A Vida social e os conhecimentos do homem : um estudo sobre a formação do Emílio de Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Abstract

This essay aims to investigate the knowledge man is able to acquire through negative education found in Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s “Emile”. It is assumed that social life presents itself as an image, sensations and embarrassment stream that places itself before the modern man, and it is characterized as “ties”, since they complicate self-knowledge. When the man knows himself, he becomes able to be as good to himself as to the other. This knowledge is debated based on Rousseau’s operative concept: state of nature, civil status and original kindness. It is drew upon the mermaid island excerpt from Homero’s “Odyssey”, as a strategy to illustrate the difficulties and the “ties” social life presents to the man from civil status, which such circumstances are symbolized by siren song, while the wax the hero uses to avoid the siren song represents the knowledge range man, from a nature’s education, is able to acquire, in order to use it to live in society. It is concluded that the formation guided by the nature is likely to provide the man all the knowledge he will need to face the difficulties of social life and the knowledge range will provide him self-knowledge, to measure – before all the situations social life presents – the extension of his needs and the limit of his strength. Thus, in facing the difficulties the siren song has, the man formed by the natural education will become an authentic Ulysses, once he will know how to use wax as a way to preserve himself and his fellow creatures, while those who despise what nature has to teach, guided by the stream, will present themselves in society as a weakened Ulysses.