Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith are giants of eighteenth century thought. The heated controversy provoked by their competing visions of human nature and society still resonates today. Smith himself reviewed Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality, and his perceptive remarks raise an intriguing question: what would a conversation between these two great thinkers look like?

In this outstanding book Charles Griswold analyses, compares and evaluates some of the key ways in which Rousseau and Smith address what could be termed -the question of the self-. Both thinkers...