Man or Citizen

Anger, Forgiveness, and Authenticity in Rousseau

Karen Pagani (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

256 Seiten

2017
Pennsylvania State University Press (Verlag)
9780271065915 (ISBN)

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Examines the role of anger and forgiveness in the autobiographical, literary, and philosophical works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. Argues that for Rousseau, anger is an inevitable outcome of social intercourse, and that forgiveness is central to his understanding of subjectivity and hence of moral and political action.

The French studies scholar Patrick Coleman made the important observation that over the course of the eighteenth century, the social meanings of anger became increasingly democratized. The work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau is an outstanding example of this change. In Man or Citizen, Karen Pagani expands, in original and fascinating ways, the study of anger in Rousseau’s autobiographical, literary, and philosophical works. Pagani is especially interested in how and to what degree anger—and various reconciliatory responses to anger, such as forgiveness—functions as a defining aspect of one’s identity, both as a private individual and as a public citizen. Rousseau himself was, as Pagani puts it, “unabashed” in his own anger and indignation—toward society on one hand (corrupter of our naturally good and authentic selves) and, on the other, toward certain individuals who had somehow wronged him (his famous philosophical disputes with Voltaire and Diderot, for example). In Rousseau’s work, Pagani finds that the extent to which an individual processes, expresses, and eventually resolves or satisfies anger is very much of moral and political concern. She argues that for Rousseau, anger is not only inevitable but also indispensable, and that the incapacity to experience it renders one amoral, while the ability to experience it is a key element of good citizenship.

Karen Pagani is Assistant Professor of French and Italian at the University of Texas at Austin.

Contents

Introduction

Part I. The Political Significance of Forgiveness and Anger in Rousseau’s Thought: The Dialogues as a Case Study

Chapter 1. The Magnanimous Pardon: A Force to be Reckoned With

Chapter 2. The Philosophes’ Plot and the Frenchman’s Anger

Chapter 3. The Productive Capacities of the Citizen’s Anger

Chapter 4. The Frenchman’s Conundrum

Part II. Private, Interpersonal Forgiveness: The Rousseauvean Intervention

Chapter 5. The Confessions: Saint-Lambert and Rousseau’s Miraculous Reconciliation

Chapter 6. Publicized Anger and the Unforgivable: Reconsidering the Story of the Foundling Hospital

Chapter 7. Forgiveness Among Men and Citizens in Julie

Chapter 8. Émile and Sophie: To forgive or not forgive? That is the Question

Conclusion. Forgiveness Today and Rousseau’s Legacy

Bibliography

Erscheinungsdatum	12.03.2017
Verlagsort	University Park
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	386 g
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Ethik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Philosophie der Neuzeit
ISBN-13	9780271065915 / 9780271065915
Zustand	Neuware