Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778)

His political philosophy influenced the progress of the Age of Enlightenment and later the French Revolution, yet it is through three pieces written within 8 years of one another that would be the most important. Rousseau’s Political Writings collects the essays Discourse on Inequality, Discourse on Political Economy, and The Social Contract that sees the development of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s political thought and features how his contemporaries and later commentators have reacted.

In Discourse of Inequality, Rousseau after a long examination of how human society began focused on the creation of private property as the beginning of inequality and this created a corrupt modern world as well as illegitimate states—as alluded to in future writings. In the Discourse on Political Economy, was a furthering of some of Rousseau’s ideas in Inequality to a conclusion while ignoring others but the most important was that he proposed that the best way for a legitimate state to handle inequality is for essentially progressive taxation on income and wealth as he views luxury with distain and leading to corrupting of a legitimate state into an illegitimate one. Finally, The Social Contract Rousseau fully develops his systematic approach into how a legitimate state is established, organized, and run though they are more guidelines as each state’s environmental factors dictate which type of government—democracy, aristocracy, or monarchy—is best for it. The 173 pages in which Rousseau develops his ideas takes up a little over half the book, the second half the editors gave background to Rousseau’s life that influenced his thinking with selections from his own autobiography and the thoughts of his contemporaries and later commentators thought the later would focus on one intellectual thread they loved or hated while ignoring Rousseau’s careful balancing act. Overall Rousseau’s thoughts and the critical reaction they elicited from others made this little over 300-page book very informative in the development of political thought in the 18th century and beyond.

Rousseau’s Political Writings is both a good collection of three of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's most important political essays as well as thoughtful criticism from his contemporaries and later political commentators.… (more)

Really just an astonishing memoir, and not at all what I was expecting. Instead of a dry, didactic, rationalist, Enlightenment-era reflection, this is a warts-and-all, somewhat unreliable, page-turner that includes several jaw-dropping revelations. He gave all five of his children away to a foundling hospital!! He shacked up with his mistress Therese (who was the daughter of his servant). He was involved in at least one menage a trois.

The Confessions does not include any discussion of Rousseau's philosophy, although through his gradual turn to misanthropy and his retreat to nature, he exemplifies a sort of proto-Romantic hero. Because his work was considered heretical by the Jesuits in France, he was forced into exile and spent several years running from one safe haven to another. The Confessions is the earliest memoir I have read that feels contemporary. Augustine's Confessions were written ultimately to make converts; Rousseau on the other hand, wants to tell the truth of his life.… (more)