Rousseau

Rousseau's Social Contract and a Theory for Global Citizenship

by Oscar de la Parra

Rousseau

by Richard Cannistra

Rousseau's Virtue Epistemology

by Ryan Patrick Hanley

Commerce and Corruption: Rousseau's Diagnosis and Adam Smith's Cure

by Ryan Patrick Hanley

Enlightened Nation Building: The "Science of the Legislator" in Adam Smith and Rousseau

by Ryan Patrick Hanley

Misreading Rousseau: J. Derrida's Deconstructive Reading of J.-J. Rousseau's Essay on the Origin of Languages

by Gerasimos Kakoliris

Jacques Derrida’s engagement with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the second part of Of Grammatology constitutes the most... more Jacques Derrida’s engagement with Jean-Jacques Rousseau in the second part of Of Grammatology constitutes the most systematic, extensive example of deconstructive reading. Nevertheless, the problem of whether Derrida reproduces Rousseau’s basic claims adequately has remained a peripheral concern. This has meant that this may constitute a misreading and the consequences that this would have for the deconstructive operation itself have not adequately examined. Hence, this enquiry into Derrida’s reading of Rousseau centers upon the extent to which Derrida distorts Rousseau’s text in order to be able to confirm deconstruction’s radical theoretical positions.

O Conceito de Soberania: constantemente referido ao Leviatã

by Bruno Motta de Vasconcellos

'The Most Important Business of the State': Rousseau and Civic Education

by Varad Mehta

Presented to the Northeastern Political Science Association, 2011

Rousseau avers in Emile that the public education characteristic of the classical republics has become impossible... more Rousseau avers in Emile that the public education characteristic of the classical republics has become impossible because the ideals of “citizen” and “fatherland” which that education was designed to perpetuate are now meaningless. Yet when it comes to making practical suggestions about what institutions are best suited to cultivating a spirit of civic unity, he harks back to those same republican exemplars he feels have become outmoded in the modern world. This paper will argue that the strongest indication of Rousseau’s commitment to republicanism is his oft-expressed admiration for the educational and cultural practices of the ancient republics, practices which fostered the cohesion and civic solidarity a republic needs to thrive, and whose adoption he urged when he had the opportunity to make recommendations to those seeking advice on how to reform – or preserve – their fatherlands. The classical republic whose civic, social, and cultural institutions surpassed all others in binding citizens and nation together in the “sweet uniformity” vital for the preservation of both was Sparta. Rousseau cherished the memory of Sparta because the Spartans understood that although its citizens are the lifeblood of a republic, citizens are not born but made. Men must be educated to be citizens. Civic education is “the most important business of the state” because it is what allows a republic to make of its people what it “needs them to be.” The Spartans had hallowed this lesson, one Rousseau devoted much of his career to imparting to any who would heed it.

Banishing the particular: Rousseau on rhetoric, patrie, and the passions

by Arash Abizadeh

Rousseau initially attempts to secure freedom by grounding political rule in persuasion, rather than coercion. When... more Rousseau initially attempts to secure freedom by grounding political rule in persuasion, rather than coercion. When the spectre of rhetoric undermines this strategy, he is led to ground the volonté générale in the silent and introspective disclosure of the solitary citizen’s inner conscience, which through a sentimentalist transformation of Descartes’s category of bon sens, is recast as an eminently public sentiment. But when rhetorical eloquence turns out to be indispensable to politics, Rousseau turns to republican virtue and the trope of grounding the polity’s freedom in the patrie’s territory and, subsequently, in the citizen’s heart.

Legislators as musicians. Rousseau’s melodious foundation of democratic republicanism and his Essai sur l’origine des langues

by Alessandro Arienzo

to be published in "Sistemi Linguistici. International review of linguistics". A forthcoming review based at Sorbonne, director prof. Louis Begioni

When placed in the narrower frame of a critique of theories of representation, Rousseau’s philosophy stands within a... more When placed in the narrower frame of a critique of theories of representation, Rousseau’s philosophy stands within a neo-classical approach to language and music that, during the Eighteenth century, uttered a strong critique of representation in the fields of knowledge, arts and politics. By focusing on the Essay on the origin of languages, I will discuss Rousseau’s belief that music, education and politics, can enhance man’s moral freedom through the establishment of a “melodic” language of wisdom, capable of healing the wounds of moral corruption and social divisions. Language is conventional and its conventionality is the result of a development in communication that was driven by human search for perfectibility and pity; both these imply mutual recognition and cooperation as well as conflicts and divisions. In this sense, Rousseau’s theory on language and music is a reflection on the “moral effects” of melody which has relevant implication for his politics. I will therefore focus on the legislator as that figure that, through persuasion and “sound” discourses, not only proposes laws, but establishes moeurs and shared social meanings in the very first moment of the joining together of men in a political community.
Moreover, if a just and legitimate political community can only be established by individuals, but it is only by the art of few wise people that the promises of freedom and justice implied in the social contract can be realized. On the converse, it is the purpose of wisdom, and the true aim of politics, to make of a disperse multitude of men a “People”, and a community of citizens. This seems to lead to an apparent paradox in Rousseau’s theory: on the one side, it is the purpose of a legislator, and of the State, to promote the moral transformation of individuals through law, civism and education; on the other side, it is only from those individuals that a just and legitimate state can be established through a moral pact. In this sense, Rousseau has to balance self-education and state government in order to draw the lines for making individuals a people upon which to establish a legitimate sovereign political order.
Within the limits of this short contribution, I will discuss the above mentioned paradox by focusing on a different line of reasoning in Rousseau’s thought. Legislators and wise politicians, in fact, should rely on their capacity to provide people with good laws and customs, convincing them to join the political society. And on that relies Rousseau’s  republicanism. But legislators and politicians should also yield on “reason of state”, as a complex science of politics, in order to set up the condition by which a political community can promote political equality and good government. Indeed, Rousseau does not intend raison d’état as a derogatory or cunning politics, but as the knowledge of all the rules concerned with the government of a population through policy, administration, economy. By joining virtue with reason of state, Rousseau reveals the necessity to sustain his republicanism, and his proposal for a democratic political order, with a governance that strengthen the capacities for the self-government of people and individuals. If this holds true, while education and self-recognizance through narration are the two pillars for a rediscovery of human singularity bridging the gap between individuality and sociality, in Rousseau’s political philosophy it is reason of state that closes the circle between politics and morality, between the melodious language of the legislator and the harmony implied in a well ordered society.

Sentiment or Duty? Liberalism and International Justice

by Byron Kaldis

G. Calder, et al (eds.), The Future of Liberalism, London: Avebury, pp 231- 242

F. Toto, "Il diritto, i costumi. Dal discorso sulla disuguaglianza al Contratto sociale", da "il cannocchiale. rivista di studi filosofici", n.1, 2008, pp. 69-90

by Francesco Toto

F. Toto, Passione, riconoscimento, diritto nel ‘Discorso sull’ineguaglianza’ di J.-J. Rousseau, in «Post–filosofie. Rivista di pratica filosofica e di scienze umane», n. 4, 2007, pp. 129-158

by Francesco Toto

F. Toto, Les facultés que l’homme naturel avait reçues en puissance. Riflessione, intelletto, ragione nel ‘Discorso sull’origine della diseguaglianza’ in «Studi settecenteschi», n. 27-28, 2007-2008, pp. 205-283

by Francesco Toto

Misreading in IR theory and ideology critique: Morgenthau, Waltz and neo-realism

by Hartmut Behr

“Non-domination as a primary good: re-thinking the frontiers of the ‘political’ in Rawls’s political liberalism”

by Eoin Daly

(2011) 2(1) Jurisprudence 37

The debate surrounding state responses to the burqa in Western Europe provides an opportunity to re-visit the... more The debate surrounding state responses to the burqa in Western Europe provides an opportunity to re-visit the ambiguous boundary between the “political” and the “comprehensive” in Rawls’s political liberalism. Must the emancipatory goals of the republican state, in the guise of the politics of liberty as non-domination, be interpreted as spilling over into a realm of “comprehensive” values – contrary to the “neutrality” that supposedly grounds the legitimacy of the politically-liberal state? Maynor identifies a fundamental incompatibility between neo-republicanism and the “political not metaphysical” basis of political liberalism – given the “necessary values and virtues that must accompany republican liberty as non-domination.” I argue that his stance dislocates the frontiers of the “political” and the “comprehensive” in Rawls’s theory, overlooking, in particular, the much-neglected Rousseauist angle of justice as fairness. The confinement of state power to the realm of the “political” does not translate, as Maynor assumes, into a non-interventionist approach that excludes “political” justice from “non-political” social spheres. Under Rawls’s theory, virtues, habits and attitudes may be constitutive of, rather than merely instrumental to liberty; “political” justice may consistently warrant radical changes across much of citizens’ lives, endowing them with certain resources and capacities, as long as it remains open to the “final ends” towards which these capacities might be directed.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Chains of Modernity

by Varad Mehta

Presented to the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2008

This paper examines Rousseau’s use of the Spartan legend in his quest to rescue Europe from modernity, particularly in... more This paper examines Rousseau’s use of the Spartan legend in his quest to rescue Europe from modernity, particularly in the First Discourse, the Letter to D’Alembert, and the Government of Poland. The Enlightenment marked the advent of modernity, yet it is replete with homages to classical antiquity. These competing impulses pervade Rousseau’s thought. He repeatedly expresses his preference for the anti-commercial mores, anti-individualistic political forms, and social cohesion and solidarity of antiquity. He especially admires Sparta, which he depicts as the antithesis of modern European civilization. Rousseau’s conception of the latter is firmly within the Enlightened mainstream: it is characterized by the development of the arts and sciences, the rise of commerce, the elevation of the individual over society, nascent secularism, the dominance of great territorial states, etc. Whereas his counterparts mostly welcomed these transformations, Rousseau consistently repudiated the malign influence of progress, which he believed perverted human nature. Hence his recourse to Sparta, where society and individual were in accord and the general will flowed through every citizen’s breast. By defining Sparta as everything modernity was not, he also defined modernity as everything Sparta was not. Rousseau’s task was to deflect the future from its present course, which he believed was leading to disaster. Yet contesting this terrain actually confirmed his place within modernity and the Enlightenment, for these were concerned primarily with the future, just as he was. Hence, ironically, in his quest to remove them Rousseau ultimately became himself ensnared in the chains of modernity.

Political Anti-Theology

by Lucas Perkins

Co-authored with Michael Gillespie. Critical Review, 2010.

In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla argues that political theology invariably leads to apocalyptic politics, and that we... more In The Stillborn God, Mark Lilla argues that political theology invariably leads to apocalyptic politics, and that we can avoid this fate only by maintaining a “Great Separation” between politics and religion, such as the one that Hobbes initiated, but which was overturned by Rousseau and German liberal theology—leading to Nazism. We argue that Hobbes never established such a divide; political theology is far more diverse than Lilla suggests; and liberal German political theology was not a significant source of Nazism. Moreover, liberalism is itself a political theology, suggesting that religion and politics should not, and perhaps cannot, be divided—although they may be reconciled.

Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos e o compromisso romântico da democracia

by Clayton M. Cunha Filho

Vol. 9, No 99 (2009): Revista Espaço Acadêmico - nº 99 - Agosto de 2009 - resenhas & livros Wanderley Guilherme dos Santos e o compromisso romântico da democracia

Resenha de Santos, Wanderley Guilherme dos.. O paradoxo de Rosseau: uma interpretação democrática da vontade geral.... more Resenha de Santos, Wanderley Guilherme dos.. O paradoxo de Rosseau: uma interpretação democrática da vontade geral. Rio de Janeiro: Rocco, 2007.

Kant on Taking an Interest in Natural Beauty

by Joseph Cannon

forthcoming in Topics in Contemporary Philosophy vol. 9, MIT Press