ABSTRACT
Telling someone something involves a kind of dependence on them. A concern for the connections between speech, recognition, and dependence on others in fact has a deep philosophical history. This chapter summarizes Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s understanding of amourpropre, and especially the way in which desiring another’s recognition involves acknowledging that other in their aspect as a free being. As early as in the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Rousseau distinguishes between two kinds of self-love: amour de soi, or the desire for self-preservation, and amour-propre, or the desire for recognition from others. Even when Rousseau’s positive political prescriptions do not bear directly on criminal cases, they are nevertheless, in contrast with what Adam Smith offers, political. The chapter explores Rousseau’s fullest exploration of speech, the Essay on the Origin of Languages, and Rousseau’s characterization of vocal speech as an expression of our passional or affective natures.
