Science, "Robinson Crusoe", and judgment: A commentary on Book III of Rousseau's "Emile"

Wyatt James Dowling, Boston College

Abstract

This dissertation examines Book III of Rousseau's Emile to show how its parts advance the goals of Emile's education. Emile learns science, reads Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, and learns to judge in Book III. Each of these parts, this dissertation finds, contributes to the general goal of giving a special discipline to Emile's intellectual faculty, a discipline that brings the capacities of his mind into balance with his true needs. This dissertation is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces this dissertation and its conclusions, and then surveys Emile's education in Book III to illustrate its aims and preview its parts. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 are topical in nature, and treat Emile's science education, his reading of Robinson Crusoe, and his education in judgment, respectively. Emile's scientific education has three aims: to reinforce a salutary cosmology, to show Emile the usefulness and limits of scientific thinking, and to give him a "magazine" of knowledge related to his true needs. Emile's reading of Robinson Crusoe motivates his study of the sciences, exercises his imagination in a positive way by giving him a standard--Crusoe's island--by which to judge the value of things, and permits him to see, through his comparison of himself with Crusoe, that his happiness depends upon his preservation of his individualistic identity. His education in judgment serves to discipline his mind so that he can judge well what actions will contribute to his somatic and psychic preservation. Chapter 5 concludes our examination of Book III by showing how Emile's education in this part prepares him for the developments of Book IV and V, and why Emile's education at the end of Book III remains incomplete only to the extent that it has not yet taken into account the birth of sexual desire, which serves as both a danger and an opportunity.

Recommended Citation

Wyatt James Dowling, "Science, "Robinson Crusoe", and judgment: A commentary on Book III of Rousseau's "Emile"" (January 1, 2007). Boston College Dissertations and Theses. Paper AAI3301787.
http://escholarship.bc.edu/dissertations/AAI3301787