrat social register, the general will, the sovereignty-of-the-people) is mentioned at BS-I S3 but not extensively engaged. Future engagement with Du contrat social and the Discours sur l'origine would expand the page substantially.

Sources

  • derrida-2001-bete-souverain-i — Sessions 3 (Confessions book 1 werewolf-passage; Du contrat social anti-Hobbes), 4 (Confessions books 9 and 12; lycanthropy footnote; Émile on stupide/bête), 6 (Émile on bêtise lexicon).

Connections

  • is the primary werewolf-text of derrida-2001-bete-souverain-i — three distinct Confessions werewolf-passages
  • anchors wolf-and-werewolf — the Confessions werewolf-self-naming; Cohen's "outlaw" translation
  • anchors the sans foi ni loi topology connecting werewolf and sovereign (see sovereignty)
  • opposes thomas-hobbes on homo homini lupus in Du contrat social — Rousseau's natural man is not a wolf
  • is forgotten by giorgio-agamben in Homo Sacer's "Ban and the Wolf" — criticized at BS-I S3 pp. 92–96
  • engages plutarch (on carnivory and cruelty, Émile) — Plutarch's "On Eating Flesh"; brief engagement
  • anticipates the contemporary register of claims#embodiment-disproves-sovereignty via Du contrat social's "L'homme est né libre" — not developed in BS-I

Open Questions

  • Du contrat social and the Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalité — Rousseau-as-political-philosopher — is not substantively engaged on the wiki. Future ingest would substantially expand this page.
  • The Rousseau-Hobbes relation (Hobbes's natural state vs. Rousseau's natural state; homo homini lupus vs. homo natura bonus) is named in BS-I but not developed. Open.
  • The autobiographical register (Confessions, Rêveries) as philosophically load-bearing: BS-I's reading of Rousseau-as-werewolf depends entirely on the Confessions-as-philosophical-source treatment. The contemporary Rousseau-scholarship's engagement with autobiography-as-philosophy would be a research thread.
  • The reception in 18th-century European debate (Voltaire's reaction, the Encyclopédie polemics, the Geneva/Paris reception) is named at Confessions book 9 but not engaged.

Critique / Limitations

  • The page records Rousseau primarily through one specific BS-I lens (the werewolf-self-naming and the bête / stupide lexicon). Direct engagement with Du contrat social, the Discours, Émile, Julie would substantially balance the picture.
  • The general-will / popular-sovereignty register that descends from Du contrat social and that frames much of subsequent democratic political theory is not on the wiki.
  • Rousseau's musicology (Dictionnaire de musique, the Querelle des Bouffons), education-theory (Émile's full project), botany (Lettres élémentaires), and the Genevan-political context are all absent.