ABSTRACT
Arthur Goldhammer is a Senior Associate of the Center for European Studies at Harvard, co-editor of French Politics and Society, and the translator of more than seventy works from the French. Rousseau could not have known his savage among giants because his understanding of the sovereignty of the general will was like the blind philosopher's understanding of the mirror, synthetic a priori, perfect for articulating a political discourse in conformity with the rules governing the language-game of an age that had never yet seen a republic of free and equal citizens. For the blind philosopher, the word 'mirror' precedes the explanatory discourse which produces, in response to a question, a justification of its use. Thus the blind man can use the noun 'mirror' as a 'name' for a 'concept', but the act of naming does not exhaust the meaning of the term, does not, as Michel Foucault would have it, 'name its being'.
