Pt. 4: A Brief History of the Modern Self
+ In an autobiographical account of his life entitled Confessions, the French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau writes an introduction that gives a distinct description of his perspective of the self. Rousseau writes: The particular object of my confessions is to make known my inner self, exactly as it was in every circumstance of my life. It is the history of my soul that I promised, and to relate it faithfully I require no other memorandum; all I need do, as I have done up until now, is to look inside myself. For Rousseau, the real and authentic self is something found "inside". What he means by this internal self isn't directly obvious, unless we understand his larger thought of two distinct types of self-love: amour de soi-même and amour propre. + Rousseau saw human beings as naturally innocent and genuine from the start. The first kind of self-love (amour de soi-même) is the consideration of ones self by themselves only. It is the love of self that is unaffected by...
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