Self and Agency: A Prolegomenon to Rousseaus Dialogues

The coherence of the Dialogues can be vindicated in opposition to the widespread view—notably espoused by Jean Starobinski—that their ethical position overturns the Rousseauian synthesis elaborated in earlier systematic works. Rousseauʹs Dialogues amount to a transcendental problem which accepts the self it portrays as given: an account is needed of how this self arises by arguments that move from stated facts to points of principle offered in Rousseauʹs philosophy. Only then can we recover agency concealed by the rhetorically infelicitous objective, third-person optic Rousseau adopts to present and defend his self.