Muse, walk, meditate: Considerations about the Fourth Walk of The Reveries of a Solitary Walker

Abstract

This presentation intends to make an analysis of the Fourth Walk of The Reveries of a Solitary Walker. Rousseau begins his walk by reporting what happened in the previous days. He tells us that he had read Plutarch, one of the authors who influenced him most in his life, precisely the treatise How to Profit by One’s Enemies, oddly he had seen on the same day a newspaper in which the Abbot Rosier had ironically changed his maxim. Intrigued by the reasons for this and interested in learning Plutarch’s lessons, the Genoese author decides to use the next day’s walk to think about lie. As we know, in writing his autobiographical texts, Rousseau always starts from two principles, the ‘Know yourself’ of the temple of Delphi - which he admits early in the journey to be a more difficult principle to follow than he supposed in his Confessions - and the maxim he adopted as the motto of his life: Vitam Impendere Vero (dedicating his life to the truth). Therefore, two main issues should be examined. The first one is when and how one owes someone the truth and the second one is if we can mislead someone unintentionally. To answer the first Rousseau will tell us that there are different kinds of truth, and the truth due to someone is that which concerns justice. This will be the “moral” truth and the one that is due to another person.