Jean-Jacques Rousseau: Paradoxes and interpretations PDF Download

Author: John T. Scott
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415350846
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 422

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Book Description
Bringing together critical assessments of the broad range of Rousseau's thought, with a particular emphasis on his political theory, this systematic collection is an essential resource for both student and scholar.

Author: Tamela Ice
Publisher: University Press of America
ISBN: 9780761844785
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
This book proposes a resolution to the paradox of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's sexual politics—that he is the philosopher of freedom for men yet philosopher of servitude for women. The author examines psychological oppression, which is often overlooked as a consequence of sexual and identity politics, which is revealed in Rousseau's Les Solitaires and Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary. The author addresses logical problems for Rousseau and certain forms of contemporary 'difference' feminisms. With the aid of Simone de Beauvoir's notions of liberty, the author proposes a way to use Rousseau's philosophies to overcome psychological oppression.

Author: Céline Spector
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 1509516522
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 213

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Book Description
Jean-Jacques Rousseau is one of the most controversial philosophers of the eighteenth century, and his groundbreaking work still provokes heated debate in contemporary political theory. In this book, Céline Spector, one of the world’s foremost experts on Rousseau’s thought, provides an accessible introduction to his moral, social and political theory. She explores the themes and central concepts of his thought, ranging from the state of nature, the social contract and the general will to natural and political freedom, religion and education. She combines a skilful exposition of Rousseau as a ‘man of paradoxes’ with a discussion of his often-overlooked ideas on knowledge, political economy and international relations. The book traces both the overall unity and the significant changes in Rousseau’s philosophy, accounting for its complexity and for the importance of its legacy. It will be essential reading for scholars, students and general readers interested in the Enlightenment and more broadly in the history of modern political thought and philosophy.

Author: Sally Howard Campbell
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 0739166328
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 111

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Book Description
In the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Sally Howard Campbell finds the bridge between the now-dominant psycho-social conception of alienation and the legal-political conception that prevailed prior to Rousseau. She discusses Rousseau's transformation of the concept of alienation and how it laid much of the groundwork for Marx's later, more explicit discussions of man's alienation. Using Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality, Campbell shows how Rousseau depicts the development of man's awareness of himself as a conscious and moral being, illustrating man's journey from a natural state of self-sufficiency to one of dependence and alienation. Paradoxically, she describes Rousseau's belief that a state of wholeness can only be achieved through a man's total alienation of himself to the community, free from the alienating effects of civil society. She concludes that, like Marx, Rousseau believed that alienation can only be transcended through the merging of the individual and the community.

Author: Philip Robinson
Publisher: Peter Lang Group Ag, International Academic Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Art in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 536

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Book Description
This is the first book to set out comprehensively Rousseau's theoretical statements on the arts: music and opera, theatre, fiction, poetry, the visual arts and dance. These statements are seen in terms of the phases of his intellectual development: the early years, the social criticism of the 1750s, the future-orientated theory of Emile and other texts, and finally the increasing self-scrutiny. This approach, conscious at all times of the element of personal commitment in his thinking, permits a sympathetic understanding, if not a resolution, of the famous paradoxes. The chief of these, his simultaneous condemnation and practice of drama, music and literature, is seen less as a personal contradiction than as a pointer to the ills of society which outrage him. Despite the huge social, political and economic upheavals since his death in 1778, Rousseau emerges as a thinker who has much to teach those concerned for the health of the arts in a modern world and for the moral values which attend them.

Author: Joseph Reisert
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501729659
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Scholars have long debated the contribution Rousseau has made to political thought. Is he a theorist of radical individualism, a reactionary advocate for authoritarianism, or just a brilliantly paradoxical but ultimately incoherent controversialist? In the first book devoted to discussion of Rousseau's conception of virtue, Joseph R. Reisert argues that Rousseau's work offers a coherent political theory that both complements and challenges key elements of contemporary liberalism.Drawing on his deep familiarity with Rousseau's work, Reisert maintains that Rousseau's primary concern was to discover the psychological foundations of virtue, which he understood as the strength of will needed to respect the rights of others. Reisert reconstructs the model of the human soul that underpins Rousseau's account of virtue, a model he considers superior to the alternatives conceived by Aristotle, Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Kant, and Rawls. Rousseau, the author explains, believed that life in modern societies undermines virtue, but that for individuals to thrive, and for free societies to endure, all would require moral education. Rousseau, who styled himself "a friend of virtue," sought to impart virtue to his readers through the examples of his literary characters Emile and Julie.Reisert finds that Rousseau's thought poses a dilemma for modern politics: democratic governments can do little to cultivate virtue directly, yet liberal society continues to need it. The requisite moral teaching, Reisert concludes, should be provided instead by families, religious organizations, and other civil associations.

Author: Judith N. Shklar
Publisher: CUP Archive
ISBN: 9780521316408
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Cambridge paperback library. First published 1969. Includes bibliographical references. 5.

Author: John T. Scott
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780415350853
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
Bringing together critical assessments of the broad range of Rousseau's thought, with a particular emphasis on his political theory, this systematic collection is an essential resource for both student and scholar.

Author: Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0452010314
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
With splendid new translations, these four major works offer a superlative introduction to a great social philosopher whose ideas helped spark a revolution that has still not ended. Can individual freedom and social stability be reconciled? What is the function of government? What are the benefits and liabilities of civilization? What is the original nature of man, and how can he most fully realize his potential? These were the questions that Jean-Jacques Rousseau investigated in works that helped set the stage for the French Revolution and have since stood as eloquent expressions of revolutionary views, not only in politics but also in such areas as personal lifestyles and educational practices. Rousseau’s concepts of the natural goodness of man, the corrupting influence of social institutions, and the right and the power of the people to overthrow their oppressors and create new and more responsive forms of government and society are as richly relevant today as they were in eighteenth-century France. Includes: The Social Contract Discourse on Inequality Discourse on the Arts and Sciences “The Creed of a Savoyard Priest” (from Emile)

Author: Lynda Lange
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271047072
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
A progenitor of modern egalitarianism, communitarianism, and participatory democracy, Jean-Jacques Rousseau is a philosopher whose deep concern with the relationship between the domains of private domestic and public political life has made him especially interesting to feminist theorists, but also has made him very controversial. The essays in this volume, representing a wide range of feminist interpretations of Rousseau, explore the many tensions in his thought that arise from his unique combination of radical and traditional perspectives on gender relations and the state. Among the topics addressed by the contributors are the connections between Rousseau&’s political vision of the egalitarian state and his view of the &"natural&" role of women in the family; Rousseau&’s apparent fear of the actual danger and power of women; important questions Rousseau raised about child care and gender relations in individualist societies that feminists should address; the founding of republics; the nature of consent; the meaning of citizenship; and the conflation of modern universal ideals of democratic citizenship with modern masculinity, leading to the suggestion that the latter is as fragile a construction as the former. Overall this volume makes an important contribution to a core question at the hinge of modernism and postmodernism: how modern, egalitarian notions of social contract, premised on universality and objective reason, can yet result in systematic exclusion of social groups, including women. Contributors are Leah Bradshaw, Melissa A. Butler, Anne Harper, Sarah Kofman, Rebecca Kukla, Lynda Lange, Ingrid Makus, Lori J. Marso, Mira Morgenstern, Susan Moller Okin, Alice Ormiston, Penny Weiss, Elie Wiestad, Elizabeth Wingrove, Monique Wittig, and Linda Zerilli.