This book reopens the question of Rousseau's influence on the French Revolution and on English Romanticism, by examining the relationship between his confessional writings and his political theory. Gregory Dart argues that by looking at the way in which Rousseau's writings were mediated by the speeches and actions of Robespierre, we can gain a clearer and more concrete sense of the legacy he left to English writers. He shows how the writings of Godwin, Wollstonecraft, Wordsworth and Hazlitt rehearse and reflect upon the Jacobin tradition in the aftermath of the Terror.
Rousseau, the great political theorist and philosopher of education, was an important forerunner of the French Revolution, though his thought was too nuanced and subtle ever to serve as mere ideology. This is the only volume that systematically surveys the full range of Rousseau's activities in politics and education, psychology, anthropology, religion, music, and theater.
One of the most profound thinkers of modern history, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) was a central figure of the European Enlightenment. He was also its most formidable critic, condemning the political, economic, theological, and sexual trappings of civilization along lines that would excite the enthusiasm of romantic individualists and radical revolutionaries alike.
Making Citizens: Rousseau's Political Theory of CultureRousseau's theory of the effect of culture on politics is critical to his philosophy. In Making Citizens, Zev M. Trachtenberg takes Rousseau's theory as a model of how considerations of culture can be incorporated into a wider account of political life. He critically evaluates Rousseau's account and finds it inadequate. Using techniques from the theory of collective action to devise a new interpretation of Rousseau's concept of the general will, Trachtenberg identifies the ways culture conditions politics and examines the attitudes individuals can adopt that facilitate or impede social cooperation.
Eli Friedlander reads Rousseau's autobiography, Reveries of the Solitary Walker, as philosophy. Reading this work against Descartes's Meditations, Friedlander shows how Rousseau's memorable transformation of experience through writing opens up the possibility of affirming even the most dejected state of being and allows the emergence of the innocence of nature out of the ruins of all social attachments.
