Emile, Or Treatise on Education is a treatise on the nature of education and on the nature of man written by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who considered it to be the "best and most important of all my writings." Due to a section of the book entitled "Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar," Emile was banned in Paris and Geneva and was publicly burned in 1762. During the French Revolution, Emile served as the inspiration for what became a new national system of education.

A provocative essay that challenged the superiority of civilized society and modern government, Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality made him an outcast among fellow Enlightenment thinkers but stands today as one of the most important political texts in Western history. Helena Rosenblatt's new translation, introduction, and selection of related documents help students comprehend why Rousseau's criticisms of human nature, political hierarchy, and private property were so controversial in his time yet later were hailed as a foundation of...

""The Government of Poland" is the only finished work in which Rousseau himself dons the mantle of legislator, applying the principles of the "Social Contract" to the real world around him. "Poland" teaches us much about the mysterious art of the "Social Contract's" 'legislator, ' how he transforms each individual into part of a larger whole. Only in . . . "Poland" do we find what this crucial transformation entails and what it presupposes. But probably the greatest lesson to be learned from . . . Poland concerns Rousseau's understanding of the proper relationship between theory and practice....