How Confessions drew on Confessions
A documented line of influence: Jean-Jacques Rousseau demonstrably engaged Augustine of Hippo’s work. The commentary below is Gröblé’s, verbatim from each work’s page.
The source
Confessions
Augustine of Hippo · c. 398
Ancient RomeThe influenced
Confessions
Jean-Jacques Rousseau · 1782
EnlightenmentRelevance
9/10
On Confessions’s page
- Rousseau took the title on purpose — this is a point-by-point reply to Augustine, not an homage
- Augustine's Confessions sets up everything Rousseau is fighting: original sin, grace, the wretched self redeemed only from above
- Read Augustine first and Rousseau's whole project sharpens — his "man according to nature," good until society spoils him, is a deliberate refusal of Augustine's born sinner
On Confessions’s page
- The book that invented the genre — and the book Rousseau wrote to overturn it
- Augustine's Confessions is a man laying bare his sins before God; fourteen centuries later Rousseau steals the title and inverts the premise
- Where Augustine confesses to a soul born in sin and saved only by grace, Rousseau answers with his own Confessions and a man born good, corrupted only by the world