The Return to Rousseau: the “Failure” of Emancipation and “Breakdown of the Work”? Some Critical Remarks on Paweł Pieniążek’s “The Individual, Evil and History in Rousseau’s Thought”

Abstract

The paper presents polemical remarks on Paweł Pieniążek’s study entitled Jednostka, zło, historia w myśli Rousseau (The Individual, Evil, History in Rousseau’s Thought, Łódź 2022). An attempt is made to discuss with the Author the interpretation of Rousseau’s main works, his most important concepts and theoretical problems. In particular, Social Contract, Emile, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, Julie, or The New Heloise are analyzed, but there also appear key references to the so-called first and second Discourses, Dialogues and Letters to Malesherbes. Where Pieniążek sees only evidence of the “failure” of Rousseau’s emancipatory ideals and signs of the “breakdown” of his work, the author of the polemic tries to defend the “citizen of Geneva”, showing that there are alternative ways of reading Rousseau’s texts, which allow him to be protected from the traditional allegations that he failed completely to reconcile the communal and individualist plan of his thought and remained dramatically torn between the two contradictory and self-excluding ideals: the citizen and the solitary.