The present paper aims to analyse how Rousseau conceives the possibility of being a philosopher and how he views the task of philosophy. While Rousseau is very critical towards contemporary philosophers and philosophy in general, he does describe his own enquiry as a philosophical one. In his view, the proper task of philosophy is ‘the knowledge of man’ that can be also understood as ‘the knowledge of oneself’. As Rousseau states in the Second Discourse, such knowledge is to be accomplished through our reason, yet the philosophy of his time fails in this task because the philosophers let themselves be dominated by their opinions. This claim is related to Rousseau’s distinction between love of oneself (amour de soi) and self-love (amour-propre).
