 | GetTextbooks.com Compare Prices & Save up to 90% | | |
|
| Login | Sign up | Settings | New! iPhone App | My Wish List | My iBundle |
 | | Confessions (Oxford World's Classics) by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Patrick Coleman (Editor), Angela Scholar (Translator) ISBN-10: 9780199540037 ISBN-10: 0-19-954003-9 ISBN-13: 9780199540037 ISBN-13: 978-0-19-954003-7 Paperback 2008-07-15 Oxford University Press, USA Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description In his Confessions Jean-Jacques Rousseau tells the story of his life, from the formative experience of his humble childhood in Geneva, through the achievement of international fame as novelist and philosopher in Paris, to his wanderings as an exile, persecuted by governments and alienated from the world of modern civilization. In trying to explain who he was and how he came to be the object of others' admiration and abuse, Rousseau analyses with unique insight the relationship between an elusive but essential inner self and the variety of social identities he was led to adopt. The book vividly illustrates the mixture of moods and motives that underlie the writing of autobiography: defiance and vulnerability, self-exploration and denial, passion, puzzlement, and detachment. Above all, Confessions is Rousseau's search, through every resource of language, to convey what he despairs of putting into words: the personal quality of one's own existence. | ||
Reviews | ||
A Master of Passion Rousseau claims that he may have the most intense passions, feelings and sentiments of any man to have ever lived. After you read this book, it is tempting to believe him. Rousseau claims that his goal is to portray a man honestly with all his virtue and all his vice. While he doctors the facts, Rousseau leaves the reader with the most complete understanding of human sentiment possible. The book adheres to Rousseau's philosophy that humans are controlled by their passions rather than by reason. To prove this point Rousseau articulately describes the feelings and passions that he has felt throughout his life and what they caused him to do. Rousseau is a master of rhetoric. He describes the passions and sentiments commone to all people in vivid language that will leave you both laughing and longing. You want to experience life as Rousseau experienced it--no thoughts just the pure sentiment of every moment. Rousseau is not honest about the events of his life, but he is honest about his feelings. And he expresses these feelings with the art of an excellent writer. This book is required reading for any romantic, any philosopher, and any lover of great literature. No matter your interests, I guarantee that several of Rousseau's well-turned stories of passion will stick with you. | ||
A Must Read When I began reading this book, I immediately realized that this was no ordinary book. Though I am relatively young, I had the feeling that this may be the most important book I will ever read. And it was. After reading this, I picked up his philosophy and was filled with indignation and remorse that I had never even heard of this man (and I am a English Graduate!). I suspect his philosophy is too passionate and subversive for a school curiculum, but nevertheless to deprive children of this knowledge is horrible. I was amazed when I questioned my professors and found that THEY have little to no knowledge of Rousseau. But I suppose I should not really be surprised. The Confessions is filled with so many memorable incidents of Rousseau's life. You really feel like you know the man. I found the first book, detailing his early years, infinitly more enjoyable than the second book, but this is how it must be. He admits that he himself enjoyed with pleasure writing the first book, but found the second much more grueling and difficult, because of the tragic quality of it all. In a word, your life will be immeasurably richer if you allow this charming individual in, and it is easier than you think. | ||
Modern Prototype Rousseau's 'Confessions' is a rarely intimate reflection of a classical philosopher's life and observations. The Confessions is also a sort of aesthetic precursor to Flaubert and Proust, a kind of interior amalgam of social reflection. Rousseau lived as exciting a life as practically anyone-he was friendly with the giants of his era, Voltaire, Diderot, D'lambert. He was also a bitter and paranoid provocateur who split with these figures as well as the enlightenment project as a whole. I honestly found sections of this text hard going, but I find it fascinating for its preoccupation with the text itself. Rousseau indicates that his life had been meaningless until he had begun writing his 'Confessions,' an admission of the centrality of this project to his life as a whole. Rousseau remains an admirable thinker for his clarity and honesty. Although he was pretty insane by the time he wrote the 'Confessions,' it remains a wildly entertaining and illuminating entry into the mind of one of our greatest minds. | ||
Amazing mind in amazing times I teach an acting class and as part of it I try to introduce students to great minds and lives of the past they are probably unaware of having been educated in American in the 20th Century. One way I do this is through first person texts. What did that man experience? What did he think? What was his life? Not as told from a biographer but from the man himself. Rousseau's ideas on man, and freedom, and government framed thinking in the Enlightenment that in turn became an element of the American model of freedom. How did he get the way he was? Being raised without a father? Having health problems that made him embarrassed to be around women and society. All interesting from an historical, a philosophical, and human perspective. | ||
"My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray will be myself." While I was actually reading this book, I blogged quite a bit about the reading experience. Rousseau is hands-down the most irritating narrator that I have read since A la Recherche du Temps Perdu. Rousseau is so self-absorbed that he moves past pathetic into loathesome and back again. He starts his career as an exhibitionist, moves into petty theft, buys an 11 year old girl for unpleasant purposes, forces his mistress to abandon their children at a foundling's home, alienates everyone who tries to help him, and generally seems lost in paranoia and self-aggrandizement. I've read a lot of reviews of this book where people refer to his excesses in a "gee, shucks" kind of way and then to go on and note that by the end of the book, they had actually come to like the guy. I have to say that this wasn't at all my experience. By the time that I finished the book, I had a strong desire to take a hot bath. None of which is to say that I think that you should skip The Confessions. On the contrary. I understand why it is an important book, and it isn't always necessary to like the narrator in order to get something out of the reading experience. (If that were the case, nobody would ever read Proust again.) So why should you read The Confessions? You should read it if you have an interest in autobiography-- it is the first major secular biography produced by the west. You should read it if you have any interest in the history or philosophy of the Enlightenment. Here is the core of so much of those ideas. Finally, you should read it if you're interested in people. Rousseau is, if nothing else, quite a character. And you've got to give him credit for being willing to be so honest about his flaws and failings. (This said, I have the distinct impression that he probably would have been shocked by the response to his little peccadillos. Perspective didn't seem to be one of his key strengths. At the end of The Confessions, he says: "For my part, I publicly and fearlessly declare that anyone, even if he has not read my writings, who will examine my nature, my character, my morals, my likings, my pleasures, and my habits with his own eyes and can still believe me a dishonourable man, is a man who deserves to be stifled.") I read the Penguin Classics edition, which is translated and introduced by J.M. Cohen. I appreciated that they left the notes in situ, but I occasionally wished that there had been more of them-- particularly when it came to mentions of writers and thinkers who had been important to Rousseau's development. | ||