Book contents
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
- 2 A General Overview
- 3 Rousseau, Voltaire, and the Revenge of Pascal
- 4 Rousseau, Fénelon, and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns
- 5 Rousseau's Political Philosophy: Stoic and Augustinian Origins
- 6 Rousseau's General Will
- 7 Rousseau's Images of Authority (Especially in La Nouvelle Heloise)
- 8 The Religious Thought
- 9 Émile: Learning to Be Men, Women, and Citizens
- 10 Émile: Nature and the Education of Sophie
- 11 Rousseau's Confessions
- 12 Music, Politics, Theater, and Representation in Rousseau
- 13 The Motto Vitam impendere vero and the Question of Lying
- 14 Rousseau's The Levite of Ephraim: Synthesis within A “Minor” Work
- 15 Ancient Postmodernism in the Philosophy of Rousseau
- Bibliography
- Index
1 - Introduction: Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 May 2006
- Frontmatter
- 1 Introduction: Life and Works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778)
- 2 A General Overview
- 3 Rousseau, Voltaire, and the Revenge of Pascal
- 4 Rousseau, Fénelon, and the Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns
- 5 Rousseau's Political Philosophy: Stoic and Augustinian Origins
- 6 Rousseau's General Will
- 7 Rousseau's Images of Authority (Especially in La Nouvelle Heloise)
- 8 The Religious Thought
- 9 Émile: Learning to Be Men, Women, and Citizens
- 10 Émile: Nature and the Education of Sophie
- 11 Rousseau's Confessions
- 12 Music, Politics, Theater, and Representation in Rousseau
- 13 The Motto Vitam impendere vero and the Question of Lying
- 14 Rousseau's The Levite of Ephraim: Synthesis within A “Minor” Work
- 15 Ancient Postmodernism in the Philosophy of Rousseau
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
There is no need to recommend the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau: the greatest of all critics of inequality, the purest social contract theorist of the eighteenth century (and simultaneously the deepest critic of contractarianism after Hume), the greatest writer on civic education after Plato, the most perceptive understander of mastery and slavery after Aristotle and before Hegel, the finest critic of Hobbes, the most important predecessor of Kant, the most accomplished didactic novelist between Richardson and Tolstoy, the greatest confessor since Augustine, the author of paradoxes (“the general will is always right” but “not enlightened”) that continue to fascinate or infuriate.
Rousseau's extensive range and intensive depth have been best brought out by Judith Shklar, in the Postscript to her celebrated Men and Citizens:
What did his contemporaries recognize as great in him, even those who reviled him as a charlatan and a poseur. He lived among the most intelligent and competent literary judges. Why did they think that he was so remarkable? His eloquence was universally recognized. Admirers and bitter enemies alike agreed that Rousseau was the most eloquent man of his age. His style is overwhelming. Rousseau, Diderot eventually said, was what one says of the poor draftsman among painters: a great colorist. Rousseau's literary powers were indeed phenomenal and to understand him fully one must give more than a passing thought to how he wrote. There is, however, another quality that his contemporaries did not recognize, partly because they shared it. That is the scope of Rousseau's intellectual competence. Even among his versatile contemporaries he was extraordinary: composer, musicologist, playwright, drama critic, novelist, botanist, pedagogue, political philospher, psychologist.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to Rousseau , pp. 1 - 7Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001