Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A preliminary note on vocabulary and conventions
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The problem: the intersection of beneficence and pudicity
- Chapter 2 The code of beneficence
- Chapter 3 The practice of beneficence and model benefactors in the major works
- Chapter 4 The passion of pity in Rousseau's theory of man
- Chapter 5 Gyges' ring: a reading of Rousseau's 6e Promenade
- Chapter 6 Pudicity in some of Rousseau's minor writings: its relationship to beneficence
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Generosity and pudicity in Gyges und sein Ring and Le Roi Candaule
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- A preliminary note on vocabulary and conventions
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 The problem: the intersection of beneficence and pudicity
- Chapter 2 The code of beneficence
- Chapter 3 The practice of beneficence and model benefactors in the major works
- Chapter 4 The passion of pity in Rousseau's theory of man
- Chapter 5 Gyges' ring: a reading of Rousseau's 6e Promenade
- Chapter 6 Pudicity in some of Rousseau's minor writings: its relationship to beneficence
- Conclusion
- Appendix: Generosity and pudicity in Gyges und sein Ring and Le Roi Candaule
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Cambridge Studies in French
Summary
Rousseau is one of the most important moral and political philosophers of the modern era. He is, at the same time, a leading figure in the canons of literature. A great deal of secondary material has been produced on both sides of the divide, some of which helps us to have a finely nuanced and sophisticated approach to Rousseau's work. This book is located in the tradition which attempts to work in both of those fields simultaneously in the belief that disciplinary segregation can lead to political readings which seem naively inattentive to the rhetorical structures of the text or to literary readings which seem to ignore the very questions which the text prioritises, those issues of justice, freedom and virtue which Rousseau considered to be of primary importance. I wish to analyse certain moral (and hence political) questions in Rousseau by using the techniques of reading which are currently associated with literary criticism or theory. The specific questions which will be addressed are those of the functioning of bienfaisance (beneficence) and of pudeur (pudicity), also of the relationship between the social codes which govern each of these practices, and of the extent to which that relationship casts light on each of the codes individually.
The code of beneficence, which regulates the giving, receiving and repaying of benefits, used to be a central topic of moral philosophy and of applied ethics, but has been afforded little close critical scrutiny in recent times.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Justice and Difference in the Works of RousseauBienfaisance and Pudeur, pp. 1 - 4Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993
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