Few thinkers have enjoyed so pervasive an influence as Rousseau, who originated dissatisfaction with modernity. By exploring polarities articulated by Rousseau-nature versus society, self versus other, community versus individual, and compassion versus competitiveness-these fourteen original essays show how his thought continues to shape our ways of talking, feeling, thinking, and complaining.
The volume begins by taking up a central theme noted by the late Allan Bloom-Rousseau's critique of the bourgeois as the dominant modern human type and as a being fundamentally in contradiction,...