Rousseau's Autobiography

From the perspective of Augustine, a gay committed to the worship of immortal and the humble submission of the self, Rousseau is a brilliant child who fails to see that life is far more(prenominal) than the turbulence of social, political and literary concerns. From the beginning to the close of his book, Rousseau displays a pride, an ambition, an egoism which seems truly childish if not pitiful. His first haggling are those of a self-obsessed braggart who sees himself as uniquely top-flight not only to his contemporaries just to every(prenominal) those in the beginning and after him:

I entertain resolved on an green light which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will contain no imitator. My plan is to display to my kind a portrait in every(prenominal) way true to nature, and the man I shall portray is myself (Rousseau 17).

Again, superstar expertness expect that by the end of the book, after all over six hundred pages, the author might display near sign that he had matured as a man, perchance after having recognized that there is something more to life than proving to others that iodine is superior to them and that they had better agree with him, or else. However, Rousseau shows at the end of his work the same pugnacious self-concern he showed at the beginning:

I have told the truth. If anyone knows anything contrary to what I have here recorded, though he prove it a super acid times, his knowledge is a lie and an imposture; and if he refuses to wonder and inquire into it during my lifetime he i

--or should I call it death-in-life? I do not know. I only know that the gifts Your mercy had provided sustained me from the first endorsement (Augustine 617).

Unlike other thinkers who profited from persecution, with respect to gaining faith and wisdom (such as Socrates and Boethius), Rousseau is made even more self-centered, petty, and antagonistic by his suffering. Augustine might say that a self-centered man such as Rousseau, who appears incapable of considering God as a means to slumber and true growth, ultimately sees himself as a god, or God Himself. If he does see himself as a god, or at least as a being superior to all other human beings, and if then he is attacked by others, it follows that those others are devils.

Rousseau, in fact, sees life as a conspiracy against him, natural of others' jealousy of him and fear of him as a fearless truthteller:

Augustine confesses his have thievery in a way which gives a darker cypher of sin than Rousseau draws. Rousseau confesses his thievery and lying to his readers and seems to be immediately relieve of his guilt and regret, as if it were an aberration which quickly came and went. Augustine sees his stealing as a sign of a deeper and darker reality within, a end toward sinfulness which required not a page or two of written analysis such as Rousseau offers, but a complete transformation of one's spirit, mind and heart done relationship with God. As Augustine writes, "Nor had I any desire to delight in the things I stole, but only the stealing of them and the sin. . . . I love the evil in me" (Augustine 623-624). To Augustine, the suffering resulting from such evil is an demand part of his turning to God for salvation away from sin. This suffering, Augustine would argue, is what Rousseau should have heeded more seriously and if he had it would have brought him to the realization that he needed God to find the peace he sought.

Rousseau, on the other hand, endlessly analyzes the wrongs he does in life, but
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