The gospel of reason. By J.J. Rousseau, citizen of Geneva
Authors of source text
Contributions
- Richard Lee
- publisher
- translator
Related resources
- is translation of
- Émile, ou de l'éducation has translation
- has other edition
- Important and curious extract from Rousseau translation
- has other edition
- The gospel of reason. By J.J. Rousseau, citizen of Geneva translation
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Notes
This 4-page extract from the 'Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar', taken from book IV of 'Émile', was sold by Citizen Lee 'At the Tree of Liberty' for one penny.
Jon Mee in 'Print, publicity and popular radicalism' suggests that Lee's radical Protestant imagination wished to present Rousseau as an "advocate of a religion of free grace" and "radical apostle of the sufficiency of the spirit's teaching", p.157. See also Patrick Leech, 'Cosmopolitanism', p.155.
The 'Profession', which was often excerpted and printed separately, was considered by many to be the most controversial part of the book and resulted in it being banned and publicly burned in Paris and Geneva in the year of its publication. In it, Rousseau leads his readers through an argument for the principles of Deism or "natural religion". He later affirmed that it "may one day create a revolution amongst men if ever good sense and good faith come alive again". In essence, it was his attempt to attempt a kind of reconciliation between the intolerant superstition of the Roman Catholic Church and the materialist scepticism (or atheism) of the philosophes by demonstrating that the essential moral needs of all Men were universal, and thus theological differences as petty and unimportant.
The translation itself corresponds to neither the Nugent nor Kenrick versions so Lee either translated himself or adapted one of the existing translations. After Lee moved to the US he reprinted this extract twice more in 1796 and 1799.
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