The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Book Description

Looks at the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau through his writings. Studies the influence of his doctrines on Burke, De Maistre, Bohand and the Age of Reason.




Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Paradoxes and interpretations


Book Description

Bringing together critical assessments of the broad range of Rousseau's thought, with a particular emphasis on his political theory, this systematic collection is an essential resource for both student and scholar.




Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations


Book Description

In this volume, John Warner grapples with one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s chief preoccupations: the problem of self-interest implicit in all social relationships. Not only did Rousseau never solve this problem, Warner argues, but he also believed it was fundamentally unsolvable—that social relationships could never restore wholeness to a self-interested human being. This engaging study is founded on two basic but important questions: what do we want out of human relationships, and are we able to achieve what we are after? Warner traces his answers through the contours of Rousseau’s thought on three distinct types of relationships—sexual love, friendship, and civil or political association—as well as alternate interpretations of Rousseau, such as that of the neo-Kantian Rawlsian school. The result is an insightful exploration of the way Rousseau inspires readers to imbue social relations with purpose and meaning, only to show the impossibility of reaching wholeness through such relationships. While Rousseau may raise our hopes only to dash them, Rousseau and the Problem of Human Relations demonstrates that his ambitious failure offers unexpected insight into the human condition and into the limits of Rousseau’s critical act.




Being After Rousseau


Book Description

In Being after Rousseau, Richard L. Velkley presents Jean-Jacques Rousseau as the founder of a modern European tradition of reflection on the relation of philosophy to culture—a reflection that calls both into question. Tracing this tradition from Rousseau to Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling, and Martin Heidegger, Velkley shows late modern philosophy as a series of ultimately unsuccessful attempts to resolve the dichotomies between nature and society, culture and civilization, and philosophy and society that Rousseau brought to the fore. The Rousseauian tradition begins, for Velkley, with Rousseau's criticism of modern political philosophy. Although the German Idealists such as Schelling accepted much of Rousseau's critique, they believed, unlike Rousseau, that human wholeness could be attained at the level of society and history. Heidegger and Nietzsche questioned this claim, but followed both Rousseau and the Idealists in their vision of the philosopher-poet striving to recover an original wholeness that the history of reason has distorted.




The Question of Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Book Description

Looks at the philosophy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau through his writings. Studies the influence of his doctrines on Burke, De Maistre, Bohand and the Age of Reason.




A Discourse on Inequality


Book Description

A fascinating examination of the relationship between civilization and inequality from one of history’s greatest minds The first man to erect a fence around a piece of land and declare it his own founded civil society—and doomed mankind to millennia of war and famine. The dawn of modern civilization, argues Jean-Jacques Rousseau in this essential treatise on human nature, was also the beginning of inequality. One of the great thinkers of the Enlightenment, Rousseau based his work in compassion for his fellow man. The great crime of despotism, he believed, was the raising of the cruel above the weak. In this landmark text, he spells out the antidote for man’s ills: a compassionate revolution to pull up the fences and restore the balance of mankind. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.




Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith


Book Description

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith are giants of eighteenth century thought. The heated controversy provoked by their competing visions of human nature and society still resonates today. Smith himself reviewed Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, and his perceptive remarks raise an intriguing question: what would a conversation between these two great thinkers look like? In this outstanding book Charles Griswold analyzes, compares and evaluates some of the key ways in which Rousseau and Smith address what could be termed "the question of the self". Both thinkers discuss what we are by nature (in particular, whether we are sociable or not), who we have become, whether we can know ourselves or each other, how best to articulate the human condition, what it would mean to be free, and whether there is anything that can be done to remedy our deeply imperfect condition. In the course of examining their rich and contrasting views, Griswold puts Rousseau and Smith in dialogue by imagining what they might say in reply to one another. Griswold’s wide-ranging exploration includes discussion of issues such as narcissism, self-falsification, sympathy, the scope of philosophy, and the relation between liberty, religion and civic order. A superb exploration of two major philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith: A Philosophical Encounter is essential reading for students and scholars of these two figures, eighteenth century philosophy, the Enlightenment, moral philosophy, and the history of ideas. It will also be of interest to those in related disciplines such as political theory, economics, and religion.




The First and Second Discourses


Book Description

One of the most respected translations of this key work of 18th-century philosophy, this text includes a brief introduction to the two works as well as abundant notes that range from simple explanations to speculative interpretations.




Rousseau, Nature, and the Problem of the Good Life


Book Description

The rise of modern science created a crisis for Western moral and political philosophy, which had theretofore relied either on Christian theology or Aristotelian natural teleology as guarantors of an objective standard for &"the good life.&" This book examines Rousseau's effort to show how and why, despite this challenge from science (which he himself intensified by equating our subhuman origins with our natural state), nature can remain a standard for human behavior. While recognizing an original goodness in human being in the state of nature, Rousseau knew this to be too low a standard and promoted the idea of &"the natural man living in the state of society,&" notably in Emile. Laurence Cooper shows how, for Rousseau, conscience&—understood as the &"love of order&"&—functions as the agent whereby simple savage sentiment is sublimated into a more refined &"civilized naturalness&" to which all people can aspire.