Near the end of Derrida’s Of Grammatology, he delved a bit into Rousseau’s idea of dreams ending  with a quote (on page 330) from Rousseau’s Book of Nature :

 

 

            “…the dreams of a bad night are given to us as philosophy. You will say I too am a dreamer; I admit it, but I do what others fail to do, I give my dreams as dreams, and leave the reader to discover whether there is anything in them which may prove useful to those who are awake. (76)”

The dreams of a bad night…. those are normally the ones people remember, right? They are clear, vivid, and don’t leave your side. I personally feel that dreams tend to linger on and perhaps Rousseau also felt that way. The lingering feeling causes you to then think of what caused them and why (leading to philosophy). I have tried to rationalize my dreams and have even had friends who kept a dream journal to see what to make of it but most of the time, I am (and they were) left with more questions than before.

We do know that dreams occur in the subconscious normally during the REM stage of the sleep cycle. You can’t control them, you can’t change them, in your mind they are present, real, and in the now. (Freud did a lot of research on dreams so if he were here he would probably be a better spokesperson than I but no worries.)

I did find it interesting that Rousseau thought that he only recounted his dreams as they were therefore leaving them up for interpretation. But how can we be sure Rousseau was able to do this successfully? Each time a dream is told, and retold, I feel that either you lose a bit of it or you seem to add to it… even when keeping a journal. It is very difficult trying to keep track of everything that occurred. So, I’m not sure if Rousseau was really able to do this in the end…but I guess I will leave that up to you guys…those who are awake.