SOLITAIRE HEUREUX. UN DIALOGUE ENTRE ROUSSEAU ET BOUDDHA
HAPPINESS IN SOLITUDE. A DIALOGUE BETWEEN ROUSSEAU AND BUDDHA

Summary/Abstract: Jean-Jacques Rousseau may be the most original Philosopher of the French Enlightenment. His thoughts, especially those on happiness, confuse contemporaries in some ways. However, they are close to Oriental philosophies, even though the Citizen of Geneva did not encounter any East Asia’s ideologies. In some aspect, his eudaemonism is comparable to Buddha’s teachings. Their doctrines of simple life are built upon their views of human beings’ good nature. They implicate that it is the reinforcement of the intern which allows us to stay in happiness by ourselves to reduce the cravings of “fantômes du bonheur”, according to the terms of Diderot. Solitude itself is neither happiness nor unhappiness, but it helps Rousseau to think about a kind of happiness that does not depend so much on the extern.

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