Abstract
The study focuses on the important role of the phenomenon of amour propre in thinking of J.-J. Rousseau, specifically in the context of Rousseau's concept of evil.
At the beginning, we want to make a short excursion to the theologians of the 17th and 18th centuries and to show possible continuity in Rousseau's thinking of evil, albeit in a substantially transformed form. In the line from Leibniz to Rousseau, we will attempt to outline how Rousseau's approach can be understood as a theodicy of its kind, even as a "secularized theodicy".
This connection will allow us to further focus on the centrality of amour propre in Rousseau's exploration of the evil. The text will try to show that if Rousseau asks for evil, he attributes key importance to such self-love, not only in terms of the source of evil, but also in the potential possibility of its overcoming and suppression.