ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on Emile, or Education, trying to reconstruct the connections between the conceptions of the child, nature, and divinity as the scaffolding for the analysis of the concept of education. Natural education in Rousseau is not, thus, about letting the child experience nature “as it is”: naturalness is staged and controlled. Emile is accompanied and supervised by his tutor who should administer the “right” experiences to the child. The notion of natural environment as suitable for the early development of the child is construed by Rousseau in accordance with the Biblical vision of Eden. The lines of continuity of religious discourse in Rousseau are strikingly strong. The similarity of Rousseau’s vision of natural education to the figure of Eden is not accidental, then, and the invisibility of the teacher can be read through this metaphor.
