ABSTRACT
The Reveries are generally read as the farewell text of a disillusioned and dejected thinker who has taken leave of the world to live in solitude. Botany emerges as a key method of “re-attaching” the solitary thinker of the Reveries to the world from which he has been proscribed, enabling him to meditate further upon the complex dynamic between the self and society. In a reversal of Max Weber’s famous declaration that science has led to a generalized “disenchantment of the world,” botany serves to “re-enchant” Jean-Jacques Rousseau with a world he had thoroughly abandoned. Flipping through the pages of the Reveries and those of his herbaria recall to Rousseau a moment that was itself carefully and meticulously composed. Following the course of Rousseau’s linguistic experimentation yields a number of surprises, which, in turn, sheds light on his search for a “new language” of self in the Reveries.
