Rousseau's Emile Chapter Summary

afternoon he would take a walk at precisely the same time: so precise was he that the townspeople said that one could set the clock by his schedule. Kant is said to have missed his walk only once: when he was reading Rousseau's Emile. Unfortunately, this delightful story is most likely untrue, but it does indicate the extent to which Kant's Observations are influenced by Rousseau's views." The book consists offour chapters in which Kant describes various aspects of culture and society in terms of the concepts ofthe beautiful and the sublime. The third chapter deals with the idea ofthe beautiful and the sublime with respect to male and female. Like Rousseau, Kant opens this chapter with a discussion on human nature. He states that men and women are all human beings,

This is not only stylistically the case, in that the first person is male and the third person female, but it also emerges in the language used to describe the two genders. Women are described as being "attractive" and "charming", terms which refer to the impact ofwomen on men. Indeed, Kant argues that this impact ofwomen on men is what it is all about, even for women themselves: their greatest concern is men. T erms used to describe men are more external and neutral: they stand on their own, nor in relationship to someone else and men are described as being oriented to things other than women. One can see this, for example, in Kant's description ofthe sublime and principled minds ofmen. Women direct themselves to men, men to higher things. At certain points, however, Kant does refer to male feelings about themselves and how they appear to others, as, for example, when he refers to the fact that men have a fear of appearing to be ridiculous. Although this essay is not an explicitly pedagogical one, as was Rousseau's Emile, Kant does give some guidelines for the education of