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Taming Amour-Propre: A Study of Book IV of Rousseau's Emile

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Date
2014
Author
Liu, Antong
Advisor
Grant, Ruth W
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Abstract

Amour-propre is a crucial concept of Rousseau's philosophy. Although recent studies have confirmed its moral ambiguity, they paid insufficient attention to Rousseau's account of amour-propre in his Emile and thus failed to appreciate the method Rousseau proposes therein to tame Emile's amour-propre. By close textual examinations of Emile, especially of the first part of its Book IV, this paper analyzes the moral ambiguity of amour-propre and Rousseau's remedy for its almost inevitable inflammation. Rather than eliminating amour-propre, the education of Emile aims at preventing his innocuous amour-propre from being inflamed. This at first requires that a cosmopolitan type of friendship be cultivated in Emile's heart so as to further cultivate his pity. Yet since the origin of the problem of inflamed amour-propre is the relativity intrinsic to human society and comparisons, pity, which is equally relative/inter-subjective, may suffer from the same problem of amour-propre. Therefore, Rousseau bases his remedial project upon the indestructible "true relations of man" (i.e. natural equality of man) that is objective (or non-relational) and guides Emile's affections towards these relations so as to make it possible for Emile to know all human relations and comparisons without taking any of them seriously.

Type
Master's thesis
Department
Political Science
Subject
Political science
Permalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8839
Citation
Liu, Antong (2014). Taming Amour-Propre: A Study of Book IV of Rousseau's Emile. Master's thesis, Duke University. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/8839.
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