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  3. Rousseau
  • Cited by 31
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
March 2010
Print publication year:
2006
Online ISBN:
9780511616235
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511616235
Subjects:
Physical Anthropology, Eighteenth-Century Philosophy, Anthropology, Philosophy
Information

Book description

Rousseau is often portrayed as an educational and social reformer whose aim was to increase individual freedom. In this volume David Gauthier examines Rousseau's evolving notion of freedom, where he focuses on a single quest: can freedom and the independent self be regained? Rousseau's first answer is given in Emile, where he seeks to create a self-sufficient individual, neither materially nor psychologically enslaved to others. His second is in the Social Contract, where he seeks to create a citizen who identifies totally with his community, experiencing his dependence on it only as a dependence on himself. Rousseau implicitly recognized the failure of these solutions. His third answer is one of the main themes of the Confessions and Reveries, where he is made for a love that merges the selves of the lovers into a single, psychologically sufficient unity that makes each 'better than free'. But is this response a chimaera?

Reviews

"Gauthier's reading of Rousseau's works, especially in terms of the key ideas of dependence and freedom, is, in many places , highly illuminating and does begin to bring to light the structures of an underlying unity." - Ann Hartle, Emory University

"a provocative essay on Rousseau from a noted scholar of Hobbes and one that will be of interest to scholars and students alike." - Rebecca Kingston, University of Toronto

"The conversation Gauthier assembles is impressive...Gauthier's presentation of the fabric of writing that makes up Rousseau's work accurately reflects its dialectical patterning and reveals some unexpected threads among its connected strands."
Zev M. Trachtenberg, University of Oklahoma, Ethics

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