Reveries of the Solitary Walker

Rousseau's unfinished final work — ten 'walks' that constitute a meditation on solitude, nature, memory, and happiness — written in the last years of his life when he had withdrawn from society and felt persecuted by his former Enlightenment colleagues.

Creates the model of romantic solitude as philosophical method — the solitary walker finds in himself and in nature what social life has destroyed — and the Fifth Walk's account of floating on a lake in pure present-moment awareness is the closest Rousseau comes to mystical experience.