Solomon, Robert C. - A History of Western Philosophy: 7: Continental Philosophy since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self

Strolling in solitude through the lush forests of St Germain during the early adolescence of the modern age, Jean-Jacques Rousseau made a miraculous discovery. It was his self. This self was not, as his more scholastic predecessor Descartes had thought, that thin merely logical self, a pure formality that presented itself indubitably whenever he reflected: 'I think, therefore I am.' Nor was his the frustrated, sceptical search that led his friend Hume to declare, paradoxically, that 'whenever I took inside myself, there is no self to be found'. What Rousseau discovered in the woods of France was a self so rich and substantial, so filled with good feelings and half-articulated good thoughts, so expansive, natural, and at peace with the universe, that he recognized it immediately as something much more than his singular self. It was rather the Self as such, the soul of humanity.