Why Is Rousseau Important To Humanity?

In a particular moment of “illumination”, Rousseau realized that the progress humanity had achieved during the period of Enlightenment was of no real value to its emotional state of well-being. Hence, he was an individual who did not perceive the world as many other contemporaries of his did, especially philosophes and so found that emotion, rather than reason, was what first helped him to understand the world he lived in. Rousseau was convinced of it from memories of a very young age: “I had feelings before I had thoughts: that is the common lot of humanity.” (Rousseau, 588) While this may be initially perceived as Rousseau simply projecting his own opinion onto humanity, as he is of course writing from the heart regarding his own personal …show more content…
Wordsworth also “…championed the spontaneity of authentic feeling and stories of everyday emotion”. (Puchner, 919) Also, much in the same vein of what Rousseau set out to accomplish with Confessions, Wordsworth’s “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, on Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour, July 13, 1798” asks what makes a self a self: how do we become what we are?” (Puchner, 921 & 922) In the poem, Wordsworth too spoke from the heart and extoled the ordinary. He brought to bear at the forefront of this poem the beauty and simplicity of nature. He wanted to write his poetry in a prosaic manner that mirrored the language of the common man. In doing so “…he defined poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” that came from “emotion recollected in tranquility”. (Puchner, 920) In the verse from the poem “…while with an eye made quiet by the power of joy, we see into the life of things” (Wordsworth, 926), one can see that is simply through emotion alone that we can begin to understand our place and what we mean in the grand scheme of things that we call life. Conclusively, it was Wordsworth’s aim to concentrate on the emotion of contentment that could be derived from experiencing and becoming a part of …show more content…
The date July 13, 1798 in the title of his poem commemorated the anniversary of the day before the French Revolution started. This momentary subterfuge was nevertheless once more punctuated by his hopeful outlook and love of the natural world as he goes on to state that he was “…still a lover of the meadows and the woods, and the mountains and of all that we behold of this green earth” (Wordsworth, 927) He furthermore reinforces his feelings on the matter with more vigor by stating “…that neither evil tongues, rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, nor the greetings where no kindness is, nor all the dreary intercourse of daily life shall e’er prevail against us or disturb our cheerful faith” (Wordsworth, 927). The very notion that he expresses and does not rationalize, rather opting to concentrate on emotions is apropos as a comparison to Rousseau’s aforementioned and similarly expressed sentiments when he declared with a sense of resolution for the better regarding how he felt in light of his soon to be many confessions within his own memoir.