O discurso sobre as ciências e as artes de Jean-Jacques Rousseau: ambiguidades e polaridades enquanto Princípio da Reflexão

Abstract

In an attempt to show the theoretical value of the Discourse on the sciences and arts (1749), this article seeks to indicate that it is constituted by ambiguities and contradictions very well measured, involving moral, ethics, politics, economics, metaphysics, religion, philosophy, aesthetics, etc. In assuming the need to study man in order to know his deepest nature, Rousseau recognizes the complexity of scientific and philosophical work, identifying that everything consists of pairs of opposites bearing losses and gains, especially when advances, progress, and implementations are at stake. But this does not mean that Rousseau claims a movement in the sense of apprehending man being eternalized at his point of departure. Pursuing the prognosis, going beyond a mere detection of the source of evils, he says that it is necessary to accommodate human enterprises to the dictates of nature in order to approach man from the most balanced position possible, leaving him in his proper place.This teaching of the Discourse in question, preceded by its polarized, peculiar and intriguing articulations, establishes its inherent richness, placing it in the rudiments sphere of Rousseau's thought.