Να είμαι ο εαυτός μου: Η αυθεντικότητα του υποκειμένου στον J. J. Rousseau ως πολιτικό αίτημα

Abstract

The development of individualization and interiority of the human subjects during the modem era produces new meditations on the concept of the self. The answer to the question ‘who am 1?’ is neither self-evident nor deducible from social identities and external sources any longer. Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) conceives the problem. Moreover, he faces it by reflecting on his own life. His autobiographical texts, but other works of his as well deal with questions such as ‘who have I been in my life? Was I true, for example, to my deeper self? And how can this relationship with myself be determined?’. For Rousseau, those questions are transformed into the moral demand ‘be myself or ‘become myself, establishing the examination regarding ‘authenticity’. This article critically reconstructs Rousseau’s positions on authenticity with reference to primary texts. It analyses his critique on non-authentic relationships with reference to Paris’s social life, his personal moral reform and, lastly, the authentic relationships that are supposedly embedded in the idealized Geneva of his time and in the political community of the Social Contract. It concludes that, while Rousseau is particularly sensitive in his critique, a critique which produces the political demand of replacing the alienating and manipulating relationships with relationships based on freedom and authenticity, he fails to offer exemplary models of authenticity.