Understanding the unity or, if one prefers, the abiding obsessions of Rousseau's works has often been compromised by the drawing of borders that have little to do with Rousseau or the contexts in which he wrote. One such border is a creation of the modern university. Working in distinct academic disciplines, even Rousseau's most astute critics have collaborated in producing the mirage of two separate and often incommensurable Rousseaus: one for political scientists and historians of philosophy, another for students of literature and psychology. As inevitable as that border may appear, it has led to a fragmentation that can compromise our understanding of his work as a whole. The real challenge in reading Rousseau is to appreciate how his political vision depends on his literary and autobiographical writings while at the same time recognizing the extent to which his literary representations of subjectivity flow from a dialectic of self and other at the core of his political writings. Our study of Rousseau must not foreclose the possibility of grasping in his work the complex paradoxes that balance the literary with the political, the psychological with the anthropological.