"At Least I Am Different": Disability, Authenticity, and Understanding in Rousseau's Life and Works

In this paper, I examine the life and works of Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778) through the lenses of madness, neurodivergence, and disability. While many scholars readily think of Rousseau as eccentric, overly emotional, and "melancholic," they do not attempt to situate him as explicitly disabled, or to interpret his work as informed by madness.Using my own disabled, autistic, and mad identity as a point of potential reparative reading and kinship (although not as a direct diagnostic analogue or an uncritical approach), I argue that reading Rousseau explicitly as disabled, and further as experiencing traits consistent with modern descriptions of mental disability, opens up a new way of looking at his philosophical and musical works. By applying disabled, neurodivergent, and mad lenses to Rousseau. I provide a framework to understand the tensions between authenticity and falsehood, belief in mankind and misanthropy, and understanding and misunderstanding in his work.