
Contents
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The Origin of Laziness The Origin of Laziness
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Full-Length Portrait of the Idler Full-Length Portrait of the Idler
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The Laziness of Being The Laziness of Being
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An Ethics of Liberty An Ethics of Liberty
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[3] The Great Project of an Idle Life: Rousseau
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Published:May 2011
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Abstract
This chapter discusses how idleness is one of the contradictory figures that weave through Jean-Jacques Rousseau's works. The problem of idleness pervades Rousseau's philosophical writings and dominates his autobiographical works. The chapter aims to trace the various paradoxes that inhabit the question for Rousseau and to explore why it engages him as political philosopher, moralist, and writer alike. After considering his anthropological ruminations on work, as well as his praise of labor, the chapter shows how Rousseau creates a radical esthetics of désoeuvrement (lack of occupation), the keystone of his program to valorize inactivity and validate subjectivity, which he also envisions as a return to origin. Rousseau thus develops a notion of idleness as decadence, a corruption of natural human energy and an evasion of patriotic duty.
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