Poetics of History places Rousseau at the origin of modern speculative philosophy by showing that his thinking on the theater, despite its dependence on a false and conventional reading of Aristotle, nonetheless articulates a radical thinking of originary mimesis, and, well before Hegel, an understanding of catharsis as Aufhebung.

Poetics of History places Rousseau at the origin of modern speculative philosophy by showing that his thinking on the theater, despite its dependence on a false and conventional reading of Aristotle, nonetheless articulates a radical thinking of originary mimesis, and, well before Hegel, an understanding of catharsis as Aufhebung.