The Confessions has almost certainly been Rousseau's most consistently popular work. Julie, or the New Heloise, which became the literary sensation of the eighteenth century immediately on publication, fell out of popularity in the next century. On the Social Contract is Rousseau's most famous work and maintains its status as one of the crucial texts in the history of political philosophy, but has never really been a popular favorite. Interest in the Confessions, however, is sustained by the persisting interest in autobiography that it did much to inspire. It is Rousseau's most accessible work and the one most closely tied to an enduring popular taste.

This is not to say that all readers have found it to be a likeable work. For every reader who reacts to it with enthusiasm, there is one who is repulsed by it. These diametrically opposed responses are inspired from the very beginning of Book I with Rousseau's insistence on his goal of showing “a man in all the truth of nature; and this man will be myself,” a declaration directly followed by his claim that he will appear at the last judgment with this book in hand. As part of his general denunciation of Rousseau, Edmund Burke referred to this opening, saying, “It was this abuse and perversion, which vanity makes even of hypocrisy, which has driven Rousseau to record a life not so much as chequered, or spotted here and there, with virtues, or even distinguished by a single good action. It is such a life he chooses to offer to the attention of mankind. It is such a life, that, with a wild defiance, he flings in the face of his Creator, who he acknowledges only to brave.”