On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life

On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life presents Heinrich Meier’s confrontation with Rousseau’s Reveries, the philosopher’s most beautiful and daring work, as well as his last and least understood. Bringing to bear more than thirty years of study of Rousseau, Meier unfolds his stunningly original interpretation in two parts.

The first part of On the Happiness of the Philosophic Life approaches the Reveries not as another autobiographical text in the tradition of the Confessions and the Dialogues, but as a reflection on the philosophic life and the distinctive happiness it provides. The second turns to a detailed analysis of a work referred to in the Reveries, the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar, which triggered Rousseau’s political persecution when it was originally published as part of Emile. In his examination of this most controversial of Rousseau’s writings, which aims to lay the foundations for a successful nonphilosophic life, Meier brings to light the differences between natural religion as expressed by the Vicar and Rousseau’s natural theology. Together, the two reciprocally illuminating parts of this study provide an indispensable guide to Rousseau and to the understanding of the nature of the philosophic life.

[A] dense but precise and enthralling analysis. -New Yorker