ABSTRACT
This chapter explores several substantive issues involving self-love and self-knowledge. Self-love and narcissism are not identical, but they are related. Self-love and illusion are not only central topics in both Rousseau and in Smith, they evidently have an important bearing on the nature and possibility of self-knowledge. This chapter explores three interpretive questions. First interpretive question concerns the relation between the Preface and the play which it prefaces. The second interpretive question concerns a different level of intertextuality, and it too leads into substantive issues. The original story of Narcissus is found in Ovid's Metamorphoses. The topic of narcissism is multifaceted, and the chapter comments on several passages from Rousseau's Emile, Freud, and Adam Phillips that flesh out the connection between idealization, narcissism, illusion, and social critique. The question leads back to the problem of the nature, possibility, and indeed desirability of self-knowledge. Finally, the chapter explores the dialectic between Rousseau and Smith about these issues.
