“Living in the Others”: Rousseau and Recognition as Estrangement

Abstract

This paper offers a reconstruction of Rousseau’s moral, cultural and social criticism of the human desire for social valuation. The thesis advanced is that, according to Rousseau, such desire emerges from the feeling of “self-love”, which he regarded as unfounded and morally reproachable, as it results from a false estimation of oneself and others. The paper is focused on the reasons that lead Rousseau to consider the desire for public esteem or social recognition as one that hampers the possibility of enjoying an autonomous life, by enslaving human persons to the opinion of their fellows. From this perspective, the paper aims to show the negative value that the search for recognition involves for Rousseau and to examine his attempts to rethink the sense of interpersonal relations.