Over the past few decades, scholars have reassessed the role of amour-propre in Rousseau's thought. While it was once believed that he had an entirely negative valuation of the emotion, it is now widely held that he finds it useful and employs it to strengthen moral attachments, conjugal love, civic virtue and moral heroism. At the same time, scholars are divided as to whether this positive amour-propre is an antidote to the negative or dangerous form. Some scholars are confident that 'inflamed' amourpropre can be overcome while others adopt a more fatalistic view. While mindful of Rousseau's pessimism in his most famous works, this essay seeks to identify a middle position. By contending Rousseau's discussion of amour-propre is largely concerned with the problems surrounding identity construction in commercial, urban societies, it will be argued that amour-propre can be lessened to manageable levels in more rural societies, that is, agrarian provincial life.

With the publication of the First Discourse, Rousseau initiated a famous debate over the social value of the arts and sciences. As this debate developed, however, it transformed into a question of the value of the intellectuals as a social class and touched upon questions of identity formation. While the philosophes were lobbying to become a new cultural aristocracy, Rousseau believed the ideological glorification of intellectual talent demeaned the peasants and working classes. This essay argues that amour propre, as put forth in the Second Discourse, was in part designed to address this concern and is an attempt to highlight the dangers of making talent the measure of a human.

In American political discourse, freedom is often spoken of in terms of its inherent rationality or divine origins and is conceptualized as nothing more than a set of concrete institutions coupled with individual rights. By way of Tocqueville's Democracy in America, I will attempt to broaden our political vocabulary by constructing a psychology of freedom. According to Tocqueville, the American consciousness is largely a product of two conflicting tendencies: Cartesian rationality and Pascalian existential angst. Out of the tensions created by the interplay of these two elements Tocqueville demonstrates that the motivations to sustain freedom, as well as the institutions and practices crucial for the maintenance of it, result from a complex psychological mixture of self-interest, vanity, and a desire for solitude.

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