He Can’t Handle the Truth

Self-deception is a problem of overriding significance, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s treatment of this problem is widely recognized to be among the most sophisticated of his era. Yet virtually no attention has been paid to the analysis of self-deception in a work Rousseau himself called â– ̃the best and most useful’ of the eighteenth century – The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar . In this article I reconstruct that analysis, arguing that the Vicar himself is engaged in an intentional effort to acquire and maintain false beliefs. If successful, this argument not only turns conventional readings of The Profession – which emphasize the Vicar’s sincere love of truth – on their collective head but also promises to enrich contemporary philosophical and social scientific conversations about self-deception

Argument (complex analysis) · Faith · Head (geology) · Reflexive pronoun · Work (physics) · French Literature and Criticism · Renaissance and Early Modern Studies · Rousseau and Enlightenment Thought