In this volume, John Warner grapples with one of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's chief preoccupations: the problem of self-interest implicit in all social relationships. Not only did Rousseau never solve this problem, Warner argues, but he also believed it was fundamentally unsolvable--that social relationships could never restore wholeness to a self-interested human being.

This engaging study is founded on two basic but important questions: what do we want out of human relationships, and are we able to achieve what we are after? Warner traces his answers through the contours of Rousseau's...