That Infernal Affair

In 1756 Rousseau and Diderot were still close friends, and Rousseau was falling in love with the Countess d'Houdetot. The letters that make up the body of That Infernal Affair reveal the apparently sudden breakdown of these and other relationships of Rousseau, against a background of the Seven Years’ War, the Lisbon earthquake, and the brutal judicial system of the Old Regime in France. Rousseau’s break with Diderot represents the watershed separating sentimental attitudes from the rationalism of Enlightenment (embodied in the Encyclopedie), a break that still colors Western thought. The letters (and the editors’ preface, notes, and appendix) reveal not only the facts of the case and Rousseau’s mental state but also the self-serving manipulation of documentary evidence by unscrupulous erstwhile friends, including Madame d'Epinay and her lover, Baron Grimm.