f-obsessed braggart who sees himself as uniquely superior not only to his contemporaries but to all those before and after him:
I have resolved on an enterprise which has no precedent, and which, once complete, will have no imitator. My purpose is to display to my kind a portrait in every way true to nature, and the man I shall portray is myself (Rousseau 17).
Again, one might expect that by the end of the book, after over six hundred pages, the author might display some sign that he had matured as a man, perhaps after having recognized that there is something more to life than proving to others that one is superior to them and that they had better agree with him, or else. However, Rousseau shows at the end of his work the same pugnacious self-concern he showed at the beginning:
I have told the truth. If anyone knows anything contrary to what I have here recorded, though he prove it a thousand times, his knowledge is a lie and an imposture; and if he refuses to investigate and inquire into it during my lifetime he is no lover of justice or of truth. . . . Anyone . . . who . . . believe[s] me a dishonourable man, is a man who deserves to be stifled (Rousseau 605-606).
To Augustine, Rousseau's obsession with what others think of him, with his earthly reputation, with challenging anyone who might doubt him or not think highly of him, are indications of an immature human being. To Augustine, the essence of life is not building a worldly reputation but building a relationship with God. To Augustine life on this earth has little or nothing to offer a human being who realizes that spirituality is reality and that one's true home is in "the eternal Jerusalem" (Augustine 647), or Heaven.áAugustine would likely have compassion for Rousseau's suffering as he s
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