The aim of the present study is to trace an interpretation of Rousseau’s novel Julie ou la Nouvelle Heloise on the basis of the difference between love and friendship. Starting with a brief reminder of Paul de Man’s interpretation of this novel in Allegories of Reading, the author turns to Jacques Derrida and borrows a key neologism from his book The Politics of Friendship: aimance or lovence, an affective modality which blurs and transcends the duality of love and friendship. On this basis, the author presents a few remarks concerning the literary form of the novel, the configuration of its characters and finally the place of Rousseau’s Julie in the context of his other works. Rather than being an isolated literary work, Julie seems to be an attempt to answer certain questions concerning the relation between individual and society from a different angle than that chosen in The Social Contract., Etienne Balibar ; překlad Josef Fulka., and Obsahuje bibliografické odkazy