"Et je ne portai plus d'autre habit"

One day Rousseau decided to dress up as an Armenian. “From then on I wore no other clothes” he stated. It seemed imperative to examine that decisive choice of clothing in the light of the philosopher’s work, including his life experience and his readings, in order to show that Armenian dress, far from being a matter of whim or functionality, far from being merely anecdotal, matches Rousseau’s thought world. These clothes enclose him. The various symbolic dimensions of Armenian dress examined here endow this choice of clothing with the value of a sign throwing light on the philosophical and political questions that were crucial in the eyes of Rousseau: the immortality of the soul, intercourse between human beings. This Armenian dress covers the physical, imaginary, musical and spiritual self of the citizen of Geneva, it provides him with the aura of the magus, it animalises and divinises him at one and the same time. Only this Armenian dress will have shown Rousseau in the entire truth of his nature, and named him as what he is: “other”.