ABSTRACT
In the prevailing notions of how people should raise and educate children in contemporary society, there are unspoken conceptions regarding the child and childhood. There was established a new type of mysticism of the child as being close to nature, an idealised notion of nature unfettered by the trappings of civilisation and culture. Like many of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s works it goes far beyond its nominal topic to address the questions of the nature of man, the family, society, and the state. The education of men is effectively the one that he criticises, privileging the education of things, once again the ideal upbringing through the unmediated contact with, and experience. Rousseau indeed places himself in the imaginary position as master of jouissance but experiences joy only second-hand, through his imaginary others. Rousseau operates on the level of a disavowal in his relations to imaginary objects.
