ROUSSEAU’S MEMORIAL PRACTICE OF HAPPINESS: AUTOBIOGRAPHY, ASKESIS AND ATARAXIA Jared Holley 1,2 Abstract: This article argues that Rousseau’s autobiographies outline an account of personal happiness as an Epicurean memorial practice. For Rousseau, happiness is secured by an attitude to pleasure cultivated by practices utilizing the powers of mem- ory and imagination. In describing these practices autobiographically, he hoped to teach his readers to avoid the false pleasures of vulgar sensuality and pursue instead the true pleasures of what he called ‘temperate sensuality’. This orienting idea of the autobiographies is a distinctly Epicurean ascetic practice — combatting the constant threat of vulgar hedonism to bring about a new relationship to the self. By reconstruct- ing this account, the article provides a basis to reconsider the relationship between solitude, sociability and citizenship in Rousseau’s political thought. In saying to myself, I have enjoyed, I enjoy again. 3 Introduction Rousseau’s autobiographies pose two closely related difficulties for histori- ans of political thought. One concerns their position in his oeuvre: how do his descriptions of individual flourishing in the autobiographies relate to those of republican virtue in his more overtly political writings? The other concerns his account of flourishing itself: does Rousseau present a consistent account of personal happiness and, if so, what are its defining features? Faced with these difficulties, a standard approach is simply to ignore the autobiographies or to downplay their importance relative to his more straightforwardly norma- tive work. 4 My aim in what follows is, instead, to approach the latter difficulty in a way that develops a new perspective from which to reconsider the former. HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT. Vol. XLIII. No. 3. Autumn 2022 1 Marie-SkÓodowska Curie Fellow in Political Thought, Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. Email: jdh53@cam.ac.uk 2 For valuable comments on previous versions of this article, my thanks to Chris Brooke, Duncan Kelly, Birte Löschenkohl, Sankar Muthu and Mike Sonenscher. This version first took shape through discussions at EUI (Florence) with, especially, Richard Bellamy, Amparo Fontaine, Shiru Lim and Eniola Soyemi. The article was greatly improved by responding to insightful criticisms and suggestions from two anonymous reviewers, and Iain Hampsher-Monk’s generous editorial support. 3 Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ‘On the Art of Enjoying’, in Rousseau, Judge of Jean- Jacques: Dialogues, ed. and trans. Roger D. Masters, Christopher Kelly and Judith R. Bush (Hanover, 1990), p. 57. 4 This is especially true of the dominant interpretations in contemporary Anglophone political philosophy. See Joshua Cohen, Rousseau: A Free Community of Equals (Oxford, 2010) and Frederick Neuhouser, Rousseau’s Theodicy of Self-Love: Evil, Rationality, Copyright (c) Imprint Academic For personal use only -- not for reproduction