ABSTRACT
The dangerous supplement, which Jean-Jacques Rousseau calls a "fatal advantage," is properly seductive; it leads desire away from the good path, makes it err far from natural ways, guides it toward its loss or fall and therefore it is a sort of lapsus or scandal. Writing is dangerous from the moment that representation there claims to be presence and the sign of the thing itself. To speak of the writing of Rousseau is to try to recognize what escapes these categories of passivity and activity, blindness and responsibility. According to Rousseau, the negativity of evil will always have the form of supplementarity. Evil is exterior to nature, to what is by nature innocent and good. The supplement is both humanity's good fortune and the origin of its perversion. The supplement will always be the moving of the tongue or acting through the hands of others. The supplement is the image and the representation of Nature.
