ABSTRACT
The service that the conviction of impending death rendered to Jean-Jacques Rousseau's intellectual apprenticeship will later find its counterpart in the service that a conviction of universal conspiracy renders to therapeutic reverie. Once again, extreme affliction becomes an occasion for happy "working through". Rousseau's unhappiness is so severe that his condition cannot possibly worsen, and therefore he can devote himself entirely to an effort of compensation. The Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts, which marked the debut of Rousseau's literary career, is an indictment of the disease—the poison—that overtakes civilized societies as "fatal enlightenment" and "idle knowledge" progress. One of the first objections raised by Rousseau's adversaries was to ask how it was, since he condemned the arts and sciences, that he came to write such eloquent discourses. Rousseau clearly credits himself with superior knowledge, capable of discerning processes that proceed unbeknownst to us and unbeknownst even to genius.
