ABSTRACT

Rousseau's entry into literature, the original cause of his troubles with his fellow bourgeois citizens and philosophes. In the latter, he writes of experiencing a moral vision of the world on his way to Vincennes on foot to visit Diderot. Diderot was still his friend. The writing of the Discourse responded to the announcement of a prize essay competition by the Academy of Dijon and advertised in the Mercure de France which he carried in his pocket on this occasion and had read under the tree, triggering off his vision. Intimate friendship is the ideal relationship between citizens sharing the text of their society, the friendship that he promotes in his political writing, in his vision of utopia, of the moral universe of a future golden age which is the ordered state of a transparent society. Its lack of transparency was, for Rousseau, instead of promoting the sentiment of intimate friendship required by the ethics of authenticity.