Rousseau and the mystery of l'air de reserve

Abstract

This article would initially be a critical review of the Chapitre I - Des Principes matériels, the Livre I - Des Elemens des Corps et de leur composition, of the work entitled Les Institutions Chymiques, by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. However, it took a larger proportion. In this reading, whose source is the text published by the Société Jean-Jacques Rousseau, of  Geneva, together with volume 12 of the Annales 1918-19, Rousseau's participation in the eighteenth-century movement for the emancipation of Chemistry from Alchemy is highlighted through arguments that highlight the purpose of the Institutions to contribute to the creation of Chemistry as a scientific discipline that dialogues with Physics and settles accounts with Philosophy by being aware of its own epistemic limits with regard to the subject of the essence of matter. It is a reading that, as a whole, ends up highlighting the importance of Chemistry as a theme dear to Rousseau's research, either because it constitutes a challenge to the widespread thesis according to which the author of the Discours sur les sciences et les arts would be against the sciences, or because it is considered one of the interpretative keys of Rousseau's work.