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Roman épistolaire célébré par son siècle, Julie ou La Nouvelle Héloïse (1762) offre une réflexion d’une criante actualité. Par le déploiement d’une érotique placée sous l’égide de la connaissance, Rousseau voit dans l’amour le couronnement de sa réflexion politique et morale, articulée autour de la question des rapports, conformément à l’ouvrage fondamental mais non premier du système, à savoir l’Emile. Il y va en effet, dans La Nouvelle Héloïse, de la confrontation brutale de l’amour à des circonstances mondaines qui le contrarient sans pouvoir l’éteindre. Au sein de cette lutte, Julie cristallise le combat mené par la vertu au nom d’une passion qui, bien que conforme à la nature, ne peut se maintenir dans le monde sans impliquer indéfectiblement sa propre contrariété. Il s’agit alors tout autant de la mise en lumière des difficultés propres au système, que du jaillissement d’une érotique complexe au sein de laquelle le langage, vecteur de la temporalité à l’œuvre dans l’amour, devient la forme par laquelle le sentiment s’actualise tout au long d’une véritable phénoménologie morale, admirablement composée, qui suit les amants de la naissance de leurs feux à la mort de l’héroïne. En se présentant comme simple éditeur des lettres qu’il a rédigées depuis le pays de ses chimères, celui que Kant désignait comme le Newton du monde moral déplace la question de l’authenticité de la correspondance et permet ainsi à la passion amoureuse d’accéder pleinement à l’universalité vers laquelle elle ouvre, tout en révélant la conquête de l’identité qu’elle opère, au sein de la contradiction déchirante entre intérêt particulier et intérêt collectif. / An epistolary novel celebrated during its century, Julie, or the New Heloise (1762) offers a resoundingly topical reflection. By using erotica under the aegis of knowledge, Rousseau sees in love the peak of his political and moral reflection, articulated around the question of interactions, conforming to the fundamental albeit not the first piece of his system, i.e. Emile. In The New Heloise, there is a brutal confrontation between love and social circumstances that contradict the former without being able to extinguish it. In the core of this confrontation, Julie crystallises the fight brought by virtue of a passion that, albeit in conformity with nature, cannot remain in the world without unfailingly resulting in its own contradiction. The inherent difficulties in the system are thus touched upon as much the emergence of a complex erotica at the core of which language, vector of the temporality that operates within love, becomes the form by which feeling is actualised throughout an admirably composed moral phenomenology which follows the lovers from the birth of their passion to the death of the heroine. By presenting himself simply as the editor of the letters that he wrote from the depths of his fantasies, the one who Kant designated as the Newton of the moral world changes the question of the correspondence’s authenticity, and thus allows romantic passion to fully reach the universality towards which it opens, all while revealing the conquest for identity that it enables, in the heart of the harrowing contradiction between individual and collective interest.

Rousseau and Kant were philosophers of freedom. Both believed freedom was the essence of humanity, and both believed that "freedom is self-legislation." This thesis examines what they understood to be self-legislation. According to Rousseau natural freedom was lost with the establishment of society. Society is an "unnatural" order and the true basis of society is simply convention. Man is free only if he is subject to laws of his own making, or at least to those laws to which he has consented. The ideal state, according to Rousseau, is the republic based on laws that have been created and adopted by each members of the community. It is in this sense of freedom, for Rousseau, is self-legislation. Kant believed the important issue was demonstrating the metaphysical possibility of freedom, not the reconstruction of society. Kant argued that freedom could be demonstrated, and morality reaffirmed, by focusing on the 11 ought" of reason. The 11 ought 11 transcends the physical world and was a pure law of reason. It is not subject to the physical laws of causality. Man has the ability to act according to this law of reason. Man is transcending the physical realm, and the physical laws of nature, whenever he makes a moral decision based on what he 11 ought 11 to do, or whenever he puts duty before his physical desire. This, Kant argues, is self-legislation, and only here may man hope to be free.