Reproduction de : Thèse de doctorat : Sciences de l'éducation : Lyon 2 : 2003. / Titre provenant de l'écran-titre. Bibliogr.

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Rousseau's articles on music for Diderot and d'Alembert's Encyclopedie , and to a lesser extent his Dictionnaire de musique, have rarely attracted the scholarly attention they deserve. As a result, the pivotal role that Rousseau played in the early French reception of Rameau's theory of harmony has never been fully appreciated. Far from being a quarrel over musical aesthetics, Rousseau's dispute with Rameau raised fundamental questions about the composer's theory of harmony. Rousseau interrogated the empirical adequacy of Rameau's theory, the soundness of its foundations, the logic of its derivation, and its pretension to universality. Over the course of his criticism, Rousseau came to regard tonal harmony as a historically-induced particularity of Western music to be explained through historical inquiry. In this respect, he anticipates a range of ideas that historians of music theory have associated far more readily with Francois-Joseph Fetis.

Were it necessary to choose two words that could capture the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, these two words would have to be truth and nature for, in his works, this philosopher does more than assert that he, and he alone, possesses truth in its entirety. He equally maintains that his sole desire lies in sharing this truth with human kind, that we might rediscover our true nature, one that we have long ago forgotten. In fact, these very words adorn his tomb in the Pantheon where he was finally brought to rest: "Ici repose l'homme de la nature et de la verite." However, upon closer examination of two of his major works, Emile or on Education and The Social Contract, both published in 1762, a surprising contradiction is brought to light. In these treatises, he makes the child and the people believe that they are free when he is merely using rhetoric to manipulate them. For example, in Emile he gives the following advice to tutors: "Take the opposite course with your pupil; let him always think he is master while you are really master. There is no subjection so complete as that which preserves the forms of freedom; it is thus that the will itself is taken captive." While in The Social Contract he recommends using divine intervention to assure that the people "obey freely, and bear with docility the yoke of public happiness." Is Rousseau simply a gifted sophist who, by hiding the rhetoric he uses, can present himself as a man of truth in order to better form the child and the people to do his bidding? Or, is there a justification for his duplicity? Could it be possible that in some instances duplicity must be used if truth is ever to be attained by all human beings? By examining the rhetoric Rousseau uses in Emile and The Social Contract, this thesis attempts to shed some light on this somewhat troubling contradiction.

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Rousseau's work often seems contradictory, but the author himself insists that his works comprise a consistent system based on the principle that man is naturally good. In order that individuals might live up to this natural goodness in society, Rousseau advocates a division of labour between general and particular aspects of reason. This division is exemplified in the different roles that Rousseau assigns to the sovereign and the government in the political sphere, and men and women in the domestic sphere. The difficulties faced by man in the absence of these divisions of labour are illustrated in Rousseau's autobiographical writings. When his various works are examined in light of the principle of man's natural goodness, the apparent contradictions between democratic and authoritarian aspects of his thought and between the roles his ascribes to men and women are resolved.

This dissertation studies understandings, definitions and uses of truth in autobiography, looking specifically at Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Confessions and Dave Eggers' A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. In order for a text to be considered an autobiography some concept of truthfulness is necessary; however, truth is not always objective and verifiable. Concepts of absolute truth, factual truth, personal truth and essential truth impede a simple understanding of the notion of truth. Furthermore, different circumstances and contexts may affect our understanding and application of concepts of truth. In his autobiography Rousseau claims he will tell the truth as best he can while Eggers states that part of his work is exaggerated or fabricated. Nevertheless, both are classified as autobiographical accounts, thus implicitly claiming that they are representing truths. As some concept of truth is necessary in order for a text to be considered autobiographical, readers' expectations of autobiography will include an expectation of how concepts of truth will be deployed. While readers may accept inadvertent inaccuracies due to faulty memory, deliberate misinformation will not be accepted. Readers expect that the information and events chronicled in the autobiography will be those that best depict the person of the autobiographer. In my dissertation I will look at how Rousseau and Eggers deploy the truth of themselves and their experiences and how this deployment of truth seeks to direct the readers' response to the texts. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2008.

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This thesis is a comparative analysis of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Reveries du promeneur solitaire and Gabrielle Roy's autobiography (La Detresse et l'Enchantement and Le temps qui m'a manque) and establishes that these two works are testamentary autobiographies, that is, autobiographies written with the awareness of approaching death. We first show that both Rousseau and Roy link their ultimate autobiographical desire to the imminence of their own death. We then show that their autobiographical activity is not only motivated by death, but, moreover, that it allows them in a certain sense to live it already, since what this activity allows them to do is, for them, similar to what they long to do in the afterlife. We suggest, finally, that this activity, which allows them to bequeath an ideal picture of themselves that will survive them, gives them a hold on their immortality.

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