Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
- 2 A General Overview
- 3 Rousseau, Voltaire, and the Revenge of Pascal
- 4 Rousseau, Fénelon, and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns
- 5 Rousseau's Political Philosophy: Stoic and Augustinian Origins
- 6 Rousseau's General Will
- 7 Rousseau's Images of Authority (Especially in La Nouvelle Heloise)
- 8 The Religious Thought
- 9 Émile: Learning to Be Men, Women, and Citizens
- 10 Émile: Nature and the Education of Sophie
- 11 Rousseau's Confessions
- 12 Music, Politics, Theater, and Representation in Rousseau
- 13 The Motto Vitam impendere vero and the Question of Lying
- 14 Rousseau's The Levite of Ephraim: Synthesis within A “Minor” Work
- 15 Ancient Postmodernism in the Philosophy of Rousseau
- Bibliography
- Index
10 - Émile: Nature and the Education of Sophie
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
- 2 A General Overview
- 3 Rousseau, Voltaire, and the Revenge of Pascal
- 4 Rousseau, Fénelon, and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns
- 5 Rousseau's Political Philosophy: Stoic and Augustinian Origins
- 6 Rousseau's General Will
- 7 Rousseau's Images of Authority (Especially in La Nouvelle Heloise)
- 8 The Religious Thought
- 9 Émile: Learning to Be Men, Women, and Citizens
- 10 Émile: Nature and the Education of Sophie
- 11 Rousseau's Confessions
- 12 Music, Politics, Theater, and Representation in Rousseau
- 13 The Motto Vitam impendere vero and the Question of Lying
- 14 Rousseau's The Levite of Ephraim: Synthesis within A “Minor” Work
- 15 Ancient Postmodernism in the Philosophy of Rousseau
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Woman has more wit [esprit], man more genius [genie]; woman observes, and man reasons. From this conjunction results the clearest insight and the most complete science regarding itself that the human mind [esprit] can acquire - in a word, the surest knowledge of oneself and others available to our species.
Émile is the canvas on which Rousseau tried to paint all of the soul's acquired passions and learning in such a way as to cohere with man's natural wholeness. It's a Phenomenology of the Mind posing as Dr. Spock.
Almost from Émile's first appearance, Rousseau's treatment of the ideal education of women has provoked charges that it is both unjust and inconsistent with his own underlying principles. Mary Wollstonecraft dismissed his views on female education as “the reveries of fancy” and a “refined licentiousness” by which woman is falsely made “the slave of love.” “According to the tenour of [Rousseau's] reasoning, by which women are to be kept from the tree of knowledge, the important years of youth, the usefulness of old age, and the rational hopes of futurity, are,” she claims, “all to be sacrificed, to render women an object of desire for a short time. ”
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau , pp. 272 - 301Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001
- 1
- Cited by