The Autobiography of Philosophy: Rousseau's the Reveries of the Solitary Walker

By Michael Davis

Book Overview

This is the most important book about the nature of philosophy and of the human soul published this year. In making the condition for its own possibility its deepest concern, philosophy is necessarily about itself-it is autobiographical. The first part of The Autobiography of Philosophy interprets Heidegger's Being and Time, Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals, Aristotle's Metaphysics, and Plato's Lysis as examples of the implicitly autobiographical character of philosophy. The second part is a reading of Rousseau's The Reveries of the Solitary Walker. Although Rousseau's explicitly autobiographical writings are more often read for the tantalizing details of his rather eccentric life than for their philosophical import, this work is an artful use of Rousseau's exile and isolation-"the strangest position in which a mortal could ever find himself"-as a paradigm for the human soul in its relation to the world. In powerfully articulating the activity that is at the core of all philosophy, The Reveries articulates the nature of the human soul for which this activity is the defining possibility.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0847692272
• ISBN13: 9780847692279
• Release Date: December 1998
• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.8" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An excellent guide to the deeper meaning of Rousseau

Here one walks into profound reveries of unraveled clarity. Davis's book is a powerful, inspired, and enormously thought explication which gives birth to new wisdom honoring the words of Rousseau. Davis knows that the only way to do justice to him is to faithfully and painstakingly follow Rousseau's path. He is the most fortunate of authors to have Michael Davis as his companion. Suffer the first four chapters; what follows, especially in the last two chapters, will justify your effort to understand. Anyone interested in philosophy should read this book.